[AAR] Rail Moas on the Syndicate Railroad

[Breeze One]

That was a fun little fleet guys! Thanks for coming out!

We formed up quite a small fleet of around 16, which is pretty good for a Null Sec mid-week roam at this time I think. We had 3 Logi, 1 Bubbler, 2 Scouts, 9 Moas, and an Atron

I wanted to stick around Syndicate tonight, rather than going looking for bigger fights elsewhere, both due to our numbers, and also to see what people locally formed up to face us. The plan was basically to gate/station camp our way around the top end of Syndicate until we annoyed people enough to respond

It was all quiet around PC9, with a camping gang having just left, so we headed up through the "system which shall not be named", with a wistful glance at a safe'd up Rattlesnake, and set up a camp in FD-MLJ while our scouts roamed around. Jax soon spotted a Loki gate camping the Orvolle exit in PF-346, so we quickly abandoned our camp and moved over. Jax and Union went for tackle, and did a fantastic job holding him, given he turned out to have blingy long range webs. He also seemed to chase our scouts off the gate for a bit which was ideal. When we landed he was far off the gate, and got a heavy delivery of Antimatter

He went down fast considering it was a 1.6bn ISK fit! Plus an (almost) full Genolution pod! Woop woop for ISK efficient fleets from the start! Great catch scouts!

(18:57:51Z) PF-346
Stiletto -43.85m
Loki +1668.16m
Capsule +625.6m

While Union re-shipped we set up a gate camp in FD-MLJ again, but caught nothing except a Shuttle, which, small as it is, is an "achievement" on ZKill I'd never managed before, so yey! Op success!

(19:08:35Z) FD-MLJ
Gallente Shuttle +0.02m

With Union returned, we headed next door to X-M2LR, where Initiative had a bunch of guys in system, all docked up. They probed us with a Ceptor or two, and kept undocking a Jackdaw to peak at our fleet, but never formed anything. We bubbled the station, and popped a few cyno ships in an effort to annoy them into undocking but no luck

Someone forgot to swap out of their training clone on the Cyno alt though!

(19:17:13Z) X-M2LR
Inquisitor +2.01m
Velator +1.6m
Capsule +47.62m

Things went quiet for a few jumps while we probed systems nearby, until Jax found a Procurer in Rf-GGF (CASTabouts home system) with potentially a Svipul and ANI support. We burned over as Jax held tackle, and got a nice Procurer kill, but the DPS ships warped out

And is this the night of blingy pods or something!? Never not kill the pods guys....

(19:42:50Z) RF-GGF
Procurer +56.89m
Capsule +230.89m

We bubbled up the Castabouts station, and tried to provoke a reaction. This time it worked! They undocked a Nightmare and the ANI from before, which seemed like the start of some fun, but then just kept undocking more...

They ended up with 6 (blingy) Battleships undocked with some smaller support, which was more than our little fleet (9 Moas ) was in a position to handle. Luckily they had no bubbles, and I had us anchored on me and aligned out. We tried to kill their Prophecy (literally the softest target they had undocked!) before we warped out. Sadly 2 Logi got caught in the process

We ended up ISK positive (those pods again!) but losing the Logi hurt

(19:51:25Z) RF-GGF
Prophecy +74.51m
Osprey -22.61m
Osprey -18.68m
Capsule +48.95m

We thought we might have a chance of isolating the Nightmare at one point, so went back in, but we didn't get the bubble up on the rest of the fleet at the station fast enough, and the other Battleships were able to warp over and re-join their friend. We lost a Moa trying to pull that off

Moa -38.07m

We started heading home, but spotted that Init had formed their own gate camp in PF-346, (I think...Ferox, Hecate, Rapier, Keres..Brutix?) so even though we only had 1 Logi left we went to investigate. Union got a great bubble on them and we caught their Keres (and his not-so blingy pod), then killed their drag bubble

(20:07:26Z) PF-346
Keres +50.94m
Capsule +7.84m
Mobile Medium Warp Disruptor I +3.72m

We had hoped the gate camp might want to fight us - at this stage, due to losses and folks having to drop we only had 6 Moas, and a single Logi so, pretty engageable. However they decided to upship instead, undocking 5 Battlecruisers and a Golem...

Shaking our heads a bit, we headed back to gate and jumped through, but they had a bubbler on the other side. We anchored on me, as their Battlecruisers jumped after us. I primaried a Brutix, which we're all convinced we killed...but it doesnt show up anywhere!

In retrospect, as pointed out on the fleet, I should have shot their 2 Sabres, to stop the bubbles they kept popping up and allowed us to extract better - sorry guys its been a while since I FC'd Null Sec and that was a bad call from me. As it was, they took out most of our remaining Moas sadly

(20:15:42Z) FD-MLJ
Moa -43.11m
Moa -29.09m
Moa -38.5m
Moa -39.72m

With me podded back home, Decklin took over to take the remaining fleet back to PC-9, dodging the Init gang and another camping gang which was moving through the same space. Great job thanks Decklin!

Sadly our bubbler was lost, heroically dropping one last defensive bubble to slow down our pursuers as he did so. Heroic sacrifice Union!

(20:26:09Z) 6E-578
Sabre -98.29m

Stats
ISK Destroyed: 2,818,750,361.74
ISK Lost: 371,933,345.87
ISK Delta: 2,446,817,015.87
Efficiency: 88.343%

Thanks to everyone for coming out! Syndicate was pretty good for content tonight actually, so lets do this again at some point!

Spoiler

Roam members (16) - NOTE: This section is NOT usually included in AARs.
Azalee Madeveda
B'aldrick Aivoras
Bora Vyvorant
Breeze One
Crimson Cadelanne
Decklin Quark Reiger
Eddie Dante
Jax Renalard
Jonathan Wolf
Raijin Naom
Rider Isleman
Union Pivo
Waldy Droog
Wokum
Zana Fehrnah
Zeon Alabel

[Breeze One]

General note, be interested to hear any opinions on the Moa fits

I’ve flown these fits before, but I’ve also occasionally flown AB Moas with 250mm Rails, and I see this variant is on the Corp fittings already for NSC. These get a greater tank, and marginally increased range, at the expense of mobility. They work great for fleet vs fleet combat, if you can get a good warp in, but I decided to go with MWD Moas here with 200mm Rails (which is probably more of a standard fit) for the mobility when roaming

Personally, I think it was the right call. There were a lot of cases here where we had to burn towards or away from a target, or burn through bubbles, and a 600m/s speed with an AB would probably have lost us some kills and lost us more ships in most engagements

You can argue that better FC’ing and positioning would mitigate this, but, I like the flexibility of the extra speed to compensate for less than optimal initial positioning. I do like the AB fit a lot, but for roaming like this, I’m a bigger fan of the MWD fit

[Jax Renalard]

I really enjoy scouting in Null where I have less blues. Knowing which sites to go to and the unpredictability of it. It was pretty tense holding off a svipul and scythe fleet issue chasing me as I held tackle on the proc. I had manage to get out of range of them and Union came in system just in time to scare them off and for me to reestablish tackle. Will fly scout for any null fleet again.

The loki was foolish to engage me on gate. I threw a few missiles at him to piss him off a bit and he took the bait. Loki had scary long webs but proper overheating of mwd got me out of range while union got secondary. I manage to tackle him again and hold him down while he was too busy with union.

Null is a different game. You got to exploit bubbles defensively and offensively. Always, always primary sabres. The longer they are alive the more control the enemy has of the entire field.

[Yuri Levnik]

Is that a common Loki fit? No buffer at all, from the look of it- I only get 17k ehp on Osmium, though it reps 609 ehp/s unheated.

[Bora Vyvorant]

Great fleet. First organized roam I've been on since I can't remember when, enjoyed every minute.

I agree that the MWD/200mm fit worked pretty well; I've also previously only flown the AB/250mm variant but the extra mobility was very useful.

I was expecting to have more cap problems than turned out to be the case in practice. I think I only used four cap charges in the end, all in "chase" situations. There was a point where I got the "I am going to show the capacitor as empty no matter what its level" GUI bug, which made me remember one of the reasons being closer to cap stable is nice... one less thing to monitor.

FC and scouts did a great job; only suggestion I'd make would be to make clearer calls about when to use prop mods and when to stop. With these fits, it's not something you can just leave running.

[Azalee Madeveda]

Great fun fleet.
I like roaming in null sec more and more. (not just because I don't have to worry about my dwindling sec status)

Not sure how about the Moa fly but from a logi point of view it was not hard to hold you (until overwhelmed by BS), will need a balanced fight to judge this better.

Looking forward to the next time.

[Jonathan Wolf]

It was a fun. The most newbie logi survived and keep the fleet up untill the end-i think im just a lucky guy

[Breeze One]

I gotta say Jonathan, its been great having a solid new support pilot (EWAR & Logi) like yourself on my recent fleets Much appreciated

Its really nice seeing how even a fairly new Alpha pilot can be really valuable in fleets - and hopefully with the incoming changes to Alpha skills it'll only get better for everyone!