[AAR] NOP Monday Roam! - 2017.07.18

[Reise Amatin]

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ACTIONABLE GOALS
Improvement items to work on from my last fleet (2017.07.11):

• Decision Making.
• Command Chatter.

PARTICIPANTS
Alto DeRaqwar – Skirmish Scout
Alyssyen Annages
Andrek Okaski
Arashi Shizukana – 2IC, Vanguard
Budda Sereda
Davnik Heasithym
Dilithium Tweaker
Disciple
Kelon Darklight
Kontxesi Buchanan
Luca Goh – Skirmish Scout
Reise Amatin
Rider Isleman
Sophia Canarius
Wheat Fields
Wokum
Xinirae Dallocort
Z0X Ambrye – 3IC, Vanguard


OBSERVATIONS
Formup and doctrine explanation went great, we left on time (almost) and things were smooth...for a bit. Scout called a flashy Legion on the gate in Frarie, and I was...unprepared for how difficult that fight was going to be. Up until I started writing this AAR, I felt that I had completely underestimated the T3 cruiser, which I don't mind doing as I'm still learning (See the Performance Review and Summary for why I no longer feel that way!). The problem occurred when we jumped in and began our attack, and just before the scout landed tackle, the Legion's suspect timer turned off, and we became suspects ourselves. Now we're sitting on a gate, taking guns, and the T3C is most likely laughing at us. He attacked the wrong fleet member because he went flashy again, but at that point the guns had taken out two fleet mates, and caused half of what was left of the fleet to scatter. There just wasn't enough DPS to take him down, and the 3IC called for a scatter after I lost my ship. This one fight colored the remainder of my thought processes for the majority of the roam from then on out, as discussed below.

(01:52:04) Frarie
Condor -3.35m
Incursus -4.33m
Incursus -8.28m
Incursus -4.26m
 
This was a strange engagement. We were on gate with two or three flashies (Vexor, Megathron, Caracal?). I figured no one would touch us as the gate guns would help us chew them up. I made the mistake of sitting on the gate and discussing how we could take on a gang like this when our EWAR pilot blew up. I don't know how to be honest. My supposition is that the Caracal alpha'd the Griffin and took off before the gate guns could take him out. Dude, don't sit on gates!

(02:39:59) Martoh
Griffin -0.77m

We lost our scout to a Corax in Aivonen on a failed plex tackle and Budda lost his ship to a Worm. This night is not going well!

(02:47:01) Aivonen, Moclinamaud
Condor -3.09m
Tristan -5.9m

Things are looking up! We traded a scout Condor for a Hookbill, which was a great trade off. Budda managed to take out a Tristan while he was scouting ahead in Aki, but was then taken down by a Comet and Catalyst.

(03:15:40) Reitsato, Akidagi
Condor -3.35m
Caldari Navy Hookbill +43.39m
Tristan +4.63m
Caldari Navy Hookbill -27.89m

Break time! After coming back refreshed and ready, we headed into Nenn/Pyn/Kedama for the last part of the roam. I was unable to find anything target-wise that I was happy taking, so we headed back home back through Nenn and into Placid. We came upon a Myrmidon in Agoze who offered us a fight, so we took it. After messing up the warp in, we all managed to get within 500 and orbit, focing the Myr to use drones. We used the one drone each Incursus had to fight drone against drone, while the main guns of the incursi (Incursuses?) focused on the BC. We only lost 2 frigates, and managed to take down a BC, which I am still grinning about . Two jumps later we were back in Stacmon and the roam was over.

(04:00:29) Agoze
Incursus -21.48m
Griffin -1.38m
Myrmidon +85.8m


Stats
ISK Destroyed: 129,181,263.59
ISK Lost: 84,074,590.12
ISK Delta: 45,106,673.47
Efficiency: 60.576%


PERFORMANCE REVIEW AND SUMMARY
The initial fight with the Legion was hard to deal with mentally. I managed to get into a hole, mentally, and started kicking myself for doing something that, in hindsight, appeared obviously stupid - attacking a T3C with Frigates. Then I made the worst mistake I've ever made, and I let that mental doubt affect the rest of the roam. I recognize now that the real reason we got pummeled with that fight was not my "poor" decision, it was bad luck.

Budda taught me a trick after the roam last night, and I'm going to write it out here so others can learn about it if they don't know already. You can use PyFA or Os.mium to estimate the DPS of one ship in your fleet, which you then multiply by X fleet members to get total fleet DPS. I went back to look at the kill board for that Legion pilot, and he lost that Legion 12 minutes after the fight with us to a pair of Nyx's an Avatar, and a Rorqual (with help from gate guns! Turnabout is fair play!!!!!!). That gave me the exact fit he used. Plugged that fit into PyFA as well, and I could see how much EHP/s he could repair. His rep was around 750 EHP/s. Which, coincidentally, was the same EHP/s repair that the Myrmidon had, which was an easier-than-I-thought-it-would-be fight. So we may have been able to beat that Legion, had it not been for sheer bad luck on the suspect timer and fleet scatter due to gate guns.

My takeaway from this one fight is two-fold. 1)Don't dwell on the past. You make mistakes, you move on. In this case, I let that one mistake cause hesitations and doubts that really made the fleet feel, at least from my perspective, poorly run and "gun shy". 2)ALWAYS know the combat capabilities of your fleet before hand. It's easy enough mental math to say 1 frigate = 110 DPS, so 5 is 550, 10 is 1100, etc. Then with a few nominal defensive values in your head (Frigates rep X EHP/s on average, Cruisers rep Y EHP/s on average, etc. - need to put some fits in PyFA and figure these out!!!) you can make a split-second decision on whether to take a fight or not and you don't have to waste time sitting around creating boredom. This comes back to what Xana said on the AAR from my last fleet:

"I rarely FC, but more than once I've found myself taking fights with extremely bad odds stacked against us, just because I felt I owed content to my fleetlings You have to balance "never not take the bait" and fleet safety. Even if you are extremely content-starved, always double check a particular situation."

Be agressive, but know your limits. I think that the method of analyzing my fleet's strengths that Budda showed me last night would help with this a great deal. It's something I will be doing from now on with every fleet I lead. I think I did a good job analyzing the engagement profile of the doctrine before the fleet, and had a good idea what we would need to do to be able to get into range to start shooting. The problem is that was only half of the equation - I never bothered to figure out what we could shoot at. I should also do a thorough analysis of the defensive capabilities of my fleet in the same manner, both with and without Logi support. What can this doctrine take on and how many losses can we absorb before we can no longer project enough damage? How much incoming DPS is too much? The answers to these questions will help us sift through content faster and find favorable fights.

Review/Attainment of Actionable Goals:

• Decision Making - Check MINUS. Felt "out of sorts" after that first engagement went sideways, and I think it affected my ability to make calls. Appropriate coping methods listed above.
• Command Chatter - Check. Found myself paralyzed at times, which affected my chatter. Keeping up the chatter may help make me NOT think so much and just do something. Still room to improve on the little things (collapsing on gate, calling for MWD use, etc.)
• Keep LEARNING! - Check. This one just lives on this list - it's why we're doing the FCC, right?

Quality Improvement Actions for Next Fleet:

• Pre-Roam Planning - further analysis of Fleet Movement, Offensive, and Defensive capabilities to enable better target selection.
• Decision Making.
• Command Chatter.

[Kontxesi Buchanan]

That Legion was definitely a piece of really bad luck. As I was targeting him, he went from flashy to non-flashy. It happened to fast that people didn't realize it before they started shooting and then things went crazy.

I hadn't fired yet and wasn't taking gate guns, so I just orbited him. I'm not sure who he shot at that made him go flashy again. At that point, there just weren't enough of us left to break his tank. (I'm not even sure who was still there other than me and the FC?) He had me webbed and scrammed for a bit, but he must have switched the scram to Reise and I was able to get away with 25% armor left.


I'm sad that you felt like you did something wrong there, but glad that you realized it was just bad luck. If we'd gotten through that gate a few seconds sooner and had all of our guns on him, I think that would have been a kill for us. It happens!

[Luca Goh]

Thanks for the fleet, Reise. This was my first time scouting - save for an impromptu attempt in the middle of a fleet that did not go well at all - and I appreciated your words of encouragement and general openness to having a first timer in the role take lead scout. Having flown in a few previous fleets of yours I knew you'd be comfortable with having a newbie attempt the role and learn on the job, and that supportive spirit is well-appreciated.

How that Legion fight unfolded was crazy to me. I can't imagine there was more than 2-3 seconds between the time it stopped going flashy and the time I locked it. Probably less than that, as I was watching intensively. I didn't understand what was happening and how it was applying so much DPS until after the fact. Just a huge spot of bad luck on our part, as has already been observed.

It was unfortunate that no one reached the Corax in time given that it was sitting <5k off the beacon in a kiting ship and thus deserved to be punished. Oh well. In retrospect I could have given y'all an idea of how far the warp would be to the plex from the gate. Live (or die) and learn.

I confess that I was pretty proud of tackling the Hookbill given that it was sitting at a belt and needed to be chased down a bit first. Took them a bit too long to realize what was happening and we profited for it.

There was also the skirmish with the (dual prop?) Condor outside the gate to a Novice plex where it slipped tackle and got away. One of the things I observed on this fleet was that I had trouble keeping my attention on the range between the target and myself, when I can hang back a bit out of their weapons and when I need to close in to ensure I maintain tackle. In this instance I probably should have closed on the Condor initially since any kind of weapons it will be running likely have a range that exceed my point anyway. Again, it's about learning to focus on these kinds of information in the heat of the moment, which vary given different roles.

The Myrmidon fight was good feels all around. I'm glad we managed to get a nice big cherry on top of the fleet to wipe away the several frustrating encounters and runs of bad luck.

Overall I was happy with how I performed in my first time flying scout/tackle, though would love to hear any feedback any others may have. It was a bummer to lose three ships: I think it speaks to my need to improve situational awareness and flying skills in order to get out of there as soon as secondary tackle arrives. I also might theory craft a bit to see if I can work up a speedier fit than what I had, which emphasized tank but apparently not enough to save me at several points.

I'm going to be on the road next Monday but hoping to catch the fleet the week after that and try my hand again at scouting.

[Budda Sereda]

Good job Luca, I could not say it was your first scout role!

@reise: you can't be sure that you know exact fit of opponent from his KB, you can only get idea of it. He can switch from short to long range, from ab to mwd, from double prop, to double web, for some hulls even from armor to shield.
But you can learn about typical range of tank and DPS.
But, still, that's not it: he can use bling module and almost double the tank. So use KB, but be careful.

And your fleet. You can multiple, but yet consider that dome pilots could be out of range, messup orbiting, jump late, warp to a wrong place. So have some buffer, call overheat, see if you braking him and its ok, to keep losing pilots with hope to finally break the tank, or its time to scatter.

As fc, you do need to play with pyfa A LOT. Just don't fall into a trap of inventing doctrines and fits: learn them to know typical fits. Remember: you are FC, not a fit maker.

Hope this helps

[Budda Sereda]

Otherwise, it was a good fleet, a bit low on content (I blame vacations time).

As for my taste, you were a bit hesitant taking fights, I guess also because if the unfortune fight with Legion.
Yet, I enjoyed flying with you!