EVE Evolved: Upgrading to a PvP cruiser: Minmatar and Caldari, page 2

The Blackbird is an incredibly effective and cheap electronic warfare platform for fleet and gang warfare. Even with low skills, one Blackbird's ECM jammers can take several enemies out of a fight by making them unable to acquire targets. Because of this, they're usually called primary target in gangs and killed very quickly. To do its job properly, the Blackbird will need to outrange high-damage opponents and fit a bit of tank to survive the ones fast enough to get close. Mid slots can't really be spared for a shield tank, so most people end up just putting an armour plate on it.

The setup above uses an 800mm plate, but if you drop the heavy missile launchers you can upgrade that to a 1600mm plate. Both setups require Engineering level V to fit, which is thankfully only a rank 1 skill and so will take less than a week to fully train. Your goal in any fight is to target-jam as many enemy ships as possible, starting with high priority targets like electronic warfare and logistics ships. If none of those are on the field, jam the ship you think will deal the most damage or any snipers able to hit you. Try to apply racial jammers to ships of the appropriate race, or use multispectral jammers if you aren't sure what race you'll be jamming. For more tips on flying an ECM ship, see the old but still relevant EVE Evolved guide to electronic warfare.

Use the microwarpdrive to get around 40-50km from all enemies and warp out if you see a tackler speeding for you. If your gang begins warping in on top of an enemy, hit Ctrl Space to cancel and then manually warp yourself to 30km or 50km from the target. Not only will you land out of range of the most enemy ships, but you'll also lag several seconds behind the main fleet and the enemy may have already selected a primary target by the time you warp in. Both factors will improve your chances of surviving and help your gang win the engagement. If you find your lock speed is too slow, swap a jammer for a Sensor Booster I.

The Moa is a survivable Caldari gunboat designed to use long-range railguns, with a bonus of 10% hybrid turret optimal range per level of Caldari Cruiser. The setup above uses short-range blasters instead of railguns, almost turning the Moa into Caldari version of the Minmatar Rupture or Gallente Thorax. This fitting produces less damage than a Rupture or Thorax, but has a significantly higher effective hitpoint buffer and so will survive longer in a fight. The shield resistance rigs are also cheap enough to use in a disposable ship.

This ship can deal decent damage out to around 5km, but as with the Thorax you'll want to get within 1km. The Medium Nosferatu I drains enough capacitor to ensure your invulnerability field and most of your guns will never switch off even if you're being heavily energy neutralised. By downgrading the Medium Nosferatu I to a Small Nosferatu I or Small Energy Neutraliser I, you can swap the Warp Scrambler I for a second shield extender to produce an absolutely ridiculous tank for a disposable tech 1 cruiser.

Avoiding pod-death

As with last week's setups, it's possible to lower the cost of death by getting a better deal on the base hull price and fitting cheaper but more effective meta level 1 modules instead of the standard tech 1 variety. One additional cost you can mitigate is the death penalty associated with being pod-killed. When your ship inevitably blows up, you are ejected from the wreck in an escape pod. If the pod is blown up, you wake up in your clone vat back at base with your current clone grade reset to the basic free version. Once you have over 900,000 skill points, you'll need to upgrade your clone again after each death to cover all your skill points.

While you have under 6 million skillpoints, and as long as you don't have any implants, getting podkilled can be a nice cheap shortcut back to your home base. Once the cost of clones and implants starts to become a significant, practice getting your escape pod to safety. The trick to this is to select a far away object like a space station or planet and hammer on the warp button in the "selected item" section of the overview just before your ship is destroyed. Your pod will almost instantly warp out as soon as it's ejected, making it very unlikely that you'll be caught. Once you're confident that you won't be getting podkilled, train the Cybernetics skill and install a few attribute implants to help speed up the skill training process.

It's often said that the most effective ship in EVE is friendship — that skillpoints and expensive equipment can almost always be trumped by having more friends than the other guy. The setups posted in this article and last week's guide are fairly standard setups that should function well as a mixed group for gang warfare. Their low cost means that as long as you have a few million ISK in the bank, you don't really need to be worried about death. I strongly advise new players to get a gang of five or so cheap cruisers together and run head-first into low security space.

Look around for pirates showing up red on the overview and smash the first one you see to bits. You'll either die a blaze of adrenaline-pumping hilarity or actually manage to kill a veteran player who specialises in killing people who can't defend themselves. Whether you end up with a glorious death or righteous vindication, I guarantee you'll have fun.

As with last week's setups, don't be afraid to tinker with them or try out new ideas. EVE PvP is a tactical landscape, where victory often goes to players who can trick the enemy into engaging on the wrong terms. Baiting the enemy into engaging a heavily-tanked tackler before dropping surprise reinforcements on their heads works fantastically. Some players owe their success to unconventional fits like shield-buffer tanked Blackbirds to absorb a lot of enemy fire, combat-fit Ospreys or equally crazy setups.

Brendan "Nyphur" Drain is an early veteran of EVE Online and writer of the weekly EVE Evolved column here at Massively. The column covers anything and everything relating to EVE Online, from in-depth guides to speculative opinion pieces. If you have an idea for a column or guide, or you just want to message him, send an email to brendan@massively.com.