[AAR] Sunday Night Shotgun Party! 1/10/17

[SketchyManDan Williams]

First Null roam I've FCed, so I though a Shotgun Party would be a nice introduction, pretty chilled out fleet, easy calls, and a simple way to jump in and get to know some of the region! I had flown one by another FC which used combat ceptors, but it seems like many of the pilots tonight were unable to fly them, so it was mainly T1 frigates and Destroyers, with a sprinkle of T2 and T3 .
This fleet started out with the chance at some OpSec kind of stuff, but this fell through in the end, so we stuck with the original plan of diving into Null. We found a few things, got a little better at combat probing, took some bait, got chased through some systems to eventually make our way out through a connection from our very own WHC due to one of our pilots being active there and spotting a connection we could use, which was a pretty awesome way to finish up on, especially since we had a few pilots who were yet to take a dive inside .
Again my memory on the details for some of this is even hazier for this fleet , but feel free to update with any of the details for the fights!

Roam members (18)

Spoiler

Ares Dodekatheon
Calder Ormand
DonkeyPunch Udan
Gatt2111
Gemma Solett
Guiliano Thellere
Hamok Shah
Harai Rex
Jim Electron
Jonathan Wolf
Matheus Esp
Mirai Jorgener
Raijin Naom
SMBEHJ
SketchyManDan Williams
The Jojosh
Tsuwen Sun
Z0X Ambrye

We started off in Stac, and took the MHC entrance into syndicate. We had a scout for this, and kept one all of the way through. I think for a shotgun party, you usually just jump in all at once, but having this scout just a few seconds ahead of us made it feel a little more organised I guess, as it was still easy to spot if it was worth a shotgun in that system, or just to move on, and they were even able to provide a quick bit on intel on the distance we should shotgun too. This definitely helped us catch a couple of the targets we found .
We had a go at shotgunning a few systems on the way through, and had a peek inside PF-, but had no luck. I switched dotlan to look for ratters instead, and began checking the most active systems instead. FC managed to combat scan a VNI, but called the fleet to jump before I even warped to it XD (I'm ill OK! aha)
I think Gatt had found a Caracal In one of our adjacent system, and told us which gate they were heading too, so we went along side to cut them off! Managed to catch him, but not take them down quick enough to avoid a loss. Here's where I realised a death can pretty much mean you're out for the rest of the fleet in Null, as there isn't really somewhere readily available to reship . Are there any places in Null that are friendly to us where we could keep a stockpile of reships, or any way we could make something like this ? (I'm thinking something along the lines of Ichoriya in Black Rise)
(20:44:01Z) RF-GGF
Thrasher -14.3m
Caracal +27.77m

Burning the fleet around the pockets was getting a bit boring, so the scout went off ahead, and I split from the group to look as well, while the 2IC took over until we found content... but nothing . So I decided to go to cloud ring as dotlan had just refreshed and it showed some ratting going on up there

Gatt had spotted a few systems worth shotgunning on the way, but we didn't have any luck catching anything yet, so we kept moving. Just before reaching our waypoint, we shotguned 6ON and managed to bag a VNI! but had lost an atron too, which was one of our few fast frigates.
(21:10:05Z) 6ON-RW
Atron -2.77m
Vexor Navy Issue +86.1m

After we began to move on, I think it was at the desto 280, where Gatt saw 2 Britux make they're way towards P5-, which we were currently sitting in, so we headed back to the 60N gate, and managed to catch them as they jumped in. This was a really fun fight, and it looks like our EWAR was getting to them as they quickly disposed of our griffin. These Brutix had a nice hull tank, but we had enough webs to make sure they were staying until they died, Logi did a nice job of holding us here, and we only lost a couple of ships
It started with a single Brutix jumping in, and we primaried this one, around 20 seconds in, a Vexor and another Brutix jumped into us, so we held primary on the initial target. I called to spread points here, and the fleet did awesome and held everything, we took the Vexor next, which went down fairly quickly, and then made our way through the next Brutix. This last one took quite a while to kill after losing a few more of our fleet, but under heavy webbing, and the logi holding our remaining fleet up, there was nothing else they could do, but sit there and get destroyed.
During the fight here, 2 more Caracals jumped in, the fleet managed to catch one, while the other burned at range to watch. We disposed of the first and tried for the second. We could't catch the Carcal, so Gatt burned behind them for a ping, but just as we were landing, it warped off , nearly killed everything that came through this gate!
(21:17:29Z) P5-KCC
Griffin -9m
Brutix +87.85m
Thrasher -14.86m
Thrasher -7.2m
Vexor +20.43m
Breacher -2.45m
Thrasher -14.91m
Brutix +90.94m
Caracal +30.06m

It was an awesome fight, and it seemed everyone was happy to carry on after this. I though we'd try out Fade as the ratting still looked high in the pockets so it gave us a chance to try some more shotgunning. We burned through and found a few systems worth shotgunning, but they were jam packed with sigs, and we were just too few to be able to get to enough of them in time, even with intel on the distances to try.

Over in DO6, a Vargur was calling us out, and asking for a fight, so I though why not... We're getting close to the end, so why not see what a few small ship could do to a Marauder XD. It turns out, not very much at all, but it was fun to see!
(21:45:39Z) DO6H-Q
Raptor -48.44m
Thrasher -19.3m
Bantam -3.84m
Burst -6.5m
Capsule -0.01m
Capsule -0.01m

It was here, our pilot spotted that we had a connection to the WHC very close by, and we could use this to make our way back to High sec. Awesome! Always wanted to do something like that, and it turned out to be needed even more than we thought. We came across a nasty gate camp of things like Orthurus, Sabres, and assorted frigate killers . So as soon as our scout called the bubbles were down, we jumped in and warped to our hole! A pilot had been caught on the way, so we waited a minute or so for the bubble to drop, and they could make it to us, but in this time, they warped to our hole, and forced us through, just as our pilots capsule caught up. Luckily it was a smaller hole and the cruisers couldn't make it in! Perfect!
(22:01:51Z) WUZ-WM
Thrasher -12.12m

Not too bad for a relatively quiet fleet, and a really fun fight in the middle, with an awesome escape at the end!
I'm sure there are details in between the fights I've forgotten about, so if you like, feel free to add them below!
Thanks for coming all, Logi did awesome again, and kept the fights going! and scouts led us swiftly through to some nice fights .
ISK Destroyed: 343,156,142.64
ISK Lost: 155,712,790.62
ISK Delta: 187,443,352.02
Efficiency: 68.787%