[AAR] Kiting Kestrals 2-11 23:00

[Azora Anzomi]

I wanted to use a small, kiting oriented fleet doctrine that was cost effective and low skill point friendly.

And so after class, we took out the Kiting Kestrals Doctrine https://www.eveworkbench.com/fleets/ded ... da5cf1870f

This Doctrine was created in the days before Uprising as a counter to all the nasty, kitey ships that used to be able to operate in novice (now Scout) plexes. Things like slicers and Garmurs. Its intended targets are to engage and force the retreat of enemy kiting ships, and more advanced kiting small gangs. Rather than kill them, the combination, of the Maulis, and a number of the light missile Kestrals could force many kiting threats out of plexes, thus allowing you to take sites, even in rather contested FW space, and when your opponents are more skilled and spend more ISK. It retains many of these strengths and the ability to operate in every faction warfare plex in the modern uprising system.

Its downsides are that:
It needs opponents who want to fight you over an objective to work. While each ship loosely counts as fast tackle, its engagement range is much further than long point range (about 50K) and so keeping targets pointed can be challenging. The Maluses will reduce targeting range to about 20K or so… but that’s still the edge of point range
The DPS is low per ship (especially the t1 fit) and while it can work with as few as 5, it does greatly benefit by getting large numbers (20+)
It struggles entering plexes where you are forced to 0 and you will lose ships when you try.
Personally, this doctrine is very special to me, as it represented a significant mindset change as an FC, from one who did mostly brawling fights, to being able to run longer range kiting fights. By practicing it, I built the skills to use larger fleets like caracals, and battlecruiser fleets.

For today’s fleet, we had 14. I had 1 tackle slasher and 3 maluses.
While we got into several feet fights, we really did not kill anything (I mean there was that weird Imicus)
That said, this doctrine really fought above its weight, engaging several small gangs that were way bigger (ship size wise), and more expensive than it. (as designed).
Fight 1
We entered a medium site with 5 Caracals in it. I immediately pulled to range, 60+ or so hoping to waste some missiles. My Maluses did a really good job, and all 5 caracals were suppressed. I turned into 50K range and began shooting targets. The enemy warped off. That’s right, our 14 frigates technically defeated a 5 man caracal fleet and held the plex. (Except as neutrals, we could not really do anything with a plex). Still, it was quite an achievement in my opinion. There were no loses.
Fight 2
We fought 2 ospray navy issues who were suspect on a gate. As mentioned, this is exactly the intended target. We chased one and got him into low shields, but he must have had snakes, or a deadspace MWD or something, and was able to out range our overheated kestrals. Even so, our maluses managed the range and instead of getting picked off 1 by 1… we only lost 1 malus to the fight.
Fight 3
Well, I finally got the escalation I was looking for, a significant fleet chassed us to an Open Plex. There we tried to fight, but I, having lost several targets to being too far away, took us in a little closer, about 35K or so… the enemy fleet was too strong and our damps were not enough at that range and my fleet got picked off quickly. We extracted with about ½ the fleet left. The advantage of kiting fleets is that its easier (as you are at long point range, or more) to extract when things are going bad.

So yeah, not my most successful fleet, but I feel there was a lot of fleet fighting experience to be gained by having several, small kiting gang style fights in a short time. I hope everyone enjoyed the experience.

Conclusions
Lacking an objective to fight over, because we were not in FW, kind of took away the reason fights would happen. The opposing militias, had little reason to challenge us over a site and so the fights did not come to us. I think this doctrine is not appropriate for further eve university use because of this. (at least outside of a FW group)
The DPS was just too low on this doctrine in this number of players.
Tackle was inadequate to the task… Sending a slasher (or any other frigate really) against these kinds of targets is suicide.
Other FC decisions…
I was a little concerned because I took on a lot of the roles that might normally have been delegated. When in the area, I somewhat purposefully took over the scouting rolls, the reason was to keep the fleet together (I was looking to fight a small gang, not individual frigs in sites, and thus wanted to stay together) and as all of our ships were frigates and fast aligning, the need for scout was limited. But some pointed out that sending tackle in first may have gotten more kills, and they are not wrong. Though as I said, I was not exactly setting up to do the bait thing. It also kept others from other opportunities for advanced fleet roles… something that goes against the purpose of this kind of fleet.