We were chilling in Amygnon and some miners just began to mine at Astreoid Field closer to Citadel 101. In the meantime we spotted several suspicious names in local, one in Ibis and the other one in Vexor. Even the vexor one warped to field and stayed on grid with mining fleet a bit. As I said it was suspicious and I began to roam around within region both lowsec and highsec routes to check any kind of wartargets. I already warned fleet and HSC about that and they were prepared to warp away at the slightest hint of danger.
I checked systems and when I was on my way back to Amygnon from Gisleres, I spotted wartarget in Jufvitte just in time! I mean really just in time since people were discussion what to do what if wartarget jumped into local and I jumped to Jufvitte and immediatly warned HSC about wartarget in Jufvitte. Moments later wartarget jumped into Amygnon but our miners were already in warp & docked. And couple of moments later +7 wartargets spiked Jufvitte and then Amygnon right away! That was a very close call and HSC succesfully saved its mining fleet without any direct confrontation and losses.
I jumped into Amygnon and then immediatly called to fleet up. First I asked for BLAP Caracals & Ospreys with tackle and ewar but sadly we did not have sufficient Caracal & Osprey users to defy wartargets. Then I recalled for BLAP Vexors & Augorors and there were 4 Logistics and many Vexors with support ships available right away in fleet. So it was settled. We will force them to engage us around gates and try our best to tackle them at first not letting them to pull range or burn back to gate.
There was solo Drake loss at gate while we are still getting prepared. I appreciate the enthusiasm and eagerness you have, I really do, but please do not travel back and forth especially if there is large siege around Amygnon. There were all kind of reports on comms, and in chat channels. This loss really could be evaded. But that was the first of many...
Drake Loss : 71.5 million ISK Loss
We undocked and aligned to Jufvitte gate. Following to all fleet aligned to gate, we fleet warped to the gate to zero and start camping the gate. Our plan is to tackle them as fast as possible if they try to crash the gate and if they try to pull range we could exchange some fire with drones as well.
They jumped in after some time and then we engaged. We began shooting each other but it was revealed that our logistics could not stand against heavy incoming damage and we lost our entire logistics before we align out and warp to citadel right after. They persisted on grid heroically to save the combat ships and their sacrifice kept our combat ships safe until they warped away right after the destruction of last logistics.
Battle Report #01 : 87.50 million ISK Loss
In here I was mistaken about how much logistics I needed since apparently the incoming damage was higher then I originally anticipated. This was my calculation error and fleet lost logistics due to this error.
While we are re-forming the fleet, we lost two Asteros at gates which I did not really understand why. I was very busy reforming fleet and I am not sure whether those Asteros were the scouts or not. But here I need to state that wartargets and their composition were already deermined and we needed just two eyes on both sides of Amygnon / Jufvitte gate stationary. And being in a covops Astero is a huge advantage. All they need to do is warping gate at range cloaked and then moving to misaligned location on grid so no one could decloak them. I apprecite the effort but those Astero losses were far from ideal cases.
Astero @ Amygnon : 140 million ISK Loss
Astero @ Jufvitte : 130 million ISK Loss
So; if you have covops and if you want to scout the gate please be sure that you warp to gate tactical cloaked and always monitor grid. And please just remove the Sister Probe Launchers from those Asteros for scout duty. One third of the loss value comes from those Probe Launchers.
We reformed the fleet with 6 Augorors, 10 Vexors, 1 Vindicator, 1 Bhaalgorn and support ships this time and we were ready to engage. The plan was same as before ; forcing them into scram/web range with our Remote Sensor Dampeners loaded with Targeting Range Dampener Scripts and hopefully Vindicator webs help to hold some ships until we got scram on them until their destruction.
Also we had a Stabber at the Jufvitte side of the gate ready to tackle anything if they red box the stabber. The plan worked and they engaged stabber but we did not respond fast enough to save the Stabber before he died to wartargets. However this sacrifice worked and we began exchanging fire. We fought long time and we managed to kill 3 Caracals, 1 Stabber and 1 Cynabal in exchange of 1 Stabber, 1 Vexor, 4 Griffins and 1 Slasher. Here Jacob did a very good job at tackling that Cynabal.
This engagement was going very good and I was keep telling people when to engage and when to stop. This continued for some time. I was asking to stop firing sometimes and then start again when I see fit. That might created some confusion in fleet members since they needed to keep track of all things and it was very tight situation.
We were very close to lose the Vindicator at some point since it pulled some range while trying to tackle wartargets but when I saw that he is going out of repair range I called him to return to gate immediatly with MWD on and called logistics to overheat repairs on Vindicator. I should say that logistics was very good in this fight and saved many ships from certain death by applying very good repairs. We kept exchanging fire for some time while they are at range and we are at gate.
When logistics said they lost one logistics, I said hold fire and disengage. Then second logistics went down. So logistics having hard time to recover capacitor chain and repairs again. Here I gave the order to jump but I disregarded the fact that we still have 30 seconds timer. Some was able to jump some could not. So fleet divided into two: fleet jumped into Amygnon and fleet at Jufvitte side. I called for scatter and regroup since we had no tackle on us yet. However Bhaalgorn got tackled and he still had timer. But it was not a big issue since Bhaalgorn should have some tank to persist until we warp back. I ordered the fleet in Amygnon to burn back to Jufvitte gate and jump on contact and repair Bhaalgorn asap and Jufvitte fleet to warp to Amygnon gate asap and persist to save Bhaalgorn. We warped back to gate only to see that Bhaalgorn was 100km away from gate and burning away. It was really bad situation and even we could rebounce from gate tacticals there was a propability of landing to Bhaalgorn one by one and face the incoming DPS without proper logi chain and repairs. When I was about to call to burn to Bhaalgorn we saw that it exploded. At this point I was extremely dissapointed. I call for burning back to Amygnon gate and then get ready to jump by disengaging and stop boosting. We retreated to Amygnon without further loss and docked up.
Battle Report #02 : 794.30 million ISK Loss / 335.20 million ISK Kill
There were some issues on this engagement :
- People calling "I am being yellow boxed" in fleet comms which clogs the comms channel a lot. Later we discussed this issue and it seems Fleet 101 lecture slide#12 is not very clear for new capsuleers. Being redboxed and yellow boxed should be explained. I also fail to explain what those terms means so that led some confusion. I warned people to broadcast for repairs when they are yellow boxed but some did not know what yellow boxing means. While in the heat of QRF I must have skipped some important points in newbro speech (very brief one) and this was my fault ultimately.
- The loss of 1st logistics was a shock and then we lost second. I think I should have tell logistics to overheat their hardeners if they are not holding. I told logistics to overheat repairs time to time but not hardeners. But I appreciate the efforts of logistics and I believe they did really good work since in my first logistics, let alone overheating hardeners, I forgot to active them at all !
- Sensor Booster scripts. ECCM and Scan Resolution scripts were loaded but the opponent fleet had no ECM so I should have told that Logistics should script their both sensor boosters with Scan Resolution scripts.
- Bhaalgorn was lost since instead of staying at gate and waiting for timer or for us to warp back, Michael MJD out. That was not effective on two reasons. First, the opponent fleet is very fast and they tackled him again without giving him enough time to warp off. Second he did not mention this in fleet so we thought that he was still at gate and warped back to gate. And as a bonus since he was below 150km away (100km) we could not warp him right away. And sadly he was still moving away from gate. Following to this lost I was very dissapointed and I raised my voice and was very firm and I might be somewhat a bit rough (though I did not say anything bad to anyone or insult) and I expressed my dissapointment. If we could get exact intel about his situation we could have saved him.
In here I want to add this; I really appreciate your efforts Michael, really do. I understood that you could not talk in comms due to RL but can listen only and I respect that as well, and you are probably older then me so I honestly apologize in front of everyone here if I hurt your feelings or made you feel bad by being rude or in any way during fleet. So I want to ask from you :
- to accept my apology please,
- to understand my position on this case,
- and take this as suggestion: inform the fleet about exact situation asap so we could be more helpful next time.
As you could read from previous results we had a very long talk and sort out few things to be more effective fleet. Our logistics (really they should get a medal not only to bear with me but to persist being logistics!) reshipped and we were ready to go again! This time I reshipped into Hyperion to replace the Bhaalgorn we lost and rest of the fleet stayed somewhat same.
We had a report that our old former PIRAT friend Mistani was also coming to Amygnon with the wartagets from Ouelletta, with his infamous Nightmare. I gave specfic orders not to engage him even he gets suspect timer since I know that his ship is very fast and deadly. He also brough a Magus with him. So when all fleets decloaked at gate in Amygnon, hell broke. It was close call but we managed to wipe out 2 Caracals in exchange of several frigates and Vexor, however others succesfully pulled range. We had a brief tackle on Cynabal at the beginning, but since we failed to land heavy tackle on it, the poor frigate exploded very shortly after he tackled the Cynabal and Cynabal warped off.
But here something weird happened. We saw one Orthrus was popped and then the next! It seems Mistani was not with them but was engaging to them. So our fleet succesfully ninjaed the killmail of those 2 Orthruses! So even though we were not the ones killed them, I think adding them to the deathtoll is the right move since it was within engagement protocols.
The engagement was going well and then it failed again. How you may ask? Well that was after I was greeted by two new fleet members in SHIELD T3Ds instead of Armor ships even though I SPECIFICALLY stated that I NEED fast tackle and/or Vexor. When the first T3D gone I became dissapointed but I kept my silence, but when we lost another one which was apparently for "Killing Drones" (against missile boats!) I called fleet to disengage immediatly. We were not tackled since the enemy was 50km away. I called align to the Citadel and then 5 seconds later I warped the whole fleet to Citadel and then we docked and ended the fleet.
Battle Report #03 : 215.6 million ISK Loss / 828.10 million ISK Kill
Here I am not going to repeat many issues but let me say this: Maybe next time someone brings an odd ship to a doctrine fleet I should make sure that EVE University fleet members are in the lossmail of that ship.