How do the sky marshals of the various pvp empires design fleet compositions and doctrines? Well there is alot that goes into it but surprisingly there are not alot of resources on the internet that take you through the entire process, you more or less have to take peices from different areas and put them together. Today we are going to design a fleet comp from start to finish.

Bare in mind that this is just one of the many ways that doctrines are designed, and by no means is this a representation of eve as a whole, this is just a method that some groups have used to great success.

:Warning, this is a long post as it will take you through the entire process, if you are not serious about learning how fleet doctrines are designed I would spare yourself the boredom.:

That being said, lets begin.

We need to start by looking at your alliance/coalition, are you a 200 man low sec alliance that needs a few strat op doctrines for the handful of r32s you own, are you a 50 man wormhole corp looking for epic small gang blingy capital brawls, or are you a massive nullsec entity with 1200 man fleets and a ton of timers that need attacked or defended, Lets assume for this article that on any given ping you can muster between 50 and 100 people into a fleet, so you are a decent sized group. You live in npc null, you have a handful of pocos and some decent moons, and you are looking to expand both in assets and in numbers. This is important because depending on your size certain things do not work as well. Lets get into the ships.

Everything created by man is created because there was a need, and in EVE this is no different. You need to look at what is going in, what is working right now, what is not, what are your enemies flying, what is popular right now, etc. After you have thought this through and you have a need, you then begin to design a doctrine. For this doctrine lets say you need a low signature brawler comp that has some e-war capabilities to counter the popular doctrines of the people you are currently fighting. Ok great, this is our need so we can go from there. Now we take it one tedious step at a time. We can start by either picking a particular ship we want to use, or we can just eliminate ships we do not want until we find what we need. For this blog I will go the long way.

Ok we need low sig, so for simplicity we are going to eliminate anything bigger than a cruiser. Next do we need armor or shield? Well this is where I would look at what you are already doing, lets say you are already running a kitey cerb fleet, or a jackdaw fleet, or a moa fleet, I would go armor. If on the other hand you have no shield comps and want to start working those into your doctrines, we could do a shield design. For this example we are going to go the armor route.

At this point we want to decide on our main dps ship, then after we have that we can start to theorycraft what support ships to pair with it. We want low sig armor brawlers so some things that come to mind right away are legions, zealots, proteus, vigilants, confessors, thorax, deimos, sacrilige, You only have a handful of moons, so lets get rid of the expensive stuff. You are not adverse to spending isk on SRP but at the time you do not want to go bankrupt from a few bad welps, so were going to redo the list with isk cost in mind. Zealot, confessor, thorax, deimos, sacrilige is what you have left, but blasters are a little short on that range you need in a fight based on the locals you fight alot, so you feel a bit safer with the better range of missiles or lasers. Now we are down to the zealot, confessor, and sacrilige. Based on the high alpha doctrines some of the locals use, you decide to go for the smaller sig possible so that you can sig tank alot of the enemy dps. In this case, the confessor wins, and your confessor doctrine is born.

Ok we have a confessor doctrine, but what now? Beams or pulse? We want to brawl but we need some range so we are going to run beams. We want alot of armor and we want an ab fit because we want to keep a low sig while perma running our ab to avoid the enemy alpha. You do some fit theorycrafting, you stalk zkillboard, you talk to people in director chat, and voila this is born.

[Confessor, T3D MINI AHAC]

400mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates
Adaptive Nano Plating II
Damage Control II
Energized Thermal Membrane II
Heat Sink II

1MN Afterburner II
Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script
Tracking Computer II, Tracking Speed Script

Dual Light Beam Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Dual Light Beam Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Dual Light Beam Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Dual Light Beam Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]

Small Anti-Kinetic Pump II
Small Trimark Armor Pump II
Small Trimark Armor Pump II

Reminds you of your days in PL years ago when you use to run zealot ahac gangs alot; complete with T3C support, guardians, etc. Fun times.

Ok now lets analyze the fit, we have alot of armor so we can tank some dps on these bad boys, especially with some logi. Between sig tanking, the ehp on this, and logi support, we are looking at alot of tank for such a small ship. In defense mode we 22k ehp and move at 500 m/s with a sig of 40, so we can fight big stuff and stay under guns. With the right support I would not be afraid of taking a fleet of these into a fight against a proteus fleet or a tempest fleet at all. Propulsion mode puts us at a little over 800 m/s so we can chase AB cruiser gangs easy. Sharpshooter mode lets us put out 300dps at 16 km, 9km while in defense or propulsion which is fine because we are going to try to stay under guns and on top of people. If we need to kite a little we can as aurora will let us put out 175 dps at 50 km which while not much can still alpha stuff when you have a bunch of these in a fleet.

Now we need to augment this ship with the right support. We need logi for sure, but what else? We want to stay on top of things, so we need a good amount of tackle to slow stuff down so we can get on it, maybe some ewar to get kitey stuff to have to move closer to us, and some command dessies so we can move our fleet around and MJD on top of the enemy. Lets do logi first since that is hands down the back bone of any fleet.

We need a mobile fleet so using cruiser logi would not be ideal because it will slow the smaller ships down. We also are using confessors which while not expensive, they are not throwaway cheap either, so we do not want to use t1 frig logi cause those are for cheaper doctrines like harpies or tristans. T2 logi frig sounds like a plan, thank you ccp for adding those btw, I have asking for years .

I kind of miss harpy fleets btw, speaking of designing doctrines I highly recommend considering harpies the next time you need a small, fast, kitey doctrine. Now back to the matter at hand.

Ok so t2 logi frigs, we have 2 options, we are going to use the deacon because this fleet is going to be hugging enemy fleets and while we are going to be under guns alot, we are also going to spend some time within optimal so taking some dmg is inevitible. The deacon can give us a little bit more tank over the thalia at the expense of a mid slot, which is worth it in this case. You want a strong logi wing to defend your confessors, so you opt for a little bit of bling here and you go with a strong fit that is kind of cookie cutter but it is tried and true and works very well.

[Deacon, blingy]

Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Damage Control II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
400mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates
Thermal Plating II

1MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner
Small Capacitor Booster II, Navy Cap Booster 400

Coreli A-Type Small Remote Armor Repairer
Coreli A-Type Small Remote Armor Repairer
Coreli A-Type Small Remote Armor Repairer

Small Trimark Armor Pump II
Small Trimark Armor Pump II

At a cost of roughly 75 mil this is a nice setup. You could shave off half the price and run m4 remote reppers, and there is nothing wrong with that at all. Bling deacon setups are getting more and more popular though throughout eve and they really make a difference so if you can do it you should. T2 rigs for sure since you have the blingy high slots it would be dumb to not protect the investment with t2 rigs. If you opt for m4 reppers then you can use t1 rigs if you want to.

Ok we also need some command dessies, this is the type of fleet where you can make some serious out play happen. Few things in eve are funnier then watching the enemy fleet’s reaction when you suddenly mjd on top of them when a second ago you were all the way on the other side of the grid. Not to be so amarr this doctrine, but yet again tank wins out and we have ourselves a pontifex.

[Pontifex, triple prop]

Damage Control II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
400mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

1MN Afterburner II
Micro Jump Field Generator
5MN Microwarpdrive II

[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]

Small Trimark Armor Pump II
Small Trimark Armor Pump II

Warrior II x5

23k ehp, 120 dps, 846 m/s with ab cold, 2156 with mwd cold, and when else in EVE will you ever get to fly a triple prop anything? Let me explain this btw, you want an ab because in a standard fight you want to anchor up with your team and let your drones do some killing while you continue to sig tank with the ab on. However when you are play maker mode, you want that speed to be able to catch something and warp it off before it can respond. So the mwd should only be used when play making, it should not be on just because.

Ok so we have confessors setup to murder people from 0km to 50km, we have some bling deacons, we have triple prop pontifex, what else do we need? Well lets look at what can easily kill us for starters. Anything super long range that tracks decently will be the biggest problem, and the second biggest problem will be anything that track wells at close range that has alot of dps. This second scenario is not as bad because we have the option of being kitey until we kill a few of them to get their dps under control which is something that a blaster doctrine for example will not be able to do. The first situation however, a long range doctrine that can track us, is a major problem and we need to be prepared to deal with this or else we will all just die to a bunch of nagas if our command dessies or inty pilots dont get us a warp in or a mjd in on top of them. This is the point of the post where I slightly rant, because not enough pvp alliances use this one tool enough. Remote sensor damps.

Why remote sensor damps? Cause literally why not? Use them in every single fleet comp you have, i dont care if your fleet consists of 4 guys, 1s a dude that just trained assault frig lvl 2 and is all about flying a hawl, the 2nd dude is all like “omg guys I wanna fly a drake cause dank memes” and your third guy is a newbro who only has a derptron, but he has to wait 8 minutes to undock while he lets electronic warfare finish so he can online his long point. Then you as the fourth guy think to yourself, god dam this is terrible what should I fly? The answer, remote sensor damps every single time.

Public service announcment ” if your fleet currently does not have remote sensor damps in it, then fly those every single time”

Ok rant over…………….wait a sec not really.

People scream about ecm being broken, yeah ok you haven’t been flying around in a 2 bil isk legion getting 1v1’d to death by a god dam 18 mil isk celestis being flown by a 3 week old account because your lock range is 12km now and he is 16 km away from you and try as you may you cannot out run him, and you also can’t just mobile depot into some warp core stabs cause you forgot your mobile depot 3 systems back plus you don’t even carry warp core stabs because “I’ll never need those on my blingy t3 will I?” You shoot his t1 drones which helps but after you kill all of this drones your still sitting there waiting unable to get out of his point, but hope is in the air because some of your freinds are like 10 jumps out and on the way to save you. Then a blinky red vindi lands on grid who just so happens to be in the same alliance as the celestis bro,………………………………… Seriously guys, RSD’s are crazy.

If you are unaware of what rsd’s do, they can either make it so it takes you longer to lock someone, or it shortens your targeting range (or both if unscripted). Mostly people use them to decrease your lock range. How powerful are they? Well one celestis with 4 rsd’s with tengu links will reduce a scimitars lock range from 112km down to 3km. That is not a typo, 112km down to 3km by a single celestis (max skilled but still, its a t1 cruiser so doesn;’t take long to max)

We are going to do the same to their kitey stuff, but even if we are not fighting kiters this works well on enemy ewar, enemy logi, anything with high dps, etc. Rsd everything, plus the skills to get good at rsd are short so in a very small amount of time even a brand new eve player can be an elite pvper and murder people. And as an added bonus it is not hard to rsd stuff, instead of clicking f1 you just have to spam click f1-f4 on 1 target, or control click 4 targets then cycle through them pressing f1, f2, etc. Eve is easy.

[Maulus, freeby]

Damage Control II
200mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates
Prototype Armor Explosive Hardener I

1MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner
Phased Muon Scoped Sensor Dampener, Targeting Range Dampening Script
Phased Muon Scoped Sensor Dampener, Targeting Range Dampening Script
Phased Muon Scoped Sensor Dampener, Targeting Range Dampening Script

[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]

Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I

This ship is so cheap I buy them by entire jump frieghters worth of m3 at a time and still I make the isk back in like 2 hours. Then I proceed to hand them out to any body like 4 at a time cause again so cheap I don’t care. A newbro can go literally lose 100 of these today and no one would even bat an eye, its cool. This ship is useful too, those damps are unreal. A single damp will bring a ship with a 100km lock range down to a 59km lock range, that is huge.

Ok so what else do we need? We have dps, logi, rsd, command dessie, we also have intys because your alliance has stock inty fits right? If not then seriously get that done. Do we need anything else in this setup? Yes, we need 3 more things, we want some webs, some serious heavy tackle, and we want a good dps alternative that is not em/thermal locked but works in the doctrine. Similar to how zealot ahac gangs usually have a few ham legions and or ham sacrileges in them.

[Hyena, triple web]

Damage Control II
True Sansha Armor Explosive Hardener
400mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates

Stasis Webifier II
Stasis Webifier II
Stasis Webifier II
1MN Afterburner II

[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]

Small Anti-Kinetic Pump II
Small Trimark Armor Pump II

Decent tank, 30k web range, this is going to help us stick onto targets so nicely.

[Svipul, confessor back up]

Gyrostabilizer II
Damage Control II
400mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates
Armor Explosive Hardener II

Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script
Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script
1MN Afterburner II
Sensor Booster II

200mm AutoCannon II, Barrage S
200mm AutoCannon II, Barrage S
200mm AutoCannon II, Barrage S
200mm AutoCannon II, Barrage S
Small Energy Neutralizer II
[Empty High slot]

Small Trimark Armor Pump II
Small Anti-Kinetic Pump II
Small Trimark Armor Pump II

a handful of these will help us against armor gangs with high em resist, again think of this in the way a ham legion is to a zealot in a zealot gang. Neut in the high slots because why not? You can run it cap stable so put it on any enemy ewar or logi in range while you shoot dps targets. Do not neut the dps primary target, he’s going to be dead before your un-bonused neut can neut him out.

[Keres, heavy tackle fit]

Damage Control II
400mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates
Experimental Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I

Warp Disruptor II
Warp Disruptor II
Warp Disruptor II
Warp Scrambler II
1MN Afterburner II

[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]

Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Trimark Armor Pump II

Because heavy tackle never fails. Inty’s are great do not get me wrong, but having one or two of these makes life easy. Think of this as a scaled down version of a tackle proteus in a zealot fleet. Basically think of this entire fleet design as a zealot fleet just scaled down.

Ok are we done, well yes and no. If there is one thing I learned from being in goons is that you should give your newbros specific stuff to fly or else one of two things happens. They all show up in mixed drakes, or they all show up in that 1 t1 frig you have in the doctrine. In this case its a maulus so it is not so bad if 30 new bros show up in a maulus, but it gets rough when you need 5 guys in vigils yet you have 30 vigils for your 50 guys in barghests. So to make matters easy, put newbro stuff right into the doctrine so that your newbros know what to do. Also make the fits easy, all m4, leave alot of extra pg and cpu, that way fcs can just hand these out and not have to worry about who can fly a t2 dcu and who has the pg for this or whatever. Hand them out, and undock.

[Punisher, newbro dps (confessor fleet)]

Extruded Compact Heat Sink
IFFA Compact Damage Control
400mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates
‘Aegis’ Explosive Plating I
‘Refuge’ Adaptive Nano Plating I

Optical Compact Tracking Computer, Optimal Range Script
1MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner

Small Focused Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Small Focused Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Small Focused Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Small Focused Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S

Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I

a week old account can pump out 100 dps with this ( sounds bad but for a week old account 100 dps out of a frig is good) and get about 7k ehp. As far as newbro fits go, this works wondors. If your a FW corp/alliance, I would try to get all of your newbros to train this before anything else.

[Inquisitor, newbro logi]

IFFA Compact Damage Control
400mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates
Experimental Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I
Experimental Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I

1MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner
Eutectic Compact Cap Recharger

Small Solace Scoped Remote Armor Repairer
Small Solace Scoped Remote Armor Repairer
Small Solace Scoped Remote Armor Repairer

Small Remote Repair Augmentor I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Anti-Explosive Pump I

Works well for newbros, needs the rr rig for a low sp account to be cap stable so I wouldn’t change that to a 2nd trimark despite the fact I know many people would make that change. Newbros die alot regardless, and that 2nd trimark will rarely make the difference. This is overall a great ship for a new player to really feel like they are making a difference, because even with the m4 fit this ship does rep a decent amount of hp. At very low sp a newbro can rep about 175 every cycle, with fleet boosts he will cycle roughly every 2 seconds, so a few newbros in these can make a huge difference.

[Atron, cheap derptron]

IFFA Compact Damage Control
Type-D Restrained Overdrive Injector
Type-D Restrained Nanofiber Structure

J5 Enduring Warp Disruptor
5MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Medium F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extender

75mm Carbide Railgun I, Antimatter Charge S
75mm Carbide Railgun I, Antimatter Charge S
75mm Carbide Railgun I, Antimatter Charge S
[Empty High slot]

Small Low Friction Nozzle Joints I
Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I
Small Auxiliary Thrusters I

Cause someone needs to bring a shield ship to armor fleet.

If your in null bring some dictors, shield dictors and shield tackle are generally welcome to armor fleets. I will not post dictor or inty fits because you should have those, but in my fitting section I have some so go for it.

What else do we need to do before this goes live as a doctrine? Well establish jobs, alliances like goons and brave do a good job making a poster for each doctrine, x ship does this, y ship does that, etc. A fleet like this you probably want to have seperate anchors for dps, ewar, and logi. So that means 3 anchors, plus back up anchors, so make sure your fc’s are aware of that. Dps will be up front, logi will be close by and ewar should be a little bit back but not by much. At times you will all need to be ontop of each other to stay underneath guns.

Last part, how much of each ship to bring? Well if you have 100 guys in fleet you’d want roughly this: 40+ confessors 10 svipuls 15 deacons (20 if your running m4 fits) 10 inty/dictor 5 command dessies 3 keres 5 maulus the rest in the other t1 frigs (fc should hand out whatever you need, if your logi light hand out inquisitor, inty light hand out derptron, etc.)

Establish some skill requirments for srp, like that deacon fit is 75 mil which is expensive for a frig, so the pilot should have logi frig 4 at the minimum, maybe logi frig 5 depending on your alliance and how many logi pilots you have. My old alliance uses that exact deacon fit and for srp gives full payment at logi frig 5, deducts 20mil for logi frig 4, and at logi frig 3 or less the pilot gets no srp. We also have some engineering skill reqs and other stuff, so that is up to you as an alliance director/fc.

A few things to do before you undock.

No 8 logi is not enough. Yes, 16 ponifex’s is to many No you can’t bring an enyo or ishkur No you can’t bring your warp speed rigged scimitar even though it’l keep up (seriously wtf) well you can but no srp for you Yes you can bring your armor drake but only if A: it is speed rigged, and B: we get to kill it later if it survives the fleet op and C: no you do not get SRP for your drake you scrub, buy insurance before undocking.

You will notice I leave drone bays and high slots open alot, that is because on those ships it is preference. DO you really care what kind of high slots a hyena has? No, I care that hes webbing everything. Ditto for the drone bays of logi pilots, they can bring dps to whore, some hull bots, a mix of both preferably but ultimately are they repping broadcasts or not is all I care about.

K now that your doctrine is set go kill stuff.

TL:DR Ushra’Khan is recruiting RSDs are OP as hell. Send isk donations to aurum exodus, thank you guys in advance.

No I am not going to stop my conspiracy theory posts, 1: they entertain me, and 2: the support mail I get out weighs the hate mail and the down votes and the post removals courtesy of the r/eve mods. Thank you everyone for the support mail, the isk, and the endless god dam supply of rookie ships that people keep contracting me, serious this is getting old please stop.

This is an example fleet to use for the purpose of the article, but feel free to comment on the fleet comp, is it good, is it bad, what would you do to change it?

Original post https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/599a8k/how_do_coalitions_design_doctrines/
Re-posted for reference only, this is not my work.