Fleet and Gang Types

Just like ships, gangs and fleets also vary wildly in their abilities and tactics. The changing "meta" of EVE and the wide variety of doctrines used by different groups in game makes any attempt to describe precise gang and fleet compositions in detail futile. This page gathers some notes on broader principles, which can help new fleet commanders ("FCs") and scouts assess threats and targets.

Purpose

The most important aspect of any fleet is its purpose. Why is this group in space?

Some fleets have no higher purpose than to find fights and have fun. Such fleets are sometimes more likely to take riskier fights, because their stakes are lower.

Some fleets have no geographically-fixed objective, but do have a strategic purpose:

• a sovereign nullsec alliance might send roaming fleets into enemy territory to deny ISK-making opportunities and inflict financial and morale damage by destroying PvP and PvE targets.
• a high-sec corporation at war might send out a fleet to hunt war targets.

Some fleets have both a strategic purpose and one or more geographically-fixed objectives:

• a nullsec coalition might want to push into some specific systems, contesting the local sovereignty, destroying enemy structures and setting up their own.
• a wormhole corporation might want to take over or to defend a particular wormhole.

Fleets with a higher goal are less likely to take fights which will put that goal at risk. So, for example, they are unlikely to pause during travel to fight an unrelated fleet simply "for the content". However, they are more likely to put their ships at risk in order to secure that goal: a fleet might accept near-total destruction in order to bring down a particular structure or defend a key asset.

A fleet's likely purpose can be guessed at from the corporations involved, from its size, from the ships involved, and from its direction and nature of travel. A small group of fast, skirmishing ships, piloted by characters from a corporation known to live in a wormhole with a nullsec static for raiding, which emerge from a wormhole and start racing to nearby ratting systems is probably a group of small-gang pilots looking for fights and content, not a strategic assault on the region.

Ship recognition

Crudely, larger ships deal more raw DPS at longer ranges, but can struggle more to apply that DPS to their targets. Larger ships also align and warp more slowly, and therefore have more limited ranges in any given time period when travelling gate-to-gate. This makes them more common in fleets which don't have to travel far or have cyno bridge assistance.

Hull size

Pilots with long experience and good memories can perform very subtle acts of ship-recognition when taking in intel. For newer players, raw subcapital hull size is a good starting-point:

• Frigates don't take damage well, but can do a lot to avoid taking damage in the first place. They move very fast relative to other hulls, both on grid and between gates. En masse, they can threaten anything.
• Destroyers are strong against frigates and can pack a punch against anything bigger. They are more vulnerable than frigates to larger weapons, and the Tech 1 destroyer hulls in particular tend to be glass cannons. Tech 2/3 destroyers have strong control and hunting abilities (bubbles, teleportation, combat probes).
  • Frigates and destroyers in a mixed-size gang often make up the gang's fast-response control element.
• Cruisers can typically deal high DPS or precise DPS with medium weapons, but often have to choose between the two. They have an attractive balance of striking power and speed, but are vulnerable both to smaller ships which punch up, and larger ships which punch down.
• Combat battlecruisers relate to cruisers a little like destroyers do to frigates: they also use medium weapons, but mount more of them. They can use command bursts and Micro Jump Drives. Unlike Tech 1 destroyers, some Tech 1 battlecruisers can mount tough tanks.
• Attack battlecruisers are pure glass cannons, mounting large-sized weapons but only ever capable of light tanks.
• Battleships are slow-moving, slow-locking and cumbersome, but can mount excellent tanks and put out ferocious raw DPS. They can fit Micro Jump Drives.

Experience is the best teacher for further ship recognition, but pilots might find this wiki's Ship Class Tactical Overview handy.

Ships of special note

While developing ship recognition, key ships to learn to notice are:

• Force Recon ships (Falcon, Rapier, Arazu, Pilgrim): these are the smallest, cheapest ships which can light a normal ("hard") cyno, and the presence of one can implicitly threaten a capital-ship escalation.
  • Be careful about including a Force Recon in your own gang outside of Pochven or wormhole space if you do not have a capital escalation prepared. Fielding a cyno ship invites pre-emptive escalation from enemies.
• Any logistics ships. The presence of logistics ships in a gang indicates a stronger remote active tank, but also indicates which type of tank it will be.
• Interceptors, interdictors, and HICs.
• T1 or T2 EWAR ships.
• Command destroyers. These are the only ships which can teleport other ships around on grid.

Tactical profile

Just as solo PvP ships mount tackle, weapons, and a tank, so gangs and fleets typically have control elements, DPS elements, and one or more tactics for defence.

In a fleet, these functions might be fully distributed between different ships:

• the damage-dealers could be fitted to fight at beyond normal tackle range.
• the tackle ships could be purely dedicated to pointing, scramming, and bubbling at closer range.
• the primary defence could be logistics ships repairing other fleet members.

In theory, an FC—or in very large fleets a command team of FC, logi FC, EWAR FC and so forth—uses these different elements much as a solo PvP pilot uses the different aspects of their individual fit; in practice, the experience of FCing rarely feels so collected!

Most gangs above micro-gang size outsource at least initial tackle and control to ships such as interceptors, interdictors, and EASs, because these ships are so much better at holding other ships on grid, often with unique abilities: a damage-dealing battlecruiser is never going to be able to launch bubble probes.

When assessing a fleet's damage-dealing abilities, it's useful to know what weapons are fitted on their line DPS ships. Experienced players can learn to recognise the weapon modules, and distinguish short-ranged from long-ranged weapons.

In EVE's gradually-shifting meta it's not possible to lay down permanent descriptions of fleet or gang types. But it is often possible to assess fleets and gangs on the three axes of control, damage, and defence.

It's also possible to think through the following broad archetypal aspects of fleets.

Logistics vs local tank

Logistics ships can be jammed, destroyed, or booshed off, and each one takes a pilot away from damage-dealing. They also require careful coordination. However, logistics ships provide more powerful active boosting or repairs than line DPS ships can manage with local tanks alone, and they provide a sustained tank that, if it holds, will last much longer than pure buffer tanks would. Organised fleets therefore often fly with a logistics wing, which could be anything from Tech 1 logistics frigates up to FAXes. Note that strategic cruisers can be configured as logistics ships: a Loki fleet might in fact consist of line DPS Lokis with remote shield-boost Lokis, and part of the fleet's strength will be opponents' inability to distinguish the two.

Assessing the presence or absence of logistics ships immediately tells you something about a gang or fleet. The specific kind of logistics ships, if present, reveals something about the gang's tank, and potentially about the nature of their fits in general: a fleet containing Scythes, for instance, is likely to have some shield buffer fitted in the mid slots of its line DPS ships, which will reduce the amount of tackle and ancillary unbonused EWAR that those line DPS ships can carry, while freeing up low slots for damage modules and mobility modules.

A logistics wing using cap-transfer logistics ships (e.g. Augoror, Basilisk) will require more coordination and will also need to stay more physically cohesive than one which uses capacitor-independent ships (e.g. Exequror, Scimitar). A cap-transfer logistics wing will be more resistant to capacitor warfare, but more vulnerable to booshing and jamming.

A gang or fleet might also be "spider-tanked", with every line DPS ship mounting a few remote logistics modules and the whole gang collectively repairing whoever is primaried by the enemy. This is most common for ships with utility high slots to spare for the relevant modules.

Local tanks, either active or buffer, should not be underestimated given the right circumstances. A properly-fitted triple-rep Myrmidon can shrug off a small gang's worth of DPS while its cap charges last, for instance, and "bait-tanked" battleships can achieve very high EHP.

Brawling

Brawling gangs or fleets typically hope to fight in point or scram range, where they can use overwhelming DPS and strong defences to crush more fragile opponents. Even the line DPS ships might well fit some kind of tackle, to help lock enemies down, and the group can also use capacitor warfare, either distributed or mounted on dedicated hulls.

The great challenge facing any brawling group is how to get on top of the enemy in the first place. A strong, well-flown tackle/control wing and (outside of empire space) the sensitive use of bubbles and gates can help with this. Booshes or even, on bigger ships, local Micro Jump Drives offer another mobility option. In sovereign nullsec, the ESS can be used to try to start brawls, though the unique conditions of the ESS require different fits which will then be more vulnerable outside of ESS grids. Brawling comps also see use for fighting directly on the undock of an NPC station ("docking games"), and for fighting on wormholes, where brawling is encouraged by, among other things, polarization mechanics.

Skirmishing

Fleets and gangs can fight perfectly well beyond tackle range, especially using medium- and large-sized weapons.

The loosely-defined family of tactics referred to as "nano" or "kiting" fall within this sphere of fleet activity. By fitting for ranged damage, high speed and agility, appropriate medium-sized ships can dance around slower targets and fight effectively even against heavier numbers or hulls. Such gangs typically fight at ranges from the edge of point range up to Micro Jump range (100km), using "screening" fast tackle and control ships to pin targets down.

It is not only kiters who fight at such ranges, however. Larger, slower, anchored fleets can fit to fight in these ranges too, and will typically use a large tackle wing of bubblers to try to hold enemies down.

The number of small ships which can deal damage at these mid-to-long ranges is quite small, and is limited mostly to destroyers, the Harpy, and the T3Ds.

Sniping

Some subcapital ships can achieve ranges well over 100 km, and a fleet might use mobile, lightly-tanked sniping ships as its line DPS core, with a highly-independent tackle and control wing fighting much closer to the enemy. Certain HACs, attack battlecruisers, and battleships are best-suited to this approach. Long-ranged HACs have the particular advantages that they have smaller signature radii, move and align faster, and can use Assault Damage Controls to survive a volley of incoming damage and let friendly logistics lock them up and begin repairing them.

Sniping ships will use range, high speed and/or warps to burned or pre-existing tactical bookmarks to avoid damage. Pinning them down in a bubble and applying DPS is the obvious but difficult solution, which will require hard work and ingenuity from scouts and tacklers. A sniping fleet needs its independent tackle wing to hold opponents down, so if you can melt all of its bubblers and interceptors and you yourself are not tied to defending a particular objective, you will give yourself the option of simply leaving.

Droppers

Covert ships can use a black ops battleship to teleport from systems away to a covert cyno or an industrial cyno, and any ships can be bridged by a Titan to a normal ("hard") cyno. Using a cyno to FTL straight into combat is commonly referred to as "dropping" or "hotdropping".

A black ops fleet will be limited to covert-capable ships, which tend to be less well-tanked than equivalent ships of the same size. Even black ops battleships are relatively thinly-defended for battleship-sized hulls. A black ops group typically attacks in circumstances of their own choosing, however, and brings a lot of frontloaded damage: stealth bombers might crumple under the slightest DPS, but that doesn't matter if they can destroy a target before the target can finish locking them up. With foreknowledge, you can prepare unexpectedly tanky bait with backup waiting to log in or counter-drop. If based persistently in an area with locals who use hotdrops, you should seed their staging system(s) with cloaky alts so as to have forewarning of drops.