[FLEET] BLAP Caracals: were you ever killed by Titan?

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Mongo the Mechanic
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Re: [FLEET] BLAP Caracals: were you ever killed by Titan?

Post by Mongo the Mechanic »

It is possible to kill a HIC, but Devoters are known for being tanky. If it were a UFC HIC I would have suggested that it be left alone for the obvious reason that it WILL have a cyno on it. That is the lesson here is that obvious bait is bait.
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Re: [FLEET] BLAP Caracals: were you ever killed by Titan?

Post by Budda Sereda »

Mongo the Mechanic wrote:It is possible to kill a HIC, but Devoters are known for being tanky. If it were a UFC HIC I would have suggested that it be left alone for the obvious reason that it WILL have a cyno on it. That is the lesson here is that obvious bait is bait.
It is not the lesson that HIC is a bait.

Lessons, at least for me, are:
1. HIC can bubble you (obvious, but I forgot that) so if you engage, engage it from 40+ or even bigger distance.
2. Cyno drop can be a Titan. That is kinda also obvious, but for me in 2.5 years that is the first Titan I see in action) with a big toy, so I need to pay a bit more attention to what exactly jumped through the cyno and warp immediately
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Re: [FLEET] BLAP Caracals: were you ever killed by Titan?

Post by DeanSherman »

The only small problem were :
* 2 logies, 1 DD were in Stacmon, and one of the pilots in Stacmon had his Sabre in PC9.
* quite a few pilots had the optimal range with faction missiles in range of 37-44km :( Keep training missile skills guys.
So the plan was to get fleet together in PC9 and harass whatever we can find.
Missile range with BLAP skills (Caracal Cruiser 3, Missile Bombardment 3, Missile Projection 3) is 41 km.
I do not see any problem here. Do you think that people should train all 5 all skills before going on NOP BLAP fleet? What is range of T2 ammo?
It is a rare case when I am able to undock form-up the proper fleet composition, I got: 3 Logies, Command Dessie, Dictor, Ceptor, 4 EWar (Griffin, Maulus, Bomber, and something else), and around of 6-7 DD: dream of any E-Uni FC.
The problem is this 'proper' fleet composition. 7 DD and 10 support ships. This comp does not have dps to actually kill anything that will want to fight against 17 ships.
Do you need CD? Could have another Caracal instead.
Do you need 3 logi for 7 DD? It looks like this fleet comp has more repping power than dps. Logi job is not to keep everyone alive, it is to buy time to win engagements. 2 logi would be enough and you could have 1 more Caracal.
Hyena would be useful? No, one more Caracal would be very useful.

Budda, you discourage low-sp pilots from flying mainline dps and encourage relatively high-sp pilots to fly support. As a result, you do not have enough Caracals to make it work. You need dps first and then you can support it with utility. You forgot to bring Caracals to BLAP Caracals fleet.
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Re: [FLEET] BLAP Caracals: were you ever killed by Titan?

Post by Budda Sereda »

Do you think that people should train all 5 all skills before going on NOP BLAP fleet? What is range of T2 ammo?
I did not say that, neither I blame newbros.

The problem is that you can't really kite with 40km. Maybe if you manually pilot yourself, but not when you are anchoring.
The problem is this 'proper' fleet composition. 7 DD and 10 support ships. This comp does not have dps to actually kill anything that will want to fight against 17 ships.
Do you need CD? Could have another Caracal instead.
Do you need 3 logi for 7 DD? It looks like this fleet comp has more repping power than dps. Logi job is not to keep everyone alive, it is to buy time to win engagements. 2 logi would be enough and you could have 1 more Caracal.
Hyena would be useful? No, one more Caracal would be very useful.

Budda, you discourage low-sp pilots from flying mainline dps and encourage relatively high-sp pilots to fly support. As a result, you do not have enough Caracals to make it work. You need dps first and then you can support it with utility.
I tend to agree with this.

The only 1 question Dean: why don't you call fleet to undock and teach newbros? I would love to join one of your fleets, would love to see how you will form up and teach newbros.
You forgot to bring Caracals to BLAP Caracals fleet.
One thing is to joke around in the forum, another really do something. When I read/write AAR I see also quite a few mistakes...

Thanks for the feedback, but keep sarcasm and jokes with yourself. Thanks
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Re: [FLEET] BLAP Caracals: were you ever killed by Titan?

Post by Raido Kudonen »

I don't normally get involved in AARs when I wasn't involved in the fleet on one side or another, but people offering criticism from a position of ignorance need to be corrected so that the ignorance doesn't spread.
DeanSherman wrote:Missile range with BLAP skills (Caracal Cruiser 3, Missile Bombardment 3, Missile Projection 3) is 41 km.
I do not see any problem here. Do you think that people should train all 5 all skills before going on NOP BLAP fleet? What is range of T2 ammo?
All IVs are ideal for kiting/skirmishing fleets, and if people were below 40km they didn't even have all IIIs. All IIIs are a minimum to even pretend to be useful, not a long-term acceptable stopping point for support skills. Fury missiles aren't generally used when you're kiting, because you need the extra range. (Nobody worth talking to uses Precision missiles on any RLML ship.)
DeanSherman wrote:The problem is this 'proper' fleet composition. 7 DD and 10 support ships. This comp does not have dps to actually kill anything that will want to fight against 17 ships.
Do you need CD? Could have another Caracal instead.
Do you need 3 logi for 7 DD? It looks like this fleet comp has more repping power than dps. Logi job is not to keep everyone alive, it is to buy time to win engagements. 2 logi would be enough and you could have 1 more Caracal.
Hyena would be useful? No, one more Caracal would be very useful.

Budda, you discourage low-sp pilots from flying mainline dps and encourage relatively high-sp pilots to fly support. As a result, you do not have enough Caracals to make it work. You need dps first and then you can support it with utility. You forgot to bring Caracals to BLAP Caracals fleet.
If you had ever taken some time to familiarize yourself with the relevant doctrine, you would know that command destroyers are crucial for links, Hyenas are very important for controlling range and screening hostile tackle. As a general rule, 3 logi constitute a "critical mass" where they can rep each other at an adequate rate to have the logi survive minimal DPS. Given the presence of links and support ships, a 3rd Scythe seems clearly correct to me.

(Incidentally, you clearly misunderstand how logi works; in a small-to-medium sized roaming fleet, logi's goal absolutely is to keep everyone alive, because losing ships has a very large impact on your overall capabilities. It's ironic that you don't get this, considering how you go on about the marginal value of one or two more Caracals.)

The only people who aren't very useful are the ewar frigate pilots (Griffins aren't good for roaming ever, a Maulus is okay but not ideal, a bomber is utterly useless and anyone with the SP to fly a bomber properly should have trained into Caracals long ago). But that's where Budda's comment about "the dream of any E-Uni FC" comes in, because newbies trained only into ewar frigates have always been a thing and they probably always will be.
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Re: [FLEET] BLAP Caracals: were you ever killed by Titan?

Post by DeanSherman »

Budda, I did not mean any sarcasm, sorry.

Raido, I did read link, now i am not sure if i understand what i read.
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Re: [FLEET] BLAP Caracals: were you ever killed by Titan?

Post by Raido Kudonen »

It's quite possible that you didn't understand some things about the doctrine, then.
  • A links Bifrost is useful in a gang of 3 Caracals, let alone what Budda had, and that's what my "whenever possible" in those comments means.
  • The logi question is a little complicated. The doctrine page is designed around flying Osprey logi, which use a cap chain and can rep and MWD basically at will as long as the cap chain is up. There are ways in which Scythes are better than Ospreys, especially in the small gang context, but they also consistently rep less DPS than Ospreys do (because you have to manage cap in a Scythe). This is probably the main point where you misunderstand the doctrine.
  • As with the Bifrost, a Hyena is good with almost any amount of DPS; its presence means that anything that tries to mess with you can't control range inside 30-40km, which is obviously a major tactical asset.The recommended Caracal-to-Hyena ratio is largely based on the experience that it's genuinely hard to find a good support frigate pilot in the Uni.
Of course, the final irony of all this is that had that bomber pilot and one more dude flying a useless T1 frigate reshipped into Caracals, we'd be looking at a Caracal gang large enough for the doctrine page to say that all these support ships are basically mandatory. Since people have no business even flying bombers until they train Missile Bombardment IV*, anyone flying a bomber should be perfectly capable of using a Caracal and will be much more useful. To sum up: people should train to all IIIs in BLAP as soon as they can upon joining the Uni; after that, support skills > more ship hulls for the vast majority of pilots.

Feel free to hit me up on alumni Slack or join the FCC if you want to learn more.

* A bomb launcher is crucial for almost all useful bomber applications. The exception that proves the rule is covert ganking fleets: a pilot that can use torpedoes is sort of welcome, but no more useful than a pilot that can use an Astero or Stratios with a covert cloak, while a pilot that can use focused void bombs is invaluable.
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Re: [FLEET] BLAP Caracals: were you ever killed by Titan?

Post by Budda Sereda »

The reason why I did not ask Space to switch from bomber to a doctrine ship is my trust he can be more useful. What is this based at? Few times already I've run fleets into nul, and that were caracals too,he did really help with both: bombs and DPS.

Yeah,i know this sounds like heresy and is not a good example to teach emerging FCs, but please consider this as just an exception which confirms the rule.
Other frigates ( Maulus with dumps and Griffin with jams): i helieve they both strengthen kiting capability of caracals. Yeah, they are fragile, but again, i believe that with proper piloting should be able to survive all: Beam Confessor, pretty much any other t1 ship, many two ships. They don't add DPS (as caracals would do), but they do increase survivability.

And probably more important concern: pretty much each eE-uni FC complained about numbers of pilots joining fleet. And if you increase negativity you probably push people out of your fleets in future.
From the other side, this may teach and increase fleet success and bring more other pilots.
By having 3 cap chain movies and 7 DDs I felt I have enough for the core fleet and decided to accept that.

Does this make sense?

Again: we had fights, we did kite and stay alive, we got kills. We did mistakes, but what's important in my opinion we LEARNED!
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Re: [FLEET] BLAP Caracals: were you ever killed by Titan?

Post by Budda Sereda »

And for many it was fun
Last edited by Budda Sereda on 2018.07.09 15:15, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [FLEET] BLAP Caracals: were you ever killed by Titan?

Post by Arrek Lemmont »

Yes it was certainly fun. More fleets like that are welcome. Great to get feedback from outside too. I understand now why you didn't see the Devoter as threatening bait - you didn't know about its bubble.

Something has me confused. You said earlier in the thread that newer pilots should train into and fly mainline DD (I agree). But later you agree with someone who says you discourage newer pilots from flying mainline DD. Which is your opinion? Or were you just being agreeable with the commenter to keep everyone happy? :)
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Re: [FLEET] BLAP Caracals: were you ever killed by Titan?

Post by Budda Sereda »

Arrek Lemmont wrote:Yes it was certainly fun. More fleets like that are welcome. Great to get feedback from outside too. I understand now why you didn't see the Devoter as threatening bait - you didn't know about its bubble.
Clearly, I do know that Devoter can bubble you. I just forgot that during the fleet because the last time I saw Devoter was in WHC, like more than a year ago.
But even if you told me during the fleet: Hey Budda, watch out, Devouter can bubble you. I would most likely answer: who cares? We are kiting anyway. TBH, right now I don't remember the exact range we were at, but no matter what, we should be able to pull the range and warp away.
I believe I wrote this already, so sorry for repeating myself.
Arrek Lemmont wrote:Something has me confused. You said earlier in the thread that newer pilots should train into and fly mainline DD (I agree). But later you agree with someone who says you discourage newer pilots from flying mainline DD. Which is your opinion? Or were you just being agreeable with the commenter to keep everyone happy? :)
I believe you are referring to this:
DeanSherman wrote:The problem is this 'proper' fleet composition. 7 DD and 10 support ships. This comp does not have dps to actually kill anything that will want to fight against 17 ships.
Do you need CD? Could have another Caracal instead.
Do you need 3 logi for 7 DD? It looks like this fleet comp has more repping power than dps. Logi job is not to keep everyone alive, it is to buy time to win engagements. 2 logi would be enough and you could have 1 more Caracal.
Hyena would be useful? No, one more Caracal would be very useful.

Budda, you discourage low-sp pilots from flying mainline dps and encourage relatively high-sp pilots to fly support. As a result, you do not have enough Caracals to make it work.
Which I answered:
Budda Sereda wrote:I tend to agree with this.
Which means I agree there is a valid criticism, but I don't completely agree with all the concerns.

Let's go through that again:
* Raido confirmed the usefulness of CD and 3 logies.
* I described my thinking process on why I accepted Space with bomber, but he is not a low-skill pilot and he should have trained BLAP. I'm sure he has BLAP trained, just chose to join in a bomber. I agree that a proper FC should have called him to switch into a doctrine ship, not necessarily DD.
* The only valid concern regarding 'discourage newer pilots from flying mainline DD' are Griffin and Maulus. No, I don't discourage mainline DD. Neither I discourage training BLAP.

Instead, I do believe that each E-Uni pilot should train BLAP skills and do it earlier rather than later. It is great doctrine, it is hard to master, but the BLAP Caracal in particular in nul-sec is one which the best matches E-Uni. Just pick your fights.
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