The WTF Fleet was born of a silly idea I had when we ran a combined AMC/HSC group to the Katia Sae statue and most of us were in Atrons, with fireworks launchers. While at the statue we fired off quite a few pretty flashies at another nearby player - what if, I thought, we put together a fleet of Atrons and did a low-sec roam with JUST fireworks launchers in the high slots?
For purposes of keeping track of isk gained/destroyed, I should note that I provided all ships to the fleet, free of charge.
The intent was to have a load of fun, and I feel like we did just that.
- The Setup -
7 pilots, equipped with "Hero Tackle" Atrons, but with fireworks launchers in the highs, and 50 each of 11 different types of fireworks. We gathered up at Stacmon V-9 at 20:00 and explained the basic premise of the fleet - find a guy, tackle him, unload some fireworks on him, get out before we die (to him or to gate guns, because we tackled.) Hopeful end result : lots of laughs. At the suggestion of B'aldrick, we agreed to try and say something in local chat to make it obvious that we're not trying to troll or taunt people, we're just out to have some fun. (This later proved hard to do while in the middle of
- Round One -
At about 20:30 we set out, destination provided by B'aldrick, who graciously shoved me into the role of FC despite my preference to let him run it ('cuz I don't know where I'm going or what I'm doing - Carebear Rayanth? run a PvP fleet? uh...) Our first jump into Ostingele was really the first sign that our plans would change quickly.
This was not to be an ordinary low sec roam, at all.
We had sprung a gate camp and what appears to have been an ongoing battle between The Minions, and the combined forces of Panic Attack and Hull Penetration. B'aldrick was our first loss as a Caracal pounced him, and we all moved in to unload everything we had... to no avail, because all we had was fireworks. Everyone but the scout, and late-comer to the fleet:
Atron -2.92 mil
Atron -2.82 mil
Atron -2.88 mil
Atron -2.82 mil
Atron -2.91 mil
Pod -0.01 mil
Oh, hey, at least one of the enemies was nice enough to send 2 mil to his victim.
And then that enemy got killed by The Minions and a gate-gun. But because we had landed a scram on him we got on the killmail! I'll count it!
Thorax +22.83 mil
Reimbursement +2.0 mil
Regroup, reship in Stacmon, new plan of action, and down to 6 members.
- Round 2 -
Still on the idea of heading on a typical roam path to Vlillirier, we decided to go through Dastryns to Ostingele instead and avoid the gatecamp. We feel a bit far behind the scout and lost a chance at showing an Enyo some love, then lost our scout to a pair of Catalysts, followed by another member that was just about to catch up to the scout.
Atron -2.91 mil
Atron -19.85 mil
(Space Warfare Development seems to have brought his own fit - I don't recall putting that much isk into these! )
Having a scout doesn't seem to be working the way we would expect. (I take the blame on that as rookie FC, not keeping the scout closer to fleet.) So I made the call to just stay closer to Stacmon. There's a lot of activity at Ostingele still, so we'll just return there and focus on jumping in, unloading, and causing general confusion before we get back out. As a bonus, there's a lot of abandoned drones and loot laying around, we might be able to scoop and make some isk back.
- Round 3 -
With some coordination we do a decent job of landing on the gate grid at the same time the two who had just reshipped jump through it. Staying close to the gate, a Vexor and Stilletto are called as targets, and we start off close to the gate so we can jump through to safety as soon as we get targeted.
Calling primaries quickly becomes pointless as more targets arrive on grid, and we switch to free-for-all, lighting up our MWD's and bouncing between targets, showing them colorful shiny explosions and moving on to another. It seems that some of our targets have realized we're not really a threat, and they begin to leave us alone - but not all of them...
Atron -2.89 mil
Atron -2.92 mil
Atron -2.92 mil
Atron -2.92 mil
Our friends then warped off to have fun elsewhere, and rather than try to chase them down, we decide to stick to the Ostengele -> Stacmon gate, pounce on anyone coming through, and clean up the wreckage of our own ships and the battlefield that was here before we arrived. Got a few more bits of shiny fun this way, and managed to hoover up some of our losses back:
Recovered fireworks and modules : +10.85 mil
Loot from third-party wrecks : +57.15 mil
- Conclusion -
Losses : 48.77 mil isk (per zkill prices)
Losses : 64.85 mil isk (Actual price paid)
Kills : 22.83 mil (per zkill prices)
Net PvP loss : 25.94 mil (per zkill prices)
Loot & Enemy Repay : 70 mil (at Jita Sell)
Wait. We made more than we lost?! In a fleet intended to not kill anything? Granted most of that was just serendipitous loot we ninja'd for our own, but cool! Let's look at that a lot closer...
Net loss, at Jita cost paid : -50 mil
Net loss, other, at Jita cost : -17.23 mil (Space Warfare's Atron he brought)
Net wreck recovery, at Jita sell : +10.85 mil
Net bonus loot, at Jita sell : +57.15 mil
Actual Net Gain/Loss : +0.77 mil ISK
Plus the killmail that probably shouldn't count: +22.83 mil
WTF?!
- Lessons learned -
I learned quite a bit, here. I put the event and ships together, fully expecting to find an experienced FC to run it who was willing to just focus on the fun and not the fact that we couldn't kill anything. But I ended up being the FC with some guidance from the 2IC, and it really wasn't as bad as I feared. I have some work to do - keeping the scout at only +1, doing better at communicating, picking targets, etc, but I feel better about my ability to step up to FC on occasion now, than I did.
As for the event?
✔ Had loads of fun
✔ Fleet adapted well to changes
✔ Somehow made more ISK than we lost
✔ Great advice and guidance from 2IC B'aldrick
✘ Big blunder at the start that cost everyone a ship right away
✘ Tackling first opened us up to gate guns
✘ MWD gave too big of a signature bloom
✘ Need more targeting range
What would I do different?
Don't tackle first.
Opening ourselves up to the gate guns in these ships isn't smart. But if we bait them into attacking us, then we can tackle and try to get the gate guns to kill them while we just make it into a big party with the fireworks!
Small-gang is perfect
Near the end we were down to three players and more of a free-for-all. Calling shots and coordinating was a bit much to deal with when we weren't gonna get any kills for it, so any more than than the 6-7 we had would be harder to work with. Keeping it at 3-6 players is great.
Stay close to home
Reshipping is time-expensive if it's more than a jump or two away. We're going to lose a lot of ships, and we don't want to waste time waiting on the reships.
Change up the fit slightly
We had abysmal range: 31km targeting range, 100km fireworks range. This led us to try and burn in for range and lighting MWD's just made us easier to target. Many of us kept the MWD's on full time to stay moving, and this gave us orbit issue as well, losing target lock frequently.
In the end, while we set out to make our enemies go "WTF?!" - and i don't know if we managed that - I'm scratching my own head now: we technically ended up isk-positive? And we got on a killmail? WTF?.
10/10 will run this again. (I still have 35 Party Atrons to destroy!)
And we did have the idea of doing this in Gankalysts against High Sec Miners, with fireworks launchers
Thanks to everyone who joined me! Let's do this again!
