Wormholes

GIVEN

- You want to take over and keep or defend (if possible) some smallish WH - let's say C1 - C3.

- Your gang, your corp, is small - maybe 2-5 members starting out.

- While PvE in the hole is important for ISK-generation, the primary threat is PvP, meaning player-piloted ships coming in to either take the hole, or just do annoying things like ganks. So the prime thing to consider here is PvP.

ASSUMPTIONS (correct these if wrong)

- Flexibility is important (damage types dealt, etc)?

-Most threats will be solo gankers or small gangs?

- Most threats will be smaller size ships (frigates and cruisers)?

- Most threats will be close-range, or at most medium range, because 1) they will need to tackle, 2) they will be flying cruisers and frigates?

QUESTION

Knowing nothing else about the situation (whether the hole is a magnetar, a pulsar, a C1 or a C3, a 'this' or a 'that'), what would be the ideal ships to fly? I have ideas about this, but I don't want to bias your response by telling you beforehand.

Also, address and correct my assumptions above if you think they are wrong.

EDIT

No T3C - there are plans to rebalance them.

get logis, 2 corp guardians and the ability to fly them, other members can bring all types of armor ships. Of course you need at least 3 members or multiple characters for that.

If the threat or your corp gets bigger, just use more of them.

rattlesnake/gila very good to run sites.

problem is that with rattlesnake you are a battleship, a big and strong one, but with low mobility.
if the enemy tackles you and has the numbers then you can't run away.

while with t3d and gila you can kite and gtfo.
ishtar... yea kinda ok more or less, i suppose: couple of neuts in the highs

Whoops, I forgot to state. T3 is probably going to be nerfed (there are several topics on it), so I don't want to go that route.

Will edit top post.

I'd be pretty shocked if T3s went away entirely as a top WH fleet meta.
Sure the fits will change but the ships wont.

I'm tempted to agree, mobility is a huge factor. Maybe something bigger, but I just can't think of what right now.

My thoughts will be about a 5% nerf to DPS of close range weapons, and a 10% nerf to tank. It's not going to be really big.

With the gang you're talking about for defending a hole, i'd recommend a bunch of kiting gilas... 2 or 3 of those can really mess up people's days.

My contribution to this thread is to have a good but flexible plan.

I'd recommend having a T1 fleet of Frigates, and a T1 fleet of Cruisers (so that's two fleets). Use these to "punch up" anyone coming into your home looking for trouble. Most groups will bugger off if you fight them; you'll almost certainly lose your whole fleet but that's what they're looking for. Content. If you manage to take one or two of them with you especially if you're outmatched they'll GF in local and everyone will have had fun.

Then get a couple of fleets of T2 Frigates and or Cruisers (probably only 1 fleet). Use this significantly more expensive ship class to respond to and defend your pve-fleet if it gets tackled, or to fend off a potential eviction fleet or a high priority threat.

Then I recommend getting a battleship doctrine. Use this fleet to defend your home against eviction should the enemy put up a beach head or attack your structures.

In short, you want cheap stuff for the every day pvp you'll have, expensive stuff for the much more rare but higher priority fights, and a big slow fleet to defend your claim to the system.

My recommendations for actual hulls would of course rely heavily based on things such a hole types, sizes, and apparent opponents. In short, build a short list of rules and criteria for yoour corporation so that, should an engagement arise, your FC can make a snap judgement, based on this criteria, and call the right fleet to action.

I'd recommend against super expensive or blingy stuff; and to never 'over-escalate.' These are ways of getting the enemy group to either camp you, or to escalate further, and in eve the enemy can almost always escalate further than you can. So limit your footprint, limits your losses, and provide good fights whenever you can and you should be left mostly alone.

I can give more detailed advice through mail if you're interested. I'm pretty good at planning things like this, I feel anyway.

Edit:
Also, as far as your assumptions go, kiting seems to be pretty huge right now in wormhole space, as far as we've seen. So close up ships get ripped apart slowly by ships far away who've got a long point and an MWD. So if you cannot score initial scram you're not bread, you're toast.

The problem is that there are a lot of variables. Depends on what the fleet compostion is of the intruders. I am partial to fielding an interdictor and a bunch of covops ships like stealth bombers and tengus, maybe Stratioses?