[AAR] KSG, WHC's first attempt

[NeedsNames]

Disclaimer: This all happened like 24+ hours ago so I probably forgot stuff/got stuff wrong. I don't have a list of everyone who participated or anything, I'm trying to piece it together from memory and zkill. I've also made like 1 AAR before, so this might be too long/focuses on the wrong things. IDK. Sorry for the huge wall of text.

Prologue: CMDR Delaney Truffault was huffing gas and saw combat scanners on D-scan, decided to sit on *bacon as bait in the venture he was huffing in. Various other people got into a variety of kitchen sink ships too including a bubbler. Drake from TURBO warped in Delany got popped before he could hole tank, but we got the Drake after some hole games.

Venture: https://zkillboard.com/kill/110735550/
Drake: https://zkillboard.com/kill/110735600/

I wasn't FCing at this point, this was just baiting hunting, and scouting each other out, normal wormhole stuff. While playing hole games, the pilot asked Delany about an arranged fight, relaying the message, we decided to go for it after killing the drake (but leaving the pod, we agreed no podding for this fight).

Form up: I suggested KSG as the doctrine considering in our previous recent fights with Turbofeed, they either brought Nano (which we didn't fair great against in SBC), or a heavier brawling comp than base SBC (Cerbs/Nighthawks/DNI with basis), which we didn't trade terribly with isk-wise, but IIRC they broke our logi wing first and we needed to hole tank and disengage. I think we've had more fights, but these are the ones I remember best and based my decision on.

They asked for numbers we had so "they don't terribly blob us," which was also not a good sign for winning a brawl. I figured if they brought nano, we could get some experience countering nano (something we've historically struggled with in other doctrines) and if it was a brawl, we might be able to draw them out and pick off a few ships like they did with us. Also, I had just bought new KSG ships and was anxious to try them out, so if it sounds like I thought through this a lot, there definitely was motivated reasoning involved. I didn't exactly want to FC, but no-one else did, and because I suggested it, it fell on me if we were going to make that happen. I don't think I gave a great explanation for why I thought KSG would be best, but people went along with forming it, which led to the first hurdle: What is KSG?

Due to the events of the weekend, putting up contracts was delayed so most people didn't have any KSG ships ready. Also, most of them weren't like me, and didn't spend hours perusing the fits from when the fitting team was first working on them to try to pre-train to be ready for when it releases, which is totally reasonable, but the fact that I'd done that gave me a sense of familiarity that led me to assume more familiarity from everyone else.

People were trying to determine what ships to fly and find them in contracts which slowed form-up and didn't a great opportunity to explain what KSG was. Other people did most of the explaining about the contracts and stuff, and various possible ships to fly (and a brief argument about whether caracals should count as a DD cruiser). While it was good advice, and necessary to get that fleet off the ground, I was trying to figure out what roles were being filled, but couldn't easily keep track. I also asked for Boran to start making tacs around the bacon hole (I assumed the fight would be there).

Eventually TURBO formed and was waiting for us to finish, which added another layer rushing it, as I didn't want to be late for an arranged fight (Delany was handling all communications, which was nice, as it was one less thing to worry about directly, but also a game of telephone).

I managed to get some x-ups for logi (3 or 4 IIRC), and a few tackle, and told logi that unlike normal fleets, they should focus on keeping tackle alive more. I told the fleet to manually pilot, try to stay within optimal ranges, and not to be afraid to warp off, and our goal was to split them up to hopefully pick something off that gets out of position, as I didn't think we could break through 5 basis regardless and undocked (some of this might have happened a bit later, and I don't think I was the clearest in explaining it). I think there were a number of retris, T3Ds, kikkis and other small ship damage dealers without the same range and DPS, which I wasn't sure what to do with, and just kinda hoped the pilots knew what they were doing when they chose those ships.

Posturing: I assumed the fight would be on the bacon hole, like our bait venture was, and had someone start setting up tacs there. They were sitting on their hole into bacon (I'll call it 2B1, although I don't remember what it was in chain). I don't have the full form-up they had anymore, but it was a lot. At least 3 DNIs, 2 Nighthawks, a curse, a Scorpion navy, 5 basilisks, 3 sleipnir, 2 hurricane fleet, a drake, a sabre and a broadsword show up on zkill. I feel like there were more DNIs though. They dropped a bubble on their hole, so as people were finishing forming and undocking, waiting at .Bacon, scouts were trying to set up tacs and a good warp-in that wouldn't welp the fleet to the bubble. I didn't have eyes on grid, so I was trying to communicate with the scouts about this, while other people were explaining how to make tacs and perches to one of our newer scouts, as well as scouts conveying info about the fleet-comp.

There was some back and forth about where to fight, they said they hadn't bookmarked our hole. If I was thinking more clearly, I should have proposed meeting at the sun, which I think they'd have accepted as neutral ground, which would mean neither side has the home-hole advantage, and we could warp in more freely. Instead we waited longer to get a warp-in, warped to a perch like 900km away, and then I found a tac ~100km away that wouldn't snare us in their bubble. I said curse, sabre, and basis are ideal targets (with input from other people), in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have included the basis if our goal was to get someone out of rep range of their logi wing. Maybe calling for a boosher in form-up would be good, but with the HIC, I don't think it would have helped. A few people asked about anchoring, I told them to manually pilot and sorta go forth, and then the engagement began.

Engagement: Unfortunately, I have the least understanding of what happened here. I accidentally piloted like 50km downwards as well as at an angle trying to approach at an ~45% angle, which from my isometric view made the enemy fleet look a lot closer than it was, and also put me, in a Brutix, the only ship with bursts on the field completely away from anyone else, and out of lock range of most of the enemy force. I also forgot to turn on my bursts until I was out of range. My overview was crowded by their numbers and drones so I was having trouble even seeing where the targets were, at some point I think I told tackle to broadcast ships they had tackle as targets, but I was rarely able to lock the targets I'd initially called, and I was far away enough from the other people I had no idea if anything I could lock would be in range of anyone else. On my watchlist, I saw people start to go down, and someone suggested we bug out, I agreed, and we disengaged.

I was told that they split into two groups which acted rather independently, and stay close to each other, and altogether had good discipline. Maybe if we were better at volleying we could have alpha'd the sabre, but as anticipated, we couldn't break through 5 basis (I'm not sure if our fleet even had the paper DPS to do that). Overall, I think once the engagement started I was too focused on piloting myself and lost track of the big picture.

Some of them later reshipped into frigates and a battle Viator to fulfill the turbofeed part of their name, which we fought in AAFs, just loosing a Firetail in return, FC'd by Boran. Moonface (ex-unista) reimbursed the Vedmak IIRC, and they left the wrecks for us to loot and salvage.

Conclusion

BR (of just this engagement): https://br.evetools.org/br/64cb3a50fead250e14b07159

Losses: Stabber, Scythe, Vedmak (+empty pod, looks like someone on their side didn't get the no podding memo, or maybe the guy thought a vedmak head might be juicy so tried anyways), Caracal and Exeq Navy.
Kills: None
ISK Lost: ~374 mil
ISK Killed: 0
Efficiency: 0%


Summary of all three engagements: https://zkillboard.com/related/31000903 ... %5B%5D%7D/

What went well:
- A lot of people got their first exposure to KSG, and perhaps nano as a style.
- I think the choice to use KSG was a tactically sound, even if the engagement was poorly executed.
- Quickly choosing to disengage when it was clearly not working.
- Keeping tackle alive (IDK exactly how, I played no part in it).
- Practice manual piloting and keeping distance

What to improve on:
- Explaining what kiting/nano is better.
- Battlefield awareness, very important for the FC, especially when everyone is kinda doing their own thing.
- Other people chiming in when opportunities arise (I don't think I made it very clear people should do that).
- All the other stuff I mentioned before.
- More of a newbro/new to nano onboarding process before the fleets themselves (which very well is KSG when we don't have time-pressure to form).

If you were in the fleet, please chime in, especially about the actual engagement, as I don't have a great first-hand experience/understanding of what happened, what else to work on, etc.

[Harry Heinee]

I'm old and have drunk diet coke all my life so my memory is suspect at best so, take with a shaker or two of salt instead of just one grain. The two groups that they presented seemed to me to be fairly quick because our initial warp in had us closer to the logi group and within short order they had swapped positions. I don't think they were as quick as us but they definitely were able to counter our initial positioning well.

I'm no FC and never will be but one thing I have observed over the few short years I've been playing is that all of the nano engagements where I have left with a sense of accomplishment (whether win lose or draw) tended to be orchestrated like a chess match. FC would call alignment points, targets and sometimes prop mod use. When conditions became untenable, we would warp to alignment then reset, rinse and repeat. While it's true that every pilot needs to be able to gauge when to warp off early because of damage, etc. and be able to keep within the feasible ranges of his own ship, it was still a fairly organized and regimented affair. I point this out as something you may wish to try on our next engagement not as criticism of this particular fight.

Interdiction bubbles hampered our ability to get into ideal positions. Kudos to our tactical bookmark provider as we would not have been able to engage without them. Perhaps I am just too lazy to go look for one if it's there but I think we need to have a sort of guide for making useful tacs and a standardized way of naming them. I point this out not based on this fight but one a couple of weeks ago. There was more than one person making tacs and the names and positions were a jumbled mess from my particular point of view.

I have also seen a fast cloaky ship provide warp-ins by getting on the opposite side of a fleet from a particular vantage point. Granted this was for brawly comps but the same could be done to get to an optimal instead of directly on top of the enemy fleet.

Anyway. You asked to chime in and there it is. Major points for stepping up to FC this fight and with a new doctrine... you stand head and shoulders above the rest of us.