Formatting is in need of an update, content needs some polish (why is nothing capitalized in bullet points?), and a bit of information needs to be updated.
Author: Rikta Garemoko
What you can learn in this guide:
Difficulty: Beginners
So, you want to become a Fleet Commander? A lot of people think about it at some point in their EVE career. Nevertheless for the most its a big step to really take out their first fleet.
Don't get me wrong: There is nothing better than
… but, people also have the desire to just read more about what a Fleet Commander should think of, to find more confidence and to have some theoretical background. This guide tries to accomplish exactly that. Its addressing rookies on their way to become a FC and maybe its even useful for those who just started doing it.
I want to give you some very practical things and impulses to think about to find the confidence to get started, to know what you can do already to prepare yourself and what you can do to improve.
This guide is divided in many small independent chapters. The order of chapters has nothing to say.
It's not needed to …
… during your first fleets. See at as a set of ideas and impulses.
Have you ever thought about which type of FC you want to become? Let's be honest: with which type of FC do you enjoy the most flying yourself?
Do you enjoy it if the FC:
or do you enjoy it if the FC:
You can most likely extend these two lists with points you have experienced in the past yourself. If you want to become a good FC, you are completely dependent on the fact that people also want to fly with you :)
You will start small. People don't know you and will give it a try, if there is nothing better to do. If you whelp the whole fleet in the first 15 minutes in a way which could have been avoided: well, I guess the next time they have to be really bored to x up again.
But, if they get the impression that you knew what you were doing, if they had a good time with you - no matter how many kills you got them - they will come back. They will spread word about you, because they had a good time.
You shouldn't underestimate that building yourself a good reputation is part of the job!
Sure. You will make mistakes. You will whelp fleets. People tend to forgive that if they still had a good time with you. Being well prepared, knowing your limits and not being a douche on comms is a good start to achieve that.
It is easy to be an armchair general, a FC in your daydreams at work, an EFT warrior creating the great masterplan.
But hey: Keep it simple, stupid! Don't go wild on what you want to do.
Start with one simple doctrine (like for example Talwars) and become good at it. Focus on it.
Become an expert in FCing a cheap doctrine first. Don't plan to execute complicated things with an expensive fleet.
A good FC will need to be really flexible later on. But you have just started. Stay focused for now!
Everything else comes later and with time!
When you start as a new FC it is all about reducing complexity!
Pretty much everything is this guide tries to reduce the complexity for you.
You want to be calm, confident and focused on a few key things, to make good decisions.
Every FC will agree that the biggest challenge in doing the job is to handle its complexity in the heat of the moment. My firm believe and own experience is, that its help a lot if you are well prepared and do your homework before you go out and have to call your first target.
Start small and focus on one specific doctrine you want to fly. (can't repeat that often enough) Get to know this doctrine inside out. Fire up EFT/PYFA and become familiar with the strength and weaknesses of the ships you will fly, and also check zKill for fits commonly used by people you will be fighting.
You have to really know by heart what you can do with YOUR ships. The next step is to get an idea of what you can engage with this ships. Write it down!
I myself have literally(!) one piece of paper printed out on my desk which tells me what I will do and what not. Write it down and stick to it. To think this through before you go out will reduce complexity while you are out with your fleet. If your scout gives you intel just check this list. Don't start thinking about it, while the hostiles already sit on the other side of the gate.
So where could you operate? You could defend our home in Catch. You could visit Providence. You could say hello to the angry Russians in Stain. You could go to faction Warfare space.
Where ever you want to go: Know this area very well!
Gathering intel, writing it down in your printed maps and be familiar with what is going on during the time you plan your fleets is very helpful.
Let's take Providence for example:
Just a short list of tipps for checking killboards:
And so on. Gathering intel, being a spy yourself and doing solo recon missions can be a lot of fun and prepares yourself a lot for bringing an actual fleet down to the area you want to be active in! Obviously you could spent a lot of time and effort with gathering intel. Decide for yourself how much you want/can focus on and how much depth of information you need to feel comfortable.
I for myself really like it and it's a great weekly routine I can work on. Every week I spend a couple of hours to improve my own intel. Its one of the many things you can spent time with in EVE if there is nothing more interesting to do.
You don't need to know all this data by heart when you go there. But just gathering - whether you will remember all of it or not - will prepare you better, than flying blind into it. Having a better idea of what you are getting into will reduce complexity during your fleet, even if this preparation itself, might appear quite complex in itself ;)
Again: Your job as FC is complicated enough. Make it easier by delegating special tasks to others in fleet. What I find the most helpful are these three things:
Already when forming up, delegate the task of putting the fleet together to someone else. Make him boss and ask him to use the "Fleet Composition" tool, to put in Wing & Squad Commanders and to notice when someone brings stupid ships.
Let him handle all the following issues which pop up all the time:
And so on. All this shit. Give this guy a clear briefing in the beginning what you want and he takes it from there. You have other things to focus on, than handling this issues.
If you know you will go to region XYZ ask a covert-ops or interceptor pilot to X up in fleet. If there is none, ask someone to do it for you explicitly and make clear, that he will be of great value for the fleet.
You will still have your interceptor scouts with your fleet jumping one system ahead. This guy is dedicated and independent from your fleet to find what you are looking for.
Convo him and assign him the task to already go to the area where you want to operate in and let him start gathering intel on his own. He will have a head start of maybe 15 minutes and he can already tell you - in this convo, not on comms - if he finds gategamps, hostile fleets roaming, ratting carriers or what so ever.
Let him know, what kind of fleet you would want to engage. If he finds a juicy target, he should keep his eyes on the target. While the fleet is forming up and someone else is organizing your fleet you want to focus on your intel and this scout, to lead the fleet not into the unknown but into an already scouted area.
This might be controversial, but I would recommend you to ask in fleet if there is an experienced anchor pilot in a DPS ship who simply knows how to keep a fleet at optimal range of hostiles. Many FCs also prefer to be the anchor for the fleet themselves, but for a new FC it makes things a lot easier, if you can simply anchor up yourself and concentrate on the overall battlefield and target calling, than also on moving the fleet around.
If you have no one who is confident with this task, it of course doesn't make sense. But if you're lucky, having a great anchor is another great 'complexity reducer'. Just communicating with him on comms like 'get me closer to the hostile', 'point the fleet to the sun', 'we need to pull more range' is easier than having to do it yourself.
And there is another simple benefit: every smart hostile FC might kill the obvious anchor pretty early on the fight.
As an FC it is really important to have a good orientation on the battlefield and a certain degree of situational awareness. Both you can not get by reading this guide, but just by pure PVP experience in the game. The good news it: you can train this a lot without having to be a FC.
My advice to improve your orientation is to join as many fleets as possible in a DPS ship and to do something different, than just anchoring up and picking up broadcast from your fleet window. You might already do the following, but if not: start doing it now!
During a fight you not only just anchor up and shoot the primaries, but you also:
You want to get yourself in a situation as you would be in control, to just train to
Use every fleet as an FC training by actively thinking about what YOU would do now in this situation. Train to handle all these things at the same time under pressure. Try to think about it in real time - don't just judge what you have would have done differently after the fight is over.
This is a really good training and as long you don't have a very good feeling, that you can keep track of everything around you it might be a bit early to FC your own fleet yet.
This is the ability to quickly comprehend what is going on, realizing what will most likely happen next, without having to think about it very long. Your situational awareness will increase over time, as more experience you gather, as more different situation you will encounter.
It's something you can work on. What really helps to train your situational awareness is:
Solo PVP or going out in a very small group is one of the best ways to work on your situational awareness. Very good scouts and very good FCs are often also very good solo pilots, as it simply forces you to make all decision by yourself, instead of just following orders.
Your will train your muscle to anticipate what is most like for the enemy to do next.
Moving a fleet around is not a big deal at all. Telling people to align to something, to hold, to jump and to warp a fleet is a piece of cake and can be done by simply everyone. It's much more about being able to apply different tactics and to understand a situation, to know what you can do and what not.
For your first fleets I want to give you three simple tactics you can apply. They all work quite well with Talwars. (little hint)
And I want to tell you one thing, you will never ever do on your first fleets: you will never ever jump into a hostile gatecamp!
Jumping into a hostile fleet, which is setup on a gate, will most likely shred you to pieces, unless your largely outnumber or outgun them and there is really no reason to do that. Jumping into another fleet puts you most of the time in a bad position. Put this rule on the list of things, you will never do, even if this is the only way to get a kill.
Yeah, let's be honest: it is often very boring to do it and no one likes it. But nevertheless it gives you the highest level of control over the situation and is a good way to start as a new FC.
To keep morale high in your fleet, I advise you to do two things:
How to set up a gatecamp:
Some remarks for the different roles:
If something comes through your gate you can kill: bubble up, tackle it, kill it
If something comes through your gate, which you don't want to engage: get out fast enough!
You should know way in advance by your scout if something is coming, which you do not want to fight. For this case you want to have a clear plan, how to get away quickly from this position.
Let's be clear about this tactic: you can only catch, what is stupid enough to jump into you. A small gang with a scout, should most likely not run directly into your trap. Everything which does: they will most likely try to burn back to the gate. Therefore its so important that you have tackle with scrams and web.
There are a lot of more advanced tactics related to gate camps - you can do some things to increase the chance to get a fight with a smaller gangs than yours - but those I will explain in another guide.
Roaming in hostile space, which has systems with stations in it, is a great place to execute the 'station trap'. You will be surprised how man pilots still warp their ratting ships or mining barges to stations to get safe, instead of a POS or bouncing between safespots.
The great news is, that with Providence next door (which has a station in nearly every system) you have a great training ground only a few jumps out.
How to set up the station trap:
You have to execute this really fast to quickly bubble up the station. When hostiles land on the station caught at the edge of the bubble, it is key to get a scram and web on him, as they will try to get in docking range or warp off.
If you have a prober with you, he should start probing as soon the bubbles are up. He might find someone in a safespot and it increases the pressure for people in safespots, so that they might try to warp to the station.
If you are in a system where the enemy has a jump-bridge, its worth camping the station for up to 15 minutes, as people who are not paying attention might bridge into the system and warp straight to the station.
If you are in ships with a high volley damage (like Talwars) you might even try to instap-pop ships who try to undock, get vulnerable and not dock up quick enough.
Another popular tactic is to 'hit and run'. This works extremely well with long range fleets, who have a high volley damage. (i.e. Talwars) If you have a enemy fleet location, for example because:
How to execute a hit and run:
After that get a warp-in at another position, move your warp-out to a different planet and start over again. If there are already two fleets fighting each other, you will probably have a very easy time to do this and can stay at your position killing ships a little longer.
If not: your main challenge will be to get tackle on the enemy fleet. If you can get a decent prober in your fleet to scan down enemies and provide warp-ins its perfect!
What is important: after every run make sure, that you really kill more ISK than you lose!
There is only one simple rule for target calling, which is always right: it's better to call any ship, than none
If you have no clue for the first seconds what to do: sort by range and call the closest target to you and work your way up, until you might have a better overview of the situation.
Apart from that it really always depends on the situation and therefore I want to give you just a few things to think about, to make your own decisions:
I would only primary logistics if it needs to be. You should have a rough idea of how much damage your fleet can apply and you should be able to roughly estimate how much EHP your targets have and how much a single T1 and T2 logistics can repp.
It's also a question of your own E-War. With a few E-Wars ships in your back and not a massive logistics support on the other side, I would at first ignore them. If you see, that they repps are holding, or that it simply takes to long to kill something, you can switch back to them at any point during the fight.
Same thinking as with the logistics. If you can ignore them, ignore them. I would always start the fight and reconsider your situation after the first 60 seconds. Ask you logistics if they have a lot of issues with jamming and dampening.
If you have a good amount of support ships: order them to go after E-War. They will most likely warp off, if a few frigates start chasing them. Another tactic is to just order everyone to lock the E-War ships without shooting them. Massive yellow boxing should make most E-War pilots to warp off.
The only exception I would make: if you fight ships with turrets and they have Vigils or Bellicose ships in fleet: take them down first. Getting them off the field will cut down their DPS by quite a lot.
Hyenas, Rapiers, Huginns & Lokis have long range webs. Keres, Arazus, Lachesis & Proteus have long range points. Both groups are a high threats for you. Webs more than points, as they will maximize the damage application. Points are relevant in fights, where there is actually a chance to warp of when called primary. (for example if you fight missile ships, which give you time to warp off) The T3 will have a massive amount of EHP, the EAFs are paper thin.
If you are for example in Talwars, all you have is your range and speed. If this is compromised by these ships on the field, they have to go down first!
If you think you can win the fight: ignore the long points and kill the long webs first. If you can't kill them and if you notice that you lose the fight: get out of the fight and while doing that primary the long points.
Hostile Interdictors should always be high on your list if you are in a situation where you don't want to get bubbled. It would not say they are top of the list in every situation, but prolly in most.
If everything else is fine you call the hostile DPS ships as primaries. You want to focus first on the highest DPS ships. If there is no difference between the ships left on the field I recommend you to have at least the column 'Velocity' active in your overview. ('Transversal Velocity' if you fly turret ships) and to start with the slowest ships in your range for the best damage application.
As its quite likely at the current situation, that you start your career as a FC with Talwars, I just want to say two things about them.
Ask your pilots to have:
If they don't: your fleet might not be as good as you think. So its better to put them in another ships than the Talwar. Maybe use the MOTD of your fleet to make this very clear.
Some general things I wanted to address:
So that's it for this guide. I hope I could give you a better idea and some practical advise on how to get started as a FC. Remember that you can already train a lot, by simply joining fleets yourself and having in mind, that you might want to FC a fleet by your own in the future. Learn from others and already start thinking as a FC.
Do your homework. Get to know different ship fittings, make notes on their strength and weaknesses. Go out and start gathering intel, create your own little knowledge-base, have a lot of bookmarks for safespots and tacticals and be well prepared.
Keep it simple. Delegate what you can, focus on just one simple doctrine like Talwars and get familiar with this three simple tactics I told you and try to become really good in executing them.
I will write a guide about more advanced tactics in the future.
If you have any questions or feedback: let's discuss them in this post on reddit about this guide.
7o
Rikta Garemoko