Warfare & Tactics

Get a hurricane, put guns on it, start declaring war on people.

Pick a frigate (punisher, merlin, rifter, tristan, incursus). Buy a stack of these and fit them up then hit up low sec and start searching for targets.

I recommend reading Taurean's Blog read his early posts on punishers. He bought a stack and lost them all and shares what he learned with each fight.

I also recommend joining a good channel where PVPers talk and hang out. Most good PVP corps have a public channel where you can ask advice and discuss fittings and tactics.

You can't really.

I've been flying T1 frigs and destroyers in low and NPC null for a month now and never have I encountered anything less than overwhelming odds.


My experience flying a frigate:
-Everyone that flies a frigate EXCEPT YOU flies a pimped out T2 frigate.
-Speed tanking is a lie, every ship in the world EXCEPT YOU has T2 scout drones that will melt you in three seconds from 3x your gun range. Even the frigates. Especially the Dramiels.
-If you do manage to find a slow cruiser with no backup and no drones, you can't break his tank with your puny DPS.

My experience flying a destroyer:
-There isn't such a thing as a 1 vs 1. Everybody EXCEPT YOU has backup and/or alts.

Even yesterday I had just dodged a gatecamp, bounced on a planet, and warped to the escape gate. I ran into a catch bubble anyways. A sabre decloaked as I was MWDing back to gate. I was quickly scrammed and webbed. Being in a Trasher, I said **** this I've got a chance, and opened fire.

Except nothing happened.

Then I saw the falcon and the buzzard. ECM and tracking dampeners on a poor T1 destroyer worth about 2 mil ISK, piloted a 3.3 mil SP character. Wheeeee! Now there's nothing to do except wait for the inevitable insurance mail while my trasher is sitting around in space like a fat cow, unable to do anything against a gang that would have won in a straight fight anyways. A falcon makes any gang immune to any opposing gang that's smaller than three.

So there isn't really anything you can do alone. People just don't fly alone, except in lowsec where the - Elite Pirates - have pimped out T2 boats and 100m SP.

If you have half a dozen mates, though, you can lay the pain on smaller T2 gangs even with poorly skilled T1 ships.

So, I've had enough of this bullshit.

I'm putting together a TEAM.

In general, you will be facing unfair odds when soloing. People won't engage unless they think they're going to win, that's human nature. It is also very possible to win in these situations with proper fits/piloting - but to get to that point, you need to get the PvP basics down, and the best way to do that is to go out die repeatedly in a cheap frigate until you figure out what is bait, what people's backup are, how to maximize your own survival time, how to disengage, etc. I make stupid mistakes all the time, but fortunately I got most the reallyyy stupid ones out of the way in ships that cost less than 5mil.

In your situation, soloing in NPC null, your best hope for kills is luring tackle off larger gangs and ganking it - if you're rocking an incursus or dessie the large number of times you die horribly will be somewhat made up for by a couple inty kills.

When you have experience, upgrading to a larger or more expensive ship will massively expand the targets you can engage successfully, but you'll find it corrospondingly harder to get semi-equal fights in many situations, so it's a tradeoff. In contrast, proper piloting skills improve what you can engage without making people ship up more to fight you, so it's essential to get them down rather than relying on bigger ships to make up for piloting deficiencies.

Lowsec static and FW plexes are a decent place to look for 1v1 fights, simply because you can see hostile backup well before it can come in. Gladatorial arenas of a sort, I've had good times there. But there's a multitude of guides on how to get fights while soloing out there, so look around.

I run through lowsec in mostly cheap stuff like stabbers and co.but I try to keep it very cheap so I don't **** my pants when I lose stuff. It's a good way to learn what is and what is not possible. For example, gate crashing a normal lowsec gate camp and what you can kill before gate guns get the better side of you.
I plan on joining a decent sized pvp corp sometime down the road as I'm still learning myself and, from what I've seen, going solo reduces your chances of getting kills and good fights but it's not impossible to do.
If you have a lot of isk, you can also invest in a boosting char to give you an edge.

P.S. my alt can speak for me.

Solo PVP is most successful if you bring:
-an expendable scout
-a Falcon
-a Dramiel for tackle
-a bait Drake with cyno fitted
-a supercapital hotdrop

The reason us 100m+ Sp ''old pirates'' hang out in low-sec is because my clones costs more than my bloody ship(s) (not even counting implants here!) thus going with anything less than 100m worth in 0.0 is just stupid for me.
That said, there are very few of us and we all started with way less.

Personally I skipped the 'buy 20 frigs' step and went and did it with t1 fit cruisers as you loose only like 1 mill of them but you can engage a lot more like AF's which you can't really in a t1 frig. I did loose quite a bit to gatecamps doing that though but ultimately I also learned a lot better how to escape them.

THE most important thing as a solo pvp'er is your mindset and situational awareness. Observe, remember, outsmart them, be paranoid, take chances.







rubbish, I for one do not. Neither does Prometheus Exhenthal (sp?) which made the frigank series and other vids (deffo watch those for solo pvp if you havn't) or many other. Granted far less of them over the years due to ......... like whats quoted.

Thanks a lot for the replies everyone!
Yesterday I had a nice 1v1 fight in Dodixie against a Merlin.
I fitted a T1 incursus with T1 stuff... didn't survive, of course. Always happens the first time xD
But I definately learned some new stuff, and made some noobish mistakes (ie: having a drone, but not using it)

The one I was fighting with was friendly and supportive though, and gave me a few hints for the future.


Incursus is kinda hard to fit though, especially with T2 stuff.
Next time, I'm not going to do an arranged fight though. I'll just go start harassing people.


I just wonder how much that is going to affect my security status. Canflipping won't affect sec status, right? But how much sec status would you lose if you'd kill someone in lowsec? :)

Solo PvP isn't Dead.
You just have to learn to take a gang on by yourself...
Even if it means doing so in ships smaller than theirs.

If I can do it, you can to. I suck at PvP .

Edit:
Send me a mail in game and I'll explain what I do and how i do it, using what ships to counter certain gangs.
I rarely have an alt scouting or giving me boosts. Infact, my alt can't even give decent boosts and so is useless anyway.

Most solo kills / Solo vs Gang kills = Just me, on my tod...

Like I said, I'll give you some tips if you mail me in game.

MystieFag

As others have said, solo takes patience.

If it helps you to weather the bad times:

You will likely learn more about PvP hunting trying to solo for 2 weeks even when dying horribly than most folks pick up in a year flying in fleets.

Best of luck out there :)