Warfare & Tactics

If you want to be an FC the one thing that no one tells you is this;


Very Good FCs have high burn out rate.

You are in command of billions of isk worth of ships and if the **** hits the fan you are responsible.

You have to have thick skin as people will blame you lose.

People make massive demands on your time

Whenever you are on people want you to lead them so you cant play casually


Once you have burned out you will find yourself in a highsec system mining in a kestrel not accepting convoes and believing that this is the greatest thing you have ever done in this game.

Pursue it, every fleet needs a fleet commander. But don't blindly rush in to it, get all your bases covered, it's the FC's job to know what is going on in his fleet, what all his ships are capable of, what his pilots are capable of, what his enemy is capable of, and what ship is the primary which goes way beyond just shooting things with the least tank and the most gank. A good example is if you're in a laser intensive fleet and there is a t1 typhoon with a neut effect coming out it's nose sitting next to a any pure dps battleship you still want to get rid of the typhoon first. Speak your commands clearly in a comprehensive way to make sure there are no misheard instructions. People may say you can not just become a good FC by learning it, but it is not impossible nor implausible you just need to know what is going on and what to do, and yes there is a lot of it. Don't be afraid to call a retreat either if you know a fight will be lost.

lol good times

That's reminded me, setting up target callers, target callers, target callers
The best target callers have Bob in the name, calling targets is quite hard and you need to know your ships

It's a hard job calling targets, I wasn't very good at this and therefore asked somebody else to do it

I disagree entirely. Every decent FC I know is a terrible solo pilot, and every great solo pilot I know either doesn't FC at all or is bad at it ... They are two entirely different concepts and mindsets.

Learning to solo pvp won't particularly help your ability to FC, flying in fleets and taking part in larger battles will teach you infinitely more. Honestly the best way to learn / improve at FCing is scouting for a larger fleet ... A scout has similar responsibilities and needs similar awareness to an FC, as well as the ability to filter and process information appropriately (the single most important skill for FCing imho).

Just a heads up, most of the advice here (including from the "read Art of War to get into the mindsight of FCing" genius) is geared at medium-large gang FCing, where people are just expected to press F1/F2/check broadcasts etc.

In small gangs, the situation is radically different; it's effectively an extension of solo pvping, except you have X clients open simultaneously, with each of them having their own voice.

Communication between every fleet member at this size is pretty crucial, as well as everyone knowing how to perform independantly without being told to shoot X, Y, Z whilst aligning to X.

So, if you want to become good at small gang FCing, try solo pvping. Take the knowledge, experience and decisiveness you've acquired from doing so and apply it in a <5 man gang and you'll be surprised at how things will "click" into place.