[AAR] Intro to Fleets Merlin Roam - Labour Day Edition

[Tomlin]

I hosted an Intro to Fleets class today and organized a Merlin roam afterwards. Due to it being a holiday in North America and EUTZ fleet, we managed really good numbers and had ~41 people in fleet total.

We took a bit longer to form-up, but made sure everyone had ships, and practiced some align, target, need shield broadcasts, etc.

We burned off to a Thera hole <10j out and went in there. We had 3 experienced and 2 learner scouts who looked around and found us a good hole in PH space.

We exited the hole and saw a Thanatos, Minokawa, Rorqual, and a bunch of Marauders on scan. We burned away from there (and away from MJ-) a bit.

Our scouts engaged a fleet of Retributions a few jumps from us, so we headed over and joined the fun. We got on grid and had a bit of a staredown with them from a few hundred KM off. We got a tackle off on one of them and tried to start brawling, but they pulled range and didn't engage much. We had a few more warp arounds of grid with us bouncing to wrecks, pods, or other scouts. In the end we caught a few of them, but they wouldn't commit. Horde also had a lot of tackle hanging out nearby, and we caught a few of those. Eventually the Retri fleet warped off while the Horde small stuff stayed, so we played with them for a bit before disengaging and moving on to hunt.

BR of that here. The Timeline tab tells the story a bit more: https://br.evetools.org/br/66d6420f5f185b001298f323

Full disclosure here: I assumed all of the enemies were together. I was focused on movement and positioning, and didn't realize the Retris did not live there and they were actively being hunted by Horde as well. Had I known that, perhaps I would have been a bit more aggressive with chasing and bubbling them. I later learned that Horde had the same thinking and thought we were with the Retri fleet flying together too.

So we went a few jumps looking for content when one of the scouts relayed a large rail harpy fleet was forming and chasing us. We went a few more jumps and decided to kite them at an ESS to check it out. Unfortunately they were a much larger fleet in both numbers and ship classes, so we decided to run a few jumps leaving defensive bubbles to slow them. As we ran we had some of their tackle with us, who we pushed back through gates occasionally, but generally just moved away from.

After going 10j or so, I was tired of it, and figured we'd just brawl them and see how many we could take down with us. We set up on a gate with bubbles to get them. But at that time, they actually took an Ansiblex to get ahead of us. So we were waiting on a gate for them, and they were in the system ahead of us waiting on that gate for us to continue on. Woops. Eventually they came in to us, so I took us through the gate, and we formed up on the other side to brawl to our deaths.

They came in, I called some close tackle as primary, it hopped the gate before we could kill it. We burned down a Kirin and then tried for some others, but they were just chewing through us too quick. I had people anchored on my, but they knew I was anchor and was webbed and scrammed, so the whole fleet was moving too slow and couldn't get on top of new targets, and also had horrible transversal. They wiped the floor pretty quick with us, but left me alive and repped me up at the end to say some GFs and thank us for coming.

Here's the BR of that one: https://br.evetools.org/br/66d63be1836d6e0012739df0
(I thought we got the Ares, we had it to half-hull when I called a target switch. Guess it got out, woops).

After that a few of them joined our comms to thank us for coming and debrief a bit from their side. They mentioned they overformed as they thought we were together with the retris, and apologized for blobbing us that much.

Learnings and Reflections

I think that's the biggest Merlin fleet I've led. It was fun having that many there, and we had some serious punching power. I do wish we had caught a lone marauder somewhere to throw that at. But alas, us being so big made us an intel and standing fleet magnet.

It's likely we could have gotten away from the Harpy fleet if we just kept running. I fully admit I was getting tired at that point and didn't want to burn another 10 jumps in hope that we'd lose them. I just wanted a fight, regardless of risk.

In terms of the fights themselves:

I think the first Retri fleet one went really well. I did have us sitting on top of wrecks for a while, which was a risk for a warp-in, but really, I was hoping they'd come in at 0 and brawl us. Our scouts did a great job of spreading out there to give us warp-ins and tacticals too.

For the Harpy fleet fight, we should have killed more. I made a mistake telling the fleet to anchor on me. I should have told them to just orbit enemies at 500 and shoot them.We likely could have taken out a few more if we did that. Either way that was a doomed losing fight, but that slow anchor problem made it a lot worse.

Overall

~578 mil destroyed and ~873 mil lost. Bit pricey of a loss for a (mostly) Merlin fleet, but we got some okay kills. And we didn't murder any innocent ratters or miners this time, we only took on willing PVPers.

[Lecram Sauri]

It was great Tomlin, thanks again for organizing and FCing! Looking forward to the next roam