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First, and foremost, thank you very much to everyone that attended my fleet!
We got another later start from waiting for some people to burn to staging as well as trying to get more people to join up. We ended up undocking at around 0220 or so. We made our way down towards Pandemic Horde's capital system in Geminate, O-VWPB, via the BFW-VV entrance to the region. There were a couple bubbles and 3-4 in local, but gate was clear. We jumped in and I ordered us to align out while shooting the bubbles. Turns out while small bubbles die quickly to 15+ Talwars, large bubbles simply laugh at 8 Talwars. We were lucky that no one was on gate and we had the time needed to MWD our way out of the bubbles and move on.
It was quiet the rest of the trip there as we broke in our new scout and got him some experience helping us move quickly. There was a null sec incursion in the constellation next to O-V, so that made things a little interesting as we got close to PH's home system. We made it there with no issues.
Now for the fun stuff. We were sitting on the gate at 0km with scout in O-V. We'd been seen by several pickets on the way in, so I was pretty sure there should be something forming up for us to shoot at. After about a minute or two, I had a gut feeling something was up, and ordered fleet to burn away for a few cycles of their MWD and setup 50km from the gate. Shortly after that (but long enough for my gut feeling to be an artifact of digestion lol), our scout was forced to jump back into VSJ-PP. Fleet was at a tactical a couple hundred km off the gate now, ready to warp back to our 50km bookmark. Scout decloaked and a Firetail jumped in after him and decloaked nearby. The firetail engaged. We warped to our 50km bookmark, perfectly positioned. I ordered scout to burn towards the fleet and after we landed, we locked and blapped the Firetail. First blood and well executed kill!
We sat on that position for a couple minutes. I don't remember if we went back to our tactical or if we waited there. ~5 minutes after the Firetail died, had scout pop back into O-V to check things out and the Horde QRF was on the gate. I think we were at an off gate tactical at that moment and then warped to the 50km bookmark when we heard about that. Had scout jump back through and begin burning away from gate to provide a local warp to if needed. I don't remember if that was followed or if I vocalized that well enough. Reason being is a Vagabond jumped into us. With us at 50km and him at ~55km or so, perfect positioning. Wasn't sure if we could take him, but figured why not. We moved forward a bit and began to attack. After surprising nuking him down into hull, he started shield repping. Budda prompted and I called for scout to land tackle on the vagabond so it couldn't warp off. We overheated launchers and after some back and forth, took him down! It was the best kill of the night. A few seconds after we killed the Vagabond, the Horde fleet jumped through and began to burn at us. With a solid kill in hand and out of position, the Talwars warped off grid. All but one.
Over the next little while, we warped back and forth between safes and warp ins on the O-V gate in VSJ, seeking opportunities to land kills. We got one great kill on a slasher. Warped in, locked, blapped while aligning, and warped off.
We tried this a few more times with no luck. During all this, an Origin. pilot in a Scorpion had been asking for a 5v1 at/near the K42 gate. I sent the scout over and he got tackled by a Manticore. We warped over to land at 30 or 50km and tried to kill him. Scout wasn't able to get tackle on him, and warped off as we landed. Tried for a couple other small ships, but they were able to warp off to tacticals. We warped back to Planet 7.
Up to this point, we'd seen some combat probes on d-scan. I figured they were probably trying to find that Scorpion. After landing, Budda commented that he had 8 combat probes on d-scan and that they were close by. I confirmed w/ my own d-scan. I began to give orders to start moving away from where we were sitting when a Jaguar landed, right on top of us. I had a few moments of confusion reading the distances on d-scan and overview; I knew it was right on top of us but what I was reading I thought looked like it was 2300 km (was actually 2300 meters) away from us, and these moments of confusion was the time needed for Horde's fleet to start landing on us. We had one person tackled, and with the fleet landing, I called for scatter. I'm not sure the timeline/reasoning, but within a short few moments, we had bubbles up on us. Someone (Calder I think) called for us to just fight here (since we'd been going at it for about 90 minutes by then). People focused on the Jaguar and as we got killed and podded, we got the Jaguar that got the drop on us. Fleet was called as we'd all/mostly all died. Good fights in local!
The good:
* We had some great skirmishing this time with getting into position, killing something quickly, and then warping / moving off. This was a lot of fun.
* No one died to incursion rats.
* I feel I did better with target calling and broadcasting (at least for most of the fights)
The bad:
* During the final fight, I went quiet after calling for scatter. As the bubbles went up, and a few people on comms stated a desire to stand and fight, I should have resumed calling targets for the engagement. Instead I just watched the fleets fight. This totally wasn't a case of "they aren't doing what I ordered, so I'm not helping". IDK if I was just too concentration burned out at this point or what was going on. At the very least, I should have called for like Budda to take over FC'ing. I think the Horde remembered I was FC'ing or I just got lucky. They killed me last and so it wasn't even a case of oh I got killed early or anything. This is my first day back on day shift after staying up all day yesterday so as to move to a day shift sleep schedule. Perhaps I was just cooked by then. I felt like I was doing fine up until that point though.
* Someone lost a training clone. I need to remember to remind people that since we're going into null sec, to bring a clone they can lose because bubbles are a thing in null. Staging has a clone bay so not too much of a problem to go out in a clean clone.
* Xafen died after the Vagabond kill and was trying to reship into something and get back to us. There was a lot going on and the guy with the patience of a saint kept asking what to bring and not getting an answer from me. I eventually told him to bring what he wanted, but that Talwar would be hard to get back to us and an interceptor would only really be useful scouting and providing pings. Perhaps this is something I should have delegated to Budda / 2FC to coordinate. Xafen, sorry I took so long to get you an answer and it sucks that you couldn't have gotten back to us because of all those bubbles!
* Movement... Kept the fleet in position w/o moving a lot while in VJS. Having a scout burn away and periodically warp to the scout when at >150km is something I know to use when regrouping or waiting for something (scout to get intel/warping whatever). We also stayed still a few times while on the O-V gate. There may be times to stay still, but there were a lot of times I should have had the fleet moving and didn't. This eventually is what killed us at the end of the roam. Part of this was just lack of mental bandwidth to keep that up and keep it into consideration. Part of it was I didn't want to "lose" the positioning we had (could have orbited probably just fine). Part of it was just forgetting I needed to get the fleet moving.
* I burned out my guns... I got distracted while killing that vagabond and forgot about turning off heat on my launchers. Ironically, this was happening while I was telling people to watch the heat on their launchers. lol Perhaps not overheating my own weapons would be better (until I have enough mental bandwidth to keep track of that while FC'ing). Or bring a mobile depot and spare set of weapons. x D
* Form up still took longer than would be nice. I know a big part of this is simply because we're staging so far from normal Uni space and most of the k-space campuses. I've tried to mitigate this issue by picking a staging system that has a clone bay so people can clone jump for the fleet as well as providing mainline dps ships (as well as T2 refits) and scout ships on contract at staging, so if someone doesn't want/can't clone jump there, all they need is a fast travel frigate/inty and can pick up a combat ship once they arrive. I'm not sure what else I can do to promote fleet participation. I don't want to overspam/ping for the fleet too much. I think another part of this is a combination of new/unknown FC as well as it being null sec roam, as well as being so far off the beaten path for most unistas. Hopefully as I continue to run these roams every two weeks, more people will start to regularly show up. I would love to get 20-30 talwars on a consistent basis. Any ideas on how I can get there would be most appreciated!
Roam members (10)
Spoiler
Aiden Chance - Talwar
Budda Sereda - Talwar
Calder Ormand - Talwar
De W Javqe - Atron
Eadrom Vintarus - Talwar
Space Warfare Development
Tisiphone Tagetes - Talwar
Vors Voorhorian - Talwar
Xafen Katapi - Talwar
Xivik Skord - Talwar
Budda Sereda - Talwar
Calder Ormand - Talwar
De W Javqe - Atron
Eadrom Vintarus - Talwar
Space Warfare Development
Tisiphone Tagetes - Talwar
Vors Voorhorian - Talwar
Xafen Katapi - Talwar
Xivik Skord - Talwar
(02:54:17) VSJ-PP
Republic Fleet Firetail +23.37m
Capsule +0.01m
Vagabond +285.12m
Talwar -11.76m
(03:11:39) BWF-ZZ
Capsule -0.01m
(03:21:01) VSJ-PP
Slasher +3.2m
Capsule +0.01m
Talwar -10.44m
Talwar -10.39m
Atron -3.74m
Talwar -9.21m
Talwar -7.13m
Jaguar +62.86m
Talwar -10.42m
Capsule -0.76m
Talwar -10.6m
Capsule -37.82m
Talwar -10.19m
Capsule -0.01m
Capsule -0.01m
Capsule -0.01m
Capsule -0.01m
Capsule -0.01m
Capsule -0.01m
Stats
ISK Destroyed: 374,564,895.82
ISK Lost: 122,534,396.88
ISK Delta: 252,030,498.94
Efficiency: 75.35%