[AAR] Secret Sail Op

[Adam Ironborn]

I am not going to get into doctrine discussion since it is another subject and a heated one, so I am just going to add some more feedback -from my perspective- here about the engagement;

1. We need to emphasize the importance of fleet / pvp check list even people are veterans . Rigged ships and properly utilized slots can make difference in these kind of fleets

2. More distribution of the workload and proper staffing. When the anchors down the FC took over the positioning and etc. We had a fleet of 50 members and we needed more appointed fleet members for spare. FC, 2IC, 3IC were already assigned but there was only one Combat Anchor. A second one could be good call. Alternative approach can be assign 2IC as Anchor and when FC down, 2IC goes up as FC and 3IC takes the position of 2IC and Anchor. Another alternative is to choose tanky command burst ships as anchors instead of mainline ships. That will provide both boosts and good positioning while they can still tank good amount of damage. Same applies for logistics as well. Instead of logistics ship, you may assing a logi booster battlecruiser as a logi anchor to provide boost and positioning. Better tank and preferably having a max velocity closer to logistics ships.

3. At some point some ewar pilots were talking about ewar anchor. We responded that they have to act like ninjas for sure but this question implies that several ewar might be warping zero with the fleet instead of their optimals and died pretty quick due to trying to position themselves nearby the fleet. We need to emphasize on the training of ewar as well.

4. I saw so many messages requesting ships, and reshipping and etc in fleet channel. Maybe we need to think about using Alliance chat for this. Assign a fleet member to that channel in operations and people x up in there to get fleet invite with proper ships or to request ships. That will help people to reship with rigged and ready ships easily.

[Gergoran Moussou]

Regarding what Asuka said about out-of-corp anchors, let's take a look at the Monitor for a bit.

https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Monitor

It is an extremely tanky ship which can only fit a few modules, the most important being propulsion (since it serves as anchor) and target painting (while the hull's bonuses make it nearly meaningless for blooming the target's signature, this allows the Monitor pilot to attack any drones assisted to the ship). Since many Uni members have decently-skilled out-of-corp alts, if one of these players was on the FC team, that player could use the out-of-corp alt to anchor (while ideally also running an in-corp character to fly another role in the fleet, such as a damage-dealing Ferox) so that headshotting the anchor would be impractical (in order to successfully headshot the anchor in this case, the enemy fleet would need to sacrifice enough ships that they would be unable to hold the grid afterward). The mechanics of High-Security space mean that it is not necessary to train into a ship which requires a lot of fairly specialized skill training and put a fairly expensive ship on-grid in order to keep the anchor from being headshot. Instead, the anchor can fly an unarmed Ferox or another ship which can match the speed and maneuverability of the line members of the fleet.

If that does not occur, what Adam/Ersin said about using a tanky command burst battlecruiser as an anchor (in this case, a Drake would be my choice, being famously durable by T1 battlecruiser standards and a similar speed to the Ferox) is a good idea. Keep in mind that due to the current wardec mechanics, an out-of-corp anchor cannot be the one providing command bursts.

Regarding what Asuka said about the recon fits. I agree with Adam/Ersin about not telling the Uni how you guys should fit your ships, but I wouldn't worry much about the recon ships' fits.
Asuka reports that people were concerned about there being only one EWAR module on the recon fits. Check zKillboard for Huginn and Lachesis losses to analyze their fits (on Saturday night, there was a large battle up in Tenal, in R-YWID with multiple big alliances' doctrine fits to look at among the dead Huginns, though only one Lachesis died there to look at). And, if you look at them, you'll find that although a few Huginns have target painters instead of webs like the majority, sensor dampeners are a lot less common on Lacheses.
https://zkillboard.com/ship/11961/losses/
https://zkillboard.com/ship/11971/losses/
They're almost always fully shield-tanked (since the meta generally favors shield doctrines for K-Space subcapital fleet engagements) with a single mid slot used for EWAR (fleet Rooks and Curses are rather less common). The main difference between the usual big NullBloc coalition fit and the Uni fit is that the Uni fit has an afterburner and puts medium guns in the high slots (and a Gyrostabilizer instead of another power diagnostic system) rather than a mix of smartbombs and small weapons (or rapid light missile launchers), but a lot of the smaller groups (which the Uni is) fit medium-sized turrets on their Huginns so that they still can have a decent amount of damage since one ship's individual damage output is a lot more important when you have a relatively small number ships in the fleet than when you have hundreds of ships in the fleet (I recall a number of discussions based around this particular point when I had questions about WHC doctrines).

What's more concerning is that Asuka wasn't able to get a clear answer as to whether or not it was supposed to be like that. There are advantages to using both, but it's important that people are clear on how their ships are supposed to be fit. However, mixing the two types of propulsion module in the fleet isn't something that I would do. I'd be worried that AB ships would get separated from the MWD ships like Asuka described happening.

Asuka is correct that at short range, my initial recommendation of Crucifiers using optimum range disruption scrips would not work. That is my mistake since I was not present for the fight and wrote my comment based on how Ferox fleets usually engage at long range. Since I later learned that this fight occurred at short range, my suggestion would be that Crucifiers switch scripts to tracking speed disruption for that situation. I maintain my recommendation that T1 EWAR be more than just what I saw here and in Uni anti-WT operations which I participated in (a lot of Griffins and a Maulus). One reason is that stacking penalties are less of an issue when people are applying more varied types of EWAR.

[Conci Furiram]

let's take a look at the Monitor for a bit.

Let's not. The appropriate FC ship for such engagements was a Tengu.

The ABs on the Huginn and Lachesis are correct. The mainline Feroxes should not be running their MWD permanently. The ABs provide survivability that an MWD cannot.

Also, sensor dampeners on the Lachesis are useless. That ship is on grid for one purpose: it's long point. If you want damps, bring a Maulus or Celestis support wing.

[Gergoran Moussou]

Let's not. The appropriate FC ship for such engagements was a Tengu.

I was only going over it to show why it's used for fleet command in big Null fights and why the idea of exploiting CONCORD protection by using an out-of-corp alt as an anchor ship provides an accessible and cheap substitute for the main advantage that it provides. My main misgiving about the using a Tengu is the possibility (against this adversary, rather high) of SP loss.

[Yrgrasil]

The ABs on the Huginn and Lachesis are correct. The mainline Feroxes should not be running their MWD permanently. The ABs provide survivability that an MWD cannot.

The mainline feroxes have the option to run permanently because they have fit a cap booster actually, so the assumption here would be that they perhabs exactly do that. Against some doctrines its actually the best idea to keep permanent some distance since the ferox really shines at long range against all other bc doctrines.

Also the huginns normally anchor in the dps wing, as soon as the command for prop on came they would fall back and get a better target for the enemy + get out of logi range since these normally pull into the same direction as the rest of the fleet. So in general as huginn pilot you have with mwd even the option to break out of the formation and burn to the logi wing until the primary switches away again.

But, since we are the uni, an alpha ferox has an speed of about 960m/s, so if you really want to use AB Huginns in that fleet, get some faction AB on it + drugs etc to match at least the t1 feroxes within the fleet, thats anyway the speed the anchor should use.
Also isk/gain should play a role, a 60m web would be perfectly sufficent, the faction lse were kinda unecessary, if bling on the tank then for the resists imho

[Yto Itinen]

I took the two days after the engagement to think about what happened, because the numbers didn't add up. I will try to give my impression on what we can do better next time, on many fronts:

Form-up

UNI has faced many times the problem of the FC handling many other tasks before fleet, namely (re)shipping and other pre-fleet preps that drain their brainpower before a fight. The FC, in my opinion, has to oversee the combat duties of a fleet, leaving the rest of the tasks to other officers that can take care of new pilots and people who need ships/rigs/mods. An FC that has already spent time looking at meta DD fits is probably going to miss special questions, like Asuka had for the Ewar ships.
We need a better protocol for forming fleets, the Incursion community sometimes uses a Person of Contact(PoC) that checks fits, answers questions and deals with generic issues of cat herding, leaving the Fc to deal with final touches and everything that happens after undock. These officers can also deal with the basic pre-flight check list, so that people don't forget rigs before they undock. With the right comms discipline, the 2IC can handle this role, leaving the Fc to deal with things like:

Intelligence

We had the structure into half armor before the enemy showed up, and the fleet noticed this only when the opposition spiked system. This is not even intel gathering, it's scouting 101, meant to prevent a 30 pilot fleet landing on top of us with no previous notice. Doing the homework on what doctrines Trigger Happy use would have been a welcome bonus, not knowing their comp until they land on us is a failure of the chain of command of this operation. At this point it was too late, but we could have used a bit of:

Versatility

Both in terms of material and planning, this fleet had no Plan B and fought in a one-dimensional way. We behaved the same when we were bashing an empty structure, when we were fighting the enemy and when we were trying to re-engage in a favorable way: we undocked, jumped gate, landed on grid and pressed F1. Baldrick managed to bring some tweaks in tactics ( switching targets suddenly, overheating while switching and so on) but it was too little, too late. We take pride in using blob tactics against opposition that does not expect it, but we failed to utilize both the numerical advantage and the ample time we spent on grid on the first half of the bash. This is a problem that lies also in:

Doctrine

The generic Ferox fit we used is, in my opinion, not great, neither in terms of omnitank nor in slot layout for a specialization on the fly(it lacks additional active/passive hardeners for an eventual switch). This is a minor problem in the big picture: a fit is not a doctrine!
We used a Ferox fit, a Caracal fit, a Griffin fit and various support ships, but we used(as somebody already mentioned) a Merlin doctrine. The way we approached the engagement, the orders and the spirit was that of a brawl where we use cheap bricks to punch holes into enemy ships. Except it did not work...and we had nothing else to throw at the problem. We are notorious for our Blap caracal doctrine, which is supposed to be fast and kitey, but as long as I've been in UNI, we have rarely used a kitey doctrine in PvE settings, let alone PvP. I have no idea if the FCC trains people in such doctrines, but I know the line member experience with these doctrines is almost non existent.
I want to expand on this point because we utilized all the ships we had in the same way, no matter the ship type, nor the enemy reaction. We had almost half a dozen people in Caracals, yet they operated the same as the Feroxes, wasting their application and clip which could have been used better and we had to warn griffins on comms to jam the logi, not the main targets.

(*)These are some more pointers that I think we need to improve upon:

-Having a newbro as the DD anchor was a bad idea, as the FC being anchor means we all face the same direction and warp as fleet much faster, instead we wasted time communicating to the anchor which TAC to align. Next time: FC as DD anchor!

-We lost two Boosters very early in the fight (and I'm not counting the one with no command bursts) one to enemy fire and one to RL issues. Considering the numbers the UNI brings to the field, a perfect booster brings a force multiplier of 30%, which is at least a dozen ships more in terms of tank. Next time: Guarantee booster numbers for SHIELD, SKIRMISH and INFO links, both in terms of pilots and ships!

-We decided to bling two Ewar ships with faction mods for effects that can be achieved by cheaper ships in great numbers: We really had no application problems against BC, all we needed webs for were the fast, small stuff. We had a hangar full of VFI waiting for us to reship. Next time: We start with the cheapest ship possible to reach an acceptable effect. We can up-ship after losing some cheap stuff and understanding the enemy intentions!

-For all the complaints we had about the enemy having TII logi, I think we did not break because the paper reps we had were inferior to enemy DPS, we broke because the logi couldn't land those reps. The INFO links I mentioned above and some skill points in ECCM resist would have greatly mitigated the issue of drones jamming our logi. Next time: "We keep logi simple, near the Fc and the main fleet and supported with Info links and better Gravimetric compensation skills!"


All in all, I think this defeat gives us a great opportunity to improve: we are a learning corp, not a bad corp! We have a mission to teach, but also to interrogate and make sure the best people are covering the roles they deserve. If we want to improve, we must measure ourselves with Trigger Happy and take this occasion to get better!
I'm very fired up for this new challenge, I hope many others are too: we have to go for a second round!

Fly fun!

Yto Itinen

[Asuka Rossi]

Regarding what Asuka said about out-of-corp anchors, let's take a look at the Monitor for a bit.

https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Monitor

It is an extremely tanky ship which can only fit a few modules, the most important being propulsion (since it serves as anchor) and target painting (while the hull's bonuses make it nearly meaningless for blooming the target's signature, this allows the Monitor pilot to attack any drones assisted to the ship). Since many Uni members have decently-skilled out-of-corp alts, if one of these players was on the FC team, that player could use the out-of-corp alt to anchor (while ideally also running an in-corp character to fly another role in the fleet, such as a damage-dealing Ferox) so that headshotting the anchor would be impractical (in order to successfully headshot the anchor in this case, the enemy fleet would need to sacrifice enough ships that they would be unable to hold the grid afterward). The mechanics of High-Security space mean that it is not necessary to train into a ship which requires a lot of fairly specialized skill training and put a fairly expensive ship on-grid in order to keep the anchor from being headshot. Instead, the anchor can fly an unarmed Ferox or another ship which can match the speed and maneuverability of the line members of the fleet.

Using a monitor for an OOC alt (if i've read correctly) is unecessary, serves only to point out who is the anchor and that we have money to waste. A normal DD ship should be enough and blend better with the speed and mobility of the entire fleet.

If that does not occur, what Adam/Ersin said about using a tanky command burst battlecruiser as an anchor (in this case, a Drake would be my choice, being famously durable by T1 battlecruiser standards and a similar speed to the Ferox) is a good idea. Keep in mind that due to the current wardec mechanics, an out-of-corp anchor cannot be the one providing command bursts.

correct assumptions except there is no need for tank on an ooc alt in HS. concord is the tank. If u want to use your main char in EUNI tho is not a bad idea to have more tank than the others. Also if u use an OOC anchor there should be no issues from getting the anchor web that slow the entire fleet down, people will need to slow down primaries one at a time.

Regarding what Asuka said about the recon fits. I agree with Adam/Ersin about not telling the Uni how you guys should fit your ships, but I wouldn't worry much about the recon ships' fits.
Asuka reports that people were concerned about there being only one EWAR module on the recon fits. Check zKillboard for Huginn and Lachesis losses to analyze their fits (on Saturday night, there was a large battle up in Tenal, in R-YWID with multiple big alliances' doctrine fits to look at among the dead Huginns, though only one Lachesis died there to look at). And, if you look at them, you'll find that although a few Huginns have target painters instead of webs like the majority, sensor dampeners are a lot less common on Lacheses.
https://zkillboard.com/ship/11961/losses/
https://zkillboard.com/ship/11971/losses/
They're almost always fully shield-tanked (since the meta generally favors shield doctrines for K-Space subcapital fleet engagements) with a single mid slot used for EWAR (fleet Rooks and Curses are rather less common). The main difference between the usual big NullBloc coalition fit and the Uni fit is that the Uni fit has an afterburner and puts medium guns in the high slots (and a Gyrostabilizer instead of another power diagnostic system) rather than a mix of smartbombs and small weapons (or rapid light missile launchers), but a lot of the smaller groups (which the Uni is) fit medium-sized turrets on their Huginns so that they still can have a decent amount of damage since one ship's individual damage output is a lot more important when you have a relatively small number ships in the fleet than when you have hundreds of ships in the fleet (I recall a number of discussions based around this particular point when I had questions about WHC doctrines).

For the ewar modules was just a question, i know that the lachesis can be shield tanked better that some caldari ships ^^' i worked with keres too shield tanked with point and scram and the one with point and damps.... with the damps i always feel more safe (but thats my opinion, so....skip!)
all the fits on zkill have a MWD, and high slots are not that prioritary.

What's more concerning is that Asuka wasn't able to get a clear answer as to whether or not it was supposed to be like that. There are advantages to using both, but it's important that people are clear on how their ships are supposed to be fit. However, mixing the two types of propulsion module in the fleet isn't something that I would do. I'd be worried that AB ships would get separated from the MWD ships like Asuka described happening.

Let's not. The appropriate FC ship for such engagements was a Tengu.

The ABs on the Huginn and Lachesis are correct. The mainline Feroxes should not be running their MWD permanently. The ABs provide survivability that an MWD cannot.

Also, sensor dampeners on the Lachesis are useless. That ship is on grid for one purpose: it's long point. If you want damps, bring a Maulus or Celestis support wing.

So if i could change the prop a mwd would've been better, if i cant stay with fleet if the FC want prop on and i dont get boosts are not that useful.
Damp point is true.

[Anidien Dallacort]

half a dozen people in Caracals, yet they operated the same as the Feroxes, wasting their application and clip which could have been used better and we had to warn griffins on comms to jam the logi, not the main targets.

On this point - to me, this is trying to operate a fleet of this size, the same as a small gang roam. Roles broken out into gross chunks, everything fit into those gross chunks, and go.

This then puts an FC in charge of the whole fleet, and tries to keep the fleet operating in a single unit, rather than specialized roles.

Rather than using structure such as Fleet > Wing > Squad already present to more advantage, and having full chain of command structure. FC then hands down wing level requirements, wings to squad, and each squad has a separate squad commander to implement their own role.

I certainly don’t have a lot of experience in PvP or commanding EVE fleets, but this corollary to combined arms principles in real world combat teams, seems important. We might not be fielding null sec sov war size fleets, but we are fielding mixed and matched skill level fleets, where not everyone can fly a battle cruiser or fit T2 guns and ammo to hit ideal ranges. Breaking up the fleet into more specialized units, and allowing each unit to have semi-independent command and control structure, can lessen the load on FC of larger fleets, trying to herd the differences.

Not sure how this translates to fleets of our compositions, sizes, and skill level. But back to the Syndicate structure a few weeks ago - we ended up within 41km of the structure to get the Caracal noobs (myself included) in range, negating a strength of the primarily Ferox fleet.


Big shout out to those that led this fleet. I missed it being at 9 am on a work day for me, but keep leading things like this, and keep learning. We’re here to have fun and learn. Sounds like those primary goals were accomplished.

[Sedjan Blyat]

Hello guys, I'm Sedjan Shix and i was FCing the Trigger Happy Feroxes..

I didn't really want to post anything in here but after hearing that there was quite some salt and ppl getting banned i decided to post in here.
I am not here to tell you how you can beat our feroxes, that is your task. I am here to help you get towards that task but in the end it is up to your FC's to find a way to beat us.

On that note... your FC's did really well and after watching the video i can tell that comms were quite good, which actually surprised me.

i haven't read all the comments in here since it's too much, but from what i heard and saw in the video, here are some tips:

I would recommend everyone in fleet has their history tab open in the fleet window and set their broadcast settings to what they should see (logi sets it to reps, DPS to targets). The FC can then easily just broadcast a target by holding ''X'' and clicking on said target... this helps with confusion.

Second thing: don't use a monitor if you're not facng a 70+ man fleet tbh... for your size you're losing another dps/boosting ship.. and always bring a prober with you or do it like me who has only one account, get an FC T3C full tanked with probes.

Next up your huginns /lachesis...find out who the hostile anchor is and web him.. this slows the whole hostile fleet down and you can pull range.. if you pulled range we would not have been able to kill you guys so quickly.


Now a question for you? did you go in to purely kill our structure or get a fight?

if you wanted a fight then you shouldn't care about the structure since we came only for a fight.
if you went for the structure you should've perched more and kept range even more.

if you have any questions either reply in here, convo me ingame or send me an EVE Mail (to Sedjan Shix).

and if you came for a fight... don't be mad you got a fight and did good... we are a really pvp heavy alliance that has been doing it for ages in different groups with some of the best FC's in eve. so we have a very experianced backbone.

[I'ma Minor123]

Hello,

I was Trigger Happy's Logistical. I am a huge Logi nerd. We had 5 basilisks. It's fairly easy to look up our basilisk doctrine ships on zkill, so I won't go any further into the actual fit we used, pretty self-explanatory on zkill.

Instead let's crunch some numbers shall we! Yay Logi!

Eve-Uni Ospreys:
You had 10 ospreys, your fitted osprey gives three shields reps of 488 per 8 seconds, total 1,464 per 8 seconds. That's 183 reps per second! With 10 osprey you will give 1,830 reps per second on a given target if all of you rep that one target.

Let's review:
1 osprey gives 183 reps per second. 10 osprey give 1,830 reps per second. With sensor booster on and +ECM script loaded: gravimetric = 59.45 (with my skills).


Trigger Happy Basilisks:
We had 5 basilisks. Trigger Happy fitted basilisk gives 680, 680, 680, and 428, per 8 seconds. That's 2,468 reps per 8 seconds. 308.5 shield reps per second! 5 basilisks rep 1,542.5 reps per second if all rep that one target.

Let's review:
1 basilisk gives 308.5 reps per second. 5 basilisks give 1,542.5 reps per second. No sensor booster, no ecm script: gravimetric = 24.64 (with my skills).

Let's compare osprey to basilisks!

10 eve uni ospreys give a total shield amount of 1,830 reps per cycle.
5 trigger happy basilisks give a total shield amount of 1,542.5 reps per cycle.
Osprey gravimetrics = 59.45 (with my skills) [sensor booster +ECM script]
Basilisk gravimetrics = 24.64 (with my skills) [none]


The ratio I will discuss is the following:

(Shield) Reps per second vs. Damage per second

RPS - DPS

Comparison between logistical fleets are as follows:

In Eve, it is possible to have an rps higher than the dps. But application is key.

With Trigger happy, rps was 1,542.5 (not overheating). If we apply the full amount of rps, that rps has the mitigating power to stop dps, or at the very least minimize it for a better warp in.

With Eve uni, rps was 1,830 (not overheating). But that total rps was spread out to 10 ospreys, not 5 (like Trigger happy's basilisks). 10 ospreys had to raise the rps over the dps and quickly. Even in Trigger happy fleets, getting 10 logistical ships to do the same thing is REALLY HARD!


In conclusion,
Crunching the numbers on shield reps per second (rps) shows it is all about application. Always take a fight that will help with application, whether it be applying damage or shield reps, application is key.

Getting better at applying only comes with experience, so always take the shot.

And ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS fly logi. Logi love from a logi nerd.

Love you guys!

[Dryu Moskwin]

As Minor says the main advantage of the Basilisks was not that we actually had superior raw reps (although factoring in the resistances of the feroxes being stronger to Kin/Therm on our side we probably did have equal or superior ehp per second rep power) it is mostly in the fact we have less people trying to react quickly giving less room for error. The other significant advantage of Basilisks is their far greater ehp compared to Ospreys. All in all though Tech 2 Logi is not a reason a fight like this is won or lost if one side has 10 T1 Logi and one side has 5 T2 Logi, it just evens it up a bit for the people with lower numbers.

The number of Feroxes on the Eve Uni side should have been able to consistently break our ships, from the video I see two major issues why they were not doing so. The first and biggest issue is the use of tags to target call, rather than broadcasting. As Sedjan says it's far better to "Broadcast" targets rather than tag them, and have all individual fleet members keep their broadcast history window open permanently so that they're not scrolling up and down the overview trying to find the target as the person recording had to do. You split damage by people selecting the wrong target, and give more time for Logi to respond by some people taking longer to find the target when some people already yellowboxed. As soon as a Trigger Happy Ferox is yellow boxed it broadcasts even if it's not redboxed yet, and gives far more reaction time for our Logi in many cases having targets locked before damage is even applied to them due to this somewhat strange way of target calling. Simply using the "Broadcast" feature and having everyone follow their broadcast history allows for a far quicker application of damage and a far stronger volley (Peoples guns cycling during the same server ticks rather than a slow trickle of damage coming in) all in all giving Logi much less time to respond and effectively breaking our ships.

The second fairly easy to fix issue was simply ammo selection, there were many times in the video where the person recording(and presumably other members of the fleet) were firing ammo types such as Antimatter well into or sometimes out of their fall off range and doing very little damage because of it. Even if the FC or target caller is not in a DPS ship they can have a notes tab up with the Optimal and Falloff of all the ammos listed to be able to call which ammo people should have loaded as the engagement range changes. Alternatively they can delegate this to a switched on line member flying DPS who can keep an eye on the range and effectiveness of their ammo and call it to save the FC trying to consider too many things at once.

Just two changes that are fairly easy to make which could make a big difference and would have probably helped a fleet which should have been able to break through our logi fairly consistently, which will make a significant impact if we have another engagement. (I hope we have another one, it seems like regardless of all the drama surrounding this on reddit or whatnot the average member of Eve Uni had a lot of fun.)

o7

[Mike Kingswell]

And ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS fly logi. Logi love from a logi nerd.

<3 Logi is love <3

Thanks to you gyus for giving a fun fight and for begin general nice guys&gals pre- mid- and post fight. Even coming here and giving us your side's feedback!
(Especially loved you guys reigning inthe only "overenthusiastic" member in local that you had - just shows that you are good guys!)

This is why I like eve: you can blow up billions and billions of eachothers stuff and if you are fighting the right kind of people in the end you will agree that fun was had and wish eachother the best (until some more explosions can be arranged).
You, dear Trigger Happy, most definatly conducted yourselves as the right kind of people in my view (and have done so for the entire war).
o7

[Yto Itinen]

First of all, I'm happy for the participation of Trigger happy in this discussion, as they have been one of the best corps we have been at war with. Good fights all around!

Eve-Uni Ospreys:
You had 10 ospreys, your fitted osprey gives three shields reps of 488 per 8 seconds, total 1,464 per 8 seconds. That's 183 reps per second! With 10 osprey you will give 1,830 reps per second on a given target if all of you rep that one target.

I understand where you come from, but assuming E-UNI linemembers flying perfect skill Ospreys is a bit far fetched: in this fight the Logi wing was filled with people who couldn't fly a Ferox, so the SP baseline was noticeably low. With Alpha skills, which is what most of the pilots had, the Osprey fit hits 120 hp/s of reps, giving the full wing, single target repping power at 1200hp/second. On the same page, the Gravimetric sensor strength with ECCM scripts for the Alpha Osprey with meta sig.amp is 48.8 on paper, but in practice there were lots of jamms landing, suggesting this was not the case. Adding a bit of confusion from late broadcasts, the E-UNI Ferox fit having un-optimized resists and weird positioning at times, means the Logi wing underperformed.

I don't blame you guys for bringing TII logi, going out with a comp that increases victory chances is totally reasonable. We will try to figure out what to improve, both fit and pilot wise!

The second fairly easy to fix issue was simply ammo selection, there were many times in the video where the person recording(and presumably other members of the fleet) were firing ammo types such as Antimatter well into or sometimes out of their fall off range and doing very little damage because of it

That issue arose from the fact that we were operating with caracals too, and the RLML range was not great to begin with, which meant the advantage of the Ferox range was lost. Combining two different weapon systems and trying to accommodate the worst one was not a great decsion.
Baldrick usually calls on chat to x-up with optimal/fallof of ammo types before engagements but the size of this fleet and the different SP levels meant that the sample was not really meaningful and if the FC had to eyeball his own range, there was no way for him to know how many people had the same SP as him, and the mileage from ammo was widely variable.

Now a question for you? did you go in to purely kill our structure or get a fight?

I'm gonna be candid, from a gameplay point of view, structure bashes are boring and for UNI that structure had no strategic meaning whatsoever, it simply was there and it had a timer. In the last year, UNI bashed exactly two structures (one of which was an alt structure in null and was going to die anyway) for learning purposes. Management finally relented and had us participate in operations of this size for the first time in years and given the feedback its receiving, I think this will be the last of it. It would really be a pity, because these large fleet engagements are really fun and a great experience! Between staying docked and losing a great battle, I'd always go for the second. I'd prefer winning by a large margin though!

From an operational point of view, no clear command and no clear priorities were given in respect to targets, so when the timer was over we just wanted a fight and we warped at sun to get it. Not many occasions for us to get a big fleet engagement like this, props to you guys for forming up!

Until we meet again, fly fun!
Yto Itinen

[Anidien Dallacort]

Big props to Trigger Happy for contributing to the discussion here. It’s always cool to blow each other up one day and compare notes the next.

and if the FC had to eyeball his own range, there was no way for him to know how many people had the same SP as him, and the mileage from ammo was widely variable.

This is a real problem we will always have to deal with in the Uni, if we are to engage in large operations like these (structure bashes or just larger scale fleet fights).

My point - there has to be a solution.

I wasn’t able to make this particular op due to being at work, but I did go to the Syndicate one. In the Syndicate op, FC did spend time determining the minimum, maximum range (I.e. how close we had to be for everyone to hit).

As noted, this strips long range fits of an advantage. But were’s ALWAYS going to have pilots that simply can’t fly longer range fits, and have to default to BLAP doctrine ships. I previously mentioned that a DD wing could be broken into separate squads by range, With separate anchors/command. In such a case, FC can call overall battlefield intent, and each squad can ensure positioning/execution accordingly. The more I think about it the more I can see where this itself has its own challenges - like the shorter range squad having to “bounce” across the longer range’s sphere - two packs of targets within range of the longer range’s squad, but on opposite opposing radii of the longer range squad, would require the shorter range squad to finish off one pack and traverse to the other side of the longer range’s sphere. All while FC tracks this fact, to keep focused target callouts. Rough.

But there has got to be some middling solution - keeping enough DPS ships going to actually engage in these ops, can’t rely on reshipping everyone that can’t fly a Ferox into Logi for example - we’ll end up with a stalemate, where we have so much Logi that we can’t be broken, but not enough DPS to break the target, for example.


As far as ammo types and switching - there are what, 2 gunnery skills controlling range? One for optimal and one that pushes fallout out? If there are multiple ammo types available, it shouldn’t be too difficult at form up to call for range checks and use the worst case to be able to create a table of all ammo types’ worst case. But it’s the same point - in Uni we can’t rely on anything but highly mixed skill bags in fleets like these, and we can’t have half the fleet outside of effective range, because then they are just flying damage absorbers and not DD.

We’re a learning Corp, so none of this is meant as admonishment to anyone, just thoughts for next time - where the Uni will be more dangerous as we tighten up!

[Dryu Moskwin]

As far as ammo types and switching - there are what, 2 gunnery skills controlling range? One for optimal and one that pushes fallout out? If there are multiple ammo types available, it shouldn’t be too difficult at form up to call for range checks and use the worst case to be able to create a table of all ammo types’ worst case.

I believe the main issue regarding varying ranges comes not from gunnery skills but rather from what level of Caldari Battlecruiser skills people have. Even within Trigger Happy most of our pilots certainly don't have perfect skills but we assume at least Level 4 on Battleship and Battlecruiser skills as especially on BCs Level 4 is not a long train at all. It may simply be best for the FC to base their ammo ranges on Level 3 or Level 4 Caldari BC for future Ferox fleets, or just play it safe and assume the longer range ammo is required, and to encourage members to train to Level 4 BC because it is not a long train.

That issue arose from the fact that we were operating with caracals too, and the RLML range was not great to begin with, which meant the advantage of the Ferox range was lost. Combining two different weapon systems and trying to accommodate the worst one was not a great decsion.

I think this compounded with people having varying levels of Caldari BC and also just generally not adjusting their ammo independently without being told to made it such a huge problem. I assume the Caracals were flown for people who could not fly Feroxes. It's probably worth a brainstorming session to choose something lower in skillpoints than Feroxes which still remains effective with them, such as Griffins or Vigils. Sure the Griffins and Vigils will drop if they're shot at, but so will Caracals and the frigates will really contribute more by aiding the Feroxes in either jamming logi or increasing damage application whether Griffin or Vigil is flown rather than hamstringing the Feroxes by pushing them closer to the enemy. Also added bonus that they're even lower SP than Caracals!

I'm gonna be candid, from a gameplay point of view, structure bashes are boring and for UNI that structure had no strategic meaning whatsoever, it simply was there and it had a timer.

Same as us when it comes to structures, it's boring bashing them but it creates timers and timers create fights so it's a boring means to a really fun end for sure.

Management finally relented and had us participate in operations of this size for the first time in years and given the feedback its receiving, I think this will be the last of it. It would really be a pity, because these large fleet engagements are really fun and a great experience! Between staying docked and losing a great battle, I'd always go for the second. I'd prefer winning by a large margin though!

I really hope it will not put an end to Eve Uni trying to perform these size and style of fleets because really it seems that the average "linemember" or "newbie" within Eve Uni really enjoyed it, regardless of whatever drama or whatnot has occured. In between some of the comments that management has deemed unhelpful there is a lot of very helpful comments in this thread alone which would certainly make any future fight of this type a great opportunity to put into practice the various lessons learnt.