In EVE, as in the real world, the best defense is to not be worth the trouble.
- Have more military might than the aggressor. As we are dealing with a superior force, this one is mostly out.
- Be of low value. This means minimize the value of loot they can grab and also minimize the value of kills for their killboard.
- Don’t convince them to make it personal. The more they specifically dislike you, the harder it will be to get them to back off.
Over the years my group has developed a simple strategy for dealing with getting overwhelmed. It is summarized as “Blue ball, blue ball, blue ball, kick them in the balls, blue ball”. This approach is straightforward if you live out of an NPC station, and obviously more complicated when you have structures to defend. When structure defense is part of the equation, those defense timers are the “kick them in the balls” part of the strategy.
When assessing an enemy threat, here are a few things to look for (some more useful than others)
- Number of combatants | This number will vary with alts and allies, but using tools like zKill can help determine what you will face if you haven’t convinced them to escalate.
- Enemy player skill | This is hard to quantify, but remember, if they regularly participate in pvp, adrenaline will cause fewer mistakes than in someone who doesn’t.
- Enemy character skill | This one is moderately hard to judge, so unless you have strong evidence to the contrary, assume most pilots you go against are all 5s, even if it isn’t true.
- Identify the enemy doctrine | What ships do they bring to fight, what ships do they bring to bash, how much logi/ewar/tackle do they bring, how quick do they bail, and do they come back with something more favorable. If possible, always get ships scans before engaging on a high sec structure, knowing what they are flying should always be more valuable than the couple minutes it costs.
- Identify the enemies active times | If the stars align, try to set structure timers to when you are strongest and they are weakest.
Wars cost money and time, minimizing their return on those investments if important.
- Fly smart. Don't move valuable equipment or resources with war targets if you can avoid it. If you can’t avoid it, get scouted.
- Don’t fly faction (ships or equipment) if tech 2 (or tech 1) can do the job. Even if the fit is cheap, pirates love getting valuable hulls on their killboard.
- As an extension of #2, there is a temptation when outgunned to try to make up the difference with bigger spending and bling. This is generally a trap, in that it rarely increases performance sufficiently to make up the difference, and it greatly increases your perceived value as a target.
- Never take a fair fight. If your side doesn’t have a clear advantage, don’t make it fun for them.
While boredom and ISK are the most common motivators for war, sometimes the enemy just doesn’t like you. These wars can be hard to shake so it is important to manage their motivation level.
- Don’t trash talk. Ever.
- If you are on edge about defending structures, don’t pick random fights. It can be great fun to catch an enemy off guard, but sometimes a death to some “noobs” is all the motivation someone needs to make a timer that would normally be too inconvenient.
- Don’t attack their structures. If the enemy is a “superior force,” attacking their structures does very little to stop them, and actively motivates them against you. The game mechanics say destroying their war headquarters will buy you some time, this is normally a lie, if they want to fight you, they can find a way.
Nobody wants to just rollover and take their beating, but there is a time and a place.
- Focus on structure defense. A well set up structure can potentially perma ECM up to 3 targets for multiple minutes. In small fleet fights that can be huge.
- Use your ship scans to build the enemy fleet in Pyfa. This can tell you vital information like weapon range, sensor strength, how much tank their remote reps generate, and estimate how well your fleet and theirs can apply damage to each other.
- Use the information in #2 to pick your final fleet comp.
a. Figure out how much damage you need to break their tank. I recommend a minimum of a 2:1 ratio of damage to enemy tank before even considering taking the fight.
b. Figure out how to best mitigate enemy DPS.
i. Logi is important, but requires a deep roster to use as your primary mitigation, as it will roughly take one logistics cruiser to rep a friendly battleship per enemy battleship attacking.
ii. ECM is a strong tool, but many structure bashers stack sensor boosters and are potentially very strong against ECM and/or sensor damps. Use your ship scans to determine viability.
iii. Weapon disruptors can be extremely powerful against popular bashing ships like Leshaks, but become generally less helpful if the fight turns into a brawl.
iv. Fighting from range can provide great damage mitigation, but going too far out will make it harder to break enemy tank, and easier for them to get a warp in on you.
c. Beware the floaters. Ships like the Hecate and Navy Exequror are great for landing on the more vulnerable key ships such as logi/ewar and erasing them. Have something in your fleet capable of punishing these smaller ships.
If you are in charge of planning structure defenses for your corp/alliance, using a combination of Pyfa/ship scans/zKill can provide you a great deal of practical intel. It is important to not overly rely on these tools, but they are extremely valuable and go a long way in improving your odds. If you are reading this and not experienced with Pyfa and are affiliated with [LOOSE], reach out and ask for Jaeger, and I’ll provide a short tutorial.