[WHC] Weighing half a fleet against a Moros

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Titus Tallang
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[WHC] Weighing half a fleet against a Moros

Post by Titus Tallang »

AAR soundtrack

This will be a three part AAR. An exciting tale of spaceships, wonder and explosions. Also, Titus rolling someone out, and it not being unintentional.
We killed a shiny bearing Moros, too. So keep reading.

This will be a story told in these chapters:
First, the tale of Gatt the Tenacious Tenacious G(Thanks, Troven.).
Second, the tale of the just slightly not perfect chain of escalation.
Third, the tale of Captain Tallang Titus the Overexcitable.
*creak*
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[WHC] Weighing half a fleet against a Moros

Post by Gatt2111 »

Conci, why do you never get to write these things?

So, Conci scanned down a new Bacon and found an Archon and a Phoenix in a POS, one of them was piloted. You'll see from my previous AAR - this excites and stimulates the WHC.

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WHC had been pre-hyped.

So then we killed their Vexor. https://zkillboard.com/kill/65384663/

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Then I had to eat a curry - Chicken Jalfrezi and pilau rice and pour a drink - vodka (it's not summer anymore).

While I was gone there had been a small escalation - Exeq NI in Bacon, etc. But they appeared to get bored, go home and log off. Surely this was a bluff - we need cap kills.

A brief aside at this point - cloaky ganking in WHC is all very well but to provoke a proper fight you've got to go in banging a drum, interfering with their business and generally irritating the shi...poo out of them. I really did want them to bring out their Archon and their Phoneix so the provoking continued.

I did laps of their citadels for a bit and combat probed everything that moved, even if it was on grid with me - they needed to know I was there and annoying. Even I have limits though so I eventually went home, a few minutes later there were reports from our some of our bears that they had arrived in Bacon. The bears came home and reshipped and we went back out again, chasing them back to their home hole.

I think Troven is getting the job of writing this part up but I take some responsibility for the subsequent whelp as my positioning was bad and I could have been a lot clearer about when the others should jump and engage.

But it's the long game that matters, they were now logging people in - the carrier kill was becoming more of a possibility. (Tenacity == positive EV) > ISK losses.

We went out again in BLAP caracals, thinking we were chasing a small fleet, and then the fun really started...

Read below and come back to this bit - I don't want to spoil it.... but... FML, my whoring drones got smart bombed before I got on the Moros killmail. But I was there!

P.S. special shout-out to SketchyManDan Williams who was asked to stay on the lowsec side of the hole and when most of the fleet got dropped at a completely different wormhole when the Moros jumped, was the only one to keep tackle on the Moros while everyone else arrived.
Last edited by Gatt2111 on 2017.10.18 23:17, edited 3 times in total.
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[WHC] Weighing half a fleet against a Moros

Post by Troven Smalvard »

Sooooooo....

I log in to Innu and mumble and here some chitter chatter about Losec holes and an Exeq Navy bouncing around with a stratios and the guys finally nail his path and our sabre has guessed the wrong hole so not going to get there in time and they escape back to the snuggly safety of their C5 and dock up,

boo boring baddies

The guys get bored of laying in wait and things go quiet and we start to bear, first site is bear-ly finished and a malediction shortly followed by a cyclone pop their little noses through the looking glass, we figure we'd like some of that, so quickly grab a pvp ship and make chase.

They run back home again before we can get on grid but Super Botherer Gatt spots another chance to get his annoying pokey stick out again and points the cyclone and gets him to chase him off the hole.

when gatt gets tackled by a malediction doing his thing we decide to gogogogo
I'll be honest i thought we had more people ready and in the preceeding system :twilightoops:

so in goes conci, then me and we ping for troops as a stratios decloaks and the ENI undocks again
i muck up my warp in trigonometry and decide to land right in the middle of them, who cares about using a hulls range bonus eh - F

at this point i'm acutely aware the current chaps in fleet are not where i was led to believe and 2 jumps away incluing a 80+Au warp...

the bonus is at least me and gatt and conci have the decency to die quickly so that when the ping responders start getting on i can save them the scramble

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we slope back tail between our legs... and complained debriefed for improvements in the future

not to not be true to form, Tenacious G [Trade Marked] says wants to go back,
ok.. X up for vengance

so off he pops in a cepter to get eyes and the cyclone is alone, i hope we can grab a kill and run and i take the cheap and cheerful suggestion (and apparently we have loads of these in corp hangers)

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as we are on the long warp Gatt calls the ENI is back on grid hmm ok plan is the same

as we are about to make the jump to K-space, Loki, Tengu, and somthing else
hmmm 5 caracals and a single sythe are loosing odds and are prob not going to have much fun so i call hold on the jump, and umm and ah abit

Baddie malediction gets on gatts grid and in Rapid Jesus range of our jump in, so i decide lets jump kill the mal and then evac to at least get a kill
just trying to blap a cheap tackle ship never leads to anything ... right .... (womp womp womp, flash back)
luckily he turns out to be a 200mil plus cepter yum

so we do the do, and our sythe is keeping us up against the rest as they are keeping range on us, but were not going on an adventure an hug the hole.

they start dipping in with the stuff to try to pull us off which doesn't work for either side and we just sit shooting drones to be annoying as its the theme of the evening

then they warp a hyperion in at 0, i dont think we will break him in a clip but give it one go, i'm right but we are not dying either ... yet ... so stay and see whats next....


final we get what we need, a trigger word even the oldest and grumpiest WHC'ers have on their highlighted ping list that we will log to kill out of spite....

NESTOR - tackled ....


the horde come to the horn as a Macherial and Bhalgorn land on me and the T1 cruiser dudes and all we have to do is keep alive and keep the enemy interested long enough for our back up armour fleet to form and get to us to grab the grid

"Gatt - Tackle that Bhal and dont die!"

props to the boys getting to us quickly and double probs for my BLAP bro's for hanging in there
I managed to get out in <20% structure some others not so lucky but more importantly we get the pods safe and can go get some big boy pants and more shineys


With the glory hunters here to cash in on Gatts 2 hours of hype build chaos ensues and Titus writes below


finally just because i love a good slack snip, the final ping escalation :D
I think we need a rage ping 101 class, we could get a guest lecturer from PL?

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Last edited by Troven Smalvard on 2017.10.19 09:46, edited 3 times in total.
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[WHC] Weighing half a fleet against a Moros

Post by Titus Tallang »

Alright, so as the fine gentlemen above me have recounted, I enter the field with an armor fleet of middling size against an assorted splattering of mixed stuff from the Russian side.

They have a Machariel at zero on the hole, but I don't want to split our fleet even further, so I instead pick out a Bhaalgorn that's sitting 20km off. Sacfleet has absolutely no issue with grabbing tackle on this kind of stuff, so we get to work burning it down. A few of the opposition warp off to reship, and the Bhaalgorn is bleeding profusely. A Nestor shows up on scan again. We overheat on the Bhaalgorn (hello, C5 Red Giant) and it barely breaks as the Nestor lands on grid.

We tackle the Nestor and start burning through it, and it smartbombs off our drones. Well, not just our drones. Remember, C5 Red Giant.
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So yeah, 14km smartbombs with almost double damage. It turns out, that's a pretty reliable way to kill of incoming missiles too.

And as you know, Unca Titus loves his Sacrileges, and WHC has started to agree with him. And the backup DPS is Ishtars. Our newbros are flying VNIs. This guy is in a buffer tanked Nestor with no other logi are grid, but we're merely very slowly tickling him to death. Of course, his friends disagree with that eventual outcome, and start mounting efforts to extract him while we get more people. The connection shrinks behind us.

Minutes pass. The other Russians launch an attempt to jam our tackle off with EC drones while forcing the Devoter to drop his bubble. We're very glad to actually have something that's not under the smartbomb umbrella, so the EC drones are obliterated before our Devoter has to actually decycle. We catch him at 20% armor. The Nestor stays tackled, and is now hitting half armor. The Russian menace cannot allow this to persist. A second Nestor pops up on scan and lands.

Incoming damage is starting to get a bit scary, so I finally turn around and blap the Machariel that's still sitting at 0 on the hole and force him to jump out. This reduces damage to manageable levels again, but we're still no closer to killing any of the Nestors. A third Bhaalgorn starts his trek from ALI towards us, when suddenly, DScan moves again and a Moros appears. I prepare to extract, since a HAW dread at range under the smartbomb umbrella would probably push us past the breaking point, and we're reaching the limits of our escalation capability for the time of day.

The Moros lands at zero. He then sieges in the middle of our readily waiting blob, far from any assistance his Nestors could provide him, next to two Bhaalgorns, with no smartbombs to cull our damage, and with zero chance of ever actually hitting a cruiser for significant amounts with his guns. I don't look a gift horse in the mouth, so we immediately start murderzoning him with all we've got while the ominous 5 minute clock starts ticking in our heads. His cap rapidly depletes, but cap boosters are a thing that exists now, so he manages to hang on until 4:30 into the timer. I start to consider my options.

We're sitting on a shrink C6 hole to lowsec, with a crippled Moros next to us. We have little chance of actually getting more kills in here if the Moros manages to catch reps. However, we'd likely force him to jump out before the Nestors can get in range, which would put the hole on low mass. If we wanted to leave safely, we'd have to do so before he jumped. However, there's a Moros in front of me dying. It's not the kind of thing I like leaving.

Instead, a second plan crystallizes. If the Moros jumps out, the hole goes to low mass. If our fleet follows, that would then collapse the hole, leaving the Moros stranded with no backup. Of course, this is not an exact science - we'd likely leave part of our fleet stuck on the inside as well, with a handful of angry Russians trying to exact revenge. In the last seconds of the siege timer, I make a judgment call to push all the way for the kill. The Moros exits its siege timer, and I call for the fleet to reapproach the wormhole but keep shooting. The Moros jumps, and I call for the fleet to follow.

The next moments become hectic. It is quickly called that the wormhole has collapsed, as planned. Some of our fleet, including our two Bhaalgorns, are stuck in the C6. Meanwhile, most of our cruisers and all three of our Guardians have made it to lowsec safely. I myself am sitting on grid with the Moros along with some of our DD, but our other two Guardians are nowhere to be seen. They report being in lowsec, but also report being on the wormhole - which supposedly hasn't collapsed - and with no Moros in sight.

Being forced to pick between a stable time loop and CCP spaghetti code, I choose the latter and guess that the server simply dropped them on the wrong exit hole when the original one collapsed. They warp to me while our brave holdouts inside the C6 leave to a subchannel to try and extract as much as they can from the grip of an angry Russian mob. The Moros meanwhile is tackled, but since all of our neuts were left inside the wormhole, we're lacking the means to finish off the wounded beast. More pings go out, and we find two pilots able to bring neuts to the party yet again.

Eventually, after ten minutes, the cap boosters in cargo depleted, the dreadnought finally succumbs. We collect the spoils and survey the carnage. We actually manage to go green in the ISK department despite having suffered heavy losses ourselves in the extraction, with the Moros value outweighing a lot of our own losses. Considering the bizarre situation we found ourselves in against the Nestors' smartbomb screening technique enabled by the system effect, it was probably a better outcome than we had any right to expect.

Final tally: Image
  • Killed: 6.96b ISK
  • Lost: 4.97b ISK
  • Efficiency: 58.3%
  • Status: Moros dead, Titus happy
*creak*
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Post by Zeerse Solaris »

I died, twice.

To expand. My first loss was an Ishtar. Being neut and scram, both of which are good things against a nestor, I was 28km off the hole to potentially stop him from MJDing away, their damage was being held well by our logi but it quickly got a lot worse when bigger stuff arrived. Eventually I went down.

Arriving back in ALI with not much for choice from my own hangars, I grabbed a VNI and came back, by which time the Moros was on the outside of the hole. He seemed to recognise my squishiness, making me warp off once even though I was orbiting close which I hoped had been under his guns, after citadel repairs a 2nd run back in was not as successful. I docked up in a station to get a rookie ship to make sure I was on the killmail when the Moros went down.
Last edited by Zeerse Solaris on 2017.10.19 11:47, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [WHC] Weighing half a fleet against a Moros

Post by Tylenos Targas »

I'm not dead yet... Schrödingers Bhaalgorn
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Re: [WHC] Weighing half a fleet against a Moros

Post by Conci Furiram »

I lost a Rook :( And brought back a double plated Devoter :)
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Re: [WHC] Weighing half a fleet against a Moros

Post by Troven Smalvard »

bonus points to Conci, for burning out his jammers in the mid engagement to remind and highlight us all of the Red Gianty Goodness of the target system
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Re: [WHC] Weighing half a fleet against a Moros

Post by Vlo Uhm »

Lost my stratios with the trickling, but it was nice to help annoy them enough to escalate. :-P

Good fun flying the caracals against those odds and then safely extracting and joining the fray in my Sacrilige.
:lol: and got my first Moros kill. :lol:

Thanks go to everyone flying! Great fun.
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Re: [WHC] Weighing half a fleet against a Moros

Post by Titus Tallang »

Had some time to reflect, so here's a few things I'd do differently next time:
  • Use the time we have to split the fleet up in an organized manner instead of having everyone jump:
    • We had three Guardians on grid and a fourth one on its way - if we called for two guardians to stay behind, we would've had a reasonable composition on the inside that, while being unable to kill anything, might've been able to extract better.
    • In the same vein as the previous point, we could've also prioritized high-value/high-effectiveness-per-mass ships and had them jump 2-3 seconds before the rest of the fleet, maybe allowing us to lose cheaper ships instead of the shinies we did.
  • Immediately split the secondary fleet (the leftovers) into a separate mumble channel. That side was mostly left in disarray for the first 30 seconds or so until Arimos (correctly) took over and moved them to a second channel. If we had coordinated their side properly, we might've avoided some further losses.
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Re: [WHC] Weighing half a fleet against a Moros

Post by Christoph Patrouette »

Sadly, i was too late to participate. But i would like to suggest the title of "Captain Ahab" to Titus - for carrying on his crusade against all the big fish in this universe, at all tides :)

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Re: [WHC] Weighing half a fleet against a Moros

Post by Sylvanium Orlenard »

Killed a Bearing Moros :) Nice to see the WHC still alive and kicking. You guys might see me return soon(tm)
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