Goals:
I had 2 goals for the fleet:
1. Fly in a small gang environment when many pilots contribute to the content
2. Practice kiting and experience fights against stronger opponents
3. Have fun
The first goal failed. We did have enough for a small gang, though realistically, it was more a small fleet than a small gang. Why? Because there were not many people who were taking part in creating content. We had few newbros and few other pilots who were happy to follow FC commands, but did not contribute in the way a small gang should perform.
In general, I would be happy, but in this particular fleet, I would love a different experience. Probably, I should be more clear on expectations to pilots.
Though, I can happily report that we did succed in 2 other goals: we had quite a few fights when we were overwhelmed. And that fact that each time we lost does not poison fun we got.
First engagement: Hyperion
During undock we had around 9 pilots. 1 self-erp Scythe, 1 ceptor, 1 T3D (probber), 1 Belicose, the rest DDs.
While we were forming up, Space reported the gate camp in Sindicate: Cynabal+Sabre. So I got fleet towards MHC. Unfortunately, opponents got eyes on us and run away. We picked-up one pilot in Caracal from PC9... and few jumps from it we spotted a Hyperion. I was skeptical about our ability tp kill it: from recent engagement I knew that tripple rep Hyperion can tank up to 3k EHP cold (until he consumes nanite paste in LAAR), after that ... he can rep around 2k (not sure how much though). Yet, I wanted the fleet to practice kiting, so I decided we will kite him for some time and disengage when this will become boring.
Unfortunately. we lost many ships. First pilots were on their own. Later I called to anchor on me, but did poor job anchoring and we lost 1-2 more. In the end, we were joined by Coercers gang: as per our intel they were from a different alliance so I thought they may help us killing a Hyperion, unfortunately, they killed us.
we probably should have disengaged once we saw Coercers on grid and have 2 lost Caracals less.(03:36:32Z) F67E-Q
Scythe -13.14m
Caracal -39.97m
Caracal -19.99m
Bellicose -24.11m
Caracal -24.55m
Caracal -30.21m
Capsule -0.01m
Few things I learned from this fight:
1. Don't expect regular fleet member to be able to kite well. We lost 2-3 ships by trying to stay out of Hyperions tackle.
2. If you expect fleet to orbit target at 20km then anchor should probably orbit at 30km...
3. As I had a tackle, I should not try staying at point range, but instead stay at 35-40km range (range of Caracals' fury missiles)
Yet, I believe even we lost ships, we learned many things and it was worth it.
Seconds engagement: hunting Coercers.
We went to PC9 to reship (I like roaming in Syndicate as we have a base nearby!!!), get few more NSC folks joined us (including a dictor, 2 Osprey logies).
Few of us got podded to Stacmon and decided to not wait for the fleet to reship and get killed on the way soloing:
(04:03:29Z) 6E-578
Caracal -35.12m
Scouts kept eyes on Coercers gang so we went hunting for it.
We spend quite a bit of time trying to hunt them. Using dictor, probber, warp-in aligned from station, etc. We experienced a glitch. I did not understand it completely so please fill-in more details if I missed something important. Some gates have a 'dead area' so ships in that area are visible on d-scan, but not on overview unless you are 150km to them or less.
I'm sure those guys did not see whole our fleet because at some point trying to run out of us they landed on the gate with the rest of the fleet and got murdered. Pontifex run away, but we caught Keres and few DDs:
(04:36:13Z) Poitot
Keres -40.74m
Cormorant +14.66m
Slasher -4.91m
Keres +45.67m
Coercer +18.79m
Coercer +18.79m
Coercer +17.13m
Only now I've realized we also lost a Keres... I guess that's because I called fleet to be on the gate at 0. I did because I planned to have fleet to jump through and did not expect Coercers will jump into us. Not sure what would I do if I was flying Keres myself, mostlikely I would aggress as well. But I think the proper course of actions should be to either pull the range so they can't catch me or don't agress, but jump.
Third engagement: whelped to Horde
Further, we moved to Horde space. Few folks from NSC dropped, we still had 2 logies, but were a bit light on DPS.
Till the 7RM we found nothing, and after I called in local "anybody wants to fight" they undocked a ton of stuff. Including Scimitar, Deimos, and many other ships (like 20ish). In my previous fleet I decided: THAT"S TOO MUCH and run away. But, I did purposely fly here for exactly this type of fights: kite overwhelming forces.
To make story short, we got 1 kill, but lost everything except of logies and ceptor:
(05:39:25Z) F-NMX6
Thrasher +2.37m
Capsule +0.01m
Heretic -91.63m
Dragoon -7.69m
Capsule -0.01m
Caracal -14.44m
Caracal -32.67m
Caracal -34.53m
Capsule -0.01m
What I learned from this:
1. You don't need to be at 20-30km to the gate to shoot small things: in this case you are very easy target to catch.
2. I should have pulled like 60-80 km from the gate, kite, see what comes close, and shoot small targets which we can kill quickly.
3. Don't call for fight in Horde space when there is 100 people in local
Now I have few other ideas on how we could make it work better for our advantage.Anyway, was interesting and good fleet, hope you guys enjoyed it.
Overall participants:
Spoiler
Arcanegrove Phenxore
Azador Delacroix
Birdinator Wyld
Budda Sereda
Derek Jalarr
Gemma Solett
I Skip Legday
Jyo Cbip
Kirsid Tannaway
Mal Kard
Mike North
Nunnery Michigan
Omnicious Shardani
Space Warfare Development
Syricco
Will Musana
Wokum
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