[Fleet] BLAP Caracals get a fleet fight with Black Flag

[Altar Kabal]

I've been slacking off a lot for the last 3-4 months and this was by far the best fleet since I started playing again a bit more. Good fights, what felt like a step up in performance from ourselves and not whelping a cruiser fleet was nice.

Great FCing and sound strategies, we could easily have had our backsides kicked by those fleets but came out of the fleet encounters well. The instructions were clear and concise. Very patient in giving everyone as much time as possible to align out of combat.

How badly were we spliting DPS this time around? I noticed when we were practicing volleys against NPCs that my rapid lists didn't seem to cycle off but instead continued to engage the first locked target. I'm not sure if that was me stuffing up, a mechanic or bug?

Anyhow, thanks. It was a lot of fun. Will be back for more.

[Xana McBash]

+1 for repeating orders

This was already thoroughly debated after previous fleets, at least 80% of mainline pilots agree that having the FC repeatedly and verbally calling odors helps a lot.

But then again, Budda is a bit of a prodigy, managed to completely skip the "mainline" and "scout" phases and jump straight into FC'ing



Edit: RIP meant "orders" not "odors", but I'm keeping it now :3

[Zang Xuu]

I particularly appreciate using the cycle time and ratio of Alpha Strike to DPS to demonstrate the reasoning. I'll keep that in mind for future doctrines as well.

Yup, it's just really the inverse of cycle time. For the same DPS, longer cycles naturally mean all the damage comes with higher alpha. Or another way to see it:
if everyone is shooting on 2 second cycles, its unimportant if someone is out of sync by 1 second/half a cycle. Their damage will get in for the same logi cycle as the rest of the fleet anyhow.

If everyone shoots on a 20 second cycle, someone who is out of sync by 10 seconds is wasting their damage, as it will be completely wiped by enemy logi.

[Budda Sereda]

You all guys (Decklin, Glen, Zeerse) convinced me that it does make sense to repeat commands. Even simple and straight forward ones.

I do admit, if in the beginning of the fleet I did not spot newbros I get relaxed FCing... it makes my job easier but does not make FCing better.

Will improve.

+1 for repeating orders

This was already thoroughly debated after previous fleets, at least 80% of mainline pilots agree that having the FC repeatedly and verbally calling odors helps a lot.

But then again, Budda is a bit of a prodigy, managed to completely skip the "mainline" and "scout" phases and jump straight into FC'ing

I do know importance of repeating orders and I do (at least trying to do) that for main things like "jump", "undock", "warp", calling primary,... only was skeptical on 'lock', but, as I mentioned, will improve.

BTW, my latest fleet on the way back I was scouting and enjoyed it a lot! I've tried scouting in fleets earlier, but usually was on back seats. Going to fix that, not sure when though.

Question to Decklin: in you review I don't see you did mention reload impacted the fight. Have you experienced any issues with that? I guess 1st Hurricane was killed while the 1st set of missiles was loaded, did you reload during 1st round or left also to reload? Did you call overheating from the very beginning?

[Xana McBash]

I do know importance of repeating orders and I do (at least trying to do) that for main things like "jump", "undock", "warp", calling primary,... only was skeptical on 'lock', but, as I mentioned, will improve.

aye, Glen presented a very good study case on why to verbally repeat targets. If anyone only takes the one thing from this AAR, that should be it.
As with all things in Eve, there will be exceptions, like being in a fleet with poor comms discipline, while the scout is relaying important intel, and the FC is too busy micro-managing ammo switches, telling specific members to overheat hardeners, and so on...

btw Budda, it's been a while since I was in one of your fleets (~a month if memory serves), those usually happen too late for my timezone. I guess I should bite down the bullet (and some coffee) to see how much you improved since then, although recent AARs look promising.

[Decklin Quark Reiger]

Question to Decklin: in you review I don't see you did mention reload impacted the fight. Have you experienced any issues with that? I guess 1st Hurricane was killed while the 1st set of missiles was loaded, did you reload during 1st round or left also to reload? Did you call overheating from the very beginning?

1. How did reload impact the fight? Any issues with that?
For me, the reload time impacted the timing of when I decided to switch targets. I had a few bits of information to trade off and juggle:
- Switching targets faster makes it harder for their logi to keep up
- Switching targets faster means that if our less experienced pilots don't keep up, we end up with split DPS.
- Switching targets without enough ammo left in the clip to finish something means we won't kill it.
- Maintaining our position relative to the logi, and the bulk of their fleet means that my target options were a bit limited. I could probably have gone a bit closer, to expand my target selection.

So, after the start of the fight when we didn't kill anything on our first clip or two, I started trying to have a couple of targets in mind, at the start of a reload cycle. I would start with one of them for a few volleys, and generally it would catch reps. Then I would try to kill of a second target with the remainder of the clip. This is what worked on the hurricanes. The VNI was just plain squishy.

2. Did you reload during each round of the fight, or leave to reload?
Yes, we reloaded several times for each round of the fight. When we killed ships, each ship we killed was within a single clip. I knew the long reload time would mean that their logi would have *plenty* of time to rep a target if we didn't kill it before reload. When we warped off it was generally because the fleet was out of position, or we needed to manage capacitor or heat.

3. Did you call overheating from the very beginning?
When the fleet undocked, I did explain that the Caracals can heat for a full clip and repair the heat damage during the reload cycle. I also said that anyone in fleet who was confident of their thermodynamics skill should do so, without me calling for it. For newer pilots who maybe didn't have Thermodynamics trained as much, I said they should be careful not to burn out their launchers. During the fight itself, I did not call for heat from the very start. I did call for heat once a target reached about 50% armour, and it looked like we were about to break it. (Edit: after watching B'aldrick's video, I realise that I did call for hear from the start of each clip) Any time I called for a reload, I also called for repairs, along the lines of "reload and repair. Reload launchers and repair them."

[Jason Eoner]

Thanks Decklin for leading this fleet. I cost us a couple of Hyena losses. The first time I might have been out of logi range as I was burning toward the target to get webs on him. I reshipped and came back to get blown up again quickly. That time our awesome logi pilots landed some good reps on me, but we were up against a large fleet and with that much incoming damage there was no way they were going to save a little frigate.

No regrets. I might have lost 50mil ISK worth of ships, but helped take out 450mil ISK.

[B'aldrick Aivoras]

Really fun fleet and well fc'd!

I enjoyed being a boosting / booshing CD as it's a role I'm trying to learn. It's pretty obvious I need lots of practice. Previously, I've flown one with a warp disruptrr to try to boosh stuff off gates and forgot on the gnosis and scrammed it!

I then activate my MJD not once but twice by mistake and then miss the boosh on the guardians at the end. Epic fail!

FC was calm and recovered quickly when booshed off - sorry Breeze.

Hope you guys don't mind me trying again!

Edited video here: https://youtu.be/zg0wyynjd4U