[AAR] Arty Punishers 19/07/2017

[Adrien Claremont]

Last night was an interesting fleet that's left me with more questions and take away points than the vast majority of others that I've FC'd. I went for the Arty Punisher doctrine that LUMPY used to great effect against our Blaster Punishers not too long ago. While we had a margin of success last night, I suspect the way in which we flew the doctrine is not how it should be in flown but I'll touch on those points towards the end.

Numbers were low, low enough to the point that I did seriously consider changing to a different doctrine. The comms talk at the time suggested we might still have enough numbers just to scrape by, and with the late addition of Zarquu in a Deacon, we stuck with the original Arty Punisher fleet. I think in total we only had 7 Punishers initially, which then dropped down to 6. Using rough numbers, and dumbing them down slightly factoring in lower skills, poor application and bad positioning, that only gave the fleet realistically a 3k volley and 660 DPS combined.

Roam members (16)

Spoiler

Adrien Claremont - FC
Altar Kabal
B'aldrick Aivoras - CD
Breeze One - T2 Logi
Calder Ormand
DeanSherman - T1 Logi
Decklin Quark Reiger - Scout
Kirsi Isrik - EWAR
Rider Isleman
Tom Endares - EWAR
Trillian Ituin
Xana McBash
Zana Fehrnah - T1 Logi
Zarquu Fussuhfusus - T2 Logi
ashahara

I wanted to start the fleet with a quick 5 min practice of how to co-ordinate alpha damage, both to highlight the importance of timings to fleet members and to get things straight in my own head. Alpha strikes are not something I've had much exposure to, and is not something I've FC'd before. As we finished up our short practice session, a lone Atron warped into the belt that we were at. Decklin quickly pointed him, however it became painfully apparently how slow armour afterburning Punishers are. The majority of the fleet missed out on the kill because they simply couldn't close the range.

(18:49:49) Dastryns
Atron +2.71m

One jump over Decklin found a VNI fighting a Drake. I called for tackle on the VNI expecting it to be the more expensive of the two ships. The Drake died just before we landed, and ECM was applied to the VNI. We think his drones much have been set to passive as they just sat around doing nothing as we took him down.

(18:56:07) Ostingele
Vexor Navy Issue +114.52m

In Vlillirier, Decklin went to tackle a Firetail in a small plex however we lost him before the fleet could land, allowing the Firetail to get away.

(19:08:15) Vlillirier
https://zkillboard.com/kill/63578876/ -49.7m

With Decklin reshipping, and the fleet now scoutless, we pushed on anyway up to the Akidagi to meet back up with Decklin. While there, Decklin secured us a Cormorant gank.

(19:17:53) Akidagi
Cormorant +16.44m

In Nennamaila, Decklin found a Confessor and a Slasher at range on a plex. The fleet warped to the sun to position for a warp in down to the plex while Decklin tried to keep them interested. As the fleet landed though, Decklin was caught by the Slasher and both ships got away.

(19:24:06) Nennamaila
https://zkillboard.com/kill/63579206/ -49.56m

We stayed in the area and fooled around while Decklin was reshipping again. The only thing to note here was the Boosh attempt we had against a Hecate. B'aldrick booshed us within 2km of the target who, unfortunately, saw what we were up to and managed to escape. So close!

Once Decklin was back with the fleet, we pushed on. We had a couple of interesting "small things" buzzing around Pynekastoh such as frigates and destroyers. Decklin caught us a INS on the gate, however when the fleet jumped in both pilots were now around 50km off the gate. Rather than burning over with our painful afterburners, we bounced to a gate ping and back down in about 10 seconds and secured the kill. We tried to go for the Dragoon too which again, unfortunately, cost us an Interceptor.

(19:36:38) Pynekastoh
Imperial Navy Slicer +31.73m
https://zkillboard.com/kill/63579580/ -51.44m

We then moved to a plex to try and bait a fight while Decklin reshipped. First we tried a small to see if the frigates and destroyers in system wanted to play. With no takers, we moved on to a medium to see if anything bigger wanted to come in. The plan was to try and use the CD to snatch whatever came into the plex first. Again, no one wanted to play.

Just as we were about to align out, a stabbed plexing Merlin warped into us and was promptly dispatched.

(19:51:47) Pynekastoh
Merlin +0.64m

At this point in the roam, B'aldrick's bladder need some attention so we docked the fleet up for a 10 min bio. Just as we docked, Decklin had eyes on a small T1 frigate gang consisting mainly of Punishers. I asked on comms for people who were still at their keyboards, to which only Breeze and Zarquu replied. Decklin kept eyes on the fleet for the remainder of the break, and kept them entertained while the fleet rushed to catch up. As we had a large numbers advantage, I called for a small vanguard of 2 Punishers and a Deacon to jump into the enemy fleet and support Decklin. The Incursus engaged and took gate guns which finished him off, and as our main fleet jumped in the enemy soon headed off in the direction of Kedama.

(20:12:58) Nisuwa
Incursus +16.82m

Decklin quickly followed and chased them into a novice plex. The presumption is that they were attempting to hide from us, but being mostly T1 frigates and with the numbers (and logi) advantage I took the fight leaving our T2 stuff behind. It was actually a really fun fight from my point of view, and successful in that we cleared the field, however it highlighted a lot of flaws in our doctrine. Or rather, in how we had the doctrine set up and how we (I) flew it. I will cover these separately at the end of the AAR.

We did really well in the fight, particularly when it came to following broadcasts and not splitting damage. For the majority of the fight, I was able to have every target locked so I can see if we were splitting damage or not. I only saw a single shot landing on an enemy ship that wasn't the primary, which I presume was either a miss click or the result of someone having their turrets pre-cycled. Either way, really great effort. Most of the fleet also stuck to the timings for alpha damage, however it was apparently the two people had their timings off. Certainly with these small numbers, it's really obvious to see when peoples shots were landing.

Our losses were Logi and EWAR. It would be great if those pilots could comment from their point of view but I presume the losses would be related to not being able to pull range in time??

(20:16:41) Kedama
Punisher +6.4m
Merlin +4.85m
Navitas -4.24m
Punisher +6.4m
Inquisitor -7.64m
Griffin -1.36m
Punisher +6.94m
Punisher +12.49m
Capsule +0.01m

At this point, we moved back to Akidagi for a quick-ish reship then made our way back down to Vey pipe home. Ichoriya was being camped at the time with a couple of instalocking Gnosis which cost us a pod.

(20:27:48) Ichoriya
Capsule -0.01m

The way home was fairly uneventful, with Decklin managing to secure a flashy Breacher who jumped into us.

(20:48:28) Aldranette
Breacher +15.51m

Stats

ISK Destroyed: 235,472,652.79
ISK Lost: 163,940,383.83
ISK Delta: 71,532,268.96
Efficiency: 58.955%

The Good

We tried out a new doctrine and had a marginal degree of success with it
We cleared the field for a fleet vs fleet fight
Gate pings were used to move the fleet around, and were instrumental in securing a kill. Afterburners are slow enough that this almost becomes a requirement for FCs to have prior to using this doctrine
Fleet remained disciplined through, with great communication throughout (expect Altar, who had his mic off was probably talking to himself for 2 hours)

The Bad

We won the fight through sheer numbers and brute force rather than skill, tactics and finesse. Blaster based doctrines would have done this a lot more efficiently with the numbers we had
FC needs to work on broadcasting align and warp to commands
FC made the wrong call asking the fleet to orbit rather than keep at range when anchoring, which negatively affected our arty tracking.
FC also came too close a number a times during the fight, allowing enemy ships to be under our guns, again negatively affecting arty tracking.

The Doctrine

These fits were based on a LUMPY fleet we fought against a few weeks ago, which we lost a blaster Punisher fleet to. We talked about these fits on the FCC Slack and pondered over which utility midslots would be the best to use, as the LUMPY fit currently had unbonused Caldari ECM modules. The consensus at the time was to look to have a mix of scrams and webs throughout the fleet to immobilised the target, allowing artillery to apply better as that would be key to getting the most out of our alpha strike capability. Ammunition selection comprised of the there main close range projectile choices, for selectable damage and the highest alpha, and additional a long range option. EWAR capabilities were left up to alpha pilots in dedicated EWAR ships as they would not be able to fly the mainline DD due to mixed turrets.

I'd originally wanted around 20 DD pilots. We'd had consistent fleets in the high 20s over the past few months, so I thought this would easily be achievable. Doing some basic math, the Punisher fit with Phased Plasma S has an Alpha of around 700. Take into account lower skills and poor application, in my head I was assessing that realistically we'd only be applying 500 damage per Punisher, therefore 20 DD would give the fleet a solid 10k alpha. Enough to simply delete most frigates. In reality we had 6 Punishers for a 3k alpha, and it was taking more like 4 or 5 strikes to take down a T1 frigate during our fleet fight. This was likely further hampered by my poor positioning and anchoring choices.

Talking of positioning, I had been asking for fleet members to anchor on me by orbiting at 500m. In my head initially, this meant that I knew I had a tight ball of pilots in case we needed to boosh for whatever reason, and I can roughly position our fleet during the fight. In hindsight this was a bad decision. I should have called for pilots to keep at range on me, as this would have likely allowed our artillery to apply better although potentially at a slight cost to damage mitigation. At one point I know I drifted too close to them which also royally screwed up our tracking as the enemy ship simply stopped taking damage. This was the point where I made the call to give up on anchoring. We were comfortably able to dictation range at our optimals and were not bleeding damage so I simply said for the fleet to keep at range 5km from the primary and to spread tackle.

So what?

For me, I took away two basic lessons learnt which are probably blatantly obvious to a lot of people. Numbers matter and keep your transveral low. In the future, unless I can get 15 DD Punishers, other fleet comps will likely have a greater effect in similar situations so just use something else. The fleet should keep at range on the FC, and the FC should align out to a celestial to keep transerval low. If the enemy does not pursue the fleet, maintain range to ensure the fleet stays within optimals and be conscious of the enemy attempting sling shot manoeuvres to break tackle.

My next thought is on range and EWAR selection and this was discussed briefly in the post fleet washup. We'd obviously gone for close range, both with the tackle mod selection and ammunition choice. At these sorts of ranges I feel that the blaster Punishers will perform better. Certainly up to the point until we can alpha ships clean off the field and likely the higher DPS will out perform artillery on larger targets. Titanium Sabot gives (with my skills) 14.4+10.5km range and Tremor pushes that out even further to 25.9+10.5km. The obvious downside is the reduced alpha, meaning even more pilots required in fleet to delete ships. Titanium Sabot still allows for the Punishers to carry long point if we fight at those ranges, while Tremor allows us to fight outside of tackle range and frees the mid slot up for damps or ECM, like the original LUMPY fit. Fighting outside of point range does mean that the fleet would be reliant on the enemy actually wanting to stay and fight. I can't say I know if either of those would work better over the current setup, but I'd like to try both in the future as I still see a lot of potential in this doctrine as a "fighting" doctrine, for those who have listened to the Apothne Q&A.

Final thought is on numbers. The only difference to the actual fitting between the Arty Punishers and the Blaster Punishers are the guns, prop and the one damage module. I'm inclined to almost amalgamate the two doctrines together and include the additional blaster modules into the fittings. That way, if we do fall short on numbers, it is not a hassle to simple switch modules out that you already have in your cargo hold. I know this is how we have treated Arty Hurricane fleets in the past, switching to autocannons when we do not have the numbers for the alpha strike.

Just my thoughts from having flown the fleet once, and I'm obviously inexperienced with projectile turrets. I welcome any thoughts, comments and criticisms.

Anyways... enough of my ramblings...

Those who lost a ship can claim a free hull replacement from the Uni Logistics Department - https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/SRP

For anyone taking part in the CCI, this fleet will count as a LSC participation event.

Finally, as I am taking part in the FCC, please take the time to fill out with feedback form - https://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtop ... 8&t=104019

Fun fleet and we made it work, but we (I) could have done a lot of things better.

Cheers guys.

[DeanSherman]

In that fight in Kedama i did not understand that we were in novice, i thought we were in small. I thought that i could just fly in circles and T2 logi will rep me with ease if needed. Now i'm surprised that 1 Inquisitor could hold me so long. I hope i will have better situational awareness next time.

Well, i think i did only one concious thing in this fleet.
We were sliding in a plex and Tengu engaged Zarquu. I stopped my ship, locked Zarquu and repped him until he slided through the gate.

[Captain Cean]

The Result of the Fleet looks ok but you said it yourself that you wasnt happy with the Comp.

This issue was (from me when i look at the AAR) you didn't goes the Full way for the Alpha setup.

Arty Punisher x7 (AAR and Killmails look more like 5)
Booster 1x
T2 Logi x2
T1 Logi x2
Griffin x2
Scout x1

So when we look at this we have 5 DPS and 8 support ships for a "DPS driven" Setup that is not the best.
The Point of the Alpha is that you Negate Support ships like logi cause the targets are dead before something can rep them. So when you didn't have the Numbers you need to cut support to Focus on the strengh of the Setup (thats why Lumpy use ewar und DPS cause DPS > Support)

So the Setup should have looked more like
2x Logi
1x Scout
Everything else DPS

And like you have said you had problems with the DMG aplication so a Vigil would had helped alot

[Adrien Claremont]

Being the learning organisation that we are, I really do not like turning people away because they cannot fly the recommended ships either through a lack of skill points or being alpha clones. Everyone is welcome to come along, and it just turned out that this time we had a large proportion of people who could not fly the DD ships yet they could bring either T1 Logi or alpha clone friendly EWAR.

When you strip those away from the fleet comp, for the backbone of the fleet we had:

6x DD (one Punisher left early on)
2x T2 Logi
1x Interceptor
1x Command Destroyer

I knew that those pilots in the T2 support roles were competent pilots, and there isn't one of those roles that I would want to swap out for an extra Punisher.

Sometimes we just don't manage to get the ideal fleet comp. That's part of E-Uni life. I did have a Vigil fit on the initial fleet post for any Minmatar alpha clones however again, we didn't manage to grab any. Hopefully things will be different in future fleets and we'll be swarmed by blood thursty newbros ready to hunt down the Cookie Monsters.

[Captain Cean]

When you strip those away from the fleet comp, for the backbone of the fleet we had:

6x DD (one Punisher left early on)
2x T2 Logi
1x Interceptor
1x Command Destroyer

That ratio actualy looks a lot better (Thanks for clean it up)

Well that but like you said that was not enough Alpha, for Alpha setups you need a minum alpha cause Arty DPS and Tracking is realy worse so when you cant Alpha (or at least bring it realy low with the first shot) you have no benefit of the setup only down sites. (Laser Better tracking+DPS /Rail more range+dmg /Autocannons better Tracking+DMG)

Hopefully things will be different in future fleets and we'll be swarmed by blood thursty newbros ready to hunt down the Cookie Monsters.

I Hope so, our Door is always open for you guys if you want a fight or need help o/

[Budda Sereda]

For the last year, I've seen few times when FCs tried to form up an alpha strike doctrine. Unfortunately, each time we did not have enough to alpha an opponent and felt down to DPS race, where alpha strike fits do not work the best.

I feel we should give up on it. Though, idea to have alternative auto cannon fit looks interesting and I think is viable.

And speaking about numbers, both e-uni and black raise are relatively quite these days... Maybe that a vacation or travel season?

[Decklin Quark Reiger]

I feel we should give up on it. Though, idea to have alternative auto cannon fit looks interesting and I think is viable.

I'd hate to give up on the idea just because we have had limited success with it. Leading and flying an alpha strike doctrine requires coordination and soft skills that we need to practice, both as line members and FCs.

Obviously it also requires numbers, so we need to keep that in mind and have a backup plan ready in case we don't get the numbers, but that's okay.

In terms of things being a bit quiet around Black Rise at the moment - it is a bit, but hey, it's summer, and people are practicing for the AT.

We could take this as an opportunity to practice roaming in other areas of space. Wormholes will help

Edit: spelling

[Budda Sereda]

True. In fact, I will go off for 2 weeks as well...

When you saying 'practice WH': do you mean jump through WHs to other sectors or go into WH, scan the chain and find content in WH? The latest idea is cool, though WH space even less populated than K-space and finding content will be even harder IMHO.

[Adrien Claremont]

...Though, idea to have alternative auto cannon fit looks interesting and I think is viable.

The Arty Punishers and the Golden Horde blaster doctrine share exactly the same tank and rigs. As I mentioned during the AAR, for future fleets I'll be asking to bring the blaster refit to swap to if we do not make the required numbers for the Alpha to work.