Flying Interceptors

Interceptors utilize a combination of advanced alloys and electronics to reduce their effective signature radius. This, along with superior maneuverability and speed, makes them very hard to target and track, particularly for high caliber turrets.

All the basic skills for Interceptors are later necessary and useful for Interdictors.

Ships
Each race has two Interceptors. One geared towards tackling with bonuses to warp disrupt and warp scram range and one geared towards DPS.

Gallente

 * Taranis : The better of the two Gallente interceptors. A little slower than most, and has completely shit range. It does have excellent raw firepower and good slot setup. You have to be very wary of being kited by faster ships when flying one, however. Best dogfighting inty of the bunch.
 * Ares : The tackling inty for Gallente, quite fast, agile and with bonuses to warp disrupt range. Does not do meaningful DPS.

Amarr

 * Crusader : Another good interceptor. It's very fast, doesn't do quite as much damage as the taranis and it has the downside of only having two midslots. This makes it hard to use as a tackler. It is very good as a damage ship for ganks though.
 * Malediction : Great tackler, nice slot setup.

Minmatar

 * Claw : Worst of the 'damage' inties, poor range, anemic DPS compared to the taranis and the crusader. In general not a very good interceptor
 * Stiletto : Best tackling inty of the bunch. 4 midslots lets you fit some combination of scram, web, disruptor, and/or sensor booster. It's damage is next to meaningless but it is hand down the best pure tackling interceptor.

Caldari

 * Crow : Used to be a favorite of high SP pilots sporting a full set of snake implants and able to afford faction gear which would allow a crow pilot to reach speeds of up to 20 km/s (yes that's right kilometers) while dealing full damage at any speed and range at which they could tackle and being cap stable. Post speed-nerf it's not as good as it used to be but a decent interceptor, albeit with rather low DPS for a 'damage' interceptor.
 * Raptor : Bonuses to tackle range, definitely the worst of the 'tackle' interceptors, on the other hand it's also the cheapest.

Skills
You'll need some basic skills to fly an interceptor. It's a T2 frigate, so just to step into it you need to train a few level five skills. Luckily they are low rank, but it will still take a few weeks.

To even step inside it you'll need a few skills.
 * Racial Frigate V
 * Navigation II
 * Evasive Maneuvering V
 * Interceptors I

Without decent learning skills, expect that to take somewhere on the order of twenty days. That being said, there's a hell of a lot more that needs to be trained to actually make use of the ship. Now comes the horrible part. I recommend taking all of these skills to III before you even step into the interceptor. After that, work your way to IV and maybe V.

Spaceship Command

 * Spaceship Command: This skill modifies your agility, or how fast you turn. It is very important for an interceptor as you'll be orbiting most of your time, and to be able to quickly approach someone or run away.
 * Interceptors: This is your basic skill. It lowers the sig radius of your ship, which makes you harder to lock and track. It also affects how much damage missiles will do to you. It is very important to raise this (you probably shouldn't be flying interceptors until this is at IV).

Navigation

 * Navigation: The basic navigation skill. This raises your velocity (speed). It is very important to raise this quickly.
 * Afterburner : The basic AB skill. This affects the duration of your AB module, which makes it use less cap. Afterburner IV is required for High Speed Maneuvering but you knew that already.
 * High Speed Maneuvering: The basic MWD skill. This affects the cap use of your MWD.
 * Acceleration Control: This affects the velocity bonus of your AB and MWD modules.
 * Warp Drive Operation: This affects the amount of cap you use to warp.
 * Fuel Conservation: This affects the amount of cap AB modules use. (NOT MWD)

Electronics

 * Electronics: The basic electronics skill, get to 5 ASAP to make fitting easier.
 * Propulsion Jamming: To use webbers and scrams.
 * Signature Analysis: Modifies how fast you lock someone.
 * Long Range Targeting: Some intys like the Taranis have ASS targeting range, this makes it bigger.
 * Targeting: Modifies how many targets you can lock.

Engineering

 * Engineering: The basic engineering skill. get to 5 ASAP to make fitting easier.
 * Energy Emission Systems: To use nos.
 * Energy Management: The basic cap skill, raise this ASAP as well. You'll need this to use Micro Auxiliary Power Cores, which pretty much define an interceptor.
 * Energy Systems Operation: The basic cap recharge skill, raise this ASAP as well.

Gunnery/Missiles
I'm not going to go into the secondary skills like Missile Bombardment or Surgical Strike, you should be moving towards T2 guns or launchers, and get all the secondary skills to IV. The most important one for turret ships is Motion Prediction.
 * Gunnery/Missile Launcher Operation: Basic skill.
 * Small X Turret/Standard Missiles/Rockets: Basic skill.
 * Small X Specialization/Standard Missile Spec/Rocket Spec: T2 specialization
 * Weapon Upgrades: Very important on an inty, the fitting is tight. Raise ASAP.
 * Advanced Weapon Upgrades: Grid version of WU.

Mechanic/Drones
Not near as important as the others, but here for completeness.
 * Drones: Basic Drone skill, Taranises can use a few light drones, dont forget them!
 * Mechanic: Modifies ship structure HP.
 * Hull Upgrades: Modifies ship armor HP.

Fitting
I'll say it right here so you won't forget it. It's hard to fit out an interceptor. They have very tight CPU and grid space.

If you do not train up your fitting skills (Engineering, Electronics, Weapon/Adv. Weapon Upgrades) it's going to be difficult to have an optimum fitting. Previously pilots would use a Micro-auxiliary power core (MAPC) module to get around this but past updates have increased the CPU and Grid of the interceptors to obviate the need for these modules. Unless you are flying some sort of special snowflake setup '''you should not have to use a MAPC.

There are few different "styles" of setup. The one you use for a gate camp probably isn't going to be the one you use for a large PvP fleet. The same for a gank setup.

Small Group
Good HP, while still maintaining speed and firepower. This is the most general setup. Good guns, MWD, a web and a scram. Nanos and Damage mods/DCII in the lows. I tend to use this setup a lot because it is the most adaptable.

Gank
All damage. Fitting for maximum damage to cut miners, haulers or small ships up before they can damage you. Biggest guns you can fit, highest speed with web/scram, lows all filled with damage mods. Taranis, Claw and Crusader are really good at this.

To plate or not to plate?
don't.

MWD or AB?
MWD. Unless you're some sort of theorycrafting superstar inty pilot fit an MWD and save everyone the headache. There are some AB fittings that make sense in certain situations but generally in 0.0 you want to be fitting an MWD all the time.

Close or Long Range?
If you're in a 'damage' interceptor, like the claw, crusader, or taranis, fit close range weapons. Otherwise your choice is irrelevant because you don't do any meaningful DPS anyway.

Scrambler or Disruptor?
Scrams for damage inties, disruptors and scram/web for tackling inties.

Implants
If you are using an interceptor, especially the first month or so when you are getting used to it. You will lose ships. You may even be podded. I don't recommend expensive implants. However there are some GREAT cheapo hardwiring implants called "Rogue" implants. These things are great for interceptors. They affect things like AB/MWD cap use, AB/MWD velocity, general velocity, agility, all sorts of fun stuff. Also you can buy a full "set" for like 7-10m, so it's very easy to replace and the bonuses are kick ass.

There are some great expensive sets too, like "Snake" and "Halo" that affect your speed and sig radius by huge amounts. But these sets are very expensive (~200m), and are now stacking penalized with speed and agility mods so are no longer worth it, so weigh that against the chance of podding. If you are flying a Taranis consider purchasing a Zainou 'Deadeye' ZGS100 This will add a little extra DPS and generally is only a few hundred k.

Tactics
Always keep in mind you are flying a 15m ISK frigate that is basically made of paper. Sure you do good damage and you're fast, but you are also very fragile, even with a plate. So always be cautious, it will help you save your ship. Tackling is a fucking rush, it's why I've spent so many million SP in small ships. Nothing like it in the game. All of the big damage ships are counting on you to hold them down. Also you get a ton more 1v1 situations in ceptors than probably any other ship class.

There's a few things to keep in mind though.

What's transversal precious?
Transversal is your speed relative to the the target or the guy shooting you. I recommend everyone check out the Official Eve Tracking Guide to understand how tracking and transversal velocities work better.

Basically guns have a certain amount of radians they can move a second. Smaller guns track faster than big guns, etc. So say I'm in my super interceptor of doom, and I'm playing stupid today. There's a sniper at 100km hammering my guys, and I decide to tackle him. So what do I do? I click the approach button. About 40km in I start getting hit, then I'm killed. Then I'm podded. Now I'm a sad panda. =(

What happened? My transversal relative to him dropped to almost 0m/s. This means his turrets did not have to track me much because I was pretty much in the same direction all the time.

Now if instead, I manually clicked a point in space about 45&deg; relative to him, so I was still making progress toward him, but I was always moving at an angle, my transversal would still be high. Consequently I would have much higher chance for survival.

The same goes for orbiting. The closer you are to your target, with the more speed you have the more radians guns have to track. This is why it's impossible for things to hit a close orbit interceptor using an AB. Your sig radius is so low, and your speed relative to them so high, they just don't have a chance.

Now if you use a MWD and hang out at 20km, you have a much higher chance of getting popped. Just remember, there are some negatives to being close, such as nos, webbers, smartbombs, and drones.

Drones
So you are tackling a guy, and suddenly you have eight Ogres on your ass. This is usually a bad thing™. Even heavy drones will hit you often enough that they will kill you, so you have a few options.

The asshole way (MWD only): Immediately MWD away from him at a 45&deg; angle to keep your transversal up. Keep this up about 50-60km. If he's stupid (and let's admit it, most eve players are) he won't recall his drones, hoping to get a kill. About 50km away from the guy, make a sharp 90&deg; turn. Any direction will do. The drones should still be on you, and catching up after your turn. When the drones get far enough away from the guy to not pose a problem for your buddies, either warp out, or MWD back to the target. What will happen is the drones will get stuck out in space. And without a target in range drones have an awesome bug where they won't MWD back to their owner. So those heavy drones get to plod back at like 500m/s from 50km away, score! (Note: This bug has been fixed)

The safe way: Drones lock you, you warp to a planet. Drones unlock you, you warp back. Repeat.

Neuts/Webbers/Scrams
Speed is life. That's your mantra in an interceptor. Lose your speed, and you're dead. The only ways ships have to combat you are drones, which I just covered, nos and webbers.

Neuts drain your cap. They also have some fairly large range, best named heavy neutralizers reach out to 25.1km. So be careful. You have to weigh your FPS against game effects because there is currently no other way to tell you are being nos'd/webbed/scrammed other than the game effect and very closely watching your capacitor. So again, be careful if you turn off game effects for a fleet battle.

So say someone lays a heavy neut on you, that means you are going to lose about 600 cap every 24 seconds PER neut. A single neut is more than enough to knock you out of any useful action. That hurts. You wont be able to run your MWD/AB, your tackling mods, or repair any damage. Best thing to do is warp away so he unlocks. Hopefully he'll forget about you when you warp back in and you can tackle him again.

Webbers work pretty much the same way. He webs you, you lose speed, you die. Again, warp off.

With the post-Trinity speed changes short range scrams now turn off your MWD instantly no momentum slowdown, no one last cycle, your mwd shuts off right away and for an interceptor that often means death. Best named scrams reach out to 9.5km and 13km with heat. Be aware Arazus can scram out to 20km with good skills and/or faction scrams.

Here is why you don't get into interceptors with shitty skills: So yesterday we fought some RISK guys. They were in an all-HAC/interceptor fleet, and we were pretty outgunned. So I started killing their interceptors so our ships could warp out. So I find this guy, he's in a Taranis too, and turns out he's using almost the exact same setup as me. Pretty neat!

So I proceed to kill this guy, and he's not really hurting me at all. I was pretty confused after I saw the kill mail and what the guy had fitted too. My only conclusion is the guy had no business being in an interceptor.

He had range on me (125mm IIs), had me webbed, and had a MWD. Again, the only two differences between my setup and his were 125mm IIs to my Ion IIs, and MWD to my AB (see my setup above).

So remember just because you can get into an interceptor quickly, you need all of the backup skills to well, back you up. The guy probably was out of cap, couldn't run away, couldn't hit me, so he just had to sit there and die. I can run everything of mine for almost forever, so even though he theoretically had the range on me, he couldn't do anything because he couldn't capitalize on his advantages.

Feel free to post other interceptor comments or fittings here, because I mostly only use the Taranis even though I can use Amarr and Minmatar intys too.

Original post by Duckk