It is time to continue an old feature which used to be run semi-regularly called “Tools of the Trade”. In this series of articles I will look at some of the popular fleet comps you will have flown or heard of, go through how you fit and fly them, and share ideas on what and what not to engage.
I’ll start off with quite a niche setup which is used more in lowsec than null, then continue on to cover T3 fleets, HACs, before moving up to battleship doctrines. The last one will be the glorious golden fleet of Navy Apocs and Guardians/Archons made famous by Rooks and Kings.
Remote Rep Fleets
The remote rep fleet dispenses with logistics ships entirely, as every ship carries both dps and remote rep modules. So while non-bonused hulls will rep less and over much shorter distances, this is offset by the fact that the fleet has no obvious weak targets for the enemy FC to go for.
The main shortcoming of this type of fleet is the limited range of remote reps on a non-logistics hull, from 4.8 km for a small to 8.4 km for a large tech 2 (deadspace small or medium have slightly better range, but there are no deadspace large remote repair modules), so the fleet has to stay close, basically in a big ball; stray outside the sphere and you’re dead. This limitation restricts the engagements you can take and you can’t go chasing stuff all over the grid too easily. Faction Warfare complexes, gates, warp interdiction bubbles, and anywhere the enemy fleet is likely to bunch up and land on top of you are ideal for this sort of fleet. Open-grid kiting battles are much harder, although kiting ships are less likely to be able to break your tank.
Strengths include a pretty solid tank and the fact that on d-scan your fleet will appear to have no logi and therefore seem much weaker than it actually is.
Your next choice is what sort of ships to use; just because you can slap a remote rep on anything doesn’t mean you should. Firstly, you will need solid resists and capacitor or the abilty to fit mods to acheive these. Next, you will need weapon systems that can apply over distance and free high slots for rep mods. This means drone ships tend to be popular choices.
Here is an example fit for a remote rep Vengeance. This ship has great cap, resists, and full tackle:
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Centii A-Type Thermic Plating
200mm Steel Plates II
1MN Afterburner II
‘Langour’ Drive Disruptor I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Rocket Launcher II
Rocket Launcher II
Rocket Launcher II
Rocket Launcher II
Coreli C-Type Small Remote Armor Repairer
Small Bay Loading Accelerator I
Small Warhead Calefaction Catalyst I
I have had a hell of a lot of success in these things but if you decide to try them here is my advice: don’t fly headlong into a fight before you have done a tank test. Go aggro some rats or a station and have a quick dry run so your fleet can get the hang of locking and repping friendlies before they have to worry about tackling and killing enemy fleets as well. Successful use of an RR fleet takes a bit of skill and that’s why you see it relatively rarely. Bear in mind the maximum locked targets of your hull and always leave one or two spare targets so you can instantly lock whoever is being primaried.
Everyone should obviously have a watchlist open and be watching for incoming damage while the fleet needs to orbit either the primary or an anchor depending on how you fly. If you are kited, simply ball up, rep, and either disengage if you can or force them off with drones if you have them.
Scaling up from assault frigs, ships like the Algos, Vexor, Vexor Navy Issue, and Dominix work well. In terms of numbers, these fleets are viable from three to four upwards and scale easily. However, once you get over sixteen fleet members, the watchlist runs out of space and you have to coordinate reps which makes things a bit harder.
Possibly the best aspect of this fleet format is that it is so involving to fly; a really tight, outnumbered fight with heated reps, drones flying everywhere, and hauling victory from under the nose of defeat is very satisfying and tremendous fun.
Now that you know the basics of a remote rep fleet, go out and try it. You might find you enjoy them.
This article originally appeared on TheMittani.com, written by Johnny Twelvebore.
