[WHC] Shrink Tank

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Tylenos Targas
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[WHC] Shrink Tank

Post by Tylenos Targas »

This is a belated AAR from a fight on the 28th of May that the traditional Writer of After Action Reports, the fights FC, was unable to write due to real life issues and certain fresh in-game commitments.With the time passed some details including the name of an involved Russian corps and the exact chain details are missing. I’ll also have to speculate on the FCs actions here and there, and can only mostly give a logi perspective

General picture for this AAR:
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Prelude
On this particular Monday evening in the WHC our static C3 ‘Bacon’ and its chain of connected wormholes and high, low and nullsec systems was showing a decent amount of activity. A Russian corporation further up the chain was using Bacons high-sec connection to run logistics, importing ships and materiel and exporting the loots and spoils of wormhole life. With ‘Loots and Spoils’ often going to the Victor, some minor harassment from our ranks had been happening for a while and the Russians where being fairly skittish. Deep Space Transports where being escorted by cloaky and non-cloaky forces, a connection was bubbled by Sabres every now and then, and generally a close watch seemed to be kept. Our harassment did though not seem to deter the Russians from keeping the convoys active – and a fight with the escorts alone was interesting enough.

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A call was made for light-armor doctrine and we formed up a mix of Exequrors, ANIs, VNIs and assorted lighter armor stuff. Conci moved a scout to the not yet fully scanned system the transports where coming in from. A small skirmish broke out on both sides of the 2 B3 connection (or as we call it, .2 B3 and *2 B3) when we briefly caught a Mammoth. Conci at this time reported not reinforcements from the Russians, our goal, but a third party showing itself: a Lazerhawks shield-fleet. Since Lazerhawks (LZHX) is not a corp you should take on unprepared, we decides to advance in the opposite direction and get more intel.

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Extra scouts where moved around and now a typical part of the wormhole game emerged: waiting and watching. Cloaked. Planning and Preparing. Over a good 15 to 20 minutes the Russians kept moving their transports around, skirmishing with LZHX on both their own and the LZHX connection, dropping bubbles to stop interceptions, and generally harassing a small gang of Hawks in highly mobile but not very effective Caracals, T3Ds and the odd Cynabal. Meanwhile from the ongoing traffic – and our own fleet – the wormhole connection between Bacon en 2 B3 had shrunk by a decent size.
With every wormhole having a maximum allowance of mass to pass through this allowed us an opportunity. Lazerhawks has a decent amount of ex-Unistas in it, and generally is more than willing to bring a fleet that is not completely out of the order to fight. But we all know how hard it is to stop the horde of Eve-players from joining in once the call for reinforcements is made. This is true for all sides in every Eve-fight. With the connected hole shrunk past the 50% point though we had some extra insurance – a physical limit to the size of the fleet that could be dropped on us. You just can’t jump through whatever you want in a wormhole, it simply will not fit. This limit effectively gave us a bit of home-field advantage.

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Overture
After some deliberation Urban called for heavy armor (guardians, sacrilege, other fun stuff) and a ping went out for extra troops. Our first order of business was to sort the backbone of any decent fleet: our own logistics wing. With guardian pilots harder to find currently (seriously guys, train into them, flying logi is awesome and fleets do not function without logi) Urban, Urbans alt and I volunteered to die in a trio of Nestors, providing both remote repairs and a significant amount of added damage to the field. Since you should never FC from logi – especially so when dual boxing – Conci was volunteered as FC and got the fleet in order.

We undocked the three Nestors, two command ships, six sacrileges and two battlecruisers. The entire group was parked on .2 B3. An announcement of an interesting fleet being out in the 2 B3 system gave the Hawks ample time to scout out our composition, collected troops of their own and whip up a response. After another 10-or-so minutes passed (and we had lost one Sacrilege due to RL and gained a Vindicator due to logging in late to the party) out came 6 damnations, 4 guardians, a Loki and a Bhaalgorn, traveling through 2 B3 to take us on. Ouch. Four Guardians was going to be hard to break, and the Bhaalgorn would prove a significant threat to our logistics capability.
Conci called priority on getting webs & tackle on the guardians, and planned on countering the Bhaal with ECCM drones until we could get either it – or a guardian or two – down. If the guardians would be able to pull range neither would ever be achieved. This is where the wormhole mass limitation came to our rescue: the hole collapsed before the Bhaal was able to jump through, directly removing the biggest threat from the field. This still left a hard to counter foursome of guardians and a decent amount of damage on the Hawks side. While Conci started probing the enemy logi for weaknesses by using overheating, hard switches and other tactics, the Hawks where doing the same to us while putting all utility neuts on our Vindicator disabling its awesome webbing power and turning off its guns.

The fight progressed fairly balanced with neither side breaking repair power. Our T1 battlecruisers were the obvious target. By keeping them pre-locked by all Nestors we managed to keep them up, switching to Sacs on an individual basis. With the Nestors scan resolution much lower than a guardian locking speed is severely hampered. Luckily the Sacriliges resists allows for this time to pass before reps can land. That is, until the Hawks used utility remote sensor dampeners to hamper the locking speed even more. This cost Martin his Sac in a pretty but expensive explosion. With our home-field advantage he was able to reship into an Ashimmu and re-join the fight. This is probably mostly a logi mistake – personally I was running two sensor boosters with ECCM scripts, while there was no active ECCM on field. If I had switched to Scan Resolution scripts earlier that Sac might not have been lost.

The fight dragged on, with our Vindicator running on the cap provided by one of the Nestors remote cap transfers. Cap boosters on the Nestors allow for it, but not forever. And the Hawks guardian team was still not breaking.

As always after a ping has gone out unexpected reinforcements trickled in on our side. We had an extra command ship added to the field somewhere in the fight (correct me if I’m wrong) and a freshly logged-in Mhzentul offered to bring in a Scorpion. Since it was looking we stood no chance to break the guardian chain without ECM we took this offer and prepared to hold it up under heavy fire. Once the Scorpion would appear on directional scanners the first order of priority for Hawks would be to get it dead good and fast. A guardian was jammed before this could be done, and one of the three effective guardians now on field could be dispatched with.

Hawks knowing the score scattered their fleet, we managed to hold a decent number down on field, GFs where exchanged, absent friends where waved at, and we ended this Monday on a high.

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Conci Furiram wrote:Thank you Lazerhawks for coming to fight us! I was very happy to see former WHC members, Ta'soo and Ruby Burke, flying two of their Guardians.
Battle report
https://br.inyour.space/?s=1001027&b=8102640&e=90&t=e
Killed: 3.77b
Lost: 0.46b

Conci: anything important missing? Let me know.

Q: was there ever a primary neut target for the Sacs utility neuts called? If not, how where people using them?
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Dallidiem Igraine
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Re: [WHC] Shrink Tank

Post by Dallidiem Igraine »

I tried to keep my Sac neuts on one of the non primary guardians. A few times, I believe, Conci called for a primary neut target and I switched over to it if it wasnt the one I was already on.
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Raido Kudonen
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Re: [WHC] Shrink Tank

Post by Raido Kudonen »

I am not the wspace expert to offer advice on these points, but I want to call out one of the best lines in a Uni AAR since I've been around:
Tylenos Targas wrote:Since Lazerhawks (LZHX) is not a corp you should take on unprepared, we decides to advance in the opposite direction and get more intel.
(also good on the hawks for bringing a fun fight)
"What is good in life, Raido?"
"To crush your enemies. To see them bubbled before you, and to hear the lamentations of their carebears."

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Conci Furiram
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Re: [WHC] Shrink Tank

Post by Conci Furiram »

Some things I want to point out:

Good: Everyone was shooting the called for ammo of CN Inferno.
Bad: I didn't do the Intel and see that the Guardians were actually weak to Mjolnir.

Good: We didn't let the Guardians kite us. Initial webs were on the mark.
Bad: Our 90% webs were unreliable cause of neut pressure on the Vindicator.

Good: People were on the ball with the constant hard switches.
Bad: I got sloppy coordinating EWAR. Post-fight discussion, many expressed they weren't sure where I wanted utility neuts.

Good: One of their Guardians was squishier that the other three (forgot his slaves maybe?). Cycling around, using neuts, Hornet ECM, Scorpion ECM on the other three, we were able to bleed the structure off Alai. After two (three?) Cycles like that, we popped him.

Good: I remembered to heat to my painter. And it had a nice visual effort on the dmg hitting the Guardians before I'd call a switch. This made me chuckle few times during the engagement.
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Jonathan Wolf
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Re: [WHC] Shrink Tank

Post by Jonathan Wolf »

It was my Prophecy which was lost on the beginning due to RL :)
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