Well, I hope to increase that number once again. And keep doing it. Don't know how sustained it will be, but I will try.
Roam Members (18)
Spoiler
Alex EpicPotato - Merlin
Alex Maillar - Burst
Amfion Bravais - Harpy
Atreus Severasse - Merlin
Brandie Poundomax - Burst
Chanstaner vi Adraille - Merlin
DockSau - Merlin
Drebin 679 - Hecate
George Goodman - Merlin
Gors - Burst
lord vader - Merlin
Irth Allyrin - Merlin
JosephLuck - Burst
Kitava Stardust - Merlin
Mali Brocreux - Burst
Rocky Oly - Merlin
Ruban Spangler - Merlin
Zhandris - Stiletto
Alex Maillar - Burst
Amfion Bravais - Harpy
Atreus Severasse - Merlin
Brandie Poundomax - Burst
Chanstaner vi Adraille - Merlin
DockSau - Merlin
Drebin 679 - Hecate
George Goodman - Merlin
Gors - Burst
lord vader - Merlin
Irth Allyrin - Merlin
JosephLuck - Burst
Kitava Stardust - Merlin
Mali Brocreux - Burst
Rocky Oly - Merlin
Ruban Spangler - Merlin
Zhandris - Stiletto
But we do undock, I go through the the basic routines, making sure people know how to anchor, align, and broadcast. Taking volunteers, I designate JosephLuck as 2IC, Brandie as a logi anchor (because I didn't necessarily want the logi at 0 if we got smartbombed), and Zhandris as a scout, who volunteered his Stiletto. I was not in the FC Team at the time, so Chanstaner had to make a Fleet Activity Tracker (FAT) link on my behalf. And when that was settled, we took a noise filament onwards!
Kills and Losses
Tenerifis
We first got filamented to QI9-42 in Tenerifis, which is a pretty sparsely populated area from the looks of things on the map. Seeing a bit of activity in the neighboring IL-YTR / KW-OAM / JK-Q77 chain, I have us swing around that-a-ways. After some explo frigates fly by that we can't catch due to our lack of a dictor, Zhandris was able to catch an Ishtar, which we were able to pounce on and kill.
(16:09) TY2X-C
Ishtar +286.72m
Mobile Tractor Unit +14.30m
Our first kill of the night, within twenty minutes of filamenting! I was honestly impressed at how clean that went. Logi saved Zhandris, and everyone was able to get onto the Ishtar for the kill. The exact way that Xavier ran this fleet.
Afterwards, we take a swing around some pockets, but don't find anything. For our last check before we filament out, we go check out the Y-E pocket, a seven system pocket that had some ratting activity according to Dotlan. On the way in, we bump into a Sabre owned by the local sov holders, Sleep Raiders. It pops a bubble a bit off the gate right as our fleet lands, and then immediately nopes out, jumps, and warps to a structure on the other side of the gate. Everyone was seemingly docked up, and our timers were up. So we get to a safe, take a quick bio, some questions, and then a signal filament!
Tenal
This next filament put us into MZPH-W in Tenal, and we immediately find a Tengu and an Ishtar on D. The Tengu presumably had cloak, but that Ishtar was still undocked, and also wasn't in any anom that we could tell. With the Ishtar not obviously on any structure either (D-scan didn't have it in line with anything, really), we were scratching our heads. But that's when I remembered that I had these combat scanners that I could use! narrowing the location to be within 5 AU, I am able to find the Ishtar after a few scans!
I end up warping to a completed anom with a... Dread on grid? An NPC one, specifically. Dread Guristas. But anyways, the Ishtar looked to be pretty much AFK. So the fleet warps in and we dispatch it. Also turned out to be in a learning pod as well...
(16:42) MZPH-W
Ishtar +289.54m
Capsule +358.09m
I've done some dread killing fleets back in NSC, but I was not going to take my chances with one in a Merlin fleet. So we warp off and regroup. Were that any other kind of dread, we'd probably have been popped one-by-one because of turret mechanics, so I guess I was a bit lucky that this situation happened in Guristas rat space and we only had to deal with torpedoes instead.
But I also learned first hand how bringing a 100M ISK ship that isn't an interdictor to a doctrine that averages something like 5M ISK per ship can really pay off, because we would not have gotten that kill if I brought something like a Harpy instead. So the fact that I was able to utilize that special ability in my first fleet back is really quite something.
After we regrouped, I check Dotlan and see some really hefty krabbing activity happening in a dead-end system, 30-D5G. But figuring that such an intense operation would likely have some sort of defense that would give Merlins trouble, I decide to move us towards other ends of Tenal, following a main road in Azure Citizen (Frat rental alliance) sov.
So we start making our way down and around. Five jumps later, Zhandris finds an Ishtar. We wait on the other side of the gate as normal to wait for tackle, and jump over when point was called. But right as we got there, Zhandris was killed and the Ishtar named "bait" warped off.
(16:52) 1QH-0K
Stiletto -49.18m
Which lead me to think that if seeing a neutral land on grid isn't causing a ship to run, will a giant local spike change their attentiveness? So from then on, I had the replacement scout, Amfion Bravais in a Harpy, just call when a ship was found on grid, and jumped the fleet in then to save a few seconds in response time.
We keep on moving, and three (3) jumps later, we find a Rattlesnake in a site. Not knowing how well we can really take things on in this comp, I decide to give it a shot. Why not? The strength of this doctrine is that it's cheap to welp. So if we welp biting off more than we can chew, then that's just a learning experience. No big deal.
When we initially land, the logi save Amfion, but I'm a bit worried that the Rattle has a smartbomb fit, which would really put some pain on our close range comp. So I go in first to suss out what the response is like. This Rattlesnake is paying attention, and decides to try and headshot me with its missiles and drones. But logi are able to pick me up, despite me not being shield tanked at all! Realizing what's going on, the Rattle tries its hand on the logi instead. While the Merlins clump up on the Rattle, the Bursts are probably a bit too far from each other, and in the heat of the moment, they start dropping. First targeted Burst dies, the second targeted gets saved, and the third targeted dies. With the Rattle only at 60% shields at this point, I decided to cut our losses and warp off.
(16:59) EOY-BG
Burst -7.64m
Burst -7.55m
After we gf'd in local, there was talk about whether we should have tried defanging the Rattle. I had opted against it because I was under the impression that the health-bonused drones would have been too tough, and the Rattle's replacement flights too many, for it to have been worth it. But my knowledge was slightly off. I had thought that it had five flights like the Gila. But a Rattlesnake only gets three. And since our logi was able to hold if they all kept on the primary, we could have had time if there was no response fleet.
But another thing was that I had completely forgotten about that whole logi anchor thing that I assigned in the beginning of the fleet! The logi were spread out, and their reps probably not as strong for that reason. I didn't give them any direction in that fight short of saying that one of the Bursts needed reps. Had I kept them closer together with an anchor, and closer to the Rattle, they might have been able to save each other a bit easier.
Still had two logi frigates though, so we moved on. Amfion finds another Ishtar we can bag, and we obligingly do.
(17:10) A-1IJ9
Ishtar +231.06m
We jump a few more systems, but we were running over the scheduled two hour time at this point. So we decide wait out our timers and filament home.
Now, spending 25 minutes waiting for timers just to save some Merlins may seem like an odd choice. I was questioning whether it was worth it vs. just finding something to welp to. But one of the people in fleet was talking about how this was the fourth fleet that their Merlin had survived in. And that got me into a whole diatribe about how so much of the value in this game is not in the objective materials or battle reports, but in these added on stories purely created by the player; Of the emotional value that doesn't get an ISK value attached to it. That I was able to improve upon a newbro's story like that made the whole filament trip worth it, in my mind.
We wait out the timer in Pochven without issue, and go home.
Over the next few days, I receive a few thanks from people for whom it was their first PvP fleet, and really enjoyed the experience. This fleet had truly, truly exceeded my expectations.
Stats
ISK Destroyed: 1,179,719,428.25
ISK Lost: 64,370,933.27
ISK Delta: 1,115,348,494.98
Efficiency: 94.825%
Overall evaluation
✔ (Positive stuff)
- Got several kills that made us ISK positive several times over even if we completely welped
- Excellent scout work from Zhandris and Amfion
- People didn't get lost, and I didn't get yelled at, so I guess I did a good job keeping the fleet grouped up?
- Formup was way too long, even by Uni standards
- Could have played that Rattle fight better, be it some combination of defanging the drones or directing our logi better (remembering to use my designated logi anchor)
- Why did I manually make this AAR in the style of the AAR tool without actually having it?
- While the Hecate is cool, fighting into Gallente T2 resists with the same damage type as the Merlins doesn't seem that great. May try something else...
