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If you're looking for the use of Interdictors and Heavy Interdictors, see the guide to Advanced Tackling

Tacklers are small, fast ships that prevent other ships from escaping a fight. Primarily they get in close to an enemy and apply a Warp Scrambler or Warp Disruptor effect that disables the affected ship's ability to warp away. Secondarily they apply a Stasis Webifier or Target Painter effect that makes the affected ship easier to hit by slowing it down or increasing it's signature radius respectively.

Modules that improve the speed and agility of a ship such as Microwarpdrives (sometimes Afterburners), Overdrive Injectors and Nanofiber Internal Structures are also popular tools of tacklers.

A valid question! Tackling ships are small, fragile things that can't kill much on their own. Flying them is in no way glamorous (at least in a way that is immediately obvious to a new player). So why should you fly them?

The number one reason you should fly tackle is to become a gorram hero.

A tackle frigate costs under 1 million ISK fully fit, zips around at 3500 m/s, turns on a dime and is crewed exlusively by test dummies and exotic dancers. Despite its size and cost it can have a big effect on a fight.

Consider this: An enemy fleet is under heavy fire from your friends and are trying to escape and regroup, but you warp to a wreck near their ships as they are aligning out and target biggest shiniest ship you can see. You mash your warp scrambler as hard as you can, then you web it too. That big shiny ship might be a Tengu. That Tengu might get left behind when the rest of its fleet warps off. That big shiny ship might just be the enemy FC or it might be deadspace fit and worth over 1 billion ISK. It might only be dead now because of you. Most likely your fleet will congratulate you. You'll ask a cute question like, “What's a tengu?” and then your wallet will blink.

Did I mention that we give out free ships?

• Minmatar Frigate III or any other racial frigate.
• Propulsion Jamming I
• CPU Management III
• Navigation I
• Afterburner III
• Hull Upgrades I
• Mechanic I
• High Speed Maneuvering I

As of the Vanguard release, all new characters start with these skills already trained.

Simply ask and we'll give you free ships to zip around and explode in while you learn about Eve.

• Attend newbro training fleets lead by fleet mentors.
• Read about tackling tactics.

As a tackle frigate your enemies are generally going to be larger ships than you. The size of guns used by those ships will be able to kill you in the same amount of time whether you have a shield/armor buffer or not. Rather than buffer tanking to absorb hits, you will be speed tanking and trying to avoid being hit at all. This means that you'll approach a target at high speed and at an angle so that its guns will have a hard time tracking you. Once close you'll orbit quickly at close range where its guns will be unable to hit you. Equipping your ship with a shield or armor tank actually makes speed tanking more difficult because shield extenders increase your ship's signature radius and armor plates decrease your ship's agility. Each of these penalties will make your ship more vulnerable to receiving hits and, in the case of an armor tank, you will also take longer to align out for a warp.

Tackle ships are especially vulnerable to a number of things which are in no particular order are:

• Light Drones will shred your ship in no time at all and an enemy can instruct them to attack you from as far as 40,000m away as long as they can target you before you burn out of their lock range.
• Smartbombs are modules that deal damage to anything in an area around the ship using them. They don't require any target to be locked, only for the ship to be in range at the time they are activated. Smartbombs are commonly used to kill drones, but players will also equip multiple smartbombs to cruisers, battlecruisers and battleships for the purpose of baiting frigates into attacking them and then activating their smartbombs for easy kills. The range of smart bombs varies by size, but is generally between 5,000m - 10,000m.
• Stasis Webifiers are modules that slow down affected ships by as much as 60%. Assuming that you're speed tanking this means that you're basically dead. Stasis webifiers typically have a range of about 10,000m.
• Warp Scramblers are short range tackle modules that also disable Microwarpdrives. If your ship gets scrambled you won't be able to burn away from danger at high speed. Warp scramblers have a base range of 7,500m - 9,000m.
• Energy Neutralizers are modules that drain your ship's capacitor. Without capacitor you can't activate any of your ship's modules. The consequences of this range from losing tackle on a target to being dead in the water and unable to escape. Energy Neutralizers have a range of 5,000m/10,000m/20,000m for their small/medium/heavy variants respectively.
• Interceptors, Assault Frigates and Destroyers are all specialized combat ships that have an especially easy time killing T1 frigates. If you ever catch one of these and tackle it there are two possibilities: They are terrible and deserve to lose ther ship to all the friends who are about to warp to you or they're baiting you into tackle range so that they can kill you. The latter scenario is far more likely.

Warp Disruptors have longer range, but use more capacitor while active and require more CPU to fit. Warp scramblers disable microwarpdrives, have shorter range, use less capacitor while active and require less CPU to fit.

Disruptors allow you to keep a safe distance from your tackle target and allow you to initially tackle other ships from much further away. Scramblers allow you to prevent your target from using a burst of speed to escape and are easier to fit on a ship and keep on in combat.

It's O.K. to fit one of each if your ship has an abundance of mid slots.

This is a question that is best answered in detail. If you don't know what to do with a tackle ship you should read the tackling tactics article. A short answer will ultimately be insufficient, but if you require a 30 second guide simply for the sake of getting started it goes something like this:

• Approach at an angle and stay alive for as long as possible.
• Apply a warp scrambling/disrupting effect to an enemy in range and orbit that enemy.
• Never never never apply a Stasis Webifier effect to an enemy before they are warp scrambled. This may cause them to enter warp before you can scramble them if they're aligned, but not yet at the 3/4 velocity required to enter warp.

Remember that the role of a tackler is to tackle, not to apply damage.

With that in mind, feel free to fit whatever weapons receive a bonus from the hull of your ship. Short range weapons are better because they do more damage and have higher tracking speeds which can be useful for attacking drones an enemy has sent to attack you. If you're interested in using a high orbit to avoid smartbombs, neuts and webs you can use long range weapons, but they usually require more fitting resources on your ship which may or may not be a problem for new pilots with low skills.

In general you shouldn't worry about what weapons you use too much. It's more important that your ship has a point, web and propulsion module.

Furthermore, it may seem like a good idea to equip a smart bomb to protect your frigate from drones, however, this is a bad idea because frigate sized smart bombs are completely ineffective and are more likely to damage your friends than they are to accomplish anything helpful.

A Microwarpdrive (MWD) is a propulsion module similar to an afterburner that provides a tremendous boost of speed to your ship. Afterburners use a little bit of capacitor, have a long cycle time and allow you to move at slightly more than double your normal speed. Microwarpdrives are the Afterburner's big brother. They use a lot of cap, have a short cycle time and allow you to move at five times your normal speed.

Microwarpdrives have a critical disadvantage that Afterburners don't. Microwardrives increase your ship's signature radius by as much as they increase it's speed. This means that while they are active your ship is much easier to target and hit with weapons.

Despite their downside MWDs are worth using because they allow a ship to sprint long distances in a short time. For tackler this means that they can close a 30,000m gap in as little as ten seconds and possibly catch a target before it can warp a way.

Feel free to sink as much isk as you want into tackle frigates. Just don't fly what you can't afford to lose. (You will lose it).

Worth noting is that your money is best spent on upgrading warp scramblers and propulsion modules to named modules. T2 modules are harder to fit and use more capacitor, without any real benefit. Guns really don't matter much on a tackler.

You do this so that your ship doesn't fly in a straight line towards your target. Instead your ship takes a path across its field of view that is more difficult for it's turrets to track, thus your ship is much more likely to survive the approach.

• Join fleets and practice practice practice.
• Train navigation skills. Speed and mobility are important for tacklers.
• Train capacitor skills. If your cap is dead, you're dead. On the other hand you can run two scrambler modules as well as a prop mod at the same time if your cap skills are healthy, which is pretty handy for specialized tacklers.
• Consider training towards advanced tackle ships like Interceptors, Interdictors or Heavy Interdictors. Talk to experienced pilots that fly these ships to learn more and decide if you're interested.

There are dozens of important roles to fill in fleets besides DPS. Unfortunately many are long trains, so you need to pick one to focus on at some point. Don't rush it. Try multiple things out before you decide on a long term goal.

• Electronic Warfare is an easily trained T1 option. Each race has a electronic warfare frigate and cruiser. The Blackbird and Griffin are the most useful as ECM is king of electronic warfare.
• Logistics Ships are T2 ships specialized in applying remote repairs to shield or armor and attempt to keep other ships from exploding under enemy fire.
• Recon Ships are T2 ships specialized in scouting enemy fleets outside of combat and disrupting enemy ships from long distance while in combat. Popular ships in this category are the Arazu and Rapier, which can warp cloaked, and the Lachesis and Huginn which warp scramble and web targets at long range.
• Covert Ops ships are T2 ships that can warp while cloaked and are specialized for scouting enemy territory, executing bombing runs, hot dropping behind enemy lines and aquiring warp-ins for fleets with combat probes.