Warfare & Tactics

If you are in a brawl ship, the best counter to kiters is usually to be first in a plex and sit close to the button.

That gives you the opportunity to tackle incoming ships before they pull range on you, but you need to act quickly because pulling range will be their first priority if they enter.

You need to be careful with the systems you select for this because it also opens you up to being blobbed on by fleets.

Aside from that, speed is the next best counter so you can get into tackle range quickly at the start of a fight before they get to full speed.

If you are facing frigates that point you at 30 km and longer, then they are using skirmish links. They are probably using multiple skirmish links, so also getting a speed bonus and lower sig radius.

If they get to full speed before you can tackle, then you can try more niche tactics like manouvering your ship to try to have them bump off an acceleration gate or asteroid (those are obviously location dependent).

You can try slingshot tactics burning slowly in one direction and then turning and overheating your AB or MWD when they are behind you to try to close on them before they evade, but that is more miss than hit against boosted ships (with practice it works well against unboosted ships).

Finally, the tactic you'll eventually get to is avoidance. Watching d-scan constsntly and just avoiding the most common kiting ships like Condors, Tristans (just hit their drones), Kestrels (often missile fit but also commonly rocket fit so you can fight them ok), etc. If you see a links ship on scan anywhere is system, expect your opponent to be boosted. If you don't see a links ship anywhere in system, but there are multiple people in system, expect you opponent to be boosted anyway.

When you are first starting and flying solo, check out all the opponents in system and try to identify quickly (from employment history, current corp, sec status) if you have viable opponents. If you do, check their killboard to give you more info on ships and likely fits which will help you narrow down who is flying what based on d-scan results. With a bit of practice you will become proficient at assiging ships to players with fairly good accuracy. If the system has a lot of players, then consider moving to a less populated system (until you gain more experience), or if there are no suitable opponents in system, move on.

If you fly in the same area regularly at during the same times, you'll quickly understand which corps mainly fly in fleets, which players are solo, who brawls, who kites, etc. Thats not specific to your question, but the body of knowledge you'll develop will be invaluable in assisting you make decisions about opponents even before you get into a fight.

the other 2 guys gave good advice. Slingshot will rarely work on a good guy (hey - I almost always manage to avoid it and I'm not good :P) but it's worth to try it.

If you are in a part of space you know the entry point to (like FW plex or mission) you can orbit that entry point (beacon) at 1,0 - 2,0 km on you ab turned off. As soon as you see enemy ship enter the dead space turn you afterburner and mircowarpdrive on and start spamming 2 buttons on your control tab (can't remember the name - it's the one with align to/warp to/target buttons): approach (the same as align to) and target. Overheating you AB is also good but if you're new and have problems controlling the situation - don't bother.

This will make you change direction and fly into the invaders direction as soon as possible. By then You should press your respective "F" key for warp scrambler (overheated ofc)(I usualy put scrambler on the 4th slot so it's F4 for me) and web if you have it.

This works in most cases, esp when you have web. You need to actively follow the guy (approach) because most of them will manage to get 1,5 s of their mwd cycle and it's enough to take them outside scram range. With you "afterburning" at them on OH - not so much.

So, as a resumption, don't wait till the guy starts running away. Spam the buttons and you will not loose a single second that he could use. You should press your warp scrambler but once since the module "waits" for quite some time before deactivating and will be automatically applied when something is locked.

If you have any extra problems, or if kiters are a notoriety for you - there are fits out there that have web (or long range weapon) pretty much required. These in particular could help you with intercepting kiters, as web makes them >50% slower.

Also - never be bothered to try this on an interceptor. It's a waste of ship and time. If someone wants to "duel" you with a ceptor - warp away. T1 ships are good enough for tormenting newbies and he should be able to do just fine in'em :P

----edit----

I just checked you KB - you fight with navy/pirate frigs. They are not a good target for a rifter. I'm sorry to say this but have some patience and avoid these. This is gonna be painful, but you are bound to loose most of the time. Instead: play some radio while you play, listen to good auditions, and wait till you've gathered enough isk to fly an RFF which is cheap, better than rifter and, even if considered to be weaker navy frig, has a potential to fight them. In amarr/fw space it was the most popular ship for a long time (esp. because of it's crazy low price <3)

If you want to try Hybrids, Rails with Spike (or even Lead) can hit out to Point range (for optimal damage I should add).

Tracking is low-ish, but MWD sig bloom of the kiter makes yer rails track perfectly @20km or more.

Avoid high-speed/low-sig/long-point boosted scumbags and Interceptors (the latter have MWD sig bloom reduction).

Some kiters have Tracking Disruptors with Optimal Range scripts, in that case you may be screwed. 150mm rails with Spike may still hit though (even if unbonused).

Have fun!

get lyyyynnnnnxxxxx

There is nothing like a lot of solo frigate fights to make you better at this game. Keep at it, win or lose.

Also, dont fight people in Condors or Hawks. Ever. Ever. Yes, you can probably beat them sometime, but you should punish them for flying those @^&$#&$ ships by denying them the enjoyment of the fight.

1) go faster.
---navigation skills, prop modules and hull upgrades, rigs, overheating. Even if you can't dictate range, at least lessen the other guy's ability to.

2) learn to fly.
---manual piloting is your friend. You're looking to either force the engagement in close so you can web/scram the bad guy, so he can no longer kite...or...get him too far out to maintain his point. Kiting takes place in a pretty narrow envelope- it's very easy to end up too close and webbed, or too far and lose your warp jam. Aggressive flying can force kiters to have to respond to your actions rather than impose their own.

Buy an atron, slap Neutron/Ions, an MWD, a scram, a shield extender, DCU, power core, mag stab on it. Rig it for damage or tank, both works, i'd go for damage. Don't even need T2, not even meta 4.

Now you have a proper derptron, which costs 1/4 of their kiter, and absolutely murders those pesky kiting condors and those scary slicers.


Slingshotting works fine most of the time. Of course a very good pilot might see it coming and not get caught, but in my experience those are very rare and most people aren't that good, or they might avoid it once, twice even, but the third.... BLAP.

It's funny how a decent LML condor can brawl one of those garbage "derptrons"

LML Kestrel. 780 Alpha. MSE. Selectable damage type. 100km lock range for silly sensor Disruptor fits.

Just changed to mwd. Help me out man, I'm just trying to learn here.