[LSC] BLAP Caracals - The welping continues.

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Raido Kudonen
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Re: [LSC] BLAP Caracals - The welping continues.

Post by Raido Kudonen »

So, this is one of these good news/bad news situations. The good news is that you're doing some good things that you apparently aren't aware that you're doing. The bad news is that you're apparently doing some bad things that you aren't aware of. Once Waffles returns from our deployment, I'd be glad to take out a public Caracal roam; however, I don't know when that will be and will just stick with constructive criticism for now.

Bad news first:
People in the Uni apparently still don't know how to fly Caracals

I've seen a number of AARs in the past few weeks where an FC used Caracals badly, welped, and then decided to stop using Caracals "for now". This is a common error new FCs commit (use an unfamiliar doctrine, screw up, blame the doctrine, design a new doctrine that is almost always worse) and the only cure is more cowbell better training.

I've written some advice on how to use each of the BLAP doctrines (and I think White 0rchid has written some for Caracals); I think it's still on Titus' sandbox wiki page pending full publication. The short version is that Caracals must take advantage of their best-in-class mobility (as a fleet doctrine, Caracals are the fastest T1 cruiser) to control the terms of any engagement or else you're just feeding. This also involves recognizing fleets that outclass you in mobility, typically because they aren't T1 cruisers, and avoiding those engagements.

Know your enemy. Spend some time on zkill and talking to more experienced FCs about common doctrines and what different sorts of ships do.


In this AAR, you blame indecision for the two major losses during the fleet (to HCOOK and WAVE respectively), but this indecision seems to be a product of insufficient knowledge - you did a good job running the Geddon fight because you thought you understood what was going on, but it doesn't seem to me you fully knew what was going on in that fight either. Not knowing stuff is okay - fixing that is the Uni's purpose - but not knowing that you don't know (or not admitting to it and asking for help) is not okay. (If you're asking for help in the FCC, I apologize - in that case, you're doing right, but should more explicitly admit your screw-up in the AAR.)

Omens come in two flavors in fleets: beam fits (which should usually have ABs) and pulse fits (which should usually have MWDs). I don't know what they used in your engagement, but Zkill shows that HCOOK lost a bunch of Omens to Moas a few days ago and the fit was a somewhat unorthodox pulse fit. Your scouts should be using the "look at" feature and looking at enemy fleets' guns to give you this intel. Against pulse Omens, you should fight at range (i.e. around 30km where they can barely project Scorch damage at all, out to 40km where they can only do drone damage), but they're almost as fast as you. As a result, you need to have set up in advance to fight, either by pulling range on the gate and letting them jump through, or by cross-jumping them and pulling range while they crash. With correct FCing, this engagement should slightly favor the Caracals, which is why Captain, above, was surprised that you ran away.

Deimoi also can be flown in two ways, although I usually expect gangs to be using rails as these guys were. Either way, they fly very quickly with MWDs (as fast or faster than you, depending on links and bling), have around 50k ehp, and either do nearly 300 Spike DPS out to 75km plus 130 drone DPS out to 55km or so (rails) or 600-780 DPS depending on blaster ammo at brawl range. Plus they apparently had some rail Hecates. You would be very unwise to fight more than 1-2 Deimoi, without any additional hostile support, with 10 Caracals - and if they are self repped I would expect that fight to stalemate. (Did this gang have logi? None appears on the BR but the logi would've been 100km off and unable to use whore drones.)

Armageddons rely very heavily on neuting, especially in small-gang environments. Your logi, however, are cap chainers, which means they should be able to hard counter the neuting by repping/feeding cap to your tackle when the Geddon tries to neut out tackle. It's possible that your tackle pilots didn't know to broadcast for cap; also, since your logi all died, it appears that the logi anchor failed to position logi well or didn't correctly maintain the cap chain. Again, the cap chain should always hard counter a lone neuter like this Geddon.


"Heavy tackle" still is not really a thing. In particular, Jaguars, and these days even Svipuls, are quite bad for this "role". There are better options and you should use those instead.

For your "heavy tackle" to be effective, you probably need both a scram and a web. (You should really be using a Hyena for the webs, more on that in a minute.) The Keres should be able to hold point on anything that doesn't MJD, so the only things that can get away from your fleet either burn out with MWD/MJD (which gets stopped via scrams) or are 100mn fit (which gets stopped via webs).

The problem is that neither the Jaguar nor the Svipul have enough mids to fit a scram, a web, and an effective shield tank. On top of this, the Jaguar doesn't actually have a very good resist profile without an invul - if you plug your exp/kin resists via rigs, you end up with under 12k EHP. That's pretty thin and therefore not really appropriate for a cruiser fleet. As for the Svipul, you can get better resists from defense mode once you've landed tackle, and you can be a combat prober so you're still a helpful first tackle, but 17.5k EHP is still a bit thin for a cruiser fleet. The Jackdaw is the best of the lot at 21.3k EHP, but still...

The fundamental problem with "heavy tackle" is that it sits in scram/web range of the bad guys, and the whole point of Caracal fleets is to not be at that range. As a result, you're committing 60-70m ISK ships (for the T3Ds - and the Jaguar is just suicide) in a way that either makes them very likely to die or risks your entire fleet. This problem should be entirely clear if you glance at Calaheim's Jackdaw killmail. He took a total of 5,185 "real" HP in damage in a ship that has just under 5k real HP. This means he didn't really catch any reps at all, against ships shooting squarely into his highest resists - probably because your logi were in deep falloff, if I had to take a guess.

Use ceptors for scram passes, ceptors and your Keres to hold point, and for the love of sweet baby Jesus get a Hyena. As soon as you can sit in a Hyena, you have a 40km t2 web before heat or links, and it has almost as much tank as that crappy Jaguar did. AT 40KM+ AWAY. And if you have someone who can fly a Jaguar, they should be able to fly a Hyena too (it's a 2x targeting skill and level 1 in Electronic Attack Ships).

Good news:

Yes, there is some!

You undocked with a pretty decent comp.

A number of fleets lately have undocked with clearly inadequate logi amounts, too many non-doctrine ships or throwaway frigates, etc. The fact that you came out ISK positive in the first engagement is largely due to this.

Target calling was good in the first engagement.

Had your logi survived better and repped/capped up your tackle, you could likely have killed the Geddon. Definitely the right choice to take away their burst damage and support first. Overall well done here; in the future clear communication with your logi FC (which some far more experienced FCs screw up) will serve you better.

Your AAR was excellent.

Very well done here. The fact that I could reconstruct (from your AAR and the BRs) what happened and what was going wrong, not having been on the fleet or talked to anyone, shows that you did the work necessary to lay out your perspective and get the learning process going. Not all FCs do this well - at times, I've done it very badly - and your honesty and self-criticism deserve a lot of credit. They'll take you far.
"What is good in life, Raido?"
"To crush your enemies. To see them bubbled before you, and to hear the lamentations of their carebears."

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Laser Skaron
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Re: [LSC] BLAP Caracals - The welping continues.

Post by Laser Skaron »

Thank you for the time Raido and the feedback. I'll straight up admit (basically before every fight) that I don't know enough about different eve ships and your description of the ones we encountered was particularly helpful.

During the geddon fight, we knew he was going to neut us. Only thing I'd like to add is I did not consider our logi could give cap to our scouts (that would have been great), but by that time neuting our scouts became a problem our logi was long gone. Furthermore, I know several people expressed concern here the geddon was NOT within our normal engagement profile, and I totally agree and was aware of this. However we had a significant numbers advantage and I believed it was worth taking the fight even though our weapons are not designed to kill a battleship.
Raido Kudonen wrote:I've seen a number of AARs in the past few weeks where an FC used Caracals badly, welped, and then decided to stop using Caracals "for now". This is a common error new FCs commit (use an unfamiliar doctrine, screw up, blame the doctrine, design a new doctrine that is almost always worse) and the only cure is more cowbell better training.
Now, I want to reiterate on that. My main concern is that I don't know how to pilot a Caracal fleet, and during this run it became obvious I was doing many things wrong and that I have no clue how to turn this doctrine around. Less so that Caracals are bad. I know this didn't come clear from my AAR but I'd rather have some more general FCing experience, and experience flying as a member of a kiting alpha doctrine before taking it out again.

And finally,
Raido Kudonen wrote:but this indecision seems to be a product of insufficient knowledge
which is why I'm volunteering to take out fleets, and write these detailed AARs, and why I welcome your feedback :D. I am fully aware I don't know enough about this game.
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Re: [LSC] BLAP Caracals - The welping continues.

Post by Coaxster »

Hrmf.

First, the vexors thing was through me -- I had outside fleet intel -- they ran and weren't to be found, so I gave no more intel on em.

Second, the omen fight was almost entirely my fault. I tend to um prod? newish FCs when I'm in fleet, to get them to quickly think things through and make decisions and get fights. In this case the intel on the omen group was lacking so the coercer kill was a good call. FC called scatter as omens appeared and I suggested taking the fight -- this caused the confusion and loss of ships since then FC then 2nd guessed himself, eventually called 'no wait stay', and folks died -- I shouldn't have said a word until we were all off grid. THEN we could've set up in a plex and tried taking the fight at proper range (at which point I doubt they'd've taken the fight). I am sad I did this to a new FC :( My apologies.

Third, yes heavy tackle exists (yeah I know even Azmo disagrees here). I've used the idea for years and it works just bloody fine, thank you. You just have to define what it means. It applies to doctrines (such as this) that have pointless and webless 'big' mainline DPS ships. You need long pointers as well as scram/webbers to hold targets (hyenas and keres will be primaried and have little tank so I find that approach inadequate since you rarely get the perfect set up [and as has been said elsewhere, when you do set up properly folks won't take the fight]). I usually call out 'fast' and 'heavy' tackle and both of those fall into both types. The difference is 'fast' means moving and locking while 'heavy' means tanky (note that speed and/or sig tanking applies here too). You need all four roles in a doctrine like this. A good ceptor pilot can pull double duty true but guess who will be primaried then? And note even ceptors will be a closer range to the enemy than the mainline fleet. This is the nature of the doctrine: tackle in close, dps at range. The idea is a numbers, skills, cost, fightability, and predictability thang: in practice 10 random frigs/dessies will hold an enemy better than one keres/hyena. Yes, they will die like flies, but a fight will be had and the field will be won.

Lastly, as a new FC, remember: it depends. Every fight is different. Next time you may have more logi. Or more ceptors. Or keres. Whatever. Don't be fighting the last battle during your next one. And because it will be different, you will have a different engagement profile -- both in terms of what you want to fight and what will be willing to fight you.

Keep up the good work. You'll get faster with practice.
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Re: [LSC] BLAP Caracals - The welping continues.

Post by Budda Sereda »

Coaxster, if heavy tackle exists, what is that ship/fit? I would love to try one with blap caracsls
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Re: [LSC] BLAP Caracals - The welping continues.

Post by Budda Sereda »

Laser wrote:Even based on just that fight, which felt somewhat successful, I realized I don't like our Caracal doctrine.
Hi Laser, if I'm not mistaken, you are a traditional logy pilot, is that correct? I believe I understand your feeling, but I do very much agree with what Raido wrote: if you don't know how to use the doctrine and until you try it few times the way it is expected to be used you won't be able to say if you like it or not.

I spent hours and hours speaking with many pilots and FCs, including Raido, White, Titus about doctrine, tackles, etc. My current personal opinion: BLAP Caracals are not well suited for roaming. They do have weakness in terms of lack of tackle. Again, it is an opinion of an emerging FC who does not have much experience and who could be wrong. I do believe BLAP Caracals strength can be shown in fights when you don't need to tackle opponent as he will want to stay on the grid. That could be an arranged fight, structure bash, etc. I believe quite soon we will have opportunity to use not BLAP, but still Caracals in the way it demonstrates its strength.

You will probably ask: Why do I take BLAP Caracals for roaming? I do want to practice it and prepare myself for arranged fights. I hope opponent bring either brawling or short-medium range doctrine ships and I will kite him to death. For this I need to practice as FC myself, and make sure that people who often fly with me have skills and understand what I as FC will be asking them to do. That's my only purpose flying BLAP Caracals in roaming. And I do believe there are other T1 CR doctrines that work much better for roamings. Which one? I don't know yet, this is 3-5 months ahead for me to learn. It could be Tweet Thoraxes (though last months I heard they are not as good anymore).
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.
I would recommend to run 3-5-10 frigates fleets, that does really help.
I remember my hesitation taking fleets in nul-sec 5 months ago: 1st real FC experience, it was hard. After going through few dozens frigates fleet that is like peanuts. Don't be discouraged by one episode. You stepped up, got beaten, but who really cares?
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.
Nope, you will see at least 4 fleets, and I hope join few! :)
Eddie Dante wrote: Perhaps an idea to just take a 10min break at a safe
You can be combat probbed and smashed AFK. If you really need safe place... dock-up, but if the system is camped and there are no stations/citadels, better to bounce, create safe 3-4 safe bookmarks and keep bouncing between these bookmarks. If everybody keep bouncing this will make combat probbing impossible.
Breeze One wrote: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.
I am sure Nosprey should be primaried first: you can secure a Nosprey kill quite quickly and switch to the BS. Most likely, BS won't leave the field just becuase allied cruiser died. If you start with Geddon you will hit reload before kill and Nosprey will keep applying his DPS.
Breeze One wrote:You're taking fights on gates because plex combat isn't optimal for Caracals
I believe you should just position fleet 50km from the gate quickly by warping, that will instantly give Caracals benefits of starting fight at range. This requires BMs (yeah, that complicated set which I was speaking about in slack).
Union Pivo wrote: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)
As 2IC you do need to be quite until FC dies. You need to keep situation awareness so when FC dies you immediately step up and continue fleet going.
It will be your call if you want to continue plan FC had, or you want to completely revert it. 2nd part does not sound right, but I've seen successful examples of that to believe that can work as well.
Should you speak and help FC? It probably depends on experience of FC, you, and style of both of you. If comms are quite I would recommend to offer help, but that is my personal preference only. If comms are busy, defenetly be quite and let FC rule.

Everybody: hope what I wrote makes sense and is useful, though feel free to dispute it.

Thanks!
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Re: [LSC] BLAP Caracals - The welping continues.

Post by Laser Skaron »

Budda Sereda wrote:...
That's quite some post you wrote there for a fleet that was taken out 2 months ago...
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Re: [LSC] BLAP Caracals - The welping continues.

Post by Budda Sereda »

Laser Skaron wrote:
Budda Sereda wrote:...
That's quite some post you wrote there for a fleet that was taken out 2 months ago...
I have not seen the date, just saw comments that sparked myself
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