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First, and foremost, thank you very much to everyone that attended my fleet!
While this was a rather short fleet, there should be some good educational discussion around it. We formed up, I gave a newbro speech, and we departed around 1920. The 15-20 minutes extended form up time seems to be par for the course for this staging location and isn't too bad considering how quickly you can get into content in Geminate.
I reviewed the space weather and saw a lot of action on the way from staging to O-V. Thinking to get a quieter route, I looked at alternatives but saw smart bombs on the gates to Akkio. So through the front door we went via BWF.
Along the way down to O-V there were quite a few fleets roaming around. At once point I had reports of two ferox fleets, a caracal fleet and we ran into multiple small gangs as well. Space was busy! We had fairly low number of talwars, so I knew we wouldn't want to tangle with either of those ferox fleets or the caracal fleets (and they counter us pretty well at our engagement range as well).
Probably the most skirmish-y we got was trying to fight a small gang of a couple retributions, a svipul, and...a confessor I believe it was. We lost our eyes due to a gate cloak "malfunction". We were on the other side of the gate as the aforementioned small gang. I had the fleet warp to 50km off the gate and we orbited. I had scout jump back into us to try and lure them in. They didn't take the bait after a bit. So I warped the fleet off to a planet and had scout jump back in for intel. We aligned at the BND gate and then scout's gate cloak expired without him realizing it and so he died.
Shortly thereafter, I saw a bubble on the gate. I asked Adrien to warp to the gate at 100km and see if the bubble was on the gate. It was. We waited for the bubble to expire and I asked Adrien to burn away from the gate. Once the bubble expired, the fleet warped to the gate at 0km. A sabre jumped into us from BND and I ordered a lock up and fire if we could catch him. He got into warp before we could blap him.
While waiting for Adrien to burn 150km away so he could warp back to the gate at 0km and jump with us, a lone Rokh jumped into system and warped towards us. I took us off the gate until he passed through and then went back to gate once he was out of system. We not only didn't have anywhere near the firepower to take on a battleship, but we were also at 0km on the gate and so if he had smartbombs, could potentially wipe off a number of us and if he had guns, our engagement profile is long range, so makes it easier for him to track us at range if he had rails and if he was blaster or had web/grapple, he could pick us off if we tried to get under his guns.
Once we were all back on the gate, I gave instructions to jump in, overheat prop mod, and align to a planet and burn towards it. The idea being that the other side could be bubbled and we would want to get out of bubble ASAP while shooting at the t3d's. It would be a gamble if the retributions would pre-ADC. We could probably pop them easily if they didn't have ADC's on, but if they did, we would waste a few salvos.
Never was an issue because as we jumped in, they warped off to tacticals a couple hundred km off the gate. I tried a few times to warp us in and get us in range to get some salvos off, but they were already warping off every time we landed. I tried bookmarking a container they had out (presumably to stop covops) and warped us in at a different angle than we warped out on, but no luck, they didn't want to play with us, so we moved on, deeper into Geminate, and our eventual doom.
Adrien disconnected due to wifi and as we ran ahead of the Ferox fleet, it looks like between d/c issue and trying to reconnect with us, the ferox fleet got him. We also lost Avrin on the out gate somehow (can you comment below, Avrin? How did we lose you?). I later heard the ferox fleet was forming up for fight on a gate (same one Adrien died on??), so we continued on. We numbered around 7 at this point, with no scout (Laser was trying to get to us though). Stuck between a rock and a hard place, I decided to try and move forward and try to get to O-V to see if we could find anything to nibble on while the Horde fleet(s) were out and about.
We made it into 3USX-F. As we aligned out, local spiked and I tried to warp us off at. just before we got into warp, the hic bubble of doom went up and we were locked in. Called for prop mods on and tried to get us out but with so few numbers and they were caracals, all they needed to do was spread dps and pop us all. I think one or two people go out in pods, but only people left were two people out of system in scouts.
RIP Fleet.
What went well:
* No issue getting someone to scout. Apparently EUTZ has all the pilots that like to scout lol
* No bubbles on BWF gate meant we could get in easily.
* Didn't need to ask scout to repeat himself nearly as much as I have on previous roams.
* More people showed up than I expected for a Monday evening. Hopefully continuing to run fleets at the same time and place will help stir up some more attendance.
What could be improved:
* There was some discussion of scram vs point on the T1 scout fits. I like the scram personally because the FC retains the option of using scout as a scram screener for the fleet to keep a hostile from burning in while talwars shoot it. Most of the time the scout might be burning off away from the fleet anyways, so I'm not personally sure of the benefit of a point over a scram for a scout on a skirmish style fleet. It would let the scout stop someone from warping off at twice the range of a scram, so there is that benefit. I'd be interested in feedback on this point.
* Laser offered that there was some extended silence while he was waiting for the small gang (retri/confessor/svipul) we tried to bring lure into us. I could have been more vocal, describing why we were waiting there.
* Another chunk of time on the BND gate was waiting for Adrien to get to 150km away from the gate to warp to us. He could have warped off to the sun or something and then back to us. I underestimated how long it would take for him to burn off. There was also some confusion with him sitting there as a perch for after the Rokh or Sabre came on the gate. I should have been more clear with what I wanted for him to do and it probably would have been faster for him to just bounce off a celestial to rejoin us instead of burning away.
* There was a lot of information to absorb during most of this roam (when is there not lol). Having so many fleets running around the region and there being small gangs to contend with on the way to O-V was a lot different of an experience for me compared to the two previous Talwars roams I've lead. It was kinda more like the low sec roam I led, but more people packed into smaller space it felt like. Lots of information meant processing and I wasn't as vocal as sometimes I should have been. I'm not sure how else to work on this other than continue to build experience and learn every time I take a fleet out. Would love suggestions on how to practice this!
* Celestial navigation - this was some feedback that I received after the fleet, and even got a mail from a second person about it. I often did not call for the top or bottom planet when asking people to align. This led to some people aligning later than others and on one occasion, we aligned to one planet and I fleet warped us to a different planet. It could be simpler in the future to explain what "top ____" and "bottom ____" means and then just use top planet / bottom planet for our celestials to usually bounce off of. Also, need to cover for newbros that to find a planet or anything else in system, the right click menu can be used for stuff not in overviews (like planets).
* Low overall numbers of Talwars. We were definitely on the very bottom edge of numbers for flying talwars. We could still blap some frigates or dessies if we could catch some with 9 or 10 Talwars, but once you start to lose damage ships, that drops off super quickly compared to going out with, say, 15-20 or more. I've been told Monday evenings can be pretty good for EUTZ so I'll continue doing some fleets at this time to see if I can build up some more people that will want to fly with me. Another part of the issue is I'm a new face for a lot of these EUTZ peeps and the staging system is 20 jumps out from Stacmon so it will take some time to build up numbers.
* No kills. :sadpony:
Roam members (11)
Spoiler
Adrien Claremont - Talwar
Avrin Dennard - Talwar
Dunar Dolorgiet - Talwar
Eadrom Vintarus - Talwar
Erwin Madelung - Talwar
Jehryn Caldarus - Talwar
Laser Skaron - Executioner
Nabs Hawk - Talwar
Union Pivo
Zoltan Irvam - Talwar
averoth trojan - Talwar
Avrin Dennard - Talwar
Dunar Dolorgiet - Talwar
Eadrom Vintarus - Talwar
Erwin Madelung - Talwar
Jehryn Caldarus - Talwar
Laser Skaron - Executioner
Nabs Hawk - Talwar
Union Pivo
Zoltan Irvam - Talwar
averoth trojan - Talwar
(19:29:05) BND-16
Executioner -3.65m
Capsule -0.01m
(19:44:50) O1-FTD, 3USX-F
Talwar -6.48m
Talwar -6.18m
Capsule -0.01m
Talwar -6.17m
Talwar -9.97m
Talwar -10.02m
Talwar -11m
Talwar -6.05m
Talwar -6.39m
Talwar -9.5m
Capsule -0.01m
Capsule -0.01m
Capsule -0.01m
Capsule -0.01m
Capsule -0.01m
Capsule - Genolution 'Auroral' 197-variant -0.01m
(20:01:02) BND-16
Capsule -0.01m
Stats
ISK Destroyed: 0
ISK Lost: 75,517,342.21
ISK Delta: -75,517,342.21
Efficiency: 0%