[HSC] Defeat against Guristas FOB

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Ersin Oghuz
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[HSC] Defeat against Guristas FOB

Post by Ersin Oghuz »

It started with Tal's slack ping about Guristas Forward Operating Base in Amygnon. I logged in today and start forming up fleet after downtime since I felt somewhat confident about we could manage it with a small fleet depending on what I watched on youtube[ 1 ] and what I read from web[ 2 ]. We formed a fleet including several Battleships, 3 Augorors and some other armor tanked Cruisers and a Battlecruiser. We were confident about outcome and our plan was simple, we warp in to 300km tactical and kill the fleet first and then kill the FOB when fleet is eliminated. Well, let's say it was not that easy. The more we shoot them the more they sent reinforcements and fleet was not on primary targets and DPS was split due to miscommunication. At some point we saw, 10 Battleships (Ravens and Rattlesnakes), and 50 cruisers( 8 Ospreys, 2 Blackbirds, 2-3 Gilas and Caracals)on grid with us and they killed our T2 logistics, Guardian. Even with Guardian it was very stressful but after Guardian was lost they started to wipe us out hence I called for scatter. We failed to kill the fleet even before we touch FOB itself:

Guardian Loss : 313 million ISK
Augoror Loss : 16.2 million ISK
Typhoon Loss : 241.6 million ISK
Prophecy Loss : 68.6 million ISK
Hyperion Loss : 372 million ISK

1st Battle Loss : 1011.4 million ISK FC: Ersin, 2IC : Eadrom

Enemy ships can warp around structure freely so it was very hard to escape from them if we need to. And they could land on top of us and/or warp off if they are not tackled. And the fact that we have BS on grid probably caused stronger spawns, so we changed into Cruisers only fleet doctrine (BLAP Augs and BLAP Vexors) for second battle. We formed 9 member fleet with 4 Augorors and 5 Vexors. This time fleet killed enemies faster due to better application of damage to primary targets but at some point enemy blobbed us again with numerous cruisers and eliminated our logistic squad so FC gave scatter order. Tal got out there since enemy dropped their tackle on him, if they did not we would lose all logi in that battle, but still we lost 3 Augs in that fight before we warped off. This time we lost much less the first battle but still we were defeated.

Augoror Loss : 18.3 million ISK
Augoror Loss : 16.2 million ISK
Augoror Loss : 16.8 million ISK

2nd Battle Loss : 51.3 million ISK FC: Eadrom

After this WHC decided to form up a fleet and come to HSC to help us out while HSC is burning with the revenge feelings! We wanted that FOB dead! We discussed to switch Exequrors instead of Augorors due to jamming from Blackbirds and Gilas, but WHC said they will bring Guardian Squadron so it would be fine :) WHC came in to Amygnon (they lost a Guardian while travelling in Low-sec to a gate camp -please be in comms and in fleet WHC :P ) and we formed a fleet together in total +15 members with Vexors, Sacrilages and Guardians.

Well, this time... This time, oh boy... This time we lost again! We lost 2 Guardians on grid before scatter order was given again :D After that order we lost 1 more Guardian and 1 Vexor. While warping out I saw couple of Guristas Ravens warping in as well :D

Guardian Loss : 394.8 million ISK
Guardian Loss : 301.7 million ISK
Guardian Loss : 329.5 million ISK
Vexor Loss : 34.9 million ISK

3rd Battle Loss : 1060.9 million ISK FC: Titus

TOTAL LOSS : 2123.6 million ISK (+2.12 billion ISK)
ISK Efficieny : We were 100% Efficient on Loosing ships :P
Loot Efficieny : I looted all wrecks with 100% efficiency :P


Well, Guristas : 3, EUNI : 0 for now while I am composing this AAR and I believe there are still people out there in HSC, trying to form fleet AGAIN :lol:

What was good :
+ Enthusiasm for the content and eagerness to reship if needed. HSC residents showed good interest and they were eager! WHC was also eager to help and coordination was good.
+ All members brought doctrine ships!
+ It was a good experimental fleet with lots of fun and learning. Logistics in first battle stressed out that it was great experience due to heavy DPS stress so it was a good learning experience for them.
+ Comms was decent and it was all clear.

What was not good :
- We failed to keep DPS on primaries on 1st battle. We could not kill their logistics fast enough since DPS was split.
- Even we had some plans beforehand, we failed to achieve our goal due to inexperience on this FOBs. We thought it could be run with a mid-size fleet with our composition but clearly we were wrong.

To summarize even we had a good doctrine fleet which gave us a sense of confidence, our inexperinece on what we need for eliminating FOBs led us our destruction. It seems FOB content totally favors solo VNIs instead of cooperative play style. The site basically spawns waves after waves while fleet is eliminating their ships. For each couple of ships we destroyed I saw new wave warped in with more then we killed. After some point the alpha became too much to deal.
"In Blasters I Trust"

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Martin Vanzyl
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Re: [HSC] Defeat against Guristas FOB

Post by Martin Vanzyl »

Was fun doing Logi, despite getting whelped, but there's just... something wrong with PVE content that seemingly punishes you for bringing a full proper fleet of peeps with Logi... then getting totally escelated into oblivion... when you can just troll the spawn mechanics with a single VNI and be successful...

To CCP:

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Re: [HSC] Defeat against Guristas FOB

Post by Budda Sereda »

That's interesting, but not enough details on what was actually going on on grid.

Would be great to understand what did exactly happen during the 3rd attempt. Did NPCs scram guards and escalate further enough to break tank? Could guardians kite? Could not we clear tackles? Who was FCing it? Would it be possible to clear site with kity doctrine (basylisks)?

Thanks
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Re: [HSC] Defeat against Guristas FOB

Post by Ersin Oghuz »

Yes, they are bringing Blackbirds and Gilas with ECMs so they break the chain and single out logistic ships one by one. Kiting may be viable option but not 100% since all ships can warp between pings on grid freely. I did not see any scrams, so all tackle is warp disruption. Basically they spawned so much Caracal in multiple waves, we cannot deal with their alpha strikes. Titus is now soloing the site with VNI ...

1st Fleet : I FC while Eadrom relay orders on comms while I type in Fleet Chat
2nd Fleet : Eadrom was FC.
3rd Fleet : Titus was FC.
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Re: [HSC] Defeat against Guristas FOB

Post by Titus Tallang »

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Re: [HSC] Defeat against Guristas FOB

Post by Cryptic Sharvas »

according to the solo VNI videos I have seen online there isn't a payout when you solo the base and you need to warp in a frigate on grid right near the end to get paid.

Titus did you get paid when you solo'ed the site?
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Re: [HSC] Defeat against Guristas FOB

Post by Budda Sereda »

I don't see mentioned NPC tackles... if that just not mentioned or we were not careful enough to align out?
Kiting may be viable option but not 100% since all ships can warp between pings on grid freely
Not sure what does this mean.
The fact that they can warp does not mean you can't stay at 40-60km from the BLOP and apply your damage. If they warp out... can they warp back on top of your fleet? Or they can warp to their own tackle ship? I don't believe NPC cheat game mechanic and can either warp on ANY point on the grid.
And if so, your goal is to kill tackle before something lands on it.

I did hear CCP does have an intention to implement changes to simulate real PvP in NPCs implementation... looks like did a good job. Too good.

But if Titus also blames CCP... Screw the balance, I'm curious what CCP did so we lost guardians?
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Re: [HSC] Defeat against Guristas FOB

Post by Christoph Patrouette »

They tackle, thats why we lost some ships. Also incoming damage was too much, even overheated reppers.

The NPCs can freely warp to any of our ships on grid. Yes, they cheat. Thats why kiting does not work if you fly less then 2-3km/s. They will constantly warp to you. If you kill the tackle (or any other group), a new wave will warp in immediatly, apparently never ending respawns. You have to ignore the fleet really and focus on the station...
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Re: [HSC] Defeat against Guristas FOB

Post by Hirmuolio Pine »

The site is now being soloed (or has been already). But for future attempts:

The guristas deal only thermal damage. So the only option for fleet is to cheese the fits with minmaxed thermal resists.

With RAH+3x thermal hardener II an augoror can get 95.8% thermal resistance. This would allow the augoror to receive 1448 EHP/s from SINGLE incoming rep (for comparison the guardian I lost had 82.1% thermal resist and received 339 EHP/s from single rep). Also since the defenders can warp freely and frigates web the AB is not very useful and can be swapped for third SEBO.

Combine this with mallers with RAH+2x thermal hardener II + thermal resist rig (96% resistance with all V). or some other cruiser with RAH+3x thermal hardener II. Better to not bring big ships to avoid guristas escalating with their big ships.

This setup is able to tank ridiciluous ammount of damage and should be able to completely ignore the defenders. Just park it on the structure and start bashing the base. Assuming 250 dps per cruiser it would take about half an hour for six dps pilots to blow up the structure.

A more skill intensive alternative would be shield fleet with T2 caldari/gallente/minmatar cruisers. Those things have 60%-80% thermal resistance before you even add any hardeners. But the T1 shield ships barely get to 90% thermal resist (90.5% with 4x T2 hardeners + DC2) since they start from lower 20% base instead of 35% base and do not have module like RAH that gives 60% unpenalized resist.

Remember with high resist that when you get close to 100% even minimal increase in resistance has massive effect on damage taken. 90% resist ship takes TWICE as much damage as 95% resist ship.
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Re: [HSC] Defeat against Guristas FOB

Post by Cassiel Seraphim »

Ersin Oghuz wrote:... but WHC said they will bring Guardian Squadron so it would be fine :) WHC came in to Amygnon (they lost a Guardian while travelling in Low-sec to a gate camp -please be in comms and in fleet WHC :P )
I was on comms, I was in fleet, that had nothing to do with it.

It was a combination of issues, but mostly boils down to the call to hold cloak was amidst a lot of general chatter without being repeated or having some kind of prefice (to make it stand out amongst the chatter) and me accidentally thinking we finished the low security stint and hit high security space already (in a moment of excellent brainfartery I looked at the next system in route seeing high security space thinking we were out of it) and I aligned to the out-gate longside 10-15 suspects (since obviously they can't do anything when I'm in high security space) ... they showed me the flaw in my line of reasoning (that we were still in low security space) and the fleet stayed cloaked then crashed the gate and regrouped while I took my pod into actual high security space.

And yes, that's a long run-on-sentence because that's pretty much how it feels like on comms when there's non-stop chatter and your brain doesn't have time to reflect :)

Upon reflecting, I should have paid more attention, which would have easily avoided this as I know how to read the screen where it says what system security a system I'm in has ... and the fleet commander should remember that we repeat commands for a reason, so that if it's missed the first time, you get it the second or third time and we avoid a lot of unnecessary confusion.
Ersin Oghuz wrote:... and we formed a fleet together in total +15 members with Vexors, Sacrilages and Guardians.
With 4 guardians we thought we had a solid enough repping position to tackle the site. After all, we only had like 16-17 people in cruiser-class ships (less than 20, but more than could fit the watch list of 15) and a quarter of it tech two logistics. From a balance point of view, we were good.

Since I was logi I had other things on my mind, but as much I was able to see and remember, this is what happened:

Initially we had 4 caracals that warped around a bit, before engaging us, then throughout the fight more ships kept spawning in. Kestrels webbing and pointing, Blackbirds jamming, Gilas shooting heavy missiles, Caracals shooting heavy assault missiles and Ospreys repping. It was mostly the Caracals that kept on spawning as we worked on the Ospreys, but before too long we ended up facing a handful of Ospreys, a handful of Blackbirds, a handful of Kestrels and like 25+ Caracals.

Early on they shoot someone here, someone there, but for the main portion of this fight they kept volleying different logis, switching back and forth with eerily high percentage of scrubs shooting the right target at the right time (darn those computers, I want people who can function that well).

At some point, I don't know if it was a lucky jam from the Blackbirds, or the sheer number of Caracals that finally brought us down, but we buckled. We didn't get enough reps on one of the logi in time (or simply didn't have enough due to jams) and the first Guardian just melted away under the barrage of the Caracals. After that we held our ground for a short while by overheating, but we couldn't keep that up and down went the second guardian as we, at least I, were forced to stop overheating before burning out the entire rack.

The rest is history, I called out reps weren't holding (we were down to just 2 guardians) and the fleet scattered. A few more ships got caught by the Kestrels, but the rest warped out.

So what did we figure out?
- More and more ships will spawn as time goes on if you have more than a single ship and/or or a second frigate on grid (Titus didn't get any respawns after he went back alone in a cruiser, nor did he get more spawns when someone accidentally warped an Astero on grid).
- They all shoot 100% thermal missiles, Dread Guristas Rockets (Kestrels), Heavy Missiles (Gilas) and Heavy Assault Missiles (Caracals).
- They focus fire and shift targets in an intelligent manner, very efficiently.
- I dug around a bit to confirm the numbers, the Caracals have like 377 dps each so when they add up in numbers, with missiles hitting you for 986 hp volleys every 2,6 seconds.

If you want to try this again, I recommend you go nuts on Thermal resistance and that you figure out the spawn mechanics for these. If you kill all the Kestrels, will they keep respawning indefinitely? Or can you kite by clearing Kestrels? Same goes for the others, will they all respawn or just some of them? Is it merely a timer that spawns the ships? What happens if you upship? We still don't know much about that, at least not from the fight I was in.

What we do know is that when it resets (which it seems to do when you leave grid completely and wait long enough), it seems like it starts over with the base of 4 Caracals.
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Re: [HSC] Defeat against Guristas FOB

Post by Titus Tallang »

It resets after 15 minutes of not being engaged (incidentally also the duration of the repair cycle).

PS: This is the outcome of having 2 cruisers on grid. HSC should probably learn to read the bookmarks that say "DO NOT WARP":
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Re: [HSC] Defeat against Guristas FOB

Post by Titus Tallang »

Ersin picked up the torch after I dropped it following my failed attempt. Strategic victory has been achieved, and Amygnon is safe yet again.
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Re: [HSC] Defeat against Guristas FOB

Post by Ersin Oghuz »

Cassiel that post of yours is very good and detailed. Completes AAR in all manners. Thanks.
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Re: [HSC] Defeat against Guristas FOB

Post by Martin Vanzyl »

Wonder what tactics these peeps used:

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Re: [HSC] Defeat against Guristas FOB

Post by Tal Tracyn »

I can confirm that kestrals do respawn if killed first.
When i heard our guardians were having trouble i swapped my guns to kestrals and destroyed 3 (while keeping my drones on primary) and i noticed a spawn of another 3-4 warp in right on our logi.
So they will respawn there tackle.
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