Warfare & Tactics

Well you guys should probably stick to the frigs/afs and dessys until you figure out your fits and how to fly them and stuff. Keep it cheap while you are learning then once you are comfortable in them and getting some kills move up to bigger, better, pricier ****. If you really want to know that other guys' fit look him up on evekill or something and check his losses, might be able to find it there.

yeh I agree with flying cheaper stuff, it emboldens you to take more risks and other pilots are more willing to engage than they would be an AF or two. Looks like your friend likes flying Rifters, which should be AB fit, so a good complement to that would be a MWD+scram+web Atron with active tank, so you can go tackle kiter targets and slow them down enough for the Rifter to catch up. On the flipside, the Rifter can take the lead on tackling AB-fit targets and you show up to add the DPS. If there's ambiguity about how the target is fit (eg. a Wolf in a plex) then just warp in both ships and play it from there.

The main thing is to bring ships different enough that your engagement profile is as broad as it can be, but without sacrificing common-sense things like web and tank, which give you more chances to disengage if things aren't going well.

Of all my duo attempts with said friend, it never occurred to me to be the first to warp at a place I know there is an enemy waiting, hoping the target keeps on me instead of my partner. I'll have to keep that in mind.

I also never thought of drugs (doesn't concord flip out if you pass them with drugs?). That'd definitely explain some of the weirder fights I've had in SiSi and regular TQ.

As for Atron suggestion, I've got gunnery and small blaster specialization in mind for my training soon as well, so I'll be keeping this bookmarked. (Active armor or shield tanked? My guess is armor, but being a Gallente frig, it could go either way.)

We've been toying with a lot of ideas. cruisers with a remote rep in the high slot, me running a logistics frig with either a good tank or ECM, or some repair drones. But the suggestion of warping in first in a Corax is also good. Far as exploration goes, that's one goal in mind for the near future; those new low sec sites and some fancy Wormhole sites are tempting. I don't have the hacking skills, but my partner is a good scanner and hacker.

Keeping tabs on this; thanks for the info!

Edited for interesting note. I never podded the guy, but I found him on z killboards, and it turns out he was one of my first kills, him flying a Sentinel. Guess that's what he was doing when he had my pod sitting there- looking up his kill mail out of recognizing the name or something. Again, I didn't pod him. Petty jerk got his revenge by blowing up a dramiel and Hawk. The podding was a bit excessive. Should make it a point to get some more kills on him, then.

FC let me whore in on kill I'm 15 km off only have scram and then suddenly pop it's a a full slave set pod. Even worse if you were the hero tackle.

So a logi frigate or stick with Corax- or just eff it and exploration sites with her.

I have a fair bit of solo pvp experience in the FW lowsec areas flying mostly frigates. When solo, the most important factor for me is the ability to disengage or escape. This means 2 types of fits are optimal for solo pvp: scram kiters or long point kiters. Scram kiters emphasize keeping your opponent on the edge of scram range to mitigate their dps (assuming they are blaster/autocannon fit) or using your range control to outtrack long range guns or guns with bad tracking (artillery, rails, beams and pulses), the essence of these fits are afterburner + scram + web (sometimes double web) and these are very susceptible to long point kiters with mwd. Traditional long point kiters emphasize dps at 20km and use their mwd to keep out of scram range.

The main selling point of these fits is that when things don't go your way (you're losing, blob incoming etc) you can disengage and warp away which is invaluable when you're flying solo.

As for flying in small gangs, you should always bring lots of utility, make sure you have someone who is fast enough to catch kiters, if you already have 2-3 webs and someone has a spare mid, bring a tracking disruptor, neuts, damps etc. Also everyone has to have some decent know how of various ships. For example, you have a gang of 3 frigs, you find a catalyst/thrasher in a FW plex, you probably have to send 1 person in to prevent scaring them off, but who you send in is paramount, that persons ship has to be able to survive long enough for everyone to arrive and keep point, during the engagement your pilots must be able to keep the catalyst at range and burn out his range if they're taking too much damage. If everyone were to brawl at 0 you'd probably kill him but you'd likely lose a couple of your gang members. This is where things like TDs can be very useful.

Some of my favourite scram kiting ships are: Incursus, Hookbill, Tristan, Comet, Breacher, Firetail, Tormentor (works but my least favourite). Long point kiting ships aren't my thing since kiting is so finicky, there's much less room for error so I personally wouldn't recommend it but some people swear by it, popular ships for this are Hookbill, Condor, Slicer, Wolf, Tristan, Atron. If you'd like more detailed fits and strategies hit me up in game and I can share what I've experienced.

Buy looooads of ships.. move them to a high sec/low sec border system that has low traffic.. start roaming in low sec.

Perhaps he had links (probably), a crystal set, and/or used drugs.

Bigger is not always better, and 2 destroyers are a lot scarier than 1 destroyer. Any smart solo pilot is going to steer clear of you, and any blob is going to bait and eat you.



Is she a newer character? Happen to be in an NPC corp? Knowing your enemy is critical to survival, esspecially in solo fights. I almost always get rid of newish players first. They are less likely to have signifigant tank skills and combat experience. Means they die faster, and wrecks do 0 dps.



FW space PvP is not super-profitable. The dudes who make money in FW do it by running FW sites using farming alts, or blitzing FW missions in a bomber.

That said, I live out in the fringes. The non-faction warfare lowsecs. Out here, cruisers and up are much more popular than in FW space, which also means it's easier to kill shiny fit plexers and missioners when you come across them. When in doubt, carry an expanded probe launcher in your cargo hold. You will know why when it comes time to use it.



Tengu links.

oh no here comes the booohooooo links part