Fit Kitchen: Nanogang Edition

I’ve been asked many times over the last few years to make nanogang fits but most of the time they live in my Pyfa… next to the other 5,000 fits (literally). It’s about time I put them down on paper an article. But what is a nanogang anyway? Put simply, it’s a style of fleet where you run with a small number of pilots – anywhere from just one (solo) to about 9/10 at most. The idea is that you use maneuverability, control, and effective EWAR to split up and kill much larger and scarier gangs.

As for the etymology of the word nanogang itself, I’m not 100% sure if that applies to the nanofibers on the ships or to the small number of pilots involved. Then again, I have seen people flying around in what they’ve jokingly called a picogang. Either way, you need to be fast and you need control. Such a fleet will also often be made up of various roles, defined as follows:

• DPS – High damage, often without its own tackle and low tank. Relies on the other ships to work.
• Tackle – Exactly what it says, this will usually be interceptors, though you can get away with T1 frigs too.
• Support – This covers primary EWAR ships such as the Keres or Sentinel and perhaps logi if you like.
• Anti-Tackle – Not covered here, but they’re simple enough. Ships designed to easily deal with other small targets.

I’ll be covering the first three roles here in their own categories while also adding in my own category of ‘generic’ nanogang ships. Ships that can fly in any nano fleet with their own tackle. You’ll recognise them as standard ‘solo kiting PvP’ ships really. I’ve also tried to keep most of this article relatively standard, but with my own twist on it. You don’t need Snakes or turbo bling to fly my fits, but if you want to upgrade them then please do so. As always, be sure to read the text around the fits to get an idea of how they fly and why I made the decisions that I did.

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Nanogang DPS

DPS can come from anything in a nanogang fleet, even the smallest frigates. To truly call yourself a good nanogang, though, and to be a more effective fleet, I recommend having at least one dedicated ship in the role. Common ships are the Oracle, Brutix Navy Issue, even a Machariel or Barghest if you have the skirmish links and want to drop the cash. Your friends need to screen (hold away from you with tackle) hostile tackle while tackling important targets and helping you not die. It’s not hugely technical, but you do need to be aware of your surroundings and play it safe.

The first fit we’re starting with is my version of a nanogang staple, the Oracle. It’s a pulse laser platform that can dish out damage to around 75-90km. It isn’t the fastest fit in the fleet, but it can heat to 840 DPS at 66km or nearly 1,400 in an emergency with 24km Conflag. My version uses a Tracking Enhancer instead of a Damage Control plus and Ionic Field Projector. This allows my fit to shoot out to almost 100km with Radio if you really need to do that. I’m also a fan of the increased tracking and range at expense of tank.

Moving on to the Ishtar, I decided to go with this drone boat to give another weapon system a chance. Railguns and BNI are fine, but I really like how this zoomy Ishtar works. The premise is that you need a Drone Navigation Computer to boost your Berserker speed up to about 4.02km/s which is enough to catch most things. And believe me, when your drones do get on target then they do some serious damage. If you need more speed than this, feel free to change the EM rig or even drop an extender to boost that speed further. It flies much like the Oracle, but with somewhat lower DPS and many more ways to escape hostiles include triple medium neut.

Finally, the Drekavac, the Triglavian battlecruiser. It takes time to ramp up DPS, starting at only 304 with Mystic, but you can overheat with close-range ammo to nearly 1,400. So what has this got over the Oracle? Well, it has 16x better tracking, a 21km web, 36.1km point, more than twice the tank, a defensive neut, and two Skirmish Command Bursts. You’re trading some DPS and range for utility in this case. Whether that’s right for you and your gang is dependant on what you need. If you can squeeze in a Magus pilot this works pretty well.

For more options, you can try my articles on the Tengu, Caracal/CNI, Gila, and Vedmak (though there will be another fit for that later).

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Nanogang Support

Support in a nanogang encompasses the EWAR frigates, logi, and T1/T2 EWAR cruisers if you feel like it and can handle being a bit slower. The idea is that by leveraging sensor damps, ECM, and tracking disruptors, you can remove other ships from the battle before you’ve even killed them. You need to dance around the edge of the grid and keep yourself alive while being aware of your fellow fleet members. They may call on you to quickly damp something, allowing them to escape a scram/web, for example. Good communication like this is a key component of an effective nanogang.

Talking about damps, we have Keres for starters. This mean little Electronic Attack Frigate can reduce the lock range of a standard hostile Oracle from 81.2km to 38km with one damp or just 16km with three. You can start to see how such a ship will just instantly delete DPS or tackle when you need it gone fast. Flying it is a little tricky with the limited capacitor, but you’ve got a Semiconductor Memory Cell to deal with that. There’s also a plate + ancil rep combo to help you withstand alpha damage and drones. This fit also features a 63km T2 point under Drekavac links, so you can help hold things down if needed.

Another kind of useful EWAR is the trusty Tracking Disruptor. Bring a Sentinel to the battle and you’ll gain more ability to shut down dangerous targets, while also bringing almost two heavy neuts worth of neuting power at 20-25km. Using the same Oracle example, a single heated Tracking Disruptor will dumpster the Scorch range from 66km to 19km with the option of destroying tracking instead if you prefer. More of a technical ship and not even as tanky as the Keres, but definitely worth having in your fleet if want a different flavour of EWAR.

For examples of T1 cruiser EWAR support instead, check out the Fittings for Glorification article which has some great nano support fits or have a look at Fit Kitchen: No Local Edition for Recon Ships. You may need to use Pyfa to import the fits properly.

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Another key support staple in many nanogangs is the links ship. While you can do this with a Drekavac or a specially fit Command ship, the easiest way is to use a Command Destroyer. This also gives you access to a boosh and, in my fit, a ship scanner. That ship scanner is key for making fast decisions and makes this a very viable solo ship and not just a “backpack boosher” to be multiboxed. If you do want a backpack ship, however, I’m a huge fan of the 10MN Bifrost. Just approach your main then forget about that character for a while. When not booshing or providing links, the Magus can also act as a somewhat heavy scram when you want it.

And lastly, we can put the logi into this nanogang category too. 50MN Oneiros’, 100MN Scimitars, take your pick. I choose the shield and armour repping Loki! It’s the only ship that can effectively apply both links and in any one nano situation, you’re likely to have both an armour Omen Navy Issue and a shield Osprey Navy Issue for example. Obviously, you can also apply the “wrong” rep to someone, it will still help so don’t be afraid of doing that if they’re dying. On top of that, this Loki is also self-linked, it has great self reps, and is an incredibly fast 2.4km/s cold 16s align 100MN ship. With HG Snakes, that’s over 4km/s hot!

The key thing to recognise about the fit above is that it’s 100MN. It’s probably one of the most agile 100MN cruisers in New Eden, but a 16 second align means that it will take you 20 seconds to reach 2km/s cold. Fortunately, the Loki has heat bonuses on almost everything so make good use of those to keep your velocity up and consider Overclocker/Mindflood boosters.

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Nanogang Tackle

Tackle in a nanogang is more nuanced than regular tackle. You can’t just ramjag into someone and call yourself an elite nano PvP’er… You need to be aware of your surroundings and able to manually pilot around obstacles (hostiles) while sig tanking all the DPS, keeping key targets held down, and doing drive-by scrams to stop other ships without putting yourself in danger. For more info on how to fly tackle, check out some of the videos by Amelia Duskspace on Youtube.

Once again starting with a standard ship, we have the Stiletto. This Minmatar interceptor has seen better days and the fit is a little gimped right now due to needing 38 CPU for an Interdiction Nullifier Module. Nevertheless, it still works fine. It has a T1 nullifier because of the shorter recharge time, even over meta. That’s more valuable than almost anything else on a ‘ceptor. The purpose of the signal amplifier is to give you more range to lock to since the base lock range is horribly small. It also serves to counter the unfortunate nerf to scan resolution (lock speed) that you are taking from fitting that nullifier. Other than that it’s pretty standard. Move fast and keep your speed up and you should be ok, just know when it’s time to peel off.

The other kind of interceptor you can use doesn’t really like using nullifiers, but it gets a very unique bonus instead. It gets +100% bonus to heating propulsion modules. This means that my silly little Raptor here can reach 8km/s very quickly with a fast align time. Under links with HG Snakes it can hit 13km/s, traveling 100km in just 10 seconds from a complete standstill. Better still, once on the target, you can orbit them with your 1MN AB at up to 3.2km/s without any snakes. These speeds aren’t sustainable forever, but going that fast for a short time will get you some impressive kills.

Rather than provide another interceptor, I went with something a little bit different. Besides, you can always follow one of my fitting guides to duplicate my designs on other, similar hulls. So instead, we arrive at the Succubus, a Sansha’s Nation frigate with a huge afterburner bonus. Using this ship with a 10MN AB allows us to achieve ludicrous speeds of 6km/s while still having guns and point/scram. It’s another overpropped sig tanker and if you can learn how to navigate around grid with it then it should do the job of tackle admirably. Just be aware that agility might be what loses you a kill when you can’t turn and follow someone in time. Still, it’s a super fun ship and it can even tank a full reload of Caracal missiles when at speed.

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Standard Nanogang & Solo Fits

The final set of five fits are all generic nanogang options. You can fly these in almost any nano fleet or solo if you prefer. If you’re just dipping your toes into nano and don’t know what to do then maybe give one of these a try. They’re not particularly expensive, but I also didn’t aim for turbo cheap fits either. If you do need something really cheap then try the search bar on the left of my blog here. Search for any ship you like and have a browse of my articles. Or once again, you could try the T1 EWAR cruisers in my Proving Grounds article.

Starting off this set with a classic, we have the Orthrus. Well known and feared for its long point and long scram, especially with links. This is a very strong, if somewhat undertanked ship. The version I’ve gone with here is a double nano XLASB fit. The best advice I have for you is to not get cocky and believe that your single scram will save you from everything. I have killed many Orthrus’ myself by simply burning two tackle ships at them then melting them. Being skittish and keeping range will keep you alive and learning how to nano for longer.

Another incredibly strong ship is the Vedmak. I’ve already done an entire article on this ship, including a different version of the same fit below and a high DPS shield tanked version. Like the Drekavac, it has amazing tracking and so much utility built-in. Ramping up to super high DPS is only the icing on the nano cake. Importantly, your neuts on this fit can be used defensively to screen tackle or offensively to more easily demolish active tanked hostile ships. As with the Orthus, this is a fast nanogang fit and you do not have much tank, so run away if you have to.

The Retribution was a fit that I was originally going to leave out of the article, but it’s definitely a solid ship and deserves a spot among the standard nano fits I’m showcasing. Your main objective with the Retribution in a fleet will be to act as secondary tackle while using your fantastic tracking and range to kill other small targets. You also aren’t too bad at all when it comes to applying DPS to bigger targets with almost 300 DPS at a safe distance. Please do be wary of the capacitor, though. It’s quite small so you may need to pulse the MWD or the rep from time to time.

The particular fit I’m recommending here is one that I decided would be better for beginners due to the ancil+Assault Damage Control allowing you to make mistakes and recover to nano again another day. Another common variant uses the Coreli/Corpi A-Type Small Armor Rep and drops the ADC for another Heat Sink. It’s somewhat of an improvement, but it’s harder to fly and needs Energy Weapon Rigging 5.

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Rounding out the article we have two final, cheaper fits, the first of which is a Rapid Light Missile Launcher Navy Osprey. It has somewhat low DPS, but it does a decent job at removing tackle and the tank is a little bit better than an equivalent Orthrus. You don’t have a defensive scram or web in this fit, but I’ve instead provided a 10MN afterburner which can be heated to above 1.2km/s for some serious sig tanking. The two utility highs also contain small neuts which offer a decent bonus when fighting up close or when screening.

The Omen Navy Issue also does the same job as a generic nanogang ship, though it is somewhat underpowered compared to some other ships on this list. As a starter nano ship, though, it will do the job just fine and you’ll learn a lot about turret tracking, cap management, and self-tanking while kiting. It’s a lot easier to learn these lessons on a cheaper ship rather than diving headfirst into a 500m ISK fit (or more).

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Afterword

Like I said at the start of this jaunt, these are mostly standard fits with my own slight twist on them in some cases. I also had plenty of help from some of the other foxes in Outfoxed including Rex Reynolds, Midein, Akee, and Cynreth. I don’t often run nano personally, but I know how to fit. Getting advice and feedback from these guys who really enjoy solo and nano gameplay was vital in making sure that these are effective in EVE. Writing an article on nano is not really the place for my usual experimentation.

I hope these fits get you plenty of kills in null and if not, I hope you learn a lot about why you lost your ship. You can always message the person who killed you, ask your friends, or just go and watch some of the many Youtube videos there are on this topic.

Didn’t find what you were looking for? Use the search box on my site!