Solo PvP

This is going to be an introduction to Solo PvP. On top of being a very fun thing to do in Eve, it will help you develop the skills you need to fly in small gangs without anchors. It will also improve your general knowledge of the game which will come in handy if you want to command fleets at some point in your career.

First things first: Frigates and destroyers

Frigate vs frigate fights are a great introduction to the different solo PvP mechanics, that’s because frigates are mostly cheap and they get to choose which engagements they take thanks to their speed, their align time and their small sig (which makes locking them slower). Frigate fights are generally the most common type of 1V1 engagements which means it will be easier to find a fight. Now the more you’ll fight, the better you’ll get. The reason I’m mentioning destroyers is you can basically think of them as oversized frigates that are both slower, tankier and more powerful. It would be a mistake to see destroyers as a “better frigate” though. 1v1 is all about fighting on your terms and range control will often be the most decisive factor, this means being slow can be a huge drawback: it’s often the difference between winning and being countered. Some frigates fits will hard counter some destroyer fits and vice versa. Now T3 destroyers are kind of a special case but we’ll get to that later.

Security Status disclaimer

If you want to have fun solo PvPing you are going to lose sec status, it can’t be avoided. I know as a new player that might sound scary but that’s actually not a big issue at all. There are two reasons for that. The first reason is that you may completely circumvent the whole Security status by using another character. If you live in lowsec or nullsec, having a sec status won’t really affect you as you can simply use a hauler alt to get ships from Highsec to where you live. You may pretty much any Highsec activity with an alt and you get two other chars on your account to do that with.

The second reason is that security status may simply be “bought back” using clone soldier tags but you probably won’t want to that as most people who live highsec generally don’t want to turn back and end up leaving it for good.

Now if you are reading this article because you are a member of Eve-University, you might run into a little trouble here. From what I remember you are discouraged to go below a certain sec status while in the uni, so if you start to solo PvP seriously, you might run into Sec status troubles after a few dozens of fights or so. I recommend asking the E-Uni solo PvPers (such as Kelon Darklight) how they manage it, if you really bump into a wall, you may simply need to leave the Uni and find a corp more oriented towards a PvP lifestyle. Still, you should know that your sec status will take time to degrade and that it will take a while to become an issue, you may definitely dip your toes into solo PvP without any big consequences and while staying in the Uni.

Soloing in Nullsec versus soloing in Lowsec:

Most aspiring soloers don’t realize that the 1v1 metagame varies between lowsec and nullsec. First of all it is generally harder to find a 1v1 frigate fight in null: being alone against a gang is a much more common occurrence than true 1v1. In this case, you will generally try to separate gangs using gate mechanics, bubbles, or simply managing to split the enemies on grid. Eveiseasy is a youtube channel mostly dedicated to this kind of PvP and you will find a ton of info about creating opportunities for 1v1 there. What can be said right now though is that a Microwarpdrive is borderline mandatory if you are going to solo in SOV space that doesn’t belong to your corp. An exception can be made for oversized Afterburners (this means fitting a cruiser sized Afterburner on a destroyer or fitting a Battleship sized afterburner on a cruiser/BC). There are several reasons why a Microwarpdrive drive is so important in nullsec. The first one is that an AB ship is helpless against a gang, you will not be fast enough to separate several people on grid and you will not be fast enough to reapproach gates and separate your foes using gates and aggression mechanics. The other main reason is bubbles: Nullsec is full of bubbles (both deployable and interdictor made) and they will screw an AB ship a lot more badly than an MWD ship. Speed is critical for both escaping them and taking advantage of them. Now an Afterburner can still be a good idea to bring in nullsec as long as you have an MWD too. It’s called a dualprop ship and is great for soloing as in this case the AB is not used as a tool for moving around but as a mean to do two other thigs: it allows you to control range in scram range during 1v1s and it allows you to Signature tank bigger ships than yourself (cruisers, BCs, BSs), this can be great if you are trying to gank null ratters for example.

Lowsec is a whole different beast: first of all there are no bubbles, secondly there are far more people willing to solo, especially in faction warfare space. Thirdly the Faction Warfare (“FW”) Plex mechanics in lowsec promotes having an afterburner for fighting in scram range. Novice, Small, Medium and large complexes (“plexes”) are places in a system specifically dedicated to PvP, they are open to anyone, not only to the people engaged in FW. These places are only accessible by using a single acceleration gate (similar to those you can find in missions). This means that there is a single entry point, if you are in a plex already and waiting for someone to come in; you know for sure where the other person will enter. So, if you decide to sit at the exit point at 0, the person invading the plex will warp straight on top of you which will net you a quasi-automatic scram if you wish to scram which renders the other person’s MWD obsolete if he has one. An AB on the other hand stays active while scrammed.

Now I do not mean at all that an AB is mandatory in FW space, there are MWD fits that counter AB fits in the grand scheme of things, there’s a rock-paper-scissors mechanics of frigate PvP. Just remember that, contrarily to nullsec, an AB is a completely viable thing in FW space, it is even preferred in the current meta.

The rock-paper-scissors Mechanics of frigate PVP

People usually divide PvP ships in two categories: Brawlers and Kiters. Brawler as a generic term generally describes ships who want to fight into warp scrambler range, this means the fight is happening below 10km. Ships engaged in a brawl will not be able to use their MWD (that’s what a scram does) and thus, the ships will generally move quite slowly.

On the other hand, Kiters wish to fight at full MWD speed all the time using a warp disruptor instead of a scram, they rely on their speed and longer range to destroy the other ship without it being able to reach them, this mean they’ll try to avoid getting webbed at all cost and getting into scram range will generally put them in a very bad position. They will usually try to fight between 13km (overheated web range of the other ship) and 24km (the range of a tech II warp disruptor). Now not messing up as a kiter can be pretty hard when both ships are moving at 3000+ m/s per second (MWD speed), but it’s going to be easier if the other guy is moving at 1300 m/s (AB speed). Now there are a few exceptions to this, a few ships have special bonuses with longer webs, longer scrams, longer disruptors or exceptional AB speed. Offgrid links boosting can be a factor too as they increase tackle range and speed considerably. Now, there’s an additional layer of subtlety to frigates and destroyers because they use small sized weapons. In their cases, brawling comes in two varieties: Scram kiting brawlers who are designed to fight at the edge of the scram range (between 6 and 9km) and brawler brawlers who are designed to fight between 0 and 4km. Yes, as you have noticed the denomination is not quite completely clear and brawling can mean two things, thank god you’ll generally understand what people mean with the context.

So the goal of scram kiters is to fight outside the range of full-brawlers so they don’t get hit. While the goal of full-brawlers is to catch them and and kill them with their superior close-range DPS (in general: the smaller your range is, the harder you hit).

Frigate 1v1 in scram range

When a brawler and a scram-kiter engage in scram range (under 10km), the outcome is almost always decided by the range the two-ships actually fight at, if the Brawler manages to fight at his optimal (usually less than 4km), he’s most likely going to out-DPS the scram kiter. On the other hand if the scram-kiter manages to get out of the brawler’s effective range, he will generally win as he’ll barely get hit. This means that the engagement range (the distance both ships are at when they apply scram and web on each other) and the speed of each ship are going to be the most important factors for winning the fight.

Let’s try to explain the whole mechanics with a few examples, we’ll have an AB in in mind at first, then explain what changes with MWD ships. Here are a few t1 frigates: let’s see how they interact.

Slow brawler: AB blaster Merlin: 220 overheated DPS at 1km (3km falloff) 6,4ehp and 1350 m/s heated, 607 m/s heated and webbed

Fast scram-kiter: AB beam executioner: 175 heated DPS, 2,5k EHP, +3,16k active EHP at a rate of 100EHP per second with perfect small ancillary armor repairer usage (no overreping), 1700 m/s heated. 765 m/s heated and webbed.

Fast brawler: AB Blaster Atron: 220 heated DPS at 1KM (4,5KM falloff), 2.6k EHP + 2,9k active EHP at 100 EHP/S assuming perfect SAAR usage, 1800 m/s heated. 810 m/s heated and webbed

Slow scram-kiter: Rail Incursus: 160 heated DPS at 6.75km, 3,56k EHP + 5K active EHP at 166 EHP/s assuming perfect SAAR usage, 1450 m/s heated, 652 m/s heated and webbed

Now let’s see how these ships interact with each other:

We’ll start with the most one sided match-up: Slow brawler vs fast scram-kiter, even if the fight starts at 0,1km which would be the best for the merlin, he would have to apply his full DPS for 20 seconds to break the active tank of the executioner, since the executioner is moving 150m/s faster than the Merlin it would only take him 6,6 seconds to get out of the Merlin’s optimal range, past that point It becomes easier and easier to active tank as seconds into fall-off pass, the Merlin has the choice to switch to Null ammo (which takes 5 seconds) but even then, the fight is going to be a struggle and the Merlin will probably lose. Now this was assuming the best possible engagement range for the Merlin, if the fight starts anywhere between 4km and 7.5km, the Merlin theoretically won’t win. Now I must insist on the “theoretical” aspect of these fights, that is if the two players play well and don’t mess up. If the executioner forgets to apply his web or forgets to overheat is AB for a few seconds, he might very well lose.

Fast brawler versus slow scram kiter: You might think “well this is simple: it’s the opposite of what we just saw, the fast brawler will catch the slow scram-kiter and kill it”. Well, that’s actually not true. Let’s take the blaster Atron vs rail Incursus match-up for example: if the fight starts close, then the webbed AB Atron is 150m/s faster than the webbed AB incursus, this means he wil be able apply the entirety of his theoretical DPS by always staying at his optimal range. But a 150m/s different is not nearly enough to orbit at 0 and create big enough transversal velocity to outtrack the incursus, this means that if the Incursus burns away from you, he will be able to apply his full theoretical DPS to you as well. In this case, even though the Atron does more damage, the Incursus is much more Tankier than the Atron. It takes theoretically 34 seconds for the Incursus to kill the Atron while it takes 38 seconds for the Atron to kill the Incursus, which means the Incursus theoretically wins. Now as the initial engagement range increases, the match-up gets tougher and tougher for the Atron because he first has to catch-up before being able to apply his whole DPS. Even if the fights starts at 4km which is moderately close, the Atron will need to catch up 3km at 150 m/s before applying his full DPS which means he’s going to lose even harder. Now once again this is whole theoretical, if the incursus forgets to overload his prop, he’ll get caught a lot faster, if he forgets to overload his guns or his tank, if he forgets to launch his small drone he might very well lose the DPS race. If neither mess-up but the Atron has considerably superior turret and tanking skills, he might win the DPS race too.

Slow Brawler vs Slow Scram-kiter / Fast Brawler vs Fast scram-kiter: In these match-ups, both ships’ tank are going to be pretty much the same and they’ll fly at pretty much the same speed, so these match-ups are usually purely decided by the engagement range: If the brawler manages to be right on-top (0 to 1,5km) of the scram-kiter when they both apply scram and web he’ll probably win. If the Scram kiter manages to engage outside 4km he’ll probably win. The player who messes up and forgets to overload the AB or applies his web late is going to lose almost automatically.

Mirror match-ups, Brawlers VS Brawlers and Scram-kiters vs Scram-kiters: These are the only match up where speed will not be as relevant to actually win the fight but the fastest ship might still be able to run away if he realizes he’s losing. In this case pure damage*EHP ratio will generally win fights, the most important thing will be to have a good fit, the second most important thing will be to overload your modules (it’s crazy how many people forget/ only do it halfway through the fight), and the third most important thing will be damage and tanking skills.

Meta-breaker in scram-range

Now there are a few ships that are not going to fit into the system that I just described, I’ll call them “meta-breakers”

Dual web ships: They will be able to completely control range. A dual-web brawler will catch-up to its target quickly and a dual web scram-kiter will be able to exit the range of a brawler in seconds; this makes the initial engagement range largely irrelevant and is great to invade a plex for example. The drawback is that you are using one of your mid slots for range control instead of using it for Tanking, which means you are going to be better at countering other types of fits but will struggle more when engaging the same type of ships. A dual web Artillery firetail for example might very well lose to a beam tormentor or a rail incursus in a pure DPS race. Viable dual web turret based frigs include the Firetail (very popular), the Merlin and the Slasher. Dual web rocket ships are a special case, the dual web hookbill is very popular but the dual breacher and kestrel or viable dual web frigs too. Rockets do not need to track which means you can play as both a scram-kiter and a brawler. You’ll be able fight brawlers by keeping them at the edge of the scram range and you’ll be able to fight scram-kiters by orbiting them at 0 and mitigate some of their DPS.

Tracking disruptors: This module has two uses: the first, is to decrease your enemy’s optimal and falloff range by half which allows you to basically scram-kite other scram-kiter. The crucifier navy issue is designed around this idea. This might also allow the autocannon TD Slasher which is theoretically a Brawler to scram kite other brawlers. The second use of the TD is to reduce your opponent’s tracking; this is mostly useful against bad brawlers who do not have a web, or generally people with less range control modules than you. The hookbill for example may fit two webs on top of a TD which allows him to get under the guns of other scram kiters by orbiting them at 0. Neuts: Having a neut or several neuts on a brawler may completely break the DPS race mechanics by turning the opponent’s guns off. This allows the slasher or the neut Tristan to beat ships that rely heavily on capacitor for their damage and their tank, SAAR hybrid and SAAR laser ships are very popular in the current lowsec meta which makes neuts very powerful.

Dual reps: These are pretty popular ships that rely on a simple gimmick: sacrificing all range control in order to have as big of a tank as possible and win thanks to pure DPS/EHP ratio, this is basically the opposite to a dual web ship. The big difference is that you can’t run away from a dual web ship that counters you, but you can always run away from a dual rep frigate that counters you, that’s what makes dual-rep ships bad. The dual rep incursus is the most popular but the dual MASB Breach exists too (and it is terrible, as having no web on a rocket ship means abysmal DPS), flying a ship like that basically relies on the other guy not realizing you don’t have a web. In order to fight these gimmicky ships you need to stay out of their range and poke them until it run out of cap booster charges, if you don’t have the means to poke it without getting hit then you should simply leave and go somewhere else.

How fighting in scram-range changes in Nullsec

All this was written with AB ships and faction warfare lowsec in mind, which is a place where MWD ships that fight in scram are rare. In nullsec though, people tend to fit MWDs and I will now explain how that changes the deal: it’s quite the same with a few significant differences. MWD brawlers and MWD scram-kiters basically function the same as AB ships except they are faster while moving around on the grid and slower during a fight. This means the initial engagement range is going to be extremely critical and the most decisive factor: the speed difference between a fast and a slow ship are going to be a lot less important. For example, the difference in speed between a webbed MWD Atron and a webbed MWD Merlin is only 50m/s (the difference was 150m/s earlier with Afterburners). This massive reduction in speed has a collateral effect: it makes rocket ships drastically better. Since fights happen at a slower velocity, rocket ships are able to use rage rockets and apply their full damage with a single web (as long as the enemy isn’t dual propped). On the other hand, rocket ships are not as good with ABs: they need to either use faction rockets with one web which means not great damage, or rage rockets with two webs which means not great tank.

The other big change with MWDs is that you get a strong capacitor penalty simply for fitting one, on top of that using the MWD in itself uses a lot of capacitor. What this means is that both MWD ships get a lot less capacitor to work with at the beginning of an engagement in scram range. This is a huge drawback to capacitor intensive ships that use hybrid and lasers and like to work with a small ancillary armor repairer at the same time: Tormentors and Incursii who are at the at the top of the food chain in AB engagements become a lot less potent while shield tanked rocket and projectile ships become a lot better. Another small speed-related difference is that low tracking-high damage T2 short range ammo (Void, Hail and Conflag) become somewhat viable in nullsec: when both ship are close to each other and going at 150 m/s, the extra damage is sometimes possible to apply reliably.

Finally, a more down to earth difference between Nullsec and lowsec is that nullsec players are generally worse. They get much fewer opportunities to fight 1v1 which moves they don’t improve at it as fast (or at all). This is actually double edged: yes it will be easier to beat nullsec players in 1v1 because they’ll have terrible fits and no web but they will also be a lot more prone to blob you.

How to win a fight in scram range, recap and remarks

The most important thing is to choose your engagements well, when you see a ship on Dscan, you need to know what are the most popular fits for the ship and what to generally expect from it. If you can link the ship on dscan to a name in local, you should search his name on zkillboard and try to find what fit he used last time he lost that ship as most people tend to buy fits in bulks and use the same over and over. This applies both ways, if you can use an unpredictable fit; the enemy might engage wrongly thinking he counters you.

Secondly you need to maximize your chances and try to use a fit that have both good counter potential and good DPS/TANK ratio, that will allow you to brute force through engagements that look close on paper. Now in order to have good countering abilities you need range control, the first thing to it is to always have a range control module, possibly more than one if you feel like maximizing your counter-ability and lowering your brute forcing ability. As I said earlier, the person with the most range control modules dictates the range of the engagement and gets the choice to disengage if he wants to. If you are flying an AB ship in lowsec, a web is mandatory. If you are flying an MWD ship in Nullsec, fitting an afterburner on top of your MWD (dualprop) will give you even better range control than a web does (but, remember that you should never fly a rocket ship without a web, you won’t be able to apply damage). You may also go dualprop+web on ships with plenty of mids like the Hookbill, this makes you the king of scram range control in Nullsec.

But, if you are flying a scram MWD frigate, you should always be super wary of AB ships, even if they are rarer in nullsec, they remain a distinct possibility. If you notice that the other guy is moving around on the grid at a speed between 900 and 1400 m/s, this means he has an AB and no MWD fitted: he sacrificed the ability to move fast on the grid which turns him into kiting food (I’ll get to that later) in exchange for super control in scram range so he might very well counter you there. Since he is so slow and you are fast, you always get the choice not to engage if you don’t want to and you’ll have to evaluate the risk: if getting scram-kited or brawled with 250 neutron blaster DPS is a possibility you should run away. On the other hand, if you know for sure his optimal range is the same as you and you think his DPS/EHP is lower than yours, then you are clear to engage. The worst thing that might happen is him managing to run away once he starts to lose.

Now if you are flying against someone with the same amount of range control modules as you, the decisive factor will be speed: sacrificing speed is almost always a bad idea, armor rigs generally have an awful speed penalty and are generally bad with a few niche uses. Plates are generally seen as pretty bad for the same reason but less so, their EHP gained/speed loss ratio isn’t nearly as bad as the armor rigs’. Still, in the current meta, the best way to armor tank your ship is generally to go with a small ancillary armor repairer, you may couple it with small auxiliary nano pumps for rigs as they give you good tanking ability without sacrificing speed, be careful though as these ships are susceptible to being neuted out. This piece of advice can be expanded to bigger stuff too: kiting with a decent armor tank becomes possible by combining armor repairers to Energized adaptive membranes and auxiliary nano pumps. Trying to buffer tank an armor ship is often subpar in the current metagame as it means sacrificing way too much speed. Shields do not have this issue and can be both buffer and active tanked. The penalty for buffer tanking shields is sig radius and it is not often big enough to be a major drawback.

Kiting, the art of fighting outside scram range

One of the biggest pros of kiting is that it allows you to fight outnumbered, but it is a lot more difficult than fighting in scram-range as it should be done by piloting manually. Most of the time, the orbit and keep at range buttons are not viable options as they’ll get you either hit or slingshotted (I’ll get to that later), you also need to manual pilot in order to track your opponents: orbiting someone in an imperial navy slicer (the most famous kiting frigate) will not work for example, you’ll have too much transversal to track your target. The only time where keeping at range might be viable is when kiting a very slow AB brawler who has no means to hit past 20km. But even then, manual piloting should be recommended as it is more fun and allows you to improve. On top of being good for soloing, kiting by manual piloting is extremely useful in a small gang situation. The ability to manual pilot is, in the current Meta, what separates the average and the great solo/small gang PvPer.

The principle of kiting is to stay between 13km (the other person’s web range) and 24km (your warp disruptor range) which basically allows you to hit brawlers without getting hit yourself. You are trying to avoid getting caught while staying close enough to keep your target from running away with your point, in order to do that you’ll need to be able to activate and overload your mwd and your point with hotkeys while double clicking in space at the same time for controlling your ship. Now this whole double clicking in space thing is actually quite impossible to fully explain by writing and I suggest watching Chessur’s slicer videos on youtube as they currently are the best tutorial you can find. As an MWD brawler (in this case the term “brawler” also applies to scram-kiters) the counter to kiters is a maneuver called the slingshot. You first double click in space away from the kiter: the goal is to get him to rush towards you, when he does you suddenly change course and rush towards him as fast as possible in order to catch him, you’ll find several youtube videos showing you this mechanic. This basically means 1v1 as a kiter or against a kiter isn’t simply a matter of fitting and hard-countering your opponent, it’s a matter of piloting skill which makes the fight more organic and piloting base. One ship stat that’s going to help you tremendously with all that is speed, both kiting and slingshotting will be easier the faster you are. A duel between a kiting slicer and a brawling MWD comet is a perfect example to this peculiar synergy as both have good chances to win; the outcome of the fight is not decided in advance and depends mostly on both pilots’ piloting skills. In order to practice kiting and slingshot, I strongly recommend going to the Test Server where you get instant fights and infinite money to play with.

There are basically three main ways of kiting with frigates: light missile launchers which have low DPS but apply their damage almost perfectly to pretty much anyone (except maybe interceptors), drones which have better DPS but can be killed and are limited by their speed. They need to fly towards the enemy before doing damage and it may also be hard to apply drone damage on a very fast linked and snaked (speed implants) target. The final way is turret based kiting which mostly means good damage but might struggle to hit when transversal is high.

Pirate frigs, destroyers and T2 frigates

Now you might be asking yourself, where do Interceptors, Assault frigs, Destroyers, Interdictors and Tactical destroyers fit in all that? Let’s consider those cases one by one:

Interceptors come in two flavors, the combat ceptor and the fleet ceptor. The fleet ceptor is basically worthless in 1v1. Combat ceptors can be decent as they get some very useful nullsec utility (being invincible to bubbles), the thing is this extra-utility isn’t really handy when it comes to pure 1v1. They unfortunately don’t make for potent kiters; else the Sig bonus would be quite insane. Still, their low speed and sig can be very handy for catching kiters for example (the crusader is notably good at that). Also, the dual prop Taranis is quite renowned for its ability kill ratters. Generally, combat ceptors are decent but do not make insane dueling frigates when it comes to DPS/EHP ratio, they can definitely be killed by T1 frigs and are quite expensive. They will mostly lose 1v1s against comets for example.

Destroyers: Think of it as very big frigates with bad range control but great DPS/EHP ratio to make up for it, they can be kited by frigates and die miserably but they might also be able to tear their way through much more expensive Pirate frigs in a mirror Brawler/Brawler or Scram-Kiter/Scram-kiter match up. They can make half decent kiters too because even though they are ridiculously slow, their sheer DPS/EHP ratio might allow them to brute-force through a something even though they’ve been singshotted.

Pirate frigs: They are either meta-breakers are exceptionally potent frigates: The daredevil for example is the equivalent of a double web ship, it can also make for a niche kiter that fights between scram range and the edge of Web-range. The Dramiel is basically a super-fast brawler with good damage and paper tank. The cruor is a pretty niche neut-metabreaker. The succubus gets a bonus to AB which allows it to either be flown as a super-fast brawler that controls scram range well or a weird slow kiter than can’t get scrammed and has amazing sig-tanking. The Astero is a big-ass Tristan. The Garmur is a meta-breaking kiter that is able to outkite other kiters, it also gets a defensive scram to defend itself against brawlers trying to slingshot it. (But Garmur can still very well get slingshotted, a few kilometers of scram range might not be enough when both ships move at 4500 km/s). Worms have the DPS and tank of destroyers while being frigate fast, they are mostly flown as kiters but since they apply their damage perfectly anywhere and have great tank, they’ll be great in scram range too.

Don’t be too afraid of pirate frigs though; they can all be countered by specific T1 frigate and T1 destroyer fits and they are often flown by terrible pilots with terrible fits.

Assault frigates: Think of it as marginally better, marginally slower and a lot more expensive T1 destroyers. They are not very popular right now as they are generally a lot worse than Tactical destroyers while not being that much cheaper. Interdictors: The sabre is pretty much the only one used for solo and it’s always flown as an Autocannon brawler, which means it’s scram-kiteable. The Eris has insane blaster DPS but only two mids which means it’s scram-kite food. The heretic and flycatchers mostly struggle with fitting issues and are rarely seen solo. You might see them once in a while in kiting gangs though.

Tactical destroyer: They are very close to being “better frigates”, they are marginally slower than frigs but are still very fast in prop mode. They have great damage and decent tank. They make for great Brawlers and Kiters alike and are virtually impossible to counter in a T1 frig except in a few select scenarios, they can still be hard-countered by Assault and Pirate frigs but are overall better than them in cost/efficiency ratio. If you are reading this guide and not that good at solo PvP yet, you should probably stay away from them from them for now.

Command destroyers: They aren’t quite as fast as tactical destroyers and do slightly less damage but they do have great tank. They are most flown in a gang but are sometimes seen solo in small plexes trying to brawl small gang of frigates by themselves with insane active tanks.

How to choose a small ship to solo PvP with

We are coming to the end of this introduction to solo PvP and we are now ready to tackle one the trickiest issue: what ships you should fly. Well there are several types of ship that are worth flying: one option is to fly notoriously good ships with a wide engagement range that allow you to fight different things: powerful scram-kiters (by that I mean not very fast but high DPS/tank ratio) are a very good place to start as they’ll allow you to have good odds against all types of brawlers and other scram-kiters. When it comes to Afterburner oriented scram kiters, the beam Tormentor, the rail Incursus and the rail Comet are at the top of the food chain. On top of being great in sram-range they have the ability to use long range ammo (infrared and Iron) and drones in order to fend off kiters. In Nullsec on the other hand, a strong and cheap rocket ship like a Kestrel or a Breacher might work very well (I suggest watching Suitonia’s kestrel videos, you’ll see destroying Brawl-Sabers worth 60m with Kestrels worth 6M), an MWD scram-kiting comet might be a great idea too.

Another advice would be to fly ships that can be fit in a wide variety of way. A Tristan for example is a very polyvalent ship that can be fit in a lot of ways: the blaster Tristan, the neut Tristan, the rail scram-kiting Tristan and the Kiting tristans are all very good, if the other guy doesn’t know how you’re fit he’s less likely to engage you with a counter (but he’s also more likely to run away).

It might also be a good idea to run with less known ships and fits that are not currently the flavor of the month. The only issue is that theorycrafting good ships by yourself is going to require some good solo PvP knowledge already. What you could fly in this vein is a neut slasher or even a Neut+TD slasher, a neut Tristan can be very fun and skillful to fly too (you’ll need good module micromanagement as it should be flown without a cap booster). Meta breakers are generally good and fun as long as they are not super obvious and expected (for example the Artillery double web firetail is probably a bad idea). Double web AB frigate might also be a cool thing to start with, they’ll be a little less versatile but have more counter potential, the AB double web kestrel is quite unknown and good at the same time, the different variations of the AB double web Hookbills are very well-known but extremely potent in lowsec, they make the hookbill at the very top of the foodchain for 1v1 AB duels.

If you want to learn to kite the Tristan, condor, possibly breacher are good ways to start with, if you want to start with turret based kiting cheaply, a beam executioner with Standard S can be a very fun and unexpected little thing to fly and will be a good introduction to the slicer. Kiting comets and hookbills might get you some success too, they won’t be as good as the slicer but they’ll be unexpected and generally more forgiving. Another good idea would be the Coercer or the Cormorant; they are very slow for kiters but they pack such a high DPS/EHP ratio that you might very well still tear through anything that catches you, including T2 and Pirate frigs.

Finally going with a T1 destroyer might be a good idea too, you’ll be die more to gatecamps and you’ll generally be scarier which means you might get less fights but you’ll get to have a better shot against more expensive stuff like pirate and T2 frigs. The Coercer for kiting and the Algos for brawling might be very good places to start with.

Finding and engaging in a fight in practice

All right, now that you’ve got a few ships fitted, it’s time to go roaming. Your best bet will probably to head towards active FW space: you can find that by opening your map and checking the “militia ships destroyed in the last x hours” box. Don’t head for one specific system with lots of kills, instead head for an area of space with several moderately to highly active systems. Once you’re there, you should start watching for open plexes. Open means that they appear on the overview (if you have faction warfare complexes checked), they’ll only show if someone has already warped to them. This means complexes that show on your probe scanner window but do not appear on your overview have never ever been warped to, so you won’t find a fight there.

Now, you are specifically looking for novice and small plexes (because only frigates and destroyers can enter them), and you want people inside. This means you need to DSCAN them with a five degree angle. A tip for d-scanning something quickly is to bind a hotkey to the “point the camera towards an object”. This means you don’t actually need to move the camera in space and manually “find” the object you wish to dscan. You only need to activate your hotkey and click the overview object to get the info you are looking for. If the open plex is far away, you’ll need to travel within 14,3AU to Dscan it. This means you are going to need to find a planet (or the sun) within 14,3AU of the plex and warp at 100 to it. Warping at 100 as a frigate/destro means you are relatively safe, the bigger stuff you fly though, the bigger align time you’ll get and the more “safes” (bookmarks) you’ll need to create. Now some people might advise you to bookmarks dozens of things everywhere you go before even thinking about fighting people but that’s a pretty dumb and risk averse mentality, especially if you are learning to solo in cheap t1 frigs, warping to things at 100 is often enough.

All right, once you find a single ship sitting in a plex with your Dscan, the first thing to do is try to link that ship to someone in Local, if you are only three or four in local you may simply look up for the other pilots on zkillboard to find who it belongs to straight away. If the ship has a Russian name and there’s a pilot from a Russian corp in local that can be your link too. The general goal is to quickly find the fit of your opponent before the start of the fight. Be aware though that once he spots you on DSCAN he’ll probably try to do exactly the same thing. Once you get a little accustomed to the metagame and you know the different ways a ship can be fit, you’ll sometimes know wether or not you should take the fight without looking at the fit and may completely skip this part.

If you are flying something that is not absurdly cheap and that you do mind a little losing, you’ll probably want to check if the other guy is truly soloing or baiting for his gang. If you managed to link the ship on Dscan to a name, check if he has fresh kills with the ship you’re seeing, if others appear on the killmail he’s probably not alone. If you can’t really link the ship to someone in local you’ll just have two guess using the corps of the other persons in system: if there are several people of the same corp in local, do you think these people live there? Do you think they are shipspinning in station or do you think are they are roaming around in frigs? Some Dscanning and a quick check on zkillboard might give you the answer. Once again, if you are starting out, what I highly recommend is to fly cheap things you can afford to lose en-masse and don’t spend too much time zkillboard-ing/metagaming your fun away. Take risks, don’t engage your direct counters of course but take fights when there’s some hope of winning, don’t be afraid of gangs, have fun and rack-up some experience.

Let’s use a basic scenario to show you how the whole thing works: You dscan down a Merlin in a novice plex in Minmatar FW space, you see 4 people in local, 3 of them are people who seem to live here and you don’t see them on dscan, the fourth one is a pilot engaged in amarr militia. You quickly look him up on zkill and sees he often loses Blaster Merlin when Soloing. The story checks out and nothing seems fishy, you are clear to engage if you want. Now you need to think about wether your ship has a chance to win and what will be the most important thing to do so (most of the time it’s gonna be range control so you’ll need to pre-overload your modules and hit your “AB-lock- keep at range-scram-web” buttons as fast as possible when landing in the plex. That’s how the initial engagement range will be decided, don’t forget to launch your drones too if you have some.

Another way to get Intel on a ship is simply to use the “look-at” function and watching what kind of guns the other ship has. For example, if you are sitting in a plex as a t1 scram-kiter like an incursus and you see a comet approaching on Dscan, you might want to burn away from the beacon to a comfortable and safe distanc. Once the comet lands on grid, you should look at it. If he has railguns fitted he is most likely to be a better scram kiter than you and you should probably leave. If he has neutron blasters, it might be a fight you want to take. You’ll generally try to let it burn into you and stay as far as possible in order to negate null ammo damage while still being close enough to scram if he tries to run. Killing the drones might be a good idea too if you can do it before the comet starts shooting you. On top of that, if you notice that he’s going at 3500+ m/s instead of the 1000+ m/s you are expecting, it means he is MWD fit and that you’ll be able to completely control range in scram-range. (Be careful though as the blaster comet is still very potent with null ammo and might be able to brute-force his way through weaker scram-kiters).

If you are flying a kiter, finding fights in lowsec might be a little more difficult as you can’t really afford to enter a plex if someone with a scram is waiting for you in it. You’ll generally want to either catch people on acceleration gates, third party existing fights, or sit in a plex of your own waiting for someone (in this case, you’ll get generally get better fights by tricking people into thinking you aren’t a kiter, if you can get AB ships to engage you are golden).

You might also be able to take some fights on gates/stations and flying as a kiter will generally help you with that. Lowsec FW space is full of people like you who are not actually engaged in FW and are simply here to fight, this means that they’ll often have suspect timers which means you can attack them at gate and station without getting hit by the sentries. Do not engage Neutral (not suspect) people on gate if you’re flying a frig or a destroyer though, the sentries would destroy you. People with low enough security status are also engageable in lowsec without sentries interfering. Generally being aware of the Timers that affect gate mechanics are also going to help you with that kind of engagement.

Finding a fight in Nullsec

This is a whole other matter and is going to take more skill than fighting a solo fight in lowsec, if you live in null far from active lowsec space this might be your only shot at soloing though so it’s always worth trying.

In order to find fights in Null you’ll need to head towards the active SOV of another alliance, there are several tools on the map that will help you do that, checking the “active pilots in space during the last X minutes” box for example. Once you are headed towards a populated part of Nullsec there are several ways to find a fight. The ideal thing would be to find a ship of your size actively trying to solo too and proceed with a honorable 1v1, but that’s not going to happen a lot. A more reliable way to find fights is simply to piss-off residents enough and provoke them into fighting you. Killing their ratters, killing their miners or simply taunting them in local might do the trick. Once they’re pissed off they are likely to send a gang, what you are going to need is to try to split this gang using gates, bubble and aggression mechanics, or simply splitting them on grid. If a player is 100km away from his mates, he’s effectively alone for a while as you can only warp to fleet mates further than 150km. Suitonia’s youtube channel Eveiseasy is full of him doing that and you should probably head towards there for practical advice.

One important thing to know about the initial engagement range of two frigates in nullsec is that if both Players approach each other at full speed and apply Scram/Web at the same time, the momentum of both ships will bring them to overshoot each other. Ships can’t turn on a dime so they’ll cross, by the time they turn back they’ll generally be between 7 and 13km which gives scram-kiters the advantage. If you are flying a brawler in null and you and the other guy both approach each other, you might want to start turning before actually crossing your target by double clicking in space behind you. This can be tricky but might prevent the overshoot.

In the same manner, you might be able to separate gangs in lowsec if you have a MWD fitted. Warping to a fleet member is completely disabled both inside Plexes and on the outside of them (next to the acceleration gates) so these are great places to split people up. If you are kiting, you don’t even absolutely need to split people up, you might be able to engage people close toeach other as long as you can stay out of the effective range of all of them and you don’t get caught by webs and scram (this applies to nullsec and lowsec alike). Another thing you can do in Nullsec is to bring a few anchorable bubbles (the smallest ones are very cheap, they cost around 2m in jita) and set traps next to tube systems’ gates.

Soloing big, the case for Cruisers and above

All right, now that you understand how solo mechanics work for small stuff you may understand how they apply to bigger things. Now first of all there’s no “scram kiting” a cruiser, the short range variations of medium and heavy guns always hit far enough to work anywhere inside scram-range. There are only Brawlers and Kiters. A second thing when considering soloing as a cruiser and above is that you must always be able to fight smaller stuff than you, if frigates can easily get under your guns, you are going to get bopped repeatedly. This is a huge constraint and it restrains the range of fits you can use solo by a whole lot because there aren’t that many tools for fighting small stuff as a big ship:

Kiting: There are very few ships that apply well to frigates outside of scram range and Rapid light missile launchers ships are the undisputed king. The Orthrus famously is the best at it, but the other RLML cruisers are viable solo ships too: Caracals, Scythe fleet issues, Osprey navy issues. Those are pretty fast ships that can find good success kiting Frigates and Cruisers alike. Other very specific ships like the scorch Omen navy issue or the Phantasm might be successful as solo kiting boats too because their specificities allows them to apply their damage to small stuff.

Brawling: It is always an option to brawl as a Cruiser vs frigs, destroyers and even T3 destroyers. You’ll mainly rely on your Medium Neut and Web to fight smaller stuff in scram range but be always be careful, as a brawling cruiser you’re probably kiting food. A duel of brawling Cruisers will usually be decided by DPS/TANK ratio, fights might last a while so killing enemy drones can be critical. Big active tanks will only be good as long as they are not overly out-DPSed.

Contrarily to solo kiting, solo Brawling is viable with stupidly big ships too, in this case you’ll probably only get to fight several people at once, the general philosophy behind it is that if you can Perma-Tank entire gangs of enemy with a huge active tank and annihilate everything that gets into your scram range, then you’ll be free to MJD away whenever you wish to disengage. The few critical modules to do that are armor repairers/shield boosters and drugs for active tanking. For offense you’ll use Neuts (a medium Neut can instantly empty the cap of a frig from 10km away, a heavy neut from 30km away), Webs (and their recently introduced stasis grappler variation), and Target painters. You’ll generally want the highest tracking guns as possible coupled to the drop drug if you wish, afterburners and oversized afterburners are good things to have if you can as they’ll help with the tracking too. This kind of ship will be countered by a group of kiters with high DPS, a few logis or command destroyers to get it off the gate. A few players specialize in this kind of PvP and MrHyde is the most famous one. You’ll find plenty of exemples and advice on his Youtube channel.