Faction Warfare and Combat Mega Guide

This guide is not meant to know a specific loadout for a ship. It is meant to know what type of defense you should use when your in a fleet or alone. This will also help FC’s or new ones that want to get the most out of their fleet members. If that is your case, please continue to read.

Since your in faction warfare It’s logical to assume that people do not train their skills with all races, all weapons or all types of defences. The first thing I will talk about is the race. .The second thing will be on armor vs shields. Then we will continue with ship bonuses and finish with ship loadouts. This is why I feel there should be a guide that should be clear enough so that FC’s don’t go mad at the end of their event. Also to note their might be other guides out there that has the same purpose so please link them in the comment section. It will help capsuleers.

Let’s start with the races shall we ? Since this is about pvp I wont talk about faction warfare missions or pve. Here are the facts about each race:

Caldari are a great race for support in fleet. The main reason for this is because they can uses their shield modules in the mid slot and use damage modules in the low slot. This way they can have maximum damage and defence in a fleet. The only problem to this is they dont have enough space for ewar modules. If they want to use an ewar module they have to sacrifice a medium slot in order to fit one; that means less defence. Thats very risky for Caldari. Thats why shields tankers are not the best in pvp; ewar modules can and will save your ship.

Amarr ships are armor tankers. They’re considered the middle range of pvp ships because of their weapons. They’re main problem is capacity. The lasers uses lots of cap but can unleash lots of damage if setup correctly. In other words, the amarr ships must be handled with precision if you have lots of capacitor and laser damage skills. They also look cool.

Gallente are very good at solo pvp and are excellent drone boats. They are also good at support in a fleet because they can use different ewar modules. Except for the stasis webifier and the warp disruptor they could use the tracking disruptor and in rare cases a jamming module since these modules uses a mid slot. The same applies to all ships who uses armor for defence. Most Gallente ships uses blasters because of their bonus to damage to hybrid turrets. Because of that, they must be very close to the target. This also implies range is their weakness in a sense. If the other ship is setup for close range also, then they better have a good defence.

Minmatar are in my opinion and my observation the best ship for pvp. One of the reasons for this is because their projectile weapons don’t use any cap at all. This effect gives you the ability to concentrate your capacitor on more important modules such as defense modules. They also have the ability to be very versatile. They could be shield tankers as they could be armor tankers. Their also good at pvp solo and they have good speed which is a must in combat. Doesn’t hurt to have lots of speed.

These are some facts on each races. Well, its the most basic ones you should know. The next thing is one of the most debated questions in pvp. Shield or armor tanking ? This is not an opinion but rather an analysis. Armor tanking ships are better at pvp because your enemy has to go through your shields in order to penetrate your defences. Also, by using an armor tanking ship, you free your mid slots so you can use ewar modules. This is very important in pvp.

Shield tanking on the other hand uses mid slots for their defences and sometimes the low slot. Because of that, they are not the best ships in pvp. The reason is since your using your shield modules for defences, your neglecting your ewar modules for combat. Remember: ewar modules uses mid slots. This is the reason shield tankers are not good in pvp because if you uses a minimum of 2 slots for a warp disruptor and a stasis webifier then you have less defence. Less defence means there’s a higher chance of death. Thats why this question is debated because you might say more offense means a higher chance of survival.

The third subject in pvp is ship bonuses. This guide suppose to be only on ship defence but I have no choice to talk about offense too because some bonuses applies to weapons. I’ve seen lots of ship setup not use their bonuses to their advantage in combat. This is not acceptable. So please use your ship bonuses when making a solid ship loadout. A good example is the rupture. A good classic fit for this ship is 1 damage module in the low slot and the rest could be defence mods. You fit a warp scrambler, a stasis webifier and an afterburner. Then you fit some autocannons in the high slot with 2 neutralizers. It makes sense to fit for damage since its bonus give more damage to projectile weapons.

Another example is the thorax. This is also a good ship for combat. Since this ship also gives bonuses to hybrid weapons, you could fit some blaster weapons and 1 or 2 damage modules. The rest of the setup could be defence modules in the low slots and ewar in the middle slots.

Their might be some exceptions to this rule. For example, the moa has range bonus with hybrid turrets. A good ship loadout “don’t rule out the Moa” I know is to maximize its damage output by using blasters. This has a great advantage in pvp which is to have more range with your blasters and good damage output. The main weakness is ewar. This ship only has 4 mid slots so theirs place for only 1 or 2 ewar modules for pvp.

The fourth aspect of ship loadout is the type of loadout you need depending on your situation. The 2 most important situation is either if your flying solo or in a fleet.

In a fleet, I suggest using weapons which have a minimum of 10km range. The reason is that most fights happens on gates. Lots of FC’s (if not all) want their pilots to hug the gate. If an enemy jumps through a gate, he will appear at 15 km away from you. In that case, you only have to burn for 5 km and orbit the ship. The biggiest advantage to this is less time required for you to shoot. And the fact that your not alone, you could neglect some DPS to fit for either a longer range weapon or use a type of ammo which gives more range and less damage. The difference since your in a fleet.

If you want to fly solo then you can fit for close range and maximum damage. Since your alone, you want to maximize damage as much as possible. But sometimes its even better to fit for long range weapons. This way you have more chance of getting less damage. A good example on this is the merlin frigate. If you equip that ship with railguns (and rockets), a stasis webifier and all the other modules you need for pvp you have more chance of avoiding damage from your enemy. Lots of people fit their frigates with short range weapons like the rifter (autocannon) and thus they need to hug your ship. In that case, if you have a merlin with railguns and a webber, you will probably have more chance of winning this fight since short range weapons don’t even do damage at long range. Unless he uses long range ammo.

I hope this guid helped some people in Faction warfare. Sorry if this was a long guide and I believe that this guide should be read by everyone.

PS.: The examples on ship loadouts I gave are only examples, they could be fitted in any sorts of way.

I hear this situation or “problem” every single day in militia. I don’t think that everyone knows about this kind of situation.

Heres one I know that happens a lot and pilots get caught in it. You see an enemy on a stargate. He starts the lock you down but he doesn’t shoot. What I see, normally, is the person that gets locked shoots first. The enemy jumps and fly away or you see multiple ships on your overview after you see the stargate activates. You think “oh shit!!!”. Your scrambled, probably webbed too and you got a blob right where you are.

This is one among many situations that I saw or heard. Here is how you can survive. The first thing is to analyse the ship. Can you kill it without problems and fast too ? I say fast just in case theres an enemy gang going your way. Next is you try to get intel in your vicinity. I know thats a bit harder because a lot of time you don’t have that intel but asking while your getting locked is better than nothing I might add.

If you can kill him and your sure that you can get away with then shoot back. If you think you can’t shoot him or its a trap (like it is a lot of time) then just jump and go away. Theres a lot more militia enemy anyway !

When the enemy shoots at you, he’s stuck in that system for a big 30 seconds so you got plenty of time to flee. You also have the advantage in this situation because you can determine if you want to fight or not.

If an enemy locks you at a gate and engages you first and scrambles you, then pray you are in a good enough ship to escape. If you happened to land on the gate alone in Faction Warfare space in a big slow ship without getting any intel on your system or the system you are jumping into, then by all means you deserve to lose your ship.

Most of the time, if you are locked and engaged at a gate, they will want you to shoot back, making it impossible for you to jump until your timer runs out when you de-aggress. If you are scrambled, try and run for it....and if you choose to jump instead, make sure through intel that you are jumping into a safe system. If you DO jump into a camp on the other side then try to escape if in a fast enough ship or wait out 30 seconds until your ship decloaks and run for the gate without aggresing to jump back - chances are that the war targets cannot jump through due to aggressing you on your reapproach. Shout for assistance in your channels whilst you are holding cloak - ECM support or a big enough quickly assembled support fleet could be your key to getting out alive!

So next time your on a gate and you see an enemy, you’ll know what to do !

Let me start by saying this is not a pvp skill guide. Not at all. Lots of skills are missing from a pvp skill guide. These set of skills are meant for electronic warfare and support pilots. A good fleet commander will always need one of each group (ewar and support). To be clear, I wont tell you what ship, weapons or what type of corporation you should choose…for now, just the ewar and support skills. If you train those skills to the minimum level mentionned below you will be a great (ass)et in a fleet.

I’m writing this post because I see lots of pilots and fleet commanders with one common goal in mind. That’s killing the enemy but everyone or most of them only want to bring DPS ships. I’m sorry but that is not enough in a fleet.

So, lets start with the skills you need so you can be useful in a faction warfare fleet:

• Electronic Warfare level 1
• Propulsion jamming level 1
• Sensor Linking level 1
• Target Painting level 1
• Weapon Disruption level 1
• Electronics upgrade level 3 (optional – sensor backup arrays)
• Electronic level 3
• Engineering level 3
• Navigation level 3
• Energy emission systems level 3
• Remote Armor Repair Systems level 3
• Remote Hull Repair Systems level 3
• Repair Systems level 2
• Shield Emission Systems level 1
• Science level 2
• Mechanics level 3
• Acceleration Control 3
• Evasive Maneuvering 3

Your first order of the day would be to go on the market and buy all those skills. They’re cheap and will be useful even if you don’t use them everyday. After you got those skills and trained them all, you will be a welcomed addition to any fleet in faction warfare. Even if you didnt cross train your character those skills will be very useful in a fleet. In other words, if you can’t fly a blackbird, you have the necessary skills to use jamming modules then you’re still useful in a fleet.

This is more than an opinion but you have more chance of surviving with a fleet mixed with ewar and logistics than a fleet with only dps. I have seen many FC’s and fleets that won’t take ewar with them or don’t want to put the energy to use them. In the end, most of them went home the
express way (podded)

Factional Warfare Missions are much different than your average NPC missions. To start with, they are all run several jumps deep into low security areas. These areas are also in the enemy territory, so you have the threat of pirates as well as war targets!

To make it through these missions quickly and smoothly, try to take some advice from this guide. It was written by an experienced Caldari factional warfare mission pilot (not me hehe) who has had great success making on average 50 million isk per mission, and upwards of 1 billion isk per day!

The best place to grab missions from are in low sec. It is better to grind up to level 3 as fast as possible, so use higher quality agents. Once you reach level 3 and 4 missions, you should pick them up from the following locations:

Rakapas, Innia, & Eha

Grab 3 missions at a time, and try to make a circular route between each mission and the three mission hubs. This will help you do them faster!

Assault Ships should also fit Microwarpdrives to avoid getting destroyed at low sec gate camps.

Avoiding damage is better than tanking it all in low sec

Caldari Navy Juggernaut Torpedo
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

Small Ancillary Current Router I x2

These are some notes from GavinGoodrich FW mission guide that I picked up in the forums and I got his permission to publish them here. This is only a copy/paste but it is completely clear.

First you need the bomber:

Manticore solo:

Highs:
3 arbalest siege
1 covops cloak

mids:

1mn MWD II
Target painter of any meta level (4 obviously best)
Sensor Booster II w/targeting range script
Cap recharger II

Lows:
2 BCU II

Rigs:
Hydraulic Bay thruster

Note: this is NOT CAP STABLE. You can run the MWD/missiles or the TP/Sebo/Missiles but not all 4. You will last at least a minute with all 4 on, however. You will die if you try to slowboat away from the commander in the reprisal if he neuts you. More explained below.

This, with crappy level 3 missile and MWD-related skills will allow you to do this semi-efficiently. Even if it’s frustrating, i’ll tell you how much isk you can make with these skills at the end. Keep reading.

The missions (keep in mind this is always gallente, so sensor dampening and kin/thermal weakness always applies)

Level 3

Fathers and Sons

Contingency plan

Level 4

The Cost of Hubris (Commander MWD’s 850m/s away from his buddies. Commander does not neut, has blasters, but more NPC’s)

The Reprisal (Commander MWD’s 850m/s away from his buddies. BS NPC’s with rails can hit up to 80k if they get a clean shot, Commander neuts hard, has blasters. Fewer NPC’s, but bigger/tougher ones)

Lethal Strike (Commander only goes 250 m/s and doesn’t leave buddies. More challenging, more time consuming to pull first spawn away)

Supply interdiction (If you’re REALLY good. fun but takes longest for same reward)

Level 3′s Just about all of these involve killing 1 commander. The commanders and guards are in battlecruisers (brutix) with rail fit, so either get 50k+ range with a slight transversal angle, or cloak up and sneak up to 10k, align to somewhere that gives you high transversal, fire (and overheat if you can) and warp soon as it dies. They drop in 3-4 volleys, typically. Very fast.

Level 4′s the Commanders have rather good rep ability(shield/Armor tanked BS’s) Since NPC reps are always chance-based, sometimes they’ll drop within 3 mins, sometimes they rep every goddamn cycle and take over 5 minutes and a full reload to kill.

#1 way to survive is range. Nothing can hit you over 80k. You can lob missiles OUTSIDE your max range and the commander will MWD into range before they land. Just know what your max range is. Mine, with shit skills and the above fit, is 60k. Easy to maintain.

#2 way to survive is transversal. This is harder to maintain as multiple ships are firing from multiple angles. If they’re all close, one of them will almost aways score a big hit on your bomber. Avoid this or warp out and start over.

#3 always get AT LEAST 100km from the warp-in point. 99% of the time nobody will follow you RIGHT to the thing the INSTANT it opens, unless it’s a WT tackler specifically looking for you mission runners and waiting. As of this post, the main ships you’ll see are gank cruisers and destroyers/AF’s trying to get you on the warp in. Soon as you get in any of the above mishes, MWD away. Level 3′s you’ll be in and out rather quickly, level 4′s will take 5-10 mins to do. You need to get the fuck away from that warp-in. Even a SB with his MWD on can keep away from most gank ships even if they do come in.

Typically, by the time they arrive, you’re 100-150km away already and all they can do is sit and watch you kite the commanders away and kill them while they try impotently to catch up or get range. Most gank ships can’t go 1.5km, and even if they could, you’d see that and decide if you wanted to try and finish the job first, or just GTFO.

Cloaky recons CANNOT keep up with a SB kiting in the opposite direction at 1.5km a second. They can only slowboat, without AB/MWD to stay cloaked. This will result in them never catching you by the time you finish.

Once the commander dies, typically if the NPC’s are 80k+ you can loot safely. Try to keep at least some transversal as you attempt to loot. Commanders drop 2 colonel II tags each time and general BS related loots.

• Lost transversal. #1 reason for death.
• MWD on, no transversal, commander got within 40k of me. Dead.
• Warped out, but the warp-in point had rats all over it and I tried to MWD/cloak rather than just warp. Dead.
• Tried to loot and wasn’t moving, BS NPC got a lucky shot at 80k. Dead.
• Orbited manually and at some point, lost transversal. Dead.
• Generally fucking around and not paying attention. Dead.
• Burned straight for the commander, didn’t “pull up” fast enough. Dead.

NONE of these deaths resulted in player ganking. This setup, with the above tactics, has never been ganked inside the mission. Only losses were the results of my own fuck-ups.

Very exciting when you fly a ship that can instapop to the point where players watch helplessly as you finish a 25mil isk mission right in front of thier face.

25 mil?   No wai! It’s true. We all make around 100 mil an hour out here. Why?

One…FW missions, with 1/2 decent standing, give 10k-13k LP’s for the above missions.

Two…you get faction discounts on navy ships (ships only, nothing else) that are 1/2 the LP price.

Navy caracal is 45k LP. Navy raven is 250k LP, Navy Scorpion is 150k, other ships are comparably priced.

You can, if efficient and smart, do 4-6 missions in an hour. I do 4, sometimes 5 on avg, as I am sloppy with bombers as you can tell. Even losing so many bombers I’ve still made over 2 bil in 2 weeks. So it’s worth it. It’s a thrill to run gatecamps and avoid gankers at the same time. Way more exciting than highsec level 4′s.

I encourage you all to do the same. Even if you don’t buy ships, navy ammo is ALWAYS in demand, and so are those navy cap boosters. Skillbooks, implants, etc are ALWAYS in demand. Decide how you want to spend it. Just keep in mind the market is already saturated pretty heavily with navy ships. Don’t just focus on those for isk, if you find a better option.

I encourage you to find a way to make 100m isk an hour that doesn’t involve 0.0. If you can do that, great. For the rest of us, this is how we can afford our capitals and rigged BS’s and interceptors that go pop a lot. And have a little time to spare.

I encourage you to make what is essentially 4x the isk I made in highsec, in the same amount of time.
-gav

P.S. Oh and stage some spare bombers and mods out in rakkapas/eha (the two main mission hubs with the best quality agents) ’cause you’ll probably lose a few while you figure this out

• Should also note Lethal strike requires you to kite the NPC’s away 75+km from thier starting point first, going 250m/s. Like I said, it’s time consuming. On top of that the BC guards damp the fuck out of you, more than one sensor booster can handle. Those need to die first or the Commander outreps you cause of the damps.
• You’ll get a tiny little bit more range with:
  1x Small Hydraulic Bay Thruster (+15% velocity)
  1x Small Rocket Fuel Cache Partition (+15% flight time)

  Using two of the same rigs gives you a small stacking penalty. Using one of each gives an extra 1 to 1.5 km range depending on skills. I know it’s tiny, just wanted to toss it out there.

• We have found that this works best in a 2 man team.1 person in a manti to do the dps, and 1 person in a fast frig to orbit at 150k/m and kite all the damp’s and keep the manti safe.While yes you can make a ton of money farming lvl4′s and salvaging. It’s still time consuming. We have found that we can complete a lvl4 fw mission in about 5 to 10 mins vs the 30 mins for a lvl 4 highsec mission and the extra 20 to 30 mins to salvage.

 

 

11. Faction Warfare Plexing

 

12. Losing Ships in High-Sec

 

 

13. Directional Scanner Guide and Probes

Other Resources on directional scanning

Directional Scanner guide from Evelopedia

Grismar’s EVE Wiki : ScanningGuide

 

14. OverView Settings

Default settings:
The default overview settings that exist when you first log in are less than optimal. They can fill your overview with extraneous information that make it difficult to find what you want. No matter what activity you're undertaking, you'll benefit from creating a new default settings list. With the overview settings menu open, click the select all button on the states tab. This will enable everything that can possibly appear on your overview, allowing you to manually deselect those things that are useless in your everyday life in space.

Read on for detailed instructions on setting up your overview for everything from mining to PvP.

Start by deselecting everything in the Asteroid section. Then in the Celestial section, deselect the options Planet, Moon and Asteroid Belt as these are easily available through the standard right-click menu. To reduce clutter, deselect the options Large Collidable Object, Wreck and all options with the word container in them. Unless you've got a penchant for collecting corpses, you can also safely deselect the biomass option without impacting your day to day activities.

Deselect the entire Drone section as seeing them on the overview doesn't really help. In the NPC menu, deselect everything except Pirate NPC and Mission NPC. The Entity section is mostly fine but you should remove Sentry gun and Billboard from this list. To finish, deselect everything in the Structure menu. Your overview is now free from the major sources of clutter but if you ever see anything on your overview of a type that you don't want there, right click it and select the remove from overview option. Don't forget to save these settings so you can reload them later. The only difference between this setup and a mining overview is that for the mining overview you'll need to enable asteroids.

Missions:
The mission overview setup uses the default setup described above as a base. Load the default setup and open your overview menu to make a few tweaks. If you're doing missions or complexes as part of a co-operative gang, it will be helpful to enable the tag option in the columns tab. This allows you to see an alphanumeric tag that the gang leader has assigned to each enemy ship so that he can refer to them in an unambiguous manner.

If your ship uses turrets, turning on the angular velocity column will show how fast your turrets need to track to hit certain targets. Likewise, missile ships will benefit from turning on the velocity and size columns. This will let them know if a target is moving too fast or if its signature radius is too small to take significant damage from your missiles. Both of these will help you avoid wasting time and ammunition on targets that you can't hit.

PvP settings:
Unlike mission-running, your overview for PvP will not use the default base described above. The default base settings are there to ensure nothing useful is missed out but in PvP you only want to see your enemy on the overview. Seeing friendly or neutral ships on your overview could cause a friendly fire incident and additional clutter will make it harder to find your intended targets. Open your overview settings and press the deselect all button in the types tab to create a blank canvas to build your overview on.

In the stations in the Station section and then in the Celestial section, enable Beacon, Covert Beacon and Stargate. The beacons option will show cynosural fields and complexes that you may be asked to warp to by your fleet commander. Having stations and stargates on the overview is always desirable as having to fiddle with the clumsy right-click menu will slow you down when your fleet commander gives the order to align or warp to them. Faction Warfare players will also benefit from selecting Landmark and Warp Gate. Finally, select everything in the Charge and Ship sections and you're done.

The most important section for PvP is the states tab in the filter window. As described in the first part of this guide, this section allows you to filter your overview by abstract states such as corp standing or fleet membership. Here you should select everything except those you don't want showing up. Deselect pilot (agent) is interactable, pilot has good standings, pilot has high standings and all of the pilot is in your alliance/corporation/militia options.

Appearance:
The default appearance options use a lot of small icons where coloured backgrounds would be more appropriate. Coloured icons have the benefit of showing in local and can be useful for quickly assessing the security of a system but they aren't as quick to spot on the overview. In this menu, select pilot is a member of your corporation, pilot is a member of your alliance and all of the standings options. Another useful tip, as described in part 1 of this guide, is to select pilot has security status below -5. This actually only shows if the target has a criminal flag that allows you to attack them and is be a very handy way to spot pirates in low security space.

If you're taking part in corporate wars and faction warfare, you'll want pilots you can shoot at to be obvious and distinct from those you can't. This is best done in the backgrounds tab of the appearance menu. Deselect all options here and then reselect the options Pilot has security status below -5, Pilot is at war with your corp/alliance and Pilot is at war with your militia. Next to these options, ensure that the background colour is red and anyone who shows up red on your overview will be a viable target.

Overview tabs:
One of the most useful additions to the overview over the years is overview tabs. This allows you to rapidly access separate overview lists that you might need without having to load new settings. If you want to concentrate on killing enemy electronic warfare, for example, you could save a separate overview configuration which shows only specialised electronic warfare ships and then add this to your overview as a tab. Other useful tabs include options to see only enemy drones and fighters or only enemy frigates.

To set up a new overview tab, open your overview settings and go to the overview tab section. Here you can create up to five separate tabs that, when selected, will change your overview settings to match the selected configurations. Add your default setup to the list and then create specialised setups for niche roles that you might need to switch to in an instant. One of the most useful features of overview tabs is that you can select a configuration in the brackets menu and this will hide items on the main screen that don't appear in the overview.