This is the heart and soul of the game. Mining, researching, production is all only in this game to make ships and ammo for combat. It can take form at all levels from frigates duels to massive BS fleet battles. This is so much to it that it all cannot be documented but a lot can be, some of it simple yet so effective and some grander.

Gate Camping

This is an age old tactic where by you select a chokepoint system that traffic has to travel through, you can wait here and let your targets come to you rather then having to move around yourself. Within eve there is a number of different ways to do this in different circumstances.

High Security Space

Due to the devastation caused by m0o corp in the early stages of the game with their legendary blockades of Mara/Passari this has been pretty much removed as an option. The best way of doing it now is by praying on people’s belief of safety and picking choice targets with dispensable craft. For example get a group of frigs with 1 indi. Bring along a cargo/module scanner and look for targets the will drop high value stuff, as your frigates will be destroyed by concord the indi does the collecting.

Remembers though that after a while your sec rating will drop too low and you will have to change this to fight in high sec space. Best thing to do is use an alt for this and just remake a new char when the old one gets too low sec.

Also remember to be careful of splash damage, as this will cause Concord to attack you.

Medium Security Space

Below .5 sec systems that are not in empire space concord will not respond but sentry guns will, this means you can kill in space just not around stargates and station's with sentry guns. The 2 ways of avoiding this is to

1. Fire outside the range of the sentry guns (different guns have different ranges) and they cannot attack you.

2. Tank the sentries, this involves tanking your ship and have your gang mates transfer shields to you, get the aggression from the sentries on you and once you are receiving more shields then loosing you’d can sit there safely shooting every ship you see as the guns will continue shoot you. Also you need to keep the aggression on you. A good idea is to have many people with sensor links giving you an amazing lock time so you can nab even pods and shuttles before they warp out.

Low Security Space

This is lawless; there is no security status or concord protection (cept in empire systems). You can kill what ever you want. The two ways of camping here are

1. Gank-Camping: Basically just having a few people at a gate blowing up everything they see and collecting the loot, just have 1 ship for fast locking, scrambling with the rest set for ganking.

2. Toll-collection: Instead of ganking every-ship you see you jam/web and scramble it and take it down to Armour damage, and stop shooting. You then ask the player to transfer a toll if he wants to live. You need more then 1 ship for EW as you need a few webs, scramblers on them so they don’t get away.

Another good idea is to just blow up the ship, warp jam and web the pod, and toll the player for not podding him. Most ppl have implants and have to pay huge amount of cash to get them replaced, unlike ships they cant get insured.

Duels

These fight are almost always won before it even happens, load out are very important in this type of fight. You should win these fights because of this as you will be setup for 1v1 and will know what type of ships you can take and not. Both EW and tanking are very effective in this area as with EW he can’t shoot you and with strong tanking you can outlast them. Also using short range setups with high damage dealing will be devastating. It can get weird when two tanks fight eachother since neither can kill the other, if this happens call for backup :)

If using Jammers you have to consider the option that the enemy might be using backup sensors, and if he does you’ll be very easy to finish off, as you wont have much med. slots left for boosting shields or using hardeners. So equip enough to over jamm ships.

If using dampers, you might consider the enemy using mwd, as he will get real close to you and then your med slots for dampers will be for no use.

Basicly 1vs1 is about knowing your enemies setup, and hide your own untill its to late for him to do anything about it.

If your hunting ppl for 1 v 1 in the same area for some time, youll have to change setup from time to time, or even chance ships, so the enemy wont know you setup, there is always counter measures in EVE, and if he knows your setup he will use those measures.

Fleet Battles

Oh yea baby, is there anything else that can even come close to a large scale fleet battle of large numbers of BS slugging it out for an hour and a half straight, this is what were here for and why we continue to play Eve.

Being good at fleet battles takes experience, you have to be in a good few before you can class yourself at been good at them. In these battles both numbers and tactics play equally important parts, as it is very possible to take on alliances many many times your size if you are a capable corp.

Tips

1. Re-read the section about use of ts and co-ordination, if this is not done you will find yourself in serious trouble. Main points been orderly on ts, everyone shooting the 1 target till its gone and try keep things simple.

2. Preconceptions without experience are very dangerous, you might have a grand plan in your head about equipping ships a certain way and a battle going like this or that but without the experience to know if it will work or not it could well get your fleet wasted by trying it out for the 1st time in a real battle.

3. Always have setups that compliment the fleets, no point 5 of you been close range blasters while rest are long range shooters. Also (this is a matter of opinion) in larger fleet battles if you are in a raven or scorpion been tanked is a waste of time, the only way your ability will be of use to the team is if your the one getting shot but if large numbers are shooting you the tanking will probably be useless anyway, while you could be target jamming 2-3 enemy ships and taking them out of the picture.

4. If against larger numbers use hit and runs tactics till better tactical advantage is acheived. Focus on taking out EW ships and smaller vessels, after that you will have the advantage by them not being able to jam, focus your jammers in their hardest hitters.

5. As battle begins have a few people doing specific thing like bring a few tempest along for instaganking crusiers+frigs in 1 volley, this should be the initial role of designated people then when targets eliminated refollow team instructions. Also try eliminate EW ships first so your team wont be jammed. Fit up cruisers and frigates for simply the role of taking out other frigates. Remember to use your drones, hammerheads are excellent against frigates.

6. When you first warp in on your enemy or if are camping have your ship aligned to a nearby warpable point, this will mean if you are targeted you can stay in battle till your shields are almost gone and warp out in a few seconds notice. When you warp out, charge yourself back up and as quickly as possible rejoin your fleet.

7. If ships are equipped with EW they will be very vulnerable and (at time of writing) since Ew has no range penalties have them equip with very long range guns and stay away from the fight just jamming and sniping people.

8. If an EW support group is present don’t have them just sitting there with 1 enemy gunship jammed the whole time, targets should be cycled through constantly. If your enemy is using them swell have your members announce on ts that xxxxx is jamming them and your EW ships can jam this jammer freeing up an extra ship in your fleet. Just do it orderly, you can use gang chat for this too to free up spam on Teamspeak.

9. Don’t be afraid to fall back and re-group your fleet and re-engage the enemy, especially if they have gained the advantage in the battle. This way you can restart the battle with different tactics.

10. Prepare for lag, this is an evil that comes hand in hand with large battles, as described earlier it can affect your performance in battle considerably. Close chat windows, minimize unnecessary UI, pre-open scanners and click everyone in your local so there picture is already loaded before warping into battle. (Use Ctrl+Tab to remove all chat windows)

11. Gangs are very important to fleet efficiency, as warping out and warping back to a gang member is a lot safer than warping to a distance to the station, gate ETC the fight is at. You just have to remember what direction you warped out of the gang, as warping back into gang will leave u 15km away/behind the gang member in the direction u warped out from. warp back from the wrong direction might get you 15km closer to the enemy.

12. While camping a gate or station keep in mind the engine eve uses although acts completely 3D, it is infact rather linear. If you want to engage an enemy at 40k sit 40k above/below the station/gate, when your enemy warps in they will appear around the middle plane of the gate/station’s Y axis at the distance they selected, not on top or below the station/gate you are so you can camp and engage the enemy at long range no matter if your enemy wants to get up close and personal.

13. Assing 2-3 frigates in your fleet and 1-2 battleships with a special role. Have the frigates watch the enemy fleet carefully looking anyone who might be warping out. The frigates warp after this person, who might be at a gate or a planet. They lock him down and once he is efficiently locked down they call in for one friendly hard-hitting battleship to finish the job. This work well in fleet battles and also draws your enemies attention away from the big battle, as the person being killed will ask for help.

14. Emmm, not sure where to put this so ill put it here. Its a camera zoom i dicovered along time ago. Press and hold the right mouse button and swing the camera in the direction u want to look along its X,Y Axis. Then while still holding the right button press and hold the left mouse button(this allows the change of the Z-Axis. While pressing the 2 of these you can move up and down with your mouse and it will zoom in and out to great distances. To accurately zoom into an object the trick is to always hold the right mouse button (left mouse button locks the camera so you cant move it along its X,Y Axis, just its Z-Axis) and press and realse the left mouse button as needed to acurate point the camera on your target.

This is great for sight-seeing and also is good for close inspection of ships so you can actually see what guns they have on >:).