[NPSI FLEET] 4k Myrmidons - 3 fights w/ Spectre

[Budda Sereda]

Quite a few times I heard about super speed Myrmidons fleet and was envy: concept was looking quite interesting. It came time for me to try it out (https://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtop ... 6&t=108955).

Looking into squad... I'm again surprised: how many times flying with the Spectre fleet I have like 40+ members in a fleet... and barely 30 undocks.
SPIES!!!

Roam members (44)

Spoiler

Aiden Chance
Ajron Cysiek
Bertok Francis
Bran Rhi - Atron
Brutor Adtur
Budda Sereda - Myrmidon, Blackbird
Calder Ormand
Deishuu Kaiki Teikitsu
Exohmin Crendraven - Myrmidon
GER ST4UBS4UGER - Myrmidon
Glen Burney
Hank Asanari - Merlin
Hymir Forseti
Ixen Orlenard - Algos
JaManFu Kotnik - Myrmidon
Jasper Ely - Myrmidon, Tormentor
Lonestar Shwartz - Myrmidon
MJ Noblezada - Taranis
MadMatt 420 - Svipul
Malcomtempt
Mister Shushu - Garmur
Mols Halleck
Nocti Lucent - Myrmidon
Peter Pantaloons
Phaethonx Brutor - Myrmidon
Ram Askaari - Myrmidon
Rapid Blue - Myrmidon
Rikki Bigg - Stiletto
Sad Panda Bear
Satoshi Tomeii - Myrmidon
She a thot - Myrmidon
Space Warfare Development
Sreal Artwa
Tisiphone Tagetes - Burst
Victor Fabre - Myrmidon
Vorgx - Cormorant
Warnam
Xafen Katapi - Malediction, Executioner
Zylithi - Myrmidon
blackish person
minxxy3 - Vexor
rocket Virpio
vanatoomas
zaneil7 - Stiletto

We undocked around 16 Myrmidons, 5-6 T1 logies, 2 CDs, 4 ceptors, 1 dictor. We barely started when scouts reported a small Cynabals gang in Agoes/Loes. I have sent the bait ahead, but either I prematurely jumped fleet or those guys felt a trap, we could not bait and catch them.

One thing which I did not handle well: when I called 2IC it was only Glen who took that role. But because of lack of scouts I've asked him to switch to a ceptor. and... in the end, we got 4 ceptors I still accepted Glen will do scouting and I won't have 2IC. This ended up really bad in the very first fight.

1st fight

Anyway, we moved further toward Black Rise when literally next minute, scouts reported a gang of DNI, Eagles with support of 4 Basis and 2 Huggins coming into our direction. I was hesitant to take a fight and wanted to get some time to sync.

I had 2 questions:

1. Can we break them?
I was doubtful: 16 Myrmidons with the mix of medium/high drones have around 400-500 dps. Which is BARELY enough to break 3 T2 logies. We had few other ships (Vexors, destroyers), so I had a chance to break. Plus we had 2 CDs and people called to try jumping logies out. With this we would have good ods killing many of them.

2. Can they catch us with our super speed?
We had tackles and small drones to clean their tackles. We had the speed to stay out of range. Opponents had 2 Huginns, but no Lachesis, so... sounds fair?

I warped fleet few hundred km from the gate called folks to anchor up and started orbiting gate trying to get time to think on further details. I was going to warp us at 100km and apply some DPS, but was hesitant as they would just run away.

They did not rush, but... my orbiting around the gate with fleet anchored on myself in literally 1 minute spreadout fleet into a small thing thread of 60km. That was really bad. I slowed down, called fleet to catch up. This did not help much. Dunno why. I can't blame pilots to not handling 'anchor' command or not turning on MWD. That so simple so they can't miss it.
My assumption now is that many pilots had LOW skills: neither speed nor acceleration.

In a meantime, while I was trying to get fleet together, they send some scouts closer to us, we started primarying smal things... they warped on top of us. We primaried 1 logy, for a VERY VERY long 30 minutes we did not apply pretty much none of DPS (I guess that drones travel time and out spread was a cause of it).
At some point Basi started taking damage, and... I was scrammed webbed and jammed. And could not control the fight anymore.

Logy reported that we are barely but do hold DPS so I decided to keep the fleet on the grid for a bit longer and see if we can break them.

I called fleet to align out to planet 2 and tried to break the logy. Unfortunately, it was not happening, we were losing ships and I called fleet to run.

(02:51:24) Agoze
Myrmidon -78.96m
Myrmidon -141.48m
Myrmidon -68.82m
Myrmidon -84.46m
Myrmidon -97.41m
Myrmidon -108.82m
Myrmidon -102.69m
Myrmidon -101.07m
Garmur -192.08m
Myrmidon -70.09m
Myrmidon -96.97m

Unpleasant. But we saved quite a few pilots willing to reship so we continued. First, we poked into a Syndicate, tried to bait catch a Hecate: our ceptor baited and caught one, but he got 2 friends and we lost our scout.

Boring roaming

(03:25:10) MHC-R3
Malediction -44.18m

Glen scouted surroundings, did not find anything promising so we came back to Black Rise.

There was no content. Here and there few T3Ds or faction frigates, nothing which would be interesting or even flashy so we could catch on gates. Nothing in plexes. We tried to bait in Tama - nothing worked.

Few pilots dropped there, but there were still quite a few and we decided to go to Kinakka.

2nd fight

Luckily, this time we've met another gang: 2 HACs, ONI, Ashimu, ceptor. Later Typhoon joined them. On our side we had 5 T1 BC, 1 T1 FR logy, 4 ceptors.

It was a more interesting skirmish which we ended-up ISK positive, but did not win the grid.
I was trying to have fleet anchored up on myself, pick up targets of opportunity. And even though we had a similar problem of being spreadout, we still were able to keep opponents tackles at some range and manoeuvre on the grid.
I was calling primaries and tried to keep fleet focused: somebody applied DPS to Typhoon, but I was afraid it is super tanky. And if it is self-rep, we could not break it at all.
Each time when our ceptor pilots were able to scram an opponent we were killing it.

An interesting thing: not sure how, during the fight it was only me who was shot by opponents. After the fight, I did confirm with all DDs: nobody from the fleet got any single shot, it was only me who was focused. Logies kep me alive for a while. But when we run out of ceptors it was me who was caught by opponents and pointed. I called fleet to warp away, but was killed.

GF!

(04:37:28) Nennamaila
Ashimmu +201.38m
Stiletto -44.67m
Exequror +25.4m
Confessor +79.03m
Taranis -39.19m
Malediction -44.4m
Myrmidon -66.63m
Stiletto -46.47m

All ceptors got SRP from myself.

From that, we moved back home. The road was clear so I called for best speed... when Xafen who was scoting in a capsule reported a gate camp. BCs were 1 jump away, but logy pilot was killed.

(04:58:08) Ostingele
Burst -2.36m

3rd fight

So, what to do. I still had 4 Myrmidons and 1 logy in Agoze with the camp in OST on Agoze gate. It was 2 Exequrors, Onerios and quite a few DDs (2 Gnosis, Vigilan, Confessor, Moa)
Now I think we could back to HS via Loes and Ouletta, but we all were eager to fight and with fleetmates help we came up with the plan:

I will bring Armor Repair moduiles from Stacmon to fleet so we can refit into SelfRep. I will fit a Blackbird with 4 anti-gallente jammers, jam 2 Exequrors and we try killing the Oneiros.

Even though both exequrors were jammed from the first go, we could not apply to Oneiros. One of BCs was jammed, 2 others... shot somebody else. Those folks called cyno, I was still trying to break Oneiros, he started taking damage, but they cynoed Archon and Thanatos and it was 'finita la comedy'

(05:34:07) Ostingele, Amarr
Myrmidon -74.98m
Burst -2.38m
Myrmidon -112.69m
Capsule -0.01m
Myrmidon -114.24m
Executioner -2.65m
Blackbird -13.82m

I don't regret we lost this fight, it was fun, good content and learning.

Overall, It was interesting and education fleet, thanks all for coming.

Stats
ISK Destroyed: 305,826,338.89
ISK Lost: 1,769,061,511.19
ISK Delta: -1,463,235,172.3
Efficiency: 14.739%

Overall evaluation

✔ (Positive stuff)
1. Content from Pandemic Legion. They spied and ganked us, i'm sure. Yet provided content. I could do better at that engagement in principle.
2. We won an ISK was in a 2nd fight.
3. I've tried the doctrine I was thinking about for quite a while.
4. Solid turnaround.
5. Positive feedback on SF feedback form

✘ (Negative stuff)
I'll start with things I could do better.

1. Original fit I've posted on SF for mainline DD had kinetic smartbombs. Fit I've posted on E-Uni forum did not.
Why? TBH, I did not see how SBs can help if we are going to kite. During the fleet, somebody rised concer that SBs can do a friendly damage if we anchor up. Counter argument was: kinetic DPS from micro SBs will barely scratch BCs, but can still do decent damage to drones.
I admit I do lack experience/knowledge in this area, so glad this question was discussed.

2. 4k Myrmidons... are not kiters. Maybe they are, but something crucial was missed in the fight so we did not kite, but screwed ourselves. Dunno what. But, if you are ever going to fly this doctrine: practice on SiSi first and make sure you do kite and not spread-out fleet across of the whole grid.

3. SPIES!!! Out of 44 members 13 died before we got the 1st kill. 12 are on that first kill. Ok, add 5 logies, and 2-4 CDs and Dictors and we get 30-ish pilots. Where are 10-13 more pilots? SPIES!!!
Should I kick people from fleet those who did not undock together with the fleet? Khm. Seriously considering this. Not sure if that will help.

From the other side... they probably brought a content for me, but with having the full visibility on the doctrine, exact composition, location, ... jamming FC ... seriously?

I'm not salty now, I was slightly salty during the fleet.

P.S. Please do leave report to the FCC Feedback form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIp ... rm?c=0&w=1

[Glen Burney]

There's really nothing you can do to counter spies in NPSI fleets, but I don't think there's much intel they can gain beyond what they would already have from just reading the website. Sure they can know where you are, but an inty in space can get them that information sooner.

In a way, spy in an NPSI fleet can be a good thing: you will get a fight at least, and we did. There is no doubt that the first engagement was the result of someone reading our fleet comp on the website, and devising a counter. That said, they didn't radically upship, and I think there are instances where our fleet could have done some damage, or at least not lost as much. Here is how:

1) Take the fight at a plex. With the fight happening at the gate, we were vulnerable to warp-ins. If we had been at a plex, we could have kited better.

2) Better anchoring. When I saw this comp work well in the past, it was only 5-6 battlecruisers, and they kept together very well. Budda, I think next time we should practice anchoring at a belt before we go out.

3) Drone bunny. At first I was against this idea, but now I think it may be best for maximum application of damage asap. Drones are just really bad at taking FOREVER to apply, and the first thing Budda primaried was a Jaguar that was burning in for a warp-in. The fact that he wasn't vaporized by 16 BC within 50km shows how bad drones are at quick application. It's almost like we should have a few harbies or oracles or whatever for some alpha DPS...
So now I agree that a drone bunny is a good idea. But the bunny has to be extra tanky, and NOT the anchor. Can those new FC ships be a drone bunny?

4) Utility. I know everything happened quickly, but those T2 cruiser logi should have been booshed off ASAP. THEY DIDN'T EVEN KILL OUR COMMAND DESSIES! We should also have had specific commands to harass those T2 cruiser logi with EWAR.

5) Scatter sooner. If I was FC, I think I would have given the scatter command almost immediately after I got popped. The enemy did not have a tremendous amount of tackle on field, and there was no bubble. Instead of losing 10, we could have lost only 3-4. This is something I regret, Budda, you did ask for someone to take over, but I was in an inty and did not have the primary locked, so I wasn't sure if we were making any headway. I should have stepped up and called a scatter.

One thing that was VERY awesome: Our fleet didn't end. I'm really glad so many reshipped and we got back out there. Budda, you did a good job not showing any disappointment, which is very awesome.

In the end, I think the biggest lesson is that some fleet comps are much more complicated to fly and coordinate. Spectre NPSI does feature a wide range of pilot skills both in-game skillpoint and meta-skills (manual piloting, etc), which can be very awesome for younger inexperienced pilots to learn. But more complicated setups like this will be bested by a prepared fleet of pilots like we encountered in the first fight.

TLDR: Practice anchoring, take that fight in a plex, and use utility ships to gain an advantage.

[Xafen Katapi]

I feel I shouldn't have died that 2nd time in the Malediction from the Punisher. I was orbiting him at 20km, no MWD, and he basically 1 shot me (2-4 in reality, before I could change direction and get out) Unlucky hits? I was orbiting at ~688m/s.

The first death to the Hecates was unfortunate. There was only one on the gate when I engaged. I'm guessing his friend was through the gate watching the other side. As soon as we had tackle on each other, the second one jumped through and they made quick work of me before the fleet could warp in. They quickly warped off the the fortizar 1400 off the gate. They were there the rest of the night and I saw them camping the gate, still, a couple times later when I came through, over multiple hours.

One last bit, is it common to have -5 pilots in PvP roam fleets? We had several on that fleet.

[Budda Sereda]

Thanks Glen!

Yeah, fight in a plex is a good idea. Anchoring,... I was surprised how bad that was. Yeah, practice, before we move out, is a must. Especially in such sort of doctrines.

Drone bunny: the concern I heard about drone bunnies in low-sec is that if a player does not have aggression against another particular ship, his drones won't aggress. Also, somebody in a fleet mentioned that a drone bunny can't control more than 50 drones...
There is often a problem with focusing fire, I admit. With drones it is even worse... but I would still stay with no bunny.

Utility: I don't remember we had any EWar when I called...

Scatter sooner: I guess yes,...

One thing that was VERY awesome: Our fleet didn't end. I'm really glad so many reshipped and we got back out there. Budda, you did a good job not showing any disappointment, which is very awesome.

Yeah, I'm glad that we continued and had another GF. Thanks to all who reshipped!

I feel I shouldn't have died that 2nd time in the Malediction from the Punisher. I was orbiting him at 20km, no MWD, and he basically 1 shot me (2-4 in reality, before I could change direction and get out) Unlucky hits? I was orbiting at ~688m/s.

If you are flying a ceptor, you better keep running MWD. You signature bloom is not that big as in a regular ship, but your speed increase is significant.

One last bit, is it common to have -5 pilots in PvP roam fleets? We had several on that fleet.

Not sure what do you mean. Could you please clarify?

And good work flying a ceptor and being a scout! Was that your first scout fleet?

[Xafen Katapi]

2nd time as a fleet scout, though first in a ceptor..I've got a lot to learn to say the least.

We had 2-3 people in fleet with bad standing to uni.

[Yuri Titov]

I'm not convinced PL had a spy in your fleet, maybe tho...

You seem surprised that you got primaried, I mean, the FC is usually gonna be the anchor and at the front, really easy to figure out, especially when your fleet is spread out over 60km, besides webbing the anchor down is a common move to kill whatever speed advantage your fleet had.

Did you tell the fleet to turn the prop mod on for orbiting? If you just told them to anchor, i wouldn't expect people to run the mwd, especially on a fit that's prolly short on cap.

[Budda Sereda]

I'm not convinced PL had a spy in your fleet, maybe tho...

You seem surprised that you got primaried, I mean, the FC is usually gonna be the anchor and at the front, really easy to figure out, especially when your fleet is spread out over 60km, besides webbing the anchor down is a common move to kill whatever speed advantage your fleet had.

I agree with the statement that when fleet is anchoring, the anchor is often visible. True.

Did you tell the fleet to turn the prop mod on for orbiting? If you just told them to anchor, I wouldn't expect people to run the mwd, especially on a fit that's prolly short on cap.

Oh, Absolutely. Though as you asked, I'm no so sure I told this in the very beginning. For 2 reasons.
In my expectation command to anchor means you control your range to the anchor.
I accept I could make an assumption that's obvious. When I realized we are spread out in a thin line clearly I called for it. But better would be to warp to the plex or at least a planet.

I guess the biggest lesson I've learned is to not take fights where an opponent can easily warp on top. In the low-sec we can go to dead space pockets. Is there any hiding place in nul-sec? Mission plexes won't help for roamings...

And yeah, I would love to hear from CD pilots: what prevented them to boosh few logies out.

[Raido Kudonen]

This fleet concept is disturbingly bad. I'm going to be a little bit blunt here, because it very much appears that you don't understand the fleet concept, or the relevant game mechanics, and therefore don't understand why you took the losses you did.

Overpropped ships as fleet fits

Okay, so you've got 3.1km/s before links. Great. Here's how these actually work.

Figure #1:


Figure #1 depicts a battlecruiser leading a fleet of smaller ships. Too large for its own good, unlikely to maneuver quickly or precisely, and easily punctured by other people's DPS. At best, it carries very large guns that instantly delete others.

Figure #2:


Figure #2 depicts the prop mod on the back of a much larger ship, such as a battleship. Note that the prop mod itself is large and unwieldy, and that it takes a while to spin up to full thrust.

Now, I'm not nearly enough interested in this post to photoshop an airboat fan onto the dude in the strange inflatable suit. However, that's a 500mn Myrmidon for you: slow to accelerate, impossible to turn, even larger target than before, still easily punctured.

Overpropped ships in general are quite hard to maneuver, and generally require knowing now to bring your ship to a full stop (or close), change direction, then re-accelerate, without at any point getting caught by hard tackle. Doing this competently with an entire fleet, of course, gets exponentially harder as you add more ships. And doing so with a high-mass, generally slow ship like the Myrmidon, and using a battleship MWD (much more mass than battleship AB), means that attempting to anchor without significant experience will scatter your fleet all over the grid in a matter of 3-4 prop mod cycles.

But what about 100mn Gilas/Ishtars/VNIs/railgus/Phantasms/HFIs/Lokis/etc?
Half of those are solo fits or small gang fits. They are manually piloted, not terribly easy to fly, and pay for it in terms of specific kinds of on-grid utility.

The other half are a) much more agile than Myrmidons, b) designed for specific third partying applications where someone else meatshields, and c) mostly rely on a couple of weird quirks that were mostly kicked out of the meta a year ago.

A very long time ago...
Once upon a time, T3 AHACs (with bonused Proteus points/scrams) and HICs with 35km scrams dominated the mid-range meta and made life for many kiters miserable. At the same time, combat recons were quite weak compared to T3s, and in particular, Huginns (the only option for bonused shield webs) and Lokis (the default for bonused armor webs) had serious kinetic holes.

One solution was to 100mn fit kitey ships that could do a lot of kinetic damage all at once. Gilas with Caldari drones were particularly impressive, since you can still dronebunny most of a fleet and therefore deliver drone alpha that, at a fairly low critical mass, instantly deletes Huginns. (Tengus weren't terrible either.) Since 100mn fits can't be scrammed, being able to remove long-range webs gave you range control and let you third party freely. This, coupled with substantial nerfs to citadel scrams a couple months ago,

However, late last summer, CCP nerfed HIC scrams (giving them a script of their own, with much lower range), heavily nerfed AHACs, and trashed the Proteus in particular. This greatly reduced the counters to kiting fleets, especially since most MWD kiting fleets move quickly enough that a warp-in usually won't get you within 20km if they burn away from your landing point. (Also, Lachs are still garbage.) As a result, it's usually not necessary to go 100mn; besides, shield Lokis are a lot better than they used to be, so bonused webs are more of a thing.

But PL spaaaaaiiiiissssss...
You lost to Navy Drakes. Nuff said.

(Okay, so if that somehow isn't obvious, Navy Drakes are not a sufficiently serious fleet to justify the effort to carefully infiltrate you. Hek has been forming up joke fleets to try to get fights out of Spectre Fleet for a very long time. And if your 4km/s speed was worth anything, you wouldn't have lost most of your DPS ships to a joke fleet with 1/3rd as much speed with MWDs on.)

[Budda Sereda]

Admittedly, mistakes were made. As I mentioned, spais or not I should have done better.

I knew those Myrmidons are hard to fly... ok, now I learned it. Paid a high price. Can one learn from not doing mistakes? I guess yes, hopefully this AAR will be found by next perspective FC who will decide to try Myrmidons with oversized MWD.

Thanks for feedback Raido, as usually educational. Not always pleasant

[Budda Sereda]

Hehe, funny thing: Google already sees this and previous AAR with 4k Myrmidons