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
• Electronics III
• Navigation I
• Afterburner III
• Hull Upgrades I
• Mechanic I
• High Speed Maneuvering I

You can train all these skills in about a day, which may seem like a long time if you're brand spanking new, but really isn't bad at all.

Once you have them 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 [https://zkb.pleaseignore.com/detail/17390779/ 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.

This shockwave file helps explain the concepts of turret tracking, transversal velocity and angular velocity: http://www.hostile.dk/files/eve/eve-tracking101.swf

• 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.

Interdictors (usually shortened to just dictors) are Tech 2 Destroyers specialized for tackling. They are fairly fast, poorly armored, and mount the firepower of three frigates. Their primary function in combat settings is deployment of warp disruption bubbles from their specialized Interdiction Sphere Launcher module. These temporary bubbles prevent all ships from warping and break ships engaging warp within their 20km radius for 2 minutes.

An interdictor is very much a double edged sword, much more so than any other type of ship in Eve. Interdictors are called primary the second they appear on grid, and get their pods caught in their own bubbles easily. As such, using expensive implants while flying an interdictor is not recommended for beginners and during fleet ops.

The Interdictor skills used to expand on the ones required for Interceptors. However, with the Odyssey release the prerequsites were changed and now form a progression with the skills required to train interdictors being mostly a lower level of those needed to train Heavy Interdiction Cruisers. Interceptors, Interdictors and Heavy Interdictors fill a broad spectrum of specialist tackling roles, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

• Here's a basic guide to using an interdictor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdoR7mhyWe8
• Dictor bubble radius is 20km
• Account for the ~1.5s delay between launcher activation and bubble drop when moving
• Bubble affects ships that have activated warp, whether trying to warp in or out of it.
• Know where the undock is for station camping
• Bubble the middle of the gate for system gate camping
• Place bubbles outside of anticipated smartbomb range, 5km (this is less necessary with Rev 2's bubble HP boost)
• Interdictor pilots will have poor Kill/Death ratios. You will be called primary in every engagement with the enemy. You will be the number 1 threat to any enemy fleet, so focus on survivability (read: escape), not damage output. Drop a bubble and jump out or warp away. If you do this and come back to the fight, chances are the enemy will not call you primary straight away.
• Practice bubble dropping to get accustomed to the delay. A good dictor pilot knows the time and range to launch for his ship to ensure a perfect placement while passing at top speeds.
• Speed is Life -Because you want to live, fit speed mods (overdrives/nanofibers) in the low slots.
• Fit a MSE - Medium Shield Extender, this is your buffer. You should have between 1500-2000 HP of shield by comparison with speed rigs my sabre has around 650 HP of armor. Once you get below 50% seriously think about warping away. Once that shield buffer is gone, you will just about be alpha'd.
• A MWD is required to escape. Remember, though, that the MWD will drastically increase your sig radius, after leaving your bubble either warp out or transition smoothly into a high transversal orbit. You need to travel faster than 3.5kms (and preferably over 4kms) to speed tank missiles.
• Bubble launcher does not auto-repeat. (Rev2.0)
• The dictor launcher can fire fast enough to perma-bubble with one launcher.(Rev2.0) Train Interdictors to V to make the most of this.
• Be ready, always position yourself on the center of the gate either above or below it and aligned to something so that you can drop your bubble, burn and warp out. When camping a gate do it with your ship directly under the little stargate icon in the middle of the stargate if it's Gallente or Caldari. If it's an Amarr gate, right in the middle of the ring on top of the icon instead. If it's a Smuggler Route gate, a little towards the front of the gate, just in front of the icon.
• Cloaked interdictors are great for laying traps (and general survival). If an enemy ganksquad is nearby, consider cloaking a dictor under a gate and have the rest of the fleet >15au away from that gate, outside of scanning range. When the enemy jumps in, the dictor decloaks, drops a bubble and then jumps out. The rest of our gang can then warp in to bookmarks above/below the gate and rape them. Even if the gang has a cov ops scout, they will think its clear and jump in. (note: does not work anymore as of Crucible as launching a bubble agresses you)
• You might want wrecks on your overview; you're going to want to use them as warp-ins to bubble the rest of the enemy fleet. <i>see How to be a Hero</i>

• It cannot be targeted, thus it is vulnerable only to bombs and smartbombs. Bubbles have 1000 hitpoints with no resists (revelations 2)
• Interdictor bubbles cannot be deployed outside of 0.0 space.
• Bubbles function with an anchored bubble nearby. (Rev2.0)
• Bubbles stop cap ships in them from cyno-ing out. (Rev2.0)
• Bubbles will cancel warps in-progress in the same way as warp scrambler modules (Rev3.0)
• Bubbles will NOT prevent emergency warps (from logging off) if they (the bubble) are deployed AFTER the ctrl-q / log off.
• Bubbles last for 2 minutes, during that time they act just like Mobile Warp Disruptors, but will only catch ships that initiated warp AFTER the dictor bubble was deployed.

• Establish your Fleet Commander's bubbling policy. Some will tell you to bubble anything you can, others want only sniping bs's, others want you to bubble only on order. A bubble where your FC doesn't expect one can get your gang caught and killed.
• Always know where the Fleet Commanders safe warp to spot will be. Often this a POS or a spot near the Sun. This can be tricky, but you must ensure that your bubble would not be in line with this safe spot and prevent your fleet from warping out. They will get sucked into your bubble.
• After-warp bubble deployment in fleet fights can be hairy, since lag and timing issues might drop your bubble too far from the enemy.
• You will receive some angst from fellow gang mates when you get them killed with your bubbles. Take it in stride but learn from your mistakes.
• Get a microphone for Mumble; you're going to be given specific orders and your FC will want a response.

• The Jump and Bubble - Simple as it sounds. You don't aggress any more by bubbling, so simply bubble up and jump.
• Using your bubble like an anchor'd bubble. When a hostile enters local but not from your gate, bubble then move to the edge of your bubble that is facing the gate they came from, if possible get others to assign you drones. This will help in decloaking covops. If you are doing this solo, be aligned, at 3/4 speed, and constantly spamming scan. The worst thing you can catch will be a rapier (follow'd by other recons), but the decloak calibration should be enough for you to escape to warp. Everything else dangerous you will be able to scan before it is caught. [del]You can do this 100-150kms infront or behind the gate or station.[/del] I don't know if this was ever the case and was stealth patched or was never the case but dictor bubbles now pull anywhere ongrid (I've personally confirmed this, anchored bubbles still have a limit of 150km). It is just like using a medium anchor'd bubble, except 1. the bubble only lasts 2 minutes,2. will only catch things that initiate warp AFTER bubble is deployed and 3. will give you a 30sec aggression timer whenever someone tries to warp within your bubble or if they land on the edge of it.
• Bubble the whole fleet (with a double-bubble dictor): Every sniping BS fleet aligns on something and its easy to see what it is. When you get a warpin and land at the enemy fleet Drop your bubble and align on the same thing they are. Drop your second bubble just infront of them so that they are forced to travel through the whole thing. Warp-out, jesusfuckdontdie.
• Delay bubbling: A technique pioneered by BlackOps; used when gatecamping, often useful for catching small ships. When a ship is bubbled while spooling up for warp the warp is canceled and the ship will decelerate to 0m/s unless the pilot intervenes. When the target jumps through the gate, the dictor waits until it decloaks before bubbling. Often, a person jumping through a gate into a gatecamp will try to warp away immediately if they see they're in a bubble, especially if they're in a small, fast ship. Then, when the dictor drops his bubble, not only will the attempt to warp be aborted, the person will also be aggressed and thus unable to burn back to the gate to jump through. Often, the person falling for the delay bubble trick will be confused for a couple of seconds when the warp fails, until he notices the bubble - which is all the time you need to tackle him. The weakness of delay bubbling is that unless the dictor pilot is paying close attention, or if the system is considerably lagged, the bubble will be dropped too late to catch the target.
• Screening: This is a useful technique for stranding baitships (or faster tackling ships) away from their main gang and killing them before their support arrives. Two interdictors, a high dps gang composition, good timing, and people who know what the fuck they are doing are required. Setup: First the friendly gang plays chicken by running from the hostile gang and jumping into the next system. After jumping in, Dictor A, and the bulk of the friendly gang warps to the next gate at 50km. Dictor B waits for Dictor A to land on-grid then warps to Dictor A at 100km. The rest of the friendly gang gets to a safe engagement range to the sides or behind Dictor A. Execution: When the target ship enters system, Dictor A drops his bubble. Now the enemy ship to be killed will be caught 50km off the gate in bubble A (assuming they are being aggressive and warping blindly to the next gate). As soon as the rest of the hostile gang enters system Dictor B drops his bubble and gets the hell out. The rest of the hostile gang will land in bubble B and be trapped 100km from the first ship, allowing the mark to be quickly snuffed-out without help from his buddies. Ships burning towards the stranded ship can be picked-off as well.
• Speed Bumps: You can slow down a pursuing enemy gang by bubbling. This is accomplished three ways. The safest method for the interdictor, and more importantly the friendly gang, is to bubble off of the “exit” gate at 100km. Simply warp to the next gate at a 100km, making-sure no friendlies are behind you, and drop your bubble. Now burn the hell out of the bubble, and warp out (or cloak). The enemy fleet will have to burn out to the gate, or warp to a planet and warp back in to the gate. You, in your dictor, are now trapped in-system, but you saved the day. Another method is to bubble the exit gate directly (or at a short distance such as 20), allowing the dictor to bubble and then burn to, and jump through the next gate. The pursuing gang will now have to traverse the bubble to make it to the gate. The disadvantage to this method is that it is really only effective on slow ships, and the interdictor runs the risk of being aggressed and stranded on the gate. The third method is to bubble the Entrance Gate upon loading system. This is the riskiest method and has the least payoff. Burn back to the gate and bubble (again making sure that you bubble no friendlies), now burn out and warp away. This is a great way to get yourself accidentally aggressed by a late-warping gangmate and potentially get yourself, or your gangmates killed. Generally speaking, don't do it.
• Probing Dictor: By fitting two Co-Processor II's you can squeeze a Bubble launcher and an Expended Probe Launcher on a Heretic and still have room for a Microwarpdrive. You do not get any scan bonuses but if you have four Combat Scan Probes out set up with 1 or 0,5 AU range you will get 100% hits on battleship on grid easily. Which means you'll be able to warp to that sniper fleet about 8 seconds after they appear on grid to bubble them. Since you have no tank at all you'll very likely die but you cannot be popped on the way in. An Onyx can do the same thing, making it the coolest of all hictors (khefron sperg in 3… 2… 1…).

I am adding this because dictors command so much power in Fleet battles. You are the Number One Threat to the enemy fleet, and you will be treated as such (read: primaried). At the same time, you can be a hero and single handedly turn a blueballs fleet encounter into a full on rape. Follow these simple guidelines:

• Accept the fact that you are already dead. Most of the time you will die, so you must make sure you cause maximum anguish to the enemy.
• Not all fleet fights happen at or beyond 150Km. When the battleships are given a warpin, warp in at 50Km or more. If you judge your warp correctly, you will exit warp beyond most enemy optimals and be more than 150Km from their fleet. (this is potentially terrible advice, you could warp in closer to the enemy fleet depending on where the warpin is setup at, please use judgment/learn from experience)

NOTE: Very true. A certain amount of spatial awareness is required to pull this off. Coming in with the fleet then burning out of range then cloaking is also a decent tactic provided you don't get popped.

• Align towards the enemy fleet with your MWD off and wait for something to pop.
• As soon as a wreck appears in the enemy fleet, warp to it at zero and launch your bubble. Immediately align to a warpout and hit the MWD. You will most likely die, but you will also have the satisfaction of hearing the FC talk over TS about how good that bubble was and you will know that you managed to completely fuck a 100 man BS fleet in the process.
• If you survive, you are a lucky bastard. If you die, go fit another dictor, then do it all over again. Your job is to be a goddamn kamikaze and cause the enemy to be bubbled and fucked EVERY FIGHT.

At a minimum you will need the following skills to set foot into an Interdictor.

• Racial Frigate III
• Racial Destroyer V
• Spaceship Command IV
• Graviton Physics I
• Propulsion Jamming V

As well as the following to equip and use the interdiction sphere launcher.

• Science V
• Engineering V
• Graviton Physics I
• Astrometrics III
• Electronics III
• Navigation II
• Propulsion Jamming V

All 4 racial Interdictors are viable in a fleet situation - but if you would like TEST, to pick your ships for you, then fly Sabres in small gangs, Heretics or Flycatchers in large fleets.

Sabres are literally the best ship in EVE Online (the space themed MMO).

And hey guess what Amarr and Minmatar also make the best Heavy Interdictors.

As to whether you train Minmatar or Amarr first… it only takes a week to train a Destroyer V for Interdictors, so do both.