Fleet and Gang Types

Introduction

Different corporations and alliances have various gang and fleet types in EVE. Generally these sub-capital gang and fleet consist of different hull types and fitting scheme, which are usually collected under few names to identify their general objectives properties and composition.

When you joined an organization, you should know the basics and familiarize with these terms to know how to prepare yourself for such gangs and fleets. Although each corporation or organizations have their differences in fitting and execution, the common properties are usually same with each other.

This information is also useful for scouts, skirmishers and commanders to identify opposing force and decide the best course of action.

Here are the list of some of most common gang and fleet types with their basic properties such as; composition, fitting scheme and basic tactics.

Reminder; this is a general information on different gang and fleet type. For detail of these fleet types, get in touch with your corporation or alliance to properly fit and use your ships.

How to Identify a Gang or a Fleet in Space

There are some basic information could lead to identify a gang type. This information can be observed through your overview, scanner or space view;

• Hull type, numbers and composition,
• Velocity observed through overview,
• Ships agility and alignment time,
• Hostiles engagement range,
• Support ships composition,
• Visually observed effects and gun types.

These are key indicators to define the opposing gang or fleet type. If you can properly observe these details, you can clearly identify the fleet type and decide the best course of action according to your composition in your gang or fleet

Frigate size

Frigates are fast, agile, fast locking ships with different properties. Also almost all of them are effective e-war platform when used properly.

• Tech 1: Frigate
• Tech 2: Assault ships (AS), Interceptors (INT), Electronic Attack Frigates (EAF), Covert Operations Frigates (COVOP for Scanning ships and BOMBER for torpedo ships)
• Faction Frigates: Navy, Federation and Pirate Frigates.

Reminder: All of these are tech 2 ship types defined as frigate type hulls in EVE.

While tech 1 versions are cheap and effective within large numbers (+20), tech 2 and faction versions are also as deadly and effective as bigger hull type.

An uneducated and inexperienced eye could easily under estimate their effectiveness and could be slain by these ships

Frigate Supports for Larger Gangs and Fleets

Especially tech 2 Frigates could specialize on various roles and provide support to different gang and fleet type.

Although they can be part of bigger hull size gangs, they play crucial roles in their gangs. Some of the Roles are;

• Skirmishers – Any Interceptor; fitted with long range point, shield tank, speed modules and sometimes cloak
• Scouts – COVOP; fitted with cov-op cloaks and combat scanner or core scanner probes.
• Tacklers – Tech 1 Frigate or Assault Ships; fitted for speed with light tank and warp disruptors.
• Heavy Tacklers – Assault Ship; fitted with heavy tank, web and warp scrambler.
• E-War Support – Electronic Attack Frigates; fast locking and moving, highly maneuverable e-war platform.

These ships could be part of any gang or fleet for supporting roles and could give clue regarding to gang or fleet type.

Hydra Frigate Gangs

Hydra gangs usually consist of tech 1 Frigates with sheers numbers. Tech 1 frigates are fast, mobile and cheap ships with E-War support hidden within their numbers. They are highly effective gangs against small sized gangs consist of BCs and BSs.

Hydra gang could be prepared from tech 2 and faction frigates. These elite Hydra gangs are exponentially stronger and dangerous then tech 1 versions and could engage any type of gangs and fleets they can bite.

Composition:

• Main Group; tech 1 frigates, assaults ships, interceptors.
• Support Group; Scouts, Skirmishers, tackle and heavy tackle, interdictors.

Fitting Scheme:

• Afterburners, tracking disruptor, sensor dampeners, ECM, Damage control Units, overdrives, internal nano-structure and +10 to 12 km weapon range.
• Strictly no microwarp drives, sensor boosters, any kind of tanks (buffer, active) or hardeners used in main group but support group could have no limitation.

Basic Tactics: Fast and mobile swarm of Frigates will tackle and engage their targets above +10 to 12 km range while applying heavy e-war from each and every member to mitigate damage income from hostiles. Five to six hydra frigates could almost block total damage from a battle ship to zero.

Hydra Principle Wiki For more details

SWOT Analyze:

• They are very effective against low velocity; high DPS gangs consist of Battle cruisers and Battle ships. * The number difference should be at least 1 to 5 or 6 to mitigate damage and 1 to 10 to break tanks.
• Smart bombing battle ships are extremely dangerous for these gangs.
• Advance frigate hulls such as interceptors and assault ships are extremely dangerous target with faction frigates and cruiser such as Dramiels, Cynabals, Vagabonds. These T2/Faction small size ships should be avoided if you are flying in tech 1 frigate but if you gang consist of tech 2 ship composition, you can engage almost any gang type.
• Hydra tech 1 Frigate gangs are very cost efficient gangs with low skill point requirements but request pilots personal experience with situational awareness to hold the line and keep the roam going.

Bomber Gangs

• ’’’Composition: ‘‘‘

Stealth bomber have perfect alpha strike against big hull types starting from Battle cruisers and above. Both bomb and torp loaded ships could be used for these kinds of Gangs. Bombs are good agains frigate size ships while Torpedo’s are more deadly for Battle cruisers and bigger.

• ’’’Fitting Scheme: ‘‘‘

General scheme consist of Cov op Cloak, Torpedo or Bomb Launchers, Sensor dampeners, target painters, torpedo range and damage modules, agility modules and sensor boosters. Also rig relevant to these are used.

• ’’’Basic Tactics: ‘‘‘

Gang identifies their target. Either scouts provide warping at range or use pre-prepared bookmarks at range to warping to the grid, align to outbound celestial or warp able target, deploy bombs or Launch and warp our before tacklers burn to you or being locked by hostiles. These fleets mostly focus on hit and run tactics to objectives or alpha single or small sized gang. In some cases, a cov op bomber gang could be hot dropped to an engagement area by a Black-op ship cyno bridge. A cyno skirmisher or a recon or another cov op ship could identify a target in BO-jump range and pop a cyno and you can jump through a black op ship to designated target and get out as described above or same way. Sample Video

• ’’’SWOT Analyze:’’’

Scouts and Intel is very important. You will be travelling in cloaked ship, which requires some more concentration to avoid de-cloaking each other. On the other hand, you are mostly safe with scout. When you identify your targets, proper deployment and proper retreat is the key elemental in this fleet. If you stay few second then you should be, you are dead because these gang are lack of any defense then their mobility, cloak and tactic. If used properly they are extremely dangerous gangs.

Interceptor Gangs

• ’’’Composition: ‘‘‘

They mostly consist of the combat interceptors and few fleet interceptors for tackle. They are the fastest and most agile gang type. Inties have bonus to their sig rad penalty of the microwarp drives. As a result of this their signature radius are very low. These gangs could also include fast faction frigates such as dramiels.

• ’’’Basic Tactics: ‘‘‘

They rush in to combat, tackle targets and orbit them at close range by getting transversal speed to speed tank the damage and get their target. They can burn out of the combat anytime they desire and difficult to catch. They are deadly against T1 frigates and cruiser gangs and any small sized to solo ships. Sample Video

• ’’’Fitting Scheme: ‘‘‘

Inties; MWD, damage control, tank, damage modules, tackle

• ’’’SWOT Analyze:’’’

They are fast and deadly but limited on DPS. They are weak against web bonuses ships and tacklers with warps scramblers. They can quickly deploy hit the target and can dis-engage as fast as they enter the engagement. Good for border patrols to catch solo PVPer and Ratter.

Destroyer size Gangs

Wolf Packs

• ’’’Composition:

T1 Destroyer with strong light interdictor support (DIC).

• ’’’Fitting Scheme:

Destroyer are fitted for heavy alpha strike, sensor dampeners and after burners.

• ’’’Basic Tactics: ‘‘‘

Surprise enemy with alpha strikes and usually get logistics destroyed at initial engagement. Encourage hostiles to follow you and slow them by using smart interdictor support and apply alpha strikes to get hostiles one by one while kiting away from the hostile.

Destroyer Wolf-Pack Wiki

• ’’’SWOT Analyze:’’’

T1 Destroyers have short locking time, strong alpha strike and high dps and very good tracking speed. They are very useful against almost all target. Proper execution of wolfpack attacks requires range and engagement ground control. You should know when to enter an engagement and then to bug out. Smart bombs, multiple bombs runs and snipers BS are considered as dangerous. They are weak against strong buffer tanked ships with logistic support though you use split tactics to separate forces to thin lines and take them our one by one.

Cruiser size Gangs

Nano-shag – (Aka Winmatar)

• ’’’Composition: ‘‘‘

These type of gangs are selected from high speed ship types. In some cases, It is expected that you can make more than 2000 m per second with your fitting. It is perfect small gang format starting from just 3 to 4 ships to 20+. While high speed ships like Vagabond, Cynabal, Sleipner and machariel are some of these ships preferred for these type of gangs, other ships like scimitars, jaguars, interceptors, interdictors and recons support the gang.

• ’’’Fitting Scheme: ‘‘‘

Shield buffer tanking used in these gang to keep your agility and speed at top level. Choosing shield tanking also provides you sufficient low slots to increase your dps for hit and run action. Also to support these gang, scimitars, DIC, Assault frigates and interceptor could accompany the main force and increase efficiency exponentially.

• ’’’Basic Tactics: ‘‘‘

The idea is make a quick run on ganks, ratters, solo or small ship gangs in Null-sec. You can also kite enemy with your speed and pick them one by one or take care of enemy support and light ships by hit and runs. Usually a skirmisher inty leads to fleet and make initial tackle to hostiles while the rest of the fleet moved from behind. Heavy tackle AS and Dictor make the secondary tackle and immobilize the whole hostile gang while the main force pick logistic support of the opposing force one by one.

• ’’’SWOT Analyze:’’’

They are extremely fast and highly maneuverable ships though ship suited for these gangs are extremely expensive to counter parts and if engagement took extended time of period and the gang start to get losses it can quickly turn the table to the other side with expensive loses. Key to the success of these fleets is to know exact time to engage and dis-engage.

AHAC - Armor-Heavy Assault Cruisers

• ’’’Composition: ‘‘‘

This is one of the most effective cruiser sized gangs in EVE. Heavy assault cruisers with armor tank and afterburner are the core of these gangs supported by guardians up to ¼ ratios. This type of gangs requires at least +30 ships to work properly. Small signature radius and their extreme speed will keep these cruiser gangs alive with logi support against almost anything. They can easily engage battleship and capital ship fleet while mitigating the DPS with their speed and low signature radius. Although all HAC are valid chooses, Zealot is far superior to any of them. Beside logistic support, a command ship as booster is also preferred for proper functionality of the fleet. Another thing used with these fleets are booster drag that reduce signature radius

• ’’’Fitting Scheme: ‘‘‘

HAC (mostly zealots) with armor buffer and after burner are the damage dealer.

• ’’’Basic Tactics: ‘‘‘

If fitted and flied according to concept, AHAC gangs could fight any outnumbered hostiles by mitigating damage with high EHP, remote armor repair and low signature radius. The fleet members keep their speed and Transversal high while engaging the enemy. Guardian pilots are the key instruments in success though they response fast and keep HACs alive during engagements. These fleets are accompanied with T3 Tackle, interdictor and interceptor support with cov ops scout. Sample Video

• ’’’SWOT Analyze:’’’

They are fast, agile and difficult to put DPS on. Also have high amount of DPS recovery with remote repairs for guardians but are extremely weak against HML Drakes and short range battle ships. Any gang with strong painting and webbing support are extremely dangerous for these gangs. This Fleet is weak against short range BS or HML Drakes, or any gang with heavy painting/webbing. Using a Loki with skirmish bonus for sig radius and damnation for EHP will significantly increase your fleet’s defense against hostile and could be key element to succeed in engagements.

Battle Cruiser Size Gangs

HSLR - High Speed Long Range Gang

• ’’’Composition: ‘‘‘

These gangs consist of high speed long range ship. It’s expected that all ships can fly faster than 1.5 km per second (faster better). These Ships create the damage dealing part of the fleet with at least 40+ up to 120 km range. Proper execution of these gangs requires a specialized logistic support such as, force recon specialized tacklers & ECM, interceptor and interdictors to slow down and tackle opposing force while your main dps group kite the enemy.

• ’’’Fitting Scheme: ‘‘‘

Shield tanked battle cruisers and command ships with long range weapons are ideal for dps while rapier/huginn/lachesis/curse/rook/falcon to support dps group while kiting the enemy to stop upcoming fast tackle from the opposing fleet. Also interceptor support is important to catch high-speed tackler before they tackle your battle cruisers.

• ’’’Basic Tactics: ‘‘‘

The number of the opposing force is irrelevant for HSLR gangs. Basically while DPS group kiting the enemy from range, support ships help the damage dealer by stopping fast tackles that can web and scram while stopping hostile e-war specialized ships. Recon tackler and ECM pilots have a great responsibility to keep damage groups alive by stopping fast tackle and preventing enemy ewar to affect your gang. Keeping your main fleet away from the hostile gives you the chance to leave battlefield at your convenience.

• ’’’SWOT Analyze:’’’

These gangs are perfect against any size of high dps gangs. You should control the range and duration of the engagement and support ships should keep them self’s alive because losing a damage dealer will only affect your dps but losing an e-war for web specialist will heart rest of the fleet. These gangs requires mid to high skill point pilots with decent experience to keep the tempo while kiting the enemy. A single mistake or wrong turn could end your engagement in a disaster. These type of gangs are extremely weak against short range brawls and gangs faster than their speed.

HSSR - High Speed Short Range

• ’’’Composition: ‘‘‘

They are very similar to Nano-shag. The main differences are; they are bit slower with more dps and tank than cruiser gangs and flied with battle cruiser with a cheaper price. Their damage and tank is nicely equalized and very flexible for all kinds of engagements. They are designed to fight head to head with any gang they encounter.

• ’’’Fitting Scheme: ‘‘‘

Similar to nano-shag, Battle cruisers with shield tank and short range weapons are the main damage dealer force. Hurricane/Drake/Arbitrator are the best ships for these gangs with their DPS/tank ratio. Logistic support from scimitars and basilisks are key element to keep the gang survived in extended fights. Also tackling support from Fleet interceptors and interdictors are required for tackling the enemy. Also fleet booster will increase your potential significantly. Claymore, vulture, tengu and loki could accompany these gang for fleet boosting.

• ’’’Basic Tactics: ‘‘‘

Skirmisher or Cov op pilot could identify valid targets, gang engage the hostile in close range combat while logi support keep the gang alive from range. It’s a brawl and head to head fight. Gang’s high speed helps to follow kiting enemies from close range and keep the hostile in range.

• ’’’SWOT Analyze:’’’

They are perfect gang types for a brawl or head to head fights. Could quickly enters an engagement and be decisive with high damage while keeping hostile in their range with high speed. Logistic support extends the survival ability till the end of the fight. They will have problems again gangs with heavy ewar support, specialized tackle and similar speeds. Loss of logistic support could cripple the survivability of the gang, so highly experienced logistic pilots are required to keep both the gang members and themselves alive.

Drake HML Gang

• ’’’Composition: ‘‘‘

These gangs consist of heavy missile Drakes, logistics and support. While logistic ships like basilisk and scimitar kept the fleet alive, heavy tackles such as Proteus, Arazu, Lachesis, Huginn and Rapier specialized to hold fast tackle getting in to range of the fleet. Also fleet interceptor and interdictors used to tackle opposing forces.

• ’’’Fitting Scheme: ‘‘‘

Drakes with heavy missiles, decent amount of shield buffer with target painters and MWD are core of these gangs. Standard logistic and support team is required for this fleet to properly execute its tactics.

• ’’’Basic Tactics: ‘‘‘

Drakes have decent tank and nice dps with range. While missiles always hit the target, target painters ensure that hostile signature radius in increased to get full damage from the fired missiles. This makes the drake fleets perfect against AHAC cruiser gangs.

• ’’’SWOT Analyze:’’’

They have low skill point requirement and could be easily fitted. They work better with sheer numbers and scale up to large sized fleets. It’s a good start for a new player in a big low-sec alliance.

Tengu Gang

• ’’’Composition: ‘‘‘
• ’’’Fitting Scheme: ‘‘‘
• ’’’Basic Tactics: ‘‘‘
• ’’’SWOT Analyze:’’’

Battle ship Sized Gangs

Durka – Smart-Bombing Battleship Gangs

• ’’’Composition:

Battleships as main damage dealers 20+ , optional titan support to drop on targets or cov op support to monitor hostile movements

• ’’’Fitting Scheme: ‘‘‘

Heavily buffer tanked battle ships with hardeners and EMP smart bombs

• ’’’Basic Tactics: ‘‘‘

This is specifically prepared for blobs. Any kind of gang type is valid target for such fleets. The main objective is to make hostile ground warp to your fleets at zero and trap them with cloaky bubblers and get the whole blob with smart bombs. A sing volley of smart bombs from a gang of 20+ BS will take down any cruiser sized gangs. Second volley will take most battle cruisers and lightly tanked battle ships and third volley will take care of the rest. After using smart bomb, gang could clear the rest of the survivals with their drones.

Sample Video

• ’’’SWOT Analyze:’’’

Extremely strong against blobs though requires hostile to warp at your location at zero as a blob or gang show warp to zero of a hostile gang. They are difficult to separate from other gang but with the new incarna and turret models, a clever scout could identify your fleet composition.

Alpha - Maelstrom

• ’’’Composition: ‘‘‘

These fleets consist of Alpha damage focused shield tanked maelstroms because they are perfect for the objective. Standard shield support and logistics ships are also used in composition. These gang usualy preferred to have at least 200+ ships

• ’’’Fitting Scheme: ‘‘‘

Long range, high alpha damage artilleries and shield tank are the main properties of the fitting scheme. Maelstrom is the only BS type used for these fleet types.

• ’’’Basic Tactics: ‘‘‘

These fleets depend on their extremely high alpha strike to overcome the logistic support of the opposing field. They tend to break tanks with single united volley of the fleet and don’t give time the logistics to rep the primary.

• ’’’SWOT Analyze:’’’

They are deadly in short range and could overcome logistic support problem but extremely weak at close range engagement. They require high skill point characters and as Tier 3 battle ships maelstroms are extremely expensive ships with their fits.

Hell-Cats – Abaddon

• ’’’Composition: ‘‘‘

Battle ships fleet consist of only abandon’s and logistic support.

• ’’’Fitting Scheme: ‘‘‘

High resistance and buffer armor tanked abandon’s with low alpha but extremely high dps. They can easily engage almost all ranges and has high survival rate against heavy damage dealing fleets such as Alpha Maelstroms.

• ’’’Basic Tactics: ‘‘‘

Destroy the opposing force with high dps while tanking the damage coming in with extremely strong buffer tanks and logistic supports.

• ’’’SWOT Analyze:’’’

This fleet requires pilot with perfect skill sets to fit such as adv. Weapon upgrades V and perfect support skills to properly fit the Abaddon and logistic ships. Also fits and hulls are expensive but very effective against all kinds of fleet compositions including capital warfare.

RR-BS – Remote Repair Battleship Gang

• ’’’Composition: ‘‘‘

These gangs consist of mixed battle ships with one or two RR modules on their large slots.

• ’’’Fitting Scheme: ‘‘‘

Battleships with same type of buffer tank with high resistance (shield or armor)

• ’’’Basic Tactics:

During the engagement, fleet members remote repair each other if they got primary by opposing force. The fleet should stay close to each other and focus the RR of each shit to one requires support.

• ’’’SWOT Analyze:’’’

It’s one of the basic Battle ship tactics written in the book. You can fly one of these ships with limited amount of skill. Long range gangs with e-war support or alpha-BS gang could overcome your rapping capability and could get you. Also Durka fleet could be dangers for these gangs.

Mixed Hull type Gangs

Mono typed tanked gangs with logistiC

• ’’’Composition: ‘‘‘

Any king of same buffer tanked ships with logistic support and various ship roles.

• ’’’Fitting Scheme: ‘‘‘

These gangs could include assorted types of hull but mainly focus on same buffer tank as either armor or Shield. Proper logistic will support the gang for survival.

• ’’’ Basic Tactics:

The fleet could be arranged for various objectives from PvP to Wormhole PvE or Missioning. A Similar type of tank is chosen for fleet scheme and supported by logistics.

• ’’’SWOT Analyze:’’’

You can tailor mixed fleet for specific objective or just group all available people and structure them to a proper tanking scheme and run various roams. They are assorted fleet type and may not counter some of the specialized fleet types using strategies such as speed, long range or high alpha.

Black Op Hot-Drop Gangs

• ’’’Composition: ‘‘‘

Black op ships, force recons, cov op ships, and cov op Transport ships for logistics or looting.

• ’’’Fitting Scheme: ‘‘‘

Any ship fitted cov op cloak (with the ability) with selected role for the roam; DPS, E-war, etc.

• ’’’Basic Tactics: ‘‘‘

A force/combat recon, cov op or just a simple cyno ship scouts the systems within jump range of Black-op Jump Bridge until, it finds valid target. As soon as he/she identify valid target, he places himself for the proper tactical position and light up a covert or normal cyno. As soon as cyno is lighten up, Black op battle ship open a jump portal to cyno and all ships within jump range with covop cloak could jump through the bridge to the destination. They gank the hostiles and cloak up and warp of the field. They either travel back through gates as cloaked or bridge back through another black-op ship to their safe system/pos/location. Sample Video

• ’’’SWOT Analyze:’’’

Surprise element is the fun part of this ganks. You can deploy to 3-4 system ahead in few seconds with tremendous amount of DPS and heavy e-war support and deploy back as you came without hitting any gate at all. Black op gang ships are extremely expensive and require high skills in means of skill points and pilot experience. Cov op ships are extremely fragile and could easily being taken care of with fast cruisers, frigates and