Warfare & Tactics

Hello. I've been playing EvE for about 2 months now with my new account. I played a bit earlier within 2014 with a trial account, and i've started to do multiple things in the game, such as factional warfare, station trading, mining, exploration and more, but one thing that mainly grabs my attention and probably the reason I started playing EvE is fleet fights and large scale battles. I am a proud pilot of a Raven Battleship, but I mainly use it for PvE and soon I will be buying another Drake and doing some sleeper sights. I really want to use my Raven in a combat situation like a fleet fight, and most likely lose many doing so. I was very interested with battles like 6VDT-H, B-R5RB, Caldari Prime and Asakai. I do understand game mechanics and player mechanics which caused these different events to occur, but I need to know certain things about fleet fights before I actually look into joining a corporation within a powerful alliance or even pursue to start my own.

1.) What does it take to be an FC? Sometimes I see different names mentioned and different corps and alliances mentioned referring to their Fleet Commanders. I personally feel that this is hinting that FCs are one of a kind and there's some kind of requirement. Do FCs in different corps and alliances have something special about them, and if so, what does it actually take to become an FC?

2.) Fleet formations. What other fleet formations are there other than the standard 'wrecking ball' fleet. I believe I understand how the wrecking ball formation is created, but how do you assemble fleet formations also?

3.) How often do big fleet fights happen? I understand player generated events can't be predicted as such, but how often will we see fleet fights occur like Caldari Prime? One thing that pulled me towards joining Factional Warfare was Caldari Prime. I saw delonewolf's POV of the fight, which immediately triggered me to joining FW and joining a massive fleet for a massive battle like CP. Also, if I were to join a corporation in an alliance like Goonswarm Federation, Nulli Secunda and Northern Coalition, when would I come across a fight with another fleet, corporation or alliance?

4.) What other roles can I look into? The only roles i've seen so far are interdiction, logistics, electronic attack and main fighters. Is there anything else I can look to do in a fight?

5.) What skills should I train?

That's all I really have to ask.

1. An immunity to the frequently infuriating depths of human stupidity, and a lot of self-confidence. A sound knowledge of the game helps too. As for why you see the same names popping up over and over, that has nothing to do with some nebulous quality unique to FCs, and more to do with the more prolific entities within the game making damn sure everyone else knows they just beat X with Y. Virtually every PvP Corp/Alliance will have an FC of some description, you just don't hear about them because nobody cares about a minor skirmish in some backwater system you'll never visit.

2. There aren't any formations in the sense you are referring to. Not that I'm aware of at least. Watch most fleet battles and they consist of two blobs moving around/through one another. How you handle your fleet depends entirely upon the situation you find yourself in, or the situation you've manufactured; as well as what ships/doctrine you're using. I'm sure there are several potential books out there on handling fleets in Eve, you won't get a definitive answer here.

3. The battles that make Eve famous are typically quite rare. It really depends upon your definition of big. If you're talking about the giant battles such as those you listed, a handful a year if you're lucky. Fights between 50-100+ people can happen several times a day given the right climate.

4. Scouting/Recon, Baiting, right down to being the poor sod flying the ammo/bomb truck. There are a lot.

5. For what? Vague question is vague.

I've got a bit of experience leading casual and small-scale fleets myself. It's actually not that hard to break into it, and if you're curious I'd encourage you to start early. Get some friends together in ships they won't miss (T1 Frigates and Cruisers are good for this) and go for a stroll around the bad parts of town. You will probably all die, but that's part of the learning experience so don't consider losing a fight as a 'loss'. When I'm out on a casual roam, I would much, much rather get into a nice brawl and come out on the wrong end of it than run around for an hour and come back with the same amount of ammunition I left with.

When you're just starting out, just focus on keeping your fleet moving with purpose and some degree of cohesion. Have a destination, and make sure people aren't getting too far ahead or behind while you're going there. If you get into a fight, be decisive and make sure you call out targets for your fleet to focus on. More advanced stuff like being able to evaluate the capabilities of enemy fleets from a simple look at them will come with practice and experience.

You would also do well to see if you could find a more experienced FC to let you backseat along with them on a roam. I'm on a bit of a break from EVE right now, but if I come back soon I'd be happy to give you a primer on roaming.


Don't worry about training skills specifically for leadership right now. All you need to lead a fleet is a microphone and a ship that can lock targets. There may come a time when you want to get more involved, but leadership skills represent a serious commitment in training time that isn't applicable to much else so I would not recommend them for beginners.

Some of the Best FC's didn't want to be FC's in the first place, for me and a lot of others we ended up forced into the role because of necessity at the time. For me the FC had gone down and the fleet was quickly falling apart, i stepped up and called targets, ended up winning the fight but losing the ISK war, and so i got my first taste as a true FC, went on to do it for over a year with Bombers Bar, and Every alliance and coalition i have been a part of since.

Some things you should look into:
1. What kind of FC you want to be - The hardass no-nonsense FC that gets results, the fun FC who doesnt give a damn about a loss, the casual fc who only does it from time to time, etc.
2. Doctrines - what you usually fly, how to fly it, how to fit it. Know your ranges and how much alpha you have
3. engagement areas - on a gate, station, POS, belt, Etc.
4. How skilled is the fleet? - more discipline and skill produces results in most cases
5. Who do you usually fight?

And always remember:
~ Your not a coward if you retreat and save the fleet to fight another day
~ Knowledge is power, the more you do your homework the better you can perform
~ make sure you can trust your fleet members and make sure they trust you

Just be careful not to go overboard like i Did, last year i really let the role of being an FC become a job, and it started to stress me out. i lost sleep over dead fleet members ships, questioned my every move even when it won us the fight but cost us 1 guy, and started to really fall apart from all the stress from the game and Real Life. took a 3 month break from FC'ing and now im retired from public fleets for good, only FC for the Coalition and Corp these days. Being an FC was soe of the most fun i have ever had in Eve and i still love doing it though.

http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/community-spotlight-fleet-commanders/

Skill-wise it is recommended that you, at the very least, train wing command, and the passive boosting skills (all found in the leadership category).
When you want to get into covert ops (which used to be really hard to FC, until CCP had to make it baby-easymode), then I recommend you hook me up in-game.

[not so stealth advert] We over in Menzoberranyr happen to be looking for Covops FCs.. New and old.. [/not so stealth advert]

In case you aren't really aware of what tidi really means on the field, it's absolutely horrible.

For example, This video Shows how he gets stuck in the character select screen for several minutes, it then takes another several minutes to load the field, etc.

My own experience is that you get your fleet parked on a titan within jump range, wait for everyone to be ready, and then the titan opens a bridge. It took us ~10 minutes to finish the jump, and we didn't even jump onto field. We then had to align for about 3-4 minutes to the fight, then warp to it, which took another 5-8 minutes. When we landed, you couldn't even start moving your ship for about 10 minutes, and when you finally did, it would take upwards of 2 minutes simply to lock onto an enemy target.

You can see some really killer videos of big fights with tidi, but read the descriptions carefully, as they are usually sped up to 1000% normal speed or higher.

Many have said to go with FW, and that's probably where you want to go. You won't be able to fly your raven too much, unless you train into a golem and then grow stainless-steel balls, but you can easily get a small group together and learn to FC and also learn a lot about PVP. Oh, and have fun too