(ILN) Uni's first (maybe) Pantheon fleet slays a dragon

[Gareth Correlian]

So two of the potential organised fights fell through so we were forced to roam and hope for some brave pilots to come and fight us.

Before the fleet
A lot of stuff was going on behind the scenes. Our cap pilots were moving to staging areas, we had eyes on Snuffbox's 5 Titan bridging systems, our scout net was spread wide, we had a complex route set up to get maximum combat options and places to hide a huge fleet (barely any of which ended up being used). We had boosters set up and a command structure put into place before the main fleet form up was done. Plus we had mini lesson by two podlets about dragons and fleet manoeuvres. So for everyone who participated in the sheer amount of tasks that made these events work, thank you, you made my life easier and my tasks flow with meaningful direction.

Our Cap fleet
This time, instead of falling to the usual cap triage fleet we tried out Pantheon instead, essentially remote rep, non-triage carriers. I would love feedback on how this went in comparison to the normal triage setup and if it made a difference in your eyes. Bar in mind without Pantheon we would have had double dread dps as well as 4 carriers.

The Fleet
We had a four stage set up, dictated by where our caps would jump to and where we could then hunt. The first stage was around Metropolis and during fleet form up our scout commander had thoroughly searched the area in the hope of finding the corps that I had marked for them. Sadly nothing so we moved towards Stage 2.

Stage two was originally going to be with a bait fleet in Old Man Star with the main fleet a few jumps away. But things changed when we heard that Shadow Cartel was interested in fighting. We made it clear to them that we would fight them on the condition that Snuff box would have no involvement in it. They agreed but even so we had eyes following the snuff fleet wherever they went to ensure that they would not interfere.

The fight was really tough as they were flying a fast moving machariel fleet with TWELVE guardians supporting them. Their fits were pretty dam blinged out to (as the battle report shows) so they were very tough to catch and blow up before their reps landed. I decided to focus on their Archon when it came clear that we were not able to finish them off, though its fit was very much a neut and dps sponge. Before the archon being blown up though we had all the Machariels drop sentries and they were chewing through our ships. I called three archons in so that our designated Smart bombing ship could refit his ship from dps/neut to full smat bomb so that he could wipe out their drone ball, which he did. Reps were barely holding so I called the rest of the archons in to add support.

They fought well though as they flew away from our carriers and we chased them moving the fleet further away from the safety of our super reps and even stressing the link to our sub cap logi ship. After only blowing a few of their ships up it was clear that this was not going to go in our direction so I had the fleet burn back to the carriers so we could safely extract.

The battle was very evenly matched isk wise and as challenging as it was it was certainly an interesting fight

battle report - http://killfeed.eveuniversity.org/?a=ki ... _id=283135
their losses – 5.42B
our losses – 5.44B

battle time line - http://evf-eve.com/services/brcat/?s=49 ... t=KQav&r=1

For this fight I want to thank Luc Lavoiser and Zakkus Koch and make sure they are added to the killmails as they stayed away from the fight watching for local spike and resisted the call to KM whore. Pro unistas


Logi to be added:

Spoiler

Alexandra Ax
Crimson Cadelanne
Glasi Vookto
Hofborn
Izmaragd Dawnstar
Jore Unn
Lamonica Eistiras
Le Loup Gris
Piotr Mauleradze
T Toralen
Torg Navatin
ISpeedAtNight LastInLine
Alex Stadfeld

We continued roaming after some time off and had our second fight with Galmil. This took a while to set up so before that we decided to run 7 besieged sites in the neighbouring systems. Carrier ratting besieged is seriously OP .

The Galmil fight was an interesting one. I had previously had my frigs make tacticals around the fight point and expecting them to arrive with arty Tempest Fleet Issues as I wanted space to manoeuvre to get closer to them. They landed at range, we on-grid warped away and aligned back to them. One of our inties slipped behind them and we warped to them at 50 odd km and we landed really close to them. Their long range, low tracking but high alpha weapon advantage was robbed from them and with judicious use of our damps, moving between scan res and range damps, we kept their logi of centre and was able to burn them down with a surprising amount of speed. I honestly think this fight should have been MUCH harder but due to a fantastic early manoeuvring we took the field with minimal losses.

Battle report - http://killfeed.eveuniversity.org/?a=ki ... _id=283165
losses – 0.09B
destroyed – 4.54B

To be fair though they were brave in coming to take us on, even though our fleet was less than half the size that we started with, we were still a force. Oh and no we did not drop caps for this, that would have been insulting.

We went home.

Another long 5 hour dragon slayer but good company, interesting fights and challenging encounters made for a fun night. Thank you for those that can and for sticking around so long.

Hugs

gareth


P.S.
as always mini-aar's from my sub commanders would be appreciated.

[Coaxster]

Fun as always, Gareth. Your scouts for the 1st half myself, Arusu, Ceaser Karfshaz, and Dark Lancelot, would like to be added to those kills too as we kept from KM whorin to keep eyes for snuffed and other reinforcements (which did indeed trickle in, but no snuffed). Resisting urge to get on kills was very very hard.

Anyhoo, we need more scouting classes It was a bit rough on the newish scouts to cover all the territory and look for what you wanted (most didn't even have PLH installed). But they rose to the task (under the lash I guess ) and did fine. There just wasn't much out worthy of the fleet.

[Neonen Enderas (Biomassed 2017.06.23)]

Thanks to Arusu for the warp in, it made us slaughter them.

And thanks to Gareth and all the people working ob making it happen. Many thanks, 11/10 will come again o7

[Croixant]

Awesome!

Well done and great execution from all.

Looking forward to read all those extra AAR's!

BZ

Croix

[Dark Lancelot Erkkinen]

Great fleet, only thing I regret is not having the skills to fly in the main group. I at least got a nice scouting experience ^.^

[Matt Mustang]

Dragon slayers are always an absolute blast I dust off my PvP Kronos (ridiculous utility) and absolutely enjoy it. I did run into a few problems as the smartbomber I originally had an AB fit so getting to the carriers was annoying even though they landed within 15km. Also I forgot in order to fit a full rack of non-EM smartbombs I have to offline my TCs or Sebo so I was actually only using 7 explosive smartbombs not the full 8. Also had some cap feed issues from the logi I should have made it more clear that I need perma-cap when smartbombing but I made sure to fix this in the second fight but never had to use smartbombs so sad. To try and avoid the akward "you killed my pod" complaints I did have a pod only tap on my overview. This was good and bad: good because I avoided pod killing friendlies, bad because I had to switch tabs to see if I was yellow boxed.

Don't know if this helped any but as we formed the fleet I pulled my squad members into a private convo where I checked fits and answered non-critical questions (basic stuff really what utility high to bring, basic fleet stuff, etc.) might want to consider doing this on a wider scale in the future.

I'm also really pissed at myself I forgot to shoot the Archon so I wasn't on the kill mail and that would have been my tenth carrier kill. Still a blast of a fleet can't wait for the next one.

PS: 110d training for my Erebus fit Gareth. (on +3 clone)
Will upload screenshots when my internet stops being derpy.

[Ulrik Elristan]

Goddamnit Gareth, a blast as always, and now 15hours since I JC'd down to Hek I'm still on eve

Wonderful job everybody, from a neut legion point of view the first fight was quite hectic as we were horribly positioned to get to their logis, especially as they were trying to pull range to thin up the fleet and getaway from the pantheons ; as such ran out of reps range more than once to try and keep their logi chain down. Hats off to Shadow Cartel, they played this fight well. I wonder whether if we had noticed they were AC fit we could have pulled them back towards the pantheons (and thus keep neuters fed on cap and under logi protection).

On the second fight, can't praise Arusu enough, that was a perfect warp-in. The TFI were sitting ducks once we got on top of them. The damps really brought the logi back (they were originally sitting 60 off their main forces), and with the small number of guards they had, breaking the chain was an easy task - mayhaps too easy. I'm sorry the fight was so one sided, but they really didn't fly their doctrine properly (I suspect they'll hold us responsible for choosing a battlefield they hadn't prepared, but then again, they should have had complete homefield advantage)

In general, we were in for a more active fleet than last time around, although we had to wait a bit in between the two fights, it stayed fun enough. Looking forward to the next one, Pantheon was an interesting doctrine. Maybe a little over the top compared to our opponents' usual escalations ? Wouldn't want to be good unistas and blob the crap out of everybody, would we

[Kyle Hargrove]

So, EWAR mini-AAR time!

First of all, thanks for the fleet, Gareth! On my road to becoming more experienced as an FC (and as an EWAR commander), you sure are leading as a bright example for me to follow.

Then, all in all I'd say it was a great day to be in an EWAR boat: we had great bookmarks, suitable targets and few pesky small boats trying to catch us. Thanks also to Zeeba who gave me a couple of good ideas to increase out effectiveness, esp in the second fight.

Now, if I had to point out any "mistakes" or points for improvements that I feel are important, I'd first and foremost say that we were quite light on EWAR, at least during the first fight: we were around 10 in a fleet of 120+.

Then, forgive me, but I want to speak against the idea of the damp Proteus: it has a quite light tank for a Proteus and if you compare it to another dedicated damp boat, it appears lackluster exactly where it should shine. Overall, it looks like a "jack of all trades, master of none", which we know is not a good principle to fit ships.
Compared to a Celestis, it has twice the tank, has the same targeting range, and has less effective damps (arguably, the main point of the fit) for 20 times the cost, and then there is the potential of SP loss.
Compared to a Lach it has a bit less than 1.5 times the tank, far inferior targeting range, half as effective damps, and twice the cost.
Heck, even a Maulus would have the same damp effectiveness, better range and, in a 10MN fit, might even have more chances of survival (BTW, +50 ball points to Xrated who brought a Maulus to a 120-man fleet)
You might say it contributes some DPS to the main brawl, but then I'd say you'd be better off either putting some ECMgus in the main brawl (that could double as drone-sniping platforms) or just have the people in Proteuses be DPS fit and some of the newerbros in Celestises.

Finally, we had some people in Blackbirds having no idea of how to set up exit point tacs and use mobile depots. Yes, I just volounteered to teach a class on the subject.

Bonus pic: notes of the EWAR squad composition and roles.

Spoiler

[I am Ozymandias]

First off I want to thank everyone and especially Gareth for their huge efforts, dragonslayers are always exciting and fun and this fleet delivered aswell!

As neutcommander I want to give a short AAR:
For the first fight the initial positioning was decent we were able to put neutpressure on the archon straight away. To confirm my suspicion that he was at full cap I ship scanned it right away. The archon was indeed at full cap and thus a priority neut target for a long time. Until it was capled out completely I must have scanned it a total of 4 or 5 times.
That's where the archons fit comes in. Me not being familiar with the amount of cap an archon has I didn't notice the huge cap buffer it had by looking at the numbers alone and being distracted by shooting primary with my drones and staying in a favorable position I completely failed to understand the ship scanner results as they weren't showing any local or remote reps.
Had I been more focused on this I would have made the connection between the archon fit and 12 guardians. This was not the triage support I expected. This was nothing else than a huge buffer (and possibly insurance fraud ).
Had I made this connection I would have ordered all neuts to go for the guardians. We had more than enough neutpressure, ecm and damps to seriously threaten their cap chain and thus fleet survivability.

Once the archon was capped out I ordered neuts to burn out to the guardians to try to disrupt the cap chain. Because of their guardians pulling range and neuts being rather short we were forced to chase after them and getting out of carrier rep range. We managed to cap out a bunch (4-5 I believe) of their guardians and these were then left behind by their fleet as they couldn't pull range anymore.
I'm sure that if we had gone for the guardians straight away we could have done more.

For the second fight there isn't much to say as it was basically a slaughter :/ and ended really quickly.

[White 0rchid]

Afraid I couldn't make this one which sucks a little, but it looked awesome fun!

Will definitely be on the next one.

[Laiza]

Well done y'all! Thanks !

[Cassiel Seraphim]

As always incredibly thankful for Gareth and all his minions making these kind of fleets a possibility. This is amazing content and I cherish each and every one of these. So thank you.

I only have one complain, and that was the choice to continue calling targets out of rep range long after the archons voiced up on coms that they couldn't rep people due to range. You sent quite a few of us to our deaths without logi support by continuing to call targets too far out. It's a bit frustrating watching you ship die when you know reps would have saved it.

Although I guess it's mostly my fault for assuming that targets would be called inside rep range, so I'll take that with me for next time.

[Atan Sol]

I apologize for my mistake in the first engagement and warping out to the tac while fleet was still coming to me as a warp-in point. I should've put some kind of FC hat and realize that staying and dying would be the best course of action. Gareth like:


Me like:



So next time:

[Alaik]

I honestly had no idea we were drifting so far during the fight. It was quite a well played slow drag to spread us out.

I also learned that the effect of the medium neuts from my legion were being turned back on me when I attempted to help drain the archon. It did not take many cycles before I was totally cap dry myself! I checked nothing was neuting me, waited for some cap, checked my fitting window shows cap was green and said stable, and capped myself out again when I tried once more. What was this black magic? Am I missing a crucial skill level somewhere? My legion skills aren't the best so it's possible. Is it large neuts only for caps? If thats the case, I'd have gone and humped a guardian much earlier.

[Lamonica Eistiras]

Awesome job to all people involved in planning etc! Gareth, it was tons of fun as always

As one of the only two cap Augs in the fleet (if there was more time or had I known beforehand we were only 2, we could have got a few more cap augs in maybe), I had a really hard time between me and the other cap Aug trying to get cap to everyone. There were so many neuting pilots and only 6 ET's to go around.
Matt, sorry you didn't get all the cap you wanted, but honestly, the three bhaal's and neut geddons get priority over you by quite a long shot. I did give you a few cycles here and there, as with a few other geddons etc, but the bhaals in that first fight had almost perma cap from me to get that archon down etc.

All in all I doubt the logi could've done much better with what we had. You logi bro's are awesome ^.^, Well done to our anchor too!