Warfare & Tactics

Hey guys, I'm a member of a small corp. We spread the light of enlightenment and joy through oneness and undying devotion to the eternal light. We're not sure what that means yet, but it's not stopping our proselytizing. There's 4 of us at the moment, and we're all relatively new (between .5 to 5.5mil SP). We have a diverse range of interests and skill focuses, but we'd like to get more into PvP (or, to be more precise, we'd like to be able to defend ourselves when we get attacked, which is often).

Our focus at the moment is isk acquisition. I frequently see "don't worry about ISK, do what you like and it'll come", which is very sweet and well intentioned, but the reality is we need the **** to buy the ships and fittings we like in order to do the things we like. Which is fine, none of us mind grinding a bit to afford ****, it's how Eve and life unfortunately work. Now, for us, given our skills and relative lack of ISK, running HS content is really ****** income, and higher level stuff like incursions are well and truly beyond our abilities to run.

As a result, we engage in PvE we CAN reasonably/realistically complete in low and null excursions (we know how to d-scan, overviews are set up, we check starmap for gatecamps). As a result we very often get attacked by ships well out of our league; I'm talking alt armies of T37 officer fit Supertitan carrier dreadnoughts against two Vexors and a Maller (more realistically, a couple of blinged pirate faction ships and T3C's).

We don't want to be blown up or run all the time. Every time we make a little bit of profit it's almost immediately lost, assuming we make it more than a few jumps in the first place. It's a little disappointing, but it's even more motivating- we're all trying to come up with different fits and methods to succeed, but none of them are working, and the drain on our resources is getting too much to continue in the manner we have been. This brings me to the reason I'm posting- and I'd like to preface this with I know fits are generally effective vs specific other ship types and fits, and everything has a counter.

What ships, in a combination of 3-4 in a gang, could seriously **** up another small gang of much "better" ships? Got an Amarr pilot, a Gallente pilot, and myself (a bit of everything sans Minmatar so far, mostly Caldari and willing to skill into whatever). Keeping in mind we're in ~200DPS boats vs Nightmares, Proteuses, Orthruses, and a variety of other 500m+ isk boats.

My initial thought was to train heavily into ECM to aggressively level the field so we even stand a chance, and while I'm flying my blackbird I'm skilling into a Falcon/Rook. This does preclude solo PvE, but it'll allow us to get some sneaky **** running when we need to. Suggestions for the other two spots in a fleet, one Amarr and one Gal? General tips are welcome, even.


TL;DR: Ideas for small PvP gang composition against overwhelming odds?

Fair enough, I understand the sentiment. I just see people decrying the practice in general, and I'd rather go down swinging- my corpmates feel the same way. I mean the alternative is to just not engage in PvP until I can sit in a blinged-out pirate faction cruiser or the same t3c fit everyone and their mother uses. We wanna get involved, we want to be annoying to kill if not too irritating/difficult to fight. To that end, is ECM a decent starting point for one of us? My Amarr corpie was skilling into a Curse which I think would be great paired with an ECM ship but we'd be ****** on DPS so I'm not too sure.

Thanks for the reply though, I do appreciate it and you're right. I just wanna go a different route.

I think you should go back to your initial concern/interest, which was Isk generation for ships as an investment for more Isk until your skills catch up to your know-how or willingness to scrap with whatever tries to punk you and actually have s chance (against the stuff you're up against). Look into epic arcs in your area, and low sec PI. You can find a nicer home and less strict requirements for that content.

Or you all can just join the militia and make Isk as you learn how to pick apart stronger enemies with cheaper ships and more cunning tricks. Living in lowsec is much easier than commuting through high traffic border areas.

There's some great videos of solo and small gang PvP, a couple channels are My Hyde (solo brawler) and ChessurSB (small gang kitey)

EWAR is great in small gangs. http://themittani.com/features/ewar-newbies

The Maulus is one of the simplest ships to get into and when well flown, swings battles. When the Missile Tracking Disruptors arrive, the Crucifier will become the bane of Orthrus and Caracals everywhere.

Speaking as a frequent Kitsune pilot, ECM is very powerful in small gangs, although it's a lot more skill dependent. You will need some time spent on Signal Dispersion and Long Distance Jamming as well as everyone's favourite skill to V asap: Thermodynamics!

While you're theorycrafting your fleet, remember that Damps and Tracking Disruptors can be feasibly fit onto hulls with no bonuses to their operation. If there's a spare'ish midslot anywhere in the fleet, extra EWAR is never a bad idea so long as you're not doing something completely dumb like dropping warp disruptors to make room for unbonused damps.

edit: Your budding EWAR pilot had better get used to being called primary and will need to learn how to bounce out quickly to avoid losing their ships repeatedly. Bookmarks, Bookmarks, Bookmarks. My standard 'tactical cage' around a gate/station is six ongrid with the gate and another one ~1,200km away for a fast bounce point. Around important gates/stations, I may burn 20 or more bounce points.



+1.
If you're already derping around in lowsec, get involved in faction warfare and you'll solve your ISK issues while you go pewpew.

My experience with trying to PvE in lowsec is that if the locals see someone running a site and surmise that that individual is alone or only has 1 or 2 friends, it is indeed an excuse to bring out all the random ridiculous blingboats that don't ever get undocked for big doctrine ops and high risk roams.

RDRAW does the same thing frankly. A shiny ship sitting on a stargate or a large plex is likely bait, one running a site is almost certainly just that and likely far from help. If we see someone running a site in Suj, their dscan (if they are paying attention) is going to light up with combat probes. They won't see anything else until the first combat recon lands on grid, with the faction cruisers and HACs appearing only when the Curse or Lachesis is burning in for tackle. Sometimes we bring griffins or a blackbird just to make absolutely sure the soon to be gank victim can't shoot back.

I have been on both sides of this. Trying to run sites/anomalies in hostile space is suicide unless you're in a empty area at a time of low activity. A local will enter system and you'll see combat probes out immediately or in a few minutes if he has to call a friend, swap ships or log a scanning alt. The local count will creep up and you'll start seeing bad things on dscan; with the recon changes the real concern is what you don't see.

If you want to make reasonable profit off lowsec PvE you need to live there and have a group big and strong enough to fight off at least single or small groups of hunters. If you can't do that, you are better off having a highsec alt for incursions/missions/station trading etc. Or a nullsec ratting alt in a renter corp. Sad but true. I had a Stratios decloak on my Ishtar at a besieged site in my home system not long ago. Despite me having a dozen corpmates in local. I'd piped up on teamspeak and had guys ready to warp to me as soon as I saw the probes on dscan; 30 seconds after he decloaked and pointed me they landed on him with a ceptor followed by half a dozen logi and DPS.

2-3 guys trying to do stuff in lowsec in T1 cruisers are gonna have to run from alot of things. Either find literally the most desolate, god forsaken space you can or make your ISK elsewhere.

What a load of tosh. Yes people set up good baits in active areas on DEDs (died to one last night :D). Yes if you try to waltz into heavily contested systems and run sites you will get scanned and blapped. But you absolutely do not need to be strong enough to defend yourself or live in the local space to earn billions of Isk in low sec.

I ran 10+ 5/10s just this weekend (on a Tengu alt) and all of these were escalations from running Dens in non FW low sec. Drop me a message ill show you some quiet areas you can roam around and make some excellent Isk. If low SP is an issue ill sort you out some specific fits you can use to run DEDs with your current SP level.

In terms of fighting outnumbered and outgunned you need to come at it from the perspective that a single kill can often pay for your entire fleet. You should take out fun combinations of ships that are dirt cheap and if you all die in fire you can just laugh at it and try again. We often take out ridiculous stuff like RR combat Navitas and gank Catalysts and get silly kill mails https://zkillboard.com/kill/47263699/ and https://zkillboard.com/kill/46752249/ for example.

Morale is important. Flying disposable but effective setups will really help boost that and show just how far you can go with just 10m ships.

If you're poor just don't ever die. It works for me.

5/10s are few and far between in my experience. You must be sitting on a gold mine of empty lowsec somewhere.

Farming highsec sites would probably be more efficient especially with multiple people able to divide the labor (scanning, running hull size limited sites etc.) and steal sites from lone explorers.

The best way I can think of to make ISK in lowsec at that skill level aside from FW is to set up in a cluster of 0.1/0.2 systems and run the belts for clone soldiers (20M per tag) in addition to any mordus/faction spawns you may find. That can be done in T1 fits (except for the Mordus BS, he is a monster).