Adding Chaos as a New Pilot

One of the common misconceptions of EVE Online is that new players are unable to contribute to a fleet. Often, it makes them feel isolated and discourages them from getting into the action. It’s a shame really, because it’s absolutely not true.

In this article, we’re going to go over how a trained new player can add chaos to a fleet, enhancing your squad and acting as a significant force multiplier. This applies mostly to low security space and wormhole fights, but can be applied well to nullsec nanogangs and home defense.

 

 

Tools of Chaos

Before we dig into each role individually, it’s important to go over some of the roles that you’ll be performing to act as a force multiplier. These roles are extremely specific, meaning that they’re easy to train into and can be mastered within a month. If you’re fleet commander says that they don’t need force multipliers, tell them that they’re an idiot and start searching for a proper group.

We recommend you read the summaries of each tool below, and then find the section you’re most interested in. Don’t try to master all of them, take them one at a time.

 

Booshing

Booshing is the act of using a micro jump field generator to jump enemy targets away from their fleet. You know what’s better than killing enemy Guardians? Jumping them 100km away from their fleet so that you can burn through their DPS.

 

Electronic Warfare

Electronic Warfare is the act of disrupting enemy ships using specific modules. You might be using ECM to jam off enemy logistics, or using tracking disruptors to de-spool Leshaks. Don’t worry if that didn’t make any sense to you, we’ll talk about it.

 

Interdiction

Nothing is more rewarding than trapping an entire enemy fleet while they’re trying to escape, putting your fleet in the perfect position to kill them. Interdiction is a subset of tackle with a high mechanical skill mastery.

 

Defensive Utility

You know what’s even more annoying than the two above roles? Completely countering your enemies’ plan to use them. Defensive roles like anti-booshing HICs and hard-counters to Scorpion ECM are extremely versatile and useful to any fleet.

 

Booshing

So you want to earn the title of “logistics counter”, eh? Booshing is one of the most useful roles in chaos, due to your ability to break up the enemy fleet into more manageable chunks. If you’re finding that your corporation is constantly outnumbered, booshing is the answer to winning engagements.

The ship we’re going to talk about is the Bifrost, one of the fastest command destroyers that will allow you to boosh targets effectively.

 

Booshing: Use Cases

We’re not going to be able to teach you the Bifrost in a text article, but we can give you some ideas that you can approach your corporation about. Ultimately, you’re going to work with your group and improve your skills over time.

Enemy Logistics

The enemy fleet has 5 Guardians, which are strong ships that repair friendly ships. Our fleet isn’t going to be able to kill anything because of these Guardians. Good thing you’re in a Bifrost.

You notice that the Guardians are anchored separately from their fleet, and you decide to go in for the boosh. You line up, pick up speed, and spool. It’s successful, our fleet is able to kill 3-5 DPS before they get back in range.

Gatecamping

Let’s say you’re sitting on a gate with our fleet, and a large target jumps through. It starts to slowly approach the gate again so that it can jump back to safety.

Our fleet approaches you, you spool up your boosh, and you jump the large target off the gate. Now that it’s 100km off the gate, we can easily kill it without it escaping.

Spearfishing

Let’s say our fleet is outnumbered heavily, 5:1. We have a composition of small, high DPS ships. The enemy fleet is sloppy, and some of their members are trailing behind 10-15km.

Luckily, you have another friend in a boosher- so there’s two of you. You decide that you can’t get close to the enemy fleet, so you time your booshes together. One of you gets our fleet on the target, and the other booshes us back to safety. With the enemy straggler. You know what happens next.

 

 

Electronic Warfare

We could talk about this role for hours, due to the massive amount of depth that electronic warfare can provide. Instead, we’re going to break it down into some manageable pieces- with some recommended ships. The theme across all electronic warfare is the same, however. Sit far away from the fight and piss off the enemy fleet.

ECM

ECM focuses on making it so that enemy ships cannot target anything except you. It’s great for disrupting enemy logistics (so that they can’t heal their fleet), or splitting up enemy DPS with friends. For example, if you have 3-4 Scorpions (large ECM battleships), you’d be able to jam enemy DPS ships and force them to split their damage.

For low SP pilots (1-5m), we recommend the Griffin and Kitsune. Move into the Scorpion as you get shield and armor skills.

Sensor Dampening

Sensor dampeners also disrupt the enemies’ targeting ability, but in different ways. You can dampen their scan resolution (time to target) or targeting range.

Let’s say your fleet has a ton of DPS, but the enemy healers are a bit too quick. You could dampen their scan resolution and frantically switch targets, killing them before their logistics can respond.

Alternatively, let’s say the enemy logistics fleet is too far- 50km or something- and you want them closer so that you can kill them. You can dampen their targeting range to force them to come closer.

For low SP pilots (1-5m), we recommend the Maulus, Celestis, and Keres. Ultimately you’ll want to move into a Lachesis for heavier nanogang.

Weapon Disruption

Weapon disruption is often thought of as useless, but those people are idiots. It could be better though CCP, roll missile and gunnery disruption into the same module already. By disrupting weapons, you can provide hard counters to ships, but it’s extremely situational.

Let’s say you are fighting a Leshak composition, which are ships that get stronger the longer they shoot. Well, we want to stop them from shooting, so we’ll use optimal range disruption to start their ramp cycle over.

Alternatively, we may have several tackle being screened by an Orthrus, which is essentially a missile ship that eats small ships for breakfast. We can use missile disruption to allow our tackle ships to safely move in.

The viable ships for weapon disruption are the Crucifier and Sentinel, you can sometimes see the Curse or Pilgrim using them, but they’re usually fit a different way.

 

 

Interdiction

Interdiction is a little bit more specific, but it’s definitely useful for high-end fleets. The most common ship you’ll see is the Sabre, but Heretics (armor compositions) and Sabre/Flycatcher (shield compositions) are also valid. If you’ve trained the Bifrost from the Booshing section, you’ll want to cross-train into the Sabre.

The goal of the interdictor is to use bubbles to force the enemy fleet into locations that they don’t want to be. These bubbles prevent ships from warping, so you can probably understand why they’d be so effective. You’ll mostly see them used in three ways:

• Drop bubbles on the enemy fleet, preventing them from leaving
• Set up drag bubbles (bubbles that pull enemies out of warp) to prevent them from escaping, or forcing them into a sub-optimal position
• Set up defensive bubbles as your fleet escapes (your fleet lands on a gate, you drop a bubble behind them), slowing down the chasing enemy fleet

Drag bubbles are insanely useful, and you’ll be a huge asset to any fleet with a Sabre.

 

 

Defensive Utility

Last but not least, we have defensive utility. The act of countering disruption. These are typically limited to higher SP ranges (25-50m), but it’s important to mention them so that you can blossom into these roles.

For something like booshing, you’d likely counter with heavy interdictors like the Onyx and Devoter. For shutting down electronic warfare you’d likely utilize sensor dampening from the Keres. These are roles that can provide multiple utilities- but can heavily counter the above practices.

 

 

Find your Role

As a new player, it’s important to find a useful role and specialize early. You’ll see this in the marketing emails, and it’s absolutely true: you can obtain veteran level effectiveness in a single role within a few weeks.

By choosing from roles that act as a force multiplier, you can directly impact your fleet and feel the difference. When your 25-man gang kills 10 billion ISK worth of ships because of your boosh, there’s nothing more rewarding.

Find something you like and reach out to your corporation and FCs, most PvP groups are more than happy to add force multipliers to their fleets. If they’re not, find one that is!