[FLEET] "Ex" L4 missions for SoE - 9/1/2021 @ 1200UTC

[Daemon Oldman]

Update: Dear mission running enthusiasts, we will probably be rescheduling this fleet to after the upcoming war (probably to Saturday 9 Jan). It's quite possible to run missions during a war, but a 19 jump trip in BS/Cruisers might not be the smartest activity. Based on WT activity, we might instead use the slot for a shorter chill fleet closer to home at Amy, along with some chat on mumble on SoE lore if folks are interested.


Exciting
Experimental
Extreme maybe
Explosive for the rats, not for us
Expensive ah, no, at least not necessarily

What: L4 missions for SoE with a focus to min-max standings-gain and isk-per-hour (including LP)
When: 9th January 2021, Saturday, 1200 (fleet will continue till around 1500, or till interest lasts)
Where: Lanngisi, Ani Constellation, Metropolis Region - 19 jumps from Amy, 11 form Averon
What to bring: Ships with mission running fits (Cruisers or larger) + as much ammo (for different damage types esp. explosive) as you can carry in your hold (do check guidelines below)


Stratios for showcasing SoE awesomeness only, you do not need a Stratios for this fleet
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FAQ:

Q: Why SoE in Lanngisi? Why not just run Garoun in Amy?
Bunch of reasons:

• * SoE has one of the more lucrative LP stores in the game (reliable 1100+ isk/LP, astero blueprints & more).
  * Lanngisi is great for mission running. Small constellation with 0.5 systems (no missions which are 7 jumps away, easy access even for anomics), Hek is right next door, less ganker presence vs Amy & Juf.
  * IF pilots are interested in lore and RP, SoE is arguably one of the most awesome and satisfying factions to run missions for. IF folks are interested, we can discuss the rich lore surrounding SoE while making isk in fleet.

Q: How will this fleet be different from any other mission fleet?
Most mission running fleets in Uni are (1) AWESOME, (2) focused significantly on casual chill & fun, (3) related to #2, focused on overwhelming force & safety. We LOVE uni missions fleets, but we want to test some sensible and some crazy ideas to make the fleet a bit more exciting, engaging, and lucrative. This would include:

• * Blitzing (stopping spawns, taking unlocked gates, killing mission objectives etc.)
  * Tagging & focus fire
  * Spider-locust hybrid fleets if possible (targeting 1200-2000 dps including 1 tank on grid), to min-max on-grid & off-grid income.
  * Mapping on-grid mission groups to play styles (e.g. speed tanking vs sniping) again if the fleet composition allows
  * Anchoring/ manual piloting to allow budget/ glass cannon fits (where required and possible)
  + some other surprises we have burning in the cooker

As with all uni events and fleets, if you're new and unfamiliar with what any of the above means, the fleet would be a good chill learning opportunity.

Q: Can I bring my Drake? OR What ships can I bring?
YES, for once, you can bring your drake... Conditions apply

If you are comfortably running L4s solo already, please feel free to join in your usual L4 ship. If you have multiple L4 ships, faster ships would be better for both travel and blitzing.

For everybody else, we will require a mission-fit cruiser or larger ship. Your ship should:

• * be able to apply damage to 50km
  * have a good active or passive tank (no buffer tanks) + sig/speed tank for cruisers (afterburner instead of mwd)
  * not have any resist holes

The ideas is to make sure that (1) you are able to contribute to dps and (2) you should not get blapped too fast to warp-out in case you get aggro for some reason. Please drop me an in-game mail or ping me on discord with your fit before you fly down to Lanngisi, or in-case you need any help with figuring out your fit.

Q: What about loot & salvage?
The focus will be on reward, bounty, and LP to maximize IPH efficiency. In case anybody is interested in looting and salvaging after the fleet, please ping me on discord to discuss the details for the same.
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If you have any other questions, please feel free to reach out to me either on discord or below.

Run missions for a humanitarian faction of space rescue-rangers. Blap bad guys for SoE!

[Daemon Oldman]

Thank you to all the folks who joined the mission fleet. We folded the fleet after approximately 4 hours of missions yesterday.

Participants & fleet comp: The fleet had 8 participants for most of the run, with 3 mission pullers (Koris, Joseph, Daemon). Most of the participants had prior experience with L4s and had ships & fits which could solo L4s

Spoiler

Dr. Joseph RD : Gila
Ben Lear : Raven Navy
kre7 : Tengu + Kestrel for Anomic team
Marcel en Distel : Gila
Koris the Second : Praxis
Dragush : Praxis
Assier Annages : Vexor Navy
Daemon Oldman: Gila + Hookbill for Anomic team

Approach: The fleet took all non-empire non-burner missions + 1 team burner, and consistently tried to blitz missions, focusing primarily on agent isk & LP reward income, with bounties being a secondary income stream. The fleet did not collect loot or salvage.

For the first 90 minutes the fleet ran together, other than some solo blitz missions - recon & cargo delivery - pulled and completed by Joseph. After 90 minutes we split up into 3 squads (1 for each mission runner):
Squad 1: 2 Praxis + RNI
Squad 2: 2 Gila + VNI
Squad 3: Gila + Tengu (and hookbill + kestrel for team burner)

We attempted to focus (for the most part successfully) on mission-completion groups in all missions. However, given the size and composition of the group, we only made limited attempts to focus-fire specific targets.

Isk income: In spite of the fleet comp (both in L4-soloable ships and experienced participants), the income was only around 50 mill isk per participant (triangulated across the mission pullers), for the 4 hour period. Approximately 30 mill isk of the earning was from agent rewards & bounties, and 20 mill isk in LP.

Observations & reflections: While, approximately 400 million isk in cumulative earnings is good, 12.5 million IPH is roughly 1/4th of IPH achieved by most folks blitzing missions solo in moderately optimized fits.

Some of this gap can be attributed to:

• teething and coordination issues (e.g. some issues with my comms + I realized a bit late that I hadn't set free-move on in fleet)
• differences in skills (security connections + negotiations) across mission pullers
• the fact that we did not try to focus fire (for most missions)
• differences in weapon systems, ship speed etc. across the fleet

However, the bigger reason might just be the maths of on-grid dps time vs non-dps time (travel, pulling & submitting missions, waiting for drones etc.). This makes fleets and especially blitzing fleets less efficient than individual mission by the significant factor observed.
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Warning: maths & a random (possibly flawed) analysis of what is probably an intuitively obvious conclusion below

Spoiler

Scenario 1: In a hypothetical situation where 100% of the time is spent on grid shooting continuous spawns of rats by...

There are 2 competing drivers affecting IPH here:

• If the rats have sizeable tank/ logi, then a fleet should technically have higher incomes from bounties than an individual (800 edps would break an active 100 ehp/s more than 2x as fast as 400 dps, because the delta is 700 vs 300).
• In reality, given coordination needs, wasted cycles, switching etc. (especially with drone travel time, missile flight etc.) the income might be lower. You would expect more dps/ time is wasted by a fleet as compared to a single ship (to take an extreme and specific case 800 edps shooting at a rat with 200 ehp left = 600 ehp wasted, vs 400 dps shooting at the same rat = 200 ehp wasted)

So if income was from bounties only, at 1 location, then a fleet's efficiency would be comparable to an individual, with tankier rats making larger fleets more optimal, and smaller less tanky rats making smaller fleets or individuals more optimal from an IPH perspective.

Scenario 2: Now, if we build this scenario further into something like missions, where you have to kill rats in multiple locations, you get a fixed reward for each location (split amongst the fleet) + the bounty at each location.

Let's take travel and other fixed time at Tr, Time to clear a mission for 1 individual as Tm, Mission reward as M, Bounty per unit time per individual in room as B.

So the naive view of IPH with a fleet of n identical pilots would be:
((M/n) + (B*n*(Tm/n)) / ((Tm/n) + Tr)
Or to put it another way (multiplying both numerator and denominator by n) it's ((M + B*n*Tm)/(Tm + n*Tr))

The above assumes that the on-grid mission clear time would be Tm/n and bounty for the group in that time would still be same (B*Tm). These may be higher or lower, based on the factors mentioned in scenario 1 + other mission requirements (e.g. travel time etc.).

Now if you're solo (n=1), Tm >> Tr (say 20-30 minutes to clear the mission rooms vs 2-3 minutes to travel accept, submit etc.), and M is usually similar or slightly larger than BxTm (maybe 18-20 mill IPH from bounty vs 25-30 mill IPH from mission reward + LP).

Blitzing tries to improve IPH while soloing by minimizing Tm, by not killing unnecessary rats, minimizing spawns etc. The idea is to get IPH to as close to M/Tr as possible.

However, if you're in a fleet, trying to minimize Tm by following blitzing strategies is counterproductive. For fleets, given the split of fixed mission rewards, and the need for the entire fleet to travel anyway, it's probably better to clear all high value rats (maybe other than guns).

Tl;dr Bounty income is (very broadly) independent of number of fleet members. Mission reward income decreases with number of fleet members. Blitzing missions at the expense of Bounty income is likely to reduce IPH in most fleet situations. So if you have a large mission fleet (say approaching 10 people, you might want to:

• split up the fleet into smaller groups and run it as a hybrid of spider + locust fleet AND/OR
• kill high-value rats instead of blitzing missions

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Illustrative example:

Let's take a mission with 10 million isk + LP reward, and 4 million bounty, which takes 20 minutes on-grid to complete solo & let's assume travel and other fixed time is 5 minutes. The mission can be blitzed in 10 minutes with a reduced bounty of 2 million with that strategy i.e (approx. 200k bounty per minute).

Solo (no blitz) income = 16 million in 22 minutes = 34 mill IPH
Solo (blitz) income = 13 million in 12 minutes = 48 mill IPH

Now with 2 fleet members
No blitz income = 36 mill IPH
Blitz income = 42 mill IPH

And with 10 fleet members on grid
No blitz income = 43 mill IPH
Blitz income = 30 mill IPH

Obviously this is highly dependant on starting assumptions, but the dynamics should be clear with this example.

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Other notes: on SoE lore talk

Spoiler

I had also promised discussions on SoE lore in this fleet. This did not happen due to a combination of us getting caught up in blitzing, comms issues on my side, and my hesitation to suggest lore-talk in a fleet of veteran missioneers who I assumed might be much more familiar with the lore already (and less interested in the same). I will try to organize more chill + lore fleets in the future in case folks are interested. In the meanwhile, if you're keen on lore, please do drop a ping on the eve lore channel on discord for chats with passionate (and vastly more knowledgeable) lore gurus.

[Arin Mara]

A wonderful report
I was cheering for a different conclusion, but I can't argue with data: doing Mission alone has a better ratio of effort and profit.

Your math and analysis wasn't intuitive to me. I had to write it down and solve the equation myself
I'll have to brood over the report a bit more. I'm not sure if it will impact the decisions I made in the future as I'm not very ISK driven.