[FLEET] Kamela - Thera - Outer Passage

[Budda Sereda]

The beginning was really boring, in the end we whelped fleet in something which I call a good fight.

We did form-up a Ferox fleet (https://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtop ... 6&t=108619). During the form-up I got 7 BC, 5 Logies, 2 ceptors, Dessie, Harpy for tackle. Considering this was a week-end it was not great, but after 4-men-fleet on Thursday I afraid not as many people will come to Kamela.

Spoiler

Airsick Lowlander
Arashi Shizukana
B'aldrick Aivoras
BatFC
Budda Sereda
Carl Misjekis
Erwin Madelung
FragLord Ots
Gemma Solett
Jonathan Wolf
Kirsi Isrik
Kora K
Lord Bartok
Marcel Eriker
Rebulah Conundrum
Tye Etch
Z0X Ambrye
Zykey Jovakko
ashahara

While we were forming, Arashi reported Apoc in Large, but we had only 2 logies, only 3 or 4 DD, and I assumed that Apoc will wait few minutes. He did not We probably should have jumped on him immediately and let the rest of fleet to join as soon as they could.
Thoughts?

We did not jump out when Z0X dropped fleet, not sure what happened... maybe DCed, maybe RL emergency, hope everything is alright.

After that, we found Abaddon (if I'm not mistaken), but even though we tackled him multiple times and booshed from the gate, he run away (we assume he was stabbed).
Further it was a boring roam through low-sec surroundings, with the only 1 kill
(18:59:53) Kamela
Coercer +11.17m

We could go somewhere further through the roam, but luckily, Thera had a nearby connection in a Providence so we went jumped into empty pods and went for it.

When we warped to HS gate we got a Coercer jumping to us, he had no modules and appeared to be an easy kill:
(19:06:41) Kamela
Coercer +1.37m

This added spice to our travel through HS to Providence: we were criminals, and now 4 also become flashy Luckily, we did not have issues and appeared in KBP7.

B'aldrick reshipped into Svipul with probes (thanks a lot!), on the way to Thera we found and caught Typhoon, booshed him and killed:

(19:23:17) YWS0-Z
Typhoon +215.94m

In a system that had a wormhole to Thera, Arashi found Phoenix bashing a citadel, unfortunately, both were neutral to us so we needed to let it continue his boring business.

In Thera few logies jumped off (wow, you guys have a base overthere? BTW, can we get some content ganking in Thera?), but we still had enough and were coming to an area with many NPC kills. Unfortunately, whoever we were able to find where smart enough to run, so we could not catch any ratters.

We were moving quite slow, and at some point, people get eyes on us. The first scout was either inexperienced or relaxed

Spoiler

Gemma: he looks like 100km from us and sits still

We educated E-Uni has smart and skilled pilots
Here I actually made a mistake, instead of calling "Kepp Gemma at 1000" I called to approach Raptor. Yet, almost all ended-up on the killmail:

(20:04:08) NEU-UD
Raptor +48.69m

Though, they got other eyes on us: Stiletto, it was reported it was the same pilot, though I'm not sure. But eventually, Vargur with a Flycatcher and another ceptor landed on us, clearly, Vargur was not something we could chew, but ... maybe he will make a mistake? Or more people will come so asked to anchor up on myself and primaried the Vargur.

He was baiting us, we got him into half armor, but at some point I decided to come back, asked fleet to align to Arashi to check the out gate. The mistake I made here is to not clear that ceptor first, dunno how did I miss it.

What I heard back was: "Budda, you don't wanna warp here, here are Typhoon, Tempest, Onyx, flycatcher... They are warping somewhere...".

Ok, so as they warp somewhere it means the gate is not bubbled, so we can jump through it. As we were aligned, I called warp and jump.

But the problem: I did not remember the gate which leads us out of the pocket. We picked 'random' one, I called to align to it, turn on prop mode and started picking targets.

Sabre was primaried but run away, I picked HFI, we were chewing through his armor when I realized it is pretty much only me, Kirsi and few small ships left on the gate... I called to warp away whoever left, and surprisingly, Kirsi was able to land a killing blow on the HFI:

(20:18:12) 4O-ZRI, NEU-UD, Y-7XVJ, Kourmonen, CNHV-M
Algos -13.84m
Ferox -80.85m
Ferox -94.98m
Osprey -29.88m
Ferox -80.71m
Ferox -86.63m
Hurricane Fleet Issue +225.41m
Ferox -81.16m

Unfortunately, system we jumped to N-I led us to a wrong direction, Baldrik with probes left in 4O- (and reported he will log-off for now, I guess his dog was getting on his nerves ), so we make a small triuck and jumped into NEU when the gate was empty. Unfortunately, while we landed they got dictors to the other side so we were bubbled outside.

Again, same plan, align to out gate and burn what we can. We did not had much firepower, but even thoguh we burned out of buble, I was afraid many of us are tackled and decided to kill few dictors, which ended up to be successful, but we lost the rest of the fleet:

Sabre +127.57m
Ares -37.88m
Ferox -82m
Osprey -19.6m
Magus -175.18m
Sabre +109.44m
Osprey -19.6m
Ferox -85.57m
Harpy -54.22m

ISK Destroyed: 739,592,715.44
ISK Lost: 946,834,395.19
ISK Delta: -207,241,679.75
Efficiency: 43.856%

ISK negative, but good fight overall!

Few learned things I've posted above already, one more thing here:
Always have a desto which leads you to some reasonable place. In this case, if I had a desto I assume we could save the 2nd half of the fleet. Or maybe not, yet not having desto led us into a wrong place.

Thanks guys for coming out today, it was fun, and hope to see you soon again!

Please do share your feedback here in the topic or via FCC feedback form: https://goo.gl/forms/W6OTiwPMD2Lu1lmL2

P.S. Extended SRP from FC for support ships will be sent shortly.

[Zykey Jovakko]

For me I enjoyed this fleet.

I got a little confused and didn't disengage quick enough from the maurader fight, so I couldn't crash the out gate so I then got bubbled and jumped by 6 battleships. I think i was only person on grid at this point so i went down in a big ball of fire.

[Budda Sereda]

For me I enjoyed this fleet.

I got a little confused and didn't disengage quick enough from the maurader fight, so I couldn't crash the out gate so I then got bubbled and jumped by 6 battleships. I think i was only person on grid at this point so i went down in a big ball of fire.

yeah, when we saw a big incoming fleet we needed to run away. Often, somebody is caught as a result of this. ATM, I don't remember when exactly that Ares appeared, but I feel he was on grid with us for some time and we should have been able to clear it.

Vargur is a BIG BOY and in ideal scenario we better ignore him. Again, I mentioned it is most likely a bait, ... and now I think that if we turned back at that time we may have encountered that fleet in a smaller number.

[Kirsi Isrik]

This was my first Ferox fleet and it was great fun. I was not the only one shooting down that HFI but I was not able to escape so I continued to do the only thing I could - to take one down with me When my shield was gone I was just overheating everything so that I could last there longer than he. Within 1 second I heard 3 blings : his kill report, my kill report and insurance

Thanks Budda and all the others! Lets do this again!

Kirsi Isrik

[B'aldrick Aivoras]

I enjoyed this fleet as it was a chance to do something different.

I arrived as forum-up was underway and decided to take an assault frigate with an ADC2 fitted. This is quite a strong ship to support a scout as part of the vanguard. It's relatively quick, can tank a target reasonably until logi arrives and can apply dps.

The coercer kill was just opportunistic as it was sitting in a plex around 20k off the beacon, I was able to close in as support arrived and tank his damage by activating the ADC as my shield dropped. Our excellent scouts got secondary points before I finished him off before the hungry blob arrived (sorry guys).

The pace of the fleet was good and as content was sparse going to null through thera seemed like a good plan. I reshipped in to a Svipul in Dital (really expensive there btw) and scanned down the required connections.

The skirmishes I was involved in were well controlled but information from scouts and FC at a couple of points confused me as to which system and which gate the intel was on. This, and the fact I misclicked and warped to the yellow brick road on 2 occassions, led to me being separterd from the fleet for the last fight. I tried to make speed there but my dog was nagging me for food and kept distracting me so I got lost again.

I safely logged off and listened in comms to the fight. I heard good target switching and calling - trying to kill their bubblers (which the svipul could have helped with ) and then their dps.

Overall, a fun and instructive fleet. Thanks FC, logi and fleetmates

Sov Null is mostly empty so aiming to catch ratters and miners in a quick way is good. Finding fleet fights is quite difficult I think. The Nullbears seem to just overship with their QRF so a bubbler of our own is always useful.

Managed to log in this am and flew all the way home to the Beach House 34 jumps only seeing one drag bubble on the exit to Low Sec with a Ferox sitting on the gate. Trap easily avoided and some bookmarks made along the way.

[Erwin Madelung]

Good AAR. We lost some stuff but Feroxes insure well and we indeed learned something. (after I wrote those things up is became longer than I expected. Sorry)

Here some of my thoughts:

While we were forming, Arashi reported Apoc in Large, but we had only 2 logies, only 3 or 4 DD, and I assumed that Apoc will wait few minutes. He did not We probably should have jumped on him immediately and let the rest of fleet to join as soon as they could.
Thoughts?

Rushed engagements while forming do not end well in my experience. So this was the right call in my opinion. 2 logies would have been probably enough to keep everyone alive but not sure about our dps.

(20:18:12) 4O-ZRI, NEU-UD, Y-7XVJ, Kourmonen, CNHV-M

My memory of that fight: You gave the command to jump gate. The scout (?) reported that a dictor was on the other side. Thus you gave the command to make best speed to the other gate (using prop mod if we are cuaght in the bubble). At least that was what I understood. So all (?) our frigates, 1 freox and I in an osprey landed on that gate. From the coms I understood that you thought people were lagging behind instead of ahead and tried to stay a bit to help people catch up and extract. My advice: If the decision is made to run at an engagement stay with that decision. Usually we will lose 1-2 ships but we then have better chances at the next engagement.

Next fight was again at a gate with a dictor. We got the command to align out and turn the prop mod on. FC then decided that we anchor up again. Here I messed up turned back to late. Which led to losing target lock with my cap partner, leaving our fleet without logi support Sorry for that.
Still a bit of feedback there: If an FC is not sure if he wants to run or fight, he should give the command to anchor. It is teh job of the anchor to try to move the fleet out of the bubble and best case also align it out. Here it is helpful if the FC and anchor are not the same person. When I started going on fleets this was more often the case than now. I am not sure why this changed. (Does not change my mess up on the cap chain though. Sorry again for that.)
One last remark on that engagement: Imho we were much to close. I dont know the exact distance but I was 100km off while the rest was out of my range. Feroxes can hit far out with the right ammo. Align out, kill dictor, warp off, repeat is not too wrong with those ships. Use the drones to kill tackle frigates.

General thoughts:
I noticed that the use of Thera increased in the last time but without a clear concept in mind. In this case we went into Outer Passage. This is not a region for roams but the people rat there under protection. If we decide to go there we should have a rough idea how we operate. We all know that sov alliances have intel channels and that the ratting systems are in pockets. So we have to adapt to that and cannot operate like in FW space.
If we use WH connections serveral people should carry probes, not only one. Those Whs can always be rolled. Moving back from Outer Passage without WHs is basically impossible. But if things go bad you can always dive into a random WH and continue scanning until you find a connection to high/low. Usually you find those pretty fast.
Finally I was a bit surprised of the composition of the fleet. The Algos is a total waste with a Ferox fleet. FC should have told him to reship into tackle or ewar. Magus is also the wrong command ship. Even if noone can fly a Stork (which is the prefered command ship with freoxes). You might consider not tacking a command ship at all. The boosh only helped once. Besides that it means an expensive badly insured loss. An additional Ferox might be more valuable for the fleet.

Sorry that my comment is so long. It makes it seem a bit as a bad fleet which it wasn't because we indeed learned a bit on it.

[Budda Sereda]

Many thanks to all for a positive feedback. please consider joining next one: https://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtop ... 6&t=108677

Special thanks to Erwin for specific recommendations. Though, I would like to chat more on that matter.

My memory of that fight: You gave the command to jump gate. The scout (?) reported that a dictor was on the other side. Thus you gave the command to make best speed to the other gate (using prop mod if we are caught in the bubble). At least that was what I understood. So all (?) our frigates, 1 freox and I in an osprey landed on that gate. From the coms I understood that you thought people were lagging behind instead of ahead and tried to stay a bit to help people catch up and extract.

Heh, I was sure they have a dictor on the other side, commend was indeed to jump through, align out to the outgate and turn on the prop mode, and even overheat it for 1 cycle. But the purpose of that was not to run, but to pull the range so a) they can't shoot at close range, b) we can warp out as soon as we need (once we clear tackles and dictors).
My intention was not to run, but to first kill dictors and then run. It is unfortunate I was understood this way. Maybe command was not really clear... dunno, will try to be more clear next time.

My advice: If the decision is made to run at an engagement stay with that decision. Usually, we will lose 1-2 ships but we then have better chances at the next engagement.

Completely agree.

Next fight was again at a gate with a dictor. We got the command to align out and turn the prop mod on. FC then decided that we anchor up again.

Yup, not sure if that was the right call, and maybe I should really have called to to anchor up immediately. But I did have an intention to pull the range from the gate (so we are out of bubble and out of DDs range), get some time to analyze the situation. And either be able to warp away immediately or take a fight. That's why I called first to align out. Later once I saw an opportunity to get some kills I called people to anchor up on myself.
That was the plan, and I believe in the circumstance when we were outnumbered 1 to 4 (having BSs against us) we did pretty well

FC ... should give the command to anchor. It is teh job of the anchor to try to move the fleet out of the bubble and best case also align it out. Here it is helpful if the FC and anchor are not the same person. When I started going on fleets this was more often the case than now. I am not sure why this changed.

I did hear some good FCs anchor fleet on themselves. They are able to do and in some circumstances I'm doing this as well. It has pros and cons.
Pros: quicker feedback on actions
Cons: if anchor killed, fleet loses both anchor and FC; plus this requires FC (who already has quite a bit of work) to do even MORE actions
I agree in the very beginning of the fleet I should have called somebody to volunteer to be an anchor, but as this was not done, it was too late to do this during engagement.

Align out, kill dictor, warp off, repeat is not too wrong with those ships. Use the drones to kill tackle frigates.

True, but as you remember, first time fleet was split by early warp-in; second time after we killed both dictors we had nobody alive

I noticed that the use of Thera increased in the last time but without a clear concept in mind. In this case we went into Outer Passage. This is not a region for roams but the people rat there under protection. If we decide to go there we should have a rough idea how we operate

TBH, it was my first FC through Thera.
Coming to Thera I was looking to jump into a region close to PH, but later I realized that WH was EOL so needed to change the plan.
And I should admit, I don't have much clue about the situation in different regions. Even more, this fleet I did not plan to go either to nul, nor to Thera... it is a lack of content in Kamela that forced me to improvise.

We all know that sov alliances have intel channels and that the ratting systems are in pockets. So we have to adapt to that and cannot operate like in FW space.

I have not been to many sov-nul roamings, do you have more specific piece of advice?

If we use WH connections serveral people should carry probes, not only one. Those Whs can always be rolled. Moving back from Outer Passage without WHs is basically impossible. But if things go bad you can always dive into a random WH and continue scanning until you find a connection to high/low. Usually you find those pretty fast.

Thanks for a piece of advice. Agree.

Finally I was a bit surprised of the composition of the fleet. The Algos is a total waste with a Ferox fleet. FC should have told him to reship into tackle or ewar.

TBH, I did not notice Algos in a fleet when we were forming up. And I did not get to use to push people to reship. But agree, another tackle or at least a MWD+shild dessie would be a better option.

Magus is also the wrong command ship. Even if noone can fly a Stork (which is the prefered command ship with freoxes). You might consider not tacking a command ship at all. The boosh only helped once. Besides that, it means an expensive badly insured loss. An additional Ferox might be more valuable for the fleet.

I agree Magus was not the best choice. It did not trigger my mind to realize that is an armor ship.
Yet, that 1 kill we made with its help cannot be discounted.

Sorry that my comment is so long.

Nothing to be sorry about, even though I argue with you in comments, I do appreciate the feedback! The reason I continue the discussion is to explain my thinking process, maybe execution was not perfect but at least many players will know what was expected to happen
And if there is a flaw in a thinking process - please do bring this up!

It makes it seem a bit as a bad fleet which it wasn't because we indeed learned a bit on it.

Then, I hope you will join the next few?

[Erwin Madelung]

We all know that sov alliances have intel channels and that the ratting systems are in pockets. So we have to adapt to that and cannot operate like in FW space.

I have not been to many sov-nul roamings, do you have more specific piece of advice?

I haven't been either. I mostly do PvE and join Uni fleets as logi. But you can still make some predictions about it even without experience. People afk rat mostly in VNIs and Ishtars. Carrier are not really afk because they clear a site too fast. Intel channels inform ratters (and miners) about neutrals. So it is go in fast kill something get out. If you stay too long in one place it is almost certain that you get dropped by something.
Know what kind of sites people run in the region. In a region with serpentis rats VNIs would run Forsaken Hubs and Havens anomalies. Carriers would go for Havens. So meet with your scout 5 min earlier and talk about the region you want to go to and what targets might be where.

My statement that the region we were in is bad for roaming was wrong btw. Another fleet took that exact WH a bit later and did a successful roam. But this was an inty fleet. So much much faster moving (8AU/s). Here is a link to the video of it. Beware the language is not consistent with uni rules!

Best probably also ask more experienced players which regions are good and what works there. Providence for example seems to be a good roaming region in general atm but not so much for the uni because a lot of structure and Sov warfare seems to be going on. And we are not allowed to 3rd party there (for good reasons). I really can't say what regions work well. Half of the regions I don't even know by name The stuff about Providence I only know because Jin'taan did a video about it recently and we saw that solo structure bash ourself.

I will certainly come to more fleets with you. The next does not work for me though as 03:00 eve time is 04:00 in the morning for me.

PS: There was also the lecture about scouting and intel. It was a bit all over the place and very long. But some topics where touched how to improve stuff if you really want to put an effort in it. Like create alts to watch staging systems and so on to not get dropped. I can understand everyone who considers this too much effort for a game. Probably you listened to the lecture as I noticed that many regular FCs where in mumble and he promised to put the lecture online. (I didn't followed the whole lecture as at 1 am my time I couldn't follow any longer.)

[Gemma Solett]

First, I'd just like to thank you Budda, that was a great fleet right up to the bitter end.

Second, Apologies for bringing the wrong CD there, I had burned straight from Kora's fleet and didn't really think about what our fleet was (I knew it was Feroxes, just a brainfart on tank).

You might consider not tacking a command ship at all. The boosh only helped once. Besides that it means an expensive badly insured loss.

Got something to contest with you here, Erwin
My tank was never really an issue, in the fight with the Typhoon he had torps, which did almost no damage to me, low enough that our Logi (<3) could hold my shield against him still. That Typhoon was crashing, so I burned straight into it and booshed it off. I will concede that it wasn't the smartest choice to bring, but it was local rep (and did manage to hold until after logi had gone down in the last fight). I think with a bit more practice and knowledge we could have used the CD to kite out the fleet we were fighting a bit more, as, like you mentioned, Feroxes are able to hit out to 100km.
As far as losing it, as long as I learn something I am happy to lose ships all day, the only way to get better is to lose ships. I started losing interceptors at a far lower rate than previous (sometimes they even survive the whole fleet!), so thought I would spice it up and start losing something a bit more exotic. I've been having great fun flying the Magus recently, but if any FC feels like it's not the right choice to bring (or doesn't want a 170m KM on their AAR), please tell me as I will happily switch ship into a malediction.

In the last fight there was several times were they dropped point on me, as the Dramiel that was scramming me would come in too close so I would scram him back, then he would pull range to 50km or so... not sure what his thinking there was. When you called to anchor instead of align I anchored up on you and tried to push the scrams off us, so that we had the slim possibility to escape. The enemy fleet did not take kindly to this and began to switch DPS towards myself. Overheated both reps, capped up and continued my mission to kill all the things. Unfortunately, while a dual rep magus can be relatively tanky, it seems it is no match for an Enforcer, Tempest, Typhoon and Hurricane. While the Dramiel and Sabre had top damage this was mainly due to them picking away at me for some time beforehand, which I relatively easily repped (along with a bit of shield thrown by logi).

Slightly off topic, but one mechanic I have noticed in the last couple of fights I have been on is initial drone damage. When drones are first engaging a target the first volley seems to do more damage (particularly on fast targets, and sometimes substantially more damage). I assume this has something to do with the drones still having their MWD on and flying straight into the target. Could this mechanic be abused to push off fast tackle? Obviously if the tackle is too fast then it won't matter either way, it will just kite the drones out with no damage at all.
I noticed this in our last fight, against their Dramiel, and again in Calders fleet, against myself. In the latter I engaged an Algos that had Hobs in a Kitey Kestrel. The first volley took me down to ~80% shield, then they barely scratched the shields at all after that. If the Algos had recalled and reengaged the drones several times would he have had the chance to kill me? I guess some research is needed.