[AAR] NoP Monday Roam! - 2018.04.17 @ 0100

[Reise Amatin]

FCC FEEDBACK
If you participated in the fleet, please leave feedback in the FCC Feedback form. The information you provide me will help me improve and lead better fleets, which leads to more fun for everyone.


FCC Feedback Form


ACTIONABLE GOALS
Improvement items to work on from my last fleet:

• Pre-Roam Planning.
• Decision Making.
• Command Chatter.

PARTICIPANTS
Roam members (24)

Spoiler

Atticus Vex - Rupture
Beavis Alland - Rupture
Budda Sereda (Logi)
Cal Gates - Condor (Skirmish Scout)
Christoph Patrouette - Vigil
Claidheamh Mor Capercaillie
Coaxster - Enyo
Dante Severo - Rupture
Ford Andedare - Rupture (3IC)
I Skip Legday - Rupture
Jehoshaphat Ambraelle - Atron
Kontxesi Buchanan - Thrasher
Marn Vermuldir
Mauritun - Rupture
Mols Halleck (Logi)
Olga Ukrainian (Logi)
Reise Amatin - Rupture
Rohan Amadeus - Rupture
Satoshi Tomeii - Rupture
Space Warfare Development
Staberinde - Rupture (2IC)
Stogal Severasse
Tisiphone Tagetes - Rupture
Xafen Katapi - Malediction (Skirmish Scout)

OBSERVATIONS
We had no new (< 3 fleets) pilots on this roam, so the preflight was shortened from what I had planned. I changed things up a bit and did some more work on the front end of the fleet with how the doctrine flew, coordinating alpha, etc. If I start at 10-past the hour we will be able to get out by half-past to 20-'till and still provide all the info to keep everyone on the same page.

Our first encounter was with a Hurricane in Aki. This poor pilot was afk in a belt when we arrived, which gave us a nice, relaxed environment to practice proper alignment, shooting on command for alpha, etc. IIRC, one of our people may have convinced him to join E-Uni?

(02:10:42) Akidagi
Hurricane +47.03m

During the roam a short time later, one of our fleet members was contacted by Rapid Withdrawl asking if we wanted to have a fleet fight. Not particularly, as I hate arranged fights. We said yes, and they told us they were bringing a Moa fleet. So apparently they knew what we were flying, and we got an interesting lesson about the difference between a response fleet and a counter fleet from one of our members (which proved to be rather prophetic). We made it to Rak without further incidence and stopped for a bio, and of course they found us there and promptly set up in a large. So now we have an arranged fight with a platform that can outperform our Ruptures at any range AND they have the advantage of being in place already. Yeah, this isn't going to go well.

We did the best we could. Loaded EMP to try to hit resist holes, had a cloaky scout check their position so we could jump at range, etc. Our destroyer jumped in 2 seconds (literally) ahead of us, and was alpha'd upon landing. We warped at range and aligned out and alpha'd. First volley did 5% damage - awesome, they tanked the resist hole. Their Ospreys repped the damage on the next server tick. We switched to an osprey that was in range but it quickly moved out of range and we did no damage. At that point I gave up and warped the fleet off. In that 30 seconds we were in the fight we lost 4 Ruptures. I hate arranged fights.

(02:48:01) Rakapas
Thrasher -14.67m
Rupture -30.44m
Rupture -25.07m
Rupture -25m
Rupture -23.13m

The fleet was split in Nis when we tried to catch a Rupture on the gate. The contingent in Oin got dropped on and we lost 2 Ruptures.

(03:13:28) Oinasiken
Rupture -25.01m
Rupture -33.6m

The remainder of the roam home was uneventful.


Stats
ISK Destroyed: 47,026,087.42
ISK Lost: 176,918,635.03
ISK Delta: -129,892,547.61
Efficiency: 20.999%


PERFORMANCE REVIEW AND SUMMARY
Everything went really well pre-flight - the changes I wanted to make from the last two roams seem to have worked the way I wanted, I will just have to keep assessing fleet member actions and how that reflects what the pre-flight briefing did for the pilots. I feel like I have a good handle on the doctrine at this point, and could effectively fly it well.

I understand the desire to go on a roam and to blow stuff up - people want to come on a roam for content. I just really detest being content for someone else where we don't have any chance at all. There's value in taking a fight and losing everything. But I don't see the point in arranged fights where we're not going to learn anything other than to get it reinforced that we shouldn't have taken the fight in the first place. Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way, and if anyone has any thoughts on the subject I'd like to hear them. Is it worth taking the fight if you strongly suspect you're going to get your @$$ handed to you? I'll keep thinking about it and working on planning and strategy.

Review/Attainment of Actionable Goals:

• Pre-Roam Planning. - ✔
• Decision Making. - ✔
• Command Chatter. - ✔–
• In-Roam Strategic Planning - ✔–
• Keep LEARNING! - ✔ (This one just lives on this list - it's why we're doing the FCC, right?)

Quality Improvement Actions for Next Fleet:

• Pre-Roam Planning.
• Decision Making.
• In-Roam Strategic Planning.
• Command Chatter.

[Space Warfare Development]

For review and consideration:

I was able to practice reporting the composition of the targets to the fleet. Calling out direction lines from the tactical overlay, target distances, and types of ships to the FC involved reverse thinking, from the fleet's landing, not from the cloak's position, and it was a challenge reporting to the FC with my field descriptions. The FC did ask for clarification, and I was able to rephrase. I will continue improving my reports.

A game bug prevented me from visually seeing the weapon modules on all the ships. The railguns suddenly appeared after the enemy ships started firing. I sent a trouble ticket to the support team.

Sending a cloak to an arranged fight is a good idea. The enemy fleet composition data gives the FC valuable information to determine if content is worth taking or avoiding.

Recommend a backup wing of painkiller ships in the EWAR comm channel, ready to pounce.

I have this idea of using the cloak's in-game Twitch stream as the FC's second eyes on the field. Imagine the FC's command console with five extra monitors, each monitor watching a scout's Twitch stream. The FC would need a full combat watchteam. Now that's hard core.

[Coaxster]

this has been hashed over before, but for new peeps...

There is always argument over what types of fights to take and which ones to avoid. It is entirely personal preference. Many unistas feel content is all, so even whelps are just fine. Some demand a capital kill or call a fleet a boring failure. In any case, the FC should (IMNSHO) have an idea in their head as to what 'op success' means for any particular fleet. That way there will be a clear idea of what to take and what not. Ahead of time.

My rules are: if I think there is more than 20% chance of 'success' for an engagement I will take it. Definition of success depends on the ships I'm flying but I generally use ISK as a guide. For example, in cheap frigates I'll take on a few blingy big ships even if odds of a kill are low.

In this fight, the ISK was about even so it was 'will we kill anything'. Here it was about 15% I'd say: if we could land at 0 on their logi we could face punch them fast enough to 'win' (though probably still losing the fight since the moas could pull range and still punch); I put it at 15% cuz as demonstrated, our effective dps was very low (and would've probably still been too low at close range). Going in, I expected that but didn't KNOW it. A good boosh might've also been sufficient (but they were clearly prepared for that by how they were moving, so, again, low odds).

I'd suggest beginning FCs do these types of thought experiments: you have fleet of X, you see fleet Y. engage, y/n? you have 5s to decide... and now you have another 5s do decide HOW to engage...

-Coaxster

[Tisiphone Tagetes]

Learned a fair bit on this fleet even though it ended rather early for me as one of the Ruptures lost in the set engagement.

I learned that there is a country mile between “able to fly” and “combat effective”. This was my first fleet flying a cruiser-class ship—having seen this event on the calendar I made sure to complete a few points in Minmatar Cruiser skill so I could fly the stated doctrine. Relatively early on in the fleet I began to realize that approach was a mistake.

Cruisers are slow by comparison to the smaller ship classes, and they seem to suffer more for undeveloped navigation skills. After seeing that I often arrived at gate 10-15 seconds after the rest of the fleet when warp-to was called, I drew some admonishment for trying to align early to be able to keep up with the rest of the fleet.

The artillery-based Rupture fit relies largely on range, much like several destroyer fits I had flown previously. From observation, it seems to require much higher skills support than those smaller fits. When FC called for an inventory of ranging at form-up, my values were the shortest reported due to weak gunnery ranging skills. During the set engagement with the Moa fleet, I couldn’t hit anything at the range the anchor was keeping and moved in closer only to be pointed and picked off once the fleet had warped away.

The set engagement presented a significant disadvantage for our fleet. As the FC noted, the opposing fleet was constructed to counter our fleet composition. The opposing force asserted a second major advantage by setting up in the large complex, and I presume that the opposing fleet also had a reasonable advantage in overall experience given that this was an NoP fleet. It is not clear to me how this sort of arranged battle is generally handled, but it certainly seems less than sporting for a fleet to assert both a compositional and positional advantage (choosing both the weapon and the field of battle). I am presuming more honor than is generally present, I suppose. It may have been a wiser course for us to set up in a complex in a neighboring system and declining at least one of the advantages to the opposition.

Another lesson learned for future fleets--have the backup ship in staging rather than back at HSC—by the time I reshipped it was too late to rejoin the fleet.

I shall likely shelve the cruiser class for a while until I finish the necessary supporting skills to employ them effectively. Thank you for the fleet!

--Tisi

[Vors Voorhorian]

Tisi,
One thing your could try next time if you can't get the range while anchored, is switching to a different ammo (reload is so slow for arty). The Proton charges in your hold could have helped give you a better falloff and optimal. The depleted uranium you had were a good choice and a nice mid-range ammo, but carbon lead or proton will allow you to hit further out.
Keep PVPing and the best of luck!
Vors

[Budda Sereda]

this has been hashed over before, but for new peeps...

There is always argument over what types of fights to take and which ones to avoid. It is entirely personal preference. Many unistas feel content is all, so even whelps are just fine. Some demand a capital kill or call a fleet a boring failure. In any case, the FC should (IMNSHO) have an idea in their head as to what 'op success' means for any particular fleet. That way there will be a clear idea of what to take and what not. Ahead of time.

My rules are: if I think there is more than 20% chance of 'success' for an engagement I will take it. Definition of success depends on the ships I'm flying but I generally use ISK as a guide. For example, in cheap frigates I'll take on a few blingy big ships even if odds of a kill are low.

In this fight, the ISK was about even so it was 'will we kill anything'. Here it was about 15% I'd say: if we could land at 0 on their logi we could face punch them fast enough to 'win' (though probably still losing the fight since the moas could pull range and still punch); I put it at 15% cuz as demonstrated, our effective dps was very low (and would've probably still been too low at close range). Going in, I expected that but didn't KNOW it. A good boosh might've also been sufficient (but they were clearly prepared for that by how they were moving, so, again, low odds).

I'd suggest beginning FCs do these types of thought experiments: you have fleet of X, you see fleet Y. engage, y/n? you have 5s to decide... and now you have another 5s do decide HOW to engage...

-Coaxster

Well said, I quote this to bring the topic up so perspective FCs who missed the topic will have chance to read this again.

Also, I'd like to comment on the exact engagement:

During the roam a short time later, one of our fleet members was contacted by Rapid Withdrawl asking if we wanted to have a fleet fight. Not particularly, as I hate arranged fights. We said yes, and they told us they were bringing a Moa fleet. So apparently they knew what we were flying, and we got an interesting lesson about the difference between a response fleet and a counter fleet from one of our members (which proved to be rather prophetic). We made it to Rak without further incidence and stopped for a bio, and of course they found us there and promptly set up in a large. So now we have an arranged fight with a platform that can outperform our Ruptures at any range AND they have the advantage of being in place already. Yeah, this isn't going to go well.

We did the best we could. Loaded EMP to try to hit resist holes, had a cloaky scout check their position so we could jump at range, etc. Our destroyer jumped in 2 seconds (literally) ahead of us, and was alpha'd upon landing. We warped at range and aligned out and alpha'd. First volley did 5% damage - awesome, they tanked the resist hole. Their Ospreys repped the damage on the next server tick. We switched to an osprey that was in range but it quickly moved out of range and we did no damage. At that point I gave up and warped the fleet off. In that 30 seconds we were in the fight we lost 4 Ruptures. I hate arranged fights.

There are few improvemenets we could do:
1. Broadcast for resp. F-ing broadcast guys. For the whole fight - 0 broadcasts.
2. FC should not warp the whole fleet with logies, it was told logies should warp at own range. Instead, FC warped fleet and instead of locking friendlies logies needed to manage align-out, speed, range. I wanted to cancel the warp, but did not even have any chance to do so as I was aligned. When I pulled myself 30-40km off, we already lost 3 ships, from watch list I noticed 1 ship taking damage, landed reps on it, but 2 my dual-boxing logies were not enough.
Logies should stay in at least separate squad and then FC should be a squad commander and warp DDs only. Snowflakes, scouts, ewar can warp on their own. Alternatively, logies can be in a separate wing and then FC can have option to warp DDs with snowflakes and ewar (scouts must have exempt from the warp).
3. I had loaded sensor booster scripts to SeBo by default. One of my ships (I was dualboxing logies) was jammed and it took me good 30 seconds to wait for booster to decycle, reload script, wait for jam cycle to expire. And even though some people argue if SeBo is required and what should be the default script, I did see EC drones coming and should have reacted quicker to load ECCM script.
4. Dual boxing is hard. I'm sure if I had a single logy I would have reacted to the situation better: monitor grid and load proper script quicker, land reps to friends quicker, though we would have 1 logy less.

I'd argue FC made a right call taking fight and providing content to his fleet. With good escape strategy it is the only way to learn.
Yes, we lost 5 ships. Who really cares?
Reise: please do keep taking fights, as Coaxster posted above.