[AAR] Thursday Night AAFs - Tomlin doesn't whelp, he just forgets pochven filaments

[Tomlin]

Fun fleet tonight all, well done!

So we formed up in AAFs, had ~16 in fleet with a mix of DPS, logi, 1 scout, and 1 bubbler. We had 3 different people who had played years ago and just came back ~10 days ago, all separately, what a coincidence.

Anyhow, we yeeted off with a noise filament and landed in Northern Fountain, coincidentally just a few jumps out from where the Tuesday fleet ended. We checked a few systems but only had tethered-up ratters. Chigas jumped into a system with a ratting capital, and their response fleet decided to come say hello. We waited on the other side of the gate, and a few jumped into us. A Kronos showed up first, so we started on it, even though I knew we couldn't kill it. Other stuff started to decloak, and we switched to a Sabre, but it burned away too fast. I called an align out, and warped the fleet off as a few people went down. We bounced between safes for a bit to avoid combat scans, before deciding to burn back deeper into the pocket we were trapped in.

As we went 2 jumps out, we realized only a few things were chasing us. One of our logi got tackled as a gate as I warped us off, and he called out that it was still only 2 of them ~30 seconds later: a Sabre and a Broadsword. So we warped back in, sadly too late to save our logi-buddy, but we knew the 2 had weapons timers, so we burned down the Sabre quick. I told people to kill the sabre pod if they liked while we switched to the Broadsword who had burned off the gate, and just slowly whittled it down. A few more ships jumped in as the broadsword was near death, but nothing huge yet. After the broadsword died I called a Muninn primary, so we burnt towards that. Thankfully a few people thought to pod the broadsword pilot as we did, as it was a tasty 3.5 bil capsule. The muninn was tankier than expected, and we kept seeing gate flashes, so again we warped out. We posted up on a safe and just waited out our timers before going to Pochven.

Here's a BR of both scuffles, since it was the same people and area and just a few jumps out: https://br.evetools.org/br/66625c07c27f9500122d1ca1

We landed in Vale, and after a quick refit and scanning down a hole, we ended up 8J Stacmon highsec, so I pinged again for a 2nd round.

We lost and gained a few people, so reformed with 12. This time we had 2 people in FD ewar ships, so I figured despite having less DPS, we could take down some bigger targets through annoyance.

We took a signal filament that landed us in central Querious. I know the Dracarys pocket in the South there always has content, so we headed down that way. Chigas was in warp to a Vexor when an Arazu jumped into us. Chigas called tackle on the Vexor as we engaged the Arazu. It burned off gate, and just never cynoed as we took it down. So we waited our weapons timers, jumped into the system, and caught up with Chigas just as his cap went dry. We ate that Vexor quickly. And then another one. And then one more. And oh hell, why not kill a 4th one too. Well to be fair, we barely got the 4th one, the rats killed it before most of us could even lock it up. But ya, Chigas was catching Vexors left, right, and center across that pocket. We did land on a Paladin ratting as well, but unfortunately it MJDed away from us before we could scram it and then it got off.

So we decided to head over to Delve as it was getting late, and there was some ratting action near the NPC stations. I figured we'd either find some good fights, get blobbed, or just dock up in the NPC stations and leave a ship there.

As we were heading over, we saw a fleet forming up to fight us right at the edge of Delve and Querious. They were a bit kitchen sinky to start. We went to the ESS to form up and fight them there. A vagabond landed at range, so I told ewar to start range damping and disrupting it. An ONI landed right on top of us at the same time, so I called it primary. We started on it as multiple vargurs were landing. I told everyone we'd kill the ONI and leave, so called an align out to the sun as it got low. We killed it, and then managed to fleet warp off the entire fleet. Not a soul was tackled; we escaped a big multi-marauder fleet without any of us dying. We went and posted up on safe to decide our next move.

This time got a bit tricky. I realized I forgot to restock my ship with a pochven filament. We had 12 in fleet, and two people have five person filaments, so we couldn't all go back that way. We were 6j from the NPC stations in Delve, and Mokine mentioned he had to leave immediately, so he dropped fleet to burn there. I said why not, so when he said nothing was directly on the outgate, we warped to it and blind jumped as a bunch of hostile ships landed on the gate behind us. I called a freeburn to the station.

As we were burning, there was a Mekubal and Stabber that were almost keeping up with us. After a few jumps out, I called everyone to hold on one gate so we could scare them off. By this point we were 3-4j from the vargurs, so I figured threat was a lot lower, though Ansiblexes could change that. The stabber must have given up, but the Mekubal and a Kiki jumped into us. I told people just to aggress them and chase them back to the gate, which they both did. Chigas was on the other side, but I told him to leave them. They did aggress him, and nobody else was entering that system, so we possibly could have gone through and engaged. But my thinking was that would just give the rest of the enemy fleet time to catch up, or give the people in Delve time to set up a camp. So we let them be and moved on.

We did jump through one gate into a bubble with a Devoter and Marshall in it. I didn't want to engage either of those, so just called for an align out with prop mods on. We almost all made it, we did lose one Flight Deck Crucifier to a smart-bomb unfortunately. The rest of us got out, continued on, docked up in Eastern Delve, and then just self-destructed home leaving a re-ship there for the future. It was a good time to end for most of us as it was getting late, and we had some fun right before it.

Learnings and Reflections

It sucked that we didn't kill anything the first fight but lost a few ships, that was feeling rough. Once we realized we killed a 3.5bil pod in that second scuffle with the same guys though, wooo. Knew the night would end isk positive regardless there. It felt good to get some kills back regardless, that pod was just icing on the cake.

The second outing was a lot of fun. I don't think our timers ever went down we just kept finding Vexors to eat, and the Arazu was a nice bonus. I'm really proud of the whole fleet for how well the ONI kill went. We were on grid with 10ish pilots in much bigger and blingier ships than us, but we managed to kill one of them and escape without a single loss. It was very smooth and so well done. Definitely not a normal fleet fight experience with what we've had lately.

I think I made the right call in the final frantic escape dash to not go back for the Kiki and Mekubal. We likely could have killed one or both of them, and it did seem quiet behind us, but there's a good chance in that time the other fleet would have caught us. Or more stuff could have joined that Marshal and Devoter camp that was sitting a few jumps ahead of us. It would have been nice to kill those two ships, but the risk was just too high, especially so close to home.

On a lighter note, I have killed three Arazus in the last two days, all of whom have been on gates, burned off them, and never lit their cynos. What is going? Why are these Arazus burning off gates and not crashing? Why are they not dropping on us? How is it so common this week?!

Overall across the two outings, we had ~4.59 bil destroyed, with losses of ~317 mil. Very isk-positive fleet.