General Guide to EVE PvP  

General Guide to Eve PvP

Attrezzo’s General Guide to Eve PvP

I. Introduction]

First and foremost this guide is largely based on personal experience and my not be the perfect solution for anyone. Furthermore, if you have a problem with some of the strategies provided below trolling the forums won’t make it any better. This is an open document and I invite anyone willing to properly correct the data to do so. Please make sure you reference this original document, not because I spent so much time on it and you respect me. Not because I’m afraid you’ll take all the credit for my work, but simply because whatever you put in here may be completely wrong. Or perhaps whatever you erase from this document might be useful in triggering imagination in someone else that would help them come up with a new useful idea. At any rate, I’ve held a lot of this in for quite some time and I feel it’s time to impart some of my thoughts on the eve public. This guide is a broad overview of how an entire corporation should work to make an effective fighting force in the eve universe, rather than individual player tactics, which vary so much it’s not worth writing for free about them. So without further ado....

Eve PvP is not NPCing or spawn chaining. It’s not quite like 1v1 either and it takes time and practice to get right. All the best skills and the best ships with the best modules won’t help you at all if you haven’t experienced battle. More easy kills in eve are due to panic and ignorance rather than a lack of skill points. That said, it’s imperative for any PvP player to understand at their most basic level that fighting other players is the only way to get better. Practicing on NPCs doesn’t help much at all. There are tricks and tips that you can only learn with practice. To illustrate this point, think about your keyboard controls. In a completely even battle the person who fires the first shot will be sure to win. That’s an advantage that is easy to understand. Key combinations like Ctrl+click in overview help you get the enemy before he gets you.

Here are some to play with:

• Ctrl-Click F1-F8 (top module row)
• Alt+F1-F8 (mid module row)
• Ctrl+F1-F8 (lowest module row)
• Set an Autopilot key(mine’s Alt-A)
  

Here are some ideas to keep in mind:

• KEEP AN UPDATED CLONE
• INSURE YOUR SHIPS
• Pods warp instantly, it’s likely you’ll never need your clone, but always keep one. It’s not worth the risk. Anyhow, if your ship is into structure get ready to warp to a planet or something. Pull up bookmarks or the jump menu. When you’re blown up there will be a brief lag and anything you clicked on previously to warp to will clear. You’ll have to re-click to warp.
• Try activating weapons BEFORE targeting when gate camping. This will target and fire in one movement. Remember to use overview it’s much quicker. -Remember to turn off auto-targeting when using the above tip. Escape menu will show you that. If you don’t you’ll fire on the next target that targets you and you will die because of it.
• Ctrl-Click a player in overview will target that player/object... THIS DOES NOT WORK ON PODS
• Orbit distance in the Selected Item box (just above overview) can be set to whatever you want by right clicking the button. This is excellent for setting a perfect optimal weapon range, especially on frigs.
• Get used to clicking objects in space and using their drag menus. Once you start using them regularly things become so much faster. Everything can be done in one simultaneous movement instead of several clicks and drags. Keep in mind the above tips and tools take time to get used to. If your serious about PvP work on them all the time in everyday EVE. This will keep the strongest part of your character, your reaction time, sharp. Also get used to your chosen ship setups. Being intimately close to how to pilot your own ship really is the difference between 1337 and n00b.

II. Structuring for PvP]

a. Building your Corp]

If you plan to start a PvP corporation or even just setup a pirating ring among your close friends the following chapter contains useful planing tips. Mostly to do with human resources. First of all decide what your goal is. Do you have a corp already? Looking to protect yourself? Do you want to take 0.0 space? Do you want to be the best group of pilots in your alliance? At the foundation of your PvP play is going to be the players who fill their character’s roles. Your corps’ strength depends on your understanding of teamwork, and ultimately how well you used it. This is certainly important overtime. You need to find players who are interested in the same goals you are, or if they are not find players who you can create a symbiotic relationship with. Everyone needs to be able to help everyone else out. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t advertize for any player that will join your corporation. If you have the skills to manage all those players more power to you. But, you should take very cautious care in deciding who leads what. What group is online when etc. Make sure people “under” their leaders understand that it’s not a statement of superiority, the concept behind organizing players is to more effectively act together. That’s all. In fact, as I’ll explain later, group leaders don’t have to be people that have 23million skill point Gunnery concentrated characters. Also keep in mind that a variety of time zones is recommended. Don’t worry too much about major battles on weekdays when everyone can’t be on as this rarely happens with any meaningful amount of force. Most real war happens on weekends, and that means that people on the other side of the globe usually won’t mind staying up a few more hours to be in a good fight.

At the paramount importance of effective group tactics is communication. This for most means a teamspeak server or the like. I personally won’t fly with anyone who doesn’t have a VoIP server. When organizing players in roles some steps should be taken to carry that over to your VoIP server. Currently the best I’ve seen is where people organize themselves in a general region of space... That’s nice and whatever but a suggested alternative, and much smoother would be to give each group/squad/patrol whatever a separate channel. Using teamspeak as an example you might give commanders channel admin over their own channel so they can add their location to the title when necessary. If you are the CEO/Director of a PvP operation make sure to set up a whisper key-combo that will whisper to all of those group leaders. And those leaders should setup a whisper to the CEO/Director as well as a whisper to all of their group’s members. In addition you should all set up another key combo to switch players to their group’s channel. And allow channel commanders to drag players from teamspeak when there aren’t enough players on to split up or whatnot. To illustrate a situation where all of this is useful consider the following.

Say your CEO gets information saying there’s an incoming fleet of 20 battleships headed up to take your station. He whispers to all of the group leaders that he needs them to report to the office. Those leaders do so and report current actions/positions of their men. Groups 1,3, and 4 have members close enough to scramble 15 players total fleet size. Each commander whispers to his five available pilots who then get into their channels. From there the CEO gives orders to hide in systems near to your own as he is inside the station in a covert ops. He undocks and waits till the enemy is inside firing on miners and eventually they all get to the station and begin their siege. The CEO commands his army to hold at 1 jump from home. He lets the station take a good amount of damage, and the enemy is losing ammo. He realizes they are all bunched together as is usual with a siege. The CEO takes note of many of the enemy fleet’s names and ages. Quickly he makes target lists for each group. He whispers to the commanders (now in their groups’ channels) Their targets and finally to get their more tanked pilots to jump and line up to the station. The enemy only sees 7 ships in local and decides to check it out they split a bit and four pilots each head off to one of the four gates. As soon as the enemy ships enter warp, the CEO has the rest of your force jump in and the 7 tanked pilots warp to him at their optimals. The commanders have their forces warp in on the enemy at the station regardless of what the pilots scouting the gates do. Each group calls it’s own targets taking out two pilots in the time it takes the enemy to take out one. Additionally the enemy is improperly armed and not tanked well. They go down fast.

Te previous situation is kindof far fetched. It takes forever to take a station even with 20 well fitted battleships most people wouldn’t attempt it. Second the optimal group size in battle is 10-20 less than that and it becomes a gamble of time as I’ll explain later. It will take that many pilots to quickly take out an enemy battleship and maintain redundancy among your numbers. More about this later. The point is that having a more organized teamspeak means adding mobility and flexibility to your force. It allows an army to truly wage war and not just riot in confused skirmishes that are laggy and frustrating.

b. Organizing Groups]

Understanding math is important. Also understanding modern warfare helps too. Not many people have a good concept of this right now in eve as they follow one rule. Concentrating firepower. This has resulted in Blob fleets that play like old American revolution era armies. Everyone stands in a row and then everyone fires at one target at a time and this goes on. Concentrating firepower means firing enough at one ship to take it out almost immediately. If you have 30 battleships firing at one battleship it’s likely that about 7 or so of those pilots don’t even activate their guns! That means tons of firepower that could have been used on another ship is wasted. In fleet battles where the system you are in is laggy, it’s easy to think that because it takes time for your client to update that you need more firepower on one person. This isn’t true. Think about smaller groups. About 5 battleships on one battleship anywhere else can take that ship down in at worst 3 volleys. And that’s being conservative saying that all of the 5 battleships are amarr or gall ships with whimpy weapons and the opposing battleship is HEAVILY tanked. In real life the number is closer to 1. Remember the game math used in our little 5v1 is the SAME math used in any battle even if the system is laggy. With this in mind if you have 3 groups of about ten pilots you can take out three ships for every one that the enemy takes out. These groups can also take losses before they start to become completely ineffective. That’s pretty freaking nice.

Now, getting on to the beef. Whether or not you should organize your fleet into smaller groups is a no brainer. It gives you tons of flexibility that up until recently (for some strange reason) has only been dreamed about in eve. A group or squad as I will refer to them here on out should be organized with one commander and however members you feel is appropriate. The point of having squads initially at all is really mostly for training anyhow. So when organizing regular day to day squads a commander should have a choice of the players that are on when he is on. And also should be responsible for helping train other players who wish to specialize in whatever he’s specialized in.. Covert ops, frig warfare, EW, etc.etc. A commander should be experienced in real life more than character wise. The best people to let command should not be strangers to battles, and should be trust able. Allowing that new member to your corp to lead a squad is a bad idea, even if he does have 50mil skillpoints. If at all possible use commanding as a reward to those players that are loyal and trustworthy. Players who stay online all the time are pretty good choices too. Commanders should be primarily responsible for training members of their squads so that they become effective in battle. Players inside squads should be evenly distributed if possible. Really this is where the flexibility begins as you can specialize squads if you want. Say a safespot busting crew, or one squad who is experienced in guerilla warfare and frig ships. When you battle you’ll organize people by who’s on and who can do what so these command lines will change. But training up in squads is highly recommended.

Training is pretty important. Having everyone know what to do when someone says what to do, and why they are doing it is what makes things really move in a battle. As I said before, more ships in eve are lost to panic than any other weapon. Training everyone on standard methods of play is important if you want everyone to keep calm and know their role. Having this in mind is the only reason squads should be organized initially anyway. Ideally, a commander should get his squad together at least once a week to go gank something. To kill people in empire or to go pirate in 0.0 or if need be, NPC... ugghhhh. If you’re morally opposed to pirating I’d say holding corp events now and again to train less knowledgeable members on the ins and outs of safespot busting, or guerilla warfare, etc etc. That’s really the only way if you don’t want to kill random people. However, on the opposite side if you have an enemy to fight that’s a relatively weak enemy, training via actual battle is the best way to go, or to pirate people. You may want to specialize some squads but don’t let that take over, make sure everyone understands what battleship combat is like. And make sure they know what raiding is, how to fit their race of ships etc. Gate camping everyday won’t get anyone any smarter. Having people go out into empire and kill enemies, or piloting enemy territory and killing miners, or staging mock fleet battles between two squads in your corp. These are all good things to get your players used to battle. In the event of the actual need to attack a target, or to defend your home territory you probably won’t have everyone on from so and so squad so you’ll have to rearrange things temporarily to get the job done. When that happens use your good judgement, ask commanders to lead your troops and organize things in teamspeak appropriately. The point is that when that time comes, everyone knows to ****ing shut up on teamspeak. The commanders know how to give orders. Everyone knows what they are to do and hopefully by making them work in squads at peacetime there will be a stronger trust between the players. This helps with arguments and frustration due to lost ships or the like. Speaking of which players need to be familiar with losing ships. I’m speaking of the losing really expensive ships. All too often a player will just think that losing a battleship is the end of the world. If you want to get good at war, you’ll end up losing a lot of ships. An idea is to offer a corp insurance policy just to ease tension about buying a new ship. To insure ships for free lost in fleet battles or something like that. Furthermore, earlier I mentioned mock fleet battles. Maybe get everyone in battleships and have each squad only activate one weapon on their target... The target being another squad in your corp. Hopefully by organizing those battles a player knows when it’s time to warp out. And if he doesn’t get it in mock battles he’ll be punished by losing only his mods.I don’t know you take over from there. This brings me to the next topic. Making money in a corp. You’re going to need it for offices and war and all kinds of good stuff so get acquainted with ways of making it.

c. Making Corp Isk]

This is only a chapter because the bottom line is that a corp will need money. Lots of it. The idea CCP had for this ingame was corp tax, but it probably won’t work for awhile. However, this would be highly recommended. Around 7% for smaller corps <30 and about 4% for Corps over that. It’s likely no one will complain about this as when they join they agree to pay that tax. Without a doubt this is the easiest way to get cash. As a Director/CEO/Accountant though keep in mind that that money should ONLY be used for corp things. Such as paying for a player’s insurance, paying for POS fuel, or Jump Drive fuel. BUT NOT your own investments are ships. Players hate that and it’s likely there will be mutiny if people finds out your selling corp isk on e-bay, or buying yourself that new fancy Caldari Navy Raven. My personal recommendation is an open standard among your corpmates. Give everyone the ability to audit the corp wallet. If everyone sees how your using corp funds and everything is explained you make trust a bigger factor in the corp.

The POS is another way to make money, although it’s a HUGE investment and a lot of work. In the future eve will rely more and more on POSes. Meaning within your Corporation or alliance there must be people willing to deal with the **** things. In the next path “Cold War edition” POSes will be responsible for gaining sovereignty over a region, which will allow you to build your own conquerable station to build capital ships. Also keep in mind that without those POSes your conquerable station is vulnerable to attack! So get cozy with them as they’ll only get more important in the world of eve. The first step should be to make an effective money making POS in empire. Something easy to protect and easy to provide supplies too. Use it as a dummy to figure out how to make money, because after all that’s what it’s about. You might end up having to put people in charge of keeping it running, or even paying people to bring supplies to it. Once that’s done and if you’re considering using the POS to be the primary source of cash for your Corp, you’ll need to hire more players to more specifically pay attention to the POSes needs.

Keep in mind though that a POS is a lot of work. A whole lot of work. It’s almost best that you make an alliance with another corporation and have them pay you to protect their POSes and supply lines. However it does actually cost less to manage the operation within your own corp if you have the manpower. POSes need regular supplies, if they don’t get them they will shut down and be vulnerable to attack, currently the only way to take a POS is after it’s run out of supplies. Keep this in mind when you’re setting up supply lines. It’s a good idea to keep about 2 months of supplies in the nearest station, or if you’re out in 0.0 have defensive safespots planned in empty systems so that if the station comes under attack indies who can sneak by may be able to deploy supplies in giant cans at those safespots. Deploy giant secure cans with supplies in them inside your POSes forcefield. Just as a reserve. Do this ESPECIALLY if you’re going to use them as a safe place to log out when your space is under attack. Getting into the POS side of eve is a good idea if you want longevity as a powerful force in eve.

While we’re on the subject of stations, consider conquerable stations in 0.0. Especially those fitted with refining arrays. If you have pretty good control over an area of 0.0 space inviting mining corporations out to your space to mine your roid belts and refine in your station is a good idea. You can add a refine tax, but I don’t recommend that it be too much more than the NPC tax as miners will prefer to travel back to empire with ore and be greedy then give you your due amount of minerals. Also make them understand there are stiff penalties for disobeying the rules in your space. Be friendly about it, upfront and straightforward about the rules. For instance when you talk to them make sure they know that you’ll do regular cargo scans on indies flying back to empire. Not because you don’t like them but just to watch your own ass. Tell them that it’s business and let them know that you’ll help them out if they help you out. Encourage miners to ask you before just doing something... like setting up a POS. Let them know that you think of your area of space as yours. And you’re protecting them from would be attackers. Remember they’re making a TON of money off of this. In my younger days I remember miner corps bringing in 1-2billion isk a month and that was our cut... a percentage 15% or something like that. Dedicated miners make a lot of money, and whether they think they do or not, the truth is that in 0.0 if the alliance armies weren’t there they wouldn’t have access to that space. Make sure they understand that had your protection not been there they wouldn’t be mining out there, and if they were they’d need an army of their own to fund anyway.

If you’re really in dire need and your Corporation’s players aren’t greedy punks, you might need to arrange the occasional corp event. For PvP corps the easiest thing to do is to run a chain on a complex. If it were me I’d kick people who didn’t come because they were busy making money for themselves. As a note to players who ignore corp events. You’re only hurting yourself. Helping the corp get a POS or something like that can only help you. You get time to be around the bigger guys in the corp to show your dedication and utility. You help the corp so later when you lose your battleship you get back in one fast. The good points are endless.. For a couple of measly hours you would have spent gate camping or doing some other useless activity. Anyway they’re good ways of making some cash to invest the money somehow. POS, Blueprint, Minerals, you pick it.

After you make all this money what do you do with it? Keep it. I’d say invest it somehow in commodities, but that’s not a good idea right now. Market trade (especially the NPC trade) isn’t useful right now as all of those consumer goods you should be able to buy aren’t based on a good trend. I always thought that CCP would create market trends within consumer goods and things, but if they have they take longer than three months to take effect and many of the shorter term investments don’t make enough money to be worth while. But, they are things to consider. In the future there may be increased excitement in regional markets that will allow a player skilled in trade to effectively “day trade” commodities in the eve universe. Giving these players BILLIONS of isk to invest would be a really good way to make money. Think of it as buying a money maker. If you return 20% profit from some given investment over a two week period. That means if you invest a billion isk in markets that have that good of a return you can make 200,000,000 isk every two weeks. And all with only a tiny bit of actual work and it can all be done from a station. That may not seem like much, but consider how long it takes to get that mining. About two weeks... The only difference is that you spend 2 hours on one day actually planning investments and setting up sell orders, whereas mining is done for hours everyday for weeks. With the rest of the corp money I suggest allowing players to take advantage of benefits. Help out players who need skills and stuff. It’s really all up to you as a CEO/Director, but any corp isk should only be spent to help out the whole corp. If you buy one person a battleship you need to make sure that anyone else with the same circumstances as that player can also get a battleship from the corp.

Some ideas are:

• Tell new players that provided they have good conduct, when they are able to fly a battleship the corp will buy and insure one battleship and one only one.
• If they lose this battleship doing anything other than a corporation op then they must pay the insurance for a new one.
• ay insurance on ships lost in corp battles. -Pay for skills on players that can’t afford them.
• Work out a reward system for players that participate in Corp operations often or who have good conduct.
• You may have to restrict some benefits in times of war, but make sure people know why you’re not buying them things they would have gotten otherwise.
• Consider posting offers about information on an enemy. Offer to pay for good information, and keep your word when you say you’ll pay ... pay. Pay your troops or anyone for that matter for good information on an enemy.

III. Offensive PvP]

a. Raids]

Raids are typically small fast moving groups of players that wreak havoc on an enemies supplies and cause confusion, paranoia, and general disruption. Raids have two very good uses, one they’re a good way to train corp members in a relatively safe way. And two, they really screw with an enemies’ head. These Guerilla tactics are good to use in empire, and if you have some HACs available in 0.0. Just last night I was in a raid squad of 3 HACs two interceptors, and one covert ops. We killed 8 enemy battleships. These were mainly miners that used enemy space but non-the-less they helped make isk for that particular enemy. Basically the idea is about 5-10 small fast ships. Interceptors and assault ships are a good combination. Get a covert ops scout if you can. Also HACS are a good thing to have along (but VERY expensive to lose). You want to make sure that you have a good mix of disruptors, scramblers, and webifiers on your squad’s ships. And the idea is speed and mobility. Kill a few enemies here, move... Kill a few enemies there... move. Never stay too long in enemy territory or they’ll end up closing in on you. Use the map to locate an area where you have a good chance of killing someone. Stop one jump out and send in a scout to locate a target, once found depending on it’s size, and likelihood to run send in either an interceptor or full attack. That’s basically the idea. Camping gates in Yulai, or other high traffic area is basically how to get along In empire. Use agents to locate an enemy and then go find him that way. The biggest downside to raids is that you’re not guaranteed any action at all. Sometimes you get lucky and kill a indy with 40k of zydrine on it or something but that doesn’t happen a lot. If you can get information on enemy supply movements that’s the best thing to go for. If they have regular trains of POS supplies to some station attack that. There’s a lot of money in POS fuel and it really sets someone back. If you manage to get caught in enemy space and there’s a ton of people jumping into your system, the safest thing to do is abort and safespot/log. However, don’t panic too much. A good raid squad can take out a PvE battleship fleet pretty easily. Just learn when to run. If they scram someone, they’re not setup for PvE. They’re setup to kill you. If someone gets NOSed same thing. Know which weapons are there to kill you.

b. Know your enemy I]

In raids, battles, or fighting pretty much anything ever in life or eve. You must try to understand what makes him tick, so you can anticipate what he will do. The first step to knowing your enemy is to know his strengths. Look at these first so you don’t have any false ideas on how “weak” your enemy is. Try to get his real online numbers. Many corps have a lot of alts in them. Figure out who his friends are. Figure out what ships they’ve flown and what wars they’ve been in. Look up their big players on eve-kills.com and make them primary targets. Make a list of all their known members, what you’ve seen them doing, put it in a corp mail and resend it every time something changes. Then after you figure out what threatens you, figure out where they can be hurt. Usually this means taking isk from them somehow. Hitting experienced targets is good because those members will most likely use lots of money to re-fit a new ship. I suggest trying to keep targets in this order... High value/High SP character target, then a low SP Young character. Try that in all the battles that you’re in. This way when you kill those members if the corp doesn’t have much cash on hand it’s likely the High Value character will use anything he can to get back into a ship and leave the little guy hanging. This interrupts two key parts of a corp, trust and money. Most people aim for expensive targets only, but it’s likely those characters can just replace those ships in a day, whereas if you switch target types you start to rattle the corporate structure causing members of lesser importance to get cast aside making a hole for a potential spy or even just dropping their numbers one by one. A player might leave a corp over such a loss.

A more advanced way to sink money out of your enemies is to figure out how they move equipment. Have they deployed Secure cans in their space? Do they have industrial ships sitting in open space? When do they resupply their POS? Where do their miners hang out and what time zones are they on? Even if you don’t completely annihilate any one of these systems if you figure out ways to interrupt them and make the enemy paranoid you start fighting them from the inside out. Once you start to understand all of these things a picture will start to form about an effective war strategy. At first you might have trouble knowing what to expect when you go to war. But be sure to pay attention to what happens. If you’re not around for the battles make sure there’s someone there who can accurately tell you what happened. If you’re around listen to teamspeak and even if you’re victorious figure out things that your squad might have done wrong, or things the enemy did. Take note of key player’s habits. Also something I hear a lot is not to talk in local. It’s despised and people go on and on about smack but sometimes it can be very beneficial. Instigating people into blabbing out their ship setups or future plans is pretty useful. Don’t talk junk about their moms or whatever but it’s ok to chat. The name of the game though is letting them talk. You want your enemy to become an information source. Ignore his cut downs and simply ask questions. Tell him things that would make him just go on and on and on. Local can be used as a distraction too. So don’t think that just because someone put up that nasty post about your corp smacking in local is grounds for banning everyone in your corp from talking in local.

c. War]

One might ask, “What constitutes war?”. The answer to this in eve is what doesn’t? Anytime you’re attacked by a sovereignty seeking force in eve that’s considered war.. empire or not. But, if you know who just attacked you, you may realize that there are alternatives. Sometimes these people are just looking for some space to call home. Sometimes they’re trying to ransom you. Sometimes their CEO just has some beef with a particular member of your corp. Now what to do about this is really up to you and your members. If you plan to have a corp that stays around awhile it’s not a good idea to fight everyone. It’s also not a good idea just to allie up with anyone either. The point is that in any case you should always know exactly what your enemy wants. If you know that there may be a quicker, easier, and probably even beneficial way to end the war without having to annihilate them. However, if it comes to that. Be sure to do just that. The most effective, albeit dirty way to win a war is to attack your enemies’ psyche. If you’re always figuring out ways to make things more tense within your enemies’ corp you’re breaking down their most important asset. Teamwork. Anyone that plays eve longer than an hour realized you can’t do anything without a good bunch of friends in this game. You can’t mine, you can’t pirate, you can’t start a corp, you can’t even get very far with agent missions, higher levels anyway. If you take teamwork out of your enemies’ corp you’ve already won. It really is as simple as that. If you stress them out enough to break up their relationships as friends in eve, people start leaving, backstabbing, being selfish. Basically everything that makes a corp work falls apart. So when it comes to war in this game, you want to hurt a corporation’s structure. Eat up all their resources, kill all their poorer players, or find other ways to put too much stress on the leadership. Any of those things will usually end in complete victory.

At some point in your eve life you will confront an enemy that works primarily out of empire. When dealing with this kind of corp your only real choice is to start an empire war. Make sure you anger them enough so they declare on you also, this way the war is free. Also, if you get one of these empire corps you might want to consider not always killing them, they make good practice if they decide to go to war with you also. In fact it might also be a good idea to purposely go out and piss off some small empire corp if only for the fact that you want to declare on them and use them to train your own troops. Usually if you’re an alliance force that claims some area of 0.0 space you don’t want to start an empire war until late in the game. If you just need targets, that’s one thing. But if you’re serious about taking an enemy out and they’re large enough to be worried about, they’ll also claim some area of 0.0 space. The idea when dealing with that is to take the battle to them using empire to extend your battle range. If you start to make headway on wearing them down and they’re starting to get desperate for cash wait till the enemy starts really running back and forth between empire. Once this happens you’re ready to declare an empire war. You see at the beginning of a war with a large enemy you don’t want to pull them into empire. It’s a slew of people and it’s a real mess trying to find anyone amongst all of those people when that could just as easily be in 0.0. Plus it may cost you money. So if you declare too early you have an enormous force to fight that will probably set just as many traps in empire as you do. On top of that you can’t move to their space as easily or as safely. It just makes for a costly long war. If you declare when the enemy has an advantage on your space you’ve just given them the all the benefits you would have gotten had you waited till you had them on the run.

The perfect time to strike is usually right after a major battle. Say you have a full attack on the enemy systems and you’ve been taking them out left and right. When they’ve lost at least 50% of their total active fighting forces’ battleships in a close proximity of time. That is to say if they regularly blob in a fleet of 90 you wait till their losses come out to at least 50 in about week’s time. That’s the time to take it to empire. It will take them more than a day to get back on their feet and that will give time for the war to be in effect. You’ll have superiority in their space and if you want to keep it make it nearly impossible for them to get back with fresh supplies and start to hunt them down where they get supplies. Keep in mind though, that an empire war will be expensive. Make sure your corporation and your members are up for the financial responsibility of losses that are sure to come. In any battle/war in any form. The time to really give it your all is when you already have the enemy down. It doesn’t make for nice sports but it works out real well when you want to take them out. For instance, it’s common in eve to see a huge fleet move into enemy space to START a battle. That’s all good and fun but it’s a better idea when you have the enemy on the ropes. Make sure any ship that can fight is either defending or attacking or patrolling until the fighting stops. Slacking off before the job is done is an easy way to let the flames flare up again. At the end of a war showing incredible superiority is the only way to make sure players don’t come back again and start the same old ****.

The only time you should consider resolution, of any kind, surrender, treaties or anything, is when it benefits you more than it benefits the enemy. If the terms of surrender require you to pay isk, fight long enough to know that you’d lose everything if you kept it up. If the there’s talk of a treaty consider the enemy, do you want his space, or do you want his friendship? Which is the better solution is up to you. At any rate make sure that your decision will help you out. Never compromise too quickly. Most of this last paragraph is pretty much common sense, but it’s easy to make a hasty compromise too early. Don’t ever just take the first treaty or offer to end a war. Many times you can milk your enemy for much more than the initial offers you just have to kick him a bit while he’s down. War isn’t just about lost ships and isk, it’s a mind set. Keep your eye on the real goal which is to get your enemy to completely give up, not just settle. If you give in too quickly to compromise there is a good chance that you’ll be sublimely considered weak and an easy pushover. Which could stand you up as a target later or perhaps for someone else. And compromise is not to be confused with mercy. Mercy is when someone begs you for a way out. Someone who is at the very end of their rope and knows he’s lost. Begging is not the same as wussing out or trying to weasel one’s way out of a bad situation. When you make your enemy beg to be left alone is when you should consider compromise, this way the ball will be completely in your court and you can get him to give in to basically whatever you want. That’s where mercy comes in, not before, and mercy is something completely based on one’s morals. I won’t presume to tell you when to grant someone mercy. And effectively at this point only a real fool would see that as weakness, seeing as you got him to the point of begging in the first place.

d. Large Battles]

Large Battles are effectively any large force of 20+ players facing off against 20+ others. Usually this results in lag issues and fighting can ensue over whole constellations and regions not just a select number of systems or choke points. Typically larger battles consist mainly of battleships, but sometimes they can happen with smaller frigs or a force of invading frigs and a fleet of battleships. At any rate the setups for these ships vary greatly.

One ship that any fleet commander is afraid of are those that can target jam. Many times these are called as primary targets as they can render large numbers of ships completely unusable. Target jammers are usually best suited with caldari ships, but you can also use shorter range dampeners on any ship that has an extra midslot. If you’ve got a few frigs or cruisers that plan to tackle in a fleet battle (bad idea sometimes as there is usually a lot of lag) have them swap out extra warp scrams or webs for dampeners. They’ll end up helping out much more in weakening an enemy, especially in long range attack situations.

Range is a key factor in outfitting ships for battle as many corps go with a flavor of the month strategy. They’ll let all of their ships go shorter or longer just so that when warping in they can all come out at optimal and stay in a group to help confuse an enemy with too many targets (in the days before overview). NOW however, it’s a bad idea to stay in one big group. Seeing as overview makes it so easy to target the right ships, it’s more important than ever to split up into squads based on general function (tanks, frigs, EW, etc). As I’m thinking many people will read this document, and that many alliance armies and PvP player are starting to wise up to group tactics, don’t think you’ll always be facing an enemy so easy to defeat. Remember how I recommended groups of about 10 (less if you are facing a smaller force in the same system)? That’s because if you don’t put enough players into a group that groups total effectiveness and predictability can be completely destroyed by taking out only a few of their targets. Lets say on average it takes 5 battleships to take out any one battleship. And you have five ships in 4 groups and your facing an enemy of 20 or more divided into 2 groups of 10. At the beginning of the battle you take out 4 ships to 2. Now that the enemy has taken out two of your ships, lets say each one was in a different squad. Now it’s more likely it will take two volleys from each of those squads to take out their target, but the enemies rhythm will stay steady. No matter who you shot down even if they’re in the same group (unlikely), lets say that in this case (for fairness) ALL volleys are evenly distributed among each sides numbers, your enemy would still kill two ships every volley, while your army would start to crumble a bit from ineffectiveness and confusion. This is how the losses would look. Eab will represent the enemy numbers in squads a and b, Yabcd will represent your numbers from squads abc and d, see who’s some comes to 20 first. 5Ya-5Yb-5Yc-5Yd :: 10Ea-10Eb 5Ya-5Yb-4Yc-4Yd :: 8Ea-8Eb 4Ya-4Yb-4Yc-4Yd :: 7Ea-7Eb 3Ya-3Yb-4Yc-4Yd :: 6Ea-7Eb 3Ya-3Yb-3Yc-3Yd :: 6Ea-5Eb 3Ya-3Yb-2Yc-2Yd :: 4Ea-5Eb 2Ya-2Yb-2Yc-2Yd :: 4Ea-4Eb 1Ya-2Yb-2Yc-2Yd :: 4Ea-4Eb 1Ya-1Yb-2Yc-2Yd :: 3Ea-4Eb 1Ya-1Yb-1Yc-2Yd :: 3Ea-4Eb 1Ya-1Yb-1Yc-1Yd :: 3Ea-3Eb 0Ya-1Yb-1Yc-1Yd :: 3Ea-3Eb 0Ya-0Yb-1Yc-1Yd :: 3Ea-2Eb 0Ya-0Yb-1Yc-1Yd :: 3Ea-2Eb 0Ya-0Yb-0Yc-1Yd :: 3Ea-1Eb 0Ya-0Yb-0Yc-0Yd :: 3Ea-1Eb

Even though you technically COULD reorganize mid battle, that takes time and can easily get confusing. Having pre-laid out targets which are called by the commanders is a much more flexible way to go. There are SSOOOOO many reasons why having slightly larger redundant groups help. Also, keep in mind that different players and different battleships, combined with chance will effect this. This example was simply to offer some circumstance and show why having redundant forces to concentrate firepower is important. Team tactics are tricky. When a group’s numbers get below a certain point it’s sometimes best to re-align firepower to the same target as another squad. However, if your squads start out too small you force your players to make this shift more often resulting in lost time and increased chance on confusion. Ideally if the human factor wasn’t a problem we could all set up our men to direct firepower perfectly, not wasting even the tiniest bit of damage, but alas we are all human and a simpler guide to follow is usually better. Especially for beginners.

The squads I referred to earlier in “Structuring for PvP” are really just that. Their only real use is for training and camaraderie. It allows players the chance to answer to only a small group of people rather than the whole corporation constantly and it takes a lot of responsibility off of the CEOs/Directors. Plus they can make fleet training virtually transparent. This structure makes the corp feel more friendly, and gets players used to taking commands instead of just occasionally forming into teams for the occasional battle. This way players are regularly assembled and therefore are much more used to the way things work. Resulting in less panic, better response, and really better overall moral. It’s important also that your regular squads use more or less the same as far as training for combat goes (training meaning the way commanders call targets, general strategy or guidelines for completing common tactical tasks... like tackling or EW) because there’s a good chance that in battle the players will be split between other commanders, some they might never have met. The squads you organize during a large battle are the real deal. This is when players’ specialization really helps out and often your players are only divided into groups right before the fighting starts.

When being attacked or attacking a large force it’s imperative that you organize your available fleet in the shortest time possible. This is when a universal whisper on teamspeak pays off. Especially if you don’t cry wolf with it. After the organization occurs real strategy can proceed, and it makes a much better playing field for your forces. If you’re new to commanding whole armies and you have enough isk in the corp wallet, I’d suggest trying different strategies out. There’s really no good all inclusive plan. There are many things to consider and really the only way to get good at using strategy in game play is to take risks and try things. Make sure however that your corp members know why you’re taking those risks and why it’s important to do so. It’s also good to listen to suggestions from any player who might have them, especially if you have time to make a decision. Be aware of your situation though, if you think that wasting time considering too many options might result in something happening you can’t afford to happen, don’t do it. Stick to a simple plan. Even if it’s something simple you’ve never tried before simplicity will ensure a faster execution and less confusion for everyone. At any rate if you can afford a loss and you don’t have any experience take risks by forming up new strategies. This will help you out more than the isk will in sticky situations sure to come later. It will keep your mind open to strange ideas, it will get you used to what kinds of things work and what don’t, and it’ll heighten your ability to read your opponent whoever he might be.

e. Siege and taking territory]

Now the fun part! Generally a Siege is an all out full scale use of everything I’ve described above. There’s sure to be a few guerilla squads running raids, followed by a massive flood of larger battles and very soon after besieging an enemy station or a stronghold. You want to fit as many ships as possible for damage while keeping a few (at least) to scout around and to offer a bit of cover fire in the event of a counter-attack.

When you’re taking a station it’s easy to be snuck up on. Taking stations or POSes takes for effin ever unless you have an absolutely HUGE force or a few dreadnoughts. Which means it’s easy for your troops to get tired and bored, going afk or something like that. You need to have a covert ops mobile in an unbookmarked safespot to warp to in the event that an enemy fleet tries to pull a logon attack or something of the like. Currently, you can’t take an online POS with just battleships. It’s pretty much impossible and you’re going to lose whatever you send in long enough to come out of warp. If the enemy doesn’t have any guns on that POS and you have an enormous army... maybe. If not, even an offline POS is a son of a bitch. If you want to take that out go for their supplies. When taking stations try to pick a time when the enemy is unaware you’re going to attack, try not to make a corp mail about it. Tell it to only the people who are going to do it and right before you do. You want to be able to also seize their supplies. That’s a big plus in a war. If you take away their blueprints and supplies you just took their capital. If their miners offer to work for you let them. Instead of the enemy getting the mining refines you do.

Stations are a good thing to take. Better if by surprise. However, taking the station isn’t really the hard part. Even though it sounds hard it’s pretty easy to take a station or two. The hard part is holding them. Especially if you have a well prepared enemy. Holding the space is really where the hurt comes in. When sieging don’t let the enemy scare you away. Have patrols watch major systems, any miners you have make sure they know what to do if they see enemies patrolling around. This is another place that regular squads come in handy. Seeing as they’re all on at the same time you can assign them to patrol certain areas. Be sure not to make them use all of their play time doing things for the corp, that’ll piss em off. Just give each commander responsibility over different parts of the space that you just “took”, choke points and things like that. They won’t be able to stop major jump ins but you’ll know when a fleet is coming. (Map is delayed now and worked on an average so it’s not very accurate anymore). At first the most recent battle areas will be the hot spots. Places with stations or POSes. Try to assign a squad at all times to patrol any major empire-0.0 spots. This way when you get a pod kill, or when an enemy pilot needs a new ship you have a good place to cause extra harm. Plus, it splits them up and pushes them out. If your strategy holds long enough eventually they won’t even be able to get supplies in and out and the space will be easier to defend. This isn’t the end however. If you want to keep that space start making money off of it. Use it as if it’s yours. Keep patrols running for awhile and you may want to start an empire war to give your guys something to do, just to beat up on the enemy a bit more. If you started your war just to make a point, you might want to consider forcing the enemy to pay you for their space back. Especially if you have your own home to worry about. Perhaps in payments. I wouldn’t give it all back at once though, make em pay a hundred mil per system, or 500 mil per major station system your choice.

In any case successfully taking space is a hard task and it takes a long time. Don’t lie to yourself, you’re not going to beat them so bad they just give up. Not likely. It’s best to prepare for the worst even if that is the case just to be thorough.

IV. Defensive PvP]

Defensive PvP is pretty tricky. There’s usually a lot of unknowns. Your first step should always be to get prepared and train for getting attacked. When that happens collect as much information about your attacker or would be attacker as you possibly can. Then find something that your attacker values at least twice as much as whatever he attacked and hit him back. If your space is getting completely overrun make plans to invade his. First in small parties. Whatever you don’t plan to stay on the defensive. Any martial artist will tell you that your best asset is to attack first if you can, if you can’t get them off you and once you start to turn the tables hit them as hard as you ****ing can right in the temple. Go for death. There will be some attacks you simply can’t thwart, you’ve got to work with what you were left with though and hit em back. That’s all pretty much day one stuff and has be cliched and re-stated so many times it’s like eating regurgitated refried beans.

a. Know your enemy II]

When you’re protecting something that could be attacked, figure out who doesn’t want you to have whatever that is. Once you know that watch them, figure out how they get what they want and then get paranoid. Think up ways to keep supplies to your space even if your conquerables have been taken and you don’t have any online POSes. You might want to secretly select systems that would be good to put giant secure cans in for ammo and supplies. Teach your commanders to learn self sufficiency. Tell them to teach their troops as well. Things like making bookmarks. Anchoring cans and bringing extra ammo. Everyone should know how to set up camp and keep safe places close. Get paranoid with your workers. People who mine, people who sell, etc. They all need to know when to run and when to call for help. They most certainly need to know about what enemies you know about. So many miners I’ve killed that didn’t know I was even a threat even though I was AT WAR with the alliance they worked with. Information like that doesn’t have to be secret. Put it on an ingame website, forums or something. Make sure they know who to contact if they see really unusual activity. Don’t give the responsibility to yourself (as CEO or director) because you’ll get bogged down with false alarms. Give that responsibility to whoever takes care of hiring miners in the first place.

Assume that the people who hate you have a spy in your corp. Make a corp rule early on about suspected spies, something all inclusive. My favorite is probation. If you have reason to believe someone is a spy make them join a naped corp that’s not involved in your war. If later you change your mind and realize he’s not a spy get him back on and that’s one person you know later is less likely of being a spy. Make sure though that all of your members agree to this ahead of time so that people won’t get all pissy if it happens to them. And most importantly, don’t make it personal. People spy... it happens. You need to show respect even if you don’t agree with it. They may end up spying for you one day, or become a valuable asset later. Anyhow having a spy policy is highly recommended. It’ll keep you out of trouble later. Speaking of spies also assume the enemy will know a pretty good amount about you. Be careful on how you let operative gathered information out. And try not to give false alarms for serious matters that require the mass movement of all your members. Telling people to move to wherever every time you think you might get attacked, is an easy way to make them ignore you. A better plan would be to have a warning system, kindof like America’s defcon system. This way you can more accurately show how important something really is.

b. When to run]

Running happens a lot. It’s degrading, it hurts inside... but at some point you’ll lose at something and you’ll have to run. A good time when you’re defending space is when you’ve lost your closest place to refit. That’s a good time to regroup somewhere else and lick your wounds. But like I said before the tricky part in taking territory is keeping it. To prepare for such occasions slash and burn anything the enemy can get in your station systems. Friendly miners need to move, take market items off the market for a while, escrows should be bought and the money and item refunded to the proper owners, all of that **** has to move when you move. Don’t leave anything that the enemy can use against you.. Especially ships you might have parked in space. It’s a pretty standard anti-napoleon ideal. If a POS is going down, or you can’t support it unanchor that bad boy and sell it. Also have plenty of Giant secure cans and indies in your best and most reliable (by that I mean easiest to defend and re-supply) POS. Have pre-selected systems set out where it would be easy to quickly launch a counter-offensive. Put those cans out with ammo and general supplies and get to work. Have your troops know how to set up a camp. That is take all the ammo they can hold and on their free time when they can sneak it by, stick it in a can somewhere out in space at a bookmark that only they have. Preferably in one of your pre-selected systems. Having systems already thought out gives you the ability to plan where your forces are coming from, having your men come all organized in the same general area is really helpful and prevents unnecessary losses.

You should always have campsites laid out in neighboring systems. This way if the enemy finds one of your camps, you can use the troops in the next system or so to trap them. Also get acquainted with camp busting strategies. Set traps in chokepoints (Do NOT just sit around like a typical gate camp). Try to keep your troops moving as to keep the map and the enemy off of their backs. Spring a trap, move on, set a trap, spring a trap move on. Most of running actually consists of not running too far. Always run when you can’t take any more losses in the corp wallet. Borrow money from friend corps, mine a ton in empire, sell your caldari navy raven, but don’t allow your corpmates to think that the corp is dead. That’s a great way to surrender. It takes a lot of capital to fund a war and to keep space and if you lose it sometimes you just lose it. If you’re overrun by one of the stronger forces in eve, find a place somewhere else that’s controlled by a weaker alliance and crush them and take their space. If you decide to run, don’t wait till you’ve fallen off the ladder, make sure you’ve only slipped a few rungs, then collect momentum again and come back to it later. It’s best to have a perpetually rethought plan of what to do should you lose your space. Figure out who you can bunker in with and what friends you can mooch off of to keep things going. That’s a big part of the preparation.

V. Followups...]

To re-iterate some ideas only mentioned here and not really formally said... Use your corpmates skills to their advantage. Don’t tell them mining is stupid. What kind of retarded nonsense is that anyway? It’s a good way to make money is what it is. If you’re into PvP and one of your corpmates happens to know a lot about mining, have him arrange the contracts with miners in your territory. It’ll be a good setup for everyone. He has someone to mine with to support himself, you have a reliable trustee to deal with doofy miner people, and they have someone that listens to them and is friendly with them. If you have a corp member that’s into safespot busting, refer people to him to get trained up on basic concepts. Many CEOs and directors I’ve worked for constantly complain about people asking them ****. It’s their own **** fault. As a CEO or Director you’re main purpose isn’t to give all inspiring micro detail to every one of your employee’s lives, it’s only to figure out who’s best to carry out whatever responsibility. Remember that as a leader, you may indeed be the link between two completely unrelated parts of your corp, BUT you are the weakest link. And don’t ever think otherwise. If you get big headed people will start to hate you. And then essentially afterwards comes the end of your corporation.

I think that’s about it. If you’ve read this far I’m impressed. Again I encourage anyone to change this however they want but leave a link down at the bottom here to the previous works... starting with this one I guess. If a link is dead and you have that version it would be nice if you stuck it somewhere and updated it.

http://attrezzo.ownmail.net/eve-PvP_1.0.rtf

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