User:Uryence/SP

Fighting in a fleet is lots of fun, and is, in many ways, the classic EVE experience.

However, fighting solo, or in a small "microgang" of 2 or 3 people can be just as fun, much easier to get set up, and develops all-round skills: flying solo, you must perform all the functions of a PvP fleet, and so it offers an intense education in all aspects of combat at once. Skills such as scouting, target calling and general fleet command all transfer well from solo/microgang PvP up to fleets. In EVE, many of the best fleet commanders started out flying solo or small-gang, and many of them still roam solo when not leading fleets.

Solo PvP is a vast topic exceeding the scope of a single wiki article, but this page covers some general principles and offers advice on one common starting-point for solo flying, small-ship PvP in lowsec space.

General principles

EVE Online is a massively multiplayer online game: most combat pilots fly in groups, and, outside of some Proving Grounds formats, no rule prevents other players from ganging up on you. Be prepared for solo PvP to be hard, and understand that sometimes a group will overwhelm you and even the most carefully-fitted and well-flown ship will die. On the plus side, this makes every kill that much more satisfying.

A key point to grasp for fitting your ship is that a solo PvP ship in any kind of space must perform all three of the key combat functions of a PvP fleet: damage-dealing, tanking, and control. You must also be your own scout and navigator so, wherever you fly, prepare to get acquainted with geographical and intel tools such as Dotlan and zKillboard.

A further point to grasp is that, despite the game's reputation, it is quite hard to force PvP on another player in EVE. While ambush attacks are possible, especially in Pochven and wormhole space, in much of the game alert use of Local chat and the directional scanner allows most players to see you coming. Your ship choice conditions the kind of fights you will find: you certainly can hunt in a relatively costly and highly-effective ship such as a Vedmak, but doing so guarantees that you will mostly fight the foolish, the unlucky, and those with serious backup hidden nearby. It can be worth exploring cheap options which can surprise enemies with counterintuitive fits.

Geography

Because different types of space play by different rules, pilots typically fit and prepare their ships for combat in a particular type. It is worth knowing the differences.

Lowsec

Bubbles and bombs cannot be used in lowsec, making it relatively safer space in which to move around. Since you do not need a MWD to burn out of bubbles, it is much safer to take an afterburner as your only propulsion module in lowsec than in other types of space. Since bubbles cannot be used to trap your pod after the loss of your ship, you have a higher chance of preserving your pod in lowsec than in more dangerous types of space.

Aggressing a pilot not flagged as a criminal, war target, or suspect in lowsec will cause a small loss of security status and will flag you yourself with a 15-minute suspect timer, letting others engage you. Podding someone will cause a significantly larger loss of security status. Security status can be regained by killing NPC pirates or by handing in criminal tags.

Aggressing a non-criminal, non-suspect pilot on-grid with a gate or a station will also draw down the wrath of the local sentry guns, which can be tanked by larger ships but present a serious threat to smaller ships.

Lowsec is also the location for Faction Warfare ("FW"). FW complexes have unique mechanics which allow you to limit the hull size and tech level (but not raw number) of ships engaging you, and you do not have to be involved in FW to take advantage of these mechanics.

Fighting other players is one of only a few reasons people go to lowsec, so you stand a high chance of finding combat there; on the other hand, you also stand a higher chance of finding well-prepared, experienced and well-equipped opponents.

Lowsec FW complex PvP is a traditional starting-point for new solo PvP players, though it has its drawbacks as well as its advantages.

Nullsec

In nullsec, there are no gate or station guns, and no security status implications from any kind of combat.

Bubbles can be used to trap people at gates or to suck targets out of warp. Since a MWD is necessary for most ships to get out of a bubble quickly, MWDs are much more commonly fitted for travel and combat in nullsec; this in turn makes many ships more vulnerable to warp scramblers, which can shut off a MWD but not an afterburner.

In nullsec, especially sovereign nullsec owned by players, there are far fewer NPC stations, and therefore fewer opportunities to dock up for safety or repairs.

There are more non-combat reasons to be in space in nullsec than in lowsec, so you are likely to find more targets in PvE ships or with limited combat preparation; on the other hand, you are likely to find fewer fights overall.

Pochven

Mechanically Pochven space is very like nullsec: bubbles and bombs can be used, and there are no security status implications to combat. However, cynos cannot be lit in Pochven, so hotdropping is not a danger.

Pochven, like wormhole space, has delayed Local chat, so you cannot easily tell who is in a system with you. Pochven has a fixed, mappable geography, but the systems are arranged in a triangle, and most systems only have two gates, so it is particularly good space for gate camps and player movements are relatively predictable. Filaments and relatively-reliable wormhole connections link Pochven to the rest of the game and make entry and exit surprisingly easy.

There are NPC stations in many Pochven systems, but you won't be able to use most of their services without good Triglavian standings.

Gangs of potentially-hostile NPCs roam each Pochven system. If they are hostile to you, they will engage you, and they are capable of destroying player ships. They will pod you if they can. It is possible to get positive standing with the EDENCOM and Triglavian NPCs in Pochven; the Drifters, Rogue Drones and Sleepers will always be hostile.

Wormhole space

Wormhole space has delayed Local chat, like Pochven. Also similarly to Pochven, wormholes have normal nullsec mechanics with bubbles and bombs, but with no cynos.

The geography of wormhole space is constantly shifting. Groups can manipulate their wormhole connections by "rolling" wormholes, something which is normally too much complex work for one solo PvP ship.

The delayed Local and shifting geography put a strong emphasis on d-scan, stealth and surprise, so combat ships in wormhole space lean towards those able to fit a covert ops cloak and warp while cloaked. Almost everything of interest in wormhole space must be probed down, and leaving from wormhole space often requires probing, so many ships fit at least a core probe launcher.

There are no NPC stations in wormhole space, except in Thera.

Lowsec FW complex combat

Much small-scale PvP happens in Faction Warfare ("FW") lowsec.

FW space contains FW Complexes (commonly known as "plexes", not to be confused with PLEX), which are effectively PvP arenas.

These appear on your overview and probe scanner window as beacons which all players can warp to with names such as “Gallente Novice Outpost” or “Caldari Large Installation”. All available plexes appear in the probe scanner window, but a plex only appears on the overview once someone has entered it.

The key factor to note is the "size" of the plex, indicated by the middle word in its name. Size tells you which hulls can enter the plex.

• "Novice": T1 frigates only
• "Small": T1/T2 frigates, T1/T2 destroyers (no T3 destroyers)
• "Medium": all frigates and destroyers, T1/T2 cruisers (no T3 cruisers)
• "Large": any ship

When you initially warp to any Novice, Small, or Medium plex, you will encounter an acceleration gate. The gate will only let appropriate ships warp into the plex itself. Large plexes have no gate and allow any ships in.

Plexes provide a fixed point for fights. The size limitations mean that you can, to some extent, control the fights you take: if you are in a Novice plex, you will not have to fight a T3 cruiser.

The gate limits ship sizes, but not numbers. You can still be overpowered by a gang of ships if you don't stay alert.

The beacon

When you activate the acceleration gate and “slide” into a Novice, Small or Medium plex, you arrive within 2.5 km of a "beacon" in space. This beacon should be visible on your overview as you land. If not, adjust your overview settings to display all brackets (items in space): the beacon's placement is key.

Any ship entering the plex will also next to this beacon; there is no way to warp in at range.

This mechanic means that once you are inside a plex, you know almost exactly where an enemy ship will enter. Likewise, when entering an occupied plex, the opponent(s) within will have positioned themselves knowing where you will appear. The occupant of the plex always has this tactical advantage in initial positioning.

Deadspace

FW plexes are deadspace. You cannot warp to a fleetmate who is over 150 km from you inside a FW plex. Nor can you warp to a wreck or to a tactical bookmark that is over 150 km away from you. A fleet mate who warps to you when you are inside a plex will land from warp outside the plex, at the acceleration gate.

As a result, it is sometimes possible to string out and separate a group within a plex.

D-scanning for fights

A lot of PvP happens before you land on grid, and revolves around picking fights and having tactics in place before you start. For this, you need intel.

The most basic form of intel you need is whether a plex contains a ship already, and if so, what kind. Or, if you are already inside, what ships are coming your way. The tool for this will be your Directional Scanner, or D-Scan.

The Wiki Directional Scanner Guide is already an excellent and detailed resource on using this tool and should be read in detail. For scanning use in and around plexes in particular:

1. When scanning plexes from outside, keep your D-Scan set at a 5 degree angle, and max range, and hold down your D-Scan hotkey (by default “V”) then click on the plex within your overview to quickly and efficiently scan each one
2. D-Scan will not tell you if a ship is actually inside a plex, or outside, next to the gate. If you see a ship on D-Scan which is too large for the plex, they are sat outside the gate, and may be trying to catch ships entering
3. When inside a plex, set your D-Scan to 360 degrees, and 1AU range, and ensure you are scanning regularly to detect anyone landing on the acceleration gate who may be about to enter. Switch to a longer range now and then to check what is happening elsewhere.

Lowsec solo ships

Many ships can be used solo in lowsec, but this section covers some of the ones most likely to be open to new characters, and most likely to be encountered in FW complexes.

Base T1 frigates

Any player flying T1 frigates in lowsec should not expect to get many fights against similarly-fitted players, and should expect to also take challenging fights against faction/pirate or T1 destroyers, and prepare accordingly.

T1 fits which work effectively tend to be "surprising" fits designed to out-wit more expensive ships by presenting an unexpected tactical profile, such as a dual web Merlin or kiting Punisher.

Faction/pirate frigates

These are very common sights in lowsec: they are technically T1 hulls, and so can enter Novice complexes, but they are more powerful than base T1 frigates.

Faction frigates are a more expensive step up from base T1 frigates. While powerful, they can still be killed by a skilled base T1 frigate. The Federation Navy Comet is an especially popular option due to its excellent balance of low cost (and SP requirement) against high combat effectiveness. Other ships such as the Caldari Navy Hookbill and Imperial Navy Slicer are also effective at fighting a wide range of opponents.

Pirate frigates are substantially more expensive, but also have subtantial advantages versus almost all other frigate variants, and are some of the toughest opponents. Many, such as the Succubus or Daredevil are deliberately designed to "break" the typical rules of the solo PvP meta in some way. These are quite advanced ships, and new pilots should probably neither fly nor fight them without backup.

T1 destroyers

These can be thought of as larger frigates with poor range control due to their speed, but great DPS. They can be kited (or occasionally scram-kited, on which see below) by a skilled T1 frigate pilot, but they are also able to tear their way through almost any frigate (including pirate/faction hulls) if it's caught within their optimal range for long.

T1 destroyers can be excellent choices for newer pilots, as they are cheap, they insure well, they use small weapons, and they can fight a much wider range of opponents than T1 frigates.

T1 destroyers are more vulnerable than frigates to larger weapons, and will suffer if caught by larger ships outside the FW complex context, e.g. on a gate.

T1 cruisers

Lone T1 cruisers are relatively rare sights in lowsec plexes, and can be a magnet for other cruisers, or advanced ships such as pirate frigates and T3 destroyers looking to punch up.

The few cruisers encountered in lowsec are often fitted specifically to kill frigates pilots, and new pilots should exercise caution around them. In particular, cruisers such as the Vexor, Stabber, Bellicose, Caracal, and Arbitrator work very well against frigates if thoughtfully fitted, and should probably be avoided by smaller ships.

A T1 cruiser is not an overwhelmingly long train for a newer player, they insure reasonably well, unlike pirate/faction/T2 frigates, and they offer certain advantages to the new PvP pilot. In particular, everything happens more slowly in a cruiser, which gives you more time to observe and learn from the fight. On the other hand, they cannot enter Novice or Small complexes.

Assault frigates

T2 assault frigates ("AFs") can enter Small plexes, and combine the agility of a frigate with higher DPS and much stronger tanks; when fitted with an Assault Damage Control, they can become briefly invulnerable. They are an extremely difficult fight for any other frigate or T1 destroyer. Common solo AFs include the Hawk (with an extremely strong MASB shield tank), or the Retribution (often flown as a kiting ship, similar to a much tankier version of the Imperial Navy Slicer).

Basic frigate meta

Ships for PvP in general are grouped primarily by their preferred fighting range. All other things being equal, winning a PvP fight usually means ensuring that you are in your ideal range, and your opponent is not.

• 0-5 km range - Brawlers
• 5-10 km range - Scram Kiters
• 10-20 km range - Kiters

In lowsec frigate PvP, as most fighting is in plexes where much of the engagement takes place around the fixed point of the beacon, MWDs are less commonly used than in other environments, as they can be immediately de-activated by a warp scrambler. While MWDs can be useful for kiters, the dominant propulsion module is the afterburner.

Brawlers

Brawlers use high damage, close range weapons, such as blasters or pulse lasers. They therefore rely on quickly getting into close range, and preventing opponents from pulling away.

When defending a plex, they will orbit the beacon very closely, and immediately try to warp-scramble and web any incoming ship.

When attacking a plex, they must swiftly close the range between them and the defending ship.

Since range is key, fast brawlers like the Atron or Federation Navy Comet are very useful due to their raw speed, and their damage bonuses. An alternative is a ship which can carry dual webs, such as the dual-web armour Kestrel or the Caldari Navy Hookbill. These are relatively slow ships in absolute terms, but the double web effect removes the speed advantage of almost any other ship, and allows you to dictate range despite being slower on paper.

Scram-kiters

An effective defence against a brawler is to fight from outside their optimal range, but still within warp scrambler and web range, normally between 7–9 km. This is called "scram-kiting". At this point, brawling damage from, for example, blasters will be minimal, but longer-reaching weapons such as beam lasers, pulse lasers with Scorch, railguns, or rockets can still hit for substantial damage.

Once again, this tactic relies on range control. When defending a plex you will likely orbit the beacon at your optimal range, but remember that a brawler could quickly close range if they have a notable speed advantage.

Likewise, when attacking a plex, if a brawler is waiting at the beacon you will need to pull range quickly, which requires range control. You must also tank the initial damage close-range long enough to pull distance.

For this reason, scram-kite ships often still fit for speed. Common scram-kiters include the Breacher, Tormentor, and Incursus. The dual-web Kestrel and Caldari Navy Hookbill noted earlier can also be equally effective as scram-kiters, because rockets can deal effective damage up to 9 km, while the dual webs maintain range control.

Kiters

The other key factor in the meta are long-range kiting ships. These will equip a warp disrupter to tackle at 20 km+ ranges, and use long range weapons. They are generally glass cannons, maximizing speed and damage over tank. As they cannot web an opponent at such long ranges, they usually rely on MWDs for a speed advantage. Since they are lightly tanked and a warp scrambler shuts down an MWD, they usually die fast if brought to close quarters.

A good kiting ship already inside a plex is very difficult to kill, as they will orbit the beacon well outside of scram range, and closing with them is challenging. A ship such as a Tormentor with beam lasers can switch to long range ammo to damage the kiting ship at range, but the kiting ship can avoid tackle and leave at will, so damage projection alone only forces a draw. The primary disadvantages of a kiting ship are that they are very poor at attacking a plex, as they are forced to arrive in a predictable place, and that they require smart, alert manual piloting.

Common kiting ships are the Condor, Imperial Navy Slicer, and Tristan.

Other approaches

Pilots can take other niche approaches to plex combat.

Capacitor warfare can render an opponent helpless, but requires a significant sacrifice of high slots, usually also a mid slot for a cap booster, can be negated using cap boosters and nosferatus, and does not shut down all weapons: projectile guns, drones, and missile launchers do not require cap to deal damage. Small energy neutralizers reach out for most of scram range, but lose their effectiveness at scram range's edge, making it possible—just—to scram-kite some neuting ships.

EWAR of various kinds can offer advantages. Tracking disruption, for example, can making kiting or scram-kiting easier by reducing an opponent's range, or can make fast brawling easier by reducing an opponent's tracking speed. The faction EWAR frigates, such as the Griffin Navy Issue and Vigil Fleet Issue are designed around EWAR tactics.

Frigates with two armour repairers in the lows and a capacitor booster in a mid slot can mount a formidable sustained active tank, often enough to outlast an opponent. Their weakness is a lack of speed and range control, so it's usually possible to leave a fight if you realise your opponent's dual-rep fitted, and it's also possible to kite such a ship and slowly wear it down.

Solo PvP beyond lowsec

- not nec. a step up, just different challenges and problems

Nullsec meta

- bubbles = MWDs = different meta - as noted above, fewer people want to fight but (therefore) fewer people are prepared to fight

K-space nullsec

- hunt ratters/miners - split people up (ideally in deadspace, otherwise use 100 km trick and avoid booshes) - know how to bust through a gatecamp - Local chat, zKill intelligence - good mapreading crucial

Pochven and wormholes

- stealth - know the geography (either holes or the local Pochven pipe)

Finding a Fight in Null Sec

Low Sec PvP is by far the most common arena for solo players and small gangs of 2-3 players. Null Sec solo/gang PvP is absolutely possible, however it is much harder to find fights, let alone get kills without having a substantial fleet jump in on top of you.

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 annoy 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 annoyed they are likely to send a gang, what you are going to need is to try to split this gang using advanced tactics such as 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.

Another thing you can do in Nullsec is to bring a few warp disruption bubbles and set traps next to system gates.

The Null-Sec Meta

The key difference between Null-Sec and Low-Sec meta comes down primarily to propulsion modules. In Null-Sec, MWDs are far more common compared to the predominately Afterburner meta of low-sec, which has a substantial impact on tactics.

There are several reasons why Microwarpdrives are so common 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 warp disruption bubbles: Nullsec is full of bubbles (both deployable and interdictor made) and speed is critical for both escaping them and taking advantage of them. For this, the substantial speed boost of the MWD is invaluable. An Afterburner can still be a good idea to bring in nullsec as long as you have an MWD too. This fit is called a dualprop ship and is great for soloing as in this case the MWD allows you to escape bubbles and close range rapidly to an opponent, while the afterburner lets you also retain a speed advantage once in scram range (where both of your MWDs will likely be deactivated by your respective warp scramblers)

MWD brawlers and MWD scram-kiters basically function the same as AB ships except they are faster initially while moving around on the grid and then considerably slower during a fight once they have been tackled and their MWD deactivated by a scram. This means the initial engagement range is going to be extremely critical and the most decisive factor: the actual 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 with Afterburners is around 150m/s). For this reason, slower ships such as the Harpy which are rarely seen in Low Sec 1v1 PvP are much more viable in Null Sec

This massive reduction in speed has many other collateral effects. For example, 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)

The fact that almost all ships will be MWD fitted by default also means that kiting becomes more challenging. Kiting ships which are viable in Low Sec such as the Tristan no longer have a speed advantage in Null Sec where your opponent will also be MWD fit. Instead, kiting relies on ships with natural speed bonuses which allow them to outpace even other MWD fits. Examples include the Garmur or combat interceptors such as the Raptor

Another big change with MWDs is that you get a strong capacitor penalty simply for fitting one, and 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: the Tormentor and Incursus which are very effective ships in AB engagements become a lot less potent in this meta, while shield tanked rocket and projectile ships such as the Talwar or the Jaguar get a notable advantage due to their lower capacitor needs

Solo PvP Beyond Frigates

Now that you understand how solo mechanics work for small ships, it is relatively straightforward to apply this to larger ships as well.

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. Therefore 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 killed repeatedly. This is a huge constraint and it dramatically restrains the range of fits you can use solo as there aren’t that many tools for fighting small ships 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 is the best at it, but the other RLML cruisers are viable solo ships too: Caracal, Scythe Fleet Issue, Osprey Navy Issue. These are all 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 also be successful as solo kiting ships as their bonuses allow them to apply their damage to small ships relatively well.

Brawling

It is always an option to brawl as a Cruiser vs frigates, destroyers and even T3 destroyers. You’ll mainly rely on Medium Neuts and Webs to fight smaller stuff in scram range but always be careful, as a brawling cruiser you’re an ideal target for kiting ships.

A duel between two brawling Cruisers will usually be decided by pure DPS/TANK ratio. Fights might last a while so killing enemy drones and managing capacitor can be critical. Big active tanks will only be good as long as they are not overly capacitor intensive.

Contrarily to solo kiting, solo Brawling is viable with 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 often want to use Neuts (a medium Neut can instantly empty the cap of a frig from 10km away, a heavy neut from 30km away), Webs, and Target Painters. You’ll generally want the highest tracking guns as possible. Afterburners and oversized afterburners are good things to have if you can as they’ll help with the tracking too.