Monday 30 September 2013

[Tutorial] Splitting gangs, and beating the blobs.

In a fair fight 2 ships should invariably kill the solo pilot, but good solo pilots fight these odds on a daily basis and win how?

Most frigate fights are over quickly, 40-50 seconds is more than enough to secure the kill and either get out safely, or be ready for the another fight. The usual way to do this is to fight only one ship at a time, as simple as it sounds this is the correct answer.
You need to learn to control the fight in such a way that only one ship is actually fighting you, whilst the others are looking on unable to get into the fight before it's over.

There are several simple ways to split gangs up.

The Stargate Split...
If you land on a stargate with hostiles, wait for one(some) of them to aggress you then immediately jump through, any ship that aggressed you is now stuck on the other side for 60seconds, this gives you time to fight anyone that followed through without their full gang.

Catch me if you can...
Large groups will often chase you round a solar system, after you've warped to a few different celestials you'll notice their gang getting split up, landing at different ranges, and often going to the wrong planet. Remember you normally have to be 150km away in order to warp, so if you land close enough to a target, and his friends are all 100km away, then you can engage, as they will have to either warp off and back, or burn across the gap.
Make sure they see where you warp to.. align off before warping.

Deadspace Trap...
See all those little beacons in lowsec in the faction warfare areas, novice plex, small plex, medium plex? These are deadspace beacons, they usually have a warp acceleration gate which limits which ships can go inside, this is useful for splitting certain ships, and limiting what can fight you on the inside. But what many people don't realise they are just as useful when you are fighting on the outside of them too. When you warp into them you always warp relative to the gate, even if you are trying to warp to a fleet member. Once you have landed there is no on grid warps. This means if you land on the outside of a deadspace beacon, then burn upwards, anyone that lands on the beacon has to fly to you, and if they send a fast ship out to you, you can kill it before the friends arrive.

Just a little bit closer...
When a gang is hugging a gate you can sometimes pull their tacklers out from the main body of the group and engage them, start by warping in at 100km then hanging about outside of the damage range, wait for their ceptors to burn towards you, but make sure you fly back in and tackle them before they reach 150km from the gang, thus forcing them to burn the distance. Useful if coupled with...

one of my favourite ways to catch people out when they are tackling for a larger gang.
...The short warp.
You can't warp less than 150km right? Wrong!
You can't initiate warp to an object less than 150km away, but you can warp to it at range, thus by sitting 150km from a wreck/gate then warping at 100 to it, you peform a hop of 50km closing the distance faster than expected. This works to bookmarks too...

Want to learn PVP? Always fancied being a pirate? Jump into the "Dbastards" channel for more information, and for open roams with some of the best pilots about.

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