Warfare & Tactics

I dont normally solo...


But when i do, i use 2 extra accounts for boosts and jams

Racial ECM implants ftw. At least with ecm, you can see it coming. With loki-boosts however...

Which just goes to show how bad it has become that people train up an alt to get a silly advantage in a t1 frig.

This is a people problem not just a mechanic problem. One that true solo players accept but choose not to engage in.

Ecm, offgrid boosters, Alts, ASBs are part of the game's fuctionality. They are a part of the game and here to stay, so man up, and think of a way to counter them, or simply use them yourself. Its like hearing those soccer fans whine for hours over how the referee whistled against their team and got them to loose the match.
its in the game, so live with it. I personally dont use any of those simply because I havent a trained alt, but the thought occurs once in a while. No one stops you from training a scout or Ogb.

T.

Offgrid Boosters would not be such an issue if they would not boost ship speed. Having Hookbills going over 7000m/s not overheated nad 9000m/s with heat is completely nonesense. No missile or drone can catch them. This is ridiculous. Except for the speed boost every other aspect of offgrid boosting is fine with me.

If a booster punk, fights another booster punk "alone" is it re-considered a solo fight? since they have equal advantages.

Na, it's a douche bag vs douche bag

I solo. Alot.

I have had quite abit of success in doing so, but there are several problems with it.

- Its frustrating
- Even if you are super careful and loot everything, you probably wont break-even (isk wise, you can get decent efficiency tho)
- You will get boned by off-grid gang links 50% of the time.
- Only a very few ships are viable due to ganglinkers
- You cant fly anything bigger than a cruiser unless you have a scout, your own booster/logi alts and a crap ton of isk. Personally I beleive that if you are using an alt for anything, you cant claim that you are soloing.

But if you do manage to get a good fight, its way better than sitting in a 30 man blob, following primaries.

There are a few ships that I would recommend you try out.

-Sentinel - Personally, i think this is the best frigate in the game right now (for solo). Simply because if you run into a gang link scrub, you can nuet them out and kill them or get out. The only problem with it, is the damage is terrible, and that means that if he got friends its hard to kill someone before they kill your drones.

-Nano Dessies - Arty Thrasher, Algos, Dragoon (and to some extent the others). You can kill frigs/other dessies outside of scram range, so you can get out if the blob arrives. The problem with these, is ganglinks. If they have them and you dont realise, you are guna get webbed/scrammed at 17km, and then you are guna die because of lack of tank or the blob will land.

-Gank Dessies - AC/shield Thrasher, Coercer, Algos - Very good if you land right on top of somebody. But if you get a gang linker who kites, you are boned. These are cheap to replace and quite easy to fly. Just overheat and hit approach.

I have also seen some pretty good Caracal pilots out there, with Light missiles. Its a pretty good ship, but you cant get in small plexes, which means you are cutting down on potential targets. I have also seen/heard about the 10mn AB coercer and it looks pretty legit. I haven't got around to trying it yet tho.

Most of my PvP has been solo or small gang.

What I can tell you is that lowsec is no longer the fertile hunting ground that it used to be five or six years ago. There's a few reasons for this but it doesn't really matter. The number one tool you will need as a solo hunter is instinct, and a very close second is patience.

The third is a ship that has a good ability to disengage from a fight - more often than not, the people you find will have friends next door. As Lady Spank said, expect to die. A lot. Very few people are interested at all in a 'fair' fight, or even a fun fight. They want a cheap kill so they can stroke their e-peens and talk about how glorious it was to get a 10v1 kill instead of their typical 20v1.

So, when it is a trap (and it is always a trap) you need to either kill the guy before his help arrives (often unlikely for a bait ship) or have a way to run. This means you'll probably want to fly Minmatar (native speed and agility) or Caldari (always space for a web). Gallente and Amarr ships, by their nature, tend to force you to commit to a fight.

Frigates seem to be the best; they're the least threatening and will scare the least amount of people away. They're capable of taking on cruisers and sometimes destroyers, depending on your fit and the situation. Frigates give you the best chance to get past a gate camp.

Destroyers are good for hunting frigates because of their sheer DPS output and ability to apply it to smaller targets.

Another consideration:

If you want to fly larger ships, consider picking 6-10 stations in an area and put a few ships in each of them. Then you can use a covops / pod / whatever to move around if there's a lot of camps in your area. You won't ever be stuck in one or two places. Just move somewhere else.

Again, it's mobility.

If you don't have thermodynamics trained, do so now.

I wish you the very best of luck. The Solo PvP Crowd is a very elite and special group and the very hardest playstyle in Eve. It's you against the world.

Short Edit:
As someone once told me, solo PvP doesn't mean you against someone else. It means you against someone else and his friends. Some people (not me) are absolute masters of pulling people away from a gang, killing them, then swooping in for seconds. I really admire those people.

Drone wont catch a properly fit Kite Hookbill even if he has no boosts.

Hookbill is easy to counter but drones are not the way to do it.

People just pay too much attention to the DPS figure in their fitting windows so they don't come up with the correct fits to kill kite hookbills.