The limitations of small gang warfare restricts their feasibility to certain areas of gameplay. It should be clear, for example, that a group of 5-10 pilots isn't really able to fight a territorial war in heavily defended 0.0 alliance territories. The avenues of PvP that are best suited to small gang warfare are broadly piracy, empire wars and faction warfare. Of the three, faction warfare will almost certainly be the most accessible. Small gangs and fleets roll out every day in the contested zones across EVE and the relatively short trip home to get a new ship if destroyed makes running disposable ship gangs very appealing. Although I've covered faction warfare in other articles, piracy and corporate wars may need some explanation.
Small gang piracy:
Whether you're pirating in low security space or 0.0, there will always be individual pilots and small groups of ships that you can attack. The key to piracy in a small gang is to get in, kill or ransom your target and get out with the loot as quickly as possible. When pirating, it's even more important than usual for your gang to stay mobile, every moment you spend at the scene of the crime is time that a possible counter-fleet can use to form up and intercept. Pirates who focus on low security space must be prepared to deal with sentry guns and completely disregard their security status, which will eventually drop to -10 due to repeated criminal activity.
Finding targets in low security space can be difficult, forcing many pirates to use alternate characters with astrometrics skills to scan down mission-running ships before launching the gang to attack. In contrast, pirates concentrating only on 0.0 space suffer much fewer disadvantages. Stargates there have no sentry guns and kills do not incur security status penalties. Additional tools are also available in 0.0 such as anchorable mobile warp disruptor bubbles for when you're camping stargates. For a roaming gang, the mobile versions that fit on specialised tech 2 interdictor and heavy interdictor ships are much more useful. The risk of running into a massive blob is very high in 0.0 and intelligence-gathering is extremely important to a gang's survival.
Empire war gangs:
Declaring war on another corporation is an excellent way to pick your fights. Making sure that the corporations you target aren't large enough to muster a massive attack force means you can be sure your gangs won't run up against one. This opens up the field for small gang warfare very well. Finding target corporations that will fight back can be difficult but even non-combatant corps could have some targets of opportunity flying around. Thanks to locator agents, you can even track down anyone in the target corporation as long as you know their names. As long as you set your overview up correctly to avoid targeting neutrals that aren't part of your war, there are no sentries or police to worry about.
Summary:
Small gang warfare is still very much alive in EVE. Using hit-and-run tactics, small gangs can be a lot of fun and incredibly effective in faction warfare, piracy and empire wars. In this part of the guide, I examined how small gang warfare fits into EVE's PvP landscape. Next week I delve into the much larger world of fleet warfare, from 30-man faction warfare gangs to 300-man 0.0 warfare fleets.
