Some Tips and best practices to get your Wspace group up to snuff.

 I thought I would take some time and give some tips on how to make your own rag tag group into a fighting force. Many people want to convert their Wspace group into a pvp group with an organized structure but aren’t really sure where to start.

Lets start with some very basics. These basics are the bedrock of your group and are critical to competing with other groups who already do these things. Most wormhole groups have these already, so if some of these points don’t pertain to you, just acknowledge that you’re doing something right all ready and pat your little selves on the back.

1^st Voice coms. The person in charge of your group needs to put his foot down right out the gate and require every single person in the wormhole to be on voice coms while they are active in the wormhole. Not just when there are fleets, ALWAYS! Even if you are just listening and your mic “doesn’t work”. If you’re audio doesn’t work and your mic doesn’t work, sort that shit out first before you start randomly jumping through wormholes. If you aren’t in the wormhole, you don’t need to be on voice coms. Very simple.

2^nd Remove Ship Tags. That little bull shit naming convention for all your ships.  Ship tags will get you killed by anyone who knows how to press “Ctrl +C” “Ctrl+V” on the D-scan window.  Each pilot should be aware of all ships that are around them at all times. Why someone is in one ship over another should be a very common discussion for people.  Have a running memory of your Dscan window. Ship tags convey way more intel to hostile fleets than you could possibly imagine. I know people in EVE who have memorized ship tag symbols for wspace corps that have been around for years. Why would you give that kind of intel away?

3^rd Have your pvp ships ready and fit. There shouldn’t be any need what so ever for you to refit when someone is calling for more ships. The ships need to complete and ready ammo loaded and drones ready.

4^th Find a common name for your home and its static. It doesn’t matter what it is, or how simply or complex, just that its consistent and referred by everyone as the same thing. For example: One of my home holes is/was called Frank. No reason, it’s just Frank. Get in the habit of calling your home hole exactly that. Don’t let people call it “The C5” “Home” “Base” “Our Home” whatever.. it has a name, call it its name ALWAYS. When someone calls it something else, correct them with “O do you mean Frank?” Get into this habit. Why? Because in complex fire fight situations saying “The C5” could mean any fucking C5 that may or may not be still connected in the chain. Same goes for the static connection. If you have a C2 static, call it “C2 Static” or Susann or whatever. The point is each of you remember that the static exit for Frank is always XXXX.

5^th Use correct terminology when describing where you are. For wormholers, there is a battle speak language that is learned and applied in almost every wormhole corp. Quick messages that convey the most information without everyone needing to ask 100 questions.  

Example:  Spear is in the C3a on the C4c connection and I see an AFK dread.

This is a very quick message that conveys every single bit of info anyone on coms would need to know. Where am I ? Which character am I flying. With that single line of info anyone can jump into my fleet, go to the C3a without being told to, know exactly which hole I’m fighting on and join the fight in seconds.

What NOT to say: “I’m in the static looking at a dread”

I don’t know who “I” is, but that fucker isn’t in the fleet. What static?! Our static? The C3’s static? Every hole has a static. Now we have a conversation of where you are that could have been avoided if you simply said the correct battle phrase language.

6^th Maintain a standing fleet. Everyone active in the wormhole should be in this fleet if you aren’t active, don’t be in the fleet. If you are ratting in the static alone, be in the standing fleet, because when you are tackled and fighting for your life, help can’t find you unless you are in the fleet.

These simple things are the bedrock of what comes next.

Fleet doctrines.

Fleet doctrine can be very complicated or very simple. Typically what this means is a selection of ships and fits approved by someone who knows what they are doing. Even that doesn’t have to be as complex as it sounds.

I recommend each corp/alliance have each of these doctrine set ups.

1.       Fleet Rescue Doctrine --  It takes a day or less to fly a black bird and use ECM. Even if you are a pure 100% pve corp there is absolutely no reason against every pilot being able to fly a single blackbird. The fit ship costs less than 10 million and could save a fleet of billions. Don’t want to apply a single day to training this ship, go for the griffin. What to go pure nuts, work toward a falcon.

A rescue doctrine should be maintained by every single pilot in any wormhole group. Hauler just jumped into a cloaked sabre? Calmly (over coms) tell him to hold his cloak, you are in warp with a blackbird. Land at the edge of the bubble, burn out of the bubble jamming all the things. The hauler now has a little more of a chance because you are now their focus. The difference is, your Black bird costs 10 million and that hauler could be bringing in 100+ million isk worth of fuel.

2.       Gank doctrine--- This is your go to ship you plan on using to explode targets you may find. Personally I recommend cruisers or smaller. Something that can last, without being repped, either self reps, buffer or speed. Ganks happen fast, often outside of your home hole, speed and efficiency is key. This isn’t the time for your hull tanked navy brutix. You won’t be able to apply damage to your target quick enough and your warp speed on target won’t be as fast as is required for quick lighting strikes.

3.       Armor Doctrine and Shield Doctrine – Many wormholers come from all different opinions on  which is better, some say shield, some say armor. I’m not going to have that argument. I will say that its important for everyone to be able to fly in both doctrine. Either fly logi in one or DPS in another. It doesn’t matter really, what really matters is that every single pilot can be in both at any particular moment. Many wormholes have beneficial or hindrance effects on the ships in them. Bring an amour fleet to a Pulsar and you may find yourself back in Jita. Don’t give your opponent the advantage by only limiting yourself to one or the other.

Roles in both Armor and Shield Doctrine – Roles are defined as fleet functions within an organized doctrine. Every play Wow? Think Tank, healer, dps.. same kind of thing.

DPS- This is what most people fly when they first get into EVE and Wspace. This is any ship that can bring damage as its primary role. Reserve this role for your least experienced pilots because its simply the easiest to do. Critical things to have on any DPS ships: Buffer tank, Tackle and Damage.

Logi- Logi ships in EVE come in two flavors, the solo logi boat and the paired up logi boats. A solo logi ship is exactly that… by himself. For amour doctrine it’s the Execurer and T2 version Onerios, for shield it’s the scythe and T2 version scimitar.  Solo logi ships have 2 goals, try and keep everyone else alive, and themselves alive. Your targets primary will be almost always the logi first. Mitigate that risk with distance from hostiles or self reps. The primary threat to logi ships is almost always kiting ships and drones. Both can close the distance and remove the solo logi ship from the field.

The other type of logi ship is the paired logi. For armor it’s the Augurer and T2 version Guardian, shield it’s the Ospry and the Basilisk. What makes these different than the solo logi ships is their ability to efficiently energy transfer between each other. This gives them a tremendous advantage over their solo counter parts. These take a bit more coordination between pilots but are far more efficient.  The primary threat to these is honestly everyone. In most engagements the person with more logi often holds the field.

Force multipliers – These are typically ships that are purely Ewar. ECM, Neuts, Damps, boosts…  They can change a doomed situation to a win with just a few cycles of their equipment. Force multipliers can’t end fights themselves but they can make an organized force way more effective. Jamming out enemy logi can remove their effectiveness from the battle. As if they weren’t there in the first place.

When your group decides to build a solid armor/shield doctrine every person on coms should be able to fly 2 of those 3 ships. I’m sure this is assumed by I would like to say it again, every single person should have those ships fit and ready at a moment’s notice.

Curious on how to maintain all these doctrine with such a large herd of cats? Well someone was super awesome and made a site called Fleet-up.com it might be one of the most awesome sites ever. With it, people in the corp/alliance will know how the leadership wants each ship to be flown. As an FC it frustrates me to no end to know that what I was expecting out of a ship never came about because someone was being “creative” with their fitting.

This was some very basic goals and functionality roles of ships in a wspace fleet. You can get even more creative and have an entire ‘Throw away doctrine” (ships you just throw at people because fuck it why not) A sniper fleet doctrine.. a frigate hole roam doctrine…. The list goes on.

The point of this post is that a small amount of organization before engagements, some best practices if you will, can and do make a big difference in outcomes of engagements. If you can’t do the things I listed here, you are shooting yourselves in the foot vs everyone else who can.