[AAR] Solitude Roaming [2018-05-19T15:00]

[Yrgrasil]

Roam members (8)

Spoiler

Avrin Dennard - Caracal
Crimson Herring - Crow
Darth Galifreia - Caracal
De W Javqe - Caracal
Erwin Madelung - Caracal
Volkan Kaliarte - Caracal
Yrgrasil - Caracal
Zaldex Oscaras - Caracal

Kills and Losses

Today we had several WHs to Fade and around, so i took the fleet to http://evemaps.dotlan.net/map/Fade/YKSC-A#npc_delta and made some kind of circuit route to deklein and back. Directly in our Entry system we had a Brutix on Gate, as he aligned out i pointed him while holding everyone back with the shooting, but instead crashing gate he committed and we killed him pretty easily without this normal splitting up thing.

(15:22:58) YKSC-A
Brutix +100.79m

On our way our scout found a Orca in a Pocket and could tackle him, since we had another point we could hold him even as he has scared of the scout with ecm/damage drones. After a long long time it finally died and dropped some nice Drones for us. Our interceptor carried these back while Fleet did a short break in the meantime.

- in the beginning i let all shot the drones with their own drones, after he switched, i just used my own rhml and let everyone else shoot at the orca itself. Guess the last approach was the better idea.

(15:34:30) L-SCBU
Orca +1406.24m
Capsule +0.01m

Our scout found again something on a Gate and tackled it while we were in warp, there was a bit confusion going on on my side, but basically he couldn't kill the interceptor in time and switched to a caracal but died before he could go through its shield.

(16:12:05) 2O9G-D
Praxis +188.13m

Somewhere in between we found a single procurer on a gate, with a tornado at a 100er ping. Since i'am pretty scared about cynos we aligned out and shot the proc a bit, i made the mistake to keep the fleet the whole time with mwd running... so we went out of the range as it was in hull -.- We even went back and tried it again, but that guy was not afk anymore and just jumped, so we moved forward. Pretty weird situation for everyone i think, but yeah... i fear the cyno (and actually also procurers).

After a while we found finally a response fleet with several Feroxes and some tackle, sabres. We tried on the other side to anchor up and shot whatever came close but couldn't kill anything, since i was shot a lot of the time i warped the fleet of at some point. Sadly i somehow missed a second bubble+sabre which could get several of our caracals before they warped off. Sadly two of them got killed.
After reforming we headed back the way we came instead of moving forward and some pretty nice run started. (Basically we run away like a little girl)

(16:17:31) 2O9G-D
Caracal -12.38m
Caracal -14.25m
Capsule -0.01m
Capsule -0.01m

Since they had several sabres we aligned all everytime after a jump and as i was more or less sure i fleetwarped to the next gate/bounce. At some point one of their crows committed and we killed him nicely. I made the mistake afterwards to warp to the gate while we had still ~30s on the engagement timer, which resulted in some annoying bouncing.

(16:28:55) 5W3-DG
Crow +49.97m

Last kill (only our scout pointed him) is more interesting because it shows that there were actually another fleet around, we saw them on dscan every know and then, but at least it explains why they stopped chasing us after a while.

(16:44:43) 5W3-DG
Claw +44.71m

Stats
ISK Destroyed: 1,789,853,456.1
ISK Lost: 26,643,221.06
ISK Delta: 1,763,210,235.04
Efficiency: 98.533%

Need to say that this was probably one of the most enjoying fleets i had in a while, even if we half of the time ran away. If they had tried more seriously they would've probably killed us, but i guess we could take down several ceptors and some sabres with us at all.

EDIT: i got also actually pretty excited, so the fc command quality went pretty much down i think after a while.

[Fergus Echerie]

Nice work

[Crimson Herring]

When I saw that fleet landing I thought that was the end of us.

That last killmail tho. XD

[Decklin Quark Reiger]

Nice small gang roam - and an Orca kill with just 7 caracals and a Raptor - that's got to feel good!

I'm terms of running away (which is one of the things the Caracals are pretty good at), it looks like you guys did a good job. Care to elaborate on specifically how that worked for you? (I think I can picture it based on your description, but what was different from this time to the previous roam?)

[Yrgrasil]

well, the last time we had more or less just bad luck with the intel. So as our scout was scanning the system as we were in warp the gate was clear but actually a fleet was warping to the gate we were heading to. This time we could already head back before they all jumped in.

The bailing itself was pretty standard, if i had feroxes on dscan i just called to align the gate/star, else i called to anchor up instead and aligned mostly a planet. Would probably call to align a planet/anom/whatever as default, but most would take more time to get into that without experience i think.

While aligning out i hoped that the enemy tackle commits, like the crow did, else i warped out because of the feroxes nearby. If i had known that there was actually a third party around, i would have maybe tried to convo them to get rid of these feroxes.. but yeah, i played it more safe this time

[Erwin Madelung]

I enjoyed the fleet very much. The huge isk positive part wasn't crucial (although it didn't hurt) but the running part later on was actually more interesting; how to preserve one's own ships while trying to kill some tackle.
My wallet balance would have probably been bigger if I had selfdestructed the caracal and gone ratting instead of running, but I would have learned less.

Overall, I have the feeling that we (Solitude residents in general and Yrg in particular) have become better at these kind of fleets, and I can only recommend Yrg's fleets. We find content every time, and risk are taken in controlled way. This sometimes leads to fleets like this one and sometimes to ones like the thursday fleet, but rarely to boring fleets.

Usually I only record fleets for myself (when I remember to do so), but because I'd already uploaded the videos for Yrgrasil to see, I felt that I could share them here too:
The brutix kill. You can see I get red boxed, I call it out to the FC and then we engage and kill him.
The Orca kill. Video starts when we have already engaged. As Yrg mentions before he calls out to kill the drones so I search my drone tab on the overview. (It is 'Targets' and I even miss it in the presaved settings because I expect it in red colored text. What a fail ) A bit after 1:30 I bump the Orca because FC calls for it - I think he was afraid that he might be ECM and lose tackle and the bump is supposed to bump the orca out of align so that he cannot warp off even if we lose tackle. Shortly after that, Crimson (our fleet ceptor) returns, and the ECM drones are dead, so no more need for bumping. Between ammo clip 2 and 3, I repair my heat damage, but the reload finishes before the heat is fully repaired and I needed a second to find the abort repair *grrr*.
The procurer kill that did't happen. Imho we did not need to warp off. I was still in good range and had 4 missiles left, which might have been enough considering that it's likely one volley of us all was still in flight.
Here we lose the 2 caracals. I actually don't shoot the Claw in the beginning. If I had, we would have gotten the kill - major fail One cycle of overheated MWD would have been appropiate when anchor was 20 km away. Regarding the losses, it looks like they decreased speed; probably because they were scrambled, and there we see how bad my fail earlier was: If we'd have killed that claw, they would have had one less scram which would have meant one less loss. I don't feel bad about losing T1 caracals, but more that those two new players could not continue on the fleet
Ceptor kill (start at about 2:40). Luckily for the video, again it's me that gets red boxed. I call this out to the FC and this leads to the kill. (I still have to practise calling it out in a calmer way.)

I hope some people can learn from these videos, and I highly recommend recording fleets for your own analysis as it is helpful to look back and see your own mistakes. For example, I didn't recall from memory that didn't shoot at that Claw :/