[LSC] Golden Swarm - 2017-Jun-21

[Laser Skaron]

(WIP: one more edit will follow to add fleet members)

As the dusk slowly settles, our brave centurions form up in Uphallant and Stacmon. The hour of the hunt approaches while a small squad of elites returns home from their latest endeavor. Bruised, but not wounded they are eager to return to the battle field after staring death in the face and getting out alive. We quickly rally the masses with a newbro speech and head out, 29 man strong, into the wild.

CharlieFC: Laser Skaron 2IC: Union Pivo 3IC: ashahara Scouts: Troven Smalvard Decklin Quark Reiger Vanguard: SketchyManDan Williams ashahara B'aldrick Aivoras Glen Burney Breeze One LC: Breeze One Logi: DeanSherman Z0X Ambrye Zana Fehrnah

Spoiler

29 Members. Composition at undock - did I miss anyone?
[Command]

• Laser Skaron [FC]
• Union Pivo [2IC / FC]
• ashahara [3IC Whelp/Scatter Caller]

[Scouts/Tackle]

• Troven Smalvard
• Decklin Quark Reiger
• Megoste

[Logi Bros]

• Breeze One
• Zana Fehrnah
• DeanSherman
• Z0X Ambrye

[Salt Miners / EWAR]

• Zarquu Fussuhfusus
• Dgdsgy Foobar

[Mainline DPS]

• Anoop Knight
• Atanii Yeva
• B'aldrick Aivoras
• Burak Oz
• DonkeyPunch Udan
• Glen Burney
• Kirsi Isrik
• Lexara Ellecon
• Oh' Leeador
• Phaethonx Brutor
• Ra'zok Zateki
• Rikali Laru
• SketchyManDan Williams
• Two Ghosts
• Veever Yvormes
• Wheat Fields
• Wokum

The elders of Dotlan and our signal fires lead us east, towards Nen, but also warn of a strong T3D legion that would spell our certain doom. Regardless, our strong fighters no know fear, and no mercy! We're bound to catch any lone travelers on our path. As we undock we find a Gila, sitting outside a station, that in blind faith trusted the CCP gods thinking it clicked "dock" instead of "warp", as well as a Vexor foraging in a plex. Our travel was not easy, as death's accolyte, a Garmur, began to harass us on our way out. We try and tango, but the beast is too fast and we lose one of our soldiers to gate guns.

Gila +246.81m
Maulus -1.49m
Vexor +34.81m

But word travels fast on the plains of battle, and our Vexor hunt is noticed by the nearby barbaric tribes. As we hide inside a medium plex, a small gang knocks on the door. We see Caracal, Wolf, Kitsune, Jackdaw, Deacon, ONI, couple Thoraxes, Vexor, Hurricane outside, as we raise the spike wall and prepare to defend our side of the gate. They have none of that, and run away towards the Ald gate and thus, we prepare to chase. We jump after them as we begin our first fight of the night.

Primary is their flashy ONI. We see them align out towards the sun, and as luck has it the ONI is on the opposite side of the gate towards that and I see him getting closer to me from 20km down to about 8k, preheating my scram would have landed us a kill right then and there. Unfortunately, they manage to string us apart and take down three soldiers (including myself) before we bounce off and regroup. Their party is still engageable, and we have another go at it as our 2nd in command takes over. Another gate fight leads to us taking done one of their Thoraxes.

(18:50:59) Aldranette
Punisher -6.76m
Punisher -6.6m
Punisher -6.76m
Punisher -7.6m
Thorax +39.34m
Punisher -29.51m

We consult the elders of Dotlan and learn that northbound, towards Martoh and Kinaka, more foes are clashing, and thus we change course.

As our leader scrambled back home to get new wings, the T3D cookie legion discovers the band's location. We first hide in a small, but quickly realize that even their T2 frigate battalion could decimate us. As such we warp to a novice to hide the core of our fleet. Unfortunately, our trapper Hyena, Decklin, joins the warp only to realize he wouldn't be able to enter slide. The trapper is caught in the midst of overwhelming force. They torture our brave warrior and bring him back to life while demanding a fight, but we abstain from blowing in the wind and avoid the wrath of the storm.

(19:09:00) Eha
Condor -5.65m
Capsule -4.37m
Rifter +4.49m
Punisher -6.55m
Hyena -31.35m
Capsule +0.01m
Capsule -0.01m

The FC rejoins our hunting party and we begin to scout the nearby systems. We run into the same Garmur that spawned at the beginning of the roam. Yet again, no success in trapping him.

While we play a bit with the Garmur, one of our scouts finds an Ashimmu in Keh. There's quite a bit of confusion on where he was located but we eventually interpret our scout's encrypted message and arrive on site to save our comrade. This Ashimmu starts a chaotic and profitable chain of events. We were outgunning our opponents at all stages during the fight, but they trickled in quite randomly.

- Your FC lands on some somewhat flashy loot from the Ashimmu and decides to dock up.
- While warping off, a Gila shows up, so the FC commands this fight off grid
- People bounce to reset gate guns
- Loki shows up (small fraction of the fleet is on grid)
- Loki yellow boxes
- We start the fight while everyone is in warp back to the grid
- Crow, Cerberus, SFI show up on grid
- Scythe lands late close to us and we switch after the Loki dies

(19:23:12) Kehjari
Punisher -13.48m
Ashimmu +164.66m
Merlin -2.93m
Gila +306.58m
Punisher -3.48m
Punisher -4.85m
Capsule -4.13m
Maulus -2.22m
Federation Navy Comet -39.22m
Loki +377.26m
Punisher -6.91m
Scythe +21.73m
Hyena -27.94m
Punisher -7.66m

The armed forces are calling for a break, and thus we head towards Ich to reship. We find a few kitey birds here and there, but avoid such fights where it would be near impossible to close range.

The dust settles for a few minutes, as we await the cold breeze to pass so we can resume our journey, but the silence is broken by one of our scouts, who finds a Hyperion doing a drone site. I grab a bucket of water and splash it on our fellow fleet members, forcefully waking them up from our break as we rally almost everyone able to undock a bit early. We lose our scout on the way but we manage to get there in time and blob. A long uneventful fight followed, where about 15% of our fleet runs out of short range ammo. The fight carries on long enough that our scout reships into a Raven and brings that to the party.

(19:58:01) Akidagi
Malediction -53.16m
Navitas -3.88m
Hyperion +405.99m
Vexor +35.34m

The clock pushes on, and I'm starting to feel tired as I make mistakes on nearby gates (nothing lost) but we find a small gang in another drone site. We head straight in and tackle an Osprey Navy towards the center of the site, while a group of kitey ships sit at 50-100k off trying to pick us off. We try and make a break for a Mach after the Osprey Navy goes down. Unfortunately, this causes the fleet to collide with the space geometry of the drone site, spreading us across 150km and straining our logi. The Mach is also just fast enough that it would split us further, while about a forth of our fleet is still stuck behind walls. I decide to bail and head home for the night

(20:25:55) Pynekastoh, Hirri, Nisuwa, Oinasiken
Thrasher +11.22m
Catalyst +1.53m
Maulus -1.47m
Malediction -38.94m
Punisher -8.19m
Osprey Navy Issue +106.12m
Punisher -7.32m
Punisher -4.86m


Stats
ISK Destroyed: 1,755,897,128.62
ISK Lost: 337,255,611.69
ISK Delta: 1,418,641,516.93
Efficiency: 83.888%

[Laser Skaron]

This was one of my few fleets where I didn't have a learning goal prior to undocking. I just saw an opening, realized I wouldn't be able to FC for the upcoming weeks, and went for it. Woohoo.

I'd like to thank our scouts and logi and support for puling through like mad men, so much content provided, so few losses, thank you guys :D. Great job everyone!

That being said:

1. I'm still not authoritative enough to silence my backseet FCs. I value input, I feel I was better at overriding them on comms and make quicker decisions based on their input, but I'm still concerned about chaos on comms.

2. I'm was generally defensive during the fleet, and I feel like my decision making was more inclined to bail from uncertain fights, rather than push my luck.

3. For the end portion of the fleet, I was getting tired and leaking a bit of that into comms, hope I wasn't bringing anyone down. Also feel like I dragged the fleet on by an extra 20-30 minutes.

4. Most fights that we took were rather straight forward. There was some challenge in target selection, but for most scenarios it felt more difficult for our opponents to take us down, than for us to win the fight.

[Breeze One]

Really fun fleet Laser, really enjoyed that!

Cookie were complaining to me on comms about the lack of content that night, but you got us some really nice fights up in the Northern part of Blackrise which was great

Union - you did great stepping up up as 2IC while Laser was out. Could be a little faster on decision making, but its totally, totally understandable given you were thrown into it mid-fleet, and it was (I think?) your first time FC'ing? Great job mate

Could be just me having a non FC perspective for once, but Comms seemed a tad messy tonight. I know you said you dont mind it (I often have the same reaction when I'm FC'ing and someone mentions comms were messy and I'm thinking eh?), but as a line member this time, yeah, there were times, between the couple of loud and consistent talkers, that I wasn't clear on what we were doing (although your instructions Laser were always clear and sensible), so I cant imagine what it was like for someone new to fleets

No-one except the FC (at the time) should be giving any orders during the fleet

Anyway, first time I've flown Logi where I've actually been tested in a decent engagement with multiple targets, and I've got a lot to learn on optimal positioning I think. When you have multiple enemies splitting their DPS, plus gate guns, and everyone starts broadcasting, with fast MWD frigates who are zipping around between different targets, and you have (relatively) short range reppers...jeez that's a challenge! Much more engaging than flying DD

That said,the feeling when you do catch people and hold them up is great! Much more engaging and fun than flying DD. Strongly recommended for everyone!

[Captain Cean]

Cookie were complaining to me on comms about the lack of content that night,

Well our Fleet looked a little bit more dangerous ^^

One thing, your Fleets have often a lot Struggler so its realy easy to follow your Fleets. You should try hold your Fleet more together (well that is hard i know) like Breez said we had not many action this night so you guys had our attention. (Actualy we Hoped that someone Attack you and we can 3rd party it) AND YOU MONSTERS LEFT DECKLIN BACK FOR DEATH

You guys had some nice kills, i am looking forward for a Detailed AAR

[Troven Smalvard]

AND YOU MONSTERS LEFT DECKLIN BACK FOR DEATH

we hoped his ship and body would gum up the plex gate to make sure you couldnt follow us further

[Decklin Quark Reiger]

One thing, your Fleets have often a lot Struggler so its realy easy to follow your Fleets. You should try hold your Fleet more together (well that is hard i know) like Breez said we had not many action this night so you guys had our attention. (Actualy we Hoped that someone Attack you and we can 3rd party it) AND YOU MONSTERS LEFT DECKLIN BACK FOR DEATH

Silly mistake on my part, warping to the novice in a T2 frigate, but nice reps from your Kirins

[Zarquu Fussuhfusus]

Cookie were complaining to me on comms about the lack of content that night,

Well our Fleet looked a little bit more dangerous ^^

Its nice that some HC members acknowledged this - our FC made totally the right call to blue-balll you here. A EUNI vs HC fight given what you had on grid at the time would not have been a fight, it would have been a pure slaughter. The resists of your T2/T3D gang combined with the Kirin logi meant we'd never have broken anything but an out of position, bad pilot - and even then if your Kirin pilots were half-decent even such an pilot would have been saved. Your fleet outclassed ours in every way: you had superior tracking, range-control/speed, massively more DPS and tank. The term "hard counter" is very apt here.

I mention this because, although I'm all for a little smack-talk and goading in Local, there were one or two of of your guys showing a real lack of class that night. This is unusual for HC, which is typically a classy outfit, so I'll put it down to a tad too many drinks on the one or two involved.

If you really wanted the fight, you had all the opportunities to bring one. You knew our comp and where we were going. Had you not had so much T2 Logi - we'd have still whelped to you, but the possibility of taking down a few of you in the fight would have allowed our FC to actually take up an offer of good content. Even keeping the logi, you could have down-shipped some folks to pirate or T1 where we'd have had at least some small some chance to alpha through the reps. Instead you kept in the same ships (in your home area too) and we're forced into picking off stragglers rather than having a proper fleet vs. fleet engagement. That was a call for your FC, but presumably you were looking for bigger fights (e.g, cruiser gangs) and we were just an interesting diversion.

Edit: my memory is a bit crap, but I think your comp was this:

Spoiler

5+ T1 frigs653
8+ T2 frigs (5+ of which were Assult Frigs)
10+ T3D's (Jackdaw+Svipul)
4+ Command Destroyers (Storks ... I think I remember a Bifrost too but not sure)
4+ Kirins (might have been 5?)

We had about 22 pilots with us at the time we found you. 15+ of those in T1 Punishers.

Edit 2: The 4 Kirins alone rep >635 HP/sec. The resits on your mainline DPS were at least 70% -- 80 in defence mode. We'd have needed to pump out a perfectly applied 2,115 DPS *just to match your reps*. With perfect application our Punisher do 214 with my skills, ~180 with others. Assuming application is around 60% and we'd have needed at least 18 Punishers just to match reps alone - ignoring tank, regen, etc.

[Laser Skaron]

Aaaaand, the narrative is updated :D, damn it took me a while.

[Captain Cean]

We first hide in a small, but quickly realize that even their T2 frigate battalion could decimate us.

Good call that was exactily what we planned.

A EUNI vs HC fight given what you had on grid at the time would not have been a fight, it would have been a pure slaughter.

We knowed and we didn't intended to Fit you fleet that day (actualy i give intel to you guys that you should avoid us).
We have Public Fleets for the German Community, so it would consume a lot of time to get a fitting ship for the "randome People" that fly with us.
So on days like that we just can't dont Size.

So we just take some strugglers and put some pressure on laser
You guys resonde when we ask for a fight for Decklin actualy made our day (was something like we dont negotiate with terrorists), we never expected that you realy come to fight. (Cause we actualy outgun you this time by alot)

[Laser Skaron]

You guys resonde when we ask for a fight for Decklin actualy made our day (was something like we dont negotiate with terrorists)

I'm glad you enjoyed that :D!

[Troven Smalvard]

Both Malediction losses were down to getting caught up on the huge structure of the drone site while trying to hold a target that was in its depths,

I'm glad to say though that while i died twice on this fleet by the time BLAP caracals rolled round the next day i had managed to perfect my manual piloting 'halo' tackle manouver above the structure and didn't die in a swarm site that night.

So Laser your ISK efficiency was lowered to improve Deklin's but you provided learning content




also incase new bros are wondering the Raven is a terrible ship for scouting in sooooooooo slooooooooooooow