Doctrines

A doctrine is a a set of one or more type of ships with predesigned fits that complement each other, increasing the overall effectiveness of a fleet and its chances of winning fights or achieving other goals. Most doctrines are designed for PvP combat, but players sometimes also use doctrines for more advanced types of PvE combat such as Incursions and more challenging sites in wormhole space.

Each fit in a doctrine is designed to fulfil a specific role within one unifying concept. Organised player corporations or alliances typically maintain several doctrines; more exclusive corporations sometimes expect applicants to be able to fly some of their doctrines, or at least to be willing to "train into" them. Typically, the choice of doctrine rests with a fleet commander ("FC") or with the inner circle of a group's strategic leadership, but the choice of specific ships within the doctrine rests with individual players.

Benefits

Doctrines create relatively uniform performance across all the ships within a fleet's various sub-units.

This uniform performance eases tactical decision-making for fleet commanders: if an FC knows that their fleet has 50 damage-dealers who deal X DPS with an ideal engagement range of 100 km, and that allowing for jams and other disruption, the logistics team can keep those damage-dealers alive when receiving up to Y DPS, then the FC can much more easily work out where on grid they would like their fleet core to be, what kind of DPS they can safely expose their fleet core to, and what types of opposing fleet composition they can and cannot reasonably engage.

If, on the other hand, a fleet gives free rein to its pilots to bring anything (so-called "kitchen sink" fleet composition), the same FC might have the same 50 damage-dealers dealing an unknown amount of DPS at ranges from 15 to 100 km, with an uncertain survivability profile, and potentially the wrong kind of tank for the type supported by the logistics team—who might themselves have different ranges and variable repair rates.

Doctrines tend to be most central, and most rigid, when very large numbers of players need to be melded together into one reliable unit that one FC can wield effectively in very large-scale fleet battles of the sort sometimes fought in sovereign nullsec. This doesn't mean that doctrines have no use in smaller fleets or in small gang PvP, however. Individual players tend to have much more initiative in small gang PvP, but they will still form a more effective group if they have at least a working sense of their gang-mates' capabilities.

Fits

The details of the doctrine fits used by different corporations and alliances will vary widely depending on their goals, likely opponents, resources, typical pilot skill profile, and location. A small group who live in wormhole space—with ship size limits, no intel from the Local chat channel, and a constant reliance on probe scanning—will differ from a large sovereign alliance—operating supercapital and capital ships alongside subcapital support fleets—who will in turn have different doctrines to a corporation used to fighting in high security space, where collateral damage is a consideration. EVE University maintains a core set of doctrines, but different campuses tend to have particular specialties, because of the specific qualities of their local space.

To accomplish the desired uniformity, all fleet members should ideally fly their selected ships with the exact fits that are established in the doctrine. However, the natural variation in trained skills between different players can be an obstacle. To overcome this, many groups in EVE open to newer players maintain doctrines with Standard fits and a New Player Friendly variants to accommodate new players with lower levels of trained skills.

Roles

Some doctrines are unusual and include niche roles, but the most typical fleet roles for which fits might be designed are as follows:

Primary Roles

• DD: Damage Dealer; high DPS to destroy enemy ships
• Logi: Logistics; repairs friendly ships' armour or shield and may provide capacitor boosts
• Tackle: Prevents hostile ships from warping away to ensure their destruction
• EWar: Electronic Warfare; manipulates the electronic capabilities of hostile ships making them less effective or useless

Secondary Roles

• Scouts: Move one or more systems a head of the fleet (and sometimes behind the fleet) for recon. Typically a Tackle Frigate, an Interceptor, or a Covert Ops cloaky ship
• Vanguard: A mini fleet that engages hostiles before the rest of the fleet joins the fight typically to trick the enemy in underestimating the actual fleet size and force
• Anchors: With the rest of the fleet Approaching or Keeping at Range, anchors are responsible for manually piloting their ships to maintain the fleets Optimal Range and tactical positioning. Typically DD and Logi have separate Anchors

Keeping Up with Doctrines

Doctrines are not static, they evolve and change as necessary given that modules and ships are periodically re-balanced. Since forum posts and saved fits both in-game and in PYFA tend to get outdated and become obsolete, EVE University has adopted a third-party website, Eve Workbench, for managing doctrines and fittings, ensuring that everyone has access to updated doctrine fits. Among other benefits, this tool is particularly helpful to check if a character can fly a given fit using API's.