[AAR] How to not play this game - 2019/12/22

[Budda Sereda]

Some of you might now me, not many do know that I'm one of very few mentors of the Fleet Command Course program. Before that I've completed the FCC course. During my tenure in E-Uni I've run 91 fleets. During this, I got lots of grief for making newbish mistakes, etc. And hopefully learned something.

This time I joined to share my experience, but in the end was FCing the fight. See details below.

Disclaimer: If I organized and led that fleet from the beginning, I'd work very hard to avoid that fight. I took it because: we wasted 2+ hours on form-up and move; it was obvious that after loosing 2 scouts the only way to do anything reasonable was to come back home. Rather than doing that, it looked reasonable to take even up-hill fight to give some content to unistas. Let me know if that was a bad decision.

Intro.

2 days ago, I've learned about a fight with RvB:

... still looking for someone to FC the Sunday arranged fight with RvB at 21:00

I've offered help:

I'd love at least joining, back seat FC, or just 2IC.

Praparing the fleet.

I've started thinking what to fly, tried to analyze previous E-Uni structure fights and fight with RvB (https://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtop ... 6&t=115158, https://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtop ... 6&t=115221), learn from mistakes that were made, how to fix them.

Problems:
- tackles die too fast
- ewar die too fast
- can't break T2 logies
- can't break Feroxes

There were other problems, related to experience which I could not fix, but had a hope that with a well-run fleet unistas can learn and do better next time.

I've asked to organizer, person who spoke with RvB about the arranged fight: what they are going to bring, what numbers, etc. My goal was to learn and try to balance the fight as much as we can. Unfortunately the answer I got was, we expect 25-30 folks from each side, but regarding the doctrine:

when the fight was agreed on it was “ anything goes”

Unfortunately, this is not the way how arranged fights work. Trust me. I have few in memory, I lost few 1, I won 6, including one against RvB: during that time I was in The Initiative, unfortunately, I don't have AAR for it . It is hard to organize and balance it, and run so people are not upset, but what is important: mutual commitment to make it balanced, variety of doctrines available, or market nearby to buy needed.
The way it happened this time was really poor:
- we did not have good cooperation
- E-Uni did not have ships stocked. Kudos to Psychotic, she did hauling and I believe handed out ships for free... But those were, just BLAP Caracals with old and same problems we had in the past.

Form-up.

I assumed fight will be somewhere we would have to travel, and I assumed fleet is going to start 1h before so we can form-up and move.
But my huge surprise, I learned that the form-up is planned to be 1.5h hours before the fight, even though the fight is planned to be in E-Uni home system.

No way guys. You have to improve: call fleets more frequently, do classes or whatever, but if you take fight in a home system, you HAVE to form-up in 15 minutes.

Fight against RvB.

LOL.

From what I udnerstood, they had something happening in their 'backyard' so they decided to not form to fight us.
Yeah.

Imagine pilots' thoughts after waiting 1.5 hour to learn that was just a waste of time. I've burned 20 jumps and bought security tags to stay in high-sec for this just to learn they can't form-up. WOW.

Ok, I can accept that. What I can NOT accept is that literally 10 minutes after, 4 their Drekavacs shooting our Astrahaus. This is complete BS: don't they have a problem in the backyard to deal with? SHAME!

What's next?

Ok, fleet had 30-ish dudes, blood thirsty, so we called to go to NS (Provi). TBH, I was skeptical, as usually they can drop a hammer on you, but Caracals have some mobility so we could have a solid skirmish.
The seconds we undocked, as I already mentioned, RvB started hazing our Astra. What confused me is that they were sitting on the "Unidentified WH", which made me think they are on WH and we could fight them, but as soon as I realized they are playing station games I recommended as to continue roaming.

Move



You have to learn how to move fast.

Once we have desto, scout should go "+1" system. As soon as he jumped to the new system he should analyze and report to FC situation on grid, dscan, local. Later updated situation on the outgate. The goal is to identify threat or content.
FC should react to this fast and move fleet fast as well. In HS probably nothing is scary, but in other places people can drop a hammer on you so you need to move FAST.
If there is no danger, FC should call "Jump and align-out", take fleet warp, and again: "jump on contact and align-out".
Even better is to order a 'free burn' to the desto unless you hear anything from scout.
Yes, this is a bit risky, but with good scout and situational awareness even if you get dropped, you will be able to get together relatively fast. On my experience, I've never seen ANY incident related to free burn.

E-Uni pilots have to learn this.

Fight in null.

FC was Ky, but unfortunately, shortly after fight started he DCed so I stepped up. We have around 15-ish Caracals, 7-ish Ospreys, Vulture, few Maulus.

Once we made a few jumps in null, we found 2 opposing fleets. One was blue to me personally, another completely neutral (don't remember the corp name).

I was dualboxing and flew a ceptor with my alt. I've noticed 'neutral fleet' in H6-CX8, asked our fleet to arrive to D61A-G and hold on H6-CX8 gate. I tackled Bifrost (he was roughly 50-60km from the gate), with 1 Orthurus on grid. I got the point, called fleet to jump and kill it. Once I saw people decloacking, I've went for scram.
Unfortunately, for some reasons, our fleet was slow to get on target: opponents got an own malediction on grid, scrammed and killed me, and pulled the range.

At this moment Ky DCed. It was hard to me to FC as the half of the grid was blue to me so I asked if someone can FC this. Noone replied, so I took the rein.

we lost one more ceptor, killed their tackle (slicer and Malediction) - this is what Caracals are great at. We could not kill anything: our opponents were fighting in a 'kity BS' (Orthrus, Vedmak, etc.) we tried to catch them and few times were close, but were not able to scram them to hold and kill so each time they escaped.

We were bleeding: 4 Ospreys, 2 Caracals, Maulus... interestingly enough, I did not see broadcasts for reps...

Bigger problem was that fleet was often spread out: I was calling 5-10 times people to anchor up, pulse MWD, but somehow that really worked poorly.

After some shananigan, I've tried to bounce betweent the gate and wrecks, but still we could not catch anything. At some point I decided to give up on kitey fleet and give a fight to "blue Feroxes". It looks like they were willing to fight us on a gate, so after confirming with fleet that nobody minds to die, we jumped back to D61.
I beleive people should have links and timer down, but I'm not sure and should have confirmed that first.

2nd fight.

We jumped 5-10 seconds before Feroxes, gate was bubbled, but we did not try to run.
I asked people, expecially logies to align up, and later anchor up, but i'm afraid not many understood what I expected. The first decloaked opponent ship was Ferox, I've called it to be primaried. But soon few Ospreys decloacked, so I called to switch DPS, and we got at least 1 kill.
I knew we are bleading, asked folks to align to the sun, at some point warped us away.
Only 1 ship other than me survived. I assumed I survived till some extend because I was blue to those Feroxes and they just did not see me on the overview.

We lost 5 Ospreys, 8 Caracals, and Vulture (it was a mistake to bring it to this roam).

I brought to HS a single survivor and on the way back commented on what happened.

What could be better?

1. Stock ALL doctrine ships: BLAP Caracals, BLAP Vexors, BLAP Talwars, FCC Feroxes, FCC Hurricanes. And many others you guys fly often: Ketrels, Merlins, Thoraxes, whatever. These ships should be flown and restocked frequently.
2. Learn to form-up fast.
3. Ignore, or don't care too much about shield timers. Those are just to generated content. Feel free to haze attackers, but don't PLAN for that or overreact.
4. Move fast.
5. Anchor better.
6. Fly doctrine ships.
7. Have 'heavy tackle' to backup ceptors, especially important for fleet fights.
8. Keep training missiles skills. 38km range in Caracals - is way too small.
9. BLAP Caracals in particular, and kity doctrines in general are hard to fly. Consider developing/flying another doctrine that won't suffer so badly after losing 1-2 scouts. Especially for roams. This still can be Caracals, but maybe fit differently.

And no, I'm not trying to brag, I did same mistakes while I was FCing in the E-Uni. I learned A LOT flying with other FCs.

What could I do better?
0. As anchor, I should have asked folks for their speed and adjust my speed accordingly.
1. When I tackled that Bifrost, I should react faster and don't let Malediction scram myself. Maybe I should have waited a bit longer while fleet gathers and moves closer.
2. Ask logy FC if people broadcast for reps and if we hold, but TBH, I did not see many broadcasts.
3. When we got the fight with Feroxes, rather than taking it on the gate, I should probably pulled the fleet a bit from the gate and kill a few small ships (if they make mistaktes). Though, I'm afraid we would not be able to reach from further distance.

Recommendations to FCC and Corp management:

1. Dunno how, but you need to organize regular fleets led by OOC FCs. Dunno what you can do for this, but E-Uni needs a good example of how to run fleets. Today, and during my tenure, FCs learned almost on their own. Time-to-time, someone from OOC mentors joins the fleet to the backseat, but a) this is not enough, b) this is not teaching well. Emerging FCs should see good examples how to run fleets. If someone thinks I'm bragging, just invite FCs from other corps. To make it simpler, I commit to organize a fight between E-Uni and PH (which I'm the member off now). We can do this frequently. DM me in game or in discord (Budda Sereda#3018).

2. Think very hard: how to stop, prevent and reverse the 'brain leak'. During my tenure in E-Uni, I've seen many pilots were told: once you hit some boundaries in the corp you have to leave. Yeah, E-Uni, as a teaching corp, chose some rules and restriction. Somehow, over years, this played a bad joke. You realize this or not: the majotiry of best people are leaving the corp, and rarely come back. This is not an easy task, but do work VERY HARD on this.

Hope someone finds this useful, feel free to comment or ask questions.

P.S. Sorry for grammar.

P.P.S. Sorry for the lack of kill-mails, Laser's roam report does not work for me.

[Ky Hanomaa]

Thank you for stepping up Budda!

The Situation in the beginning was awful indeed - we formed up for so long only to get notified about the fight not happening 5 mins before undock. The Dreks showed up and I hoped to get our unistas one or two of them at least. They had eyes and got spooked when we undocked the main fleet warping off seconds before our tackle landed. I remember one of them saying „Better response this time“ in local. Since it‘s a Shield Timer it was pretty obvious that we could not defend it unless we wanted to stay posted and play cat and mouse for hours on end.

The roam was intended to give our guys at least something to shoot at. The low tempo while burning through High-Sec was due to a lot of stragglers falling behind for some reason so I usually waited 1 system back with my alt to make sure we had most of the guys with us before moving on.

When we finally got a fight, my internet decided it doesn‘t like EVE and Mumble running at the same time and crashed everytime I tried to reconnect to the game. Restarted PC, Router and everything. The problem persisted until late after the fleet and I have yet to log in today to find out if it‘s gone.

Thank you again for stepping up Budda - I‘m sure I can speak for all of us when I say the Uni appreciates your efforts to help guide newer FCs within the FCC.

[Ersin Oghuz]

I was not in that fleet due to my timezone and I do not wish to comment anything regarding the fleet, although I must say it is a well composed AAR Budda, thanks for this and stepping up as commanding officer.
I want to point out one thing though :

Fight against RvB.

LOL.

From what I udnerstood, they had something happening in their 'backyard' so they decided to not form to fight us.
Yeah.

Imagine pilots' thoughts after waiting 1.5 hour to learn that was just a waste of time. I've burned 20 jumps and bought security tags to stay in high-sec for this just to learn they can't form-up. WOW.

Ok, I can accept that. What I can NOT accept is that literally 10 minutes after, 4 their Drekavacs shooting our Astrahaus. This is complete BS: don't they have a problem in the backyard to deal with? SHAME!

This. While I was still in EVE Uni, we fought another war against RvB. I lead some of those "arranged" fights with them and even though I do still believe major portion of RvB gives decent fights and honors their aggreements, there were some "others". I am not going into details on previous events and such, but not taking an arranged fight due to some other thing came up and then bringing 4 Triglavian ships to bash the structure when EUNI fleet stand down was not acceptable at best. Moreover you are stating that when you formed back they choosed to play station games. So, maybe not accepting those "arranged fights" offer from them anymore can be a good call until you get a "proper explanation or apology" for this behaviour.

[Samsam James]

Thanks for the very thorough AAR

I agree with most everything there. Based in AMC, I do a lot more PvE than PvP but this was a really good experience for me. This was easily the largest fleet engagement I've been in and a really great learning experience.

I have to say I struggled with the speed of everything of all the commands given by the FC. I did my best but that is something I need to improve on.

I messed up towards the end when the FC called to jump through the gate and then very quickly called to move out of the bubble. I was flying logi. I hadn't jumped through the gate at that point and had assumed he was talking about the bubble on this side of the gate so didn't jump. By the time I realised my mistake and jumped through the fleet had been decimated and I got blapped pretty quickly.

A couple of things to specifically echo:
The anchoring was a bit all over the place. The FC gave clear instructions lots of times on what he wanted and at times you could see people heading away from the FC as anchor.

As logi on the fleet there were virtually no calls for shields from the fleet. I only saw 3. Two of those were from 1 person. I may have missed some but that is very few.

I know I missed tonnes of what was going on but there is always next time.

[Nienke Solette]

I won't put in full quotes from Budda because that would make my post even more of a wall of text. If you want further details, please contact me directly. I 've put just the sub-headers with my comments on it in this post:

Disclaimer:

Which fight do you exactly mean, the fight with RvB or the Null-Sec fight? Like you say later in this AAR, you had a fleet of 30 blood-thirsty capsuleers who wanted fights/content, even after losing the two scouts. I think you made the right decision here.

Fleet prep:

I partly agree with your assessment here. Mutual cooperation was indeed poor (at least what I have seen from it, I don't know how the contact person in EVE-Uni perceives this). However, compared to last structure defence, I must say that the variety of ships on contract has improved massively (at least in Shema - Sierra). Many kudos to everyone who helped in this!
So, my lesson learned for fleet prep: More effort must be put into balancing arranged fights.

Form-up:

1.5 hours is indeed too much. 0.5 - 1 hour I consider reasonable, especially given the fact that we do a newbro-speach at almost every fleet. 15 minutes for a planned fleet is rather fast, that is more in the direction of a 'slow' QRF. All in all, I agree that Unistas need to learn how to form up quickly by themselves.

Fight against RvB.

I fully agree with Budda here. Not showing up because they have more important things to attend can be fine with a good reason. That would have been a "Not cool, but ok" response from EVE-Uni to RvB. However, those four Dreks attacking our Astrahaus is just not acceptable. I hope this will trigger a more hefty response from us, for example "What the f*ck were you doing?!". Indeed, SHAME on RvB!

What's next?

So yeah, the fight on our station. I was tackle Condor and went to the different system believing I would have to warp to a shared bookmark for a Wormhole. However, the station is called "Identified Wormhole". Funny name, but highly unpractical for structure defences! I would recommend renaming this structure. The decision to not play station games and go roaming was a good one.

Move

I agree with Budda, we should have free-burned to the gate just before Null-Sec. It's common practice for Incursion/Travel fleets too and gives some autonomy to fleet members too. Furthermore, it gives time to the whole fleet to think about what happend, what is going to happen, and focus on the approaching fight, instead of bluntly following "align and joc" commands. Lastly, if someone spots a threat, this can be called over Mumble. For newbros, this might be a new thing and weird for them, but it is the fastest and best way to learn how to report intel through the command chain.

Fights in null

The DC of Ky was unfortunate. Many thanks Budda for taking up the FC role. If I didn't have a no-mic policy at my parents or was at home, I would have gladly taken it up onto myself. Unfortunate... I hope this is a wake-up call for other Unistas to pick up FC-ing. It's great fun and you'll learn the FC's perspective in fleets really quick!

Dual-boxing FC with blues on grid. Again, unfortunate, but apparently a necessary evil for this fleet. I hope we can prevent this in the future.

FC was Ky, but unfortunately, shortly after fight started he DCed so I stepped up. We have around 15-ish Caracals, 7-ish Ospreys, Vulture, few Maulus.

I was in a Maulus and must say, this was the most fun in an EWAR ship since I started playing. I lacked an EWAR FC though, that would greatly improve the experience for newbros in my opinion. In the fight itself, I just locked and damped everything I could with a variety of targeting range / scan resulotion script (mainly following the advice to start with scan damps and later to range damps). I died because I wasn't aware of fleet positioning and FC's intention to jump the gate. I engaged and got a weapons timer, which was the cause for me losing my ship.

I think FC's awareness of fleet positioning and doctrine strengths was really good, despite the opponents being out of range often and us bleeding ships.

What could be better?

1. As mentioned, doctrine ships' availability massively improved since last structure defence I attended. I hope numbers stay good and we keep restocking this frequently.
2 - 6. I agree
7. I agree, but many Unistas can't fly Interceptors. Is there a low-SP alternative for Heavy Tackle?
8. Partly agree. I think every capsuleer must decide for themselves what to train. However, I miss a gap after going for the BLAP skills. Yes, we have the Magic 14. However, those are focussed on all ships, instead of PvP / PvE content related skill plans. Suggestion: make an Advanced Learning for Aspiring Pilots skillplan (ALAP). I would focuse on skilling to BLAP frigates/cruisers with T2 modules/ammo or BLAP battlecruisers/battleships (both T1 / T2 modules/ammo).
9. Agreed. I think we use Caracal/Ferox doctrine a lot. We need some variety and we need to train with various doctrines. I would recommend every Unista to come to planned fleets with different doctrines than Caracals/Feroxes/Ospreys. (shameless self-promotion; the weekend of 3-5 january I'll fly some NoP frig fleets, see forum)

What could I do better?

0. Agreed. Reccomendation for other FCs and anchors to put this in their fleet preparation process.
1. Were you still multiboxing at that moment? This might be another reason why the Malediction scrammed you...?
2. Did you filter out the rep broadcasts? What is Logi-FC's perspective on this? FC - Logi FC communication is essential in this.
3. I agree.

Recommendations to FCC and Corp management:

1. Networking, networking, networking. Does the FCC / EVE-Uni have a list of OOC FCs who we can contact? Is there a mailing list? @Budda I would love setting up a fight between E-Uni and PH. Will give you a call soon!
2. This is still the case. In my opinion, the Uni has to spent more effort in retaining high-skilled and highly-experienced Unistas. Yes, you'll always have some bleeding, and it is not easy to do this. Even in RL this is really, really hard!

P.P.S. Laser's roam report does only work in chrome incognito mode for me, and zkillboard needs an hour to update the killboard.

[Taylor Moon Mahyisti]

hi guys, please accept my apologies for the no-show re: the arranged fight. we had problems on our end as you know

i would like to say that the four dreks who reffed your astra did not know about the cancelled fight. if they had, i think they would have not done that out of respect for you guys. i hunt around AMC a lot and i know i didn't go there that night or the next for that reason, because i agree that not showing for the arranged fight and then hunting you guys like that would have been less than honourable to say the least.

this was obviously a communication problem by rvb, everyone should have known about this and once again i apologise. we are still happy to have an arranged fight and next time i will make sure something like this does not happen

[Gokym Ovaert]

I cant comment on the form up and all that because I was super late due to RL issues. So I can't give any other feedback to this portion as to echo previous concernes that 1,5h seems rather long for a form up. I don't know if this time was supposed to be used to discuss specific tactics for the arranged fight or not.

First of all I'd like to thank Ky and later Budda to take the fleet out although the fight was canceled. This was the right call. Regarding the traveling through HighSec I think that Budda is right to say this could be done better with freeburning. But you have to consider that we always have newbros in fleet who know absolutly nothing about fleets. And since we had a small newbrospeech I'd assume we had some firsttimers with us. From my observations I can say that the first view jumps as a fleet with "AAA - Desto" -> "Take this Warp" -> "JJJ, hold cloak" always start a little iffy but after 5-6 jumps the fleet starts to move as a unit. And I think this is realy valuable for new pilots because it gets them in the flow of how to react to FCs orders.

Maybe there could be a few warmup jumps where FC orders everything. Once the fleet moves properly FC can call best speed to desto. This keeps the training aspects and my be faster still.

We have a general problem with scouts in the Uni. And that is it takes time to learn and the SP requirements are relativly steep. Shure you can hop into a slahser but that thing blows up rather quickly. And if there is no reshiping you are srcewed. I think we could do with more specialized trainings for comabt roles like Scouts/Hunters/FCs/HIC e.t.c. I want to learn to be a good scout but all the clases are super theoretical and you need practice to git gud! There was only one class on scouting recently wich Ky provided befor a fleet. D-Scan is relativly simple to learn wich is a recuring class. But there are no clases on "threat assesment", "how to scout", "fleet coms", "combat scanning", "manual piloting". Also we could have regular PVP practice similar to what NSC started https://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtop ... 2&t=115068

Another problem wich in my opinion might hold newbros back to even want to start learning scouting is that there is no fully SRPabl scoutship. I cant fly an Interceptor yet so I'm stuck in a Slasher. But to make that thing at least a little survivable I need to make a 10mil fit wich is still just 400k in SRP. I personaly dont care, but others might. Especialy because on your first few fleets you are gonna die alot (at least I did/am).

As for the DC and fight. I absolutly agree with Budda that we need more ppl to step up and FC. If this would have been a LowSec roam and not a big angry NS fleet I probably would have steped up, but this was way beond my paygrade and I didn't want to whelp a big fleet in 5 seconds.

When the initial tackel was called I imidiatly overheated my MDW and burned straight to the target with preheated point. But the target warped of befor I got in range. I dont think the response here was super slow. But Caracals are not as fast as an intis.

For the main fight I think Budda did an exelent job at keeping the fleet in position and warping to wrecks to try and get an engagement but soon the enemy realized that they were sitting on wrecks and moved to other tackticals. I will admit that I was called out once for not beeing anchored wich was due to "e click" on the watchlist several times not registrating. After the fleet I asked what I could have done to prevent that and Budda gave a very good response to this: zoom out your camera and keep a better eye on where you are in relation to the rest of the fleet. This way you will realize relativly fast if you are anchored or not. I will try and do this better in the future and not just trust my inputs.

Maybe we could have tried to warp one of the ships of and get a ping behind the enemys so that we could warp on top of them. But this would have been the scouts job wich we already lost at this point. I dont know if a caracal would warp fast enough for this to work.

The range problem with the BLAP Caracals was already mentioned in some other AARs. I dont know if this is a fitting problem or a SP problem. At least SP seem to be atleast a little bit at play because I was the person with the lowest range. And I have completed the BLAP training paln for DD. So this is again another low SP problem (maybe). We probably could use an ALAP skillplan for DD and Logi. But also as mentioned above, some recomended training paths for specialized combat roles. Something of that sort already exists for the NSC although it does not seem to get used anymore.

Basicly I agree with most of the points mentioned in earlier posts but want to reminde everyone that in any given uni fleet, there will be firsttimers, general newbrows and low SP players. I think it is absolutly valid to point out what can be improved but always keep in mind that not everyone will even be able to perform at that level.

All in all this was still a fun fleet for me and I want to thank Ky and Budda again.

[Turlough Dominian]

- E-Uni did not have ships stocked.

Just want to mention this is incorrect, 3 days ago this would of been totally correct but stocks in the area have been very much increased over the last 2 days a few members gave up alot of time buying/delivering/fitting/contracting.

[Gergoran Moussou]

The form-up issue is definitely one that was an issue when I was leading Uni fleets. It got to the point where when I led my last fleet, I got three people, pinging for form-up a half-hour beforehand, and waiting another half-hour to undock. This was not unusual. Only WHC consistently had timely form-ups when hunters found something interesting to fight.

I would have been reluctant to go to Providence, not because of their Cerberus blobs, but because during my past few visits (such as the first fleet that I led after joining PH), CVA and friends have just not responded and stayed docked rather than engaging and providing content. Looking at zKill, it seems like the fighting was against RC, rather than ProviBloc, justifying this perception that I have. I've been taking my fleets to Brave space instead for that reason.

I agree with Budda's suggestion that this would be resolved by running more fleets, more frequently. However, this requires people to want to go on fleets and people to want to lead fleets. The problem here goes with Budda's point about the brain drain: PVP-oriented players, particularly those who enjoy leading fleets, tend to not stay for very long. Some of those, such as me and Budda, have tried to maintain a relationship after leaving, others such as Urban Oxide have returned and left again multiple times. However, the loss of institutional knowledge is an issue which E-Uni needs to address. I would recommend that E-Uni build relationships with other corporations and alliances and run fleets together to build up experience and knowledge of how to handle fleets. I know that this has been tried in the past: there were some fleets with Fweddit this summer, which Raido said was a revival of a program which existed at some point before I started playing, but it's definitely something which people need to maintain more than just run something and have it fall to the wayside after a couple of weeks like seems to have happened with that. In addition to Fweddit, I know that there used to be some sort of relationship with Tuskers, which seems like it's worth looking into, though more for individual skills than fleet skills because solo/small gang nano stuff is the specialty of Tuskers. I would recommend that after this wardec ends, something to this effect could be discussed with RvB (while also maintaining opportunities to fight them when not flying alongside them), but shortly before the wardec, I became aware of some statements which make me think that there might be a bit of existing bad blood which would make this difficult.

NPSI is a great thing for getting people opportunities to fly in fleets, but it doesn't really give the same experience of flying together consistently with the same group of people and I can't imagine learning to FC based entirely on NPSI. Even in massive NullBlob stuff like I'm presently part of, I find many of the same names consistently because they're the people who play when I'm on and like doing many of the same things as me. These don't even have to be corpmates or alliancemates. While I'd suggest being a bit less strict about the neutrality policy in order to accommodate this sort of thing, I'd recommend against changing it to open up fleets run by major sov-holding entities even if there are still people like Budda and Ersin occasionally in Uni fleets.

Budda likes running arranged fights. His offer is something worth setting up. I've been on both of the ones that he's arranged against NPSI groups since I joined PH and I saw some Uni members in both of them (I saw Zokr Mclan both times, in the second one, he podded both of my T1 EWAR pilots participating in the fleet, I hope the Uni people enjoyed the fights).

Budda's suggestion of incorporating more heavy tackle is definitely important. However, in a fleet as cheap as Caracals, I'd be a bit reluctant to incorporate anything larger than frigate-sized tackle (and the tackle cruisers such as Lachesis and Onyx tend to be a bit slower anyway, so I'd more likely consider them in a fleet composition which doesn't need to burn off and then move back after finishing reload), so I'd suggest going with assault frigates as what constitutes heavy tackle in this doctrine, more durable and able to hold the target than an interceptor or T1 frigate. It's not really enough to be heavy tackle for some other types of fleet composition, but for what Caracals are best at, it serves the purpose. The Jaguar, in particular, is the shield assault frigate which comes to mind as most effective for this purpose (and is well-established as a tackling ship).

With what Budda said about training missile skills because 38km is too close, I'd also recommend adjusting the doctrine fit in order to make it work well even without high missile skills. With Caldari Navy ammunition, I'm personally getting 63km on the PH doctrine ship and 48km on the BLAP one (the difference comes from rigs, Uni fit is set up to prioritize durability over range). There should probably be a larger discussion of doctrines beyond just updating the BLAP Caracal. Bringing the Ferox doctrine outside of just the NSC was a decision that I wholly approve of, but there are other things that can be done and I'd recommend having a public discussion of how doctrines can be updated or replaced.

RvB appears to have miscommunicated with the four Drekavacs. That happens from time to time. I've been in arranged fights where my side accidentally brought more than arranged because not everyone was aware of the arrangement. I've even been the person who didn't know about this and brought something beyond the arrangements. People make mistakes and it looks like someone from RvB has acknowledged and apologized for it in this thread.

I wouldn't worry too much about defending structures on shield. If you're keeping it fueled, you have two opportunities to plan in advance to defend it somewhere close to your preferred time, even though the window of possibility was recently changed. Because of the advance warning to get people prepared to defend those and the defender's greater control over when the fight occurs, it's a lot easier to defend structures than to attack them.

I see that people mentioned having no broadcasts. While this wouldn't have been entirely an issue in the Uni fleets when I flew logi because those were typically low enough numbers that I could have everyone else in WHC Standing Fleet on my watchlist, broadcasting is essential. If you don't broadcast, you can't expect repairs because you have no way to know if any of the logi pilots have you watchlisted.

[Budda Sereda]

It looks like my information about stocked ships fir this OP was not correct. My apology.
But, please do make sure you have armor variants:
1. BLAP Vexor
2. Maybe HSC CDI
3. Maybe some others too.

Interceptors MUST be SRPable. And in current situation maybe even 100%. If E-uni has enough funds.
Though, I'd put restriction on whom to SRP: introduce scouting course, and provide 100% ceptors srp to that program graduates.

SPs problem: clearly, you can't train everything. But with amount of free SPs CCP hands out last months, interested folks should have enough to inject l5 frigate for either Stiletto or Malediction.

Also, when I wrote 'heavy tackle' I did not mean heavy cruisers like recons or hics. AFs like Wolf, Harpy will do much better. Here we come back to SPs problem, but if you inject Minmatar frigates, you also get Wolf and Jaguar: NICE!

Gergoran: no, dont have public discussions of doctrines. Talk to OOC FCs, consult with them; or just use doctrines from big alliances: they know what they doing. Just be mindful and make sure you understand the purpose of that dictrine.

It's nice to hear about miscommunication from rvb side. But another thing to admit is that the way to arrange a fight should go beyond than just agree on date and time. Or just dont name it an arranged one.

[Anidien Dallacort]

Budda,

Thank you for stepping up and grabbing command. FC’s disconnect was unfortunately bad timing, with a scout on tackle already and us on the other side of the gate.

We all wanted a fight, and I know I was glad to get what we could out of that opportunity. I was ready to go down in a ball of fire. Somehow some kind of dumb luck made me the only ship to get out with you (your call to warp to the sun was timely, I had about 5 or more yellow boxes on me for a bit by the time we warped off).

Lack of tackle ended up being painful. Lots of target calls were at 150% to 200% of my max missile range, but I knew we were burning for what we could get, so it wasn’t frustrating.

On the note of movement - I feel I was keeping the anchoring pretty well, but I even got reminded to catch up at one point - I had fallen behind after capping out with MWD trying to keep up. There were certainly some not staying anchored, but I can attest to some of the movement issues just being an inability to keep up due to skill differences.

Personal positive - my first real PvP kill in that Osprey! This was my first real fight (in that structure fleets I’ve been on lately were no show opponents).

A few lessons learned:

- I keyed in too much on ship type when target calls were flying, and ended up firing at the wrong ship once (right ship type wrong pilot). I note that not all target calls were followed up with a broadcast, but the info was given on comms nonetheless and I fell behind on keeping up with that. I need to relax - was getting a bit tense at the end there.

- My first time stuck in a bubble - on the way out of null. And no amount of pushing “jump” on the gate a bit away, will help there. For some reason I figured the jump button would act as “approach and jump” if bubbled, but instead I ended up just sitting still in the middle of a bubble as we were retreating, until I realized I was at 0 velocity and had to issue an approach command to get out of the bubble. Not a mistake I’ll make again!


I had lots of fun, even if we didn’t have everything we needed to be successful, thanks again for giving us that fight!

[Larkvi]

I was flying in a Malus, and died very early after we took on the Bifrost (they did not appreciate being jammed, presumably). I certainly did not mind dying/losing the Malus (and it was at least something to do after travel fleeting from HSC to AMC and then ... waiting). Even the frigate I was flying had trouble closing into EWAR range on the stuff he was initially tackling, so I imagine the Caracals were having a much rougher time.

I realize Buddha was not intending to FC originally, but for my part, I found it very hard to hear/follow Buddha's orders. He was obviously frustrated at repeating them, but that was necessary due to the quality of the audio that was coming through (this was not a problem for any other member of the fleet, so I am confident it was not on my end). I strongly suspect this contributed to some of the problems keeping together.