[WAR] OP : Short Trip @ 2017-05-07

[Ersin Oghuz]

History : Short Bus Mercenaries. declared war on us before so we were trying to locate their assets if we could and just before they dropped the previous war decleration we found 4 of their POCOs in Clellinon. Since the war is dropped we just kept that intel for us and waited for the next window of opportunity. Week ago they declared war on us and then we suddenly have our opportunity to destroy their assests very close to our home system (Amygnon, HSC). I consulted to Management for Structure Assault permission and got green light.

Reinforcement Fleet : I organized an operation called "Op: Short Trip" referencing their alliance name and the closeness of the assets to our home system. It was succesful with reinforcement of 4 POCOs belong to wartargets by 35 Unistas from various campuses as well as HSC. We were monitored by several OOC scouts during assault but without any gunfire incidents. The reinforcement timer was tricky for me and many unistas but I decided to proceed.

Timers:

Code: Select all

Clellinon   V                   Sunday 1:27 AM EVE-Time
Clellinon   III                 Sunday 1:51 AM EVE-Time
Clellinon   II                  Sunday 1:57 AM EVE-Time
Clellinon   IV                  Sunday 2:38 AM EVE-Time

Call-To-Arms : Not only reinforcement times were bad, but also 2 more corporations declared war on us right after we reinforce their POCOs. So, here I was wondering how to manage it since now I was expecting a big fleet fight since it seemed that Mercs would defend their POCOs. I decided to declare call-to-arms via Combat Events subforum [Call-to-Arms] Operation : Short Trip - Part 2.

Fleet Fight and POCO Bashing :

Earlier that day we spent couple of hours to create some bookmarks around gates nearby, POCOs, and CAS station in Clellinon in order to use them in combat situation. Thanks to Ares and Arden Calima for that.

We managed to gather a fleet with 95 capsuleers mostly flying BLAP Vexors, CDI Vexors, BLAP Augorors and CDI Agurors. We also had occasional BCs for boosting. We had 4-5 scouts/OOC eyes in several systems : Ares, Zeerse and 2-3 more OOC scouts that I do not remember their uni-toons (so if you want your name here please send me PM and i will update the scout list)

We had 10 logibros in Augorors and Ingenia volunteered for FCing Logi Squad as a first time Logi FC. Budda, Xana, LeFleur volunteered for commanding posts as 2IC, 3IC, 4IC (Scatter FC). And later Coaxter joined us as an OOC DD to snipe their OOC Logi. We had a solid E-War squad as well.

(2 Seperate Combat Wings with several Combat Squads, 1 Support Wing with 2 Logistics, 2 E-War and 1 Scout squad(s) )

Budda gave a newbro speech and I gave some preliminary information before we launch. Also Budda volunteered for taking the fleet boss to relieve me the stress of sorting that out. Following those informative mini lectures we undocked and start travelling to Clellinon which is 5 jumps away from Amygnon.

We travelled to Clellinon safely but some problems occured while finding scouts since I pronunce it wrong

After we travelled to Clellinon, reports regarding big hostile fleet in Merolles, not far from our position and they were probably coming through our location. I sent scout that way to confirm that and scouts reported fleet in Cistuvaert, however here I must say that they reported a Nestor but there was no Nestor.

And when we understand they are coming to Clellinon we warped back to Luse gate at Clellinon and start camping the gate with drones out and orbiting the gate in our optimal while logi and e-war took their positions. The POCOs were about to come out of reinforcements but enemy fleet was just a jump away. Here I wanted to stay on grid more but after having several reminders from others I gave up and make people pull drones in and align to POCO V which is the first POCO out of reinforcement time. Then I gave the order warp but I did not warp myself!. So here there I made two mistakes. First I was the FC, and I should remind others that I am the FC and we should hold our position (next time I will be more harsh about it). This is my first mistake in the engagement and the second one was not using Fleet Warp to POCO and let myself stuck on gate. Up to Clellinon I used fleet warp nicely and succesfully but here in the real combat situation I failed to do so and this let 3-4 of us targeted and caught on gate while our fleet warped to POCO 5 30 AU away. I was dying and I made a 3rd mistake. I called the fleet back to gate. Maybe that was the right call since I though the fleet can take the combat at gate since they already engaged 3-4 of us and they were still dealing with us (I could not jump back to Luse even I was 0 at gate since I still had a timer due to boosting) so I called the fleet in and the fleet started warping back. I understand that I will not hold and then I relieved the command to 2IC, Budda. (I came back with a Vexor later and I was primaried and died again. Then I came back with another Prophecy but the war was already ended and I took the command while bashing the 2nd POCO)

Here I am asking other FCs to fill in their comments and observations.

ZkillBoard BattleReport(for correct ISK Loss and ISK Efficiency Report)
EVE-EVF BattleReport (for correct number of pilots and groupings)
New Cool KillBoard on Trial from Titus

We lost 1.5 billion ISK, while they lost 2.0 billion ISK in total (including the POCOs).



Summary on my part:

1- I should attend E-War wing better to tell them how they operate and I should made the dock up and swap the Gallente and Amarr ECM for battle.
2- I should not ask E-War wing to exempt them from fleet warps so I can use fleet warps for whole group when I needed to.
3- I should be more firm about fleet comms since there were many incidents about unnecessary flow of information & chatter.
4- I should be more firm about how to command the fleet. I welcome all input and feedback but when I watch the video of the combat from our side I really understand that I do not need to be told about all the things going on grid and in total since I already know them.
5- My death could be a good thing since they took the fight on gate and even I died at the beginning, Budda and rest commanders did lead the fleet well.
6- There was some conflicting orders time to time. I know that some of you are really good at solo and fleet PvP and mean well for the whole fleet, however I set those chain of command for some reason. If FC is down, 2IC is in charge, if 2IC is down 3IC and goes on. You can assign others while you are FCing as well but chain of command should be the same. If more then 2 commanders took the charge for some reason that would be extremely distruptive. I know that you do not mean harm but that is how chain of command and communication in combat situation works.
7- Green safeties for Logistics was a horrible mistake since from another fleet previously I learnt that our logi should set to yellow safeties as well but I failed to remind that to our logibros, a very big mistake on my part again.
8- After I reshipped second time the combat on gate was over and I took the command while bashing POCOs. Since they lost many OOC logistics they choose not to engage again while we are bashing the POCOs.
9- +90 capsuleers ... Hard to manage & command...
10- Thank you very much for participating in this operation!

Ship Replacement Program

If you were using BLAP ships (Vexor and Augoror) Apply to E-UNI BLAP SRP >> Check here <<
If you were using CDI ships first apply to E-UNI SRP and then apply to HSC SRP >> Check here <<

! ANY LOOT FROM THAT ENGAGEMENT SHOULD GO TO HSC DONATIONS SO WE CAN COVER THE SRP EXPENSES ! IF YOU HAVE ANY LOOT FROM THE ENGAGEMENT PLEASE DROP THEM TO HSC DONATIONS CONTAINER IN ALPHA HANGAR AT CITADEL 101 OR CONTRACT TO ERSIN OGHUZ WITH EXPLANATION.

Additional Resources

Image Galleries : #01 #02 #03

Video from Mercs : Mercs - View from OOC Logistics / Mercs - View from DD

Video from E-UNI : Thank you Tristle Thank you Omnicious

Reddit Comments

[Ersin Oghuz]

AAR part from Budda

Thanks and appreciations.

Great job Ersin: Organizing the event - great job! Letting me a chance to FC - appreciate your trust!
Tristle: You made a great video: the best teaching part of this is to review own actions! Glad you stayed alive till the very end. I've tried to record it too,... but will take this offline.
Ewar squad: Good job guys, some of you stayed alive till the end - great:
- each griffin has 4 jammers and time to time jams and disappoints opponents...
- don't commit - stay alive!
- for training - just join any roaming if frigates or dessie doctrine take a Griffin, if cruisers - Blackbird.
Logies: Good job guys, you saved at least my ship twice and quite a few people did catch reps.

Sorries
In fact, that was my first ever PvP fight in high-sec. Hunting 1-2 lone WTs does not count. It is also my first big fight when each side has more than 50 ships. And being an FC ... brrgh...
I did numerous amount of mistakes... LOTS of them, only some are:
- Instead of "Approach" shortkey I hit "Orbit" (and my default was 60km, I just was in Blackbird roaming)
- I was a bad ass speaking during other pilots FCing... I know, that's my traditional problem..
- I took a stupid fit for the engagement: out-of-doctrine brawling Pontifex with a busher module...
- As a 2IC I feel I should be in the mainline ship, maybe blinged, but same so won't be a preferred target to be killed first.
- I never called pilots to check their range and switch ammo for better range
- When I just got in command and I should have repeated FCs command (or issue new one) to indicate I'm on top of things and make sure people follow orders.

But even I'm not perfect, I will be writing what I think other pilots could be better. Please excuse me for been critical while doing mistakes myself. I hope we will all learn together. If you disagree with what I wrote - please feel free to argue: I will be happy to discuss and change my opinion.

Chatter in comms
Honestly, I can't say we really had many issues. Yes, it was case when few people were speaking at the same time, but all called for right things. And we had somebody super-experienced he would probably shut-up all of us and managed things well, but considering current situation I prefer we have advises when there is a pause for that other than miss something important:
- target flashies only
- orbit
- watch fleet history
- some other things.

Now, let's back to AAR.

Intel processing.

My thought process was: they have T3Cs, they have Guards... we won't break them. I know what is resist of T3C and repping power of Guardians landed on T3C and I also thought: we are done, the best what we can do is to kill POCO while they are killing us.
Too bad... but let's see: we have 70 Vexors: even with meta modules and low-skill pilots that should be around 15000-23000 dps, we should be able to kill something.

Intro.

When I saw many neutral ships jumping through the gate... I was glad: at least we will kill T1 stuff
TBH, I was not really understanding what's going on and what they are going to do. When we learned WTs are sitting on the other side of the gate... and don't plan to take any actions my thought process was: they will keep us on the gate until reinforcements timers will run out. So we need to warp-off and start bashing POCO.

Anyway, Ersin was FC, I expressed my opinion in command channel... and probably impacted Ersin's decision.
Ersin: it was your call to decide what to do, you were in a full right to order "everybody please shut up". And stress was big enough to accept that.

Though, I do believe it was a right decision. The problem was not executed well. I think you should have warped 1st DD wing, I would warp a 2nd DD wing, Logies and EWars would warp themselves at their range.
I think the right call would be to have logies and EWars in separate from DD Wings. And don't exempt anybody from warps, and let them warp themselves when needed. If wing commander died... we would need to do something
Don't remember if the fleet configuration was done that way though.

While we waited for WTs to jump their logies moved off the gate... I believe we should have followed them. Instead, I recommended orbiting the gate (better be in move than stay still). But ... at some point, we decided to warp. FC called to pull drones, aling, warp... and stood themselves. As soon as we started leaving WTs jumped and FC left tackled...

Should we come back to the gate? Later after discussion, I think that was a right call. And luckily we did not lose much during warps.

The beginning.

From Tristle's video, you all see that after Ersin called me to be an FC I was quite for a minute. I should have repeated FCs command to indicate I'm on top of things and make sure people follow orders. It was some confusion on what to do, I think we should better all stayed on the gate and take a fight other than try to reposition and lose ships during that. I believe we (Ersin, Coaxster, and myself) managed that well enough.

Out of WTs I picked up somethins we can shout with relatively low resist (Execuror NI, 2 other alternatives were 2 VNIs only, I'm still not sure how was I able to pick them up ).
We were still landing, sending drones, so ENI was saved by WTs, ... and at this moment ... by accident I issued command orbiting at 60km (see above about my mistakes).
2nd call (Proteus) - was stupid; 3rd was better... but some people were still shooting the first ENI... Seriously? When all targets were broadcasted...?

At some point I went out of range, was not able to lock some targets, and was confused on what's the problem... BAD TIME... asked Coaxster to backup.

I like how he reacted "Good grief" Thanks Coaxster, you helped me to come back...

Unfortunately, looks like he was far from the rest of fleet and target he called were out of range for lot of people, somebody else picked up calling primaries... it was hard 3 minutes... I still did not get who was FC that time, but when he called he is going down and I managed my hot-keys and get into loggies range I took the command back...

Real work

At this moment I came close to their logies, fleet DDs main portion caught up with myself too... AND WE GOT SOME FUN We started shooting things effectively each minute we killed 2 Execurors, unfortunately paying for that by lost vexor or 2 as well.

At the same time, I don't understand why I see a lot of drones (42nd minute of Tristle's video) shooting something else, but not primaries and secondaries... Were they still shooting Proteus? Maybe that was logy drones?

I feel, at this point, the main mass of DD drones at this point were around opponent logies. But WTs DDs get on top of our DDs. Logies called that we are taking loses due to alpha... I called to jam WTs DDs... not sure if that helped, we most likely did not have many EWar guys left.

Yet that was fun: I hope everybody had that feeling too: we were like a machine, lock secondary, kill primary, change primary, rinse and repeat COOL! Maybe that was not fun for those who was killed,... but that's a fight. I hate those times in WHC when I was flying T1 BC in fleet of HACs and was shot first from the grid... but that was a good drill (thanks Kyle!).

Finita for Budda.

Another mistake from my side: feeling cool I thought it is a time to shoot T3Cs. I did not really have properly sorted overview and did not know WTs still had a dozen of logies. I called primary to be a Legion,... we could not break it and lost 3 more ships before came back to logies

I got punished for this mistake and killed

With that, I called Coaxster to finish and was sorry to leave the Battlefield. Later I reshiped into a rookie ship to enjoy the battle from the grid, but until I landed WTs disengaged. Once we started bashing POCOs I jumped into a Vexor... thought it was not really required.

In my manner, I kept giving advises when FC was quiet, hope that was not distractive, but helped somebody. Now I understand why GOOD FCs keep giving orders CONSTANTLY: to prevent "well-wishers" from giving other commands.

Funny things:
1. WTs lost somebody to Gate Guns lol: https://zkillboard.com/kill/62098826/?/

Small advises:
- If you fly BC and have excessive low module slots: instead of putting damage module - put resist to plug resist hole. https://zkillboard.com/kill/62098926/ - 3 DDA is TOO much: put hardeners for specific damage type, and trimark rigs.
- Force Recon for bashing POCO (https://zkillboard.com/kill/62098905/)? If we bash POCO, we don't need to keep opponents on the grid. Also, why so expensive tackling module? Just took the nearest ship? Ok, I did similar, but still 380M ship in a doctrine with T1 cruisers... is not reasonable. You will be just shot first. Thanks for participation though!
- When spreading tackles - overheat your tackle module.
- Hot-key to overheat - Shift+Click on the module - this is more convinient than trying to click that small strip on top of the module's circle.
- Logies: if you get somebody repping, but can't push through DPS - overheat your modules for 3-5 cycles: this won't make too much heat damage but can save a ship. https://zkillboard.com/kill/62098988/ - just wow took raw damage as a solid BS
- Remember to keep moving with AB.
- Watch fleet broadcast history (filter it out, non logy - remove calls for reps).

Summary:

1. Fighting in HS against OOC logies, our logies should have safeties set to yellow.
2. I think BLAP should have T2 ships ready on contracts or have modules available to refit quickly. I tried to find t2 guns and could not.
3. We knew where we will have fight, should have reship on contract in Clellinon
4. As FC we all should advise pilots on how to use damps. It was few times: ewar jam logies, but never about what to damp.
5. FC should control engagement range and call fleet to use proper range ammo. And proper drones (Medium or Heavies against cruisers, not light).
6. Lots of people commented about bringing OOC DDs to shoot opponents logies. In fact, they could do same with ours.

Questions : (veterans and experts - please advise):
1. What should be wings and squads? I think Logies and EWars should be in a separate wing. While wing commanders alive - we can maneuver well. If somebody in WC position dies he should call for the replacement. Does this make sense?
2. Whom Vexor pilots should damp? I guess from Tristle's video that's clear: damp logies as they were so far from the gate.

Thanks guys! It was a lot of pleasure and fun fighting with you!

P.S. And at the end, I want to express appreciation and thanks to WHC in general and Kyle Hargrove in particular: during my tenure in E-Uni I have seen quite a few good FCs, but the best is Kyle Hargrove, I learned from him a lot! Thanks Kyle!

[Ersin Oghuz]

AAR part from Xana


Things got a bit hectic when our 2ic went down and passed FC to Coaxster (who was not in the chain of command).

I stayed quiet initially , because I fly regularly with Coax, and knew he was the most experienced FC we had at the moment.
It was only after I noticed him getting flustered at the fleet being out of position (more specifically out of HIS position, like he described in his post) that I actually took command and began calling primaries.
If memory serves, I started working on one of the proteus, and ordered the fleet to lock up only one of the enemy logi, my intention here was to go for a hard switch and pick down their logis while they were cycling reps on the shiny DDs.
Also I did call to break anchor and "get into your own optimals", because I knew a lot of people were actually blaster or neut fit, or had different types of ammo loaded (it is the uni after all), so I trusted everyone to start burning to where they'd be capable of applying the most damage.
I got blaped shortly after.

Overall I was in command a whooping ~50 seconds (grrrrr spais)


Coaxster resumed FC, I reshipped at the station, got back on grid, instantly got popped a second time (unlucky landed right on top of their DD).

Intel was bad, we had no idea about their actual numbers (or the ooc logi) until they entered the system.
I am glad everyone from all the campuses answered the call, I wasn't sure we'd be able to break their composition, but we prevailed \o/
Thank you all for showing up, and thank you so much Ersin, for taking the time to organize this, it was a blast

[Ersin Oghuz]

AAR part from Coaxster

I got on just slightly before the fight so only had just enough time to get into my 1000 dps face punching BNI for some flashy logi killin and get to the right system. From mumble I saw the fleet was about 100 folks with a lot of ewar plus some logi. But that is all I knew! When Ersin pulled me into command channel I thought I would give a few insights on killing the logi but that's it. I was there for some F1 monkey action. Little did I know that K950's comment in local that I was the FC was...forshadowing.

When the 40-50 OOC logi entered system (that was my initial guess at numbers), I thought we were doomed: 50ish t1 cruisers with unista skills were not going to break that. But I ran over to them to sit on them and see if my face punching could do the trick. But after realizing they were mostly exeqs I thought just maaaaybe we could to this after all. The initial call to warp to the poco (which I agreed with thinking there were many more enemy DPS than there were) caused confusion (and the comms were AWFUL so we didn't get intel properly about the WT fleet -- this was nearly disastrous -- at no time did I hear details on what and how many WT DD were about to come in -- other than something about a nestor that never appeared...). But this 'mistake' made sure the fight actually *happened* and in the end was probably for the best. However, as a result we were out of place (wrt to their logi) when we got back on grid (but this was also sort of ok because by aggressing the DD it made the logi go flashy). As their logi went flashy I chased after them again. As expected, I couldn't solo break them (it was close though: if I switched fast enough, maybe, but I was in a BC so eh). But the enemy logi were showing serious signs of well, non-ideal behavior (as THEIR video shows, they were very disorganized). I suggested to the FCs piling onto the T1 logi and ignoring their dps once the logi were flashy. But since they had setup already, the guards and augs were already probably pre-locked by each other, so the exeqs were the suggested target (augs typically need cap chains, exeqs don't).

When I was asked to take over the first time (due to spais getting the FC headshotted), I was waaaay out of place compared to the rest of the fleet so it took me a bit to figure things out (like I said, I didn't even know what ships y'all were in! it was an intense fast studying of the grid. sheesh. Thus my Charlie Brown response in the video). As I "quietly studied", Budda -- no, actually it was someone else I think calling primaries? -- took command back until he died. But by then everyone had closed on the enemy logi and THEN they started dropping like flies and I knew the fight was going to be ours. I think I goofed and called a non-flashy at one point (I had green safety on for just that reason but I'm not sure all the unistas did). But this meant that some enemy logi hadn't *done* anything yet (from reddit it seems they had safeties on green so couldn't rep -- significantly cutting the fleet repping power -- and thus didn't go flashy). Anyway, since I was tuning out the enemy DD ships (I couldn't shoot them, and they were far away anyway -- remember I was in a face puncher -- their logi being so close together was their doom) I didn't quite notice quickly enough they were bailing or I would've explicitly called spread points sooner. In a fight like this (particularly when in drone boats so you don't have to be very close to the primary) folks should *know* to spread out to get points. But this is the uni

I did remember to explicitly call the griffins to jam the logi (since I did see we had some). And that worked wonderfully. And the unista logi did great. Only when all enemy dps was being applied (i.e. they grabbed a ship on top of them) did the alpha get too much. I missed that we had so many TDs and damps -- again, since I wasn't paying attention to the DD, it didn't really matter (though that Rapier loss....tsk). But damps on the logi and DD did add a bit to their confusion. If I had called for explicit scan res damps on the guards and augs, it would've helped even more (but probably not a lot since as I said, they had already locked each other and the shineys).

There was a lot of split dps throughout the fight. Partly this was due to some "too far away" calls (well, then BURN to them!). But it also kept their logi rather distracted (yet another 'mistake' that turned out just fine). Other than when I was the only one shooting the logi at the start, I don't think I saw many significant reps land on their T1 logi. They were saving their shineys (which is why calling any T3Cs as primary was a bad idea -- though due to damps and jams it wasn't out of the question -- that one proteus was very close!).

Oh as I kept swapping targets and dps on their logi, when I was called to FC the 2nd time "for reals", they all put their drones on me (proof of spais). They did little damage (since only the logi I had aggressed but not yet killed could do this) but it was still funny. I didn't even call for reps.

All in all, nicely done, unistas. I'd just say more discipline and more calm However, I will add something very very key: if you turn over FC to someone, you are DONE. Do not then keep calling commands from the backseat (type them in fleet or suggest them). Hand over command or don't. No halfway. Now, I'm not in the uni, so I didn't push back when this happened to me here (in a fleet of mine, I'd've snarled STFU ). But it caused a LOT of confusion and cost us some kills. Also, it helps if as an FC you preface fleet commands with 'FLEET!' (not necessarily primary calls, but everything else like warps). This way everyone knows it is a COMMAND and it is coming from the FC. It also means folks can give suggestions (prefaced with 'FC I suggest...') without others seeing it as a command.

I'm beginning to like this OOC WT killin thing. Call me again next time Or if you can get 100 unistas together again, maybe a guest FC dragon slayer is in order...hmm....(hint: train into bombers asap )

[Ersin Oghuz]

>> Reserved for reports from other FCs <<
Jax

[Richard Marte]

Here I wanted to stay on grid more but after having several reminders from others I gave up and make people pull drones in and align to POCO V which is the first POCO out of reinforcement time. Then I gave the order warp but I did not warp myself!. So here there I made two mistakes. First I was the FC, and I should remind others that I am the FC and we should hold our position (next time I will be more harsh about it).

No need to be harsh. Just issue orders. Nobody warped off until you told them to.

That said, I'm not sure that sticking around indefinitely was the right move either. They could have just chosen to wait with us on the gates, with the POCOs slowly regenerating their shields. Keep in mind that their main objective would just be to keep us from destroying the POCOs.

I was dying and I made a 3rd mistake. I called the fleet back to gate. Maybe that was the right call since I though the fleet can take the combat at gate since they already engaged 3-4 of us and they were still dealing with us (I could not jump back to Luse even I was 0 at gate since I still had a timer due to boosting) so I called the fleet in and the fleet started warping back. I understand that I will not hold and then I relieved the command to 2IC, Budda.

My hunch is that it might have been better to let the 2IC make the call. You weren't on grid with the fleet. Usually when I see the Uni yolo into a fight to save somebody, it just results in more losses than simply cutting our losses. That said, I'm not sure that waiting for them at the POCO would have been better since then they could have warped in at optimals/etc. The one advantage of having a 2IC make the call is that any warp back would have been coordinated. Fleet warps in both directions might have been better. Granted, by trickling in we probably did cause them to engage rather than possibly warp off, so maybe it worked for the better after all.

6- There was some conflicting orders time to time. I know that some of you are really good at solo and fleet PvP and mean well for the whole fleet, however I set those chain of command for some reason. If FC is down, 2IC is in charge, if 2IC is down 3IC and goes on. You can assign others while you are FCing as well but chain of command should be the same. If more then 2 commanders took the charge for some reason that would be extremely distruptive. As I as I know that you do not mean harm but that is how chain of command and communication in combat situation works.

I certainly agree, but it seems to me that command was getting passed around fairly often so it wasn't always clear who was in charge.

As I understand it you were FC, Budda was 2IC, and LeFleur was 3IC. When you went down, Budda had comms issues and I did not hear a single command from him for some time (maybe others did). I don't think LeFleur stepped in at all at this point. So the chain of command was gone and it was a free for all until I think it was Jax that basically took over. Things got passed around a fair bit, and there were points where advice was sought. Honestly, most of the feedback was probably helpful, such as not wasting time on tanky T3Cs when there was a ton of T1 logi on the field. That said, switching to FCs who were anchored made it hard to call targets at proper ranges.

Usually the best way to avoid having a bunch of back seat FCs is for the real FC to just be more assertive. When there is an FC vacuum and ships are blowing up, people are naturally going to step in. I think most people who step up like this will be fairly quick to step back down as soon as the "real FC" calls for combat comms.

[Ersin Oghuz]

Yeah I agree on part of people taking in charge when needed. I have no problem on that. After a moment of silence Jax took over and that was expected when no one left in charge (here I should note that the ICs silence though...).

Maybe I should phrase it better & properly since I did not wish to make anyone uncomfortable and I believe after Budda and other commanders left command Jax took over again and he did very well. About disruptive comment: I heard many orders were given at the same time by many people. That is not ideal.

And for the call for warp back. Yes definetly I should inform the 2IC about the situation and leave the decision to him instead of calling the fleet back in. That was a mistake on my part.

[Abelard Andedare]

A few okay images from the OP: http://imgur.com/a/k8B5O

[LeFleur]

To Clarify, I wasn't third in command, I was the one in charge of calling scatter in case it was necessary. It wasn't, so I did not step up. What I did was try to predict the next target called by the current FC and if correct, broadcast it for the rest of the unistas.

I think we won against an on paper unbreakable fleet that made a lot of mistakes and we were able to capitalize.
1) they were using out of corp t1 logistic ships, that by going suspect let third parties go for the kill without fear of retaliation
2) They had prelocked their precious t3s so they were slow to lock the falling ships
3) they were mostly logi ALTs, so they didn't pay as much attention as our on corp logi did (amazing work, guys) because they were prioritizing the main war target character's target calling.
4) They were logi alts from different alliances, so they prioritized differently, didn't have a dedicated logi communication and so were far less coordinated.


One thing I also noticed was that sometimes, between locking targets, my drones and I suspect other's drones as well, went to attack on their own, further confusing our enemies on who was going to be primaried.

[Tlymphocyte]

This was an excellent battle. FC, 2IC and Uni command did a pretty great job. This'll be one for the history books.

In regards to the EWAR wing, there's both pluses and minuses to exempting us to fleet warp. The big thing was that our EWAR is a mixed squadron - even though we were mostly Griffins, we also had a Blackbird, a Maulus, a Celestis, and my Crucifier, and I think I even saw Jax in an Arby at one point - all with different optimals. It's probably better to not throw EWAR into the thick of it, especially newbros in prayer-tanked frigs. Judging from the merc footage, our Blackbird pilot did some serious damage - because he was exempt from fleet warp and was allowed to land at his +70km optimal.

I'm only an EWAR pilot though, so you veterans may be more qualified to make judgments - perhaps fleet cohesion is more important than EWAR self-warping to optimals. It definitely is super important for EWAR is to stay safe though - when WHC was attacked by HK a few months ago, we lost most of our HSC EWAR immediately at the start of the fight, since we had to splash in right on top of them.

That being said, EWAR performance could improve a lot with regular training classes. We lost several Griffins that strayed too close to the blobs and got blapped. I'd totally be down to teach Tracking Disruption 101 and ECM 101 if people think it's necessary. Comms discipline could have totally been better too. Some people just like talking i guess!

All in all though, FC and 2IC did a pretty great job. I'm glad I got to be part of this brutal engagement. Feels good, man. We should enjoy it!

[Jason Eoner]

As soon as I saw how many logi pilots they had, I have to admit I lost faith. If you asked me before the fleet if I thought we could knock over 20 enemy logi ships off the field, I would have thought you were crazy. But with as much DPS as we had, switching from target to target we were able to knock them off grid before they could catch reps.

To our logi pilots: We love you! And to our EWAR pilots: The other side was totally hating you.

I think two things especially helped us:

1. The FCs were calling out primary targets, plus secondary targets to start locking since we were killing them so quickly.
2. Broadcasting the targets. With things happening so quickly and with such a long list of names it sure does make things easier. I know LeFleur was helping out... I was trying to help out if I found the target in the list and they weren't broadcast yet.

I was amazed. This was indeed one for the history books.

[Richard Marte]

The big thing was that our EWAR is a mixed squadron - even though we were mostly Griffins, we also had a Blackbird, a Maulus, a Celestis, and my Crucifier, and I think I even saw Jax in an Arby at one point - all with different optimals.

I had avoided EWAR mainly because it was just griffins in the doctrine and I figured we'd be short on DD if anything. If I knew I could have brought a blackbird I might have had some fun with that (or maybe a Kitsune). The Celstis/Maulus seems somewhat redundant with the damps on the Vexors, but I'm not convinced we used those well so I bet they did a lot of good in practice.

I should probably fly EWAR on one of these large but less-essential fleets (ie not a citadel defense) just to get more practice at it now that I know what I'm doing.

I was thinking that one tactic that might work would be coordinating EWAR. If you applied damps to a group of logi, and then hit those same ships with ECM, that would prevent each ship from just looking at what kind of EWAR they're facing and rescripting. I know that when I fly T2 logi with ECCM it is pretty rare for ECM to land. However, if I had to rescript to counter damps I imagine that it would be a lot more effective. If I'm flying logi and getting damped I basically have no choice but to rescript because you're useless if ships are exploding before you land reps on them, and it is better to just take your chances with ECM. I have no idea whether this was already happening in the EWAR wing.

[LeFleur]

I just watched the three videos, and I must say that I congratulate the ewar wing, not only because of their effectiveness, but also on the positioning. On their logi side of the battle, you can hear the times they say "is this pilot in reach of anybody" which I found hilarious since their DD were anchored, so all at almost the same range.

[Nierte]

Just a few observations:

At 8:24 in the Merc - Logi video, my prophecy had the great fortune to be their "Gonna broadcast something big, let's test it." target. Yay for me! Unfortunately our Logi had not figured out the green/yellow safety thing yet. Anyway, I broadcast for reps at 25% shield as I could tell with the different people hitting me I was being primaried. I didn't see a rep icon pop up until nearly 20 seconds later when I only had 10% armor left. I was in a pod 5 seconds after that. Definitely left a bad taste in my mouth about the engagement overall. I can say that making sure our Logi is set to yellow safety and everyone fully understands how the limited engagement / suspect system works should be a priority in all future engagements though. A lot of us were completely caught by surprise on that.

The main fleet outside of the Logi channel had no idea anything was even wrong there. I was told afterword the Logi channel was going nuts about it, but the main fleet didn't have a clue anything was amiss. I wasn't scrammed, I'd have tried to warp off if I knew there were no reps incoming. I think the FC(s) and the rest of the fleet should have been informed with a Break Break Break immediately on something that major happening. I think someone might have tried to say something at one point on listening to the video, but with all the other chatter on comms it was not made clear.

The start of the engagement when we first warped to the POCO from the gate was confusing as hell. We hear that Ersin is being killed on the gate, but we had all just warped off. We're told to stay on the POCO by one person then someone else tells us to warp back to the gate. Which is it? Our fleet is now spread across the entire system in different stages of warping between the two. In my opinion we should have all regrouped at the POCO before going back to the gate as a single group. People slowly trickling back in to the gate grid against their whole force was a bad idea.

The musical chair FC's was a bit confusing as well, as they did not seem to be coordinated on strategy. At one point we're told to anchor on someone and stay with the group. Then we're being given targets out of our range by another FC, then we're told to burn toward a target by yet another FC. That target is no longer valid, and we didn't get any further command on whether we should anchor someone, burn to someone else, or just fly around randomly looking at the stars. I died not long after this, so missed out on the rest of the gate grid engagement. From listening to comms, it seemed to get a lot more organized after that as our Logi got squared away and we had targets being called and getting dropped. Unfortunately they broke and left the field when I was 1 jump away from getting back after reshipping in Amy.

We need a bit more comms discipline. There was a lot of random chatter happening and cluttering things up. Jax commented on it at one point.

The POCO bashing after I got back went pretty well.

--Nierte

[Richard Marte]

At 8:24 in the Merc - Logi video, my prophecy had the great fortune to be their "Gonna broadcast something big, let's test it." target. Yay for me! Unfortunately our Logi had not figured out the green/yellow safety thing yet. I broadcast for reps at 25% shield as I could tell with the different people hitting me I was being primaried. I didn't see a rep icon pop up until nearly 20 seconds later when I only had 10% armor left. I was in a pod 5 seconds after that. Definitely left a bad taste in my mouth about the engagement overall. I can say that making sure our Logi is set to yellow safety and fully understands how the limited engagement / suspect system works should be a priority in all future engagements though. A lot of us were caught by surprise on that.

Agree - I had forgotten about the suspect logi mechanics as well. It doesn't help that it is fairly confusing.

If our logi left you with a bad taste, watch that video again. I suspect it was recorded from an alt/etc, so I won't judge too harshly, but the logi pilot being recorded was practically afk just running reppers on a couple of blingy ships. Once we got into the rhythm of actually targetting their T1 logi they were going down really fast, especially since their own logi didn't seem to be doing much about it. It seemed like the recorded pilot was barely watching the broadcasts, and if anything I think he was more focused on fielding his mighty Warriors than actually landing reps. Maybe he was dual boxing and kept confusing ships.

I'm not sure what Budda was up to with his pot shots on the filmed logi. I'd have called it a waste of dps, but it seemed like the guy was pretty distracted and spent more time trying to fight off a T3D with a flight of light drones than on actually servicing broadcasts for reps.

It was a shame to not see any damps land on the filmed ship. We had a lot of damps on field and if we had spread them on their logi it would have added to the chaos.