[FLEET] A Fleet

[Glen Burney]

After the wonderful success of Xana's T1 Frigate fleet, we continued on under my leadership. Mostly we hunted up in Black Rise in a few systems, and this confessor and 2 Caracals were trying to get us killed on gates in the area. My instructions to the fleet were"

DON'T DIE.

Mostly this involves using gate mechanics to your advantage. Budda Serada, in our fleet, had a suspect timer from an earlier engagement, and a limited engagement timer with some of the enemy ships. The rest of our fleet had no timers. The enemies were all bunched at zero on the gate. I asked Budda to "harass" the enemies by jumping into our system, shooting the people with whom he had a limited engagement, and I had the rest of the fleet lock, but NOT SHOOT the Caracals and Confessor.

The idea behind all this is to confuse the enemy, and force them into a mistake. A mistake involving gate guns and death.

The strategy worked. The Confessor shot a non-flashy target and we immediately scrammed, webbed, etc. and let the gate guns do most of the dirty work:

https://zkillboard.com/kill/64214264/

After that, we used a slightly different approach for one of the Caracals that hung around.

Here's what we did.
1) Each player was instructed to align to a tactical bookmark, shoot the Caracal once, and then warp out immediately. This gave us all a Suspect timer, but we could then warp back to the gate and engage the Caracal without gate guns. At this point the Caracal jumped the gate and we waited.

2) The little hidden feature here is that the "gate gun ignoring" feature continues for a while as long as you don't leave grid (I have not tested the "as long as you don't leave grid" part). So after we all got back on the gate, the Caracal jumped back into us and ALL OF THE PLAYERS THAT HAD PREVIOUSLY SHOT THE CARACAL ON THAT GRID COULD ENGAGE FREELY WITHOUT TAKING GATE GUNS. The caracal got scrammed and webbed and we took him down:

https://zkillboard.com/kill/64214386/

Later, we kilt a punisher at a plex:

https://zkillboard.com/kill/64214423/

[Kontxesi Buchanan]

I am immeasurably glad that I didn't go to bed when I said I would and stuck around for these kills. Not only was it a fun bit of taunting (and I usually don't like those kind of gate games), but I learned a lot from those two (or one prolonged?) engagements. Thank you for taking over as FC and learnin' us some stuff, Glen.

[Kora K]

I have not tested the "as long as you don't leave grid" part

IIRC, as long as you have a limited engagement timer you're good (can leave grid).

[Budda Sereda]

I am immeasurably glad that I didn't go to bed when I said I would and stuck around for these kills. Not only was it a fun bit of taunting (and I usually don't like those kind of gate games), but I learned a lot from those two (or one prolonged?) engagements. Thank you for taking over as FC and learnin' us some stuff, Glen.

I believe we should put as a policy: when Glen FCs nobody in LSC is permitted to sleep .

Nice lessons Glen!

[Decklin Quark Reiger]

I have not tested the "as long as you don't leave grid" part

IIRC, as long as you have a limited engagement timer you're good (can leave grid).

Yep, this is correct

[Jyo Cbip]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the method we used to avoid gate guns here was not a limited engagement timer- since the Caracal did not shoot back no such timer was created. Instead it is a hidden timer that prevents gate guns from firing again after you bounce to a ping but remain on grid. I seem to remember someone in fleet comms (Glen?) saying this could last as long as 5 min.

Decklin and Kora you are correct as a limited engagement timer would still prevent gate guns from firing. However if I'm understanding correctly the mechanism here is slightly different and it's an important distinction as it does not require the enemy to aggress back.

[Decklin Quark Reiger]

You're right it's a slightly different mechanism, since the LE only occurs when the opponent agresses back.

However, you don't need to remain on grid.

I've done it with warping off-grid and back, because I didn't have a ping handy.

[Glen Burney]

Yup it's different than the Limited Engagement (LE) timer. The LE timer shows as a blue timer, and the guy you have it with will flash orange in your overview.

For this hidden timer, the gateguns will ignore subsequent aggression against the same pilot/ship on the same grid for a period of at least 20 minutes (may be as long as 30?). It's pretty rare to see it in action, so I'm very happy to have shared it with you all!