[WHC] High-sec hole games - my 2nd FC

[Budda Sereda]

We get close connection to JITA and I brought some PI and was refining my stations... when we noticed guests in Innuendo (WHC home system) on the EGGs hole: Tengu, Orthrus, Onyx, Rattlesnake. They bubbled the EGGs connection clearly asking for the fight.

Anducio made a ping, people started joining, I switched to my main (still in Myrmidon, unfortunately did not train to T2 cruiser just yet).

So those guys were sitting on the hole in the bubble, they got few more ships... right now i don't already remember what were ships before we engaged, but they had quite a few DDs, logis, dampers.

I was going to be a scout and wanted to to hole at 100km, but was told to not do that as buble will suck my. I'm wondering why would this happen? please help me to learn that.

Eventually, I believe Mhzentul still did, got into buble but was not decloaked and able to move out of buble and be our scout. Later he scouted Bacon.

Round 1:

We got around 10 people, nobody really wanted to lead fleet to glory, and as I was eager for blood ... here is my 2nd FC experience

Standard armor buffer fit DDs plus guardians as a logi - easy choice for FC. A bit more hard about amount of logi. I called for 3 and got them.
On top of that we had 6 DDs: Sacriledge, 2 ANI, Harbinger, Brutix, and Myrmidon. and 1 scout.

They got few more ships, don't remember exactly, but I felt it was TOO much for us to handle in the open fight.

We were thinking about available options. One was to use CD (Command Destroyer), push people out of the hole, split and kill. But:
1. It did not work really well 2 days ago (http://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtopi ... 6&t=100580) so I did not want to start with this option
2. When I called who can fly CD, I believe only Rezda (if i'm not mistaken) told he can, but i did not want to swap logi for CD.

Another option was to warp at tactical (we had one at 50 km from the hole), but concern was that we don't point hostiles and they will just flew away.

Option #3 was to warp to the hole at 0, burn through buble and ... hit something juicy.

So we went for the option 3.

We warped to hole (this time I did not stuck in structure, so i'm learning ). Primaried Tengu... it did not really go well.
Also I heard message from somebody he was jammed (or dumped, can't recall ATM) so I decided to pick up the low-hanging fruit and run away to high sec. We switched to Drake.
Our Brutix was going down but was able to escape. Then I was primaried... for some time our logies kept myself alive ... but they were either jammed or damped so I started getting hull damage.
I believe we killed that Drake while I was still in the Innuendo.
At some point I jumped into high sec and asked Wildozer to call primaries and manage the fleet.

Been out of grid , it is always hard to hear how your team is dying...
I warped to top station, repaired, came back to the hole with intention to shoot somebody.
Guys were jumping off the hole 1-by-1... and I called whoever is close to the hole to jump to high sec, whoever is far - warp back to ALI (our Fortizar citadel).

Eventually everybody was docked and we had 0 loses, but that drake killed
https://zkillboard.com/kill/56085033/ +87.2M

Honestly, I think that was the best we could pull at that moment. We just did not have enough DPS and time. For more

Round 2:

We got first success, but now... 6 DDs are in HS, 3 logis and scout in ALI. How could we join, considering buble and solid fleet guarding it.
Also we've noticed their scouts in HS, later we learned it was Raven, plus they did keep getting reinforcements from B.

I don't remember who first mentioned that buble is indication of helpless HIC which could be killed. So that was the plan: DDs undock, jump through hole (TOGETHER!!!), kill Onyx, jump back.

Additional option was to not jump back, but jump into Inno. But that was a bit risky as somebody could be pointed and had chance to be killed. So I decided we will jump back. And we will have time to repeat jump through killable buble again.

Honestly, execution was poor. Instead of aligning to hole to do synchronous warp somebody jumped alone. Luckily it is high sec so he just waited for us, but in another case he could just die for nothing.

Eventually, I waited for bubble respawn and we jumped in. Killing helpless Onyx was an easy task
I'm not sure if somebody was really taking any serious damage, but staying with no logy support was ... kind of risky and even we could continue fight I commanded to come back to high sec.

https://zkillboard.com/kill/56085265/ +398.8M Hurray, that is the success!!!

Round 3:

Same situation (our fleet is split), but opponent (hopefully) is demoralized.
From the other side. while we waited for polarization to pass, Scouts reported that opponent got two more Onyx's, plus few more jammers (Scorpion).

As I lost my heavy and midium drones, I've asked somebody (Anducio helped) to buy set of new one. It was probably not the best option as opponents brought CD - the guy who ruined hole game.

Luckily, scouts reported dessi on the hole and plan was the same: we come in, shout one of Onyxes, and 2 of us scrum dessie so he won't push us out of the hole.

In addition to this, guardians who were staying in ALI plus Dtek (who just logged in) asked to join the fight. So it was agreed they will reship to DD and once buble is down they will go to the hole, so for the round 4 we will have more DDs and keep plaing highsec game.

... it looks like our understanding of CD mechanic was wrong and dessie pushed us out of the hole... I understood it is the beginning of the end. First idea was to call guardians for help. But I was hesitating: should we put them under risk as well trying to save DDs? Considering amount of jammers on the field it was really risky.
Who was telling me: don't bring jammers because you will stop content from coming. Seriously?

Idea was: ok, let's have guardians on some distance. Later I realized that's not a good idea as 50 km is not really as much. Anyway, I commanded guardians to warp to tactical. Somebody told tactical is too far from fleet and guardians should warp to fleet.
I called warp not to fleet but at least at 50km.

Not sure what exactly had happened.

Wildozer died first: https://zkillboard.com/kill/56085462/- -82.0M
Next minute dies myself: https://zkillboard.com/kill/56085467/ - -84.2M and Dallidiem - https://zkillboard.com/kill/56085479/ - -80.7M

At this moment they lost the buble so I was able to save my clone (which was empty anyway).

Guardians were on the field, one of them was pointed. I reshipped to Hurricane and warped to see if there is anything i can help Rezda with... but it was too late:
Gurdian https://zkillboard.com/kill/56085492/ - -362.1M and Brutix https://zkillboard.com/kill/56085501/ - -66.5M

Few guys jumped back into high-sec.

So total balance:
Killed: +486M
Lost: -675.5
Total efficiency: 41.8% (if I do math right).

Summary:
1. Main reason of the loses: we did not completely understand the mechanics of CDs.
2. We could have less loses if guardians stayed at home. I should stop them from coming in. Luckily we did not lose another guardian. From the other side, this probably gave chance Roy to escape with Sacrilege.

Good:

1. Quick form-up. Honestly, now I don't think this was really a big deal. Though, we were quick with first two kills and if we waited longer people would probably bring that CD earlier.
2. We had some kills.
3. I think we surprised the opponent by killing his Onyx
4. We do have experienced pilot who can survive: during 2 first rounds we had 0 loses, in the last round we had few ships that did escape.
5. We had quite good intel: thanks to Anducio, Mhzentul, and later to DTek.
6. Pilots were in empty clones - smart move, so pops did not really were too bad.

Could be better:

0. Because of specifics of the way we had a fight, some pilots were not able to fight for a while, i'm sorry guys for this. Hope you understand why.
1. We should know CD mechanics. I remember Kora had a training few days ago, unfortunately I could not join
2. Decision to call logies to help was questionable.
3. I feel FC should keep in memory what ships are on grid from fleet, who dies, who still alive. And if it worth the risk trying to save them.
4. Don't forget about ships who stayed in HS after fight.
5. Don't run away before it became too hot: we could try to catch another small fish during round 2.
6. Each time when I jumped off Inno i was leaving my drones to die for nothing. First time i could not really wait (i had 40% hull left), 2nd - i could really pick-up my hobgoblins.
7. Brutix was fit with blasters, and during 2nd engagement, his distance was probably not good enough to apply damage. I understand it was risky to move far from the hole. Though this to be considered for hole-games.

Learned things:

1. CDs are hard to stop
2. I guess only those won't jump who are scrummed. It is not enough to scrum CD, you need to scrum yourself...?
I still don't understand FULL mechanic. Any clarification on what had happened would be great

Things to Learn:
0. We need to have anti-jam doctrine.
1. Willdozer (i believe) advised to not warp to hole even at 100km as hole will suck myself. I'm wondering why?



P.S. Now I know 2nd reason why people don't want to be an FC. Other than responsibility for others, you need to write AAR

[Budda Sereda]

I guess I understand that problem with bubble: if you are on the line with buble - it will suck you independently if you cross the bubble itself or not.

So if we know those guys were WAITING for us, and we know they are aware about our home station (ALI) we should just worp to the gate from 'something else', from the combat site, for instance.

Am I right here?

Thanks.

[Vidork Drako]

I knew it would happend when I went to sleep. This was the same guys we tried to bait with the two procureor ealier. I saw on killboard than they was earlier eve time players and they had poeple behind at that time. I did spot a falcon in bacon when I went to sleep. About CD ... there is three way to avoid to be drag away : scramble the CD or Scramble each other (yeah it actually work) or destroy it.

[Rezda Nardieu]

Budda, thanks for FC'ing. You did a good job.

I think that there was a bit too much time spent justifying and talking through your decisions.

My old football coach had a saying 'If you are going to make a mistake, make it a good one'. An example was calling the logi to reship, then not reship, then reship, then having them undock in DD, then dock and reship to guards again and warp. This meant the Guardians were scattered and warped to different points (I was 20k of the one other guard on field, I don't think the third was on grid at all).

No reasonable person is going to be angry if you make a decision that costs us ships.

Another thing was that I think the goal for the op changed half way through. At one stage we were looking to take a fight, then it seemed like we were just wanting to get back to Innu.

[White 0rchid]

I guess I understand that problem with bubble: if you are on the line with buble - it will suck you independently if you cross the bubble itself or not.

Sort of. It has to do with your warp destination. If you make a safe in between two locations, for instance, and drop a bubble there, you won't get pulled out in the middle of your warp. However if you draw a line from where you enter warp to your end warp destination, let's say a gate or a wormhole, and any part of that line crosses through an interdiction sphere of any kind, AND, your end destination is within 1000km** of where that bubble is placed, it will pull you out of warp.

**I'm actually not sure if this is true. It used to be 250km and then changed, but they were talking about changing it back. Edit, found the post on it https://forums.eveonline.com/default.as ... ost6553293

On the topic of command dessies, they are absolutely fantastic ships. You should be doing one of two things with them really. Either warp them to a perch first and cloak them up (all command dessies should have cloaks) and then warp them down with a prober right onto their target (probably logi), or jump them through the hole and back in again so you can immediately cloak and aim your boosh properly.

[Tylenos Targas]

Second rounds are always higher risk, people can more easely adapt to what is to be expected. Still it seems you had a couple of interesting fights

If you know you will land at or near a command destroyer, a fast scram on the thing is required to keep it from jumping stuff off. In a 'I have many pilots' situation putting someone in an interceptor is probably the more effective way of ensuring that scram lands on time. A T3D would be another strong choice though is more hampered by bubbles. How fast an inty will die on a hole... I have little experience with that. I'm guessing a dual prop version might be able to zip around and survive. Something to try some time.

On the mechanics of CDs:
- If your ship is scrammed, you can not be jumped. It doesn't matter who lands the scram (friend or foe)
- If the command destroyer itself is scrammed, it can not cycle its micro jump field generator and nobody gets jumped.

[Titus Tallang]

Reading through the AAR, there are too many variations on "I told the Guardians to warp at 50, but then somebody else told them to warp with the fleet".

You are the FC. "Somebody else" has absolutely no business countermanding your orders. If you call the Guardians at 50, then the Guardians are to go at 50. If this is a mistake, you might lose ships and you can discuss why in the AAR, but during a combat situation, as a fleet member, you do not countermand the FC's orders. No matter if you think you know better. Period.

[Lynx Artrald]

You are the FC. "Somebody else" has absolutely no business countermanding your orders.

I must not post about certain individuals who like to backseat FC.
I must not post about certain individuals who like to backseat FC.
I must not post about certain individuals who like to backseat FC.
I must not post about certain individuals who like to backseat FC.
...
phew, that was close. Took all the self-control I had!

[Kora K]

Reading through the AAR, there are too many variations on "I told the Guardians to warp at 50, but then somebody else told them to warp with the fleet".

You are the FC. "Somebody else" has absolutely no business countermanding your orders. If you call the Guardians at 50, then the Guardians are to go at 50. If this is a mistake, you might lose ships and you can discuss why in the AAR, but during a combat situation, as a fleet member, you do not countermand the FC's orders. No matter if you think you know better. Period.

I agree with Titus 100% on this one, having backseat FC as a new FC is the worst thing ever. Budda, don't hesitate to go into a command channel, with someone more experienced. You can whisper to each other, and he can advise you if you ask / need help taking a decision. However, you should be the one giving commands, and only you.

Keep FCing PVP encounter, experience is the best way to improve at FCing.

[Kyle Hargrove]

Hey, Budda!

First off, congratulations for your 2nd fight in the FC seat.

Then, my main concern: I'm reading issues about using Command Dessies a bit too often.

For the purposes of highsec hole engagements, using Command Destroyers is actually... Quite simple, IMO.

White gave you a great overview of how to operate CDs in normal situations, but in these engagements, to be frank, you don't need much "aiming" at all. Highsec wormhole fights revolve around the fact that at least one party is there to be ready to jump out at the first notice of trouble. Even more so in the case of having a bubble up, it's quite easy to get at least some targets off.

As you know, jump range for a wormhole is 5km, the zero-hitbox of a wormhole is around 2-3km, and the MJFG bubble is 6km. A good way to solve the problem, then, is to simply have the CD warp to the hole at 10 (or to the edge of the bubble, of course), then approach the hole bookmark, spool up, and it'll likely grab a bunch of the people that are there to "safely jump out if trouble shows up". Maybe you won't wipe the floor, but at least you'll get some kills... Which is better than getting none.

Now, let me try to solve some "Q/A" that might come up with this. Forgive me for the horrible bullet formatting, but I think you'll get the point.

• What happens with your main fleet? Well, if you have them either approach the hole or approach the CD pilot (requires some reflexes), they'll get jumped out too. Quite easy not to mess up.
• How do you hold tackle on all the people that were jumped with the CD? Either spread points before jumping, or jump a HIC/Dictor with the CD.
• What do you do with the Guardians? Either jump them with the CD, or have them bounce out (getting an off-grid tac before is useful), and then warp back to the CD after the jump.
• What if the fleet gets split? The part of the fleet that didn't get the jump should either warp off and bounce back to the CD, jump out to HS and try again to bounce or, worst comes to worst, just brawl on the hole and jump to HS if they get in low armour.
• Also notice that, since the jump is 100km, you can and should position the Guardians so that they are in the middle between the hole and the new fight location: that should position them so that they have both the hole and the new fight location within rep range.
• What if I can't approach the CD in time? Well, you should really fit a MWD then :)
• What if the CD gets denied/popped? Tough luck. If it gets denied, just jump to HS and try again, if it gets popped... Still better than not trying this.
• Did you account for $specific_situation? No, I didn't. I said this is a ballpark technique.

Of course, all the rest boils down to technique and practice.

Then, off to some other points:

When writing an AAR, you're writing your assessment of the battlefield. At least for the first engagement, I didn't understand what you had, and what they had. Not even numbers. For the future, try to pay some attention to these details, because awareness to this kind of information can both help yourself in better understanding what is at stake, and provide a case example for future FCs that are reading the AARs.

Then, I understand you had a ship with damps on the first engagement... But that's probably a wasted person-slot in a fight over a HS hole. Unless you have links and other jazz to achieve truly ridiculous results, you would have been better off having that person... Even in a DD ship!

Finally, if your enemy uses lots of Scorpions... That's great news for you! Yes, I know, they're jams, they're annoying, and so on. The good thing, however, is that Scorps don't do much else aside from being jammy bricks. A good solution to deal with them is bring in drone ships, assign drones to them... And watch them slowly die. Their resist profile is terrible, and have almost no damage capability, which means that, worst comes to worst, you can just stall the situation, reship to bombers, and chase them out.

Oh, and a very simple point: to jump all your fleet together... Just use wing/squad/fleet warps. That's what they're there for! :D

Thanks for the AAR, and keep it up! Personally, I have to say you're really surprising me for initiative and involvement.

Onwards and upwards!

p.s.: If you don't want to use command dessies, you can still do it the way we did it in days of yore: primary switching tricks might sometime score you a kill to inattentive logi or late broadcasts, and this especially works if you combine it with overheats. And again, order of target calling matters. If you're taking an even fight, don't start by calling primary their T3s: go for T1s first, then escalate upwards and upwards. If they have no logi, you might assume selfrep. In this case, get neuts on those ships that might have the most selfrep ability, and keep DPS on another ship. When that first ship is dead, or if it stabilizes, switch to the target that you were previously neuting.

[Arnold Hita]

I was willing to help in my HAM Legion but unfortunately i was playing on my laptop over wifi and my connection droppeda few minutes before the first fight. Sorry guys.

[Budda Sereda]

Thanks guys for feedback.

Regarding keeping "things under control". Yes, I clearly understand it is MUST, and all pilots will respect my 'break, break'. Though, I did not know what to order at that moment. As I mentioned, I was not able to estimate quickly consequences of staying with no logies vs having them on grid. Lack of experience I guess. Now I think proper order would be:
- logies doc to the citadel
- whoever is close to the hole - burn
- everybody else scatter
Agree, things went out of control.
As a 'defensive point' I would recommend pilots to wait for specific and clear order. if it is not clear: keep executing the previous command. Though, i did introduce some sort of mess by asking logies to warp at tactical and neither pushed for execution, neither canceled the order.

Another thing was that I think the goal for the op changed half way through. At one stage we were looking to take a fight, then it seemed like we were just wanting to get back to Innu.

Maybe it looked like that, but my goal for the 3rd round was to kill another Onyx and get back to high sec.
A secondary goal was to get more ships from citadel joining the DD group, only if safe though.
It was not safe, and they should have stayed aligned.

We knew about that dessie and had a plan to scram it, I believe Willdozer and Anducio were tasked to keep it scrammed. Even more, I got confirmation from them that dessie is scrummed.
And it was a surprise that we were still jumped off the hole.
Maybe lock took longer and having interceptor would really help.
And yeah, looks like a viable option would be to have 1-2 interceptors warped from citadel to scrum that dessie.
Thanks Tylenos.

On the mechanics of CDs:
- If your ship is scrammed, you can not be jumped. It doesn't matter who lands the scram (friend or foe)
- If the command destroyer itself is scrammed, it can not cycle its micro jump field generator and nobody gets jumped.

And you are speaking about scrum (10km range, 2 strength), not a disruptor (25km range, 1 strength). Disruptor won't have any impact on CD.
Is that correct?

On the topic of command dessies, they are absolutely fantastic ships. You should be doing one of two things with them really. Either warp them to a perch first and cloak them up (all command dessies should have cloaks) and then warp them down with a prober right onto their target (probably logi), or jump them through the hole and back in again so you can immediately cloak and aim your boosh properly.

Or yeah we did exercise them 2 days ago (http://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtopi ... 6&t=100580), but not as successful as these guys.

@Kyle, @Kora, @Lynx, Titus: thanks for info and directions.

Regarding scorpions. I did have drones... though it was the only 1 boat with drones.
But there is a bigger problem than lack of drones.
Scorpion will completely shut off 1 of our logies, 2nd will be shut of by 2 other jammers on the grid. So we will end up with only 1 operational logi. Having 11 opponent ships ... 1 logi will just die before we kill the scorpion.
But, i hear you: we can have 1 more logy, or even 2 and 1 less DD. This will work well vs self-rep ships.
We can stay closer to the hole to warp off.

We can also chose to not engage. And after killing Onyx, having scoprion and CD on grid - that was probably a better option.

But, honestly, I feel like people don't care much about potential lose of ships. They prefer to have fight and kill something even under heavy risk of losing ship other than retreat and come back in 1 hour.
But yeah, it is my call. Admit it.

Thanks!

[shappers dovahkin]

Great responses and discussion guys. Good to see and to learn from.

[Kora K]

When I have no idea what to do during a fight, I use this simple process :

1) Can I escape somewhere safe and stay there indefinitively (docking up, safe log off, ...) ? If yes, scatter scatter scatter.

2) If I can't escape quickly to a safe place, is there a way to burn away from them (jumping through multiple systems / WH) ? If yes, maybe there will be stragglers on their side, so we will fight only a few of them. Otherwise, I'll have more time to think.

3) If everyone is tackled / bubbled and only 5% of the fleet can escape : sort by distance, start shooting the ship closest to you. Repeat until you are all dead, or do enough damage for them to reconsider staying.

[Mhzentul Lafarius]

Thank you Budda for stepping up to FC. That was quite an interesting engagement that lead in my opinion to a lot of learnings!

From my scouting and memory this is the sequence of enemy ships we faced, plus or minus:
Onyx, Tengu, RS, Orthrus initially bubbled egg and circled around
Uncloaked Arazu in initial engagement, Drake joined
VNI, Scythe, Astero, Nemesis, Scorpion joined in between 1st and 2nd engagement through Bacon
Scythe reshipped into Stratios
They replaced their lost Onyx, Brought in Bitfrost, added 2nd Onyx in 3rd Engagement

I think Budda solicited guidance throughout and tried to incorporate new knowledge quickly. Good job!

Mhz