How to solo PVP

By: Kelon Darklight

First rule- Fly what you can afford to lose!

Ballpark Costs

• T1 frigate with t2 guns, prop, etc.- 5mil to 10mil
• T2 frigate- 30 to 45mil depending on fit
• Navy Frigate- 15 to 25 million depending on meta modules
• Destroyers with t2 guns- 10 to 15mil
• T1 cruiser- 30-40mil

Picking a ship for solo

What do you want to do? General Archetypes

• Dual web/blaster
• Mwd/scram/web
• Ab/scram/web
• Mwd/point
• 10mn Afterburner fits
• Dual Rep
• Dual Propulsion

Dual Web/Blaster

• This is basically Enyos, Comets, Merlins, and Incursus.
• The basic idea is very simple. You load void for maximum damage, and the dual web allows you to close into void range and then keep the trans down so you can apply full void dps.
• DO NOT ORBIT! If you must, use keep at range 1000m. This is well within void range and allows you to not screw your own tracking.
• If you notice the guy aligning out, you can delay his warp out by dropping webs (needs to be at 75% speed to warp). This is a fairly advanced tactic and doesn't always work anyway due to cycle time.

In this second example I am showing a dual web incursus fit. Why dual web? So I can close into void range and blast them with 290 dps. While you will lose kills to them warping off, I have gotten many kills with dual web fits vs T2 and faction frigates. Basically just warp into non-kiting frigates, keep at 1000, and overheat and pray. I would avoid fighting gallente/caldari t2 frigates because of their super high kin/therm resist profile.

So, you spot a vengeance, and take the fight

• Due to it not aligning out, you manage to break its dual reps and kill it.
• If you are fighting a blaster boat, align out if you notice dual web so you can warp off
• Technically no one should die to dual webs, but people don’t except dual web incursus. I get lots of kills with dual webs!

MWD/Scram/Web

• In a mwd/scram/web frigate you are in general looking for mwd/point ships to kill. Good examples are condors, fleet inties, and things of this nature.
• You scram, and then try to hold your desired range. For an executioner, this usually means to keep outside of 6 or 7km and apply dps with scorch if it has short range guns. Missile boat you close into multi range. If using an atron, you want to get on top of them to apply dps with your blasters.
• Usually fighting an AB frigate will not end well as they can dictate the range of the fight as you will not be able to MWD.

The basic idea in this fit is to either use navy multifreq on missile boats and usually use pulses on gun fits. Scorch will outrange most of your prey so you can pound them without having to get within their effective range. This fit has been very successful for me for chasing down and killing inties. You will want to learn how to sling shot, which is in a later slide.

Ab/scram/web

• Most common in low sec FW space. This is due to the fact they can sit inside a FW plex and force mwd fits to warp into them, giving them a fair shot at scram/webbing them before they can pull out of range.
• Tends to try to either outrange or out dps its foes
• Main issue is that any mwd frigate will be much faster, so it will be hard to escape from a mwd frigate
• Tends to have stronger tank than a MWD frigate due to the lower fitting requirement of an AB and no cap penalty that the mwd imposes on a ship.

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Pretend this is your ship. With scorch you have about 10km effective range. This is good, as that is past your effective scram range anyway. So your goal in this ship is to maintain 7 to 8km from your target. This will reduce incoming dps from close range fits, which is how most of your targets will be fitted. This will also help keep transversal down, which is good because lasers have worse tracking of all the close range weapons.

So say you are in that tormentor and see a Comet

• What you know: many comets are blaster fit, so unless he is dual web you stand a decent chance at keeping the range open. If he is dual web, align out and warp if you are losing.
• If he is 150mm fit, you have just as much range and a very stiff tank with the 400mm plate. While he could be the rare kiting comet, you decide to take the risk and go in.
• Turns out he was mwd/scram/blaster fit so you easily control range and kill him with very little damage done to you.

Mwd/point

• Classic examples of this are Slicers and Condors
• Generally you are relying on staying out of your opponent's range while dealing damage to them.
• My advice is to learn how to manual pilot instead of using orbit. Later you will see how slingshotting works and you want to avoid being a victim of that.
• If you have free mids, you can put on defensive web, defensive scram, a TD to reduce their range, or a damp to reduce their lock range.

Cheap Kiting fit. As you can see antimatter doesn’t quite have the range to apply full dps at the edge of point range, so you might want to consider using a longer range ammo. The locus rigs extend the range of the guns to help with kiting. If you need more cpu, you could swap one of the mag stabs for a tracking enhancer. Even with plain antimatter, this fit does 226 dps! Not bad for cheap fit.

10mn Afterburner

• Major advantages- You don’t get the sig bloom, can’t be scrammed off, and still have close to MWD speed
• Major disadvantages- Uses tons of fitting, so generally tank on these fits are thinner (offset usually by the smaller sig) and smaller weapons. The last and most important one is that it takes up to 20+ seconds to get up to full speed and you turn like a slug.
• The most infamous example currently is the 10mn Confessor. In speed mode, those things can go as fast as inties normally go on mwd. With its dps projection and low sig, it’s a beast to try to fight solo. If you are in a frigate, my advice is to generally avoid these!

If you look at the right, you can see that the align time is 17.2 seconds, which is the major downfall of 10mn fit. Takes a long time to get to full speed. The plus is you are unscrammable and you can overheat the 10mn AB much longer than you can overheat a mwd. While slower than mwd when not overheating, you can overheat the 10mn for up to 2 minutes. That is a long time! Be careful to not get slingshotted away from what you are shooting, as that is the main problem with this ship.

Dual Rep

• While having alot of tank is not a bad thing, the major issue I have with these fits is you need to give up a medium slot for them. Either for a 2nd MASB or for a cap booster.
• This tends to leave you with only a scram for tackle. While not a bad thing, this leaves you with very little room for dictating range vs fits with a web
• You can tell sometimes if the ship you are fighting will be dual rep if the only tackle they put on you is a scram (example. Incursus has 3 mids, only a scram says he is using the other slot for a cap booster)

This fit works around the issue that a dual MASB tank would give. Even though you rep less than you would with dual masb, you get the benefit of having a web. While you don't need range control to apply your dps, web increases your dps and will help keep the distance you want from your target. The SAAR as nice synergy with the MASB as one does not use cap and the other one does.

Dual Prop

• Major Advantages- Lets you have the benefits of the MWD (Fast) and the benefit of the AB (less cap usage, lower sig, scramproof)
• Major Disadvantage- Uses two of your mid slots. Still get the cap penalty from the MWD while using AB. Uses lots of your fitting putting on two propulsion modules.

How to fit a frigate for solo

Step 0- Download EFT

Step 1- Fit Damage Control

Step 2- Fit either AB or MWD

Step 3- Fit at least one tackle module (scram, point, web)

Step 4- Fit tank, so either MASB, MSE, 200mm plate(sometimes with a SAAR, the plate acts as buffer), 400mm plate, or a SAAR

Step 5- Mount largest guns possible!

Step 6- Rigs and extra slots to taste

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Additional tips for ship fitting

• Some 3% implants are really cheap, its worth looking into them (ex. small laser damage 3% is only 500k or so in Jita)
• Drone selection is usually hobgoblins for brawling and acolytes for fast drones
• Save on CPU by swapping to compact on points, scrams, webs, and damage controls
• Smaller weapons use less fitting and have better tracking at the cost of dps/range
• Rigs that do the same thing as a module do stack, so keep this in mind so you aren’t heavily overstacking. Stacking Penalties- 1/0.87/0.57/0.28 (ala don't use more than 3 modules that affect same stat)

What ammo should I carry?

• Missile and rocket ships should carry every flavor of damage. To apply rage dps vs an AB frigate in general dual webs are required so rage rockets are not necessary to always carry. Javelin rockets are always handy in case you need the extra range.
• Blasters tend to be Void, Navy Antimatter, and Null. Void has tracking penalties so only use it if you are confident you can overcome that issue.
• Rails tend to be Javelin, Navy Antimatter, a choice of long range ammo, and some spike if you really need the extra range for a kiter.
• Pulses tend to be Navy Multi and scorch. While Conflag is a choice, your tracking is already the worse of the short range weapons.
• Beams is either Navy Multi or Gamma, and a ammo that lets you hit out to either point range or long range depending if you have optimal bonuses or not.
• Autocannons carry EMP, Phased plasma, and Fusion for short range, and barrage for longer projection.
• Artillery uses the same short range ammo as autocannons, and delepeted uranium.

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Ammo selection matters

• Beyond the obvious choice of close range and long range ammos during a fight, the difference in resists needs to be considered.
• E.G a rifter using auto cannons vs a punisher that has a DCU fitted. If the rifter uses EMP, he is hitting a resist profile of 66% EM. Now if he uses say thermal instead he is only hitting a resist profile of 56%. That is a increase of 10% applied damage if you take the time to consider what to use! While exp is the lowest at 45%, it is typically covered by an exp rig on armor ships. A single exp rig raises it to 61%.
• In general, em followed by therm vs shield tank ships and exp followed by kin vs armor ships if possible. The exception comes from T2 ships.

When to close and when to keep the range open

• So typically if you have weapons that outrange your foe, you want to keep “at range”, while if they have longer range you want to close distance and get under their guns.
• How will I know what kind of weapons they have fitted?
• There is a handy dandy chart on the next page that shows pictures of every weapon, curiosity of Azual Skoll a very good ex-uni Solo PVPer. http://i.imgur.com/c08RJ.jpg if you want to print a copy out
• If you have time and intel on who you will fight, checking EVE kill or Zkill for their past losses will generally tell you their fit.

T2 Resist holes

• Gallente get bonuses to their Kin and Therm resists, so exp tends to be the best choice here.
• Caldari also get bonuses to their Kin and Therm resists, so generally EM tends to be the best damage choice here.
• Amarr get bonuses to Exp and Kin, so Therm tends to be the best damage here.
• Minmatar get bonuses to EM and Therm, so vs a Wolf Exp is the best choice, while vs Jags Kin tends to be the best choice.

When to Overheat

• Guns will overheat for at least over a minute for a frigate. Because this is longer than most fights, make sure you always overheat your guns going in. Don’t forget to stop overheating for longer fights, nothing more embarrassing that dying because you burnt out your guns.
• MWDs are very vulnerable to heat damage. You can get as little as 3 overheat cycles before burnout. So be very careful with overheating your MWD!
• AB’s, scram, points, and webs last decently long, but you have to be careful with overheat to not burn out. MASBs overheat is almost always worthwhile, but has to be balanced vs the need to overheat your other midslots. If you are using a web or a scram defensively, that should always be pre-heated for use.
• As the only thing you can heat in your lows will be armor repairers, there is no reason to not overheat for maximum hp/s.

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How do I deal with overheat damage?

• Any station with a repair facility you can use to repair damage to modules, but these are not always available. You can be in hostile FW space or Sov null so you need another solution
• Nanite paste can be used to repair any module that is not totally burnt out. The greater the damage to the module, the longer the repair takes and the more nanite is used. This is for in between fights as even light heat damage takes a good time frame to repair! If you totally burn out a module you have to repair it inside a station. Don’t forget to online it after you are done! This can be somewhat gotten around if you have spare modules and a mobile depot on hand, but usually the station repairs is the only fix.

How to pick a fight!

• Need to roam around, look for people in local, and use d-scan to see what is in space
• Problem is that not every ship in space is out and about, so it can be worthwhile having a notepad to record what stuff is POS junk
• But Kelon, how do I locate appropriate areas to roam in to do solo?

Someone is on the gate or at a station, can I engage without being shot by gate guns?

• If they are a legal target, then yes. That means they have to be suspect flashy (yellow), criminal or permaflashy (flashy red), limited engagement (teal), or a war target (also flashy red).
• What if you want to shoot someone who is currently not a legal target on a gate? If you want to do that, check out Ninja-ing on the next slide.

How to Ninja

• What is Ninja-ing? It is the technique of being able to shoot non- legal targets in low sec that are on a gate or station.
• Step 1: Align out, and then shoot target and warp off.
• Step 2: Warp back
• Step 3: Shoot!
• It really is that simple. As long as re-aggress that target within 5 minutes, gate guns will not engage you anywhere in low sec.

D-scan is thy friend, unless its combat recons. Then you are screwed.

• If you mouse click in space, you can then hit C. This toggles camera tracking on/off. This is extremely useful when you want to do narrow scans on plexs, gates, belts, and anything else in space.
• Dotlan http://evemaps.dotlan.net/ is very useful for a roadmap for roaming around in. You can also tell it to show player kills, npc kills, or jumps within the last X to see where there is activity.
• Pirates little helper is also a useful tool, though not one I use myself

How to use it offensively

• While space is big, most people tend to be at certain spots in space. The first spots to check are stargates, stations, the sun, FW plexs, combat anoms in null, asteroid belts, and then planets. Be aware that ships around planets can be just sitting in a POS so they are not always something to worry about.
• Generally you start with 360 degrees to max possible distance. If you see something of interest, narrow it down to 5 or 15 degrees and start checking places. This is where the tracking camera comes in handy. It will automatically point your camera to whatever object you currently have selected. Also in a system where everything is close cut down on your range to eliminate possible spots without having to check each one.

How to use it defensively

• As you don’t need to know where they are coming from you can generally set it to 360 degrees and max range. If you are in say a plex you can swap from long range to 100000 km for checking if any of the ships you see are outside your plex or not.

So I spotted someone at a FW plex, what do I do now?!

• Evaluate what you think is their likely configuration for their ship.
• I avoid E-war frigates usually, as they are a real pain to fight. Nothing like being jammed or damped to 5km for an entire fight.
• It is possible to use eve kill to look up pilots and their likely fit depending on amount in local and your knowledge of who's in what.
• If it is a medium or large plex, you need to be careful of combat recons. They are immune to d-scan and thus a real threat to you if you warp unaware of them.

Know Common Fits

• Examples:
• Condors tend to be MWD/Light Missile fit/Point
• Slicers tend to be mwd/point
• Merlins/Incursus tend to be AB/scram/web
• Fleet Inties usually are MWD/long/MSE
• Really too many for me to list
• Note that while these are common, you always run into exception of the rules. For example, I went in a mwd fit to catch a slicer the other day, and he scrammed me and brawl me down due to his ab.

That’s great Kelon, but there is more than one!

• That does not make it impossible, just need to use your noggin!
• The best way to fight a gang, is to turn into a series of 1v1s instead of a 1vgang. No one has enough tank for that!
• I do usually avoid fights where one of the frigates is an EWAR frigate. Nothing like bonused TDs, damps, or ecm to ruin your day.
• If you think you can kill someone, try to separate them from their friends.
• How do I do that?

How to separate 101

• One method of separating people is FW plexs. As these have a size restriction you can force gangs to leave behind things that don’t fit if they want to follow you
• Another method is kiting them around ongrid. As people cannot warp to people that are at a plex, you can use speed to force them to separate to keep up the chase. You don’t have to be faster than them, unless they are in the same fit/ships, their own speed will separate them as no one has the same speed.
• Even if you aren’t on a plex grid, people have to be at 150km or greater to warp to fleet mates, so good positioning can do the same thing.

How to separate 102

• Clever use of bookmarks can be key to getting kills, especially in null
• Say you have a bookmark aligned to gate B, and you warp from gate A to gate B. Even though you only warped short distance, it still looks like you warped to gate B. This means aggressive pilots will warp after you and you can warp back to the gate to catch stragglers.
• Another example is someone warps off a gate at 100km from gate B and you are on gate A. If you have a tactical aligned with gate B at 200km, you can warp to that tactical at 100km and land right on top of them.

Example fight

The following is a fight I did in a 400mm plated coercer. I had an optimal of 20km and had about 1.6km/s speed. Does about 200+ dps within that range.

The Players

Merlin

Hawk

Ishkur

Inquisitor

Ares

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Coercer

Retribution

Warps in at 30km to scout out the Small Outpost, see a Hawk at the gate

Scouting the Outpost

D-scan from the ingate, see a single Hawk at the Small Outpost, long D shows no other ships currently in range.

Coercer Objectives: Stay within 15-20km of the Hawk to apply damage with Scorch, do not get in Scram/Web range

Hawk attempts to closes to scram/web range

Don’t get on top of gate, otherwise his friends can land on you, plus you can get stuck on gate

Plan of attack

First Backup for the Hawk Arrives

Merlin lands at the gate at zero.

Merlin goes in to tackle coercer. With the Hawk falling back, this allows him to either force me to retreat, get into scram/web range to keep within dps range of the hawk, or waste time by going around him.

Hawk, unable to close, retreats to acceleration gate

Coercer Objectives: Stay untackled. While finishing off the Hawk would be the most desirable, the Merlin closing in forces the Coercer to swap to the Merlin and turn away from the chase. Must finish off the Merlin quickly enough so the Hawk does not get enough time to reload a MASB.

First Backup Arrives- Stage 2

BOOM!

The Hawk, embolden by the Merlin's arrival, does not warp off and stays on grid. He also decides to burn towards me. Sadly, for him, the Merlin dies in short order.

Coercer Objective: Go back to applying DPS on the Hawk, watch the Hawk to avoid a slingshot attempt.

Second Wave Lands- Stage 1

Lands ~40km off

Group approaches Coercer

I know I have time, and use it to finish off the Hawk. I use a bit of overheating here.

Second Wave Lands – Stage 2

Group approaches Coercer

Ka- BOOM!

Meanwhile, the Ares has caught up and scrammed me. I manage to inflict serious damage on it, forcing it to retreat back to the group.

Coercer aligns out for warp off

Second Wave Lands

Group approaches Coercer

Meanwhile, I am being attacked by the drones, and have to make a target call. It is a fairly easy call, as Inquisitor can repair the others and unlikely to have a good local tank. At this point I am running low on a critical resource, capacitor.

Coercer remains aligned out

Is out of action, warps off for repairs

Second Wave Lands

Coercer Objective: As soon as the Inquisitor dies, I warp to the point I was aligned to at 50km (never warp to 0). This was because the Ishkur/Retribution were getting too close and I was literally at 3-4% cap.

Coercer warps out

Coercer has light damage

from the drones,

still has almost full

armor left

Inquisitor made a mistake here. If he had burned away from me, I would have been forced to either get in scram range of his friends or let him go. Instead he kept burning at me.

Alas, poor Logi

At the Infrastructure Hub

After I land, I realign to the outpost we were at. I was planning on waiting until I had regained more cap, but the Ishkur and Retribution decided to bring the party to me. They warp to 0. I let them burn at me to force them to separate. The Retribution, being faster than the Ishkur, arrives to the party first.

At the Infrastructure Hub- Stage 2

Look who came back!

I now start overheating my guns and MWD here. I had conserved my heat for close range brawling, and here it was.

Keeps burning in. He is lagging about 20+ KM behind the retribution at this point.

At the Infrastructure Hub- Stage 3

Rushes in, unnoticed by me at the time

While I did finish off the Retribution, I once again back to having almost no cap. I was forced to make a choice, and turned off the MWD so I could keep shooting.

Closes to scram range.

POOF!

At the Infrastructure Hub- Stage 4

I am desperately trying to finish off the Ishkur. He gets into structure when….

Brawling with the Coercer

ZOOMSSSS

Sudden Death!

The Ares manages to land the final blow on me. The Ishkur was quite close to being dead…. So close….

Pew PEW!

PWNED!

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The key to why I did so well was I manage to dictate the range for most of the fight. As I was outside of their effective range for the whole fight they were unable to kill me until they finally did land scram. Hopefully this battle helps you understand a bit of how a fight can play out.

Null and the Bubbles

• Null has this wonderful thing call bubbles. While within a bubble, nothing can warp. There are 3 kind of bubbles, Heavy Interdictor, Interdictor launched, and anchored. The only real difference is where the bubble is station. For anchored and Heavys, its centered on the object. For Interdictor, they can launch a bubble.
• To make this even more complicated, if the place you warp to has a bubble aligned, you will land in the bubble inside of what you were warping too. This is why its important to have tacticals off every gate in null so you can d-scan it before you warp there.
• Because of bubbles, you will find more mwd frigates in null than you do in low sec.

Drag/Sling Bubble

http://d3g9tccc3m12zo.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/HowWarpBubblesWork.png

How to Bookmark

• How do you make a good bookmark collection? I can’t possibly explain it better than the agony unleashed link below. They give you a concise method for creating bookmarks and knowing what they are at a glance.
• http://www.agony-unleashed.com/wiki/index.php?title=Bookmarks

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Despite all your bad- I mean good advice, I am dead. What do I do now?

• What I like to do is buy fits in bulk. This way you can simply use the fitting tool in game to instantly assemble a ship. This also saves you a lot of time on buying ship X gear 5 times after each death.
• Buying stuff at a trade hub and having shipped to a decent high-low is probably the best method for a starter. You will likely save money over buying it locally!
• Jump freighters hires are super excellent for moving large quanties of stuff into low or null, but does cost a pretty penny (80mil or more). On the plus side, I usually am moving 1 bil to 1.5 bil of ships at a time so I find this to be an excellent insurance! If you want to move some frigates into low, you can use a industrial to do it. Just be sure to fit warp core stabs and have a friend scout you!

Loot, what do I do?

• I tend to leave the loot in stations if possible. If you are in null you could set up a mobile depot to drop loot off in. I do advise when you pick the loot to take back to sell/use to leave some scrams/webs/points.
• Why do you want to leave those? Because it can give you the ability to refit on the fly. The other day I was skirmishing vs a Garmur in a Slicer and couldn’t keep the range closed. I got out, swapped to a scram, and managed to scram him to keep him in range and kill him. If I hadn’t left a scram there I wouldn't have been able to get that kill.

Power of Links

• You will run into other pilots that are using links. While you may or may not be using them, here is what links do.

• Damage Control/Active Shielding -- Reduces the capacitor need of the fleet's personal and targeted armor/shield repair systems.
• Passive Defense/Shield Efficiency ---- Grants a bonus to the fleet's armor/shield resistances.
• Rapid Repair/Shield Harmonizing - -- Increases the speed of the fleet's personal and targeted armor repair systems.

Max possible bonus is 25.6%

Evasive Maneuvers -- Lowers the signature radius of ships in the fleet. (34.5%)

Interdiction Maneuvers -- Boosts the range of the fleet's propulsion jamming modules, except for Warp Disruption Field Generators. (34.5%)

Rapid Deployment -- Increases the speed of the fleet's afterburner and microwarpdrive modules. (30.2%)

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Why is Sig radius important?

• Basically, if you are moving, having a smaller sig will reduce damage from missiles and reduce tracking of guns.
• There is some complicated gun math, but basically the Scan Res of you guns gains tracking if the target sig is larger than that and losses tracking if the target sig is lower than that. So lower sig is better!

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Pirate Implant set bonuses

• The main 3 to know. If you want more information on implants, look here: http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Implants

Speed Bonus

Armor Amount Bonus and Shield boost respectively

Manual Piloting, not just double clicking in space!

• Practice this! If you have a friend, you can take turns being a kiter and the person trying to catch the kiter.
• Learn how to slingshot! (Picture next 2 slides) These are from http://eveopportunist.blogspot.ca/2011/04/art-of-slingshot-art-of-part-3.html which also has a very nice writeup on how to do it effectively
• Watch videos of other people manual piloting
• I can’t really explain it well, its much better to watch someone else doing it.

Slingshoting

All power to engines!

• Sometimes, you can actually be too fast. So you can manually lower your speed by clicking on a spot in your speed semicircle in the middle of your hud.
• One reason to do this is to pretend to be AB fit to trick a faster MWD ship to underestimate you.
• Another reason is to match speed with something you are kiting. This way it is harder for them to use your speed against you.
• A third reason is to let people catch up with you and then adjust speed once they are in range instead of turning around at them.

Is this crazy?

• A good solo PVP buddy of mine likes to look at their ship. This way he can see what they are doing and can adjust to it before the overview shows. Such as if the ship is turning 180 degrees, you will see it rotating in space before the overview would tell you that. However, I found it quite disorienting, so I leave it up to the viewer to decide whether this method is worth a try.

People Videos to look at for examples of manual piloting

• Chessur is an amazing pilot who has some nice videos you can watch at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1UGd7FHTg1tbHh6D5x4E3w
• Suitonia has also produced some nice solo videos you can watch as well: https://www.youtube.com/user/eveiseasy/videos
• There are more examples, but these are the top two that came to my mind.

Credits

• Evilsqirrel Kashuken was great help in reviewing and giving feedback for this How To Guide
• Thanks to Tusker’s channel for helpful feedback
• Everyone’s work that is linked in the slides above
• Anyone who has ever fought me, except the people that decloaked a griffin when I warped in. You know who you are!
• E-Uni for the great wiki and community that supported me