Shepherd's Gambit
Concept
Imagine, le cunning deception strategy involving T1 Logistics cruisers disguised as harmless support ships. This roaming fleet intentionally looks vulnerable, lost, and easy to pick off, encouraging enemy aggression. But hidden beneath their harmless exterior is powerful offensive tackle capability and combat drones ready to turn hunters into prey.
Execution Steps
1). The Odyssey Setup
Assemble a fleet primarily composed of T1 logistics ships (Ospreys, Augorors, Exequrors, Scythes). Equip each cruiser with offensive modules: webs, scrams, energy neuts, combat drones, drone damage amplifiers, and enough logistical support to convincingly mimic a genuine lost support wing (you can actually keep the RR setup).
2). Lost Fleet
The fleet deliberately moves through popular hunting grounds, acting confused or disorganized, broadcasting seemingly erroneous comm chatter to sell the illusion of vulnerability. Occasionally using local chat to simulate confusion: "Did we lose warp-in?," "Are we at wrong gate?," "Where’s FC?" etc.
3). Accepted Gambit
When the enemy fleet takes the bait and engages, your "logistics" ships reveal their true nature: Deploy tackle, release a coordinated swarm of combat drones, and use electronic warfare.
4). The Feast
You can use this setup as a heavy-tacklers and optionally launch cloaked combat reinforcements to jump in for the final clean-up.
This strategy is built on the same principles as my Solo PvP Logi doctrine - exploiting the deep-rooted perception that logistics ships are defenseless support, not real threats. Due to time pressure and an unexpected opportunity, the enemy may deploy a rapid response team to quickly snatch the wing of Logis. Except these "Logis" aren’t just support - they can tackle and DPS down aggressors before the enemy even realizes their mistake and decides to undock something bigger.
It's also rarely executed at scale, adding an extra layer of psychological warfare - where the enemy attacks, only to become the prey. But if things go wrong, it’s just a bunch of T1 cruisers - a loss that’s easy to replace!
Here are some fits so you can see the stats:
https://twitter.com/KekburNet/status/1900971008007327888P.S. Want to flip the coin one more time? Field the same logistics ships - but this time, as actual support. For the first few minutes of battle, the enemy will hesitate to send a tackle wing to deal with them, still wary from their last attempt, when they got slaughtered.
