Fitting for PvP

Work in progress.

So I'll just stick a Warp Disruptor on my ship and get going right?

No.

If you are going to PvP, buy a ship and fit it specifically for PvP, simply adding tackle to your mission runner just will not do.

A common mistake made when people start to PvP is taking what they have learned from fitting ships for PvE and applying it to a PvP fitting

Here are some key differences to PvE and PvP combat:

Fighting NPC's in PvE is essentially fighting a computer, you can predict what your target or targets are going to do easily and can calculate what amount of damage you are recieving what EW is going to be applied to you and can fit a ship to provail in the fight.

Most of the time you are recieving a fairly constant level of damage in PvE combat, it can be quite a suprise as to how much damage a player's ship can deal and is often considerably a lot more than an NPC.

Cap-stability is often regarded as an essential for a PvE fitting, especially when a new player is not used to controlling individual modules and baby-sitting the fight. Relying on cap rechargers, cap power relays, capacitor control circuits etc. will not always work for PvP, especially considering cap-stability isn't a major essential for PvP and energy neutralising modules are very popular to have on PvP ships. Using a capacitor booster with the appopriate cap charges is a much better way of keep up your capacitor in PvP.

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I suppose this is apart of the learning curve of EVE and it doesn't help being relatively poor as a new player and not being able to afford numerous ships for PvE and PvP, but here are some tips for fitting for PvP.

There are so many different tactics to player versus player combat, there is no way to fit a ship that can do everything, every fitting and every ship will have a weakness, it is the players that identify there strengths and weaknesses before entering combat that provail in pvp.

As with every ship, fit it for it's purpose. Are you going to be a fast tackler? How fast do you need to fly? Are you joining a sniper battlship fleet?  How far do you need to be able to lock and hit?

Ask yourself "what am I using this ship for?" and then fit it to do that the best it can.

To use create an example we will stick to the idea that you are a solo pilot looking for people ratting in asteroid belts, in low security space. Yes imagine you are a pirate, flying a T1 Cruiser.

Don't let your target escape.
Warping in and shooting at your target can leave you feeling embarassed if they can just warp away, you are going to need a warp disruptor at the very minimum.

Even if you have somebody else with you with a point, you don't know for sure they can hold that point for the entire fight, it is best that every pvp ship has tackle.

How much tackle do I need?

Be sure to check out the 'Warp disruptor or Warp Scrambler?' post!

It depends on how much you can fit, and what your target is.

Say you are flying a Rupture, or a Vexor. You have 3 mid slots to work with, that's just enough room to fit a prop mod, warp scrambler or disruptor and a webifier. Being able to stop your target from warping away, and also stop them from burning out of your point range is a great tackle.

However, say you are flying a Caracal, you are going to be shield tanking, so although you have plenty of mid slots, you are going to want to use those for your tank. You may only want to fit a warp disruptor or scrambler.

Imagine you are going to engage a battleship (very brave of you) consider the maximum velocity of this ship compared to your cruiser, he is going to have a tough time escaping your point range, so is a webifier really needed?

Now imagine you are going to engage a frigate, fitting a warp scrambler will shut down it's microwarp drive, but what if it has an afterburner instead? Are you going to be able to keep up with it to keep it pointed? You will probably need a webifier.

The need for speed 

Realistically speaking every sub-cap PvP ship needs a prop mod. This is not always the case but fittings that do not use one are often very niche and have a specific purpose, if you are roaming and are jumping through gates or trying to catch people at a belt for example you are going to need a prop mod.

So do I use an Afterburner or a Microwarp Drive?
This is highly debated, and will be looked into further in another post.

But as a general rule, Frigates and Cruisers can get away with using an Afterburner, everything else will need a Microwarp Drive.

Think how fast your ship travels without a prop mod, think how much mass it has, then think about how fast you need to travel. Say you jump into a gate camp and need to burn back to the gate, will an afterburner be enough to get your cruiser back to the gate before the camp destroys you?

Right, I'm a flyin' I'm a tacklin'  what now?
Alright so lets fit some firepower

Wait, not every ship needs to fit guns or launchers, some have specific roles and bonuses and could benefit from alterative high slot modules such as energy neutralisers or cynos for example.

But back to our T1 Cruiser example, you might want to go for a really high damage high dps fit and fit the biggest guns you can fit onto your ship. The bigger the module the more power and CPU it is going to use, so that leaves less room for your tank.

You may also want to consider other attributes such as tracking speed for example, yes 425mm autocannons do a lot of damage, but how much of that damage is actually going to hit a fast moving target? you may want to downgrade to 220mm vulcan's.

This leads to nicely to...

Tank vs Gank

This topic is also highly debated so check out the Tank vs Gank post in the blog archive.

Before you fit your ship, decide if you want to fit it for maxium damage, or maximum survivability or a balance.

You may even want to forget about both tank and gank and fit for high speed and fast locking time. Yet again, it depends on what you are using the ship for.