[AAR] Structure Bash vs war-target HQ

[Turlough Dominian]

Some people asked for there curiosity as to why we where interested in shooting it:
Learning / experience / Content / members have been showing interest in such activity's are the main reasons we went on an offensive defense.

Tuesday, November 12th
We had an incoming war from a corporation called The Syndicate. and during the wait period we had an internal discussion and we made the choice to shoot there war HQ that was located out in Gererique / solitude area

With 3hrs notice to our members we formed up a 34 man fleet to shoot the structure
I had thorax's and aug for the doctrine moved to location for convenience to members

Thursday November 14th
We officially announced that we where going to go for the second timer think with about 19hrs notice and got a good turnout of 69 people in fleet to shoot the second timer.
To get down to solitude we used two High to High wormholes to skip the low/null route
We used ferox's /ospreys for the doctrine reason why I picked the ferox was we had some near by the target location already so logistically made seance, we also moved down some extra's for reshipping just encase

Tuesday, November 20th
We announced to our members that even tho the war was dropping that we would be returning for the final timer on the 23rd of November.
This naturally meant we would need to war dec the corporation to allow us the ability to shoot there old war HQ.
Same doctrine Ferox's/ospreys
We also had whc come along in a separate fleet unknown to the rest of the fleet and they landed shortly after we did, they where to help with fighting encase it was defended
Naturally with so many in fleet comms got a bit out of control at times but wasn't bad really for the amount that was in channel, we had to go for prittie strict comms so thank you guys for your patience with that.
War targets did come to defend but opted out of engaging our fleet, this is perfectly normal and I would do the same I wouldn't take on such a fight without more numbers but still fair play to them coming and /respect.

For the final timer I had another doctrine/group of ships available that I did not mention to the fleet that i had available but they where for a depends and only to be used if really needed , they where not needed so back to storage they go <3
what those ships where is a mystery

Astrahus:
https://zkillboard.com/kill/80072315/

we killed 9 fighters and a magnate during the engagement of the final timer
We lost a blackbird and a griffen from the main fleet
and we lost two talos and two oracles that where under the secondary fleets command.

Special thanks to people who joined me in the fun aspect of hauling stuff out to location was many hours of work, and ty to everyone who helped it really was a group effort from people scanning H2H wormholes that we used for both hauling and travel fleet to people who helped in fleet for various rolls , anywho way too many peeps to thanks so as to avoid leaving someone out big thanks to all of you guys <3

I will leave it for you guys to mention what was good what was bad and what we could improve on and learn from this experience , if it has anything to do with comms 100+ people in one channel is a recipe for disaster lols

Anywho thanks for coming hope you had fun

[B'aldrick Aivoras]

Awesome job - dad dancing in EVE London to distract the opposition with my moves must’ve worked ;p

[Tungon Akeela]

It was my 3rd fleet and i liked it. It was not that interesting at first but I kind of understand why living in Solitude can be fun.
One of the interesting things about the fleet for me was the Indy ship flying with us.
It's probably not that easy to get stuff there.
I am new, but next time you need someone to fly with a fleet where it would be nice to fly a tayra because you want to ship something there I will prefer flying a tayra/badger for shipping stuff to Solitude than getting on a killmail.

Maybe that is not an option because you normally use other ships for that kind of stuff.

However:
Thanks Solitude!

[Amoni Panala]

Third time was the charm. Surprisingly uneventful, but thanks for taking us out there.

[Trew Berserk]

GREAT FUN! Really cool to see so many good people commit. Big thanks to all!

[Shauny Tsero]

Surprisingly uneventful, but still great fun!!

The only thing constructive I will say is that the peeps from WHC should of joined fleet before arriving at the WT structure so they could braodcasted for Reps and maybe we wouldn't of lost any ships. everything else was well organised, executed well and when it came to comms everyone reacted well to radio silence so it wasn't that bad having 100+ peeps in Mumble . All in all an excellently executed plan good job to all involved .

[Parrish Askiras]

Many thanks to those who organized the bash. I'm sure a lot more went into this than I realize.

I thought is was awesome to watch our fleet warping through low and nul sec to Solitude, but the show of force at the structure was truly impressive. Great fun for a newbro like me to be a part of it.

Apologies to Mike Kingswell for me not knowing anything about logi. I learned a lot and will be better next time.

Parrish

[Deli Korsan]

Thanks a million for people who provided us this great event. By us i mean both the university and the family i have at home.

We play eve together as my wife and son loves space games. They were getting angry at me not playing with them but spend time with my uni friends (even though this was my first active participation, I sometimes just listened the comms).. Last night changed a great deal about their ideas of playing 'together as a team'. Scout reports, aling comms, fleet warps, chattering fleet mates jokes, and finally a great prize the juicy target...

I connected the pc to our large tv at sitting room with movie speakers on. Also i turned the phone speakers on for mumble too. It was like a cinema where we were also part of!

Now we have two more candidates for uni.. I even thought to shoot a few photo of their faces as we warped with 100+ ships and ask to post it on memes!

The moment the target exploded they were more excited than me clapping and whooing...

Again thanks a million for putting a large smile on this family man's face as i said

'see why i spend time with them?'....

Fly safe!

Redmi 4X cihazımdan Tapatalk kullanılarak gönderildi

[Laura Karpinski]

Thanks a million for people who provided us this great event. By us i mean both the university and the family i have at home.

We play eve together as my wife and son loves space games. They were getting angry at me not playing with them but spend time with my uni friends (even though this was my first active participation, I sometimes just listened the comms).. Last night changed a great deal about their ideas of playing 'together as a team'. Scout reports, aling comms, fleet warps, chattering fleet mates jokes, and finally a great prize the juicy target...

I connected the pc to our large tv at sitting room with movie speakers on. Also i turned the phone speakers on for mumble too. It was like a cinema where we were also part of!

Now we have two more candidates for uni.. I even thought to shoot a few photo of their faces as we warped with 100+ ships and ask to post it on memes!

The moment the target exploded they were more excited than me clapping and whooing...

Again thanks a million for putting a large smile on this family man's face as i said

'see why i spend time with them?'....

Fly safe!

Redmi 4X cihazımdan Tapatalk kullanılarak gönderildi

This is adorable

[Mike Kingswell]

Thanks a million for people who provided us this great event. By us i mean both the university and the family i have at home.
(...)
'see why i spend time with them?'....

Wow! reading this gave me a fuzzy feeling inside man !
Super glad you enjoyed it with the whole family!


As for the operations:
Thanks to anyone who helped get this show on the road! I enjoy those big fleets quite a lot. They let me fly with people from all campuses and have fun interactions with friends form far away or deep down the wormholes.
Even though we didn't have a big fight the objective was achieved (the objective was to have fun!).

19 Logi Pilots with several of them being newbros stepping up and doing it first time was a great feeling! As soon as someone broadcasted I didn't actually see any damage land because we overrepped way too hard
Logi comms were clean and considering the amount of Logi - including some newbros - and running only 1 big capchain it went quite well!
(now if WHC would stay in reprange things would have been perfect ;-P)

Travel Fleet home was also quite the experience.

Big thanks for the haulers, organisers, planers, bookmark-makers, industrialy and turtles that made this happen o7

[Anidien Dallacort]

I want to start by echoing the respect for The Syndicate. for coming out. They are a corp of 22 - there was a meaningful percentage of that ready to go. Unfortunately, on occasion, when a blob is kicked it kicks back, but mad respect for coming out ready to go knowing what could come.

The below is written from the perspective of someone on their first PvP fleet (disclaimer made). Of course, my opinion - for any areas of possible improvement identified, no disrespect meant to those who know better than me, in any fashion (see disclaimer above, I completely agree you probably know better than me! I invite people telling me why I'm wrong, definitely speaking up to try to learn here.):

What Went Well:

• Very well run fleet, and thanks to all in command, especially Turlough. It was obvious that it was meticulously planned, and went very smoothly.
• I'll call comms out as a positive. With that many people in the fleet, things are bound to get a little messy. All it took each time was a gentle nudge, and everything settled. Commands got through. I have a feeling that if we had encountered an actual pitched battle, the chatter would have been more toned down since command was on top of comms control when discipline slipped a bit.
• Anchor and movement once on grid was excellent, pack kept together and kept moving.
• Commands for what to target when and with what (i.e. guns on fighters, drones on structure) were clear.
• Travel fleet was well timed and well run to get to the target area, allowing for multiple waypoints for batches of people to join up. I JC'ed into Boystin and the integration into the main fleet from Amy was seamless.
• WHC rocks, working hard to roll a hole to be able to participate.
• Personal What Went Wells:
• Got into my first PvP activity, looking forward to more!
• I never felt overwhelmed, even doing this for the first time (helps when the fleet is as well run as it was! Was able to just listen, trust, and act).
• I'm now dangerous on zkillboard, look out!

Room for Improvement:

• Communication - but not the expected comments (which were listed as a positive above). There were a few requests for info, or informational statements, that didn't make it up the chain of command (FC noted missing them - no shame there, fleet was massive). In a fleet this size, might be useful to have one or two people who's sole role is to look for questions/comments and filter them up - no command responsibilities or other distractions, just info gathering and passing up. Dozens of people may have seen such things, but didn't want to overwhelm comms (verbal or written) by potentially having 50 people point out what one other person said, or assumed those who needed it saw it.
• WHC could have joined the main fleet, but still kept autonomy, no different than the Logi wing or other specialized wings. Not only for the broadcasts/logi support, but having the full wing of "greens" in local and on grid, could have made it difficult to identify disconnected fleetmembers, if connections went awry en masse for whatever reason.
• Too much chatter in local. We all have to be careful, even a war deccing corp doesn't make the people bad - such activities are part of the game, and they are just playing the same as we are. We came to take something of value, and should be aware that they might feel that a bit - any chatter could be taken the wrong way by the people on the other side, should leave that to command sanctioned communication.
• There were a couple of points of indecision from command - the two I can think of, were questions regarding whether to medical clone into Soli stations, and what to do with the loot when the station was blown up. Quick, definitive statements are best, especially in a fleet this size. More time to decide can be gained by an order to do nothing and hold - but without clear direction, multiple opinions start to flood in, and people can act not knowing if those who are saying to do something, have that "authority". Loot in particular could have been a big heartache, once weapon timers were running for those that fired at it, for example, we have options restricted if a response fleet happened to come in at that moment.
• Personal Room for Improvement:
• I should have read the Fleet post more carefully. I had relied on Caracal reships being available, not being skilled into any battlecruisers. It is clear upon re-read, that Ferox and Osprey were available on location, Caracals were permitted for those that could not fly the BC, but never mentioned as an available reship. Not sure if I could have done anything differently, but it's still a miss on my part that I should have noticed.
• During the combat itself, I somehow ended up orbiting FC/anchor at 1000m, instead of keeping at distance at 1000m. Likely a misclick due to some video lag as we arrived on grid en masse. But to further the sin (which could have had even more material consequences if I were flying guns instead of missiles), I didn't realize this until the structure was under half hull - my camera was zoomed out to take in the whole scene, it wasn't until I zoomed in that I noticed the orbit path on the screen.. I should check and recheck the state of my ship more frequently.
• At one point I was firing missiles at a fighter outside of missile max range. Quickly rectified, but need to be more careful.

One final note:

This naturally meant we would need to war dec the corporation to allow us the ability to shoot there old war HQ.

I spent some time trying to figure out how we were going to pull this structure bash off, before the war dec was announced. Another option - with a lot of highly situational aspects to it - would be to ally with another corp decced by the target, that has the same structure as war HQ. This option eliminates the war bill, takes away the ability for allies to join on the enemy's side, and instantly ends the war when the structure bash is complete (along with a 2 week enforced peace at that). Of course, it relies on having a corp we can talk to along those lines, whom the enemy corp won't be able to let the war lapse with in time, and coordinate that activity with the right timing (since it relies on the other corp accepting the alliance with the timing that lets us start firing when the timer ends).

Thank you again for the fleet and the experience!

[Celine en Chasteaux]

Thanks very much for everyone setting this up and participating. Was a lot of fun. Still don't understand why they got a load of allies together and none turned up. Guess they just saw the size of us and decided against it?

Directors: Am I okay to post the video on youtube on an unlisted link/blurred chat and watchlist?
(And apologies for not asking with my previous two videos, didn't realise there was an official policy that Max pointed us to in this fleet)

[Dinah Arsten]

Hi Folks,

I want to add my thanks to Turlough for organising such an extensive operation at such short notice. Just the logistics of being able to mount a three phase fight must have been a huge amount of effort.

Unfortunately I was unable to join the travel fleet from AMY, but was able to make a solo run to BOY with guidance from Julien and the NSC bookmarks, then reship and join the fleet. I appreciate the flexibility and help from everyone that made it possible.

Also a big thank-you to Mike Kingswell for leading a somewhat inebriated and dysfunctional fleet back to AMY. It was nice way to wind down after the bash, though for those of you for whom it was still morning I apologize for the drunken ramblings that occurred.

I though the Mumble Comms were very well disciplined given the number of pilots. I agree that having someone in Command (not the FC) responsible for monitoring Fleet Chat is important, just to reduce the bandwidth requirements on the FC. I think Max(?) ended up doing that, but I'm not clear if that was a formal responsibility or not.

Finally, it was a great introduction to large fleet ops. That we didn't have significant opposition made it much easier for a newbro like me to take part without being overwhelmed. I look forward to the next opportunity.

-Dinah

PS - I also orbitted the FC for a while, before realising I should get in line like everyone else

[Celine en Chasteaux]

Unfortunately I was unable to join the travel fleet from AMY, but was able to make a solo run to BOY with guidance from Julien and the NSC bookmarks, then reship and join the fleet. I appreciate the flexibility and help from everyone that made it possible.

Hope those people paid up that said you wouldn't make it

[Devola Gestalt]

o/

thanks to all the people involved in this operation. I especially appreciate the willingness of directors to go on the offensive in these hisec wars. I had talked a few times with some managers/directors about the frustration of the Uni being "content on demand" in hisec & our wars being totally one sided. For me this operation is a clear action in the right direction. Thank you again, I hope we'll see more of this in the future.

I'll throw a few suggestions on points we could improve (I think), in hope it can be useful for future great scale of operations in the Uni.

Comms: make dedicated text channel for memes/jokes/fun

Being in a 3h hours fleet without being able to say anything funny is extremely boring. Joking in fleet channel with 100+ people hides the useful questions/x-ing that makes the fleet work. That's why I suggest we have 2 chat channels for this kind of big operations:

• The fleet channel: reserved to questions/x-ing/intel/info that are useful to the operation
• A separate channel in free comms at all times (usual Uni rules of political correctness still apply)

Anyone is free to ignore the 2nd channel and just read the 1st when attention is required elsewhere, or they don't like memes.

This somehow half happened during this operation, with people starting to post fleet related things in the HSC channel. This "solution" wasn't very convenient for the people staying in HSC that were flooded.

Comms: "I don't know, let me/xyz check" is better than disinformation

I'm sure these people have no bad intentions. However they give bad information with the utmost confidence. This is made worse as this is sometimes done by squad leaders/management, and nameless grunts being heavily discouraged (sometimes muted) for talking in comms (so they can't rectify mistakes).

Here's a few things I caught:

• "There are no Ferox left on contract in 101". There were 6 left at the end of the OP. Hopefully no one fell back to a non-doctrine ship because of that.
• "We have boosts figured out, so go in a DD ship". Well thanks to Edwin's persistence, we avoided flying without skirmish boosts just in time.

These things can be checked in 1min. I can totally understand FCs & squad leaders have too much things to do to dedicate 1min per question. In this case, just delegate to someone who can get the right, up-to-date information.

Rules: lead by example

It's totally acceptable that you ask for people to not talk in local. It's also fine you ask for combat comms & cut people talking about unnecessary stuff.

However it doesn't leave a very good impression when these rules only apply to the nameless grunts, but managers & directors don't follow them. When someone gets muted for answering a fleetmate question (while fleet is docked & POS spinning), but some higher ranked guys can monopolize comms over the FC to make a monologue on Uni streaming rules (while traveling in the middle of not-so-safe nulsec area) ... Some line members might feel slightly frustrated, some others not sure what they can/can't do. Similar things about local channel.

Note that this problem is not specific to this operation. This also happen in roams/QRFs/daily campus life.

The fight: 500M isk lost

I think this is totally missing in this AAR until now, but we lost 500M isk of ships ... against a single manned structure. In this situation, I think 0 loss would be a totally reasonable objective.

https://zkillboard.com/related/30003586/201911232200/

So let's analyze the losses:

• 1 griffin: who cares Griffins are not appropriate for a structure bash, but if it's the only "doctrine" ship some unista can bring, better to have him participate and blow up, than telling him to stay at home.
• 1 blackbird: having the ewar wing at citadel range while there was nothing to jam on grid was a mistake, but it was fixed early in the fight.
• 2 talos & 2 oracle: WHC showing up in non-doctrine nano ships (much less tanked than the feroxes), in a separate fleet at first, without logi... while reshipping was available 1 jump away. I totally appreciate the amount of work WHC did to rageroll & participate in this operation, still the battle part could have been handled much better.

Also 1 hookbill lost in the travel fleet from 101: https://zkillboard.com/kill/80070366/. On this one I can't tell if the scout was overextending (I think he was at least +2 from the fleet), or if it was decided to not risk this fleet for "just" a frigate, or anything else...