[AAR] Secret Sail Op

[Rikali Laru]

By all means, rep the claymore/huginn and not the far cheaper ferox, that's the right call. Well, more so when the uni provided the ships lol

[Bates Larsson]

Thank you to those who actually gave constructive feedback, it doesn't matter if your a director or a newbro we are all learning and the point of an AAR is to get that valuable feedback, not to become a punching bag for someone's ego.

It does not matter if the FC has done 1 or 10000 fleets, it does not matter if they win without losses or lose everything, all that matters is people had fun and learnt something. Comments like 'have someone else do it' don't add anything, we all play the game to have fun and at the end of the day I thank the FC for taking the time to actually bother to lead a fleet irrespective of any outcome.

Eve Uni is a place to learn and grow.

[Adam Ironborn]

As a Logistics Anchor I need to give some input here from my side.

In the first engagement, as Logi FC Mike stated already, because of the fact that DPS wing was split into 2 different positions, I had to choose between where to position the fleet at the heat of the battle. I should have inform Mike as he was the logi FC and let him decide what should we do about that, but instead I acted on myself and tried my best to position the fleet in between two seperate combat squads. I tried my best but from my point of view those are my mistakes;
- I should inform the FC about this and let him decide,
- Positioning the fleet in between two squads made our logistics barely adequate for both squads since we were strecthed to our fall off range almost.
During the engagement I informed about having Jams on logi squad and inform logistics FC asap which he relayed this information to the main FC.

In the second engagement, sadly at least 4-5 Ospreys were not anchoring on me and they were 60km left behing somehow. We were in our optimals with the main fleet and the wartarget fleet were following us. Logistics FC and I warned the lagging Ospreys to follow us but somehow they could not catch up even after Mike warned me to slow down to 50% max speed so they could catch up. After some point I saw that the enemy fleet breaking away to get the lagging Ospreys and I turned the logistics squad towards them so I could position the logistics body to get between the combat fleet and lagging ships so the ships can catch up in the mean time. At this point we overshoot a bit of our range but the FC already called out scatter command and hence we left the field. Frankly in this engagement I should have simply left the unanchored ships behind to protect the main body. My mistake was to reach out both bodies to protect the both which clearly could not work. Apologies for those mistakes. I learnt from them and hoping to do better next time

In the third engagement I tried my best to follow the combat squad and position the fleet such that combat squad will be in front of us -well in our optimals- between us and enemy fleet. It worked a while but at some point enemy fleet caught up with us since I made a mistake on manual piloting and probably misread the field while trying to repair fellow fleet members frantically. Although with another move I moved the logistics body away from the enemy fleet. At some point I lost my ship and Mike had to take over as an anchor on top of his already hard job logistics FCing. But I can say that he did good to hold the fleet until the very end.

Thank you Mike for Logistics FCing, and Psychotic for being Main FC. Thanks for all members who joined the operation and all who risked their expensive ships in this operation. We did lost this battle, yes, but with this AAR and feedback we will analyze our mistakes, learn from them and be better next time. As logi anchor I did mistakes and trying to analyze them so I can do better next time!

Have fun!

[Turlough Dominian]

Was chatting with two wartargets today about yesterdays engagement including there fc to gain knowledge and all taht fun stuff, forgot to ask if i could attach there names so ive re-named them to wartarget and wartarget#2 but below is there side of the engagement /thoughts

the two dudes where prittie cool and peaceful , thanks again for the chat

Spoiler

[ 2019.12.11 19:00:13 ] wartarget > ohh ok

[ 2019.12.11 19:01:19 ] wartarget > ok let's start.. i think your first mistake was not having intel on us...

[ 2019.12.11 19:01:31 ] wartarget > while we knew exactly how your fleet comp looks like

[ 2019.12.11 19:02:43 ] wartarget > 2.) we went basis since we had less ppl in fleet... you could've never broken our basis but if you had ppl reship into griffins/bb's you would've probably broken us more

[ 2019.12.11 19:03:55 ] wartarget > 3.) the drones as mentioned.. you should've probably gone ecm drones and put em all on our basis

[ 2019.12.11 19:04:18 ] wartarget > also you didn't really need the lachesis.. it didn't really help you

[ 2019.12.11 19:05:17 ] Turlough Dominian > where the hugins at least worthwhile both lach and hugins where last min additions

[ 2019.12.11 19:05:38 ] wartarget > if you would've managed to keep us at range the fight might've fallen to your advantage since we wouldn't have had enough dmg to break you

[ 2019.12.11 19:06:08 ] wartarget > huginns were good, but bad executed.. i was almost never webbed by them... which means my fleet in general goes still the same speed...

[ 2019.12.11 19:06:17 ] wartarget > they should've webbed me and kept us at range

[ 2019.12.11 19:06:48 ] wartarget> same goes for lach.. i was only scrammed when they were primarying me

[ 2019.12.11 19:07:44 ] wartarget > which goes to my next point... i wasn in a really tanky tengu with probes.. your alt should've been in either a booster or in an FC ship which is tanky enough ( and no, not a monitor)

[ 2019.12.11 19:08:19 ] wartarget > and calling me primary while they couldn't break the feroxes was also not a good call

[ 2019.12.11 19:09:10 ] wartarget > your griffins did a good job though

[ 2019.12.11 19:09:12 ] wartarget > aswell as the bb

[ 2019.12.11 19:09:38 ] wartarget#2 > My POV: I think you fought bravely, and coming back in 2 more times was cool, even though the 2nd time fleet came in was probably to try to hold the timer but it repaired just before you landed. :PChecked through a few of the kills and a good bunch was missing rigs (most likely due to handouts/rushing). You outnumbered us, but we made up for it in coordination, fitting, T2 logi, combat probing for positioning, EC-300's and experience/skillpoints for added DPS. It was a hard fight for us nonetheless given our low numbers.Most of our dudes are seasoned PVP players so logi is generally very on point. And so is the timing on target broadcasting, leading to a fast alpha so if you aren't broadcasting/using hardeners soon enough we'd get through on the next cycle.Also wartarget is right regarding webs. If you web the anchor you slow the entire fleet rather than get a bit better tracking. Ferox vs Ferox you have decent tracking anyhow so not much point in webbing down primaries.

[ 2019.12.11 19:13:51 ] wartarget > he/she did probably quite well... though the intel anf leetcomp aswell as the positioning was a bit off... and don't help him/her figure out how to counter us.. let him/her figure that out on his/her own

[ 2019.12.11 19:14:50 ] wartarget > i'm happy aswell for every FC that steps up and in general of ppl that pew pew

[ 2019.12.11 19:18:00 ] wartarget#2 > I think she did a decent job hurfing for the fight - I mean in the end you guys showed up with 50+ dudes (outforming us) in like 24 hour notice. And it's always hard to herd a bunch of space-kittens. I'd love to see a recording of your side though to analyze it. All we do is fight pretty much every day, and we've won a lot of times, often 2:1 or even worse in odds. So don't feel bad about losing more ships than us.

[ 2019.12.11 19:20:47 ] wartarget> tell her she did really good for rather new pilots

[Christoph Patrouette]

Can you send them my video please, as they asked for it...

[Turlough Dominian]

Can you send them my video please, as they asked for it...

done <3

[Yrgrasil]

before i get banned here like some other alumnis already, only something positive to add from the video i saw

the fight at sun shows kinda decent target calling from baldrick, not a lot silent moments, fast switching and around 24:10 he tried to make an countdown/alpha shot (the 3,2,1, shoot thingy) but it seems he just failed before to broadcast and name the target from what i saw.
This is exactly what you want to do when you can't break them regulary after 2-3 tries with rapid switching. I would assume with full strenght in the beginning this could have been an good start for a nice ship trading.

[Gaelys Aarmenvar]

My two cents, from a newbro's point of view:

I won't talk about general FCing, first because I have no experience in the matter, and mostly because it was my first time as a logi so I was completely focused on Mike's voice only.

As a learning experience, this was probably the fleet during which I've learned the most as an EVE player. I'll never broadcast late again when I fly DD Learned a lot about the importance of jamming in a fleet, and the damage it can cause. I've learned the importance of the Targeting Management skill (seriously, switching targets while having fc and the cap buddies prelocked is not easy when you can only have 4 targets Sorry FC, I had to unlock you )

The orders from the logi FC were clear and fast, I was keeping an eye on the history tab and the targets were called as soon as the broadcast was received when possible. And thanks for that, I was feeling overwhelmed enough

For me, this was an amazing experience, and would definitely do it again. Every time I die in EVE, I learn and become slightly better. As long as everyone learns something from what happened yesterday, I would call that a great success and would not change any bit of it.

Big thanks to everyone that was part of it, from the Uni or not, and whatever side they fought for

[Octavius Augustinus]

Before I comment I must give a caveat. I have almost zero experience as FC and very little experience with logi and large fleets beyond the few I have been in in UNI and the videos I have watched on You tube. I do have real world military and intelligence experience so take this for what its worth. Because of work I was not able to be present on the fleet but did listen to the audio on mumble.

1. Trigger happy observed and had limited engagement with a UNI fleet with similar doctrine and numbers in Hoona for a structure defense. So they had knowledge and expectation of what we would bring.

2. Trigger Happy engaged Goons two days ago with similar fleet doctrine and were equally successful. It is apparent they are a highly qualified foe with effective doctrine, some of which has been noted previously in the AAR. So there are lessons that we can learn from observing the way they came to the field. Looking at their killboards also indicate some very seasoned and competent players. So hi losses in this scenario were to be expected in my opinion. Perhaps an area of education/training for us could be in the area of intelligence gathering and application to missions both at the tactical (actual engagement) and strategic (long-term) levels.

3. Trigger Happy now has additional experience with UNI as well. I would suspect that should they decide to actually come for any uni structures that unless we can assemble a much larger fleet than they bring that we may have difficulty defending said structures.

4. I was not privy to any pre-flight conversations or planning that took place. I wonder if having a standardized check list for pre-flight fleet ops could be useful so everything is set to go -- watchlists, coms, etc... Maybe even a pre-op check list, a checklist to run with the entire fleet before undoc, a checklist for logi, and an individual checklist (clean clone etc...).

5. What I heard on mumble indicated good fleet discipline. They had done their homework and were good at identifying taking out command and control (FC) as well as inhibiting logi. People with far more experience than I can speak to how to address that in the future. But what impressed me was the discipline of the fleet. In spite of loses and some confusion as always happens in battle (real world or eve) discipline and focus is key and what I observed by listening indicated good discipline.

6. We are indeed a learning corp. Our guys are not as experienced virtually (skill points) or in experience (also flight time/dynamics) as many of the people who wardeck us. There is validity in considering our own hubris in past success based on huge numbers and limited engagements and this is an opportunity for learning and motivating us to become more effective. We are a learning corp in a game and what we make of it is a cooperative effort which in my opinion is facilitated by respectful feedback, fact based yes, but respectful. I know I have a lot to learn.

7. In the US military we practice. We call these "exercises". We table top exercises doing this in conversation with both our own side and the opposing force (opfor) with both playing to win. And then we do actual exercises. I wonder if this could somehow be incorporated into an internal learning format perhaps like fight night but on a small fleet scale. There are certain things that could be practice safely without losses -- setting up logi, watch lists, aligning, anchoring, selecting ammo, reshipping, fitting, com discipline, warp discipline, setting up tacticals and safes, etc...and so forth. A great deal of this could be practiced even without opposing sides shooting ships. Especially ewar and logi -- can we break the other sides locks, can we break their cap chains, can we sustain the same against efforts to break. Practice builds confidence and habit and builds speed and effectiveness.

8. And lastly I see two aspects regarding this event with Trigger Happy. One the opportunity for learning against as competent foe. But second preparing for real-game impact on the corp should they decide to press and come for structures. Would it be helpful for situations that go beyond learning opportunities to situations that may have impact on broader corp functions when we really do need effectiveness to have a core trained group of folks (a battle group) to protect vital assets? Other uni members could of course be added in, but for mission critical situations having an experienced spine at the heart of the fleet might make the difference.

[Waruiru]

I am jealous I had to work instead of joining the fleet! It looks like the biggest and most interesting event that has occurred since I joined, so I am bummed I missed it. When I first started, a Eve Uni vet told me to think of ships as ammunition, you fire them off in this game and lose them. But you have fun and learn things. It sounds like this fleet was a lot of fun and a lot of learning. Exactly why I joined a University. Another vet kept telling me "Always take the bait." Sure, it might end badly, but it is fun and it might end well. "Content" another vet likes to call it. Well, this sounds like it was great content and my respect goes to all the folks who invested their time into planning it, delivering the logistics to it and standing up to do it.

Please have the next one later in the day though. I won't miss the next one, but I don't want to have to call in sick to work...

[Milspecc]

This was a fight and it was well worth it. (mic drop)

[Nienke Solette]

I want to thank everyone who made this operation possible. As beginning FC in the FCC I've enjoyed the fleet and learned a lot!

[Ogion Sparrowhawk]

A few revisions on my previous points now that there is a video out for the sake of learning. Please take these points as LEARNING, not as me trying to be mean by pointing out flaws and offering suggestions.

FIrst engagement in the video:

1) For logi I don't see much seperating between you and the fleet. I don't see the warp onto grid since the video starts before that, but it may be been a good idea for the logi FC to fleet warp his own squad. Had you warped in say 40km behind the fleet on the initial warpin you would have been in a much better position to either close distance, or burn off towards an align point. Also, the logi FC should have been in constant contact with the FC during the fight. Had the FC known that they were lossing so hard when said by the logi FC, they could have warped the fleet off to a ping and reevaluated the situation. I notice that there is very little light tackle on the enemy side and very few if anyone was tackled; it would have been easy to clear grid.

At 4 minutse in you can see the enemy logi's positioning which is quite optimal.

2) Target calling: Usually in PvP fleets the FC rarely tags targets at #1 #2 etc. Usually its something like "Fleet lock of primary of Aurelia in the Ferox, lock of secondary of Hatchin in the Ferox, after primary target is down switch to secondary of Hatchin in the Ferox, (Once Aurelia is down) Fleet switch to primary of Hatchin in the Ferox." Always be giving new primarys and secondarys and make sure to ALWAYS be repeating yourself. An FC that doesnt shut up is an FC that inspires confidence and shows control (though of course let your logi and scouts speak).

3) At around 3 minutes into the fight someone says on comms that "They didn't even have time to broadcast." This should set off warning bells in the FC's head which would ultimately lead to bailing and regrouping.

4) Range Range Range Range Range: Feroxes are not a brawl doctrine. For most of the first fight you are under 10km from the enemy. At this range Feroxes may have trouble with application and a key part of their strenghs: mobility. The anchor should have (at the beginning) either warped off to a ping to reposition, or just overheated MWD a few cycles to pull range on the enemy. Your best tracking is going to be when they are chasing you as transversal is near zero. At that time you could coordinate alpha strikes, ammo switches, target switches, etc with much better effectiveness. Also, if the anchor does decide to pull range or warp off to a ping, make sure the logi knows so they can reposition appropraitely so they don't get tackled and killed by the enemy.

__________________________

From here I'm just going to point out stuff that I noticed with time stamps:

6:46: FC calls for the fleet to "stay on the move" with MWD's on. Idealy the fleet would have been aligned to a bookmark with propmods off to conserve the oh so valuable cap. If the enemy fleet would have landed on you at zero you would have bounced. Also at this point I notice that the logi is in direct alignment with the enemy fleet who is at a bookmark. If the enemy fleet was to warp at 10 they would have landed on your logi and been able to take them out. The logi should be positioned on the opposite side of the fleet.

7:50: The fleet seems to be getting spead apart here. In a best case scenerio the anchor would have slowed down so that the fleet could ball back up. As anchor is sometimes helpful to not go full speed so you an accomidate the players with lower SP who don't go as fast. As you can see once the enemy lands they immediatly start picking the people who are off anchor to primary. Also at this point logi isn't in a bad position I guess, but further ahead of the fleet would have been better. Though thats just a minor point and good job on that positioning.

8:50: You can see the large blob or red EC drones on the logi. I did outline this before, but switching your combat drones over to clear off the EC's and put one or two guns on the structure would have been best.

[Gergoran Moussou]

I like what Octavius has to say.

The standard individual checklist, variations of which most groups teach (including when I was based in LSC and WHC, people taught variations of this) covers the following points:
1. Proper ship fit (including rigs, an issue that people have pointed out, and the fact that most groups' Ferox doctrines now carry a tank refit to take on enemies with hybrid turrets optimally, if the intelligence is that the opposing force is a Ferox or Eagle fleet, the checklist would include refitting).
2. Full supply of ammunition and other consumables (including drugs, cap booster charges, nanite repair paste).
3. Proper clone (generally want to use a clean clone for most PVP, maybe with a CPU or power grid implant, though in some some situations, you want a specific implant set, such as a wormhole eviction a few weeks ago in which I flew a Bhaalgorn with a full set of Talisman implants to maximize the neutralization coming from every high slot, though there was never any actual fighting for this to occur).
4. Insurance.

There are certainly other checklists which could be helpful, but that's the main one.

I've noticed that people with military backgrounds tend to have good ideas on how to organize something in New Eden. The US military loves checklists and they really are a good way to make sure that you've properly prepared for something.

Additionally, intelligence gathering is a good thing to work on. I'd love to see a class on non-spy intelligence gathering, something which the Uni can much more feasibly employ than spies (there aren't many people in the game who possess a set of alts which have no ESI or otherwise traceable connection to their main characters and meet the standards that corporations within Trigger Happy are looking for). I remember late in the summer, Argus Sorn did a lecture on spying (if a recording exists, I'd be interested in listening to it because it occurred when I was unable to attend). Since he's a Null-Sec corp CEO with Uni ties, he might be the person to talk to about setting something up, he almost definitely knows of a few people who can give such a lecture competently.

I might also suggest trying to arrange a practice structure bash at some point where another group anchors an Astrahus in the LSC area and Uni forms up to bash it. RvB comes to mind as most likely to be interested in that. I wouldn't recommend doing it in the NSC area because the locals there are a bit more likely to third-party and would likely bring capital ships if they did so. The main group which did that sort of thing in that part of Low-Sec disbanded a few weeks ago, so I wouldn't expect this unless another group starts doing that now that Snuffed Out is gone. I'd be willing to contribute at least part of an SRP fund for this, given some advance notice (since I can't personally replace a Ferox fleet on short notice).

[Asuka Rossi]

o7 lachesis pilot here-

my little pov for the fleet:

Spoiler

My POV on the fleet start from the ship giveout. I asked for the lachesis instead of DD for pairing up with the huginns, that i can't fly yet.
I noticed that was AB fitted with only 600 m/s, that compared to the Ferox is a lot slower. I asked if it was right but no clear response...well, its not an issue for me, will be hard to get boosts/reps when the fleet leave me behind but as an ewar pilot i'm used to bounce a lot and to get primaried. Confronted with the Huginns pilot and they were pointing out that they had one web each too and thinked was not right. But as we undocked was too late to think and we prepared to go to vahlalla as good ewar bois.

We headed to the site and started shooting until they arrived.

Coordination for tackling was good, we got all the little guy that warped in.

As soon as the FC called prop on the huginn and lachesis were left behind as we expected.

I noticed they have a vigil and that, paired with skilled WT and unusual range of the fight (did they even took more range than 30km from the fleet?) is a dangerous ewar and i feeled the lack of damp on the lachesis as a bad thing. I got primaried and shooted at but a good support pilot know when to bail. A fit with less shield tank and more utility would've been welcome in my op.

The call for griffins was a good call: 4 basilisk have enough targets to cover each other all of their fleets, so the use of scanres damp was not that dangerous for them and the short range they were rendered range damp useless as TD on the feroxes. Only thing that we all foregt was calling for an all gravimetric setup, for more chances.

As i noticed from the torlough convo with the WT they sayed the lachesis was not needed....well that was a good assumption from them but this is HS, not NS. so people if not pointed can bail at their pleasure (more on this point later).
After the structure got back to full health we fought at the sun and the WT warped on top of me and got primaried immediately. I was aligned and i immediately bounced away and warped back on a better position (lachesis are not that needed, right? )
As i bounced back i was a bit off but close to the vigil, that i pointed and shooted down with some others hat were on the ball and helped me -> https://zkillboard.com/kill/80377649/ then i started pointing the primaries but we couldn't break anything.
we got back to staging and i gave back my ship.

My points:
We failed the mission.
We failed to reinforce the structure and its not an issue of someone but its an issue of everyone.
Let's start with the doctrine: EUNI have really fixed doctrines that are a bit old and dont get changed to take advantage of the fleet. We have also really few doctrines to choose, and the Feroxes are the only heavy doctrine we have.
They refitted dedicated hardeners to counter us, and with basi help good luck on breaking those.

Talking about numbers is AN HUGE MISTAKE from either sides.
they had 20 feroxes and 4 basi, we had 26ish ferox and 8ish osprey (if i am right) but skill difference play an huge factor here. they have more dps, more reps and more experience and we cant do anything about it other than learning, skill up and keep going. As a learning corp we have day-one people aside skilled veterans with years on the game, when Trigger happy is composed by skilled and experienced players. So even rigs/broadcast/other things are completely acceptable from our side, a shame but acceptable.

Now, reshippings...
this is more of an advice for next fleets tho, but could be really powerful: staging out of the system is fine, but reshipping should be FAST! and its not a fault of the combtants, but of the position of the reships. we have to take a gate after a 27 AU warp in a pod then warping to station, dock, reship (undocking, shame the rigs, docking, fitting rigs), undocking and going the way back. that is A LOT OF TIME even if u only count the weapons timer (60s). If i can suggest for the next times some OOC Bowheads with reships off grid but close to the fight, u warp there and reship. Fast and efficient.

Anchors!
Well, as an FC its quite normal to be the fleet anchor, but we are playing in HS and that is not a wise use of game mechanics: use an alt!
They cant do anything about that, the fleet can go on without issues and they cant web the anchor so they entire fleet dont slow down!
If we dont want an ooc anchor just tank the FC as much as u can...Headshotting is a not honorable tactic but its effective, and euni is really weak on that.

Fit overall:
They bringed feroxes with kn/th tank. we should've done the same to hold grid.
Logi have done an amazing job but got overwhelmed by the drones.

Overall personal opinion:
I dont really know why we were there. We could've holded on the structure and keeped the damage up at an high cost of ships but we would've got the job done.If we looked for a fight i guess they will greet us in their SOV system. The drones were enoug to keep the damage up on the structure so playing the cat and mouse to survive as long as possible until the job is done should be an option on bashing OP.
BUT
but
Blaming people is always easier after thing happens. And as a learning corp blaming people that are learning is not the way to go. I suggest we really get an OVERHAUL OF ALL DOCTRINES because are OLD and known. The use of T2 ships other than the huginn and the malediction was optional ( like the lachesis...yes me) but the use of command ships was completely unnecessary. Feroxes can fit their own command bursts and there is no need of that bling of a ship. But these are my opinions so take them as you wish.

Btw everyone have done their bests and i appreciated that more than the welp of an entire fleet.
Ty for reading this and i apologize for the length.

Asuka