[Waffles AAR] How To Use Talwars

[Raido Kudonen]

Hi friends,

Some folks have been taking out BLAP Talwars recently, which is awesome. However, the doctrine that goes with those Talwar fits (IMO) hasn't been entirely well understood at this time. As a result, they've understandably felt that the Talwars were not performing effectively, and they've been somewhat frustrated as a result.

The following is an AAR from a Waffles/Pancakes fleet I took out a few weeks ago, with a reference to another Waffles op redacted and some footnotes for context and explanation. This AAR describes an op for which Talwars are very well suited - we took a wormhole chain to a nullsec region that is full of dumb carebears, shot some of them, and then ran away from their response fleet. I didn't handle the fleet perfectly and we took some unnecessary losses, but we got a lot more kills and escaped with the loot (which we gave to a couple of baby Pancakes).

Posted a talwar roam for this afternoon. Recon folks* were tired of scanning because of [REDACTED], so I checked some wormholes myself before the fleet and found a 2j route from Black Rise to Immensea. After some repeated pinging and a quick briefing for new Pancakes on what to do in fleet,** we headed out.

FCON docked up when we first showed up, except for an Iteron V that warped straight into the fleet and then died on the other side of the gate. He also had a +4 clone. https://zkillboard.com/related/30002178/201703252100/

The scouts went back into the dead-end system, and sure enough two FCON nullbears had already warped back to their anom (might have been dual boxing).*** They died too, and we kept the loot. https://zkillboard.com/related/30002186/201703252200/

By this time, I expected FCON would be forming to camp us in, so I tried to hurry the fleet out. Several Dominixes and a Tengu showed up on our outgate, and we aligned out and murdered the Tengu.**** I fleet warped a second too late and lost my prober Jackdaw, and we also lost a Sabre, but the trade went pretty well. https://zkillboard.com/related/30002180/201703252200/*****

Some Sabres and a Cane fleet did try to camp us in, but they were FCON and we are the breakfast family so we successfully extracted most of the fleet. https://zkillboard.com/related/30002168/201703252200/ Some of the fleet members killed a Sabre but zkill is derping so it only shows the Talwars. Pretty sure we were isk positive on the sabre. Edit: here's the sabre, and yes we were isk positive on that. https://zkillboard.com/kill/61064106/

*WAFFLES, like most PvP alliances, has a "recon team" of folks who do a lot of scanning in order to find us routes to other regions (and in order to find us easy capital kills from time to time). A number of past and present Unistas have done stuff like this - alumni include Vatik Yomem, Glasi Vookto, and White Russsian, current members include Glen Burney, Vidork Drako, and Budda Sereda. Folks who get intel for other FCs' ops are invaluable and should be encouraged at every opportunity.

**You can take the FC out of the Uni...

***This is surprisingly common, and something your scouts should always watch for. Note that you can also set up log-off traps (put a ceptor or dictor on top of their MTU, log off, immediately get back on the log-in screen, and wait 5 minutes for them to decide they're safe and come back out. When you log in, your ship will warp back right on top of them and they will have very little time to wake up and gtfo. NB: under no circumstances do this in/next to enemy staging - you will get stomped while waiting around.

****"Good fights" are not something this doctrine does; also, FCON don't give them. I was surprised that we got their Tengu but he was a total idiot, started repping late, and had a bit of an explosive hole. This is how NOT to fly a regengu. Also note the Fury light missiles, which only reach out to 30km and don't really apply well to frigates or destroyers.

*****Oops. I had been aligned, then tried to align to something else to stay in light missile range of the bad guys. Then some wrecking shots from drones and suddenly had no shields. Bad flying on my part.

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Hope this is helpful for an example of the correct use of Talwars. Note that while we had a couple T3Ds for combat probing, the fleet itself was entirely using ships that new Unistas can fly readily (and really, lots of Unistas can fly T3Ds and should be ready to combat probe). Also note that this fleet, with only 10 Talwars and a couple high-projection T3Ds, was considerably short of the ideal "critical mass" of 20-25 Talwars for hazing T1 QRFs, let alone the 40-50 Talwars that two-shot Guardians or, for that matter, the Hurricanes they used for their QRF. You can field this many ships very easily.

[Budda Sereda]

Raido, you encouraged me to take a fleet through WHs for hunting... I thought about this, but finding a hole which leads to a proper region is hard. Also, I don't have much information about main ratting areas. I know about Providence. Are any others good? Or maybe any nul-sec is good, just check dotlan on what systems have many daily npc kills and go through them?