Talwar pirates visit Test space

[Decklin Quark Reiger]

Fleet preparation went well - I had the fleet composition I was after, with 25 in fleet, including 3 cepters, 2 dictors and 1 Hyena, with the rest of us in Talwars. Thank you *very* much to those of you who filled one of those key roles, and also thank you to everyone else for flying the doctrine

Spoiler

ashahara
Akachi Isimazu
B'aldrick Aivoras (Dictor)
Barbara Blast
Biwako Acami
Burak Oz (Dictor)
Cyus Erata
Decklin Quark Reiger
Eddie Dante
Gandar Thiesant
Gatt2111 (Interceptor)
Guiliano Thellere
Hideo Date
Laser Skaron (Interceptor)
Mrcrab Bojinov
Razha Gala (Hyena)
Rebulah Conundrum
Reise Amatin
Trillian Ituin
Troven Smalvard (Interceptor)
Union Pivo
Veever Yvormes
Wokum
Xana McBash
Zana Fehrnah

Troven had scanned down a couple of wormhole connections from Aidart for us to go pester null sec ratters, and hopefully provoke a response fleet.
Thank you *very* much for this advance scanning Troven

Just as we were finishing form-up, Troven reported that he had a Rattlesnake in the first hole, so we quickly undocked, and I gave my shortest-ever newbro speach to our two new-bros that we had with us today. Something along the lines of, "you guys are familiar with the history tab on the fleet window, right?" and "You know you can lock stuff from the broadcast history, right?".. having received confirmation of both of these points, I was like, "Okay, good enough - let's go!" and we went and killed the rattlesnake:

Kills and Losses
(18:39:54) J125243
Mobile Tractor Unit +7.81m
Rattlesnake +1082.91m
Capsule +5.25m
Talwar -10.9m
Talwar -7.86m

We killed the MTU first, so that the MTU couldn't loot the Rattlesnake wreck.

After we killed him, I saw that he had asked in local about paying ransom, but I noticed it too late. Besides, I'd have been disinclined to acquiesce to his request.

Nice catch Troven - good job getting the warp in, and way to go Baldrick to get the bubble on him, as well as our ceptors for tag-teaming him with scrams, and bouncing off when needed, to preventing him from MJD'ing away.

Our two losses here came from the rats, but they went back to grab another Talwar, and rejoined us soon afterwards.

We secured the loot in Aidart before taking a connection directly from Aidart into Curse, where there had been some ratting activity earlier in the day:


We travelled down the pipe from our entry system, J4UD-J to the eastern side of the region.

Unfortunately, the area was very quiet - we only saw a handful of people in local, and very little in space. We paused a few times to try to combat-probe a Tengu or 2, but they evaded pursuit. One of them warped away from the DED site he was running, and the other one docked up once he saw the probes.

Unfortunately, we lost Gatt to POS defenses, in CVY-UC:

(19:07:28) CVY-UC
Malediction -44.86m

Gatt pod-expressed home, and got in another cepter, so he could rejoin us.

We travelled back to our wormhole, to try the second connection.

While we were heading back, we killed this poor Imicus, because.. well I think he made an insulting remark about the colour of Razha's Hyena. Not sure., but Razha used up more of Baldrick's paste than what the Imicus was worth.. by like 10 times.. but anyway.. we killed him!

(19:17:25) J4UD-J
Imicus +0.85m
Capsule +0.01m


Our second connection took us into TEST space:


Our trip through the wormhole chain was largely uneventful, just reminding people to bookmark the hole on both sides as we went through, and making sure that nobody got left behind, including the people who had reshipped.

Once we reached Esoteria, our cepters scouted ahead, looking for ratters, or other targets of opportunity. Again, we passed a few Tengus, but they were cloaky, and interdiction nullified, so they escaped.

Once we got to the OIOM-Y area, we attempted to ambush a Typhoon that Troven reported was trailing behind us a system or two. Unfortunately, we didn't kill the Typhoon fast enough, and he managed to burn back to the gate, and burn out of the bubble on the other side, escaping, before most of the fleet was able to jump through. By that point, we were in our own bubble, and the Typhoon had escaped to a safe.

In the ratting pocket, the ratters had obviously been paying attention to their intel channel, and were keeping an eye on local, because once our scout entered the system, they were quick to get to safe spots. We saw a mix of Ishtars, and VNIs, as well as a Machariels (probably just in POSs, as opposed to ratting). We did manage to catch a careless Coercer which was fit for salvaging.

Coercer +4.35m

After we started to leave the pocket, our scouts reported that the ratters had immediately appeared on d-scan again. So they were pretty keen to get back to ratting. We waited on the IR-FDV gate in 6-TYRX, hoping that our scout would be able to catch a ratter in Q1-R7K as they thought we were leaving. Unfortnately, we didn't catch any ratters, but one of the other scouts did report that we had the Typhoon from earlier headed our way. This time, we caught him and killed him, using a combination of they Hyena webs, the dictor bubble, and bumping him away from the gate as he tried to re-approach it.

Typhoon +198.37m
Capsule +0.01m

Just as we were killing the Typhoon, our scout reported that a Brutix had landed at a ping off the 6-T gate in IR-. Our scouts were able to hold tackle on him, while our Talwars burned in and killed him. Great job guys

Brutix +87.52m
Capsule +0.01m

Meanwhile, a random capsule warped to the gate, into our bubble. RIP capsule:

Capsule +0.01m

From here, we made our way back home, without finding much of interest, other than some colourful language in local.

Stats
ISK Destroyed: 1,387,099,973.49
ISK Lost: 63,623,326.8
ISK Delta: 1,323,476,646.69
Efficiency: 95.614%

[Decklin Quark Reiger]

In terms of feedback, and learning opportunities from this fleet, I think there are a few key things:

- We really need to practice timing our volleys. Both in terms of people locking and firing the broadcast target, and also the specific phrasing that I use as the FC, when calling for volleys, weapons red, etc.. For example, instead of saying, "Fire in 3, 2 1..." I should say, "and in 3, 2, 1 Fire!" for example. Another technique that seemed to work well was calling for people to unlock targets, then activate their launchers (with no target locked) and then simultaneously lock the next broadcast target. We practised this a few times on rats throughout the fleet, and we did get better at it. Something to keep practising.
- Anchoring went reasonably well. Good job guys - let's keep it up.
- Don't forget to bounce away if you're in danger, this applies to skirmishers in general, including any scouts who may land on grid with a hostile POS
- Our scouts did a great job keeping track of what was going on in the surrounding systems, and tag-teaming when it was time to get scrams on the battleships, without dying.
- Having very specific, clear expectations of the doctrine was really useful. Even though I haven't FC'd Talwars before, I was able to learn from the write-up that Raido did, and had very specific expectations of the support ships I wanted on the fleet. Thank you to everyone for flying the approriate doctrine, instead of a snowflake!

See you all next time.

[Akachi Isimazu]

Rats blowed my first had to run back re-ship then followed fleet wormhole route, found fleet at npc null sec which was kinda empty (i did not see any action there since I was bit late) then we went to test Alliance space we found some ships shot them down to little pieces. I was bit too slow so missed some made + I did make one mistake overheaded turrets too to 100% dmg(next time have stop overheading sooner) ... so only gun after that is awesome RAMMING speed

[Troven Smalvard]

+ I did make one mistake overheaded turrets too to 100% dmg(next time have stop overheading sooner) ... so only gun after that is awesome RAMMING speed

Just incase you didn't know, and if you did maybe someone reading this doesn't and will be useful.

If you hover mouse over any module that is overheating you will get a % dmg update at the end of each cycle, so you can keep an eye on.
Depending on how much multi task you are able you can guesstimate how much heat damage a cycle your getting and know when to stop (there must be actual repeatable maths in this but i don't know it and eyeballing it usually serves me well enough)

you only get about three cycles on a prop give or take before death burn so be extra careful with them

also don't forget that heat damage travels along the rack, so the more modules overheated in the row the quicker the damage and also that modules you are not specifically heating will get damage from neighbors


and train thermodynamics to 4 !
should be fairly quick

[Analiese Aubernet]

As Troven mentioned - heat applies at the end of the cycle, so you need to decycle heat 2! cycles before it would burn out your guns to prevent your guns from being burned out.

Also, if you're constantly heating, you're going to take significantly more heat damage per cycle once you get up into the 70-80% range. Some things to keep in mind.

[Budda Sereda]

I am trying to ALWAYS overheat guns in the beginning of the fight, get HEAT (not damage, just a temperature) to 20-40% and stop overheating. Until either temperature goes back to 5-10% or it is crucial to kill target quickly. But keep eyes on your heat and when it is around 50-60 - stop overheating for a minute and after that only pulse 1 cycle at a time each 20-30 seconds.

This could look as minor dmg increase, but often you have fights when these minor pieces do matter.

[Laser Skaron]

Great job Decklin, good fleet, fun times into null. I'm a bit sad no one formed up to fight us but well, not too much we could do about that.

Beyond that, the uni is not used to fighting alpha doctrines. Especially great job at taking pretty much every opportunity possible to practice coordinating alpha strikes (mostly against gate rats).

I am trying to ALWAYS overheat guns in the beginning of the fight.

That is ok for solo, but in a fleet heat is an valuable resource. You have much longer fights and you can heat by default. FCs may often micromanage heat and ask for over overheating at critical times, for example to surprise targets with extra damage.

[Raido Kudonen]

Great job, this is the right way to use Talwars and it looks like you got some good kills.

[Troven Smalvard]

Decklin,

nice job taking the LSC bois to null (actually gained sec status on an LSC roam )
and i'm glad some of you got first intro to WHC ganking 101- alwaysalwaysalways kill the MTU, sorry i was a bit rushed in explaining what we were going to do, but realistically target should have finished the site while we were getting from UPH to splash, however now seeing his epic tank no dps fit i can see why he let us off the hook with his snail pace

+ve on FC kept up a solid pace through the quiet systems, volley practice i also heard and although alpha really didn't come into play much on this fleet as it might have great job coaching the concept of the doctrine and good calling for anchor on engagement.

+ves on my fellow cepter pilots, loved the amount of talk in comms from all, especially when we were bouncing agro and keeping scrams on things that should have potentially had MJDs felt like a good cohesive little unit, i really enjoyed this fleet especially working in the mini team and got the pvp shakes not had in a while holding the rattler

-ve on me, all my fault the typhoon got away the first time, i called when he dropped agro and i called that i was disengaging to jump through to hold other side of the gate, other tackle team held him as should since i had called off to chase ... then I proceeded to drop point but for some reason not my dps thus keeping my gate timer.
lessons learned make sure you are sure your doing what you have said.
Also really we should have decided between tackle immediately one of us to not engage to make sure we had less timer than the target.

thankfully the fleet got the phoon later so i was spared some pain

also multiboxing the scanner was already discussed with FC after fleet and 2 primary roles don't combine well, i had only meant to bring my scanner -1 incase we lost our connection to not have people stranded, and should have just stuck to that really.


hope we get to run something similar again soon, any other FCs wanting WH help for similar fleet stuff just let me know