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.
Frigates
T1 Frigates
These will often just be tacklers. Point, web, speed mod, overdrives etc in lows & mids, irrelevant DPS or NOS etc in highs. The Minmatar Slasher can achieve very impressive speeds for a basic tackling hull. T1 frigates can also use EWAR; the Griffin, Maulus, and Crucifier, in particular, can have a significant battlefield impact.
A group of T1 frigates, or one motivated pilot with time to work in, can take down a larger ship, though. The Caldari Merlin is tough and can put out surprising hybrid turret DPS. The Gallente Tristan can field a full flight of (potentially T2) drones.
Some pirate frigates are very powerful opponents. The Worm is extremely tough and puts out good DPS; the Dramiel is very fast indeed; the Garmur points and kites at irritatingly long ranges.
T2 Frigates
Interceptors (Inty / 'ceptor)
These are often primary tacklers. They have the highest scan resolution of any class, and only Vigils) 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 are fitted) and awesome agility.
A typical tackling interceptor will hold point at you from a long distance. If the pilot wants to turn off your MWD or MJD, they will spiral in for a "scram-pass", in which they slide past you, briefly warp scramble you, and then coast out of your own scram/web range using their high starting speed.
Covert Ops
These 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) Of particular note are the Kitsune, which can provide powerful ECM jamming, and the Keres, which can point from long ranges and delete an opponent's targeting range.
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.
The Jaguar is a particularly popular tackling AF. The Wolf, Retribution and Enyo can muster particularly high DPS, and sometimes a gang can be just armor-tanked examples of these ships backed up by T2 logistics frigates.
Assault Frigates can fit the Assault Damage Control, which lets them bump their damage resistances up to nearly 100% for a brief moment.
Destroyer Class Ships
T1 Destroyers
Anti-frigate ships. Very good tracking, lots of small guns, but a frigate-level tank with a near-cruiser-sized footprint on enemy targeting sensors.
Destroyers can chew quickly through most L1 missions. Some missioner-runnerss use them as 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. 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.
In PvP T1 destroyers are used in situations which call for cheap, expendable, mobile DPS. (More Details)
T2 Destroyers
Interdictors ('Dictors)
These ships are of greatly reduced value in high and low sec, becoming mere gunboats or missile ships in most cases; however, in nullsec they become one of the most important ships available. Their role is launching warp disruption probes, usually called bubbles. Inside a bubble, nothing can warp, no matter how many stabs they fit. Anyone trying to warp to a spot within or close to the bubble will be pulled to the edge of it, although only if the bubble is in line between the two objects that the ship warps between. Interdictors and HICs (heavy interdiction cruisers) are the only ships that can tackle Titans and Supercarriers. (More Details)
Command Destroyers
Like their bigger siblings, the Command Ships, these are tough ships with the ability to grant bonuses to their fleetmates. They also have the unique ability to use Micro Jump Field Generators, which let them grab every ship in a 6 km radius and blink all of those ships 100 km away. This ability, commonly called "booshing", is used to cut key vulnerable ships, such as logistics ships or EWAR ships, out of their accompanying fleet.
T3 Tactical Destroyers
Like T3 Strategic Cruisers, tactical destroyers are unpredictable and flexible. Unlike T3Cs, though, they can only switch between three predetermined modes, Defense, Propulsion, and Sharpshooter, rather than a wider range of possible configurations. The Amarr Confessor is tough to destroy, the Minmatar Svipul has tracking bonuses which let it gobble up small ships, the Caldari Jackdaw can achieve absurdly long ranges, and the Gallente Hecate is fast, damaging, but fragile.
Cruisers
T1 Cruisers
T1 cruisers 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). Cruiser hulls are cheap and effective, and commonly seen in PvE and PvP. (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.
Force recons can light a hard cyno and the presence of one or more on the field implicitly threatens a capital ship escalation.
Combat recons are invisible to the directional scanner.
Heavy Assault Cruisers (HAC)
Extremely versatile and powerful damage-dealing 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 battleship guns-- which still offer good DPS and a decent buffer tank. Like Assault Frigates, HACs can mount the Assault Damage Control, letting them bump their damage resistance up to nearly 100% for brief periods. (More Details)
Heavy Interdiction Cruisers (HIC)
With the exception of some T3 cruiser fits 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 wants its bubble to be. While the bubble is up (30 second cycle time), it can not receive any type of remote support. Its normal speed remains the same, and afterburners and MWDs will have reduced effect. In return, the HIC's mass gets reduced, so they can get up to speed and change direction 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.
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). Amarr and Caldari logistics ships can form a "cap chain" in which each logi ship boosts other logi ships' capacitors; this is excellent for large gangs or fleets. The Gallente and Minmatar logistics ships function well on their own, and are meant for smaller gangs with only a few logi pilots, or even only one logi pilot.
T3 Strategic Cruisers
CCP deliberately designed Strategic Cruisers to be highly flexible and able to take on many roles. Depending on their fits, they can
- mount outsized tanks
- travel while cloaked
- use EWAR
- deal high DPS
- repair other ships
Battlecruiser Class Ships
T1 Battlecruiser (BC)
Standard battlecruisers mount medium-sized weapon systems, like cruisers, but with bonuses extending their reach. These battlecruisers represent a good balance of speed, tank, damage potential, SP requirements, and cost, making them popular for PvP and for Level 3 missions. They can mount Command Bursts with bonuses for their use, making them popular additions to small PvP gangs.
Attack battlecruisers can fit large-sized weapon systems, but have fragile tanks. They are often used as snipers. The Tornado is often used for suicide ganking because it can mount a battleship-sized artillery alpha strike on a cheaper hull.
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 Command Bursts, can mount at least 2 bursts, and in general have extremely good tanks with great resists. They are excellent, but SP-intensive, force multipliers.
(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)
Force Auxiliaries ("FAX")
These are giant logistics platforms, with bonuses to either shield or armor repairs depending on race. The Amarrian Apostle and the Gallentean Ninazu are armor logistics platforms, while the Caldari Minokawa and the Minmatar Lif are shield logisitcs platforms. They can carry some drones, but unlike the triage-fit carriers they superseded, cannot carry and launch fighters. They are the only ships that can fit the Triage module, which enhances their remote repair ability and makes them immune to electronic warfare.
Carriers
These are giant fighter DPS 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.
In addition to that, all carriers get an additional 5%/level bonus to the following: Carriers can use fighters, 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).
Just like dreadnoughts' siege modules, carriers also get a special module that only they can fit: the networked sensor array. (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)
