Warfare & Tactics

I solo PVP with an alt from a wormhole and get a steady stream of kills (and losses) from him. I'll tell you a couple of my secrets to finding targets.

1) first and foremost, solo PVP is not "drinking from the firehose" type PVP. Many of your potential targets don't *want* to PVP and you must be VERY patient sometimes to find them or corner them. On a typical solo roam I may engage 2-3 ships in a couple of hours and maybe have to disengage 1/2 of them because they warped in a blob or it turned out to be more than I could handle.

1b) the easiest type of solo PVP is to camp a high-sec gate near a hub offering distribution missions that occasionally go into low-sec. Egghelende on the Jel gate will get you about 200 kills a month if you put much effort into it just from the sheer numbers of noobs in T1 haulers, frigates and destroyers that jump through that gate. There is a system near the Kor-azor/Aridia border as well that has HUGE number of macros in T1 haulers grinding missions (or did the last time I checked). If all you want is kills then this is a good option..... however... these are *easy* kills. If you want *interesting* kills, read on.

2) a LOT of plexes, missions and ratting happens in low-sec. You'd be surprised. I would say 1/2 of the systems where someone is active have wrecks on scan. So how do you catch them? This is where you need a prober. Use combat probes, try to find the ship directly if you can but if you can't then probe out complexes and anomolies (especially ungated ones) Look for where people *were* ratting (wrecks) or mining (cans) and get set up (cloaked) inside to wait for them to come back. Some will.

Another trick is to use available wormholes to "hide" your ships. you disappear, you are no longer reported on intel channels and everyone thinks you left. But you didn't leave. You're still in-system but cloaked in a way that makes you invisible to local and invisible to intel channels.

An example of how I used #2 to get a kill yesterday: I saw a pilot in an ishtar (I was in a vagabond) with core scanner probes out in a system. I concluded that he was looking for plexes. He didn't do anything with my prober in system but as soon as I put out probes he recalled his probes and logged off. So I scanned the system for all anomolies and found 1 Radar site and 1 wormhole. Pretty straight forward... he was looking for the radar site but I interrupted him. I made a contact for the pilot, got the vaga into the wormhole to hide it and scanned down the radar site making a corp book mark for it. Then I left the system with my prober. After ... mmmm.... 15 min or so he logged back on. I gave him 7 min to finish his probing and start to run the site and then I came out of the wh, warped to BM, landed right on top of him and melted him. His loss 237mil isk.

Did something very similar with a hulk a week ago in 0.0: His loss 350mil isk (faction fitted Hulk FTW).... nice drop too.

3) "screw up" your sec status as fast as you can. One of the main problems in low-sec is getting a fight on a gate. Especially in small ships, two pilots with higher sec status can't engage one another on a gate/station without getting BAP'd by the sentries. However, if you are permanently red and flashy then people can engage you under sentries. That's a HUGE advantage for pirates and allows you to get a LOT more fights. (and a few that you didn't want... but that's the price). The alt I solo with in low-sec has a sec status of about -9 most of the time (I plex a lot in him so it never really goes to -10 for long) but I 'm very careful to not allow his sec status to get above -5.

4) use the agent finder. The agent finder will allow you to see where nearby agents are and what kind of missions they are offering. The good part about this is, say, you know that a mission runner will have a good tank for kinetic and thermal... it will allow you to choose your damage to play into the lowest resist of his ship and melt him faster. For example in some regions/systems I've been able to melt mission battleships in 45 seconds or so using the vagabond and the loki comes across as being hit with an uber-tanking tonne of bricks. Even with an AF, if you're using the right ammo, you might be able to "tip over" a mission BS.... but all of this takes planning and knowing what you're attacking and where their Achilles heel is. I work out of a wormhole so I'm all over eve but if you're planning on working from K-space then look at what damage you can do with your choice of ships and then choose an area to work in that will present you with mission ships who are weakly tanked for your damage.

5) Use Dotlan. Dotlan data is delayed but the 24h statistics will show you the "main routes" through a region and where much of the ratting/mission runing is being done. it gives you a bit of focus because you don't have to waste time roaming around in empty space. Also the eve in-game maps have a wealth of information that will help you find systems that are not empty.

Other than that... it's just a question having some balls, having a plan and a big dose of good luck.

Good luck.
T-

I'm still relatively new to solo-pvp myself, and my stats are currently pretty horrible... BUT.

I have learned to use the in-game maps to my advantage, as they provide a lot of valuable information if you know what you're looking for Head in to the in-game map and start messing with the filters.

I am in a rather large alliance, so the first thing I do is go to "lines" and set the line color to "Standings Since most of the space occupied by my alliance is BAD hunting grounds (due to too many blues), I look for systems which are connected to yellow or red lines.. Yellow is the best, as the occupying faction sees you as "neutral" rather than red. Neutrals will generally still be reported on intel in my experience, but if you hang out in an area long enough without stirring up a hornets nest, the occupants of that system will generally let their gaurd down.

The second thing to look for is activity in the potential hunting grounds. As mentioned above, there are several options on the in-game map which allow you to narrow down which areas are potentially good for hunting.

Scroll down to the "statistics" tab under "stars" and try checking the following stats

"Average Pilots in space in the last 30 minutes".. This will give you a snapshot of recent activity in that system. Obviously, you do not want to camp in systems with too many people, as it raises your odds of getting blobbed. However, if you find one of these systems that exists along a "pipeline" rather than a large intersection of systems, you can potentially nab incoming or outgoing traffic, and do so far enough away that any distress call will not result in an instant blob

"Jumps in the last hour".. If you see a system which is showing 30-60 jumps in the last hour, you should consider that a potentially good system for gate-camping. That's 1 jump every 1-2 minutes, which is a reasonable amount of time to wait for someone. Obviously, not every jump will be a potential target, because you do not want to engage everyone... But lets say even 1 out of every 5 of those are potentially good targets.. You have to wait an average of 5-10 minutes to find a target you like? Not bad. Even if you have to wait 1/2 an hour, it may be worth it. Combine this with the knowledge of how many gates are in the system and how much traffic is nearby, and you're starting to narrow down your potential camp grounds

"Ships destroyed in the last hour." ... The less, the better. The less ships destroyed means the less competition you have and the less jumpy people in the system will be. Avoid systems with huge kill counts for obvious reasons. You may be jumping into a trap

"Station count"... Systems with stations and a high "average pilots in space" generally means it's some kind of hub for a faction. It sucks going into a system with 10 people just to find that 7 of them are docked 2 are ratting in Tengu's, and 1 is POS'd up

"Pirate and Police ships destroyed in the last 24 hours" gives you a glimpse at how much ratting is going on in that system.

Optimally, you would want to look for a system with the following traits

-Low to Medium people in space in the last 30 minutes. (1-10, maybe?
-Station count 1 or 0. Preferably 0
-High jump count.. 30
-As few gates as possible. 1-2 is best. (Careful, as you can get camped too.
-High "Pirate and police ships destroyed in the last 24 hours
-Low "Ships destroyed in the last hour".. The lower the better

Once you find a system like this, you want to come in under the radar. Start Dscanning the system to see how many pilots are active in space, so you don't get ambushed or otherwise caught off your guard. Start setting up Tactical's on all of the gates, both on and off grid. This way you can Dscan the gate from a distance as soon as you see someone enter local, or you can sit on a gate and watch the gate flash yourself while still remaining safe.. Although this tends to draw more attention. . but the tactical also provides a quick escape if things go wrong on-gate.

Sometimes Blitzing Asteroid Belts or Ice Belts can result in miners/ratters who are caught unaware. You can do the same with plexes. As soon as you enter a system that you KNOW has very few people in it, but has a high ratting score, immediately scan down how many plexes are in system and jump right to the first one you find. Most of the time you will come up empty, but once in a while you will catch someone in the middle of something and they will NOT be happy to see you.

Hope this helps.