New Eden Pilot

Offensive FC combat probing is great. It brings together the power of both scout and FC, and allows an FC to hotdrop a fleet on any target no matter his position. Snipers and stationary loners have never been worse off.

Here's the concept.

1. The FC employs an expanded probe launcher, and fills up with combat probes.
2. Probes are positioned around points of interest, for example a gate and a station.
3. Cloaked scouts are positioned at the same points, to provide visual. These scouts can be stationary, so T1 prototype cloaks on a frigate works great. If you fear spies, don't have scouts in fleet so fleet-members can't warp to them. Since it's the probes that provide warpins, not the scouts, the scouts can be hundreds of kilometers out, as long as they are on grid.
   
4. The FC scans continuously, and scouts report any targets of interest. Since scans take less than 10 seconds now, chances are good that a target won't slip through.
5. If a target is found, FC ninja-warps fleet to the warp-in acquired by the probes.

For illustration, this picture shows a typical situation from the war. A warp-in point on the incerceptor is aquired through probes. Note that in this case I'm alone, on grid with opfor and without a fleet. The point of the picture is just to show how probes can produce warpins. Note also the friendly chat with Melissa Dawn who agreed on the picture in a quiet moment of our battles. Thanks!



Fleet should be relatively homogeneous with regards to optimal range, since everyone will be hot-dropped at the same range from target. 10km or 20km is typically used, since it is inside tackling range, but outside smart-bomb range.

Here's a ship I've FC'ed in:
Droneboats are good for this, since they dish out decent DPS even without turrets/missiles. Also, when the FC flies a ship like everyone else, he's less likely to be singled out as a target by opfor.

This is why we scout. A typical scene from the recent war against Seppuku Warriors / Vertigo, opfor is gathering forces outside Osmon SOE.



And if you ever thought scouting was boring, try sneaking up on a enemy fleet for warp-in points or stealth bombing. If anyone tells you they're not pumping adrenaline here, they're liars. This is scary stuff.

Note how the overview now shows everything, each little tidbit of containers / biomass / station guns shows up sorted by distance. Going forward at half throttle, to be sure this is all under control.