[AAR] Kiting Small Gang Class Fleet 2-25, 23:00

[Azora Anzomi]

I wanted to work on building Kiting small Gang skills, both in the university (and for myself) and so ran a class. instead of the planned skirmish between eve uni players, I did not have enough to really make that work, so we went for a small gang roam.

We had the following ships
1 Keres,
1 Stiletto + 1 Tackle slasher
5 Cruisers (3 omens, 1 stabber and a caracal)

Once arrived in heydelies, we detected a small fleet camping the fliet gate.
upon arrival (commanding my fleet to warp to 50), to my surprise, 2 execs + a keres had a suspect tags, the other 2 battlecruisers and 1 cruiser did not. Feeling there may be an opportunity to split their fleet (or force gate guns), we engaged the ships with suspect tags.

we pin down the keres but it takes along time to kill it. (I forgot to send my drones, and several others did as well.) Turns out our opponents were mostly blaster fit, which was great for kiting them out.

But out opponents escalate ships to a 3rd exec, and we struggle to break an exec, meanwhile, several of my players are struggling and not kiting out (or warping out) fast enough, and getting caught by the battlecruisers. Our inexperience cost us alot... I expected as much, but then again, that was the point of this whole class. To try something hard and by doing so, expand our knowledge and experience. As much as this fight did not go well, I think it was an excellent example of a real small gang fleet fight for the brave players who flew with me who now have more than 0 experience in small gang fights.

Other realizations were that our caracal and stabber fleets, when flown in the hands of our newer players, just do not have the range to make this work. When you get down to it SP matters... quite a bit for this kind of fighting.

We reship to Fight 2

After some frustration where the entire Galmil just runs away from us in a battlefield in their own space (really!) we find a small goonswarm fleet of destroyers and cruisers in a medium plex (we had switched keres for maulis to get into such) I knew this would be a rough fight, sliding into 0 with all those destroyers. But honestly it went better than I though, my maulis, and at least 3 cruisers managed to get to range, now we could use our speed and range against them. we pick their destroyers and frigates off 1 by one. But so were our cruisers getting picked off. Again, inexperience leading to getting tackled. (though in at least 1 case it was because they were trying to maintain tackle) It did lead to an awkward moment where my omen alone, kiting from range, with the maulis, completely forced the enemy out of the plex and allowed us to loot the field. For those who survived the initial warp in, again, a good example of small gang tactics.

https://zkillboard.com/kill/115827540/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/115827535/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/115827522/

So some thoughts,
Need new caracal fit for this
Omen fit was great. Stabber... not so much (got to have max skills to get to 40K range)
This is a really non new player friendly style of fighting. Like really, being able to sit inside of a cruiser is not enough, it requires a lot of support skills to usefully fly cruisers like this in small gang. (may be value in emphasizing the training of such) But lets not kid ourselves, we are talking like 3 months of training or more to really be "ready,"
Need to find a way to explain and train "how to Kite" better
As much as this was far from an example of success, I feel I created situations of actual experience in small gang fights, and hope that it inspires further study and practice to all who participated.