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:
I've offered help:... still looking for someone to FC the Sunday arranged fight with RvB at 21:00
Praparing the fleet.I'd love at least joining, back seat FC, or just 2IC.
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:
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.when the fight was agreed on it was “ anything goes”
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.