Ships & Modules

Any advice on which ship is better for a small pvp gang? Probably consist of 3 armor tanked autocannon Machariels OR 3 blaster Vindicators + dual web Loki + 2x Guardian logis. Could also switch the battleships for Domis but I suppose it's all situatonal.

I'm trying to give the gang good resistant to neuts, so that's a negative for Vindis who will require cap to fire their guns. Plus for vindi is the nice dps and tracking, the web bonus isn't so useful because the Loki will be doing that job. Machariel has a little less DPS but 3 times better range and better maneuverability. Machariel also doesn't have to worry about running out of cap. With targets duel webbed and probably tracking computers fitted on the machariels I doubt the difference in tracking will matter much.

small pvp gang =! battleships

id use cruisers. 2 logi for 4 ships is a bit too much. a 6 man kiting gang will get way more kills. you can engage larger groups and more people are willing to fight you as well.

It's for hi-sec wars mostly.

I beg to differ. Kiting arty machs and even pests work wonders. Though that depends on your definition of small gang, since with the obligatory support (anti-tackle, points and webs) they need at least 8-10 people to work as intended.

RLML phoons/ravens can go smaller and add nice punch to a small 3-5 man cruiser gang, but you'd better get some hyperspatial rigs and possibly WS- implants.

Can't really talk about HS wars since they mostly look like gate/station camps and picking off stragglers which is not particulary interesting.

That being said, machs can very much armour tank, and with slaves (hisec) they can easily do 350K+ tank. And with ACs they can do neuts. Though 3 heavy neuts aren't that much.

Your real problem is you are looking at maybe 2500dps between your 6 ships. Which is, well, tankable by, say, your mach with a single 5-1 guardian. You'll never be able to scratch a T3 with logi support. Hell, you'll never be able to scratch the logi support itself. So once you are up against a similar fleet, you both are tanking till downtime.

You could probably mix the battleships, and maybe add nestor for refitting and/or RR, but it's still the same problem of "hug the gate and tank them all". Personally, at this point something like RRBS would at least look somewhat interesting.

vindis all the way, gonna need all that deepz to kill them before they dock up. Although if you are in a HS war that doesn't involve station games (do they exist?) maybe machs.


slot layout favors an armor tank on a mach imo. Often shield fit for nano ops though, people like to be able to disengage. Plus mach warp speed is nice to either burn to target or run from blob.


only because small gang meta favors running away rather than brawling. although I don't really blame small gangs too much as the other side has a tendency to blob beyond belief, and that doesn't even include the possibility of a hot drop. FC we out number them 4 to 1 what do we do!? Wait till we outnumber them 10 to 1 and drop the titans!

I figure that 3 machs with 2 heavy neuts each will be sufficient to shut down most targets, that's 6 heavy neuts. The machs can also each run a target painter to help increase the potential damage on non battleship targets. As for enemy logistics, well that's what we have a max ECM strength cloaky falcon pilot following us around for. I didn't mention it previously but we have it.

How does slave mach get 350k ehp? I can't see how it's possible even with slaves and max gang boosts.

Would a vindi use caldari navy antimatter or void ammo for pvp? Void has higher paper dps but reduces tracking, falloff, and increase gun cap usage by 25%

For highsec wars, the Marauder class is utterly absurd. They are too soft to capitals to use in lowsec/null, but in highsec and in wormholes that do not permit moving capital ships in, they are ridiculously tanky.

If your opponents are not fielding a Bhaalgorn fleet, they will be basically unable to break your tank unless they can field utterly overwhelming numbers.

Mach has a single utility high. Of course you can drop a gun for a second neut (I knew a guy who was running neut+smartbomb mach, because for solo it's worth the DPS loss), but you are, well, dropping a gun.

Double plated, T2 trimarks. Though that's probably overkill for a 6man gang, better swap a plate for a gyro.

web loki long point lach and arty machs whit a scimi, 6-8man gang will do fine warping in at web range to alpha