Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Using Gate Aggression Mechanics to Split Apart the Enemy

Recently I left on a nice long round-about roam. Or at least that was the plan. Oddly I seem to have been stuck in Providence. I can't seem to make it very far without running low on ammo/cargo space for loot :). Earlier this morning I logged on and had a very quick fight on the 9UY-H to H6-CX8 gate. I thought that this fight represented some very basic strategy that any pilot aspiring to solo pvp must know.

The situation was this. I was in an Enyo and saw a Jaguar on d-scan. A Jaguar vs an Enyo is a good fight, could go either way. The main issue being wether or not the Jaguar tries to pull range or not. Anyways, I engaged him on the H6 gate and quickly started taking him down stripping him of his shields and well into armour. Unfortunately his buddy in a Sabre popped through the gate. With the added DPS from the Sabre + the likely additional points and webifier, this turned from an easy win to a likely pod-loss. Aligning for the sun I hit the overloaded MWD bailed out. :(.


At this point I decided to keep on trying for these guys. My systems were damaged (but not offline) from overheat so my effectiveness was reduced, but I figured if I could take on one of them alone I should still come out on top. Warping back to the gate I took a quick glance at them and jumped through.

With only the two ships against me I was in a very safe situation. Neither of them alone or together could prevent me from getting back to the gate. Of course they were also 'safe'. No way I could engage them both at the same time. What I needed to do was get it so that they were both in a state of aggression on opposite sides of the gate. That way they could neither get out through the gate, but help would have to wait the full 60 second timer to come in.

Clearly they were on to my plan. I couldn't get either of them to aggress. So I started giving them a little encouragement. On the side of the jaguar I inched slowly off the gate. My plan was to convince the jaguar to engage me since I could not immediately go on through. It worked. I was about 4000m from the gate when he opened fire. I quickly motored back to the gate and jumped as soon as I could. Shields were dropped to about 50%.

Now I had a very small window to act. I had about 60 seconds before that jaguar could come in. Fortunately the Sabre decided that he was willing to play into my plan and he launched a bubble, giving him aggression. I immediately locked and approached the Sabre, scrambling it once in range and opening fire. He returned fire but, with only a slight DPS advantage, and a much weaker tank, he went down before the Jaguar's aggression was up. Thanks to his own bubble I was able to get the 90m+ isk pod as well :). The jaguar finally came through but, after the drubbing I had given him solo earlier, was in no mood to play without help. I probably could have engaged him, but I did have significant damage so I just played it safe. I looted the wreck, popping what I couldn't hold and left.

TL;DR: I used gate aggresion mechanics to isolate each member of their gang on opposite sides. This included baiting the Jaguar by moving somewhat off gate to encourage him to take a chance. These same tactics can also be used in larger gangs.

3 comments:

  1. Very nice job. I wonder how you would have done against the Sabre if he had a DCII and a Gyrostab, though...

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  2. Nicely written. It seems like your opponents made a mistake there.

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  3. @Gern,
    Good question. Obviously a Sabre fit without a cloak with more gank + tank would be more dangerous. However I still should be able to pull out a win based upon my better tank, similar dps plus the benefit of an active tank. That is unless the Sabre mitigates my damage by scram/webbing me far enough away that my damage was significantly reduced. Of course this is true for the fit the Sabre did in fact have.

    @VR,
    Not so much a mistake. They wanted a fight, I wanted a fight, I just made sure they could not dictate terms. They knew that I was not going to get trapped in a 2v1 so they had to take their chances with a 1v1, that or give up.

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