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Setting yourself up for Solo Combat in Lowsec

Published on 27. Oct, 2008 ... written by Black Claw, Tags: Articles, Latest

by Black Claw … Someone asked me a question recently on how to actually set themselves up for solo combat in lowsec.  This article is my attempt to help them, and anyone else that would love to know how to equip themselves for combat.

If you’re in a small corp like mine, joining up for fleet action with dozens of other members might be impossible. Also, everyone seems to be moving away from the ’solo hunter’ style of play, but I find that’s where most of the excitement is.  Being in a fleet is simply not as challenging or as exciting as being alone, using your skills and your wits to find and destroy your ‘prey’.

This article is to help the adventurous learn what skills they need to work on, and what equipment to use in order to be an effective, solo combat specialist.  If you’re not adventurous, you probably won’t find too much of value in here. *smile*

The best ships to use for solo combat are frigates and cruisers.  These provide the greatest returns for the money spent.  Getting into combat means you will eventually lose the ship, so the cheaper the ship, the more often you can fight without it affecting your wallet too much.

The most common form of attack is with gunnery or missiles. Make sure your particular weapon skills are at least level IV.  Since you are going to be within 20km to engage your scrambler and around 10km to engage your web, you will need to have weapons and ammo that allow you to work within 10km.  Fit short range weapons that you are skilled at, and which receive bonuses from the ship you’re using.  You will need to mix your skills and ship bonuses to get the best results.

Since it’s important to hold your prey in place while you attack them, you’ll want to fit a Warp Scrambler (’scram’) and a Webifier (’web’).  These require the Propulsion Jamming skill.  You’ll also want to get your Afterburner, Navigation and High Speed Maneuvering up so that you can use the Afterburner (AB) and Micro Warp Drive (MWD).

These will fill your mid slots quite nicely.  The AB obviously doesn’t get you travelling as fast as the MWD does, but it uses a lot less capacitor energy than the MWD. Another disadvantage of the MWD is that is increases your signature radius, so that you become a much ‘larger’ target for the electronic sensors of your prey.  This means they’ll hit you more often and with more damage.  You don’t want that.

You can always cycle the MWD so that you turn it on to get close to the target, and then turn it off when you’re within range.

To fight someone successfully, you must keep them pinned, unable to leave the field of battle.  The scrambler prevents the prey from warping out, while the web dramatically slows them down, making them an easier target to hit.  Webs are useful against ships that use speed to their advantage, particularly frigates and interceptors, but also cruisers and some battlecruisers. You will not need to use webs on anything larger.

Now that you’ve got your high slots filled with weapons, your mid slots filled with tackling gear and speed enhancer, all that’s left to focus on is your low slots.

This is where you can get creative, but you have to do it in a way that’s going to complement your ship, your tactics, and your goals.

There are a few major factors to work with at this point, and they focus on ‘tanking’ or ‘ganking’.  Here’s some definitions:

Gank - Destroying another player’s vessel in a very short time, ideally before they realize what is going on. A Gank ship configuration is one focuses as doing as much damage as possible at the expensive of defensive measures. Can also refer to multiple ships ganging up on a single ship.

Tank - Refers to the absorbtion of incoming damage. Setting a ship up for maximum defense is referred to as a Tank setup and is usually done at the expense of offense and versatility. The act of tanking is absorbing damage to a greater degree than otherwise possible.

You can NOT tank and gank at the same time. It must be one or the other.

You can shield tank or armor tank.  Each of them have their pros and cons, and will depend on the ship and your skills.

Shield tanking will require Shield Operation at level V, and Tactical Shield Manipulation to at least level IV.  You’ll also need Shield Upgrades, and Shield Compensation (this lowers the capacitor needs for shieid boosters by 2% per level).

Increasing the resistance levels of shields using hardeners works exceptionally well when coupled with shield boosters. If you have the room, add some shield extenders as well to provide more protection.

Armor tanking requires Mechanic and Hull Upgrades, along with Armor Compensation skills.  When you’re armor tanking, you need to maximise your armor resists through armor hardeners and resist modules, like the Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane.  Don’t forget armor plating to add to your hit points (HP), and an armor repairer to repair any damage done to the armor.

Ganking, is where you maximise the damage you’re doing to your target.  Your goal in this fashion is to greatly increase the damage you do to them, but at the expense of any defences you might apply to your ship.  The slots you need for ganking are also used for tanking, which is why you must choose one or the other to get the best results.

You can certainly work on balancing the two, but for best results, one must outweigh the other.  It’s your choice which one that is, and can often depend on the ship you use. If the ship’s bonuses favour both armor repair and gunnery, for example, then it makes sense to include equipment that enhances both.

You increase the weapons damage by having the following skills: Sharpshooter to increase optimal range, Rapid Firing for a faster rate of fire, Surgical Strike for increasing damage, Motion Prediction for tracking speed increase, Trajectory Analysis for a better falloff range, and Controlled Bursts so that turrets use less cap.

The second lot of skills you’ll need to support them are: Targeting, Long Range Targeting, and Signature Analysis.  Advanced Weapon Upgrades lowers the powergrid consumption of turrets, and helps you get Tech 2 weapons.

Weapon Upgrade modules can be added to your ship to increase the damage instead of shield or armor tanking equipment.  Most of them are based on previously mentioned skills, so you shouldn’t have any problems with them.

You can use the following ‘ganking’ equipment: Gyrostabilizers for projectile weapons, Heatsinks for lasers, and Magnetic Field Stabilizers (’magstabs’) for hybrids.  Tracking Computers and Tracking Enhancers increase range and tracking speed, helping large guns hit smaller targets.

You can, of course, mix these factors in together to find a balance.  For example, you can use a Damage Control module to increase the resistance of your shield, armour and hull. Along with that you can use a gyrostabilizer or magstab for increasing weapon damage. You can add an Overdrive Injector to increase speed, or an armor repairer to repair armor.

The combinations are immense. What you end up with will depend on your skills, the ship, the equipment and your goals.

One of the best websites to get ideas on how to effectively set up the ships in Eve Online for different purposes is Battleclinic.  You can look at people’s suggestions for PVP, missions, and even fleet action for all kinds of different ships.

Ultimately, the ship you fly and what you equip it with is entirely up to you.  Just try to remember that you’re going out there to fight, and to win.  You’ll want to do everything you can to make sure you succeed.

I hope this guide will help you find victory in your battles.

You can read more about Black Claw’s opinions and adventures at his website: The Travels of Black Claw

Tags: combat, hints, low, pvp, sec, ship, solo, tips