AFK Skirmish

[Marcus Arilia]

Wasn’t gonna write this up, but someone asked me to, so here it is. Also, I did it on my phone so it’s not fancy, it was Amoni, Eir, Gerg, and myself.

I’ll start at the beginning. On my way home from class I saw in slack that Gerg saw Penelore’s Alt posting in Innu local. I figured I’d check out whatever it was when I got home.

Home I was. I noticed on the mapper that we didn’t have their hole in there, but saw a unmapped C5 and figured that was it. I pulled out the Purifier just in case there was something to bomb (and it’s cheap), and headed that way. Sure enough it was the right connection but no one in space. 5 in their faction Forti, and they have a ton of structures. About then I got a PM from Pen looking for a fight.

She said she was on Bacon so I headed there, bombed *, nothing, bombed ., nothing. So I hung around on . for a few at a perch and I see an Osprey Navy come in. I dock up and call LS (typey FC btw) of 3 DPS and a Beli assuming she’s anticipating SS and wants to wreck the 4 of us that are on with her missiles. She told me she had a friend coming too. At this point I assume 4 kitey pilots (Pen + Lorissa, other dude + alt). We undock and warp to Bacon. I notice a Sabre 990k off Ali on our way. We land 100 off and see Pen in the ONI and Lorissa in a stiletto. We take a pot shot and they run through the hole. I guess I over estimated their response. Since they ran I had us reship to bombers in case they came back in force with friends.

Sure enough they come back, this time with a Scalpel added to the bunch. We had a decent perch about 700 off but then I noticed the Sabre burn to the edge of the bubble and the Stiletto go zooming. They were trying to catch us if we warped bombers from Ali at 100 or into the bubble. We were already on grid and way off so we were fine. Seeing what they were doing I bounced off a planet. The Scalpel and ONI were at the Ali aligned spot 100 off so I took the opportunity to make a BM 70 off of them and out of line with the bubble, then I called everyone to reship to light shield. I still assumed they had other stuff on the other side... it’s bait... it’s always bait.

I called for the Belli to try to get the Scalpel if possible then the Stiletto and Sabre if they were close. I also told everyone since we didn’t have Logi they would need to manually pilot their stuff. We undocked and warped to my BM. I called the ONI primary and let the Belli do its thing. After a few seconds the stiletto was inbound so a few of us pulled range. Gerg hadn’t pulled range quick enoufh and ended up getting tackled, then the ONI came in. I called heat on the ONI as I pulled more range since it was in half armor, and I needed range to apply. I also called to try and get the Stiletto. About that same time a Phantasm came in. I knew they were crazy quick. About the time the Stiletto went down the Phantasm was in point range of Gerg. Gerg went down pretty quick and I called a warp to Ali since he could out kitey us. No pods were killed and we looted what little was on the field. Overall a good skirmish with Ehefkae and hopefully not too horrible for typey FC.

Stiletto- https://zkillboard.com/kill/79085464/
ONI- https://zkillboard.com/kill/79085466/

Oracle- https://zkillboard.com/kill/79085468/

+
Isk wise we ended up even
Fights were had
I assumed they’d have other stuff coming, and was right with the Phantasm

-
Typey FC
LS individual manual piloting really is absolutely crucial for survival and tends to be the biggest gap.

[Laethe Fooswa]

So yes I wanted to write a few things about this... mostly to put my own critique into words, as I have always liked the AAR format of thinking through fights afterwards and this one I had the unique opportunity to see Marcus's thoughts.

One of the biggest things to take away from Marcus's post is the amount of back and forth and decision making that went into actually getting a fight in the first place.

I can tell you in the end the fight materialized simply because I was determined to have a fight and welp my ONI despite the cancer that was undocked against us. My corpies were less kind regarding that and you probably would have accomplished the goal of running off the intruder more effectively than getting a fight with the intruder had I not been involved. Props for not following us through the hole on the first round... I had to test general eagerness at least once with such cancer.

It's true I did expect small ships so I brought the ONI. I also brought it cause it is a 50m ship so meh. I did expected 4-6 with deacons and was willing to welp to trade a bit. I also really just wanted to practice two-boxing pvp engagement more as it has been something I have been trying to force myself to do more knowing it to be a significant weakness of mine. This fight was about Loreissa for me... not Penelore. And honestly... I was terrible. So... practice achieved eh?

At one point I saw your bomber in space while I was setting up a warp-to at 100 off the hole. Stupidly I dropped a can instead of a corp tac. I'm really not sure why I did that... pure ignorance. But another reason why sometimes you have to force yourself to take dumb engagements just so you have mistakes to think about later. Anyways... I did kind of count on you bouncing into the engagement because I figured you saw what I was doing. Well played there...

So basically... my piloting was just about terrible. Two boxing a pvp encounter is damn hard especially when you are trying to be the main player on the field. Normally when I 2-box its a sabre and a long-range sniping confessor. This time I had to worry about being primary, keeping up traversal on 3 sniper BCs, tanking and tackling. I think things went ok when I first tackled the Beli but my mistake came immediately after when I let my ONI get in too close. I did an okay job on traversal with the ONI and actually was tanking ok with the scalpel support until I went into reload. You had me at that point and we hadn't cleared the Belli yet... so game over.

Additional stupid mistakes included...
1. Forgetting my ECM drones on the ONI.
2. Not putting a second long point on one of the BCs with my Stiletto
3. Should have overheated guns on Belli immediately

The Phantasm came to party late... someone who logged on while we had just started. I actually told him not to join in since I was afraid you would run but once I saw how failed our attack went I told him... yah go ahead come on in.

Getting the perfect engagement is never going to happen. Not on either side of the equation, no matter how close your frenemy or how bushido your intentions. I took this fight cause I wanted a fight and I knew I would lose and I was honestly afraid everyone in EUni would log off and the opportunity would be lost. At the same time... people log in and say... hey were fighting? here I come...

You guys did a great job of adjusting... letting the fight come to you... and positioning yourself optimally. All things that are required of the Light Shield doctrine. Well played. gf gf... cya round space.

[Amoni Panala]

Despite being rather grumpy about this fight (I was irritated when they ran away from our LS the first time), this was a pretty good fight. Manual piloting is everything in the LS doctrine and that's why I prefer to fly the Bellicose over anything else in the doctrine (at least on the DPS side of things). The only reason we didn't get their Scalpel was because they put all three of their ships (ONI, Stilleto, and Sabre) between me and it. The Stilleto became my primary when it started webbing me down while the ONI focus fired me. I decided to pop the Stilleto and then blow the ONI sky-high since the Sabre was pulling range on me and I couldn't get into position while being primaried. This is where we failed, I think. Perhaps on par with the lack of manual piloting skills, we didn't focus fire. Their ships popped really fast when the mainline DPS were brought to bear and we could have cleared the field (either by blowing them all up or forcing a retreat). With respect to you and your careful preparation and negotiation on the terms of the engagement, we really needed someone to call primaries over comms.

By the time I warped off, I was at 11% structure and the ONI and Stilleto were down (I felt even better know those were Penelore's ships). I really wish we had had logi on field because I know I could have popped the Sabre if I had had just a little more time. Truthfully, I think this speaks to the need for manual piloting drills. It doesn't matter if we have 10 or 100 people online and equipped with T2 stuff, when it comes to the LS doctrine manual piloting will make or break the fight. I've been practicing a lot on my own, but I really think we should do drills (and I'll even organize them).

[Gergoran Moussou]

As said elsewhere, I'd have to say that my biggest error was not paying attention to distance, allowing myself to be tackled.

[Laethe Fooswa]

By the time I warped off, I was at 11% structure and the ONI and Stilleto were down

dammit... editted my post to add overheating earlier as one of the mistake I made.