FLEETS201 - Fleet Tactics

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Contents 1 Syllabus 2 Teaching Guide 2.1 Class Information 2.1.1 General information 2.2 Teaching Notes 2.3 Class Content 2.3.1 Review of Fleets 2.3.2 Introduction to Eve Maps 2.3.3 Leadership bonuses 2.3.3.1 What are the leadership or fleet bonuses? 2.3.3.2 How do they filter down through a fleet? 2.3.4 Suggested Squad Setup 2.3.5 Advanced Ship/Player Roles 2.3.6 Intro to Gate Games 2.3.7 Tactical View (Overview) 2.3.8 D-SCAN 2.3.9 Group Warp and Ninja Warp 2.3.10 Tacticals 2.3.11 Safes/Deep Safes 2.3.12 Rolling Safes 2.3.13 Combat 2.3.14 Set Speed 2.3.15 Closing

Syllabus

• Review of fleets
• Leadership Bonuses
• Introduction to Eve maps
• Broadcasts
• Advanced Ship Roles
• Safespots
• Intro to Gate Games
• Advanced Fleet Tactics

This class can be handled as part-lecture followed by a practical for broadcasts, safespots, gate games.

Teaching Guide

Class Information

General information

• Class Title: Fleets 201
• Duration:
• Location:

Class contents:

• Review of fleets
• Introduction to Eve maps
• Advanced Ship Roles
• Safespots
• Intro to Gate Games
• Advanced Fleet Tactics
• Q&A

Student requirements:

• Mumble registration and access - make sure you have Mumble sorted out and operational well before the class begins. Use theses guide for set-up:Mumble
• Access to the Class.E-UNI in-game chat channel

Additional information: This class is primarily lecture, delivered in the Class.E-UNI channel in Mumble, followed by Q&A.

Teaching Notes

Teacher Requirements

• Class channel on Mumble (not fleet chat)
• Class channel in-game (CLASS.E-UNI for in-corp teachers, LECTURE.E-UNI for out-of-corp teachers)
• Member of EVE University Corporation. Alternatively, teachers outside corp can use a proxy FC from inside uni as they may not fleet with the uni class.

Class Content

Review of Fleets

Introduction to Eve Maps

If you are going to lead a fleet visit http://evemaps.dotlan.net or http://www.ombeve.co.uk/ . They have nicely made maps of all regions in Eve. You might consider printing out the maps for Metropolis, Heimatar and Molden Heath to get a quick overview when planning where to go with your fleet.

Leadership bonuses

The last part of this class covers leadership bonuses. It is important to emphasise however that although the bonuses can definitely help, it is more important who is behind the computer than what ingame skills they have. A person with great tactical insight but only Leadership III will be a better fleet commander than a person with Fleet Command IV but no clue what he is doing.  This page http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Fleet_Leadership gives a great in-depth explanation of what the leadership bonuses are and how they work.

What are the leadership or fleet bonuses?

The main leadership bonuses are the four basic warfare skills:

• Information Warfare: Increased targeting range
• Siege Warfare: Increased shield hitpoints
• Skirmish Warfare: Increased top speed
• Armoured Warfare: Increased armour hitpoints

These skills, and their more advanced versions, mindlinks and warfare links apply their bonuses if the pilots in fleet, wing or squadron command positions have the correct leadership skills.

How do they filter down through a fleet?

The warfare bonuses are nice, but only useful if they are correctly propagated through a fleet. This is where the fleet command structure comes into play:

• Fleet commander
  • Wing commander(s)
    • Squadron commander(s)
      • Squadron members

Leadership bonuses filter down the chain of command, provided the person in command has high enough skills to lead the people under his command. Or in other words, in order for a squadron commander to share his bonuses with his nine squadron members (a full squad), he needs to have a high enough level of the skill Leadership to support ten pilots (his nine friends and himself). This means Leadership level 5, as Leadership allows you to support two pilots per level. The leadership skills are:

• Leadership: Allows you to share bonuses with 2 squadron members per level
• Wing Command: Allows you to share bonuses with 1 squadron commander per level
• Fleet Command: Allows you to share bonuses with 1 wing commander per level

Example: If a fleet commander has skills he wants to share with the rest of his fleet, consisting of one wing of three full squadrons, he will need to have Fleet Command I. In addition, he’ll need a wing commander with Wing Command III – since there are three squadrons under command of the WC – and each squadron needs to have a squadron commander with Leadership V – since each squad has a full ten pilots in it. If at any point in the chain a commander has insufficient skills, none of the pilots under the command of him or her will receive skills from the commander. This means that there is no partial sharing!

Additionally, a player in a fleet can be set as ‘Fleet/Wing/Squad booster’. This is best explained by an example. Imagine a pilot who has amazing bonus skills and a nice fleet command ship with mindlinks and warfare modules. In other words: amazingly high bonuses. However, this pilot only has Leadership V. A person with Fleet Command V could assume FC position, and then set this person as Fleet Booster. The bonuses of the command ship pilot will be used, but will be propagated using the leadership skills of the pilots in the chain of command. In practice, this is rarely needed since pilots with high bonuses skills also tend to train up their leadership skills.

For Eve University, it is recommended that pilots who wish to act as squadron commanders train up the basic warfare skills to level 3, and the skill Leadership to level 5. Pilots are encouraged to train for this as we are often short on squadron commanders.

Suggested Squad Setup

This method is based on Silentbrick’s (Eve University’s Fleet Admiral) ideal squad setup. The ideal squadron has four tacklers, four electronic warfare ship and two damage dealers. Because each squadron can hold a target down and kill it, these squadrons are able to operate semi-independently.

For example: in a fleet with four of these squadrons, and a solar system with two gates, the FC could order squadrons one and two to guard gate A, while squadrons three and four guard gate B. Because the squadrons are set up to be balanced, the FC can be sure each group has enough tacklers, damage dealers and electronic warfare to deal with incoming threats. Had the fleet been set up in an ad-hoc way, he might be sending 2 squads full of tacklers and electronic warfare – but no damage dealers – to gate A, while the group at gate B has all the heavy hitters but nobody to prevent targets from getting away. This is something we want to avoid.

Advanced Ship/Player Roles

Assign one player to do a DSan of max range and 360° every 20 seconds. Assign one player to watch local for targets and threats. Assign one player to be the Ewar commander using the ewar mumble token.

Intro to Gate Games

Tactical View (Overview)

The tactical view or tactical overview is a 3D display which shows vital information about your modules and distances to objects in space. It displays a 2 dimensional series of rings which are centered on your ship and show distances up to 150km. By default, the tactical view shows the maximum targeting distance of your ship in space. Everything within the solid area on the tactical view can be targeted. Everything outside of this area is out of targeting distance. The tactical view will show optimal and fall-off ranges for your modules as well, if you place your mouse cursor over any module with a range, the tactical overview will show you the optimal range and fall-off range for that module.

Tactical View Practical.

D-SCAN

Throughout fleet, everyone should periodically use direction scan, especially in low/null-sec. Directional Scan, when set to 360* and the maximum range, will alert you of what ships are within 14.4 AU of your ship. This will give you warning if someone is heading your way before they land on grid. D-SCAN will not be able to see cloaked ships. Ships on grid with you will show distance to ship, while ships off grid will show "-" as distance. There are ways to track down the direction and distance to the target, but this is beyond the scope of this class. See Scouting 101/Skirmishers 101.

D-SCAN Practical.

Group Warp and Ninja Warp

FC/WC/SC can warp Fleet/Wing/Squad to destination. Once warp is completed, ships will become unaligned. Ships will need to realign before warp is done again. Normal for fleets...FC/Boss will call align to target, wait for all ships to align, then warp fleet/wing/squad to target. Wing Warp does not affect other wings or the FC. Squad Warp will not affect other squads, wings, WC, or FC.

Ninja warp is when FC/Boss/WC/SC tells everyone to align to one celestial, but then warps fleet to another celestial. This is common for null-sec, as paths between gates are often bubbled. This also helps for tacticals, where FC will warp everyone to 300km off gate, then warp to the gate after checking for gatecamp.

Ninja Warp Practical.

Tacticals

If the FC is worried that a gate in low-sec might be camped, they will have squad or fleet warp to tactical to see if the gate is camped. If it is not camped, they can have fleet warp to gate and jump. At 250-300km off of gate, it is less likely that camp will be able to respond. When sitting at a gate for a while, the FC may have someone burn off to tactical to allow E-WAR and DD to warp to tactical and then back at their optimals.

Safes/Deep Safes

FC may warp everyone to a safe, or may go to a safe and have everyone warp to them which allows the fleet to hide outside of the normal paths in the system. A safe is not invulnerable, as local will show the fleet in system and D-SCAN will show targets that are within 14.4 AU. A ship with combat probes can scan down and use combat probes to provide a warp-in to exact location where fleet is located.

A safe is a good place to regroup after scatter and can provide some protection.

Rolling Safes

In order to make it more difficult for scanning frigates to find fleet, the FC will usually have a fast frigate burn out ahead of the fleet with a Micro-Warp-Drive (MWD). Once the fleet is 150km behind the frigate, everyone warps to the frigate. This makes combat probing difficult, but not impossible. If group warp is used, have everyone realign to the frigate, otherwise next group warp will take more time as ships will be unaligned.

Rolling Safe Practical.

Combat

Initial steps to combat:

• If at DGC, you should be ready for combat
• Otherwise, you should warp to target at optimals
  • Target will likely be a fleet-mate, this is called a warp-in. If they are on your watchlist, you can warp to them from there. Otherwise they have to "X" up in fleet/squad-chat or you'll need to select them from local
  • DD should be at optimal range of guns
  • EW should be at optimal range of mods
  • Tackle should be right on top of target
  • Realize that warp-in may not be exactly where target is, because ships move during warp

If FC/WC/SC group-warps to target, they may not be at your optimal, so you'll need to bounce and come back at optimal. Always bounce to closest celestial.

When FC calls out primary/secondary targets, DD cares. Everyone else ignores this command. When primary is called during normal fleet, DD should lock and engage primary, and lock secondaries. Do not switch targets until told new primary.

E-WAR should jam primary first, but should jam everyone else once primary is jammed. Tackle needs to tackle everyone they can...once the primary is tackled and isn't moving, move on to other targets.

Combat practical exercise.

Set Speed

Ships move at different speeds. Some ships move very fast while others struggle to catch up. In order to keep ships together, FC may tell all ships to set maximum speed. You can set maximum speed via the speed control on your HUD. This allows slow ships to keep up and keep everyone together. Maximum speed does not effect warp speed and once you warp you'll need to reset maximum speed.

Closing