[AAR] HSC "experimental" vulfpeck fleet.

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Devola Gestalt
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[AAR] HSC "experimental" vulfpeck fleet.

Post by Devola Gestalt »

While this was just a PVE fleet, I think it is an experience worth sharing for posterity. Any feedback from veteran WHer is also appreciated.

Fleet members

Name - number of sites - ship type (from memory, so might be wrong)
Spoiler
47 Armer - 2 - Coercer
Batto Ashitaka - 2 - Augoror
Chugore Blunt - 2 - Coercer
Devola Gestalt - 2 - Gnosis
Ersin Oghuz - 2 - Coercer
Falling Snow KumaMoto - 2 - Augoror
Hikaru Sakai - 1 - Coercer
manda doomsslayer - 1 - Coercer
Squin Ti - 2 - Coercer
Valeria Rammstein - 2 - Augoror
Velts Engren - 2 - Coercer
Payouts are done. If you were in this fleet but not on this list, or are on the list but didn't get any money, contact me ASAP

HSC vulfwhat ?

Vulfpeck fleets are a doctrine (and a group of folks using it) used to farm C5 combat sites in the particular "Wolf-Rayet" wormhole environment. The effects of these wormholes make armor destroyers extremely viable & efficient to run these sites. The base doctrine is Confessor/Guardians/T2 boosting battlecruiser, however they also suggest "newbro" coercer/augoror fits, for the few occasions where they lead newbro friendly fleets;

I've never attended this kind of fleet, however I always saw a huge potential here: making a very profitable, yet extremely newbro friendly fleet that many HSC newbro can participate in, with low investment.

But Devola confessor/guardians aren't really newbro friendly, there are not many people at HSC who can fly that.

That's right, the base doctrine (T3D + T2 logicstic cruiser) is absolutely not newbro friendly, nor a tiny investment (I remind the reader that we see newbros flying their mission cruiser without rigs at HSC, because medium T1 rigs are too expensive for them). However there is a thing HSC is extremely good at: blobing, especially overblobing to absurd levels where people start to pour salt. Can't bring T3D ? We shall go with coercer, and just add more DD pilot to keep the same DPS. Can't bring T2 logi ? We shall just bring (almost BLAP) Augorors, but a couple more. T2 boosting battlecruiser ? Hey, they have a Gnosis fit for that on vulfpeck site !

Now that brings the mainline logi at 25M isk, the mainline DD at around 10M isk. The meta versions are easy to skill into. The only "high" isk&SP ship is the Gnosis at around 55M isk. And contrary to letting someone in a destroyer come to a L3-L4 mission (where the newbro is basically accepting the generosity of an experienced pilot, which isn't bad, but not necessarily satisfying), we can get a newbro in a mainline DD ship: he is a valuable contributor to the success of the fleet and earn his isk the fair way.

Of course because we're bringing more people in less efficient ships, we can't expect the 100-200M isk/hour/pilot of a vulfpeck fleet. But if we can reach just 1/3 of that, that will still be some huge income for newbros, and still decent ISK for the veteran(s) leading or coming along.

I stocked a few ships in my personal hangars at 101, ready to lead a fleet to the first convenient C2-3 Wolf Rayet I would map around HSC. Well today what I happened to find was a C5 Wolf Rayet. 6 combat sites, direct HS connection, empty structures, clean killboard, and only other WH in there was the C2 static. And that gold mine was sitting just 3 jumps from HSC. However I never ran C5 combat sites, so I hesitated to bring a fleet to run content I didn't know, in an experimental doctrine I'm not used to fly. Luckily, Ersin Oghuz happened to pass by, had some experience in vulfpeck fleets, and volunteered (or was volunteered) to FC. So the show was on !

Doctrine / fits

"High" SP coercer (directly from vulpeck, with a heat sink swapped out for a membrane for extra safety).
Spoiler
[Coercer, *Simulated Coercer Fitting]
400mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Heat Sink II

5MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Warp Scrambler II

Dual Light Pulse Laser II
Dual Light Pulse Laser II
Dual Light Pulse Laser II
Dual Light Pulse Laser II
Dual Light Pulse Laser II
Dual Light Pulse Laser II
Dual Light Pulse Laser II
Dual Light Pulse Laser II

Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I




Scorch S x8
Conflagration S x8
Imperial Navy Multifrequency S x8
Mid SP coercer (same as above, meta guns & scram)
Spoiler
[Coercer, *Simulated Coercer Fitting]
400mm Steel Plates II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Heat Sink II

5MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Faint Epsilon Scoped Warp Scrambler

Dual Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I
Dual Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I
Dual Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I
Dual Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I
Dual Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I
Dual Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I
Dual Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I
Dual Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I

Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I




Microwave S x8
Standard S x8
Imperial Navy Multifrequency S x8
T2 Augoror (almost BLAP, just swap a sensor booster with a small battery for neuts resist)
Spoiler
[Augoror, *Simulated Augoror Fitting]
Armor Thermal Hardener II
800mm Steel Plates II
Armor Kinetic Hardener II
Damage Control II
Armor Explosive Hardener II

Sensor Booster II
10MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner
Small Compact Pb-Acid Cap Battery

Medium Solace Scoped Remote Armor Repairer
Medium 'Regard' Remote Capacitor Transmitter
Medium Solace Scoped Remote Armor Repairer
Medium 'Regard' Remote Capacitor Transmitter
Medium Solace Scoped Remote Armor Repairer

Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Anti-EM Pump I




Targeting Range Script x2
Scan Resolution Script x2
ECCM Script x2
Nanite Repair Paste x40
Gnosis booster (close to the vulfpeck one, T1 skirmish boost because no one could fly T2 armor & skirmish)
Spoiler
[Gnosis, Gnosis]
1600mm Steel Plates II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Damage Control II
AE-K Compact Drone Damage Amplifier

F-90 Compact Sensor Booster
Medium Compact Pb-Acid Cap Battery
10MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner
Medium Micro Jump Drive
Fleeting Compact Stasis Webifier
Small Capacitor Booster II

Large 'Regard' Remote Capacitor Transmitter
Skirmish Command Burst I
Armor Command Burst II
Armor Command Burst II
Skirmish Command Burst I
Armor Command Burst II

Medium Command Processor I
Medium Command Processor I
Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer I



Hobgoblin II x5

ECCM Script x1
Navy Cap Booster 400 x16
Armor Energizing Charge x725
Rapid Repair Charge x725
Armor Reinforcement Charge x300
Scan Resolution Script x1
Evasive Maneuvers Charge x726
Interdiction Maneuvers Charge x750
Rapid Deployment Charge x750
Nanite Repair Paste x50
Core Scanner Probe I x16
Core Probe Launcher I x1
I also had full meta coercers and meta augorors ready. However I decided to not get them out for this fleet. Because it was the 1st try of this experimental doctrine, and in a C5 (instead of the C2-3 I had in mind). I also had armor thrasher/catalyst somewhere on pyfa, but I didn't want to fly something so far from vulfpeck doctrines for now. Experimenting is nice, but one step at a time.

Some people brought their own ships (which is awesome). Others got free ships from me: my experiment will be run with my isk :-)

The fleet itself

Formup was a little slow, mainly because it took time to get a minimum of ~10 people that FC & me assumed would be enough to have a decent chance of success. Also after that, ships handout was slow, because I traded ships one by one. Finally I took time to undock because I had to run around the place to find T1 boosts I could use on my Gnosis.

We get to Gisleres (WH entry) and crossjump some neutral on the WH. I think "This is bad, we're spotted. They are gonna drop on us like starving dogs on a steak". Well funnily, this guy was in "The Initiative.", same alliance as our FC. So our FC grabbed free intel from him, and maybe they decided to not drop on us because we had a blue in our fleet. I was happily chuckling behind my screen at this point.

Well anyway, we jump the WH and warp to a 1st site. The 3 waves of the combat sites goes well:
  • 3 augorors can hold without any trouble.
  • 7 coercers are enough to break rats. Though it is quite slow: more DD ships would not go to waste.
  • Positioning is quite hard: the logi/booster are AB fitted. The coercers are brawlers. Logi range is 50km and boosts ~40km. Target calling depends more on what can be shot without splitting the fleet, rather prioritizing the most dangerous/annoying rats.
At this point I wonder why the logi/boost are AB fitted in vulfpeck. I assume it's because it would compromise the fits too much. Still for the next time, preparing some good warpin bookmark in a cloaky would be useful to have the fleet warp directly close to where the rats spawn.

At some point some destroyers got capped out by rats. The Gnosis was used to give them some cap back, however its transmitter only has 9km range, so it might take some times for the Gnosis to get in range... I don't know how it's done in true vulfpeck, but I wonder if the Gnosis is misused. Having an augoror give cap to the DD (66km range for augoror), and having the Gnosis partly taking place of the augoror in the cap chain (just giving cap, not receiving any) would be much faster. This is certainly a more complex manoeuver though.

We clear the 3 waves. At this point the FC said something funny: we can spawn a battleship that gives good loot, but he might wipe the fleet. Wanna try ? I gave my blessing. Multiple others gave their blessing. Nobody said no. So we spawned the battleship...

Well nobody landed scram on him. So he started burning around happily, went straight to one logi, and melted it in something like 30sec. Then my gnosis get tackled/neuted/damage. For some time the 2 remaining logi manage to keep me alive. but I guess this was only possible while they overheated their reppers. Sometimes later I start going down for real. i'm out of cap and tackled, but at some point I have a bright idea: hit the cap booster, 1 cycle overheat the AB to go away, and MJD out of the mess. It could have worked if I thought about it 5 or 10 sec ago, but I go down with the MJD half past the warm up timer. A coercer gets blown up. At this point FC admit our defeat and warp the fleet out. The battleship was far from dead.

Gnosis -53M
Coercer -11M
Augoror -24M

Lesson learnt:
  • 7 Coercer & 3 augorors are absolutely not enough for the optional battleship. Not enough logi to hold reps, not enough DD to break it in a reasonable time.
  • Landing scram & webs at the beginning of the battleship fight is very important. Maybe that's why the vulfpeck booster has skirmish & info boosts: faster lock times & extended scram can make the difference.
  • The boosting battlecruiser is certainly not an intense/hard role, but I think better decision making from my part would have mattered here.
Anyway, I give new ships to people who lost something, Ersin gave me a spare Gnosis. After some biobreak we're back to try a second site. Before that Ersin kite the battleship away from the MTU so i can get it back. To this day the battleship is still happily MWD-ing around his combat site.

Blue loot +164M
Our wrecks' loot +27M

We go to a second site, which is ran without trouble. We decide to let the optional battleship alone. This site paid 164M isk in ~20min for 9 people. If we can keep up this pace, that's above 50M isk/hour/pilot. Accessible for low SP pilots with a 10M isk ship. Not bad, isn't it ? :-)

Blue loot +164M

Sadly at this point, between the long form-up, the reshipping, the biobreak, and the fact that this is totally experimental so both FCs and linemembers need to get used to it, 3hours have passed, and I had to logoff. We got ~320M isk for the whole fleet. This is a pretty awful payout for a harvester fleet, but we were able to test the concept, got some positive&encouraging results, and saw what was the limit of this doctrine. For an experimental & impromptu fleet, I'll call that a success.

TL:DR
  • Doctrine seems viable for the 3 waves of C5 combat sites.
    10 people are able to run these C5 sites, and there is still room for more DD, no need to refuse additional people.
    The potential isk/hour/pilot is decent.
    We were greedy and welped a part of the fleet :-) I replaced the lost ships, and consider my invested isk worth it.
    The optional battleship was out of reach. Whether it can be fixed with more people, or if this doctrine simply can't deal with it, is open to debate.
    The payout for this 1st iteration isn't great, considering the duration of the fleet. Hopefully we can do better in the future
    I focused on getting the operation up (fits/doctrine/combat part), but totally forgot to make a loot spreadsheet (or something like that). It's easy to recover the useful info for 2 combat sites, but wouldn't do for more complex operations, especially with people joining/leaving in the middle.
Thanks to everyone who flew with me on this one. Thanks to Ersin Oghuz for accepting to lead us and share his vulfpeck experience. Hopefully this fleet was interesting for everybody.

I hope we'll be able to consolidate the concept and have more opportunities to run this kind of fleet in the Uni. Keep looking for Wolf Rayet systems folks !
Last edited by Devola Gestalt on 2019.12.02 10:43, edited 2 times in total.
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Erywin Chelien
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Re: [AAR] HSC "experimental" vulfpeck fleet.

Post by Erywin Chelien »

Sounds like you guys had fun in Spooky space! The sites definitely take some getting used to. Landing that Scram on the Drifter is really important.

I'm sure some in WHC would be interested in joining and sharing our experience if we can get enough lead time to get out to Amy and reship.

Cheers,
E
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Batto Ashitaka
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Re: [AAR] HSC "experimental" vulfpeck fleet.

Post by Batto Ashitaka »

It was a really interesting fleet and could be called an Incursion for Destroyers.

On the logi side 3 augs were enough (apart from that special battleship, I lost almost all my high slots trying to save Devola and despite going full rep + overheat, Valeria was gone in a flash).
One or two reps cycling on a target was enough most of the time.

Thanks to you Devola we now can expend the class of WH HSC can take on \o/
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Falling Snow KumaMoto
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Re: [AAR] HSC "experimental" vulfpeck fleet.

Post by Falling Snow KumaMoto »

The fleet was good fun, I'm glad we got enough to form up and run. I had never lost a pilot when I was logi on a PvE fleet before, but that battleship was evil indeed. It was no use trying to get some transversal since he was too fast for us. We could have held with 3 logi if he was on the gnosis. It seemed to me that the gnosis had much better resists than our logibro augoror. Honestly, if we still had enough people, I wanted to try that again, but a few DD had to log off after the first site. You're right though, like 10 coercers + 4 Augorors (+1 gnosis) would have been far more reasonable to spawn that battleship.

FCs used to run L4 mission fleets at HSC using our pvp doctrine ships (vexors + augorors, for instance). This was good practice getting to know the pvp ships without the panic of dangerous enemy players. The ironic drawback of those L4 pvp fleets was that they were very popular, which often meant DD and logi couldn't tell if they were actually contributing. From logi perspective, this fleet was more challenging even without the elite battleship. Broadcasts had to be on time, NPCs often switched targets and hit hard, lots of movement required from the anchors. Great practice for people (like me) who only have experience in pvp fleets that are either whelp or gank with nothing in between.
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Nienke Solette
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Re: [AAR] HSC "experimental" vulfpeck fleet.

Post by Nienke Solette »

Interesting read and I'm definitely interested in the following vulpeck fleets!
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Marcus Arilia
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Re: [AAR] HSC "experimental" vulfpeck fleet.

Post by Marcus Arilia »

Steve Neuts like crazy, does a lot of DPS and infinite points. So unfortunately your MJD likely won’t save you on Steve. You can kill Steve with 3 Nestors but it takes about half an hour. He pretty much always primaries whatever had the largest sig, and needs to be webbed to be controllable. On top of that you need 2 scrams on him cause he has +3 warp core strength and warps away with 25% armor remaining. On the plus side, he drops 300 mil in blue loot.
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Ersin Oghuz
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Re: [AAR] HSC "experimental" vulfpeck fleet.

Post by Ersin Oghuz »

When Devola found the C5 and told HSC about his intentions to launch a Coercer fleet (due to lack of Confessor pilots in HSC) to run combat sites in there I happen to be there and since I attended several public vulfpeck fleets (confessors in c6s) as a confessor pilot, Devola quickly 'volunteered' me as FC :lol:
Even though I joined several VP fleets I did not lead them so this was my first commanding experience for this kind of fleet as well. I knew that our firepower would not be that much both from our numbers and from the slightly modified fits we used in favor of buffed armor but we had 3 logistics so I thought we could run several sites in there. Things went well as planned (apart from long form up) until we decided to go for the Tyrannos Battleship spawn. It was a very dangerous call and I suspected that we could not do it, but for the sake of the experimental run I was in favor to try it. Prior to spawning I noticed the fleet about the importance of scramming and webbing (although our destroyers has only scrams due to medium slot availabilty). We have scrams on destroyers and only one webber, the Gnosis. Well we failed to land tackle and webs on it when it is first spawned and it went directly to one of our logistics. Then to gnosis after the logistics ship died. So we lost gnosis, augoror and coercer there but it was a good trial. I guess slightly buffed up numbers would help to tackle that ship in the next trials. Maybe having 2 Gnosis on field (distributing Armor, Skirmish and Information bursts for Raw Armor HP(or Repair Power), Armor Resists, Scram and Web Range, Signature Decrease and Increased Agility) with 4 Augorors will help us to hold the grid while 10-15 Coercers can break the Battleship. Half of the Coercers can have scram while the other half can have webbers, which should help pinning down the battleship to its place.
It is fairly low initial investment level for a potentially high income activity.

2x Gnosis : 120 million ISK (60 million ISK per ship)
4x Augorors : 120 million ISK (30 million ISK per ship)
15x Coercers : 150 million ISK (10 million ISK per ship)

The sites can drop around 150-250 million ISK depending on the site type. And the last battleship drops like 300 million ISK if I am not mistaken. Oh fun fact : When you spawn the battleship but failed to kill it, it won't despawn :) It continues roaming in the wormhole system for several days and try to grab capsuleers and kill them :) So HSC left a suprise to the next capsuleer ever enters the system :P

HSC may think about having a full squadron of ships available for this kind of activity maybe.
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Devola Gestalt
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Re: [AAR] HSC "experimental" vulfpeck fleet.

Post by Devola Gestalt »

Falling Snow KumaMoto wrote:It seemed to me that the gnosis had much better resists than our logibro augoror.
Well on paper both have close at around 70% omni tank (without boosts). What might have happened here for the augoror was that hardeners were turned off (either because they were never turned on, or because the neut pressure was enough to cap the ship out and prevent them from auto-cycling). In this case, the augoror indeed has potato resists.

All vulfpeck fits have passive resist module instead of hardeners. Now I know the reason :-) Steve has enough neut pressure to disable any active module on any ship of this fleet comp. My Gnosis was out of cap almost instantly even with a 22% neut resist. So if we want to take Steeve in the future, I don't think it's reasonable to run with the BLAP Augoror and we'll have to come with more dedicated logi fits. I would have prefered to have people buy ships they can also use outside of these fleets, but there's no point if it doesn't work.

We might also have to consider getting any neuted Augorors out of the cap chain during this phase: if they can't cycle hardeners, they can't participate in cap chain either.
Marcus Arilia wrote:Steve Neuts like crazy, does a lot of DPS and infinite points.
Forgive my manners. I didn't know this gentleman had a nickname. I understand why Steve might have felt offended and destroyed our fleet now :-). Seriously your feedback is greatly appreciated, that might help us preventing future accidents.
Ersin Oghuz wrote:HSC may think about having a full squadron of ships available for this kind of activity maybe.
I don't know about HSC, but I can certainly leave my leftover pile of coercers on contract. I'll consider doing the same with logi/booster once I have a satisfying augoror fit that is slightly more newbro friendly and not at 80M ISK.



And finally, payouts are done. If you didn't received any money for this fleet, please complain fast. (you might notice that you received the payment in 2 parts, because I screwed up my first spreadsheet. Uni should teach how to do divisions).
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Re: [AAR] HSC "experimental" vulfpeck fleet.

Post by Kai-Alon Deninard »

Suggest for this that if you want to run C5/C6 WRs that you take non-newbro logi. The Coercers will be slower, but Guardians will keep the fleet alive. You can add a third Augoror logi for a "logi training" pilot. (Although, I remember multiple VP fleets where I was one of three Guardians flying - if we took more than 10 Confessors, we added a 3rd Guardian)

This is exciting that you guys are doing this. I will be happy to help out anyway I can. (Including flying a Guardian or an Eos booster.)

Another potential thing that should be mentioned is that gas sites can be huffed during the fleet if there are any in the hole. Also, cloaky newbros can also either salvage or picket.
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Re: [AAR] HSC "experimental" vulfpeck fleet.

Post by Marcus Arilia »

One other callout. Steve likes to primary the thing with the largest sig. So whoever is the biggest is who will need the reps. Armor brick tank a gnosis and you might be okay, you’ll just need a lot of reps on it.
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Re: [AAR] HSC "experimental" vulfpeck fleet.

Post by Falling Snow KumaMoto »

Yeah, with 2 augorors we were able to hold our Gnosis up if we overheated. The problem was Steve lost his mind, and went for our third augoror FIRST, with predictable results. Maybe it was a range thing, as the fleet was spaced out a bit, with DD on the spawner, logi a discreet distance away, and the slow gnosis moving to try to keep us all boosted.
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Re: [AAR] HSC "experimental" vulfpeck fleet.

Post by Kai-Alon Deninard »

Just for fun - the Vulfpeck folks have an "Arithmos Daily" page (https://arithmosdaily.vulfpeck.space) page that chronicles Steve's killboard. He's a monster, he is. :D :D
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Re: [AAR] HSC "experimental" vulfpeck fleet.

Post by Squin Ti »

I only really have positives to take from this. Firsty, I had loads of fun (primary goal). Never done any of the wormhole combat sites so was a good learning experience for me. Nice little bit of ISK to put on top of that. Form-up took a while but there's no way to avoid that in this situation where you're dependant on people being online when the WH appears.

I hope we find another one of these wormholes in the future and manage to get enough numbers to bleed it dry. I have my coercer waiting.
LONG LIVE STEVE
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