[AAR] Secret Sail Op

[Psychotic Fickity]

Roam members (57)

Spoiler

Adam Ironborn - Osprey
Ariea Thellare
Asuka Rossi - Lachesis
Aszure - Ferox
Avrin Dennard - Ferox, Griffin
B'aldrick Aivoras - Claymore, Ferox
BattlePig Mac - Caracal
Brock Carlisle - Huginn
Caelon Bissau - Griffin
Capt Steele - Ferox
Ch4rl13 D4M3 B3rry - Osprey
Christoph Patrouette - Ferox
Cowboy Angel - Ferox
Dairek Alamari - Ferox
Danny Algaert - Osprey
Desmond Hawkins - Caracal
Dexyr Sulvara - Ferox
DonBasuno Ichosira - Ferox, Griffin
Elena Leone - Ferox
Ellery Smith - Caracal
Emilia Stark - Ferox, Griffin
Faye Enkelli
Gaelys Aarmenvar - Osprey
Giacomo Belenos - Osprey
Gilmir - Caracal
Hirmuolio Pine - Ferox
John Juulianos - Osprey
Ky Hanomaa - Malediction
Larkvi - Maulus, Griffin
Lucius Septimus Severus - Huginn
Marcel Eriker - Ferox, Griffin
Max Tsero - Vulture
Mike Kingswell - Osprey
Milspecc - Ferox
Min Nashira - Ferox
Nienke Solette - Osprey
Nivek Rensir - Ferox, Griffin
Noodliness - Ferox
Penelope Mikakka - Griffin
Porsche Amarr - Osprey
Psychotic Fickity - Ferox
Rbls - Vulture
Rikali Laru - Ferox
Shikra
Tatami - Ferox
Thorian ol Tolaa - Caracal
Tim NineOwls - Osprey
Tobias Hamilton - Caracal
Tyrion Edwardes
Valeria Rammstein - Ferox
Varris Thellere - Ferox
Velts Engren - Ferox
Vybez Kartel - Ferox
Yto Itinen - Ferox
Zairnix Onren - Ferox
Zoltan Irvam - Ferox
manda doomsslayer - Ferox

Kills and Losses

(18:24:56) Litiura
Ferox -65.51m
Ferox -67.85m
Ferox -73.11m
Ferox -65.6m
Osprey -18.27m
Osprey -18.1m
Huginn -535.48m
Bifrost +115.15m
Ferox -65.75m
Griffin -0.96m
Ferox -65.83m
Ferox -66.01m
Claymore -455.91m
Republic Fleet Firetail +20.61m
Maulus -2.71m
Cyclone +82.75m
Ferox -72.12m
Ferox -73.93m
Ferox -65.03m
Ferox -73.06m
Garmur +51.93m
Ferox -70.21m
Ferox -63.71m
Ferox -60.67m
Caracal -23.3m
Caracal -23.87m
Capsule -0.01m

(18:42:49) Litiura
Griffin -3.53m
Griffin -30.33m
Griffin -30.33m
Griffin -3.53m
Griffin -3.53m
Ferox -72.98m
Griffin -3.53m
Ferox -66.37m
Ferox -66.26m
Griffin -30.33m
Ferox -74.64m
Vulture -503.28m
Caracal -12.04m
Huginn -536.16m
Griffin -3.27m
Ferox +99.83m
Ferox -63.69m
Osprey -13.51m
Vigil +10.51m
Osprey -7.83m
Ferox -65.25m
Osprey -9.15m
Ferox -66.1m
Ferox +70.78m
Ferox -66.62m
Ferox -63.9m
Ferox -72.66m
Griffin -30.33m
Ferox -65.03m
Ferox -65.15m
Ferox -72.66m
Ferox -71.84m
Ferox -58.75m
Osprey -16.26m
Osprey -9.16m
Ferox -65.7m
Osprey -9.15m
Osprey -18.09m
Osprey -9.14m
Ferox -65.55m

Stats
ISK Destroyed: 451,568,761.98
ISK Lost: 4,452,653,526.39
ISK Delta: -4,001,084,764.41
Efficiency: 9.208%

Overall evaluation

• ✔ (Positive stuff)
  Great form up.
  prompt responses.
  Logi was doing their thing.
  Great command communication.
  Great job in getting ships to formation station.
  Great job in keeping combat comms in mumble.
  Great job by those in special ships, with responding and doing what needed done ( Thank you)
  Team work was demonstrated in such a large group.
  Great job by 2IC and 3IC keeping calm and doing what needed to be done.
  Logi did a great job in communicating when we were at crit for fleet.
  
  ✘ (Negative stuff)
  I forgot to tell everyone where to put their drones ( eg: on the station)
  Could of moved around more when the WT showed up in system
  Could of had a combat prober of our own ready to go
  Did not anticipate their Basilisks vrs our osprey logi
  Could of had a few off grid bookmarks
  Could of been quicker to make calls on fight.
  Didn't have enough DPS vrs their Logi.
  Didn't get back in time to keep timer from repairing
  We got too spread out at the start at the structure.
  Debating doing possible EMC drones on these later.

[Marcus Arilia]

I’m just gonna go ahead and say it and get myself into trouble. Should probably start having the experienced WHC and NSC FCs start FCing these fleets.

[Ged Sinak]

Just a few points that I would like to discuss:

1) It seems as if you logi had a lot of trouble in this fight. Since they were jammed out by drones (since I see no griiffins or other jam ships on the km's), you could have asked the fleet to put their drones on the hornets to take the jam pressure off them. SInce you were using them as DPS on the structure, you could have instead asked the fleet to seperate their guns into seperate groups and put one or two guns each on the structure. Also, were the logi's running their eccm scripts, or were they running their usual scan res scripts?

Looking at this engagement and the number you were fighting you should NOT have died and killed so few of them. Your logi would have been able to hold if they were not jammed out and the fleet had taken care of the drones.

2) What was your positioning like in relation to the enemy? Killing only two of them when you have 28 Feroxes doesn't really makes sense. I do see that they have basi's, but you have at least 11000 dps assuming everyone is flying t1 (but probs more like 13000 dps with a mix of t2). Perhaps if they were holding due to the fleet not all applying dps to the correct target, people using the wrong ammo, tracking problems etc you could have rapidly kept switching targets and calling overheats to catch the logi off guard.

Also, you have a few people in Caracals it seems and due to this you were probably forced to stay within 36 or so km. If their flying a Caracal I'm guessing they did not have good missile skills. It is not optimal in the slightest to be forced to fight within only antimatter range when using Feroxes. A strangth of their is being able to project to very long distances with their long range ammo. If I was FC I would have had people in Caracals reship into assorted EWAR. A few TD's or Optimal Range Scripts on the opposing fleet from some newbro Crucifiers would help minimize your incomming dps, ultimately upping your surviveablity greatly.

3) You have ONLY Griffins as your ewar. Were they jamming out the enemy logi? Basi's have very high ECM resistance and dedicating so much of your EWAR to Griffins may not be the smartest idea. Like I state before, do not underestimate the effectiveness of the other ewar frigates.

4) Why are you not using Basi's? At least a few would have made a major difference. I know that there are a few incursion runners in that fleet that have the skills to fly them. If your fielding (and loosing) 550mil Huginns, why cant you bring 300 mil Basi's?

5) You state that you didn't have bookmarks for the fight. Before structure bashes where you expect opposition it is always required to get tacticals. Every 50km off structure till 200, 1000 up, 200 off gates, multiple safes (at a minimum). It doesn't take more than 30 minutes in an interceptor to set these up.

That's all I can think of for now, but ill probably revisit this. I'd be happy to jump into mumble or a private chat with leadership if you'd like to go over the engagement.

[Cutecumber Roll]

I’m just gonna go ahead and say it and get myself into trouble. Should probably start having the experienced WHC and NSC FCs start FCing these fleets.

https://zkillboard.com/kill/80071981/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/80072023/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/80072057/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/80072078/

Wouldn't have helped. The wormhole campus has no idea what the f*** they are doing either.

[Ged Sinak]

I'd much rather have an FC from WHC or NSC due their exposure to PvP that relates to what an engagement like this is. I see people on the FC team that should have been used, rather than someone with rank. Rank (staff position) does not equal FC experience. I know that this is supposed to be a fun event, and it probably was, but if you guys want to figure out how to win fights like this LISTEN to the people who have experience. You have an entire FC program that you can pull people for, or even push to create new FC's. I see many things in this fight that someone with basic small gang/solo experience would have realized and would have probably disengaged and reevaluated the fight.

[Cutecumber Roll]

All I am saying is that the supposed elite PvPers from WHC have demonstrated their own profound lack of common sense on a very similar fleet not so long ago.

[Danny Algaert]

1) It seems as if you logi had a lot of trouble in this fight. Since they were jammed out by drones (since I see no griiffins or other jam ships on the km's), you could have asked the fleet to put their drones on the hornets to take the jam pressure off them. SInce you were using them as DPS on the structure, you could have instead asked the fleet to seperate their guns into seperate groups and put one or two guns each on the structure. Also, were the logi's running their eccm scripts, or were they running their usual scan res scripts?

We had scan res loaded to begin with. We swapped scripts not long after WTs arrived and begun jamming.

Looking at this engagement and the number you were fighting you should NOT have died and killed so few of them. Your logi would have been able to hold if they were not jammed out and the fleet had taken care of the drones.

By the time I was getting some of logi targets locked they were in hull or dead already. Don't know whether this was due to high volley damage, late broadcasts or slow lock time.

[Danny Algaert]

5) You state that you didn't have bookmarks for the fight. Before structure bashes where you expect opposition it is always required to get tacticals. Every 50km off structure till 200, 1000 up, 200 off gates, multiple safes (at a minimum). It doesn't take more than 30 minutes in an interceptor to set these up.

We had a great set of tacticals both today and yesterday, I believe psychotic is only referring to lack of safes. Second portion of the fight was at the sun, I don't think we had any tacticals for that.

[Ged Sinak]

Did the logi FC let the fleet FC know that the logi was being jammed?

[Velts Engren]

My perspective, from a f1 pusher perspective, whose knowledge of the game is slowly coming back :

Some calls from the FCs were a bit unclear, mostly in the broadcasting of targets. They were either confusing ("dps on X" when Y is the last brodcast) or too late ("Decycle gun... fire on X" with the broadcast of x coming a few second later). There were also some calls by tag at the beginning, with multiple 1 and 2 tags.
The choice of the first anchor, was a bit weird, since you took a random volunteer which did not really knew what to do. I'm also relatively sure some people in fleet did not know what anchoring meant before the engagement.
The ammo swap calls were a bit problematic for some i guess. At least it was from me. You should call them by name and not by range, especially since you had a lot of people in fleet with 5 different kind of ammo in cargo.

On the plus side, the logistic was excellent, even when we were heavily losing moral was up, and it was overall a really nice fleet to be in. We lost, but i think we all learned a lot, i sure did. I dont think the more experienced FC from NSC or WHC were necessary. In the end, we now have 2 FCs with a lot more knowledge than before, and i'll gladly join their next fleets, even if we all die in a glorious ball of fire. After all, its the Uni.

Edit : for clarification, there were a ton of tacticals outside the target, but none off grid if i'm not wrong.

[Gergoran Moussou]

I'd provide another suggestion beyond what Ged and Marcus said. If there isn't a Uni FC right now capable, look into having an out-of-corp person FC on the out-of-corp character. The FC would just anchor and call targets. Because CONCORD would protect him from headshots unless also wardecced by Trigger Happy (this is the case for at least three former Uni people with FC experience who I know of, in Pandemic Horde), it wouldn't matter whether or not he's flying a Monitor (though in other areas of space, that sort of ship is necessary for this role). I suspect that Diplo might have some reasonable objections to this, though.

I'd recommend being a bit more careful about who the target is before forming up for a structure bash. Trigger Happy is not the usual High-Sec wardec cowards who look for easy kills and run away when people form up against them. They are a Null-Sec PVP veteran group. They might have gotten into wardecs since a corp which previously wardecced E-Uni joined, but there's a reason why they're the rising stars of Null-Sec. They all have experience and they consist primarily of corporations and players who left the bigger SovNull entities because they weren't content to just sit around like a lot of the longtime major powers. I'd consider bashing their structures to be a bad idea, simply because if they catch wind that someone formed up a fleet for them, they're not going to leave it uncontested. They'll think that it sounds like fun and then form up to win. They're not declaring wars for easy kills and because some other entity paid them to, so much as they are declaring wars because they want to provoke content.

With how war HQ currently works, I'm not in favor of it being an exception to the policy about attacking structures. At best, the adversary will not form up and it will still take long enough to hit all three timers because of reinforcement that the war is probably going to be over by the time that the structure is killed. At worst, they will form up to defend and something like this will happen.

Trigger Happy is predominantly European. It looks like you hit them during what might be their peak hours. If this was for shields, I wouldn't recommend that (though for armor and structure, there isn't really a choice).

In general, I really don't like how wardecs work right now. Despite having left the Uni a while ago by this point, you guys are still very important to me as an institution and I find it rather disappointing that even after they got reworked to be more limited, you guys still find yourselves rather screwed over. If it didn't take almost a week to clear out a war HQ's timers, it might be a meaningful change, but as it stands, it still screws you guys over.

Ged commented about the Ferox fleet having Caracals. What I would recommend in this case would be to fly two separate fleets on the same grid. One fleet would be your main fleet (in this case, Ferox/Osprey). Second fleet should be something faster than the main one. Caracals are one option. If you go with something smaller, a Jackdaw fleet with frigate logi (preferably T2) is probably the best option, since E-Uni already has a standard doctrine (BLAP Talwars) which is similar enough that while not as effective as the counterpart T3 ship, it's going to do alright. The other standard composition for a frigate/destroyer fleet is Harpies and for an overflow of people who can't fly the main fleet's doctrine yet, I'd be reluctant to do a T2 ship which doesn't have a T1 counterpart that fits in very well (Merlins are nice ships, but the lack of any sort of range bonus would cause serious problems for them in this sort of fleet).

I second the point about EWAR being almost entirely Griffins. While Griffins are certainly a very annoying ship to deal with, ECM is not the most effective form of EWAR. Even at max skills, a Griffin with Gravimetric ECM II will have slightly under a third of the base sensor strength of a Basilisk. The most effective T1 EWAR frigates in big fleet fights right now tend to be Crucifiers and Vigils. While the CDI Griffins are useful ships and definitely help a fleet, their primary purpose of jamming logi requires a lot more Griffins than I'd expect to be available without people switching out of more important ships. Since the BLAP doctrines already include a Minmatar frigate for small ship logi, I'd suggest adding Vigils as a standard ship. The Maulus is what I'd go with if I wanted to disrupt logi with EWAR. While enough fleets will anchor logi directly on the FC with the damage dealers that I don't think I'd rely on range disruption, so try to script them for targeting speed. I'd recommend having a variety of different EWAR types.

[Hirmuolio Pine]

In the few feroxes we managed to kill we see that they had anti ferox fits: Two KIN hardeners, one TH hardener and TH rig.

We should have probably done the same as soon as we knew what they had.

Changing the adaptive and EM hadener on our ships to KIN and TH would almost DOUBLE the effectiveness of reps from ospreys.

It is no wonder it was so hard to get theough their shields. One of the possible problems of damage locked ships.

[Cutecumber Roll]

A lot of people are dancing around the subject here.

Yes, there are slight changes to doctrine that could make uni fleets more effective but that isn't addressing the problem.
Yes, having better ships and a group of players with consistent enough skills to all field doctrine ships might help but that isn't addressing the problem.

The small problem is that an inexperienced FC whelped a fleet.
This thing happens; we move on.

The bigger problem is that after an engagement where a fleet with overwhelming numbers lost to a much smaller force the responce was:
"Logi was doing their thing.
Great command communication.
Great job by those in special ships, with responding and doing what needed done ( Thank you)
Team work was demonstrated in such a large group.
Great job by 2IC and 3IC keeping calm and doing what needed to be done.
Logi did a great job in communicating when we were at crit for fleet."

None of the Negative stuff listed explains at all how a much larger fleet managed to blow this fight. Some of the Positive Stuff listed is just clearly untrue given that logi was clearly and admittedly completely ineffective and none of what was written gives the impression of someone interested in learning from their mistakes here.

The even bigger problem is that this isn't a one off. This attitude is very indicative of a broader problem in Uni of pilots refusing to learn from mistakes.

When we are victorious because of sheer dumb luck or ridiculous overwhelming numbers we overlook our mistakes amid a wave of self congratulation. (e.g. when WHC showed up with untanked nano gang ships and no logi to a structure bash and their stupid elitism got them predictably killed)

When we lose we do this instead; we try to sweep the real problem under the rug. It doesn't matter that Uni is too reliant on griffins over other EWAR. It doesn't matter whether there were enough tacticals or not. it doesn't matter that drones got out late. It doesn't matter that it might be really really cool to split the fleet and have seperate logistics for the faster ships. (which it absolutely would but it would also be the absolute definition of cat-herding) It doesn't matter what doctrine would have been slightly better when the fleet that we brought on grid should have already been overkill.

What matters is that a logistics wing that should have been adequate broke, and a dps wing that should have easily broken the enemy fleet couldn't, and we need to examine the fleet and what sort of mistakes by individual pilots and by the FC led to that outcome so everyone can actually learn something from this, not advocate for doctrines we like more or talk about how much better the other FCs we know are.

After a fight like this there are a lot of ways to analyse what went wrong, even without the help of a recording.
Personally I would love to see the combat logs from the logi... there has been some speculation about ECM but it would be good to see just how much ecm pressure was on them.
It would be useful to see how much damage was actually being applied from a sample of the dps, and to look at if the dps was effectively focusing fire.
It would be good to look over the broadcast history from the fleet to see if targets were being effectively broadcast and to see how many of the lossmails were preceeded by a shield broadcast, and how much time was between that broadcast and death.
If there is a video somewhere it would be good to see if the fleet was moving and maintaining range effectively throughout.
It would be good to have input from the LC on how they felt the logi squad was doing maintaining a cap chain and paying attention to broadcasts and aggro switches.

These are the types of questions to ask to constructively analyse a fight. We have a logi pilot saying, "By the time I was getting some of logi targets locked they were in hull or dead already. Don't know whether this was due to high volley damage, late broadcasts or slow lock time." and instead of considering this and trying to use the tools we have to evaluate what went wrong you guys are doing everything you can to drag the conversation any other direction.

[Cutecumber Roll]

In the few feroxes we managed to kill we see that they had anti ferox fits: Two KIN hardeners, one TH hardener and TH rig.

We should have probably done the same as soon as we knew what they had.

Changing the adaptive and EM hadener on our ships to KIN and TH would almost DOUBLE the effectiveness of reps from ospreys.

It is no wonder it was so hard to get theough their shields. One of the possible problems of damage locked ships.

Very good point. Uni has only a few standard doctrines, and in this case they guessed correctly what we would bring.

[Devola Gestalt]

I'll add a little line to this AAR as something caught my attention. Please have a look at these kills:

Spoiler

Griffin
Ferox
Ferox
Ferox
Griffin
Caracal
Griffin
Ferox
Ferox
Ferox
Ferox
Ferox
Ferox
Osprey

Well there's a slightly disturbing thing with these 14 fits: empty rigs slots, rigs in the hold. This mistake wasn't only made by newbros, you'll find graduates & veterans in there, even the FC.

I also want to question this fit: Vulture. 2 empty high slots on a command BC, while it has the PG & CPU to fit 2 T2 burst. Even with suboptimal skills, it's a good idea to fit either backup shield/info boosts, or any of the 2 other boosts (even a +14% armor resist/buffer can help in a shield fleet: more buffer for the whole fleet for 5M isk is a good deal).

I'd recommend being a bit more careful about who the target is before forming up for a structure bash. Trigger Happy is not the usual High-Sec wardec cowards who look for easy kills and run away when people form up against them.

If the point of these bashing fleets is to make operations that we are 140% sure to win even if half of the fleet has a disconnect, and in what remains half is AFK, sure. The problem with these fleets: they teach nothing useful, apart how to stage 100 ships and basic fleet movements to our newbros.

However for the Uni, Trigger might be exactly the kind of target we need.
- Are we likely to lose ? yes.
- Does this fight has an educational value ? Yes, much more than an undefended structure bash. Whether you're FC or a linemember, you learn much more from a close fight, or a fight where you're at a slight disavantage, than a free gank or a "lock structure, press F1 and watch Netflix" operation.

Last time I checked the goal of the Uni is to teach people how to play Eve. Not farming good stats in zkill. Not braging off about our 100% success rate in strategic ops. Not to just teach how to do 100% safe ganks, while having no idea of what to do in close fights where good decision making (individual & FC) matters. That's why I totally appreciate the directors' willingness to make large scale operations that we're not sure to win. This is a golden opportunity given to our FCs and linemembers to gain valuable experience in larger scale fights. If we lose, we'll grow more from it than from a dozen uncontested structure bashes.

I also see some positive morale component in these operations. Right now HSC & AMC (I'm not much in the later, I use intel channel as sources) are heavily disrupted by WTs, to a point where burn out is a thing, especially for newbros. With an operation like that, for a little time we are the one dealing the punch and they are the ones on the receiving end, we actually get a fight instead of boring station games and dealing with the permacamp, and we see some Uni directors coming down from the Ivory tower and attempt to make something about these wars. I'm all for it.