[AAR] Industrial Uprising (Seizing the means of pew) 22/3/19

[Auric Fulcrum]

Roam members (16)

Spoiler

Alf Saissore - Nereus
Asuka Rossi - Nereus
Auric Fulcrum - Nereus
B'aldrick Aivoras - Atron
Breeze One - Atron
Chrispin - Nereus
Esca Sinak - Nereus
JohnPlayerNotSpecial - Nereus
Kelle Damage - Nereus
Liam Udan - Nereus
Oona Boirelle
Rale Olerie
Savannah Tokila - Nereus
Vrebor Gamir - Nereus
Zeerse Solaris - Nereus
manda doomsslayer - Nereus

This fleet was part of the AMC Week of endless Entertainment!

Here's what this doctrine was supposed to do:
- Be very easy to fly, with barely any active modules
- Be extremely tanky and use that fact to surprise the enemy
- Be almost immune to neuts
- Be very cheap
- Rely on scouts to find targets on gates and in large FW complexes
- Bait the enemy to engage us by letting a single Nereus "autopilot" towards the next gate
- Blob things to death with drones

✔ Strengths:
- Massive tank, very hard to break even for multiple blingy cruisers
- Enemy will almost certainly underestimate what a fleet of these can do
- Baits the enemy into making mistakes

✘ Weaknesses:
- Not even Frigate-level DPS
- Extremely slow
- Has cap issues if not in Energy Nos range
- Almost exclusively rely on scouts for tackle, as most things can just burn away once caught by a Nereus
- Horrible targeting (takes more than 20 seconds to lock frigates, about 10 for cruisers, maximum 2 locked targets)
- Rely on drones only for DPS unless enemy is brawly

Doesn't look too good, right? I personally expected us to whelp on the first fight we got, either to a BC/BS gatecamp or some kitey shenanigans.

Here's what we actually did

Kills and Losses

After a very slow fromup, which was in part due to the HSC Fight Club happening at the same time as this fleet, we split the fleet into 4 groups: the scouts (not in a Nereus), Point, Scram and Web. I also had one person take on a special role, the Bait. His job was to fly as if on autopilot and thereby bait people into engaging him on gates, where the rest of the fleet would then land and fight the aggressors. The scouts job in this fleet was a bit different from the norm. Their job was to look at 2 things only: large plexes and gates. The reason for that was that the Nereus can't engage things anywhere else, since we can't get into any plexes aside from larges. This was also done to avoid gatecamps that we obviously couldn't take and would just die to.

(19:42:27) Nennamaila, Hikkoken
Nereus -10.23m
Nereus -5.31m
Nereus -5.47m
Nereus -5.86m
Thorax +27.32m
Omen Navy Issue +110.32m

After roaming around for a bit, we got our fist fight! Scouts reported a gang of 3 Osprey Navys, a Cynabal and a Thorax sitting on the Hikkoken gate in Nennamaila. I was very hesitant to take that fight, fearing that they would just kite us out and slowly pick us off (at this point in time, I didn't realize just how incredibly tanky these Nereus were). Our bait jumped in and warped to the gate at 10, soon getting redboxed by the cruiser gang. The fleet jumped into Nen and warped to the gate in a desperate attempt to save him. Sadly, he died before we landed and the gang warped off.

I called for the fleet to regroup at 0 on the gate, when the flashy Cynabal of the cruiser gang landed on us and jumped through. We followed it and I called for everyone to decloack and try to establish tackle. Cynabal aggressed aswell and the fight began. The Cynabal was called as primary and I told everyone to activate the hardeners, throw their drones at him and approach while the scout held tackle. The rest of the Cynabals friends jumped in while he was burning out of our tackle range and taking shots at us. I don't quite remember all the details of what happened, as it was a very intense and stressful situation (I really need to install OBS and start recording these).

Here's how the fight went down: I tried to call for primaries according to the following criteria: distance from the fleet, distance from the droneball, speed. I kept calling new primaries and secondaries as the enemies burned in and out of range, which was very challenging because of the horrible locking-time and range of the Nereus (there were a few times where no enemy was in range and we had to wait for them to make a mistake). At some point I called the fleet to stop approaching the primary and reapproach the gate to give myself the option of deaggressing and jumping out if we started to get overwhelmed. The enemies Thorax was sitting at 0 on the gate, so I called everyone to point it and put Guns & Neuts on it while keeping the drones on the primary target. Apparently the Thorax pilot didn't manage to locate the jump-button in time and got blapped by our pea-shooters (he had more than enough time to deaggress and get out, no idea what he was thinking). The Cynabal and Osprey Navys both bounced and jumped numerous times, the Cynabal disengaging after going into hull. After losing a few Nereus' at the beginning we managed to consistently force their Osperys off the field, which caused them to frequently and frantically switch targets in a desperate attempt to break our tank, giving up after a few volleys at each fleet member. Towards the end of the fight, a Nomen joined their ranks, but landed close enough to us to get blapped before it could get out of overheated point range. After the death of the Nomen, the Ospreys started to burn out of range and disengage one after the other.

(20:22:12) Tama
Hecate +126.31m

While some fleetmembers were reshipping back in Stacmon, I decided to take the fleet to the legendary system of gatecamps: Tama! After trying to bait a Retribution gang in Kedama, our Scout and Bait jumped into Tama and got a Hecate to engage them. The fleet followed and held the Hecate until it popped. Sadly, our rightfully earned kill was stolen from us by one of the Retribution pilots.

(20:25:48) Tama
Nereus -5.47m
Nereus -5.47m
Nereus -5.31m

I called for the fleet to dock up in a station in Tama while we waited for other people to reship. That's when one of us (I think it was one that was reshipping and coming back from Stac) ran into a gatecamp on the Kedama gate. Fleet undocked and warped in, some people getting stuck in the middle of nowhere (Esca was already off grid when I called the fleet to warp to him) and some landing in the middle of a Leshak, Praxis, SFI and Enyo. As it turns out, the Hecate we just killed got quite salty, decided to reship into said Leshak and called in a few buddys aswell. After getting everyone on the gate, I waited for the enemy fleet to aggress before jumping through so we'd have the advantage of them taking both aggression timers and gateguns. The fleet then warped to the Reitsato gate and help there, waiting for the scout to +1.

(20:31:35) Reitsato
Atron -1.35m
Enyo +55.91m
Nereus -5.47m
Nereus -5.41m
Nereus -7.99m
Nereus -5.03m

A flashy Jaguar landed on our gate and jumped thorugh, scout following. Scout called point on the Jaguar and the fleet jumped just as the gatecamp from earlier was landing on our gate. Jaguar was called as primary and I called everyone to crash the gate at the same time. The Leshak, Praxis, SFI and Enyo jumped in and I called for everyone to switch to the Enyo as he wasn't really moving at the time. We managed to kill the Enyo and switched back to the Jaguar which was repping hard. In fact, it was repping so hard that I immediately came to the conclusion that they must have some kind of logi on grid that we couldn't break (this was not the case) and so called for everyone to pull drones and deaggress, warp off if possible, otherwise crash the gate. We lost a few more Nereus' to brutal Leshak DPS , but actually managed to hold a lot better than I expected (even holding for more than 30 seconds against the Leshak). After scattering, JohnPlayerNotSpecial officially ended the AMC part of the fleet, but most of us wanted to roam a bit more, so we did that.

(20:36:54) Kedama
Nereus -5.48m
Capsule -0.01m

Lost one more to the gatecamp fleet

(20:41:29) Hikkoken
Nereus -5.47m

Lost someone to a completely different fleet that was gatecamping the Pynekastoh gate in Hikkoken (we saw this exact fleet at the very start, moving from Ostingele to Harroule).

(21:19:01) Eha
Atron -5.99m
Capsule - Genolution 'Auroral' 197-variant -0.01m

Tried to engage some small stuff in a large, bait got blapped and the baited warped off before we could lock them. At this point I decided to end the fleet and get everyone back to Stacmon safely

Stats
ISK Destroyed: 319,859,514.73
ISK Lost: 85,336,956.48
ISK Delta: 234,522,558.25
Efficiency: 78.939%

Overall evaluation

• ✔ (Positive stuff)
  - Had tons of fun
  - Learned a lot about fleet fights and the doctrine. When you're almost forced to take every fight you find, you learn how to make the best of what appears to be a losing situation and just do everything you can
  - Killed blingy stuff in Industrials
  - Went ISK positive
  ✘ (Negative stuff)
  - Didn't process information properly at times, especially in the fleet fights (Didn't notice enemy had no logi, called sub-optimal primaries, lost overview of the situation, etc.)
  - Slow formup

[Liam Udan]

Was a great fleet, had fun gaining some experience as someone fairly new to PvP and managed to get my first kill mail, thanks to the clear and easy to follow orders by the FC Auric Fulcrum.

[Asuka Rossi]

✘ Weaknesses:
- Not even Frigate-level DPS
- Extremely slow
- Has cap issues if not in Energy Nos range
- Almost exclusively rely on scouts for tackle, as most things can just burn away once caught by a Nereus
- Horrible targeting (takes more than 20 seconds to lock frigates, about 10 for cruisers, maximum 2 locked targets)
- Rely on drones only for DPS unless enemy is brawly

But the Battle Nereus doesn't know this and kill a Faction Cruiser. Hands down!

[B'aldrick Aivoras]

I only joined the fleet when the ONI skirmish was going on so wasn’t on grid.

I heard some great FCing though with clear instructions, good target calling and overall great control.

Excellent work - always go on an Auric fleet they are fun! o7

[Zeerse Solaris]

Not sure we needed scouts other than to call what was about to engage me as bait which seemed to be irresistible to low sec pirates

[manda doomsslayer]

THIS WAS FUN.