Combat preparation
1° When going to an op, have enough ammo.
Make sure you can fight for an hour sustained fire.
Example for rails: 1000 of each range and 2 ranges: one short, one long.
2° Have the appropriate ship for the right job.
A) Tackler
A tackler will fly a tech II interceptor with 3 midslots or a Vigil.
Nothing else. [Not true now, rifter has 3 mid slots as of RMR, you can use either interchangeably...actually, rifter accels a bit better]
If you can't fly interceptors and are not Minmatarr, train for the Vigil (2 hours!) or don't pretend being a tackler.
The Vigil might have a surprizing design, but remember only the job you do can be elite, not the ship you are flying, and the Vigil is a top-notch tackler.
No Crusader or Rifter or whatever: 3 med slots Inty or Vigil, nothing else.
In midslots, you will fit a 20km scrambler, a 7500m scrambler and a MWD
Your lowslots will be devoted to cap recharge and speed boost (nanofibers or overdrive injector) if you have enough cap recharge.
Ships that have trouble sustaining the cap drain from scramblers will fit a webber instead of a second scrambler.
Why 3 points of scrambling when several tacklers will be present? Because the target won't wait for everybody to reach him before trying to escape and you will often be alone in tackling range when milliseconds matter.
Have the Propulsion Jamming skill trained high so you can sustain scrambling forever. Contrary to popular belief, tackling is no newbie stuff and requires skills and dedication.
B) Damage dealer.
All ships will do the job excepted ships that can't cross at least 70 AU in one go. So a Kestrel or Griffin is forbidden.
Make sure you deal the maximal damage the ship can, and have at least one damage mod in lowslot.
You will have at least an afterburner in midslot when in frig fleets, for all frigate types.
On assault frigates, fill your mids with electronic war (EW skills specialized are mandatory for all IRON pilots, Signal Dispersion, Signal Suppression and Turret Destabilization).
You musn't have any tanking at all, some ships with a spare high slot will have a remote armor repairer (Enyo, Harpy etc).
Travel and communication
1° When coming to an op, make sure you have a ship ready before the op starts and be on time. Up to 30 pilots will be waiting for you if you are late. If you are 15 jumps away it's too late to think about your fitting or try to buy modules on the market. Ops starting late mean the enemy will be in bed when we strike at the heart of his territory and the whole gang will be pissed because of the lack of targets.
2° You must have Teamspeak installed and ready before the op starts.
TS is a communicatin tool, not a Radio Show tool.
Keep silent on TS, only the fleet commander and scouts have the right to talk. Discipline is what makes the difference between pilots that can take down a fleet with minimal losses and those who lose ships even to Concord.
3° When you have valuable information to relay to the fleet commander, voice it in a comprehensive manner.
Wrong: HOSTILES O my fucking good they ripping me a new ass!!! warp to me, WARP TO MEEEEEEE!!!!
Right: Ewok gate in EC, 2 battleships 100k away 1 interceptor on gate.
Let me rephrase this, since this is the most frustrating thing ever for fleet commanders: every time you relay information, say, in this order: sytem-gate-number of hostiles (approximative if more than 10)-ship types-range from gate/station.
You have to learn the tiny differences in ship icons on the overview to tell what is a battleship, cruiser or frigate, and know all small icons so you can immediately see the difference between a Maller and a Sacrilege, for example.
4° When coming to a gate, jump unless told otherwise. If you are told not to jump, don't jump even some absent-minded pilot does. You are a combat pilot, not a sheep.
5° Don't chat in gang channel when a battle is near or going on. The fleet commander reads that chat and quickly gets insane if he has to pay attention to mindless babbling.
6° Keep silent on TS.
7° STFU on TS!
8° See 2, 6 and 7.
Combat
1° Your overview.
You must have gang, corp, alliance and high standings filtered out from your overview, so you don't accidentaly target your gangmates.
From your overview panel, which must be visible as well as the 'selected item' panel, click on the arrow before the word 'overview'. From the popup that appears, select the last option 'overview settings'. From the 'Filters' tab select the 'States' tab and uncheck the last 3 options and the 'Pilot has high standings' option.
From the 'Types' tab in the 'Filters' tab, select only the objects that you want to see when in combat. Make sure the stargates are displayed.
From the 'Columns' tab, select:
Icon
Name
Distance
Radial Velocity (negative if you are closing in)
Transversal velocity (also known as perpendicular velocity)
Corp
Unselect the others and resize the colums in the overview so that the whole overview window doesn't take more than 12 centimeters on your screen. This requires some practice to have all columns display the necessary information without littering your screen.
2° Tackling tactics.
A) Long range.
If you are going for a turret ship farther than 30km away from your position, use an elliptic approach. Do never use the 'orbit' function, it's certain death. Click 10 centimeters right of your target and MWD full speed. This should give you a transversal velocity greater than 1000 m/s. Against snipers over 100km away it must be much higher than 1000 m/s in the early approach even if you are not targeted. When you will be, it's too late.
It is your duty, before taking part in military ops, to test your approach against corpmates. Have various sniper setups at various ranges, have them fire only one gun at you and build your experience about what transversal velocity is suited for what situation.
The more you get close to your target, the tighter your trajectory, so that when you finally reach the magic 'within 30km' you select automatic orbit which must be preset between 6000 and 7000m.
Turn you MWD off because you need to spare on cap and fire both your scramblers for 3 points scrambling.
Do not fire your guns, save on cap until the gang joins you and begins the killing.
When gangmates have joined you, turn off the 20k scrambler and keep the 7500 going on and open fire.
If drones are launched at you and you are alone in scramble range, turn your MWD on, right-clic on your target and select 'orbit at 2500' to keep within the 7500 scrambling range. Stop shooting at the primary target and kill the drones, you will cut on the damage dealt to you and will be able to scramble for longer.
Do not bail out even if you are taking damage. Do not pay attention to missiles fired at you, even if the first one takes half your shield away in one go, which is most unlikely after the missile nerf.
If you are taking severe damage and your gang is not yet in position to relay you on the scrambling, hold your position until your ship explodes, every millisecond counts.
If you can't stand this, you are not born as a tackler.
B) Short range and fleet fights.
The fleet commander will split the tacklers in at least 2 groups, if he doesn't do it yourself: if your name begins with A to M you are group 1, otherwise you are group 2.
Group 1 goes for the primary, group 2 for the secondary.
When your target is killed, move to the new secondary target.
Your ship can't be greater than 1cm on your scree, zoom out, you need a good overview of the battle.
Don't use your MWD when in orbit range, save on cap.
When drones are launched at you, MWD in orbit and be ready to warp out if you can't stand the damage.
Watch out for smartbombs, under no circumstance can you be closer than 5km. If you have blasters fitted, look at your target (eye icon in your 'selected item' panel) and look if your target has guns fitted.
3° Survival
Whatever you do, always keep a celestial objet in sight, a belt, a planet, the sun, anything. Even when orbiting, you should always have a celestial in view, not too far away from your trajectory.
If things get hairy, and leaving the battlefield won't have consequences on the current fight, warp to that celestial with a right-clic on it, do never select an object from the scroll down menu at the top left of your screen, you'll be dead before warping out, you have to pilot manually.
After having warped out, select your gang leader in the gang chat window and select 'warp to member' with a right-clic on his picture to continue the fight even if your ship is damaged.
If your ship is about to explode, forget about everything, don't say a word on TS, and select a stargate on your overview. From the 'selected item' panel, click frantically on the leftmost button 'warp to' and your pod will be gone before the fastest interceptor can get a lock on you.
4° Interception tactics
There is one and only one way to tackle a target supposed to go through the gate you are camping: stand on top of it.
Every ship uncloaking at that gate will be within 15 km of you.
Just to make sure this is clear, when the flet stop at any gate, all interceptors fly immediately right on top of the gate at the model limit and absolutely nowhere else!
Doing this, you will also be outside of smarbomb range if the enemy jumps on you through the gate.
5° Scouting
If you are sent as scout in a fast frigate, you have TS all for yourself, make good use of it. Keep the fleet commander informed of what you are doing, you are his eyes. You must give information before hand because when you encounter the enemy you'll be hard pressed to give all necessary information in a timely fashion.
When you see are targets, tell sytem-gate-number of hostiles (approximative if more than 10)-ship types-range from gate/station.
You have to master all the small ship icons so you can immediately tell what ship you see.
If you have the time, give the ship types for the battleships and what kind of support you see.
Etiquette
1° Hand all your loot over to the fleet commander when getting back to the base, to share the ISK between pilots who have lost ships.
2° Don't talk in local.
As much as you love smacktalking, don't.
Those who display middle fingers and such crap in local only prove themselves immature and poorly educated persons.
After a fight, it is good manners to congratulate the enemy by a simple 'Good fight!' in local, especially if you lost. You can be born tackler and gentleman at the same time.
Comments like 'Pwned' will only get you well earned despise.
