LSC Roams Black Rise: Deconstructing a Welp

[Harai Rex]

Roam Members

Spoiler

Aiden Chance - vanguard
Edmund Vaille
Gemma Solett - scout
Harai Rex - FC
Jack Travellin
Klue Pythious - scout
Reise Amatin
Space Warfare Development

Hey all! On Friday night some of us at the LSC decided to take out a newbro-friendly kitchen sink roam. 6 of us (Reise and Space were in fleet, but not really roaming with us) hopped into a variety of mostly T1-fit frigates and left from Uphallant to go see what we could go blow up/get blown up by. The good news is some pilots who were new to pvp got REALLY used to dying terrible deaths.

Placid was fairly quiet, which worked just fine for us, as it gave rookie scout Klue plenty of time to get used to scouting. Our first bit of content came in Eha, where we found a small gang of sentinels with a catalyst for firepower on the Martoh gate. One of them was sitting on a perch fairly close to one of Gemma's tacticals, so I ordered the fleet to warp up and try to catch the sentinel there. I had underestimated just how nasty sentinels can be when they get all of their neuts on you, and half our fleet got capped out fairly quickly. I called scatter, and most of the fleet got out, with the exception of the FC (myself). A bit later Gemma got caught by an unrelated tristan on the Oicx gate. Silly Gemma.

Condor -9.73m
Kestrel -13.28m

After that headshot, the rest of the fleet took a bio break in Eha while I reshipped in Ichoriya. After we got moving again, things were pretty quiet until we hit Kinakka, where we had what is probably the most embarrassing engagement I've FC'd to date. Klue found a breacher and a corax on a small outpost, so I brought the rest of the fleet in to play with them. They ran away when we initially slid the gate, but the breacher then returned outside the plex. I ordered the fleet to bounce, and we found that the breacher was 100 km off the gate, but then the corax landed at 0 on top of us, so I had the fleet turn around and kill the corax. We died to this solo corax. All of us. One of the sentinels from earlier came back at the end of the fight, but didn't make much of a difference. I'm going to circle back to this fight at the end of the AAR and dive more into what went wrong, but for now just know that we mass welped, and went to Ichoriya to reship.

Tristan -3.69m
Rifter -6.27m
Kestrel -1.47m
Punisher -9.97m
Condor -9.81m

Fortunately, everyone was able to reship after the mass welp, and we turned around and started heading back to Uphallant. In Kinakka, Klue found a comet and a condor at a small plex, and went in for tackle without telling me. I brought the rest of the fleet in as soon as I found out what he was doing, but he died long before we arrived and the comet and condor ran before we could slide in. I took a minute afterwards to reiterate how important it is for a scout to be talking to the FC almost constantly, especially when he's going for tackle on a target. Sad we couldn't get the kill, but a good learning experience for our scout.

Merlin -0.99m

Klue went back to Ichoriya to reship, and Gemma took over as primary scout. His first catch was a kitey comet, which he could hold point on but the rest of the fleet couldn't catch up to, so we had to let it go. After that, our luck improved, and Gemma was able to find and tackle a plexing algos, which we promptly came in and killed. After we killed the algos, a tristan slid into us, so we killed that too.

Algos +1.86m
Tristan +9.97m

Gemma kept scouting, and found a Catalyst for us plexing in Indregulle. Easy tackle, easy kill.

Catalyst +6.75m

Our final content of the night was found in Ostingele, where Gemma found a catalyst and a comet at a plex for us. I had him, Klue, and Aiden go in for tackle, with the rest of the fleet following shortly behind. It was a short and bloody fight (appearently blaster catalysts hurt at close range), with us losing three of our own before the catalyst went down. I didn't want the rest of the fleet to try their luck with the comet without me on the field, so I called scatter after the catalyst died. We were isk negative on this engagement, but it was a fun way to end the roam.

Rifter -2.76m
Incursus -13.93m
Catalyst +14.12m
Merlin -0.99m

Stats
ISK Destroyed: 32,705,023.39
ISK Lost: 72,899,170.71
ISK Delta: -40,194,147.32
Efficiency: 30.969%

I want to go back to that welp to the Corax for a bit and talk, mostly for my own benefit, about why I think we welped so horribly in an engagement that would normally be a fairly secure kill. I think my errors in this engagement boiled down to two main things: lack of understanding of the corax as a ship, and misunderstanding the capabilities of my own fleet. I have precious little experience fighting the Corax, as it is a fairly rare sight in lowsec, and was not expecting it to hit as hard as it did at such long range. Looking back on it, I suspect this Corax had a heavy damage fit, and he was doing loads of damage with javelin rockets out to 20 km. At least two pilots report being killed in 3-4 volleys. I was simply not expecting this amount of damage or range out of a Corax. The second mistake I made was overestimating my own fleet. This was, first and foremost, a newbro roam: many of the pilots were flying T1 fit ships, and this was one of the first three roams for at least three fleet members. Through no fault of their own, they were lacking the sort of reaction time, situational awareness, damage, and tank that I subconsciously expected when I started FC'ing this engagement. I kept the fleet on grid long enough for a welp to happen because I overestimated the experience level of the pilots that remained, as well as the quality of their fittings. In the future, I will try harder to critically think about the capabilities of the pilots and ships under my command. Just to be clear, NONE of this is the fault of the pilots I was flying with: their lack of experience or capability was purely due to their newness and consequent lack of pvp experience or skill points, NOT because they're bad or in some way lacking as pilots or people.

With the exception of the Corax welp, I think this roam went pretty well. A handful of newbros learned a bit about how the LSC operates and got their first taste of pvp, and Klue did an excellent job as a newbie scout. If you went on this roam, feel free to add/correct stuff in the comments. Thank you all for joining, I had a blast!

See you all around, and happy hunting o7

[Decklin Quark Reiger]

First, in terms of knowing yourself:

Looking at the fits from a few of the frigate losses, I'm seeing undersized tank modules. That is, small shield extenders on the Tristan and Kestrel, as well as a 200mm plate on the Rifter. Small shield extenders are almost always a bad choice. It's worth investing the power grid in a medium shield extender (use a micro auxiliary power core if you need to). For the Rifter, I'd also recommend a 400mm plate instead of the 200.

Second, in terms of knowing your opponent:
Here's a loss from that Corax pilot:

https://zkillboard.com/kill/67935799/

With two webs he'll apply his Rage rockets very well and combined with lower buffer from the under-tanked frigates, that means that he melts them very quickly.

Since he has no prop mod, that Corax is vulnerable to being kited. His defence against kiting was to use Javelin rockets, reaching out to point range. At that distance he'll still do a ton more damage than your light missile Condor could.

So, it wasn't really a fight you guys could realistically win, given the fits that you all had on grid at the time.

If you happen to see him again, you can swap your turret disruptor for a missile disruptor, load a range disruption script, and plink away at him from a distance, hoping to kill him before you get outside interference.

Keep it up guys - the main thing is to keep learning from your losses

[Edmund Vaille]

This was my first time doing something fun with Eve Uni, and my first fleet experience. Even though we had a large net loss of ISK, I value everything I learned under Gemma and Harai much over the 40 Million ISK lost. If I had the choice of paying that 40 million or not having that experience, I would have emptied my entire wallet for it. Harai and Gemma were incredibly insightful and willing to let me pick their brains incessantly. The fleet was small enough that a brand newbro like me was able to glean even more information and understanding from the experienced members of the corp.

My time at the HSC campus has been much less than eventful, with most things being cordoned off by the ability to survive in level 4 missions or other post BLAP training characters. This newbro friendly T1 Frigate roam was the most fun I have had in my ~11 days of Eve.

I am very grateful for the experience and the welcome shown to a new character to both the corp and the game, and really believe the lessons learned far out value the ISK lost.