[LSC] Magic Merlins Low-sec roaming - II

[Budda Sereda]

Fun fleet I would say, we did not kill many things today, but got quite a few interesting fights

Fleet started with 24 pilots, 2 logies, 2 scouts, and 6 more joined as we were roaming It is a pleasure!

Spoiler

Alto DeRaqwar
Ariea Thellare
Atanii Yeva
Atticus Vex
Auresh Odunen
Barrett Chanlin
Beavis Alland
Budda Sereda
Ca'ain
Caliban Ohmiras
Dgdsgy Foobar
Disciple
Harlan Adoudel
Janok Mabata
Jax Renalard
Jorj Onzo
Ludvic Sulla
Mokure Breau
Oskar Dallocort
Philbro Kishunuba
Reise Amatin
Stormdancer Utrigas
Sweet Pain
Tom Endares
Trevor Grambling
Trystel Nickel
Vors Voorhorian
Will Musana
Wokum
Z0X Ambrye

I did not even finish a newbro speach as Reise reported Arbitrator sitting at the Stacmon gate in Ost, he was at 13km or so from the gate so I called fleet to jump and we got a first kill losing nobody to gate guns (even though we had 3-5 newbrows).
(02:19:17) Ostingele
Arbitrator +10.77m
Good start!

Ca'an, were you killed trying to catch up with us?
(03:00:41) Nennamaila
Bantam -4.13m

Going to Nennamaila we tried to catch things in plexes but were never successful today But were lucky to jump into a non-flashy Harbinger. We got him down by losing 5 Merlins...
Merlin -3.49m
Merlin -12.02m
Merlin -4.22m
Merlin -4.91m
Merlin -7.57m
Harbinger +89.79m

Still ISK positive for this engagement, but... interesting thing I noticed that ALL Merlins killed in this engagement are NOT really Magic.
And here I want to touch a bit topic of Merlins fit. In my original post I asked for fit which is posted at Wiki https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Merlin/Fittings as Merlin: LSC Magic Merlin - Standard:

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[Merlin, LSC Magic Merlin - Standard]
Light Ion Blaster II
Light Ion Blaster II
Light Ion Blaster II

5MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Medium Shield Extender II
X5 Enduring Stasis Webifier
J5b Enduring Warp Scrambler

Damage Control II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core I

Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I

Void S x600
Null S x600
Federation Navy Antimatter Charge S x600

This is a good solo fit (see more on solo fit below), but earlier today I did realized you don't really need WHOLE fleet to have scram and web, and instead can fit a tank module: Invulnerability fit. Thanks to Raido I got a better fleet fit:

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[Merlin, Magic Merlin t2]

Damage Control II
Vortex Compact Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Vortex Compact Magnetic Field Stabilizer

5MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Medium F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extender
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Warp Scrambler II

Light Electron Blaster II, Void S
Light Electron Blaster II, Void S
Light Electron Blaster II, Void S

Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I

This fit is much tighter and harder to fit, but it increases your resistance. And this is a preferred fit for your Magic Merlin.
Few minutes before undock I asked member to fit an invulnerability module and some did: I guess this did help them to survive Harbinger.
Looks like Fitting Squad has a bit more work to do

Anyway, after shooting Harbinger, we moved towards Ichoriya to reship, found Slicer ... and lost 3 ships in a quick succession.

Executioner -10.7m
Griffin -0.93m
Merlin -5.29m

Looks like a damn good pilot, who was killed few minutes before he met with us tonight: https://zkillboard.com/kill/62636282/ - interesting fit, I recommend everybody to look and learn from it. I feel I want to try it for solo PvP (though, I almost never soloing).

We moved further towards Ichoriya, found Tormentor and Succubus, tried to get them, first with 2 ships, 2nd time with 3 - lost all 5
(03:30:37) Akidagi
Merlin -3.59m
Merlin -8.03m
Merlin -5.63m
Merlin -2.56m
Merlin -1.03m

Don't remember exactly what was a system, but at one of these engagements, we were kitten and at warp off lost another ship. He was dieing slowly, so I asked to warp back to him... we did not save our friend, but barely lost another ship.

As FC I need to improve making controlled warp-off: not all pilots have good in-game skills, neither execute commands immediately. I should get all ships into a small blob and warp all together making sure all are aligned.

EVENTUALLY we came to Ichoriya, noticed a Damage Control II on sell for 400M (yeah, not K, M ISK) in station. Luckily, nobody bought it.

After reship we went towards Tama

Lost Merlin trying to take a Punisher.
Merlin -5.3m
Reise: only now I realized you were scouting in Merlin... I guess that's not the best choice: you should be in ship which prefer speed, agility, and tank and neglect DPS: fleet doesn't need you to kill target we need you to stay alive until we land. Scout should fly something like Atron, Slasher... More experienced pilots: please correct me or advise a better ship for scouting.

Soon we met a Brutix: again, non flashy. I believe he warped into us. I asked two pilots to agress Brutix on the gate, forced him to jump, and we finished him on the other side by losing a Merlins, 2 Griffins, and 1 logy.

(03:49:40) Nennamaila
Griffin -0.93m
Merlin -3.42m
Griffin -0.97m
Burst -5.44m
Brutix +75.59m
I think whole fleet did GREAT: we had people bouncing taking gun shots, it was cool to hear peoples announcement "bouncing" and see them coming back.
And thanks logies for keeping us alive! And it came as a surprise that loses we had could be avoided.
I believe in this engagement we should have only one Merlin lost as it MUST fight at close range. Both EWar pilots should be prealigned out and bounced immediately after aggressing Brutix: we need you guys back after you remove guns agression.
Ca'ain- you should be at 30km and out of Brutix's blasters range.

Please don't take this as a complaint or concern to you, but I believe you guys want to learn too?
And thanks to logies for keeping many more of us alive.

We came back to Ichoriya again, replenished loses ... and met the Brutix again. This time he was flashy. And later we learned it was another Brutix.
We triggered aggression, started shooting him...
(04:02:44) Enaluri
Merlin -16.58m - I was killed first. Again, my mistake. As soon as I started taking damage I should have disengaged and bounced, but somehow I believed own invulnerability and did not disengage when needed.
I was killed, bounced, and called Will (2IC) to take a command.
As I was warping away Proteus landed on grid. He waited a few seconds and joined the party... on the Brutix's side. While we realized this, 4 more of us were killed:
Merlin -7.28m
Bantam -3.75m
Merlin -17.88m
Merlin -1.01m

Honestly, I don't remmeber how Mokue lost his Merlin:
(04:09:11) Akidagi
Merlin -5.37m

We moved towards Tama, Sujarento, and further towards high-sec: could not catch really anything on plexes or gates, though had quite a few transports jumping through us, most likely stabbed. Tried to catch WTs near the Dodixie, were not able to and moved back to Stacmon through high-sec.

Overall interesting fleet, all kills were made on gates. I guess that's a hint to other FCs.

Stats
ISK Destroyed: 176,152,398.77
ISK Lost: 142,045,232.68
ISK Delta: +34,107,166.09
Efficiency: 55.35%

[Breeze One]

This is a good solo fit...

Magic Merlins are terrible, terrible solo ships. Please, no one fly them as solo ships. Either of those fits. MWD brawlers don't work solo in Low Sec.

The Slicer fit is very standard Budda, it's how 90% of Slicers in low sec fit themselves. You don't have to be a good pilot in that to slaughter Magic Merlins (although that guy is) it's just a terrible matchup for the Merlins and it's just feeding him easy kills. He got 6 kills out of you that night looking at his killboard, he was killing you guys during the Harbinger fight as well looking at the kills. You're just his ideal prey.

Slicers/Garnurs etc are just plain bad news for brawling ships. I'd just avoid them.

[Laser Skaron]

This is a good solo fit...

Magic Merlins are terrible, terrible solo ships. Please, no one fly them as solo ships. Either of those fits.

...primarily because the FW meta dictates most engagements happen at close range, where scrams are easier to land - you will NOT have that MWD active and will lose range control. Not only that, but you have a very small effective range (past ~2km you don't do much). Against kity ships (say tristans) - they can match your speed and you won't be able to catch them to get inside your ~2km range.

Plus, you're buffer tanked, and you can't hope to outlast any opponent....

The reasons they work in a fleet is 1) there are not enough scrams out there to shut down every pilot. 2) you have logi.

[Reise Amatin]

Functioned as scout for my FCC Lt JG rank requirement.

Budda, I think you're right about the scout ship, but in a way not. A standard scout ship like an Atron would never have withstood the punishment I took on my two losses, as the tank would have been more than half of what it was in the Merlin. I simply swapped the scram for a point for scouting, and it worked well enough. There was only one potential fight that was lost due to not being in a faster ship, and I don't know that being 2 or 3 seconds faster would have allowed me to lock and point that cormorant before he warped off.

Having said that, the standard fast tackle is the correct choice. I just happened to get lucky that I got two fights that allowed me to see the extra tank from the Merlin and how it would hold up. The slicer fight was fantastic. My first slingshot maneuver - ever - actually worked, and I was able to web a slicer! If not for his active armor repper I think it would have been a closer fight. And that Merlin hull with the extra tank allowed the fleet to warp all the way back from the stargate to try to re-engage. In an Atron I'd have been dead before anyone was able to land on the gate to start to come back.

Great fleet everyone, thanks for FCing Budda!

[Budda Sereda]

Thanks Breeze and Laser. Yeah, I feel bad about feeding kills to slicer. Need to pay more attention.

If those fits are indeed terrible, what do they do on wiki?

@Reise: you think close fight for scout is good... But I can't agree. My arguments above, I can only ask more experienced scouts to comment

[Breeze One]

If those fits are indeed terrible, what do they do on wiki?

Because they are great Fleet fits? They are the standard Magic Merlin fits and they work brilliantly as a fleet fit. Your adaptation with the Adaptive Invuln is nice, but there are pros and cons to it, and there are some good reasons I can see for not changing the standard fit we've always used. I'd call yours "Budda 'Merlins" rather than Magic ones

As to the Merlin fits marked as "Solo" on the wiki...that's a different issue but most of the fits on the wiki marked for solo use are pretty awful for solo FW combat.

[Budda Sereda]

Budda's or Raido's

I guess I know pros of adopted fits. But in a fleet of 10+ Merlin's, why fit all ships with 2 tackling modules?

And speaking of that slicer: Breeze, how would engage him? That time we did not know he is double nano, though what could scram/web him?

[Analiese Aubernet]

90% of the time slicers are fit with double nano, double heat sink, SAAR. You can't "know" per se, but you can be pretty sure that he'll be kitey and generally project ~200dps at a minimum out to his point range.

[Budda Sereda]

And, by keeping range he will ensure solid transversal... So to catch him, you need something even quicker and something that can tank even more than 6k to stay alive while fleet (or a team mate) lands... Any navy issue or fleet issue frigate can be a good scout? Need to run less fleets and play more with Pyfa

[Breeze One]

I'm not a massive Magic Merlin advocate, but you ideally want both webs and scrams in your fleet to slow a target down no? You can split the webs and scrams across the fleet, but having each ship carry both means:

1) Any one Merlin can act as tackle slowing a target down for the rest of the fleet (or act as scout if required)
2) Its incredibly useful when you're doing a short notice, random roam, as you don't have to mess around with making sure you have both webs and scrams in fleet - everyone just jumps in and goes
3) If you start losing Merlins mid-fleet you dont risk losing all your tackle (unlikely but possible)
4) As you say, your fit is tighter on the fitting requirements, making it less newbro-friendly

I'm not saying your/Raido's fit is bad, and it sounds great for an organised fleet, but I'd suggest the "Standard" Magic Merlin fit should remain as it is, because primarily of point 2. Magic Merlins are a great short notice "grab and go" doctrine. Having each member of fleet able to do all the roles (scram + web) if required is part of why its so great at this. Anyway, we should probably have this discussion elsewhere - I dont want to derail your AAR!

On the Slicer - dont engage him? It doesn't matter that you dont know his exact fit. There's no Slicer alive which is slower than your Merlins, the Slicer is designed to go at 4 or 5km/s. You're not going to catch him unless he makes a (bad) mistake, and you'll lose ships trying.

We had a Slicer bug my Punisher fleet the other night. Apart from some fleet members trying to engage him without instruction (and dying), I just ignored him mostly, had EWAR jam/damp him so he had to choose between coming closer, or not engaging, and just moved us on. Some fights arent worth it.

[Ca'ain]

Fun fleet I would say, we did not kill many things today, but got quite a few interesting fights


Ca'an, were you killed trying to catch up with us?
(03:00:41) Nennamaila
Bantam -4.13m

Yes, and well, I made 2 embarrassingly bad mistakes here.

First - I was at the acceleration gate for the Plex in the system and there was a slicer camping the gate. He scramed me and webbed me. I was on comms, and should have said something, but I thought the fleet was busy setting up and didn't want to be a burden. That was my first mistake which is compounded by my second.

Second - I had fit a sensor dampener and when I threw on the MWD I broke his lock for enough time to warp away but didn't. I can't say why I didn't warp away, except in the heat of it I missed it. So - if I had told you on comms I was at the gate, the fleet could have warped in on 0 and maybe saved me (most likely) and got the kill. Worse, I might have lost my ship and you still would have at least got the kill (a slicer is what - $150+M to my $4M bantam arrrghh!!!).

When I posted the kill mail in Fleet someone said - why didn't you say on comms - that was a great question! Lesson learned, speak up on comms!

[Ca'ain]

Soon we met a Brutix: again, non flashy. I believe he warped into us. I asked two pilots to agress Brutix on the gate, forced him to jump, and we finished him on the other side by losing a Merlins, 2 Griffins, and 1 logy.

(03:49:40) Nennamaila
Griffin -0.93m
Merlin -3.42m
Griffin -0.97m
Burst -5.44m
Brutix +75.59m
I think whole fleet did GREAT: we had people bouncing taking gun shots, it was cool to hear peoples announcement "bouncing" and see them coming back.
And thanks logies for keeping us alive! And it came as a surprise that loses we had could be avoided.
I believe in this engagement we should have only one Merlin lost as it MUST fight at close range. Both EWar pilots should be prealigned out and bounced immediately after aggressing Brutix: we need you guys back after you remove guns agression.

Ca'ain- you should be at 30km and out of Brutix's blasters range.

Yes - absolutely right, I didn't keep range on Brutix, was orbiting FC at 5,000 and he caught me.

[Barrett Chanlin]

Thanks for fleet FC, always learn important stuff in your fleets!