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Ah, the Gila. It’s great at all kinds of PVE and the abyss is no exception. While a lot of people (including me) think the Gila’s boring, it’s a very popular choice for T6 abyss due to its combination of strong shield tank, drone and missile bonuses, and relatively low SP requirements. Let’s dive into T6 Gila fits and how you can get the most out of this ship.
The Basics
Like the Ishtar, the Gila’s a drone ship. It’s shield-tanked like the typical T6 Ishtar fit on that page and uses missiles for supplemental damage. The Gila’s unique in that it follows the Guristas flavor of only having 2 drones in a flight, but getting massive HP and damage bonuses for those drones. This means that the bulk of your damage will be coming from 2 medium drones. Fortunately, the Gila has a massive drone bay, with room for 10 flights of 2 medium drones each. Those drone bonuses are also role bonuses, and the Gila’s a T1 pirate hull. This makes it far more friendly towards low-SP pilots than other T6 abyss cruisers. For detailed stats, Uniwiki is of course a great resource.
The Gila supplements its drones with missiles. This means rapid lights on most fits due to fitting space and application considerations. Some people use heavy missiles or HAMs, but you kind of have to build the fit around that. It’s a more advanced tactic requiring higher missile support skills, so I won’t cover that here. I like to run 1 HML along with 3 rapid lights. The heavy launcher can pop cans in 1 hit at long range and the DPS loss from sacrificing 1 rapid light is negligible.
Armor Gilas are, of course, out of the question.
Weather
With the right fit, Gilas can handle exotic, electrical, or gamma weather. T6 firestorms are possible, but require significantly higher ISK investment, SP, and pilot skill to pull off consistently. If you’re ready for T6 fires, you don’t need this guide. As always, I don’t recommend trying to make swiss-army multi-weather fits, especially in high tiers. That said, the dual-battery fit below can be adapted for multiple weathers with module swaps. T6 passive fits are generally pigeonholed into gamma.
Generally, the best weather for Gilas is exotic due to the kinetic resist penalty letting you use shield-tanked Vespa drones and kinetic missiles that take advantage of the Gila damage bonus. It also doesn’t have a rat HP boost like gamma. However, exotics anecdotally have the worst loot of any T6 weather. This seems to be due to them having a larger portion of their loot value in industry mats like Zero-Point Condensate, which is both more bulky and less valuable than red loot (Survey Databases) that gets sold to NPC buy orders. Speaking of which, keep an eye on your Gila’s cargo space. It’s deceptively small and your MTU eats up a lot of it.
Drone and Missile Selection
Before getting into actual fits, let’s take a moment to talk about drones and missiles. Obviously, you’ll be using medium drones with 2 per flight along with whatever missiles fit your launchers (probably rapid lights). Make sure to match drones and missiles to weather resist penalty:
| Weather | Damage to Deal | Drone Faction | Medium Drone Name | Missile Name |
| Electrical | EM | Amarr | Infiltrator | Mjolnir |
| Exotic | Kinetic | Caldari | Vespa | Scourge |
| Gamma | Explosive | Minmatar | Valkyrie | Nova |
Your main flight should be navy drones. You lose a bit of damage compared to T2, but gain significantly increased tracking and durability, both of which are extremely important in high-tier abyss. I recommend 3 navy flights, so 6 drones in total. That leaves you with room for 4 more drones. I recommend having a flight of T2 drones and a flight of ‘Augmented’ drones. The T2 drones are for battleships, where you don’t care about tracking or drone HP. Augmented drones deal significantly higher damage than other variants with improved tracking, but deal split damage types. This means they only pull ahead in rooms with low, flat resists that render the weather penalty largely irrelevant. Chiefly, that’ll be Ephialtes rooms.
Getting 1 good pair of mutated navy drones is an excellent investment. With a flight of rolled navies, fill your remaining 4 flights with regular navy drones for waves with heavy drone aggro and damage, like Tesseras (rogue drone battlecruisers) and Angels. See the “Upgrading Fits” section below for more info.
If you’re using rapid lights, just use Fury light missiles if you have the skills. They’re light missiles; you won’t have any application problems. If you’re using one heavy launcher alongside the rapid lights for cache popping (which I recommend), Caldari Navy heavy missiles will still let you one-shot cans provided you’re using kinetic or thermal ones. Light missiles should match the weather resist penalty, but the cache-popping heavy missiles should be kinetic or thermal (to take advantage of the Gila’s kin/therm missile damage bonus).
To MTU or Not to MTU
You might notice that the T6 fits on this page have MTUs, while the T4 starter ones don’t. MTUs are amazing for collecting loot from side nodes, and have a tactical application in giving you an object to anchor yourself on, say if you want to keep yourself in a blue cloud or near a Deviant Automata Suppressor to help against the rats. However, going after side nodes is dangerous until you’re comfortable with the tier and weather. Side node loot’s also not really worthwhile until you get to T6. When you do start using MTUs, the Packrat’s a good compromise between price and effectiveness. Don’t start using blingier variants like Magpies or Consortiums until you’re confident in your piloting.
Starter Fits
Since the Gila scales really well into lower tiers (unlike the Ishtar), here are 2 T4 starter fits for reference. If you’ve never flown a Gila before, I strongly advise you to pick up one of these fits and get the hang of things in T4 before dumping ISK into a T6 fit. A 5bil fit with no experience is a 5bil lossmail.
The Povertila
This is the Povertila, designed by Balsaq / Scott Dominus. You can read their breakdown of the fit on this Abyss Tracker page and find it among the starter fits on Caldari Joans’ excellent site. My only adjustment to the fit is replacing the EM shield hardener with a thermal one (the original Povertila’s designed to run electricals as well; this one’s specifically for exotics). I also filled out the rest of the drone bay. Start with this fit in T2/3 exotic before moving up to T4.
[Gila, T4 Exotic Starter]
Damage Control II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Pithum C-Type Medium Shield Booster
Republic Fleet Large Cap Battery
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
10MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner
Shield Boost Amplifier II
Pithum C-Type Medium Shield Booster
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile
Medium Ghoul Compact Energy Nosferatu
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit II
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit II
Medium Thermal Shield Reinforcer I
Caldari Navy Vespa x2
Caldari Navy Vespa x2
Caldari Navy Vespa x2
Vespa II x2
Vespa II x2
Standard Blue Pill Booster
Agency 'Hardshell' TB5 Dose II
Scourge Fury Light Missile x5000
Nanite Repair Paste x100The Passive Fit
This is a passive starter Gila for T4 gammas, also designed by the Povertila’s creator. You can read about the fit on its Abyss Tracker page.
[Gila, T4 Gamma Passive]
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Caldari Navy Large Shield Extender
Caldari Navy Large Shield Extender
Caldari Navy Large Shield Extender
Caldari Navy Large Shield Extender
10MN Afterburner II
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Nova Fury Light Missile
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Nova Fury Light Missile
Drone Link Augmentor II
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Nova Fury Light Missile
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Nova Fury Light Missile
Medium Core Defense Field Extender II
Medium Core Defense Field Extender II
Medium Core Defense Field Extender II
Republic Fleet Valkyrie x2
Republic Fleet Valkyrie x2
Republic Fleet Valkyrie x2
Valkyrie II x2
Valkyrie II x2
Nova Fury Light Missile x5000
Nanite Repair Paste x100Fits, Fits, and More Fits!
Unlike the Ishtar, there’s a good bit of variation among baseline T6 fits. The main two categories are active and passive fits. There are generally 3 “baseline” active fits: dual-battery, large shield booster, and povertila-style. There’s only really 1 passive T6 Gila fit I’m comfortable recommending.
Make sure to preroll Standard Blue Pill and have Hardshell II in cargo on all active fits here. All of my fits also have 1 Heavy Missile Launcher for cache popping.
Active vs Passive Fits
The benefits of passive fits are that they provide a huge amount of shield buffer and don’t require much heat management. Also, the bulk of your ISK’s in the implants rather than the fit itself, so you’ll lose less to gankers if they manage to get you. Not to mention you’ll be harder to successfully gank in the first place. The downsides are that you’re effectively forced to run gammas, which are suboptimal for Gilas since they force you to use flimsy, low-damage Valkyries, present a timeout risk due to Valkyries dealing low damage and rats getting 50% additional shield HP, and don’t have the ability to overheat to compensate for mistakes.
Active fits give you instant feedback when you make a mistake, since you’ll quickly lose shield. This lets you overheat and/or adjust your piloting to correct your mistake. In a passive fit, you have so much buffer that you might not notice you made a mistake until your shields are getting depleted a few minutes later, at which point it’s too late for you to fix things and you don’t really have the ability to overheat to do that anyway.
To be clear, I don’t like passive abyss Gilas. They definitely work, but it feels like ramming a square peg into a round hole. And active fits are more exciting anyway. 🙂
Dual-Battery
This is my favorite kind of T6 Gila fit and what I recommend starting with. Its active reps aren’t anything crazy like the Ishtar, but it has excellent cap reinforcement and shield buffer. It also has 2 hardeners that you can overheat for a long time. If you want to take your Gila into T6 but don’t know where to start, I recommend this fit. It’s designed to run T6 exotics, but can run T6 gamma or electrical as well with some module swaps. To take it into gammas, just replace the drones with their Valkyrie versions and use Nova light missiles. To take it into electricals, replace the drones with Infiltrators and use Mjolnir light missiles, and replace a battery with a Pith X-Type EM Shield Hardener.
Stagger the hardener cycles if possible for more responsive overheating, and don’t be afraid to heat early and often. If you’re over on PG, downgrade the thermal rig to T1 and upgrade the Ancil Router to T2.
[Gila, T6 Exotic Baseline]
Dread Guristas Drone Damage Amplifier
Dread Guristas Drone Damage Amplifier
Dread Guristas Drone Damage Amplifier
Pithum B-Type Multispectrum Shield Hardener
Thukker Large Cap Battery
Pithum A-Type Medium Shield Booster
Federation Navy 10MN Afterburner
Thukker Large Cap Battery
Pithum B-Type Multispectrum Shield Hardener
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile
Drone Link Augmentor II
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile
'Undertaker' Heavy Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile
Medium Core Defense Operational Solidifier II
Medium Thermal Shield Reinforcer II
Medium Ancillary Current Router I
'Augmented' Vespa x2
Caldari Navy Vespa x2
Caldari Navy Vespa x2
Caldari Navy Vespa x2
Vespa II x2
Mid-grade Crystal Alpha
Mid-grade Crystal Beta
Mid-grade Crystal Gamma
Mid-grade Crystal Delta
Mid-grade Crystal Epsilon
Mid-grade Crystal Omega
Zainou 'Deadeye' Missile Projection MP-703
Inherent Implants 'Squire' Capacitor Management EM-803
Zainou 'Snapshot' Light Missiles LM-903
Zainou 'Deadeye' Rapid Launch RL-1003
Standard Blue Pill Booster
Agency 'Hardshell' TB5 Dose II
Scourge Fury Light Missile x5000
Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile x1000
Nanite Repair Paste x100
'Packrat' Mobile Tractor Unit x1Povertila-Style
Also known as a “Luxurila,” you can the original version of this fit (by Scott Dominus) on Abyss Tracker. Like the Povertila, it sacrifices cap stability in favor of raw repping power by using two medium shield boosters. This is less comfortable than I’d like a T6 fit to be, but it works. Just don’t permarun both boosters like a potato. If you’re over on CPU, downgrade the DLA to T1.
[Gila, T6 Exotic Dual Booster]
Dread Guristas Drone Damage Amplifier
Dread Guristas Drone Damage Amplifier
Dread Guristas Drone Damage Amplifier
Pithum A-Type Medium Shield Booster
Republic Fleet Large Cap Battery
Gistum B-Type Multispectrum Shield Hardener
Federation Navy 10MN Afterburner
Domination Shield Boost Amplifier
Pithum A-Type Medium Shield Booster
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile
Drone Link Augmentor II
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile
'Undertaker' Heavy Missile Launcher
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit II
Medium Semiconductor Memory Cell II
Medium Thermal Shield Reinforcer I
'Augmented' Vespa x2
Caldari Navy Vespa x2
Caldari Navy Vespa x2
Caldari Navy Vespa x2
Vespa II x2
Mid-grade Crystal Alpha
Mid-grade Crystal Beta
Mid-grade Crystal Gamma
Mid-grade Crystal Delta
Mid-grade Crystal Epsilon
Mid-grade Crystal Omega
Zainou 'Deadeye' Missile Projection MP-703
Inherent Implants 'Squire' Capacitor Management EM-803
Zainou 'Snapshot' Light Missiles LM-903
Zainou 'Deadeye' Rapid Launch RL-1003
Standard Blue Pill Booster
Agency 'Hardshell' TB5 Dose II
Scourge Fury Light Missile x5000
Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile x1000
Nanite Repair Paste x100
'Packrat' Mobile Tractor Unit x1T6 Passive
This is a passive Gila specifically for T6 gammas. It’s based on a fit by Gustav Mannfred, which you can find on his site or this Abyss Tracker page. Don’t try it in other weathers (gamma’s shield HP bonus is very important). Since Minmatar drones deal the lowest damage and are the flimsiest out of all faction variants, I strongly recommend getting 1 good pair of rolled fleet valks. While some like their passive Gilas, I don’t. Either use a dual-battery active fit with drone and missile swaps or get an Ishtar. It clears gammas way faster and is a pretty easy crosstrain. No timeout risk either thanks to the magic of Geckos.
[Gila, T6 Gamma Passive]
Dread Guristas Drone Damage Amplifier
Dread Guristas Drone Damage Amplifier
Dread Guristas Drone Damage Amplifier
Federation Navy 10MN Afterburner
Caldari Navy Large Shield Extender
Caldari Navy Large Shield Extender
Caldari Navy Large Shield Extender
Caldari Navy Large Shield Extender
Pithum B-Type Multispectrum Shield Hardener
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Nova Fury Light Missile
Drone Link Augmentor II
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Nova Fury Light Missile
'Undertaker' Heavy Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Nova Fury Light Missile
Medium Core Defense Field Purger II
Medium Core Defense Field Purger II
Medium Core Defense Field Purger II
'Augmented' Valkyrie x2
Republic Fleet Valkyrie x6
Valkyrie II x2
High-grade Nirvana Alpha
High-grade Nirvana Beta
High-grade Nirvana Gamma
Mid-grade Nirvana Delta
Mid-grade Nirvana Epsilon
Mid-grade Nirvana Omega
Zainou 'Deadeye' Missile Projection MP-703
Zainou 'Deadeye' Guided Missile Precision GP-803
Zainou 'Gnome' Shield Operation SP-903
Zainou 'Deadeye' Rapid Launch RL-1003
Synth X-Instinct Booster
Synth Crash Booster
Agency 'Overclocker' SB5 Dose II
Nova Fury Light Missile x5000
Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile x1000
Nanite Repair Paste x100
'Packrat' Mobile Tractor Unit x1Other Fits
There are other takes on Gila fits, including ones that use a Large Shield Booster and even passive fits for non-gamma weather. LSB fits are mainly an electrical thing. They take advantage of the electrical weather bonus to cap regen to support a large shield booster, which reps more but is less cap-efficient than a medium. I personally don’t like this kind of fit since electrical filaments are expensive and they aren’t optimal for Gilas. Also, you can just use a modified dual-battery fit and be able to run other weathers too. Non-gamma passive fits also see some use, but I’d never recommend it personally.
Skills
As said before, Gilas are the most SP-friendly T6 cruisers since they’re a Tech I pirate hull. That means you don’t have to train a racial cruiser skill to V just to sit in one. Their drone bonuses are also entirely role bonuses, so you’ll get their full effect just by flying the ship. Since you’ll primarily be using faction medium drones, you don’t have to train any heavy drone skill and can slack off on Drone Specialization skills.
Since both are drone ships, everything about T6 Ishtar skills applies here. The most important one is Drone Interfacing for the multiple large bonuses, including a huge 10% drone damage per level. On top of the Ishtar stuff,
Upgrading Fits
First thing’s first: the fits here are perfectly viable and consistent without any upgrades. You can technically even use C-Type hardeners on the dual-battery with just Mid-Grade implants and still be fine. You can even run meta launchers if you don’t have the skills for Tech II. However, Gilas also scale really well with some additional bling.
The absolute first upgrade you should make is a flight of good mutated navy drones. In this case, “good” means as much extra damage as you can get, same or better tracking, and not too much red in other stats. Range, velocity, and primary HP (shield for Vespas and armor for Infils) are pretty important to not completely dumpster, though a bit of red is fine. Hull and non-primary HP are irrelevant. You can roll your own drones or pick up someone else’s off contracts. I like to use Firepower mutaplasmids, but some prefer the cheaper Durability ones. Keep in mind that Durability-rolled drones will usually have lower damage modifiers than Firepower ones even if the bar looks very green. Rolled drones are “nice to have” for T6 exotics, “strongly recommended” for electricals, and “arguably necessary” for gammas.
Upgrading to a nicer AB (Corelum B-Type) is worth it. Full HG Crystals/Nirvanas and blingier hardwirings are also worthwhile. Crystals especially are much cheaper than they used to be. If you don’t want to shell out for a full HG Crystal set, upgrading the first 3 and keeping the rest at MG is a good compromise. An Overmind ‘Goliath’ Drone Tuner T25-10S is excellent too, since its huge 25% drone durability bonus stacks with the Gila’s role bonus to give you ridiculously tanky drones. Nice to have when using those expensive mutated ones. Once again, if you’re using a flight of mutated navies, ditch the Tech II and Augmented drones and just fill your remaining flights with regular navies. Use them for heavy drone aggro waves like Tesseras and Angels.
If you really want to pour money into your abyss chariot, a flight of mutated Augmented drones can speed up Ephialtes rooms a bit. However, I don’t think it’s worth it. I also tried running mutated DDAs for a time and didn’t notice a difference. Consider them low-priority if you even go for them at all. Make sure you’re using faction DDAs in T6 though. Dread Guristas ones are very cheap these days. Rolled batteries are also completely unnecessary unless you’re going for a Povertila-style single-battery T6 fit (seriously, just use a dual-battery).
Tactics
Since they’re both shield-tanked drone ships, most of the Ishtar stuff applies here, especially when it comes to managing your drones, prerolling Standard Blue Pill, and preemptively overheating your hardener(s). The room advice is also pretty much the same. The big differences are that the Gila has much more shield buffer even with an active fit, and much better cap stability with a dual-battery fit. In exchange, your active reps aren’t quite as insane. You also get a T1 resist profile, so you can’t just ignore Overminds (rogue drone battleships).
Another difference is that you’ll be using 2 supercharged medium drones instead of 2 Geckos and expendable junk. Managing drone aggro is in a way easier than in an Ishtar due to having far fewer drones to pay attention to, but having to recall even 1 drone cuts your damage almost in half. When fighting flimsy rats like Tessellas (rogue drone frigates) or Damaviks, it can be a good idea to separate your drones and assign one to a target. This reduces lost damage from both drones overpowering the same target’s tank and having to waste time flying to the next one.
Regarding specific rooms, CONCORD/EDENCOM rooms can be very dangerous for Gila pilots. You have an EM hole by default and the exotic weather penalty butchers your kinetic resist. CONCORD rooms deal heavy amounts of both damage types. When you enter a CONCORD room, especially if you’re new to the tier, the best strategy is often to just turn your ship around and burn away while heating your hardeners and clearing support rats. The battleships may deal heavy damage, but they can only apply that damage thanks to their support ships, all of which are flimsy. For reference, the range of a Thunderchild Disparu Troop is 64km.
Other difficult rooms include Karybdis Tyrannos (aka Karen) and Overmind (rogue drone battleship). In these rooms, it’s critical to maintain high transversal to the battleship and clear webs and neuts ASAP. As you get more experienced, you’ll get a feel for how many support rats you can handle while burning down the battleship.
Leshak, Angel, and Vedmak rooms can also be tricky, but the Ishtar tactics all apply here too.
Regarding missiles, just stick them on whatever target you’re already engaging. Use the heavy launcher to pop cans, then add it to the pile with the rest. As with the Ishtar, I don’t recommend using an MTU or going for side nodes until you’ve gotten comfortable with the content. A newfangled Consortium MTU may be expensive, but it’s worth its weight in tractor beams. Which don’t have weight. Ha. Ha. Seriously though, it’s very good once you’ve gotten bored of Packrats.
The Bottom Line
In my opinion, the Gila’s the best cruiser to learn high-tier abyss with. It doesn’t require a lot of SP, isn’t hideously expensive, lets you survive some mistakes, and scales well from T4 to T6. If you’re looking to get into high-tier abyss and don’t want to learn how to multibox, I strongly suggest grabbing a Povertila and heading into T4 exotic. Don’t like it? You can still use the hull for pretty much every kind of PVE in EVE. Get blown up? That’s just a few hundred mil down the drain; a tiny fraction of what high-end abyss fits are worth. And if you do find yourself getting the hang of things, you’ll be printing ISK in T6 before you know it.