Wormholes

Ships can do 2.5 things.

Start off by figuring out your average.

Average number of Pilots online

Average skill sets. What can most people fly? What weapons systems are most people skilled for?

Build a doctrine around this. Keep it simple at first and expand later.

Figure out a dream doctrine and work towards it. Baby steps.

More brawl-y doctrines tend to dominate in much of wormhole space. C4s are generally either armour T3s with guardians for logi, or in pulsars rattlesnakes/gilas/basilisks (though once you jump out of the pulsar a lot of your advantages are lost).

Do what the posts above suggested, but also pursue it from the opposite direction. Look at the kill boards of the bigger C4 corps that you encounter and look at their lossmails, take the fits apart so you understand what they are trying to achieve and how they complement each ship, fit for tank, engagement range and speed, and then try and work how you stay in a fight and how you disengage. Put the fits you come up with into fleetup - get everyone in the corp to put in their keys and then see whether you can pull a fleet out of that. If you are lacking particular roles, see if you can substitute particular hulls with a less skill intensive equivalent. Encourage people to take a look at the fits and train into some of them - and then have them ready in the wormhole. Work out how you incentivize people to fly the prescribed fits - for critical roles like logi, perhaps have a set of corp ships that people always use.

at minimum you'll want a brawling doctrine that can eat damage, and a kiting doctrine that can easily disengage so that you can try and take fights that you'd be unable to take in your brawling doctrine

Agree with Bayne, you are over-analysing this and should concentrate less on ironclad doctrines than on getting your tactics down.

For a 5 man gang, your options are fairly limited in terms of what ships you can bring. You will, in low-class space, mostly be doing ganking or taking small numbers of peopl, so you should gear your gangs around this.

BUGRY is good at ganking, small gang stuff, and the like. Very rarely have we needed, bothered or been able to ship up into our party clothes (Bhaals, Guards, blah blah) for decent fights, without either overpowering the foe or having their batphone turn up and waving off. Like, the typical way it goes is, you encounter your foe, they scout you, you scout them, they ping Jabber or mates, what you think was 5 guys turns into 20 bored dinkusfaces piling in on your 3 guys. Or vice versa.

No point having a doctrine for that game of cat and mouse.

Generally, with five guys, i would suggest;

1 x cloaky tackle (Astero, seriously)
2 x DPS
EITHER one of these three choices:
2 x more DPS
2 x EWAR
2 x Logi

DPS wise, I'd say Gilas. Let's not lie, the Gila is OP AF and you can get 1600 DPS from 2 of them. if you drop 4, you basically get up close to 3200 DPS. Valid armour options would be HAm legions, Protars, blaster prots (with a pinpoint accurate warp-in), Sacrileges, Deimoses, Ishtards. T1, you're down to the Brutix navy, brutix, prophecy.

No minmatar DPS, they suck, it's just the facts. Well, except for buffer Cyclones.

ECM wise, you could then drop 2 Rooks if fighting, say, some enemy non-drone cruiser/BC fleet not dominated by T3's. So, let's say, ganking Drakes or a couple of BS's running a site, for example. Don't drop Rooks on drone boats, and be careful of Tengus as jams not guaranteed.

2 Curses are awesome for active tanked foes, like marauders, or for a lot of work against eg, laser boats etc. But hardly anyone flies them, so often you just turn off MWD's and proteus blasters. Whooptedo.

Logi wise, 2 Scythes teamed with 2 Gilas are fine. It's hard to justify solo logis because they get driven off really quickly. Fits for the Logis are crucial.

Alternatively, for marauders in particular, if you get cloaky tackle in position, you drop 2 Hecate + 2 Sentinels on them at the right time, you tear them a new one in no time. You don't need to go crazy on expensive stuff for ganking, and honestly, only the worst marauder pilots get caught with a full-sized hole open into them, so often you are using a frig hole.

Which brings us to - developing an efficient frig hole doctrine. You CAN take out 2.4B Marauders with frigates only. You can dunk Rattlesnakes via frig holes. Hell, we even killed a Dread via a frig hole once.

The key with small gang stuff is to up your piloting skill, and get people good at their roles, and fly the same kitchen sink that works, versus kitchen sinks that change every minute. it is also most important to know who, what and when to fight unless you enjoy welping.

Example bizarre 5 man gang to gank a Paladin:
1 x Active shield tanked Arazu heavy cloaky tackle
2 x Buffer Cyclones
2 x Gilas

surprised no1 mentioned remote rep setups, especially stratios.

Solo logi also works, you just need to tank it as Jester does. I have an X-L ASB oneiros that's fricking awesome

You can do a LASB Scythe.

[Scythe, LASB]

Reactor Control Unit II
Capacitor Power Relay II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Pseudoelectron Containment Field I
Co-Processor II

Large Ancillary Shield Booster, Navy Cap Booster 150
Small Capacitor Booster II, Navy Cap Booster 400
Cap Recharger II
50MN Cold-Gas Enduring Microwarpdrive
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Medium S95a Remote Shield Booster
Medium S95a Remote Shield Booster
Medium S95a Remote Shield Booster

Medium Core Defense Operational Solidifier I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I

I played around with RR Strats, they did well 3 + Falcon vs 3 proteus + loki, but DPS is limited, so it took a while to kill stuff. But i guess this was in the days before Geckos.

[Stratios, RRtios]

1600mm Steel Plates II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Reactor Control Unit II
Energized Explosive Membrane II
Damage Control II

10MN Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner
Medium Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Warp Scrambler II
ECCM - Magnetometric II

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Centum C-Type Medium Remote Armor Repairer
Centum C-Type Medium Remote Armor Repairer
Medium Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Centum B-Type Medium Remote Capacitor Transmitter

Medium Remote Repair Augmentor II
Medium Remote Repair Augmentor II
Medium Ancillary Current Router I


Ogre II x4
Garde II x4

Yah we've seen RR Stratios steups around a bit, plus the eternal RR Domi setups everyone and their mother has. Have to be careful on those as range to each other is an issue and W spacers tend to be pretty decent at bumping.

Also the active rep setups can do plenty in <5 fights. Sleipnirs, Deimos, Hyperions ( My fav <3 ) Cyclones, Myrms or even just slap a pair of Medium Armour Reppers on a thorax and go have fun.
I've been having a blast with an active Phantasm lately with a fit I stole form a Mr Hyde113 video.

T1 Battlecruisers are getting a buff next patch which will make quite a few of them really nasty and should be fun to fly with. Myself and a corpie used to pretty regularly go roaming around lowsec in a Cyclone and Ferox pair loaded up with XLASB's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CgscVqqA7M - Phantasm fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fBUjWopCX4 - Hyperion fun.

Don't discount the Ferox (post-rebalance) as a decent active tanked brawling ship either, with the extra midslot.

Yes, while you lose a major advantage in pulsars with drone fleets like the gila fleet, the gila/rattlesnake fleet outperforms armour fleets in magnetar and black hole wormholes too.

The reason why I say this is because of the way that a drone fleet's damage works. While straight dps numbers would indicate that a traditonal t3 fleet has a damage advantage (you're typically looking 500-700dps from a t3 fleet doctrine ship, whereas from 450-650 for a gila), once you factor in tracking that changes, even though medium guns have good tracking and generally land solid shots, they still only typically do about 50-80% of their dps per shot on a moving target. Drones on the other hand, have INSAAANE tracking (we were playing on the test server and having t3ds being alphaed off the field by heavy drones), so they almost always apply 100% of their dps. So when you factor this in, the gila fleet tends to have a bit of an advantage on damage. This is where the WH effects come into play, the magnetar hugely helps the damage advantage that a gila has, especially with the pinpoint tracking.

Where the blackhole gets interesting is drone speed, it allows for target switching to be violently fast. And if you can control your drones effectively and cycle targets, you can kill a couple before the reps have landed.

That and any good person flies a DICtor.