Warfare & Tactics

You have to be at your keyboard to win.

I am usually afk camping FW pklex when I die. But whoever kills me hits a gate camp within 10 minutes and the kill counts for me. Since their ship is uaually 100 times the value of mine. its an economic victory.

Myth- large fleet PvP is all fleet warps and mashing F1.

Reality- Fleets are made up of individual roles and the larger the fleet, often the more freedom you have to operate within the fleet. With a large fleet, there may be entire wings for EWAR, tackle, and scouting support. Because CCP's mechanics favor alpha strike- there is some truth to the 'everyone hit F1' idea, but that is only the DPS component of PvP. But because you have a large fleet, you can fly a supporting role, or even a special snowflake.

Myth- There is some preset minimum SP or experience to even get into PvP.

Reality- Most PvP oriented corps/alliances love new players. It's easy to guide new players in terms of skills and fitting advice. It's easy to hand out skill books and even fitted ships to new players. Most serious low/null sec alliances will offer an SRP, making PvP essentially free. The larger ones, like The Imperium that I am a member of, have entire fleet doctrines just for low SP players, free ships, and training fleets covering all aspects of PvP (and PvE for that matter).

Myth- Tackle is just tackle, logi is just logi, etc

Reality- Each of the fleet roles available in Eve offer surprising depth and progression. If you take time to really explore a given fleet role, you will find a complexity you might not expect. For example tackle is often seen as newbies dying in a fire while the rest of the fleet does the 'real' damage. However, tackle often does the scouting for the entire fleet, meaning you have to operate on your own, relay intel properly to the FC, manually pilot, and know what to do when you jump thru a gate and there is 35 Hurricanes on the other side. From there you might move into Dictors, and be one of the most dangerous ships on the battlefield. After that you might be flying HICs and be the one that infini-points that capital so everyone can dog pile on it. Or set off a perfectly timed drag bubble so your fleet of smartbombing BS's can obliterate an entire enemy fleet before they get out of warp. Related to the first point- if you take the time to learn a role and be good at it- you will not be 'mashing F1' if you don't want to.

Myth- If you are in a large alliance/coalition, you will have a million CTA (StratOps) and only ever fly in giant blob fleets.

Reality- It's a game and you are only expected to pitch in, not carry the entire war effort. Mostly- don't be ratting when your alliance is trying to save it's sov....duh. Other than that, you have tons of time to care bear till the cows come home.
Yes, we fly in some gigantic fleets that are TiDi inducing nightmares. But we also run lots of small gang fleets, fun roams, frigate roams to low sec, gank fleets if we find a WH to high sec, etc. The nice thing about a large group like the null blocs is that everytime I open my fleet finder, there is never less than about 20 fleets available to join.

Myth- Low and null sec is locked away forever behind a wall of gate camps.

Reality- There are some commonly camped systems, but getting in and out of low/null sec in anything but a freighter isn't all that hard to be honest. It's best to leave your important ships where you use them, and use a fast ship like a Ceptor to do border crossings. No one is pulling off their gate camp to chase a Ceptor, Stealth Bomber or even Astero. Chances are that you will waltz right past 99% of the gate camps (most are informal, more about chatting on comms than seriously trying to kill everything) you encounter. That is if there is a camp at all....they are just less common than many new players think.

1) Pro PVP pilot has x amount of SP
2) No other myths

There are alot of myths and misunderstandings regarding the 'hand off' method. There are many other names for this but it is basically shooting someone who is neutral on a gate or station in lowsec which triggers sentry guns and then immediately warping off and warping back to prevent sentry fire when engaging the target again. This actually is alot more complex than it seems and I figured it would be useful to talk about.

1. How long it lasts
Now this is something I'm not completely sure about, but many of my friends say that it lasts for 15 minutes, I've never actually timed it but it definitely lasts longer than a limited engagement timer so 15 minutes makes sense since that's the duration of a suspect timer. No actual timer appears but it works the same as other combat timers in regards to the the timer being renewed if you continue aggressing the target.

2. Handing off on multiple targets
I'm pretty certain about this one, you can only 'hand off' on the first person that you triggered the sentries to shoot you. For example, if you shoot 3 different neutral ships on gate then warp off and come back, you will only be immune to sentries on the person you shot first, the other 2 pilots will cause sentries to resume fire if you were to aggress them.

3. Failed attempts
Now this is more of a buggy feature of sentries in general, some people say that you actually have to soak up a shot from the sentries to perform a proper hand off. However I've found this isn't true, rather the sentries can be buggy and immediately resume fire on you when you warp back despite you warping far enough away from the sentries that the stopped shooting you.

4. Multiple systems
Once a successful hand off is done, the 'timer' lasts through multiple systems despite no actual timer being shown. Therefore you still retain your ability to engage the neutral that you handed off on without taking sentry fire despite jumping into a different system.

5. Handing off on station/gates
Funnily enough you can actually hand off on a station/gate through this method. Upon warping back you can freely aggress the station or gate without sentry fire but in practice this is basically useless as it doesn't prevent you from taking sentry fire from aggressing neutrals despite having handed off on the station/gate.

6. Highsec?
Now this requires someone else to test, I've been a red flashy pirate for the past 2+ years so I can't really chase targets that I've handed off on into highsec. However assuming you are only suspect and not full blown outlaw, I'm curious if you can actually freely aggress a target you've handed off on in lowsec, in highsec.

There might be some other myths about this technique that need to be cleared up but I'm interested to see what else people know or don't know about handing off.

Yeah not sure about this one either.