Spoiler
Analiese Aubernet
Archemide - Bellicose
Atticus Vex
Christoph Patrouette
Conci Furiram - Hyena
Cpn Reynolds
CyberBlackEagle - Caracal
Drault Sarn
Durnik Risalo
Ergan Eto - Caracal
Etra Ellecon - Caracal
Fogsworth
Gemma Solett
Indy Indy - Sabre
Ithugor Wells
KPYTOE KOPOBO
Karaliene Andras
Kirsid Tannaway - Scythe
Ky Hanomaa
Max Duckman
Neemo Beer
Penelore - Bellicose
Satoshi Tomeii
Staberinde
Xyrin Bacard
Z0X Ambrye - Stiletto
Zako Maken - Scythe
Archemide - Bellicose
Atticus Vex
Christoph Patrouette
Conci Furiram - Hyena
Cpn Reynolds
CyberBlackEagle - Caracal
Drault Sarn
Durnik Risalo
Ergan Eto - Caracal
Etra Ellecon - Caracal
Fogsworth
Gemma Solett
Indy Indy - Sabre
Ithugor Wells
KPYTOE KOPOBO
Karaliene Andras
Kirsid Tannaway - Scythe
Ky Hanomaa
Max Duckman
Neemo Beer
Penelore - Bellicose
Satoshi Tomeii
Staberinde
Xyrin Bacard
Z0X Ambrye - Stiletto
Zako Maken - Scythe
This week (and for all Thursdays going forward for a while), we're going to be testing out new doctrines on Thursday Things. I'll be putting my summary of the doctrine in a post below. I'll also do a separate analysis of the doctrine below. The OP is mostly just going to be about the calls made on the fleet. So, part of our prep was running the fleet against a NPC Miner Response fleet. That was our first engagement.
(01:29:53) PC9-AY
Imicus +1.95m
Capsule +0.01m
Indy was coming from PC9, and managed to pick this guy off before he met up with us. L33T PvP right here.
So we found a group of Thukker Miners. Bubbles went up, and I broadcast some targets. The first thing I realized was that, while broadcasting targets is useful in PvP, in PvE it's pretty much worthless. All the rats have the same name. So, I quickly tagged up a couple of the miners, and had the fleet shoot miners 1 2 and 3. I also never called 'drones out' and completely forgot to use mine. This is something I need to get in the habit of calling when a fight starts that we're going to stick around for. I'm also pretty terrible about guessing how many prop mod cycles to use. Instead of guessing how many cycles (this fight I called 2 and used 3), I should just say prop mods on and prop mods off.
I also had an idea that Bellicoses would shoot the main target, and Caracals would shoot tackle. I figured "eh, calling 2 targets can't possible be that hard, can it?" This engagement showed that I can't do that. I'll get more into what changes I'd like to make to compensate for that below, in doctrine analysis.
But, hey. We cleared the response fleet without losing a single person. Only like 10 NPCs to our 26 people, but it was still good practice. It's a nice warm-up for the fleet, I think. Let me know if you guys did or didn't like hunting a response fleet.
We were lucky enough to get a direct Null-Null wormhole connection, and we took that into Cloud Ring.
We also had a couple of ex-Uni's on this fleet. Shortly after we got to null, they got called away to an op of their own. They were also filling some of the more special roles. We lost (iirc) 1 logi, 1 scout, and 2 DD. Then, our bubbler ran into connection issues. Another snowflake lost. Not a lot I can do about this as an FC, but less snowflakes means less options.
Local called that a fight was coming. I had our Hyena burn us a couple of tacticals (see? I'm learning!). We hung out there while our scout got eyes on what they were bringing. I also (intentionally) put us on a gate that was not the way home. That way, if we had to retreat home, we weren't on the gate we had to retreat to.
Scout called Drakes, Ospreys, Osprey Navies, and Caracals. They had bigger ships, we had bigger numbers. I figured it was a pretty fair fight. They came into system (about 10 of them). I warped us down to the gate, at range. Then they came in on a tac. Then local spiked again. Assault frigs started landing on the gate. I warped us back to the tactical (40 ish neuts now). Luckily, everyone got off.
They had 30ish assualt frigs/T2 logi. Not a fight we wanted. I assumed this was an overescalation by the enemy. I had us clear our route, and planned to retreat. Someone more observant than I pointed out that it was 2 different alliances. There was a bit of a standoff, then the AFs left. I had our scout confirm that they were really gone, and not just hiding in the next system, waiting for us to fight. The wangs (drake/caracal/osprey group)'s sabre warped off right here. I thought it was odd but didn't really process it. Bigger ships to pop. He probably had something else to do.
Wangs currently had 1 Malediction, 4 Ospreys, 2 ONIs, and 5 Drakes. We had 22 in fleet. Maybe not an even fight, but one I thought we could definitely trade in. I warped us in right as they started warping. All of their ships came in at the same range. Naturally, I went for the Ospreys. They were ~70km off of us. I called prop mods on (for the wrong amount of time. Again). Some silly people (myself included) started painting our primary before we got into missile range. He started burning away. I had us lock up a second Osprey. (Should've really just called to lock up all the Ospreys. The goal is to break their logi first, after all).
Once we were in range of the second Osprey, I called everyone to swap primary to that Osprey. Also, I (again) forgot to call drones out. We were actually doing pretty good dps; he was in 1/4 shield before thjey started getting reps on him. Oh, and then the Drakes started smartbombing the drones. After that, we really couldn't break them. One of our Scythes got popped, and another was burning off way away from the fleet. If we couldn't break their logi on a logi ship, we certainly weren't going to go through one of their dps ships. I fleet warped us to a tactical (finally learning from my AARs) as I died.
Drault (2IC) had us warp to the gate home. Remember that Sabre that disappeared earlier? I didn't realize what they had done until I was watching this video. They saw our scout check our way out, when we thought we were being overescalated. Then, they sent their sabre to that gate to be ready to bubble it up when we left. Clever trick. We all landed in their bubble. We lost another couple to that.
Something else of note: there was a bit of chatting in local. I made sure that someone besides me did all of the talking, so they wouldn't know who our FC was. I didn't want to get headshot. However, in local they apologized for headshotting. They said they were trying to avoid it. I imagine some groups headshot, and others avoid it so it's a gf. Is obfuscating the FC generally a good call?
(03:09:12) 8R-RTB
Scythe -25.76m
Caracal -37.87m
Bellicose -31.19m
Scythe -20.91m
Caracal -37.9m
Capsule -0.01m
Capsule -0.01m
After that, we got back to PC9. It was still early into the fleet, so I the couple people who died reship, and we took a short bio. We also got a new bubbler (yay!)
(03:26:27) PC9-AY
Capsule -0.01m
(03:34:24) JH-M2W
Coercer +12.91m
We had a couple Coercers poking around PC9 when we got back. One of them picked off a pod that landed in our bubble. We chased them down and managed to catch one of them in a bubble. We did a bit of jumping back and forth on gates, but we managed to pick him off.
Then, we went poking down to VV- gate. No content to be found.
Stats
ISK Destroyed: 14,860,890.37
ISK Lost: 153,667,128.1
ISK Delta: -138,806,237.73
Efficiency: 8.818%