Ship Class Tactical Overview

This Tactical Overview is designed to give a brief synopsis of the uses of each ship class in PvP. It is intended to give an overall overview by ship class, not ship type. Learning what every ship type can do becomes necessary as you advance in your PVP career. However, as a starting point, just learning general rules about ship classes is enough.

For more in-depth ship information, look at some of the other pages in the Ships Category, or click the "More Details" link at the end of each section.

Frigate Class Ships

T1 Frigates

These will generally just be tacklers. Point, web, speed mod, overdrives etc in lows & mids, irrelevant DPS or NOS etc in highs. Notable exceptions: The Rifter is one of the best T1 combat frigs, and by most people even considered THE best. In a dogfighting fit with autocannons, afterburner, web and scram, it can take on most other frigs, and even some larger targets, and win (watch out for the Taranis (Gallente combat interceptor) and all the assault frigates though). The Merlin comes a close second (or beats the Rifter depending on fit and engagement scenario), either using blasters as a close range brawler or rails and kiteing on the edge of web range. The Punisher and Incursus are the Amarr and Gallente equivalents, but they don't quite reach the level of the Rifter. Additionally, a well-fitted Kestrel, taking advantage of four rocket launchers, can come as an extremely unpleasant surprise to the unwary. (More Details)

T2 Frigates

Interceptors (Inty / 'ceptor)

These are the primary tacklers in anything but 0.0 (where dictors and hics take over, and even then have uses for pinning down kiters). They have the highest scan resolution of any class, and only Vigils (Minmatar electronic warfare frig) can match their speed. Their main purpose is tackling, and that's what they do best, but many interceptors can also be refit to be effective combat ships in an interceptor-only gang. Their firepower and tank will be low compared to other types of ships, but they have the advantage of very high speed (even when tank & gank fitted) and awesome agility. (More Details)

Covert Ops

They can warp cloaked, and are used as scouts and for probing stuff down. Can also be used for tackling stuff it has scouted/probed out, but that's only for experienced people that know what they can and can't hold long enough for help to arrive, and which targets are worth the risk. (More Details)

Stealth Bombers (SB)

Super high DPS/alpha frigates that can warp cloaked and doesn't have a sensor recalibration delay after decloaking. In 0.0, they can also launch bombs (basically a large, ranged, higher damage smartbomb). They have trouble hitting small targets with their torpedoes though. (More Details)

Electronic Attack Ships (EAS)

These vary a lot from race to race. Basically, they are frigate-sized versions of the combat recons that will be described below. (More Details)

Assault Frigates (AS / AF)

High tank, usually high DPS frigates. If you get tackled by one of these, you're generally not going anywhere: they're a pain to get rid of when properly fitted. Their disadvantage compared to interceptors is that they're slower, and often sacrifice their MWD and fit an AB instead to be able to survive longer after getting the target tackled. (More Details)

Destroyer Class Ships

T1 Destroyers

Anti-frigate ships. Very good tracking, lots of small guns, however their tank is frigate-level, while they're almost as big as a cruiser. They therefore die extremely fast, and are considered useless by many, though they remain much more efficient than most frigates for running Level 1 missions, and can handle Level 2 missions with some training and personal skill. Some missioners use them as a cheap salvaging vessels. Due to its many high slots many salvagers and tractor beams can be fitted on a low cost ship where no other qualities are required. Of additional note is that most Destroyers feature enough CPU to mount multiple mining lasers, turning the Destroyer into a small mining vessel that can easily rival the Procurer for mining efficiency, if not for cargo capacity. (More Details)

T2 Destroyers: Interdictors (Dictor)

These ships are of greatly reduced value in high and low sec, becoming mere gunboats or missile ships in most cases; however, when they get into 0.0, they become one of the most important ships available. Their role is launching warp disruption probes, usually called bubbles. Those probes create a warp disruption field in a 20km radius from the probe: inside that field, nothing can warp, no matter how many stabs they fit. Anyone trying to warp to a spot within 150 (iirc) km of the edge of the bubble will be pulled to the edge of it, although only if the bubble is in line between the 2 objects that the ship is warping between. Interdictors and HICs (heavy interdiction cruisers) are the only ships that can tackle titans and motherships. (More Details)

Cruiser Class Ships

T1 Cruisers

Can have many roles, from mining and logistics (Osprey, Augoror, Scythe, Exequror) and electronic warfare (Blackbird, Bellicose, Arbitrator, Celestis) to pure DPS (basically, the rest of them). (More Details)

T2 Cruisers

Recon Ships

These come in two categories, combat recons and force recons. Force recons can fit a covert ops cloak and therefore warp cloaked, while the combat recon is generally better suited for the actual combat part, either through stronger tank, higher DPS or simply better range for their electronic warfare (EW) type. Their main purpose is EW, but what they use varies from race to race. (More Details)

Heavy Assault Cruisers (HAC)

Extremely versatile and powerful ships. They combine high speed and agility with either close range fits for high DPS and decent tanks, or very long range fits -- only outranged by sniper ships using BS guns-- which still offer good DPS and a decent buffer tank. (More Details)

Heavy Interdiction Cruisers (HIC)

With the exception of some T3 cruiser setups, these will have better tank than any other cruiser, and match that of most battleships. Their DPS is extremely low, but their role is tackling.

In 0.0 they can create a 12-20 km radius warp disruption field similar to what the light interdictors create, however, while the light interdictor can launch its bubble and then get out, and the bubble will stay there for 2 minutes anyway, the HIC has to stay where it want its bubble to be. While the bubble is up (30 second cycle time), it can not recieve any type of remote support. Its normal speed remains the same, afterburners and microwarpdrives will have reduced effect. In return, the HIC's mass gets reduced, so they can get up to speed and change direction etc extremely fast. In high and low sec, the bubble can't be used, but a script allows it to work as a normal disruptor with infinite strength and 50% more range.(More Details)

Logistics

Each race does it a bit differently here, but overall, these ships are supposed to increase the survivability of the fleet in one way or another.

Gallente and Amarr repair armor, Caldari and Minmatar repair shields. In addition, Gallente and Minmatar can boost fleet members' tracking, and Amarr and Caldari can add extra energy to fleet members' capacitors (which is an extremely powerful utility when two Amarr or Caldari logistics ships are used in tandem with one another). (More Details)

T3 Cruisers: Strategic Cruisers

You can't get more versatile than this. Depending on what subsystems you put on it, it can basically do anything except for bubbling. With the right sub system, you can even become immune to bubbles -- a unique ability that no other ship has -- although you can still be tackled by HICs with the script in and by normal disruptors/scrams. T3 cruisers can be fitted to use their racial warfare links with an even stronger bonus than fleet command ships (described below), but it can only fit one link by default. However, by fitting two command processors, that can be increased to three links. (More Details)

Battlecruiser Class Ships

T1 Battlecruiser (BC)

Very good mix between gank, tank, agility, speed and cost. Usually short range, although long range guns do appear on some specific fits (drake and "instacane" to mention two), they are the dps workhorses of many fleets. A notable exception to this is the tier 3 battlecruisers, which are capable of mounting BS sized guns, but have substantialy reduced tank, so are often fit out as snipers to mitigate their weaknesses.

BCs also have the ability to fit a single warfare link, which can give extra bonuses to your gang. (More Details)

T2 Battlecruisers

Command Ships (CS)

These come in two classes, field command ships, which are basically just a stronger version of the T1 BC with a bit more DPS and tank and better resists, and fleet command ships. Fleet command ships get a bonus to their racial warfare links, and in general have extremely good tanks with great resists. The racial links are: Armor for Amarr, Shield for Caldari, Skirmish for Minmatar and Information for Gallente, and there are three types of links in each class. If the command ship is in a leadership position in the fleet, everyone below him in the command chain (including normal members) get the following bonus, assuming the command chain is complete (for example, if the CS is wing commander, and there are no squad commanders, or more squads than the CS can handle with its current wing commander level, no bonuses will be applied). (More Details)

Battleship Class Ships

T1 Battleship (BS)

You can't get heavier than this and still stay in sub-capital ships, although there are of course variations. Great buffer tanks; very high DPS when close range fitted; long range fits have the best range in the game, while still maintaining good DPS (usually Apoc, Mega, Maelstrom/Tempest and Rokh, though the Mega and Mael/Tempest can also be close range fitted and still perform better than/as well as the other BS of their race). One notable exception here: the Caldari Scorpion, which is the only T1 electronic warfare BS, and use ECM.

The battleships' weakness is low speed and agility combined with slow locking speed (low scan resolution) and bad gun tracking, so it's hard to force an opponent in smaller ships to engage if the odds are in your favor, or to actually kill them since you'll be missing a lot if you do get a fight. (More Details)

T2 Battleships

Marauders

These are basically PvE only ships. Decent DPS and good local tank, but in PvP you generally want a buffer tank instead, and marauders have very low sensor strength, making them easy to jam. The Paladin and Kronos have 50% web strength bonuses which can be situationally useful if you really need a target webbed down as much as possible, and don't mind using a ship that costs over half a billion and gets tiny insurance payouts. But Blood Raider and Serpentis ships also get a 10% bonus/level of Minmatar Frigate/Cruiser/Battleship, which also adds up to a total of 50% bonus at level 5. (More Details)

Black Ops (BO)

These are the big brothers of the force recon ships but, while they do get bonus to how fast they move while cloaked (which actually means that they'll move faster when cloaked than when not cloaked with the BO skill at a decent level), they can't fit a covert ops cloak and warp while cloaked. They cost about 700m or so before fittings, so it's rarely worth risking them in combat.

However, they do have a very useful role to play in PvP: the covert jump bridge. Covert cyno fields can now be lit even in cyno jammed 0.0 systems and doesn't appear as a beacon in the entire system like a normal cyno, and a black ops can then lock on to that field and create a bridge to it, which then allows other covert ops ships (any ship that get a bonus to cloaking, including T3 cruisers with the cloaking sub) to jump to the system the bridge was set up to -- making the black ops ship basically a one-way stargate. Only BOs, recons and covops ships can fit and light covert cynos. (More Details)

Capital Ships

Capital ships -- dreadnoughts, carriers, supercarriers ("motherships"), titans and Rorquals (the last one isn't a combat ship) -- can't use gates, and the supercarriers and titans can't even dock. Instead they use their own jump drive to travel around. In order to do that, they require fuel (racial isotopes, helium for Amarr, oxygen for Gallente and the rorqual, nitrogen for Caldari and hydrogen for Minmatar) and a cynosural field to jump to.

Those cyno fields can be created in two ways. One can be created by anchoring and onlining a cyno generator POS mod. This will always be online and available for use for the corp/alliance the POS belongs to, but requires the corp/alliance to have the relevant upgrades installed in the system before it can be used, and cannot be online at the same time as a cyno jammer in the same system. Alternatively, a Cynosural Field Generator module can be mounted on a ship (usually a throwaway frigate) which can then 'light' a cyno in any system which doesn't have an online cyno jammer. (More Details)

Dreadnoughts (Dread)

For pure DPS this used to be as good as it gets, though they have now been surpassed by supercarriers doing 8k DPS (10k for the Nyx), and Titans which can reach similar DPS numbers as dreads, but also get the doomsday device. Dreads can reach almost 5k dps when in siege mode even in a long range fit. When not sieged, though, they generally just match a BS. Their weapons' tracking is extremely bad, so they can basically only hit other caps and POSs/outposts, unless the target isn't moving at all. (More Details)

Carriers

These are giant logistics platforms. They have the ability to store 1.000.000 m3 of assembled ships in their ship maintenance bay so that people that lose their ship can quickly pick up a new one, and other ships from their corp (or fleet if the carrier's configured for that) can use them to refit in space. They get a 50%/level range bonus to two of the following, varying depending on which racial carrier it is: capital energy transfer, capital shield transporter and capital remote armor repairers. The Amarr Archon get cap transfer and armor rep, the Gallente Thanathos and Minmatar Nidhoggur get shield and armor and the Caldari Chimera get cap transfer and shield.

In addition to that, all carriers get an additional 5%/level bonus to the following: the Chimera and Archon get a resist bonus (armor for Archon, shield for Chimera), the Nidhoggur gets a capital remote rep amount bonus and the Thanatos gets a fighter damage bonus. Carriers can use fighters (but not fighter bombers), and for every level of the racial carrier skill all carriers can control one extra drone or fighter in addition to the normal five. They can't fit any guns or launchers at all, so the high slots are usually used for neuts, smartbombs (drone/small ship defense) and remote reps.

Just like dreadnoughts' siege modules, carriers also get a special module that only they can fit: the triage module. (More Details)

Supercarriers ("Supers")

A larger carrier with the ability to use fighter bombers, greatly increasing their DPS to roughly twice as much as a sieged dread with a full flight of bombers and max skills. These get +3 drones/carrier level instead of 1, but can't dock and have shorter jump range (equivalent to a dread/jump freighter). Supercarriers can't enter triage mode, but are permanently immune to electronic warfare anyway. They can only be tackled by interdictors and heavy interdictors (and anchorable bubbles, but that's not practical due to the anchoring time required before they activate combined with limited range). (More Details)

Titans

Like supercarriers, these are immune to EW and can only be tackled by dictors and HICs. They're all able to fit and activate the largest and most lethal gun in the game: a doomsday device, which does 2-3m damage depending on skills, but can only be fired once every 10 minutes, costs 50k racial isotopes to activate, prevents the titan from moving at all for 30 seconds and from using its jump drive for 10 minutes. Activating a doomsday device takes 10 seconds, so targets have some time to get out before the damage is applied. Its range is 250 km (the hard-coded max lock range -- nothing can do damage at longer range than that).

Titans can also fit a jump bridge module, which works in a similar way to the cov ops jump bridge described above that the black ops use, but can bridge any type of ship, has longer range and can only lock on to normal cynos, not cov ops ones. (More Details)

Capital Industrial Ship: The Rorqual

This ship is primarily intended for mining support with its huge tractor beam range and speed, ability to fit bonused mining leadership links and ability to compress ore. However, it does have a 50%/level range bonus to capital shield transfers, and a 20%/level drone damage bonus, so while it's not intended as a PvP ship, some people have been known to use it for that. (More Details)