Piece D or WOW can be overwhelming for a newbie. You look ahead at the wide open space and wonder how you're going to fit in along with all those veteran players that have a huge advantage over you. Fear not, as with real life, even the smallest pebble can make waves. You don't need to be in have a supercapital in your garage to make a difference. Enter the support pilot.
Let¡¯s face it; it takes a lot of time and effort to get into the larger ships. I've been playing for years and I've never set pod in a capital ship, though I have all the prerequisites for one. Some new players look at that as an end goal, and that's fine, but there are plenty of awesome experiences to be had while you train up your ability to use a jump drive. The support pilot is an integral part of a fleet of any size.
Some of the best fun can be had in EVE in a small gang of fast moving ships. As a wolfpack, you can wreak havoc in enemy territory, as you roam around and take out targets of opportunity. It can be like a game of cat and mouse sometimes, as you bait the enemy to commit so you can take them out, while you avoid traps yourself.
Small to medium sized roaming gangs usually require a variety of ships across all the different races in EVE. That means that even with very little training, you can easily take part in a type of PvP that most veterans have a blast at. It's easy to learn, a lot of fun, and you don't need the most expensive ships in the game to be effective. For example, the Maulus¡ªa Gallente frigate¡ªis cheap and gives 5% bonuses to remote sensor dampeners per level of the frigate skill. That means that for a very small outlay of training time and cash you can mangle someone's ability to lock a target properly.
Interceptors are a Tech Two frigate which specialize in scrambling someone's warp drive, and are probably one of the easiest Tech Two ships to get into. They're always needed in any sized fleet as a way to restrain a ship and keep it from warping away, called tackling. As some of the fastest ships in EVE, they're a blast to fly because of the sheer adrenaline rush they provide when you get there first and attack the target before anyone else. Interceptors are my favorite ship to fly for this reason. There's nothing like tearing through space like a banshee, with full knowledge that your first module activation will make your enemy sigh with the knowledge that his quick escape has been thwarted. It's now do or die.
Major capital operations require support fleets. Systems have to be secured while capitals do their work on an enemy starbase, and the support fleet's must monitor the gates that lead in and out of the system, and eliminate any threats which might try to burst in. Situations like these call for practically every type of ship the game has to offer, from interceptors and other frigates up to battleships. The average fleet-fitted battleship usually handles long and short range combat through ammunition rotation. These battleships can be used to take out enemy support fleets in operation, as they focus primarily on the opposing battleships.
Meanwhile, smaller class ships do their best to defend the larger ones against the enemy's smaller class support, which are quite effective against battleships. They can mangle their sensors, drop interdictor bubbles to keep huge groups of ships from warping out, or just add more damage output in general. It almost doesn't matter what you're flying, as long as you can respond to needs on the battlefield as they evolve and work towards the fleet¡¯s goals.
One of the big enemies of the support pilot is the doomsday device. The four Titans in EVE each have their own doomsday device, capable of unleashing a ridiculous hellstorm of damage over a wide 250 km sphere of the battlefield. The act of firing the doomsday makes a Titan a sitting duck for a time, before it regains the ability to jump out, but it can also reduce a huge support fleet into a cloud of wrecks with a single button press. These types of attacks are infrequent unless you often end up in fleet battles between large organizations that both have Titans.
Support ships offer players of any age and skill the ability to have an extremely fun time in EVE, one full of options for a player to specialize and make a name for him/herself. My own personal favorites are the interceptor class, but everyone has their own. If you'd like to share your own experience as a newer pilot in EVE taking on support roles in combat, check out the newfangled comment system below!
by Michael Lastucka |
