Fleet Command 101

Fleet Command - The most stressful game - The Fleet Commander or FC, is a complete different game, where you steer a rag tag bunch of dummies manually pressing buttons to do the single thing you want to do. Where you want to press F1, the FC wants everyone to press their F1 at a the same time. Where you want jump through a gate, an FC has to decide WHEN he can safely get through the gate with aggression and what might be waiting on the other side.

The importance of a single FC for a fleet - There has to be a single person 'in charge'. That person will often assign alternatives in case their internet goes down, or have one person handle tackling or bombing or scouting or capitals. But you have one person calling the play to make sure that everything is going to go well. And if things go in the toilet, it's on them.

What in-game skills are important - None. No seriously, a newbie in a brand new frigate could be an FC. Ideally, you have the following things though: 1. a slightly more tanky and faster ship than the mainline ship, possibly the t2 version. The harpy is a great FC ship. 2. Decent Magic 14 skills. 3. Probing skills are nice but not necessary. 4. A monitor is great, but not at all necessary below like 50 people. 5. The fleet formation warping isn't required but again helps in some cases. 6. boosting skills are no longer required, thanks CCP!

What to practice to get better ahead of time - Telling people what to do. That's it. Well, initially you're listening to advice. On every fleet of 20 people, you'll have 5 complete idiots, maybe 5 that know how to do most parts, 4 that know everything you do, and 6 that know way more than you. Use those people to help you. Again, you're in charge, but learn what they are teaching you. I would recommend you study the following. 1. all of our fleet doctrines 2. Identify most critical fleet ships by name and role (dictors, hictors, recons, booshers, logi, and t3c) 3. The general layout of our allies and enemies. 4. Who is going to be there to help you in time of crisis.

How to pick a doctrine (rock-scissors-Munnin) - This is hard. I would recommend sticking to the current doctrines you've seen other people ping for. A single ship is hard enough to fit, and entire doctrine takes time and effort and skill. So go with something easy. Cormorants, caracals, or feroxes are the three bigs to go for. Corms if going for a roam, caracals if responding to something, and feroxes if it's something actually dangerous. By minimizing your response and not going straight to eagle/muninn, you are more likely to get your fight when it comes to you. You treat your fleet like a single ship, with a single speed and maneuverability and range and dps.

Finding a fight - Again, hard. You want to identify a target. I know Mist likes to roam on XIX, since they share a timezone. Going someplace, going into an ESS, and forcing them to come chase you off is honestly pretty easy. You can use a filament to move around quickly. Or try to get home quickly. Doing wormhole exploration makes this easier, drifter holes make this even easier since you just need a single entrance/exit in a 50 wormhole system. Get people to help you! Or just roam about after doing a filament.

Just start FCing - Just undock. just go. stop overthinking it, announce a time, and go.

How to use other people to get there - This is really key. If you look at any operation, you'll notice one or eight people helping the FC. Everyone has a role. 1. Recon, someone advising you where to go. 2. Backup FC, if something happens to you. 3. A backseat FC, this is someone helping you do your job, and standing in for you if you die or disconnect. 4. Lead scout, someone going in before your fleet lands and warning you that a tick bomb is setup. 5. Link pilots, these are experienced pilots who can often help you. 6. Logi Anchor is needed for larger fleets, pulling logi away from the main fleet so that the main fleet can survive.

Range and your fleet - Range and speed are basically everything. You need to make sure you stay in range of your weapons to shoot them, while staying out of the weapons that can hurt you. If you have ever gone on a mist fleet, you'll know how important range is. Most of the doctrines that we fly are that good because the weapons systems work at good ranges while going quickly. I'd recommend taking out cormorants to test these things out.

Target calling - Start with the most dangerous ships on the field. These include Lachesis, Huginn in big fleets. But dictors (sabre) or booshers (bifrost, stork), these can fuck up small fleets. Then move onto shooting their DPS, see how the first one goes down. If that doesn't work, you start working on their logi. Note, you have to sometimes do alphaing, where you get everyone to clear their guns and everyone shoots at once. This will cause all your damage to arrive at the same time, volleying through the target.

Dealing with loss and doing it again tomorrow - DBRB is a goon FC and he isn't the best FC. But he shows up, gets people to fly with him again even if he lost the last time, and is energic. This gets people to show up to his fleets. Note that a good FC gets people to follow them, like Mist has for his roams.. If people lose confidence in you as an FC, they don't show up, they don't put their valuable assets on the line, and you don't get the numbers you need for the fight you want. For large scale ops, Horde backs the losses with SRP Ship Replacement Program, or Valhalla program on the left hand side of the bar. This makes sure your *must* have ships are there, getting replaced, and the alliance is paying for those problems. People are more than willing to put their expensive ships on the line for a person they trust.

Your first fleet - Start today. Go join standing fleet, arrive early when fighting someone, practice calling targets and directions. Then ask if anyone wants to go for a roam, find some place to go. Or even start your own sub channel with a small group. Then work on doing broadcasts for normal fits, like cormorants or caracals. Or do handouts of ships so you get the exact doctrine you want. It's all up to you and your interests though.