[LSC] BLAP Caracals - The welping continues.

[Laser Skaron]

A fleet is scheduled in the calendar for the day, but unfortunately FC can't make it :( and someone has to step up in Slack to take over for the day. Takes about 3 hours for a volunteer to offer, and that volunteer turns out to be me.

First time I'm in a Caracal. Second time FCing cruisers. What could possibly go wrong?

Fleet Comp:
FC: Laser Skaron
2IC & Anchor: Union Pivo
Scouts and fast tackle: Eddie Dante, Troven Smalvard, Kramnath, Decklin Quark Reiger, B'aldrick Aivoras
Heavy Tacke: Tika On, Calaheim Koraka, Jax Renalard
LC: Bill Achasse
Logi: DonBasuno Ichosira, Zana Fehrnah, Calaheim Koraka
The swarm of ugly caldari ships: Agadeen, Barbara Blast, Coaxster, Cody O'Conaire, DeanSherman, Eldar Parmala, Martins Semah, Pronto Pup, Tritium Kashuken, Tygron Hynde, Zeerse Solaris

Warmup

As usual, we begin slow on our usual trip to Black Rise. Dotlan is emptier than usual, which basically negates one of our usual pipes and we thus head out through VLI.

We hear word of a Vexor landing behind us and thus we decide to catch him on our side. We anchor up on our 2IC, tell logi to prelock our scouts, and successfully blap the man. However we also learn that 3 shield logi cannot hold gate guns on an armor tanked ceptor. We try this trick again a few minutes later on a different cruiser, however he successfully crashes the gate and no record of that fight made it up to zkill.

(18:11:07) Agoze
Malediction -36.98m
Vexor +46.3m

We go for an overkill kestrel, and a sadly he manages to take out our tackle before we land. Cruisers warp just slow enough that I'm not used to getting them through a gate fast enough to save our tackle.

(18:26:36) Renarelle
Atron -3.18m
Kestrel +8.99m
Capsule +0.01m

Engagement 1 - No tackle on the Armageddon

We find word of a small Armageddon, Osprey, 2x ONI gang and we decide to chase them. First, we jump after the geddon and try to lock him on the other side. He uncloaks, we lock him up, but we want to take out his support wing first so we don't engage yet. Eventually he warps off and his support uncloaks and follows him (while he laughs in local at how noobs we are). Now, a battleship warps slow, and we now this, so we prepare to catch him on the next gate. This time we will engage the geddon. However, we don't land scrams on him And he MJDs off and warps out. Again, no fight.

We want to keep chasing them but I call shots a bit to slow and they get to their home system (at least so we thought), until they decide to come back and take the fight. Assessment: We have very little tackle in fleet. They can neut down our tackle. His support is something we can easily take down. He will have gate guns on his side.

We begin by taking down an ONI and his Logi successfully while losing half our logi. We could cut our losses or try and make some content. I call everything on the geddon for 2 reasons: 1) I'm not sure our tackle will survive long enough to kill both targets. 2) if he loses his final team mate, there's a higher chance he warps off early. We end up losing our scouts when he's at around 40% hull (tanked like a real man), but he stays on grid and warps off at 1-2%.

(18:44:40) Aubenall
Osprey -9.89m
Osprey Navy Issue +90.33m
Osprey -9.8m
Osprey +18.37m
Slasher -1.33m
Osprey -8.73m
Crow -39.15m
Atron -3.78m

I cannot believe this engagement was ISK positive! OMG I thought we lost so much more here: ISK Destroyed: 108,700,511.1; ISK Lost: 72,676,920.9 => Efficiency: 59.931%.

Discussions follow in fleet. We have enough damage, but we can't hold people down without tackle mods and from the range we want to be fighting at. Therefore, we decide to bring... heavy tackle. We head back to stac, no targets in sight, we reship and bring a Jaguar, a Jackdaw and a Svipul with us to hold people down.

Engagement 2 - The cookie monster

We keep looking for things, as we end up on the Vli gate in Ren and hear there's cookies on the other side. I wait for intel as a Coercer jumps through. We catch and take him down, and just a few seconds later half my overview spikes with flashy cookies disguised as Omens. Gut reaction becomes Scatter! "I had no idea what they were flying in until this point, did not have a plan for them ready I don't want to improvise on the spot. I guess Omens are brawly? I don't know... I have to think it through so scatter!" Immediately after I call scatter, I doubt myself hell, at some point I call primaries on (what I think) is their FC, but by this time we had already lost half our fleet.

We were on grid for a total minute and a half of indecisiveness. There you go folks, the element of surprise will destroy a new FC. This was not a fight, this was a massacre.

(19:42:01) Renarelle
Coercer +7.68m
Griffin -0.77m
Caracal -13.57m
Osprey -8.73m
Caracal -12.96m
Caracal -15.04m
Jaguar -33.2m
Osprey -9.05m
Osprey -8.73m
Capsule -0.01m
Capsule -0.01m

We're now stuck in Ren, and we debate how we want to move on. We want to head to Ichoriya to grab some new ship before a final welp, but we get advanced warning about a gatecamp of "about 10 flashy things" in Nen Capsule -0.01m. Cookies are still flying around, and they will turn us into milk if we run into them again (they actually try to tackle us on a gate a bit later but we successfully jump in and out and avoid them). And while the plan is still reship a final time we get intel of half a dozen Vexors somewhere around (which I can't process that means 6... and I think we can't take on 12 vexors with what we've got left).

Engagement 3 - A fight not worth starting

In the end, we push through to Ichoriya and try to take a fight in Nen. Probably should have just avoided this as we were way overwhelmed and I don't think we really got a lot out of it even learning wise. We end up fighting another kitey gang, about twice our size.

They stay well out of our range at around 60-100km. The one thing we did well this fight and helped a ton was sorting overview by range (telling everyone to do so as well), and taking on their fast tackle and 2 Hecates that kept walking in and our of our range. I found this super helpful in the heat of the moment as it effectively gave me a goal for the final welping. These 3-4 targets that are in range have to blow up. We onlyu manage to take down one as we do our final extraction and save (I believe) 3 ships in the process.

(20:15:04) Nennamaila
Keres -47.92m
Atron -1.59m
Republic Fleet Firetail -19.98m
Ares +40.53m
Talwar -8.25m
Jackdaw -63.64m
Caracal -14.23m
Caracal -34.22m
Caracal -12.86m
Caracal -19.29m

Stats
ISK Destroyed: 212,213,438.25
ISK Lost: 436,903,447.39
ISK Delta: -224,690,009.14
Efficiency: 32.693%

[Laser Skaron]

That geddon was probably the high point of this roam for me. Mainly because it was something I could manage and I had a clear plan of what was going on. Unlike the other 2 engagements, here everything felt in control. I knew where we were in space, how well we were splitting damage (eh, not everyone was on point but it was good enough, and I could adjust that and reemphasize primaries). I had a plan on how we execute on things (which went well) and we had an immediate great discussion afterwards followed by an adjustment to the doctrine.

My goal right now as an FC is to have more fights like that and to increase the range of engagements where I can get THAT experience.

Things I learned/observed during this fight:
- It takes us about 20 seconds until everyone successfully converges on a single target to apply damage. Switching targets appeared more smooth afterwards.
- We were anchoring with our prop mods off (I've no clue if that's the right way to do it, but our mainline DD was never the target here).
- This comp is super reliant on holding tackle.
- Our tackle died to gate guns => we will continue to lose fights on low sec gates.
- Mainline DD is quite resilient, even without logi.
- I burned out my guns just as I was telling everyone to make sure they don't burn out their guns.
- We had to go through 1 reload cycle during the fight.

Even based on just that fight, which felt somewhat successful, I realized I don't like our Caracal doctrine.

Comm discipline felt a bit chaotic towards the end of the fight. It caused doubt when extracting from the cookies. I asked for an intel refresh on that small Vexor gang for about 7 times without anyone speaking up. Decklin had to call for combat comms at least once or twice. - but even then, it was better than the start of the roam when things were super quiet. At least people got engaged into the roam after a while, woohoo!

Those cookies demolished me. Good to experience taking a loss like that as an FC and not having the vaguest idea of how to pick up the pieces and end the roam "in style" for everyone involved. I felt pretty low at that stage and maybe I should have given control to our 2IC, take a minute break, wash my face, and then look for another phoenix to bump ourselves out of existance.

Thanks everyone for joining, I at least hope you had fun! And considering I found more flaws than strengths for these Caracal animals, and that we've been welping them consistently in low sec whenever we took them out over the past 2 months I don't expect to FC them again anytime soon.

[Captain Cean]

The Cookie Monster was sad

From our point of View.

(I dont even did see that it was you guys until we start checking KM's)
We had Intel that there is a Caracal Fleet on the Other side and i get a dscan (Actualy we had realy matching numbers)
So we decide to jump into you guys.

First we take out that griffin cause "f*ck that ECM guys". Then we start applie DPS on DPS cause the Caracals have massiv burst DPS that could take out a large part of our fleet before they could catch reps. While he Start Explode i saw that you guys start warping off, time to spread points and clear the field.
While we loot the field suddenly 2 Ospreys land on field again arround 20km off gate ... well i guess free kills.

After a short Break we start moving on, Well Caracals are back on the Gate lets try to snack some on our way through. I was quite suprised when you guys reaproach good call from your side.


Summary: I was quite suprised when you guys suddenly start warping out, we where realy excited for a real cruiser fight.



My english suck and i know it \o/

[Laser Skaron]

Summary: I was quite suprised when you guys suddenly start warping out, we where realy excited for a real cruiser fight.

It would have definitely been a good fight, but I was taken by surprise, could not parse the situation fast enough (need more experience). Beyond that, we've already learned: eve uni is going to lose a fight against cookies when we have even a small numbers and paper strength advantage. Plus, you had gate cloak to assess the situation and were at your optimals.

Fight was heavily in your advantage in my opinion.

[Eddie Dante]

Laser, thanks for FC'ing! It may not have been the most succesful fleet but I found it a good learning experience especially because it was chaotic and different from other fleets. Also I got the impression there were more inexperienced people with us then usual.

As you already stated, comms were very crowded at a few points during fleet. Perhaps an idea to just take a 10min break at a safe, quiet down, get our intell clear and settle on a new plan if we get into these situations again?

I feel the cookie welp was part my mistake too. When i jumped from REN into VLI, i called 'big holy cookie fleet' instead of actual numbers. Seeing nothing on dscan, i warped to center (also nothing on dscan) and warped to another remote planet cluster. The cookie fleet undocked from center and jumped into our fleet without me seeing them... Shouldve stayed near REN gate to see what would jump us.

Other improvements for me for next fleet:
- Continued usage of dscan.me
- Looking up info about staying alive as tackle
- stacking up some frigates in both UPH and (probably) Ichoriya for fast reshipping.

Overall conclusion: Would fly and welp again!

[Captain Cean]

To minimize the suprise, when you get intel from another fleet or an other Target that is intressting you should ignore cheap kills (Like that corcer on the Gate) to keep the concentration. And make your scouts follow that fleet and keep an eye on them.

The Coercer Kill cost your fleet at that moment, you Had gate guns, your fleet wasnt prepared for a Fleet fight and Aggresion so you couldnt jump through the Gate. Just believe in yourself cause when you think that you will lose, you WILL lose cause you make the wrong decisions.

[Decklin Quark Reiger]

Good advice Captain Cean

[Laser Skaron]

To minimize the suprise, when you get intel from another fleet or an other Target that is intressting you should ignore cheap kills (Like that corcer on the Gate) to keep the concentration. And make your scouts follow that fleet and keep an eye on them.

The Coercer Kill cost your fleet at that moment

That is a very good point and I haven't considered it until now. Thanks!

Just believe in yourself :wink: cause when you think that you will lose, you WILL lose cause you make the wrong decisions.

Honestly, until one experiences situations like the one you provided last night, one doesn't form the reflexes and awareness to respond correctly. Thank you for the opportunity :D.

[Troven Smalvard]

Laser,

first up thanks for stepping up so there wasn't a cancellation on the calendar.

As easy as it is to critique from a comfy chair after the fact, my thoughts without malice

You said you'd not flown caracals before and confidence seemed a little low at the start out, as mentioned did feel like we had a large % of newish peeps and it will rub off on them more, might be why comms was so quiet early till you got in stride

cepters are never going to hold against gate guns with perfect tracking for any length of time regardless and i should have reiterated more on that for/after the vexor kill as you were looking for a lot of gate engagements
The Isk loss isnt a problem so no worries on that, we just know the down time for reshipping hurts peoples attention spans, especially when so little tackle

I guess we not going to find much in plexes worth cruiser fleet in black rise and placid so we should have thought this up before we left stage.
once another corp sees us and we are gonna get a fleet fight at a celestial then better suited or just pure scout and have the heavy tackle with the fleet i'll take 50% responsibility on this one (i'm hedging some of it off onto Eddie to balance my books )

first geddon path cross you knew their comp but changed your mind on what you wanted tackled a few times such that they all warped without us getting a shot off
again easy for me with one thing to think on, but stick to your guns, i was hesitating to activate point, as the caracals should be able to lock and fire quick enough on a BS i was waiting for them to go flashy and draw gate fire so i had a better chance of holding

for the first geddon moonwalk totally my fault, had a brainfart on the MJD and was trying to stay long point range because neuts and didnt scrm him


2nd time round logi did a good job keeping tackle up as long as poss but once the logi were down no way we were keeping up the scrams with 2/3 of us only in frigs
on the plusses once we got actually got engaged with them you were loads better, commands good clear concise, kept talking to the fleet reinforced primaries, called a secondary explained what you wanted for range and called anchor etc just sorry we couldn't hold a little longer

sorry had to abandon before the cookie monsters, so cant comment there but sounds like took some learning out of it when you thought about it, which is what its about.
I didn't think about gate timers for getting the destroyer being a tac-tickle factor either


don't not take them out again, maybe have a break and fly doctrine more comfortable think them over and come back, only learn by stretching

o7

[Laser Skaron]

first geddon path cross you knew their comp but changed your mind on what you wanted tackled a few times such that they all warped without us getting a shot off

[...]

don't not take them out again, maybe have a break and fly doctrine more comfortable think them over and come back, only learn by stretching

No need to apologize mate :D. There are SO MANY places where everyone makes mistakes in this game that apologizing for every one would prevent us from playing the actual game :p. There's a super nice attitude in the uni about this and we're all happy people are willing to recognize their mistakes and learn.

I completely forgot about the split tackle calls, but as I remember, that happened after he MJDd out.

I won't take out Caracals "anytime soon". "Never" is not part of the equation ;).

[Breeze One]

So much props to Laser for volunteering to FC this!

Wasn't on the fleet but as someone very interested in this doctrine, I want to ask the FC (and others) their opinions on my (very general) impressions below?

There are only 10 Caracals (with T1 launchers) on any of the killmails. That seems a little under the "critical mass" other alumni have referred to for this doctrine?

Missile damage types are very varied on each killmail between the ships. I remember the point being raised on a previous Caracal AAR that we should be quite careful with appropriate damage selection?

I feel like on Uni fleets we tend to focus on large bling targets (Like the Geddon) by default. While I totally support Lasers rationale and the call he made on that in the moment (I'd probably have done the same at the time), is our engagement profile with Caracals looking for big blingy targets like this, or are we primarily aiming to engage and alpha-strike Cruiser level targets (like the Nosprey), with the Geddon being a bonus rather than the priority. I basically wonder if our usual instincts should be different with a fleet like this.

All that said, reading all the Caracal AARs I feel like even if there's some things we can improve on, Laser is right that there are key challenges with using the fleet comp effectively in Low Sec (similar to Talwars). You're taking fights on gates because plex combat isn't optimal for Caracals, but as pointed out here, you then run into gate gun issues. In Null Sec where bubbles provide your tackle, and there are no gate guns, they are likely to be far more effective.

My overall impressions anyway when thinking about next time we fly them. Appreciate opinions from anyone on the fleet!

[Troven Smalvard]

Missile damage types are very varied on each killmail between the ships. I remember the point being raised on a previous Caracal AAR that we should be quite careful with appropriate damage selection?

there was definitely a everyone load inferno now unless i tell you otherwise at the start of the fleet

not sure if there were calls for ammo type changes during the roam, as i wasnt using i zoned out that bit probably
but i did hear reminders to reload after the vexor engage, not all the new pilots may have realised how long RLMLs take to load

[Laser Skaron]

Missile damage types are very varied on each killmail between the ships. I remember the point being raised on a previous Caracal AAR that we should be quite careful with appropriate damage selection?

there was definitely a everyone load inferno now unless i tell you otherwise at the start of the fleet

not sure if there were calls for ammo type changes during the roam, as i wasnt using i zoned out that bit probably
but i did hear reminders to reload after the vexor engage, not all the new pilots may have realised how long RLMLs take to load

Yeah, I didn't get to consider switching ammo types almost at all. I was asked, and told members we default to inferno but if anyone had other deliveries loaded I won't complain, or worry about it right now...

[Union Pivo]

This was my first time beeing 2ic and first time beeing DD anchor and first time flying RLML Caracal.

2ic: after volunteering I realized I have no idea what that entails. (Other than the fact that you take over if FC dies) So I was never sure weather to be quiet or try to help fc. So I did both, probably at wrong times. I have to observe on other fleets what other 2ic do (or just ask FC what he wants me to do, not sure why I didn't do that)

DD anchor: I think I did slighty better here, (I did screw up orbiting wrong beacon in plex), but again I wasn't sure if it was my call or FC's to tell people to turn MWD on to get to optimals. In 3rd engagement I probably should just called for MWDs on, and maybe we could kill at least one of the hecates, before we lost our tackle


My observation of RLML Caracal is that logi would be a lot more useful for our tacklers, than for our DD. I got hit by gate guns several times and I never worried about dying to them (I did have T2 tank equipped) Probably should only take fight's where you out range your opponent.

PS: And if not out range our opponent then having enough DPS(numbers) to kill them without reloading.

[Zeerse Solaris]

My thoughts, also with benefit of hindsight and without the FC responsibility:

We need to undock with everyone knowing what our tactics are and stick to them as much as possible, the doctrine isn't for gate fights at zero but that's what we repeatedly did. I know we go out wanting to get kills and that's fine for overwhelming some poor unfortunate solo target, but if we're kitey, lets kite, get into a high populated system's plex and wait for someone to come to us, nothing happens, well lets go somewhere else. Any wait time could be spent practising kitey anchoring with someone in the fleet playing the closing brawly role. Content or the right content, is not guaranteed, don't try to force it.

Regarding the Vexor fleet, that was intel from outside of the fleet, so perhaps FC didn't realise that, but our scouts didn't call it, hence the silence in response to further intel requests.

Cookies landing us at a gate wasn't actually an immediate problem, if they starting shooting as brawl range, that is the problem, but jump the gate, not scatter, we actually ended up with some scattering, people who had been tackled, jumping the gate as their only option, and as the countermand came in to fight, some staying and fighting, by the time the 2nd scatter command was issued, people were warping back in to probably die.

By the time the Deimos/Hecate fleet was about, I had been separated on the other side of the gate, bashing away at their scout because It had been called primary on the other side. I think the lesson there is, if an equal size/bigger fleet of T2s come in and adopt the same tactic (kitey), that's a bad sign, time to go.

Regarding the DPS output of these Caracals, In my Bellicose with my own poor missile skills, once my medium drones get hold of something, I apply more damage than the T1 caracals. As I said on the last time we took them out, what's a medium sized gang of Caracals looking to fight? A big gang of T1 frigs/dessies?

We definitely learnt stuff, especially the light bulb, hang on, how can we hold anything down? moment. Sad my Blackbird didn't undock, I think that may have been less scary than others thought, I shall look for a new opportunity for it.