Warfare & Tactics

All of the basic actions have shortcuts, I suggest checking your options. As for how to use it, if you've ever played Homeworld it's essentially the same deal. Set your destination, your ship will fly there. You can still use the shortcut to click items in your overview to approach normally. I can't imagine it is of much use for orbiting, but if you need to go in a straight line somewhere, knock yourself out.



These are both entirely situational, and depend upon what exactly you're trying to approach. For turret-based ships, you want to approach at an angle and gradually curve into your desired orbit to prevent them from tracking you easily. For missiles, tracking isn't an issue and you can burn straight for them.

As for getting away, that depends on who has the faster ship. If you're MWD fit and scrammed, it was nice knowing you, cross your fingers and hope they make a mistake. You can slingshot (there are literally a million videos on youtube explaining how this works) in and out of point/scram range with a little practice.

1. what the heck is it i stumbled on to
2. How do you properly use it?

That Q function has been there for quite a long time. The blue-circle graphics is a new thing though. It's actually quite handy when you are trying to do a bundle of things quickly. I use it, usually in the form of Q-click (holding down the Q key and mouse clicking on my target in the overview or mainscreen), quite often when I am driving to decloak cloakies or when I am doing instalock duty against ceptors. It's handy in these situations because I am also often trying to get a target lock (ctrl-click) and I find it a much faster method than just clicking the relevant icons in the 'selected item' window.

The keep-at-range facility (e-click iirc) is also similarly useful in some situations.

3. What is the best way to approach someone you intend to kill

Like so many things in eve "it depends".

In my sabre when it's a relatively easy kill I just go for approach and blap. When it's a ship that, poorly managed, could kill my sabre I go for a close orbit (traversal). When a hot-dropper seems likely I go for a wider orbit and the reduced DPS trade-off that comes with it.

In my pilgrim I routinely use both, initially approach to reduce the likelihood of a fast target escaping before I fully establish my tackle, and then a wide kiting orbit to apply damage once I have them in my clutches.

4. Whst is the best way to run away.... assuming you cant just warp away

My experience is that the best way to (bravely) run away is to identify the need early enough. All too often I leave that decision too late.

In my sabre I try to just use speed and burn away, either choosing a direction away from the hostiles or towards something I'm looking to eventually warp to. If I am scrammed my speed is mostly gone and if I am pointed by a very fast kiter then my subsequent warp-away options are significantly reduced. There are techniques (e.g. slingshot) to break tackle in such situations but I have no expertise in those ... usually using a falcon or pilgrim for that purpose if I have one available.

In my pilgrim I try to align to a bookmark that takes me away from my attackers. I then use my neuts and a flight of warrior IIs to play the tacklers and, hopefully, lose them. Usually I eventually find myself ale to warp away, although sometimes there are just too many of them or they are recon tackling me from afar and I cannot shake them.

In my falcon I just jam, laugh, and run away ... although a recent loss reminded me of the dice-roll aspect of jams these days, even in an all-5s falcon.

Most of my travel-fit ships have jammers and / or RSDs fitted (and cloaks) so if I am actually tackled I do have some additional escape possibilities. This saved a prowler for me once by breaking the lock of an interceptor before his in-warp buddies landed.

The other main escape methods involve docking, heading inside a force field, or jumping the gate / wormhole.

Falcons sometimes need to bravely run away, and that mention was in response to the running away enquiry. Again just based on my experience.