Warfare & Tactics

Learn to love ECM.

Experience is the best teacher





oh and keeping range like a little *****

SKILLS

---

A Gal/MIn background is a perfect starting point - since you should already have decent shield and hybrid skills, so the first first thing you need to check is that your missile skills are good enough. While they do have a few good (underestimated) blaster boats generally speaking the missile boats are the better Caldari ships.

T2 Heavies & HAMS will make a BIG difference to you DPS in Caldari ships. You will also want the support skills at 4 (ideally 5 ofc) to maximise damage.

You will need excellent shield tanking skills - generally passive/buffer are more more useful than active on Caldari ships

ECM is so powerful and unique to the Caldari that if you want to be able to use ALL their best ships you will need to train for their Recons too.

FITTING

---

Compared with the other races, Damage Controls are less important than a decent shield tank & other lowslot mods such a damage mods.

This is because Caldari ships tend to have low armor HP and few lowslots so once your shields are gone you are pretty much dead. This takes some getting used to if you mostly armor tanked until now but if you flew Minmatar then you already have an idea of what to expect - although Caldari will be much more fragile with their shields down.

The other thing to note is the HUGE EM resist hole in their shields which always needs plugging. There is no other race that has a ZERO base resist to their main defensive HPs.

They are probably most similar to Minmatar - their weapons (missiles) are capless, their buffer shield tanks regenerate quickly and provide good EHP however they can't armor tank well (unlike Minmatar) so they have to use their midslots to both tackle/jam and tank which means that there are fewer good solo pvp ships compared to the other races.

They generally have small drone bays so tend to use drones defensively rather than offensively and consequently they favour ECM drones more than other races as this also suits their fighting style of avoiding (rather than taking) damage.

FLYING

---

Caldari ships aren't very fast/manouverable but they also aren't great at taking damage at close range - this creates a bit of a contradiction since they need to maintain range to stay alive but often aren't fast enough to do so. It's therefore important to start fights at your optimal range and then maintain that range. If you get too close you will die faster than any other race.

They're not like Minmatar who can dance in and out of a fight like Bruce Lee or Gallente who just want to get on top of you and pound you into the ground like the Hulk. This makes them hard to fly and it takes a skilled pilot to stay alive so they are a great choice if you like a challenge!

The ship I'd recommend you to start with is the Drake because it can be fitted to fly like a Minmatar ship (with nano + heavies) or a Gallente ship (with tank+ HAMs). It does decent damage while tanking well and it's also cheap and easy to train for. All these factors make it their most popular ship overall.

Also in the Tengu, they also have the best T3 in the game by far although you won't want to fly it until you're comfortable in a Drake.

SUMMARY

---

Caldari are a difficult race to PvP in if you want to utilise the full range of their ships as their best ships can use either guns or missiles (see list below) so you need to train for and understand the game mechanics of both. They are comparatively slow and fragile so need to stay at range. However, because of their reputation as a PvE race they're constantly underestimated so in the hands of a good pilot they can offer some nice surprise pvp. They also have two nasty aces in the hole: ECM and the Tengu.

Best pvp ships to train for: Tengu, Drake, Rook/Falcon, Hookbill, Cerberus, Harpy, Flycatcher

Max out missile and Navigation skills. Always fly with at least Zor "set"

Train shields.

Max Drake, Max Falcon/Rook, Max Tengu.....and thats it! Oh and the Onyx ain't that bad either.

1700+PVP Kills in caldari boats....Learn to love the drake

"Precision missiles slow down your ship so best to avoid those if you can."

It took me so long to realize this, Its a drawback in the ammo specs, it actually slows you down.

I normally only recommed presions for eating fast frigs, but yeah Caldari navy as default when fighting anything else.

Drake is best bet all around for caldari pvp. Get BC to five for sure

Hybrid fixes?

and the bad part is it stacks for each launcher loaded with them!