[AAR] 2019-10-27 // Sunday Funday with Ky

[Ky Hanomaa]

Form-Up took rather long this time, since we had 3(?) brand-new Newbros join from the beginning as well as another one joining at the end of Form-Up, causing me to basically repeat the entire Newbro-Speech in fast-forward while also getting him set up with a ship (I didn't really mind, gives me more practice handling Newbros in Fleets).

Roam members (14)

Spoiler

Asuka Rossi - Blackbird
B'aldrick Aivoras
Batto Ashitaka
Ch4rl13 D4M3 B3rry
Ghad Makanen
Ithugor Wells - Malediction
Ky Hanomaa - Caracal
Loron Garns
Rensvok Virpio
Tal Tracyn
Triton Aster - Caracal
Tyrion Edwardes - Caracal
Vishnael Skyhunter - Caracal
Yto Itinen - Caracal

Kills and Losses

We stumbled upon a kitey small-gang at a Plex in Loes - and figured we could try our luck with them. I got primaried pretty much from the beginning and tried my best to call targets while being dampened down to 15km (same for my 2IC) by their Keres. Scout managed to get tackle on one of their ships, but ended up dying seconds after due to the high damage-application their comp offered, especially the Kikimoras. They managed to control the grid by staying outside our range and taking advantage of our reload-times in exchange for some of their overall DPS. After about 2 minutes into the fight, I decided it wasn't worth it warped the fleet to a safe after having them align to a nearby celestial. They weren't going to let themselves get caught and we weren't breaking.

(20:21:18) Loes
Malediction -43.9m

After the encounter, I started rushing to the location of our arranged fight with Buntspecht & Co.

En route, we dealt with an unusual number of disconnects. Especially Tal kept getting disconnected, which unfortunately slowed down the fleet as a whole, since I didn't want to just leave him behind (and lose out on even more DPS in our fight).

When we arrived, Tal decided he'd rather stay out and not risk anything with his disconnects and Ch4rl13, who was Logi, had to leave.

The fight then played out kind of as I expected with our odds. Our Caracals couldn't break their Stabbers before having to reload. Our 2 remaining Logi couldn't hold the combined DPS of the Stabbers. We got overwhelmed and I called scatter after we lost most if not all of our DDs including our Blackbird, which was crucial for counteracting their Reps and Damps.

(21:07:13) Akidagi
Caracal -28.17m
Blackbird -25.04m
Caracal -13.14m
Caracal -13.45m
Caracal -60.39m
Caracal -28.14m

After a debrief with the Fleet, I joined our opponent's comms to find out what went wrong and how to improve the quality of our fights. One crucial mistake I made while planning the fleet was expecting the same numbers as the previous Fleet had. I chose the BLAP Caracals specifically to have people anchor up on me and thus not having to worry about their piloting. At the same time, they shouldn't have issues with being in range and applying their DPS on the cruisers. I was told, that their Logi had trouble holding everytime I called a new primary, but ended up unable to break anything before reload. We didn't have critical mass. Since we also lost 1 Logi due to RL, we weren't able to hold, so the Blackbird ended up going down rather early - I'll have a Kitsune/Griffin or a Keres/Maulus next time, whose survival will depend on the piloting skills of the person flying it.

They offered that they give us 3 Logi Pilots or that we agree on a doctrine and shuffle members, which both sound like a fun ideas, if it weren't for the language barrier. They're native German speakers and have poor English skills. Getting 3 good Logi Pilots sound great, but I want to provide our members with Logi-practice. These brawls are the best opportunity for this kind of training I've seen in all my time in the Uni, since we actually get "good fights" out of them.

I'll give it one more go with another doctrine coming Sunday, hopefully with better numbers, and evaluate after that.

Stats
ISK Destroyed: 0
ISK Lost: 212,230,020.78
ISK Delta: -212,230,020.78
Efficiency: 0%

Overall evaluation

• ✔ (Positive stuff)
  - Anchoring worked well
  - Logi held well in the first fight, when we were still 3
  
  ✘ (Negative stuff)
  - I had serious trouble calling targets with both me and my 2IC dampened out

[B'aldrick Aivoras]

Really enjoyed flying out after a period of AFG.

I thought you controlled the fleet well and allowed everyone to get involved. I did think we were a bit short on DPS especially when we lost the extra logi. It menat that our EWAR would really struggle and any advantage might be lost.

Anchoring and range control was good so i don't there was anything you could do as you also supplemented this with good target calling and broadcasts. Good job!

My mistake was burning out my launchers - i thgt you could overheat a full cycle of RLMLs with Thermodynamics 5 but i guess there's been a nerf that I missed

What next for an arranged fight? Well, it always depends on what you like ofc. I think brawly works with boosh / boost and EWAR / logi. I luv retributions / punishers for this sort of thing. I still remember a HCOOK brawl where the target calling and booshes made the difference.

The choice is yours but I'd always lose a ship for you
o7

[Asuka Rossi]

Blackbird here.
From my POV the problem as i landed was the celestis, that focused all damps on me locking my range down to 37km. Lucky for me their logi closed too much on the fleet and i tried to land 2 jammers, and in the short time i lived i landed 2 cycles on one of their osprey. A good choice could've been keeping some racial spares until we arrived so i could've jammed more reliably, multi can work in unknown fights but againstknown targets and scripted ECCM didnt do so well. As i expected i got focused too and the slow speed didnt give me chance of escape, they closed immediately and they scram-webbed me as soon as they can. Logi tried their best to keep me alive and i think we lost some dd too because logi tried everything to rep me, but reps werent enough and at the end i died. Using a Kitsune next time could be an improvement because of the increased speed but a stabber is still a bit faster, so the job will be hard. Something to counter a celestis is needed too, u cant counter anymore damps with jams so at least another dampening ship should be considered or at least theorycrafting a jamming fit that can still be useful even if dampened. I should add that the blackbird is also a lot slower than the caracals so keeping the anchor with the fleet was hard at the Loes fight, but with some MWD pulses i somehow managed to keep up with the prop-off anchored fleet. A suggestion for next time fleets is to pair griffin/kitsunes up to cruisers gangs, and then blackbirds for BC and up keeping an eye for an eventual rook for non-plexed fights (the rook t2 resist are quite nice compared to the t1 ones and can pack a punch too)

[Ky Hanomaa]

I initially planned on having 2 Blackbirds, one to focus on Logi and one to counter their Damps. We sadly didn't have the numbers to sacrifice more DPS for more EWAR and people were unusually unwilling to take any role besides DD on this fleet.

If you plan on coming next Sunday, you're free to bring a Kitsune or Keres or whatever EWAR Ship you prefer with a fit of your personal choice, just make sure it can fit into a Medium Plex.

[Budda Sereda]

Good write up! Sorry to hear for the loss, but keep flying!

[Budda Sereda]

Deleted duplicate

[Budda Sereda]

Question though: have you tried to primary logies first? With 10-ish Caracals you should be able to. If they confirm they were barely holding dps alive, you should have been able to break logies. Might need to OH and even try 2nd time after reload... and, while reloading, caracal can repair some hit damage.
Or maybe try to primary ewar ships (celestis) often they have lower tank than dps and logies

Another thing, would be good to hear fight tactics. Did you start fight with them at 0? Or at range? Did you try to sneak to there back to get closer yo logies? Those all are very important.

The blackbird pilot: you do have to be at solid range, like 60-80km. If they damp you - that sucks, what you can do is to warp away, and come back, and maybe before they damp you again you can land 1-2jams. And to bounce faster, have a tactical bm nearby. It's another good idea to carry Mobile Depot and racial jams. FC can always wait an extra minute for you to refit.

Regarding losing a logy: I'd say 2 logies, as was noted, is too low, good idea would be to ask someone from dps pilots to switch a ship.

[Gergoran Moussou]

I second the recommendation of a mobile depot and all types of racial jams. You're going to want to tailor your default loadout to what you expect to encounter in the area where you fly it (for example, Amarr and Triglavian ships are popular in wormholes so I would default to Radar, but because Drake Navy/Basilisk is another established brawling doctrine, gravimetric should also be brought and it's worth also bringing the other two types to deal with Gallente/Minmatar ships). Before you arrive on-grid, refit based on what enemies have been spotted.

My personal preference is to only use Amarr/Caldari logi when there are three or more logi pilots available in case of situations like this when one person has to leave. Two Ospreys can be more effective than two Scythes by keeping each other cap stable, but once one of them goes down, the other becomes dead weight. Depending on the skills of the people flying, I would likely have wanted to see if it was possible to reship to Scythes for that reason after Charlie had to leave, but since it takes a bit more SP to fly a Scythe cap-stable, I don't know if that would have been feasible since you mentioned a lack of volunteers for roles.

[Ky Hanomaa]

I could have fit up the Blackbird to hit their exact weakness, yes, but decided not to do so since I wanted to be "honorable" about it, in the context of this being a friendly arranged brawl. On top of that, this was mainly an experiment to see whether sacrificing the DPS of the Thoraxes for the "Anchor up and press F1"-type of fleet the Caracals offered was worth it. It actually went rather well imo considering we were outnumbered and lost critical mass before the fight even began. I also wanted to see whether Logi would be able to keep the tanked Blackbird alive long enough to take down enough of their DD and decrease incoming DPS enough to hold grid. This turned out to not work that well, so I'll abstain from using that in the future.

We started at range and I wanted to try and kite the Stabbers out of Logi range. They very quickly caught up to us, so I decided to change direction and burn for their Logi, who kept distance behind the Stabbers. Due to us lacking the numbers we ended up almost breaking something but ultimately couldn't due to reload.

Bouncing in that is hard due to FW-Plex mechanics.

Switching into any given ship out in the middle of Low-Sec is also rather hard (especially since LSC's downfall - the market in Archavoinet offered some flexibility in that regard).