Warfare & Tactics

Unless it's a Tengu blob or it's nano, armor fleets tend to be more common. It's partly because there are no shield BS that are as good as a Baddon, partly because the shield carriers are less popular, partly because armor ships are able to fit a better buffer. The utility mids that an armor fit gives are also very helpful.

Whatever tool gets the job done.

If you have very high numbers I like alpha maelstroms, volleying everything.
If your opponent has alphamaels and numbers and you have less I prefere long range tier 3s.
If it's going to be a slug match I prefer drakes.
If it's like 100 vs 100 and the opponent has drakes I prefer abaddons.
If the opponent has abaddons I prefer armorhacs.
If the opponent outnumbers you 2:1 in battleships or drakes but it's less then 200vs100 I prefer tengus.

Small nano gangs I prefer to fly with vagabonds and cynabals.

Bombers when needed.

There is no "best" way of tanking. Shield tank, armor tank, no tank, all have their place. If you lock yourself into one style you're going to be predictable and eventually lose battles because of that. Be flexible and it will help your success.

^^ this.

There is no one-size fits all fleet composition. You can't make the decision about what to bring unless you have an idea of your own numbers, the enemy numbers and the enemy composition. Counter drakes with abaddons, counter abaddons with ahacs, counter ahacs with drakes... that kind of thing.

If you're on the offensive and someone else is likely to be forming up to counter *you* then it's also good to dedicate a secondary wing (if you have the numbers) to specifically counter their counter. Maels with drakes or BLOPS for blapping Tier-3's etc.

Depends purely on the situation, but my personal preference is for shield.

This is probably one of the best replies to this so far. Ty for the insight =)

This post covers how different doctrines tend to fare assuming competent FCs on both sides of the field. Given the post the OP liked, though, I'll go more in depth and give an opinion:



I completely agree that FCing from EWAR or logistics is a bad idea, as you're likely not anchored with the main fleet, and you likely won't be locking primaries. Logistics (which I mostly fly in larger fleets) compounds this problem, as having a number of likely targets pre-locked is critical, and targeting hostiles but potentially fat fingering a primary is just asking for trouble.

That said, I tend to prefer shield fleets - their mobility is nice in smaller roaming gangs and for battlefields with a number of warp bounces to try to find optimals, you can cram a shield buffer onto most nearly unranked snipers and utility ships to make even a few logi have something to work with, and a t2 shield tank is significantly easier for newer players to train into, with the worst timesink being Tactical Shield Manipulation IV.

I'm actually not a huge fan of complete kitchen sink fleets. In very small gangs, this sort of setup is great, as you're mostly looking to the FC for a call whether to fight or get out, but in larger fleets having a mixed doctrine makes the fleet unable to do any one thing well.