[WHC] AMC 'lasers on' at the sleepers

[Zeerse Solaris]

Down at the AMC, in our secret location that no one outside of the campus knows, life is good, we cull the local area of it's veldspar scourge, and we have not seen a war target since the one we exploded, looted and salvaged (because we can) several weeks ago.

Occasionally we break from our sedentary ore and ice mining activity to journey into wormhole space in search of wonders, namely c320 and c540 gas, and occasionally the unwary, or in my case, the distracted and forgetting which bookmark he'd already warped to, miner can fall foul of the dreaded sleeper rats: No, I can't remember why 2 empty mids and no rigs but yes, soil .

Though it take a while, such affronts cannot go unpunished, and thus a plan was hatched to take willing comrades into a confrontation with the sleepers on their home ground of C3 combat anomalies. While a few veteran AMC people have progressed to flying ships capable of taking on sleepers in small groups or even on their own, the offer was made to all, others, campus members, hearing of this, joined the fray.

Therefore a fleet of Tech 1 cruisers was readied in our Wormhole campus, with fittings available for all skill levels, including Alpha clones. We comprised of 4 Ospreys, a boosting Gnosis (my alt), 13 DPS, a scout and a salvager. This turn out was twice what I had hoped for, so thanks to everyone who made the journey over and the members of the WHC that supplemented our group, as well as rolling the connection for the pve content we were looking for, without that help, the fleet would be a short one indeed.

In our first suitable connection, our fleet melted through the sleepers from our weight of numbers, logistics being more than competent in their role to prevent losses. That wormhole also had a high sec connection, through which, a small number of pilots ventured, destroyers seemingly being the ship of choice for alpha clone explorers nowadays, an anti-Astero thing perhaps? . Our WHC chaperones, showing how it's perhaps advised to turn around and exit a wormhole with 20 ships visible inside.

Cleaning the entire system of sleepers (we triggered 4 gas sites for sleepers (maybe some lucky huffers will stumble upon them)). we returned victorious to the wormhole campus.

At this point, wormhole life does what wormhole life does, comms reported a sizeable hostile fleet forming up on a new connection directly with the wormhole campus. we docked as a response was formed. Perhaps viewing our increased numbers from the ratting fleet and the WHC, a significant number of Gilas and support ships was in system as well as at least 1 marauder on their side of the wormhole. This threat originated from Of Sound Mind, who quite politely were looking for a good fight, Tylenos took charge of combat comms and after some switching of potential doctrines based on what was available, and what we were against, a fleet of Caracals took on the hostile fleet. This was something even with everyone on the field we couldn't match, but with some losses, Of Sound Mind departed in good humour, rolling their connection and offering our eyes in their wormhole safe passage (Tylenos may add more about the fight in his own AAR).

During this hiatus from the ratting activity, fleet numbers reduced as it was getting late for the EUTZ.

With this threat gone though, our farmed out C3 connection was rolled, where we found a quiet, unoccupied C3 with 10 more sites. On the 9th site, we saw a Helios on dscan, whom was waiting uncloaked at the 10th and last, some way off, while an exploration frigate is no threat to a group of cruisers, it's his friends you can't see yet that are. Not waiting for further signs of hostiles, we took our spoils back to the campus again. The pilot later convo'd one of our fleet asking for a fleet engagement, but by then, most of the WHC pvp pilots had headed off so we could not respond.

Summary of the good:
People learnt new things, for some it was the first time in a wormhole, for others, the first time in the wormhole campus. People who had not flown logistics before did so, and some who had, did so in a cap chain for the first time. Many had never ran sleeper sites before, we went over the basics of what not to shoot as well as what to shoot.
Other than those who were willingly part of the Caracal engagement, no one died. With numbers, and despite my highly questionable fitting skills, with good teamwork and a few people, we achieved success at something most of the participants thought was out of their range.
Total pay out: 907m isk (most submitted into the WHC buyback which contributes to running of the campus).

Summary of not so good:
I took on far too much at the start of the fleet, trying to record who was on field for payouts as also tagging targets and handling warps, which was complicated by using my OOC on grid who couldn't see corp bookmarks. Calaheim helped out by taking over tagging which helped tremendously.
The various buyback tools we have don't really account for down time, so while a few generous people waived their shares which boosted it for the remainder, I need to think about the fairest way to handle time spent unproductively.
Fittings, I don't think we had any alpha clones join us, although there were a mixture of skills amongst the omegas, my fittings assumed a 'worse case' scenario of Alphas. Amarr Alphas in particular are worse off in a shield doctrine, so probably getting any Amarr omegas to train into any other of the cruisers would have been better.

Overall, it was a success, learning was had, isk was made, and people seemed to have fun and enjoy it.

Future plans will be more opportunistic in our local area rather than impose on the WHC, but staging in the WHC the first time allowed me to provide a firm date and firm location (kind of given the nature of wormholes).

[Budda Sereda]

When I was running WH-trip fleets in LSC I was making screen shot of the fleet during undock, and before we jump back through the whole. And whoever was present in both moments was getting 2 parts, whoever was present in 1 only - 1 part, scanners - 1 part on top of that. After fleet having screenshots was easy to distribute payout.
Not too easy, because "Give Money" for 20 fleet members (and search them first) is kind of boring.

[Tylenos Targas]

A short addition on the PVP break we had;

We had a direct connection from Innuendo to a hole owned by Of Sound Mind when Zeerse was running his introduction fleet. When I logged on a Vargur was reported on the far side (or star [*] side) of that hole. This screams an incoming fleet fight, which is a time honered introduction fleet tradition (be it noob night in the hole or the newfangled mining sleepers variant).

Shortly after bringing home the bears our scout reported around 10 Gila's and 5 Basilisks on D. This is a fairly heavy setup which requires a fairly heavy group from our side, which can be difficult to form with a ton of 'unknown factors' in our fleet (our AMC friends that mostly had only their one ship locally that was set up for bearing). I started out by trying to find 5 guardians of our own to see if could hold them on the hole. Five guards is slightly more difficult to find in WHC these days since we just had a 'changing of the guard' where more experienced people left for new endeavors and fresh people got in. We did ultimately find them, which left us with very few (3 to 5) mainline DPS ships apart from the kitching sink present.

Of Sound Mind had escalated to 12+ Gila's and added a Widow, which is not something we could comfortably fight at that time. I decided to get our guests some short PVP action anyway. Thinking of alternatives (hurricanes first, which has a problem of availability and price on a suicide mission) we did find a good number of newbie friendly RLML Caracals in our various collections. Though killing something was a long shot losses would be limited (empty clones mandatory) and I'm comfortable replacing some Caracals on my own.

We warped in a good dozen+ Caracals at 70 on the field, got some experience with anchoring, learned some of the limitations, Sound got a warpin from a cloaky, we primaried a Gila, and skedaddled losing 6 birds of pray. I did not bother with shooting drones, the Gila has way to many in the drone hold. Sound committed the Widow, I don't know how far down we got the Gila before reps landed.

Learned:
- In wormhole space, don't warp to a hole before something is organized. You will usually not be rescued. I did hear the Proph dying on comms, but did not even see the Aug navy until now
- A common thing I'm re-learning from (re)flying T1 boats: limited locking range (just below 70 on the caracal?) which makes kiting a little more annoying
- I like having a newbie friendly 'instant fleet' available. Caracals seem to be at a good pricepoint and with the Blap doctrine we will now have most UNI members trained into them. I'll be trucking in 6 T2 tank ospreys, 12 T2 tank/T1 launcher caracals, 6 T2 tank/T2 launcher versions and some T1/T1s over the coming days (From space-poor to space-destitute) which can draw out fights like this a lot longer.

[Eddie Dante]

This was a nice introduction to the combat sites, very pleasently surprised by a dormitory filled with borrow-ships! Great job organizing this event.

The only nitpick here would be that our fleet was a little overkill for the poor NPC's