FLEETS101 - Introduction to Fleets

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The following article is a syllabus for a class, intended primarily for teaching staff.

It is not our intention that teachers just recite this document. Make sure to read it thoroughly, use its structure as a guide for the structure of your class, but also make sure there is an added value for students to attend the class, instead of just reading this document.

Presenting the required components can be done in any order - the important part is to ensure the the syllabus is adhered to. Note that the teaching guide may not be up to date and it is the teacher's responsibility to ensure everything in the syllabus is covered.

This syllabus was last reviewed in June 2011. Before editing the Syllabus section, please discuss any changes with the Teaching Manager.

Feel free to contribute to the Teaching Guide, however make sure you adhere to the syllabus.


Introduction To Fleets
FLEETS101
School of Warfare
Course FLEETS
Complexity 1
Practical Yes
Overview
Introductory class to explain how fleets work within the uni.

Contents

Syllabus

This should be handled as a practical exercise, with the teacher explaining each step then the class performing it.

Teaching Guide

Preface

In New Eden, danger is everywhere. Corporations, Alliances and Factions wage large scale wars. While individual pilots can be fearsome in player versus player combat, for a war this just isn’t enough. This has given rise to fleets, a hierarchical group of players working together to accomplish a specific goal. Fleets tend to operate on technical and tactical levels, and less so on the strategic level – which is the domain of the corporate or alliance directorate.

Operating in a fleet is different from flying on your own. There is a greater need for discipline, following the chain of command and reacting swiftly to orders from commanding officers. As fleets or gangs are used by almost all PvPing entities in the game, it is important that Eve University pilots are familiar with the basic concepts of operating in a fleet.

Class Information

This chapter contains the standard information of this class pertaining to scheduling and class contents. The general information should be sufficient to create a proper class topic for scheduling on the Eve University forums. Additional information relevant to the teacher is listed under Notes for the teacher.

General information

Duration: 2 Hours Location: Aldrat is recommended

Class contents:

Student Requirements:

Additional information: Students are encouraged to be at the location, as this class is highly practical in nature. Any ship will do.

Teaching Notes

Teacher Requirements

Required materials:

You can also let students practice forming their own fleet and doing some fleet movement with it at the end of the class. Make sure to organise it so all students that want to do so get a turn.

Class Contents

Introduction

One thing that makes Eve stand out from other games is the scale and size of the groups in which players organise themselves. This, combined with the war-driven gameplay you see in large parts of the game can lead to engagements between dozens or even hundreds of players.

Tactical organisation is the key in winning these engagements, and this is where fleets come in. A group of individual pilots all trying to do their own thing will not win any battles. Fleets allow players to travel and fight together, and are a key instrument in combat doctrine throughout New Eden. Eve University uses fleets heavily, as we tend to have a lot of players wanting to participate in combat operations.

Types of Fleets

EVE only knows Fleets, there is no difference between PvE and PvP

Forming a fleet & Fleet structure

Basic invitations

To start a fleet, go through the following steps:

  1. Right-click on a person you wish to fleet with
  2. Select “Form fleet with...” from the dropdown menu to issue a fleet invite
  3. You should now be in a fleet (regardless if the other player accepted the invite), as the Fleet Commander and Boss with one wing and one squadron in that wing.
  4. You can now invite more people into your fleet by right-clicking on their name and selecting “Invite to fleet “.
Fleet Hierarchy

The concept of Wings and Squadrons help to organise a fleet, and are a vital component of a fleet’s hierarchical structure. A fleet can have a maximum of 5 wings, each wing can have a maximum of 5 squadrons and each squadron can contain a maximum of 10 players. This brings the maximum size of a fleet to 256 people (five wings each containing 5*10 = fifty players, plus five wing commanders and one fleet commander). Note that wing commanders and fleet commanders are not part of a squadron, while squadron commanders are.

Commanders have control over the part of the fleet that falls under their command. A fleet commander has control over the entire fleet, a wing commander over his/her own wing, and a squad commander over his/her squadron. This leads to the following overview:

Additionally, fleets also have a Boss position. This person is able to do the same things the FC can, minus group-warps. The Boss position is not exclusive, so an FC, WC or SC can be Boss as well as hold a commanding position.

While an FC or Boss can handle all the invites, this is a lot of work and not really an efficient way of doing things. This is why we encourage our players to use role-based invites when forming a fleet.

Role-based invites

Role based invites are based around two concepts. The first one is to spread the invitation workload out over as many people as possible. The second concept is that this makes it easier to create squadrons with a specific set up. These could be ‘balanced squadrons’; squadrons that all have some tacklers, electronic warfare ships and damage dealers, or ‘specialised squadrons’; where each squadron focuses on one task (tackling, electronic warfare, damage dealing, etc).

The following is an example of the steps required to create a balanced fleet:

  1. The FC asks all players with ‘Wing Command’ – a leadership skill – to put their level of Wing Command into Alliance chat
    1. The Wing Command skill is not strictly required for leading a wing, but is relevant to fleet bonuses. This will be covered later in the class.
  2. The FC invites the wing commanders to his fleet in wing commander positions, depending on who has the highest Wing Command level and how many wing commanders are needed.
  3. The FC then asks in alliance chat for all players with the skill Leadership to put their level of Leadership in Alliance chat.
    1. The Leadership skill is not strictly required for leading a squadron, but is relevant to fleet bonuses. Exactly how this works is a more advanced topic covered in a later class, for now all you need to know is that it helps to have the Leadership skill in command positions.
  4. The WCs then invite the squadron commanders to their wings in squadron command positions, depending on the amount of squadron commanders that are needed and their Leadership level.
  5. Then, the fleet commander will ask for pilots of a specific role – such as tackling, electronic warfare or damage dealing – to ‘X up’ (put an ‘X’ in) Alliance chat. For example, an FC asks for all tacklers to X up.
  6. Each squadron commander then invites players to his squadron, based on how many players of that role he requires in his squadron. For example, each squadron commander attempts to invite four tacklers into his squadron.
  7. Steps 5 and 6 are repeated for all roles.
    1. Scouts are given a separate squadron, preferably in their own wing.

This should result in a fleet where every squadron has a more or less equal, balanced mix of tacklers, electronic warfare and damage dealing ships. This method also ensures that the workload of inviting players is spread out over the fleet commander, the wing commander(s) and the squadron commanders.

Self invite & Free move

While role based invites are a very formal way to create an organised fleet, this is not always desired or necessary. Sometimes, speed is of the essence or the strict organisation isn’t a huge deal (for example, in a mining operation fleet). In this case ‘Self invite’ and even ‘Free move’ are options an FC could consider.

Self invite is a fleet option where players can invite themselves to the fleet. They will arrive in the fleet at a squadron member position. To enable Self invite, select ‘Enable fleet invite (Corporation)/(Alliance)’ in the fleet options (the little triangle left of “Fleet” in the fleet overview). Then, right-click on yourself in the channel you want to post the fleet invite in and select ‘Channel -> Post fleet invitation’. A link should appear in the channel that pilots can click to join.

Should this not be enough, the FC or Boss can also turn on Free move. Free move allows players to move themselves between squadrons, and even make themselves a squadron commander. They can do this by right-clicking on themselves and selecting ‘Fleet->Move member-> ...’. This option is also found in the fleet options.

Free move and self invite are heavily used in large 0.0 alliance fleets, where the members are experienced enough to know where they should go in a fleet.

Why are fleets useful?

TEACHERS NOTE: Demonstrating why fleets are useful is best done through a practical example. The following steps should clearly demonstrate the advantage fleet movement.

  1. Invite everyone to a fleet (Self invite is the easiest way).
  2. Tell everyone in the fleet to gather at one place (a planet is a good choice).
  3. Tell all pilots to make sure they are zoomed out far enough that they can see the entire fleet.
  4. Without any further orders to the students, initiate a fleet warp to another point (planet or gate).
  5. Mention to the students how everyone warps away (and arrives) at different times as it happens. This illustrates what happens when a fleet moves without coordination.
  6. Explain that this can be done better. Explain how to align to a target (gate for example).
  7. After making sure the entire fleet is aligned, make sure the pilots are zoomed out and then warp the entire fleet to the target. Mention how everyone moves together, and how the fleet bunches up as they near their target.

After doing this, explain that moving together has significant advantages. Among these advantages are intimidation, and the ability to properly support your fleet mates. Now that the purpose is clear, we’ll explain the ins and outs of fleet movement.

Fleet movement & Communication

This part will cover both how to move and communicate in a fleet.

Explain Command Channel at this point.

Movement

We’ll need to explain the few commands that might be given during fleet movement. These commands are:

First, explain the aligning order by warping around the solar system a bit. Use the broadcast system as well as vocal commands. Make sure everyone understands how it works, then try pick up the pace a bit.

Once this is clear, cover the jump command. Remember that we encourage the use of ‘jump jump jump’ to avoid people jumping through as soon as they hear the word jump once – which might just be used in a sentence rather than a command. Explain the concept of hold cloak after jump and why it is important for fleets in low-sec.

After you’ve covered jumping, hold cloak, and aligning, take a short trip around nearby systems. This is an opportunity to cover Hold/Jump on contact. Also cover the ‘break break break’ command. This is used as a scatter command; as soon as the break command is ordered, everyone has to get safe as soon as they can. In general, this means either stations in that system, or warping around planets and preferably using safe spots to stay safe.

Communication

Few things are more important in a fleet than proper communication. First of all, it is important that commands from the commanders are understood and carried out. This also means that pilots should not go off doing things on their own without being told to. To make sure FC orders are heard, Mumble discipline is paramount. Make it clear that while in a combat fleet, pilots in squad member positions should not speak on Mumble unless asked to. They can use fleet chat and squadron chat.

Explain that every squadron commander should set up a squadron chat channel. This can be either a regular group conversation or a real channel. Real channels are preferred since people can rejoin them themselves, and they allow for a message of the day to be set.

The second thing we’ll cover is how a (war) target should be reported. It is important to emphasise that the following information should be presented, as concise as possible:

While this is not entirely crucial to fleet operations, making sure pilots know how to properly report information can and will benefit fleet operations.

Watch Lists

Explain the watch list, and the usual members to add (FC, WC, SC, scouts).

Gate Camps

Perform OGC and DGC exercises with the class.

Dropping Fleet

You can usually drop fleet at any time. If in hostile territory, drop and dock at the nearest station. During wartime, you may not be allowed to fly your ship back to Aldrat solo - check the WSOP for exact regs.

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