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A covert hotdrop op is where a bunch of dudes all sit on an expensive ass blops bs and fap or play tanks until one guy with a couple of brain cells and a cyno finds something to kill. Then he yells at everyone to shut up, tackles the poor bastard, lights the cyno, the blackops bridges, everyone jumps through, giv misl and collect killmails (or all die in a fire).

This is what you need and why:

• Blackops Battleship: Opens the bridge… d'uh.
• Fuel: The bridge uses fuel… kind of another d'uh. The specific Isotopes you need depends on which blackops bs you have. Also, if you're going to jump around a lot you're really going to want a blockade runner to carry fuel since even an expanded blops can only carry so much.
• Bait: Something with a cyno, need something to bridge to. Usually a recon with a covert cyno although you can bridge to a regular cyno.
• Stealth Bombers: Gotta have some dps.
• Falcons: Bombers are made of paper, this is your tank. 'Do not fucking plate fit!'
• Recons: Rapiers web stuff. Arazus have long ass points. Pilgrims… uh… I'm not really sure what a pilgrim gives you (maybe tracking disruptors?) 'Do not fucking plate fit!'
• Command T3(Loki): While not necessary, these provide a GREAT boost to the recons, enabling the fleet to catch and kill nanofags(i.e. Cynabals and Vagabonds)

Things I recommend you DON'T bring unless you know what you're doing and/or want someone to turn around and counterdrop you or are feeling like you got a shitton of swagger.

• Covert Reconfig T3 Cruisers: Flashy, don't really gain you a lot of dps compared to the cost of bringing more bombers. Some of them like the Proteus need to get in scram range to do max dps. All their snazzy special shit that I know of can be done better by a recon. The only benefit I can see if if you have the leadership skills and can fit a loki with skirmish gang mods. Shield mods don't gain you much, armor only helps armor bait ships, and no one trains into the ecm booster skills. If you want to do this talk to Konno, he's the only one who has tried this so far.
• Combat Fit Blops BS: Even flashier, you might have tracking issues at the ranges we go in at and if we drop on bait you're going to be instaprimary. I only recommend these if you're ONLY dropping combat blops and only if you have good intel (and maybe if you're dropping a carrier, the Redeemer is one hell of a nasty anti-support ship at 50k with scorch).

I don't care what kind of stupid EFT numbers you came up with on your Widow with named launchers, your primary bridge ship should be fit with nothing except expanders in the lows, cap rechargers in the mids, the bridge module and a cloak. Order of usefulness Redeemer>Sin/Panther>Widow. You care about two things:

• How much fuel you can carry: The more you can carry the more ships you can bridge at a time and the less you have to stop to refuel. You can carry 6 or 7k of fuel in your built in bay but expander fitting can multiply that amount several times. Important note: While the bridge module will automatically pull fuel from your cargo bay if the fuel bay is out it WILL NOT pull fuel out of a can. (so stuffing a GSC into your cargo bay to fit more fuel is generally not advised. If you really need that last bit of fuel you should bring a fuel truck and save yourself a lot of trouble)
• How fast you can regen cap: If we have to relocate fast to nail something big or if we have to bridge the gang back from a drop due to a fuckoff gang (or if you're dumb and jump through by accident) you'll need to regen cap to move yourself around. Note: the bridge itself uses a miniscule amount compared to actually jumping the ship.

On a generic covert dropping op, do yourself and the FC a favor and don't bring a combat fit blops. I personally hate them since they're a magnet for people trying to bait you or counterdrop. Also, if you have a different JDC level than the bridger that has to be taken into account as well as your different flavor of Isotopes. You should really be dualboxing something else like a bomber or a recon to go in and pew pew with since doing nothing but bridging all night is really boring. I don't recommend dualboxing with a bait ship if you can avoid it, it's very easy to hit the wrong buton when you're stressed.

I DO recommend you fit things like remote armor/hull reps in your highs in case people take damage and carry extra flights of drones for recons in your drone bay. Extra highs could fit things like a neut in case for some idiotic reason you get tackled (this should never happen) or a tractor for pulling cans of fuel dropped by a truck.

Lastly, train JDC V if you're going to bridge a lot. Yeah, it's like a month, I don't care. Blops have shit range as it is so you need to squeeze as much out of it as possible. Do NOT train the portal skill above level 1. The bonus is for activation cost and it costs nothing to activate a covert bridge except a miniscule amount of cap. I also highly recommend that you eventually get cyno 5 on your blops bs. There's a lot of awesome shit you can do in hostile space if a couple of people have these (hello ghetto jump bridge network).

Fuel is life. 90% of the headaches with drops revolve around fuel. The more isotopes you can move around the farther you can bridge, the more ships you can bridge, the more you can reposition to hit interesting and expensive shit, the more often you can bridge back instead of having the burn, it's everything.

You're generally going to have 3 sources of fuel.

• Whatever the blops is carrying.
• Cans anchored in space.
• Fuel carried by a blockade runner.

By far, the easiest way to deal with this if you're moving around is have someone dualbox a blockade runner (not the blops, they're theoretically dualboxing something fun, although most of the time they end up tripleboxing). There really isn't an order of usefulness since they can all carry at least a GSC or two of fuel, however the Prorator carries the most (you'd have to do a lot of bridges are have a very large gang for this to matter).

If you're going to drop on a regular basis in hostile territory it can help to stage some cans full of fuel. Obviously this is dependent on knowing what kind of blops (and therefore what kind of isotopes) you are going to use on a regular basis however if you're doing your own logistics this can be helpful. You can also drop fuel in a CHA in a POS, have a pile sitting in a station you're basing out of, leave it in a carrier in a POS, etc etc. The point I'm trying to make is make sure your fuel is sorted ahead of time, no one wants to show up on an op and have to do hauler escorts for that shit.

Your bait ships are the guys who have to not be dumb. 'If all you can do is shoot the primary and rat, don't be this guy.' That being said, baiting is not particularly hard. It just take some imagination, thinking of what you would do if you were in the guy whose expensive crap you're trying to kill's shoes, and most importantly the balls to actually go out and run the risk of losing a ship (*gasp* My K/D Ratio!). Here's a lot of from Arakkis:

For fuck's sake, uncloak

Cruising around like a badass ninja is not what bait ships do. Sure, you don't want to blunder into a gatecamp and get popped. However, the whole idea of baiting is to get shot at and no one can fucking shoot at you if you are hiding like a bitch. Hang your dick out.

Act like you want to honorably 1v1

OK, so you're uncloaked, hanging your dick out, now what? Pop your drones out and send them at anything that goes by. Unless it's a Fleet Issue Tempest 100k off a station, burn at dudes and be overtly aggressive. I've seen a lot of guys do stupid things when they start getting shot at that has lead to some great KMs. You want to get any ship you are going to potentially drop on to aggress on you so that they can't dock at a station or jump through a gate. Read the wiki article on aggression and understand how it works. If you drop a fleet full of goons or testies on top of something expensive only to have it jump through a gate, you are going to have sore goons and testies. No one likes sore goons or testies.

Put points on EVERYTHING

Always always always put a point on any ship you see. I've seen guys that are unaggressed, on a station, start shooting me AFTER I've dropped an entire fleet on their friend all because I had a point on them and they couldn't warp off. As I said above, people do stupid things when their adrenaline starts going and this leads to KMs. This is also the reason I almost exclusively fly an Arazu. People will often think they are safe from single points at 20-30 km away and scrams at about 6km. Those extra few kms they have to slowboat out of will often allow a bomber to zip out and get another point.

Don't linger unless you have an escape route

Sitting on a gate or station pointing frigates for 10 mins is a great way to set yourself up for a bombing run or some other hilarious welp. You have to surprise people and get them to do stupid things. If you give them time to get all organized, they may be able to turn the tables on you OR on your whole gang of ninjas. That doesn't mean you shouldn't give the kestrel you just soloed with your drones time to reship into his Tengu, but you have to deaggress yourself and be ready to bug the fuck out if they throw the kitchen sink at you.

WORDS FROM PAPA KONNO:

How you fly it: (A third person perspective.) Depending on who is flying the Blops and where we are located, you'll be given your wandering limits. You're looking for solo jag bags in expensive shit, or small or even medium gangs, It all depends on what our fleet composition is. We don't want to drop on gangs that have large number of interceptors, or a bunch of hac's/instapoping bc's. The bigger and slower the targets the better as 85% of our DPS will be in the form of torpedoes. That being said, 2 or 3 of just about anything battle cruiser sized or bigger is worth dropping on. That KM up there. 2 Machs and a Cynabal… That was worth trying twice.

What you want to do is wander around looking for likely targets. You can hang around gates, scan around for ratters, and if you can probe..? All the better.

Remember; If you're baiting on a gate, the objective is to get your target mad at you before you open the cyno.

The mechanics are pretty much as follows. You'll point your target while you burn into scram range. Once you get him scrammed you slow down to a speed which someone else will have to provide for I know not. So now he's scrammed, and agressed, and you're below the maximum speed, now you open the cyno and scream, “Cyno Up, Cyno Up, Cyno Up!” Then you wait for the Blops pilot to scream, “Bridge is Up, Bridge is Up, Bridge is Up!” If there are multiple targets? As soon as your primary is scrammed, use your points on anything else within your range that is slow enough to stay pointed. You'll need to decide what the primary should be and what need's to be pointed/jammed as you'll have eyes and we'll be blind till grid load. And you need to relay this while we're coming in, so we can react in the most efficient way possible.

Now if you're hunting in belts or probing out people in missions and shit, then you could in theory cloak bump, or engage with whatever style you choose. I don't care how you find me skulls, just find me skulls! The Skull Throne, think only of the Skull Throne.

Checklist:

• Is My mike working?
• Do I have Ozone?
• I am I in range?
• Can our gang take the target with a minimum of loss?
• 'Do I have Ozone?'
• Is the target agressed? (If on gate.)
• Is he scrammed?
• Am I slow enough to light cyno?
• Can I light a cyno here (system not cyno-jammed)?

If the answer to any of these questions are “no” then people are going to die, and by people I mean you.

Generally, you'll be flying either a cyno 5 recon or some kind of supertanked cruiser. We've used drakes and lolcyclones in the past, however drakes scream bait and bcs tend to be kind of slow and some shit won't aggress them. I highly recommend this stabber fit https://wiki.goonfleet.com/Stabber#hepatitisDD.27s_Stabber as I've nailed strat cruisers, marauders, faction shit, and all sorts of other expensive crap with it. If you're in a bc or cruiser you can play a lot more station games and aggress on a lot more shit than a somewhat more squishy recon. They're also cheap as fuck to lose when you're still learning. The only drawback is you have to wait 10 minutes for the cyno to drop (although if your gang cloaks around you you'd be surprised what kind of random shit will come in to try and mess with you) and you can't pop cyno in a jammed system. These are FUN in NPC space.

When you move to a recon, you're probably looking at an Arazu or Rapier. We've had some pro Pilgrims in the past (sup Commander Tigre) but I don't recommend them if you can fly anything else since they don't really give you much in the way of tackle. Falcons are too squishy unless you're stalking a jewing system or something.

An Arazu is probably the best (and likewise is kind of obvious bait by itself) since it can get a 20k scram and 50k point with t2 mods and fit an absolutely fuckoff tank (for a recon) when they're armor fit (they also can get bells and whistles like eccm, more points, sensor boosters, etc) although they're fat and slow as hell in that config. A shield fit is less common since their resists against lasers are kind of meh but are a lot more agile (I use this with dual LSEs, an invuln, a dc2, an em rig, and a cdfe). A rapier is squishier and can only fit one point but having something double webbed off a gate or bridge or whatnot before the gang even bridges can be very helpful.

'If you're at all serious about baiting with recons you will want recon 5 eventually.' With recon 5 you can fit the ever useful Expanded Probe Launcher, allowing you to get perfect warpins on shit sitting way off gates or stations or whatnot instead of having to burn 100km at like 300m/s only to have them warp off as soon as you decloak. You can technically do this with Recon 4 but you will gimp the everliving FUCK out of your fit, don't do that just train recon 5.

Other shit: You name it, we've used it. Brick tanked tackling Falcon with horrendously pubbie name, station fagging BS, stealth bombers/covops, arbitrator, sleipnir, prowler, etc. The only thing that matters is you can get a point (preferably a scram), get them aggressed, and not die before the gang gets in and we can get shit jammed.

Oh, and if you're dropping on a battleship that isn't a Raven, check for gun models. If it doesn't have any then it's probably smartbomb fit. Don't play with these idiots if they're not well within a bubble. They fit a bunch of stabs in the lows, cost nothing to lose, and if your bombers land within 5kish they'll all die.

I'm putting this section in because there are quite a few people who seem to have cyno 5 but can't yet fly recons, or fly falcons/pilgrims which don't make the greatest bait ships, or are poor. You CAN use a bomber as your cyno ship, they actually have a couple really nice advantages over recons: *They have no sensor recalibration after decloak so you can instapoint things that are aligned out but not paying attention, especially if you have a sensor boosted manti. This gets even more fun when you load up on coprocs and shoehorn a probe launcher on. *They're easier to move around as long as you don't get delay bubbled since they're much faster/more agile than a recon. *Everyone can fly them (or should be able to). *They're cheap as fuck to lose. *No one expects a bomber to do anything besides bomb or try to gank haulers or die in a horrible fire. They do have some obvious disadvantages: *They're fragile. *They don't have a bonus to point range. *Their cyno lasts a full minute so once you light it you're basically committed. Bombers are probably the best ships to use if you're going to sit in someone's system afk cloaked a lot waiting for them to get comfortable enough to ignore you. Fit a bomb launcher/torpedo launcher/both and you can do the usual annoying shit bombers do like shooting wrecks or bombing crap. Then, when they bring out their expensive crap, cyno in your friends and proceed with the rape. You're not really baiting so much as stalking people and being a huge douche besides.

This works really well in renter systems because they can usually only pve in the few places they have sov. One thing to note, I wouldn't whistle up a blops gang for anything short of a command ship/faction cruiser here since once you drop people in once this gets harder and you're much more likely to die since you're a bomber and the first ongrid.

The best kind of bomber for this is a Manticore followed by whatever the other one with 4 mids is. You're going to want to fit mwd/point/2xRSD (scan res scripted, yes damps, I know this is like the one time you'd ever use them) then DCUII/whatever in the lows. Warpin, tackle and get damps on them as soon as possible to buy your falcon time to get ongrid and get him jammed.

right|frameFits on stealth bombers are largely a matter of personal preference. You're going to want to fit double BCS and a point. Manticores should fit a target painter in their extra mid and I HIGHLY recommend a small shield extender just to give you a little buffer in case some cane gets a lucky shot off at you. You can MSE fit if you want but the point is to squeeze as much dps as possible out of your fit since you're all our damage. Likewise, you should always have faction ammo on you (don't worry about resists, just whatever you're bonused for) and 'NO FUCKING BOMBS'.

When you land on grid you should be pointing whatever you can unless the FC tells you otherwise and get out of any bubbles. If it's really not feasible to point something (ie you're well out of range or there's multiple points on whatever's there) you should 'ALIGN OUT'. You have battleship dps but NO TANK. If something starts shooting you 'WARP OUT'. If you get drones on you 'WARP OUT'. If you get rat aggro 'WARP OUT'. If a zealot/muninn/harb/cane/etc yellow boxes you 'WARP OUT'.

Shit not to do:

• 'NO MOTHER FUCKING BOMBS!!1! NO MOTHER FUCKING BOMBS!!1! NO MOTHER FUCKING BOMBS!!1! NO MOTHER FUCKING BOMBS!!1! NO MOTHER FUCKING BOMBS!!1! NO MOTHER FUCKING BOMBS!!1! NO MOTHER FUCKING BOMBS!!1! NO MOTHER FUCKING BOMBS!!1! NO MOTHER FUCKING BOMBS!!1! NO MOTHER FUCKING BOMBS!!1!' We don't use them and there's a high probability of you OOPSing and accidentally bombing us when we're MWDing out of a bubble or to get tackle. I will primary you and you will never come on another op if you ever do this. If you fit them okaywhatever but they sure as hell better be offline. Some people like Dirt Nap carry them to voidbomb carriers or whatever, it's a retarded idea and you should get the fuck out (yes I've theorycrafted bomb stuff, you could setup runs on shit but the effort/reward ratio with goons is too high compared to resetting and going after something with bait).
• Shoot the damn primary! We roll with groups of 10-15, we don't have the extra people to have you splitting dps. With these groups especially, if someone is primary it's for a reason (will rape us, has ecm, is expensive, etc). Lots of times when we're hitting expensive shit we'll go in, gank one guy, and get the fuck out.
• Don't solo tackle shit when we're burning somewhere. You have no tank and are slow, even if you tackle a cruiser or something and we kill it your bomber's probably worth more and then we're down a dps ship. 'DON'T FUCKING TACKLE CURSES ON GATES WHEN WE'RE LIKE 2 JUMPS OUT EITHER FUCK!!1!' Half your tank is the falcons, the other half is the element of surprise. If you don't have at least one and preferably both you're just going to die. Don't try to fight frigates and inties and shit either. You have torpedoes, you're not going to hit them for crap and we'll all laugh when they kill you.
• Don't fit fucking dampeners, ever. Yeah, I see this shit a lot, it's retarded. You'd need a lot of damps for it to be effective and there are much better things to put in your mids. I generally put mids in order of effectiveness at MWD>Point>SSE/MSE>Painter/Scram>Dampener/ECM so if your bomber has 5 mids okay I guess (hint, there are no bombers with 5 mids, don't do this).
• I personally am leary to fit a scram. You shouldn't be getting that close to anything. That said, if you want to be a hero scrams can be useful as a fourth mid (an annoying amount of shit can now burn back to gates while double webbed) since we don't always have an Arazu.

Without a bomb launcher you'll have a utility high. If you can fit a covert cyno (even offline) bring it and 50 lo. We can always use more of these just for moving around. Other options might be a salvager or remote rep.

Surprise is our main thing but after that wears off our tank is ECM. The more falcons we have the higher above our weight class we can hit, I generally don't even want to undock without at least 2. Jammer fitting is your preference (you can argue about which racials to bring somewhere else, multispec is still a bad idea except if you're brining either a faction or officer one as a 5th jammer, thon's are like 70mil and have near racial strength) unless the FC calls for something specific, however 'NO PLATES.' The reason you should NOT fit a plate is because plates add mass and the amount of fuel used by a blackops portal is solely dependant on how much mass is going through it. If you want a tank, I suggest an LSE II and a DCU II. If you can fit a covert cyno, please bring it. Remote reps are also highly desirable for patching up bait ships.

Other recons don't give us a huge amount of dps but they do give us some utility. My preference is to have at least one Rapier for catching shit trying to burn away. Arazus are good as well, although they're probably better as bait ships ('NO PLATES' if you're sitting on the blackops, same reason as with falcons). e: Actually having one shield fit Arazu on the blops is nice since sometimes your bait ship needs to warp out due to drones/being primary. More than one on the blops is overkill.

Jam anything fucking up the bait ship first, then things like logistics and antisupport. I'd be less worried about big shit since it can't track us and anything likely to try and deaggress that might have a chance to get away should generally not be jammed.

Pilgrims… well… they don't really give us much. Yeah, you can tracking disrupt but a falcon would be better. They usually only armor tank which is shit for our fuel. They have neuts but no range bonus. They use drones but by the time they get to the target it'll probably be dead. If you can ONLY bring a pilgrim (you can't fly a bomber? seriously?) I'd ignore the primary and go after tacklers with light drones, fit tracking disruptors to put on shit like canes, and neut something big if it's in range, while using the lows for nanos/speedmods and a dc2.

I'm adding this because it's about the only use of a strat cruiser I've found I genuinely like. Here's some

Everybody will gain the benefit of having extended tackling/webbing range. That means we have a better chance of actually keeping fast shit on grid long enough to pop it.

Decent alpha, decent range (65K with Tremor.) I wager I'll be pretty high up on the KM damage list.

Has killer point range 37.9k/44.5 without/with heat.

Has the above listed attributes and still has an interdiction nullifier so mobility isn't an issue.

Isn't the fastest T3 out there only 1.3k/s not the biggest deal but might be an issue keeping up with frantic escapees.

My preference is to roll with 2 falcons, a rapier, 8-10 bombers, and a bait ship minimum. Actually, I prefer 2 bait ships of different flavors (like a t1 cruiser and an Arazu/deficient recon) since if something won't bite on one you can always get them with the other. Neutral alts can be hot, although you'll have to dodge blues which is annoying. I'll occasionally use a hictor if we're in well scouted space but the hulls are kind of expensive so I wouldn't make a habit of it.

It helps if you can get setup near both someone's home and an active pipe, especially a 0.0/highsec jumpoff (there's some nice systems in Syndicate for this and 4-a in Pure Blind has given us good luck on occasion. XX9-WV in Curse is EXCELLENT for this since you can hit the entrance pipe from empire, the entrance pipe from Great Wildlands, the entrance pipe from Catch, a fair chunk of Scalding Pass, and all of Curse itself.) NPC space can be a LOT of fun since if you have a cruiser or bc to play station games with you can kill a lot of those pricks that fly ubertanked station fagging bullshit.

If you have a tower to bridge out of that is ideal, however that's rarely the case. Usually you'll bridge out of a safespot. If neutrals show up in system EVERYONE needs to be doing constant 360 scans with overview settings turned off 'or an overview with scanner probes on it active'. You're looking for Combat Scanner Probes and Sisters Combat Scanner Probes. If you see these, don't panic. Just have everyone burn off and cloak, I'll generally log the blackops too (Which means you (DON'T EVER FUCKING AGGRESS THE BLACKOPS BS YOU PUTZES!) and have people watch to make sure it disappears.

General shit not to do:

• Don't hotdrop smartbombing BS.
• Don't waste time chasing frigates.
• Don't aggress the blackops or fuel truck.
• Shut the fuck up when the bait ship calls for it.
• Don't chase shit around the system after a drop.
• Don't sit uncloaked after a drop.
• Don't run the blops through gates if you don't have to.
• Don't dick around with sniper shit like machs/tempests that can oneshot your bait ship if you can't get close enough to actually have a chance of surviving.
• Don't play station games after a drop.
• Don't be afraid to lose all your shit to get a nice kill, bombers are cheap.
• No not believing in yourself.

This shit can be immensely amusing. Baiting for one of these gangs is a fucking rush and one of the few things in eve that's still exceedingly amusing to me. It's also very chill for the people not baiting as you can sit and watch a movie or play tanks until there's something to kill (likewise, if you're going to sperg every ten seconds that you're bored because you haven't discovered masterbation or are physically incapable of amusing yourself, get the fuck out).

The buy in is also incredibly cheap compared to Titan dropping and you don't need to dick with towers. Most of the time we drink and shit up TS or swap war stories until we find something to kill, then collect mails (or die in a hilarious fire). We do care about k/d ratio, but not unduly. The only part that sucks is you can't bridge through in a rifter.