Three Jaguars and a Jackdaw

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Kano Fiera
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Three Jaguars and a Jackdaw

Post by Kano Fiera »

I had a busy day yesterday and lost four blingy ships; for my own benefit, and hopefully to assist other Unistas, I'll write down some lessons from these losses.

I'll save the worst for last and start with the Jaguar losses.


First up is the Noobs Night in the Hole nulldive armor fleet. The doctrine tackle is a dual prop Jaguar with a thin tank but excellent signature tanking potential. Our fleet was about 20-25 strong, with Enyos and Comets for damage and 4 logi.

In this particular engagement we were warping to an enormous bubble field (at least 400m ISK of anchored warp field disruptors) to tackle and destroy a Hurricane and a Drake. We knew there was a Nidhoggur in the area but it had fled earlier and I wasn't sure if it was going to come back for this fight. FC (Urban) marked the Cane primary and I suggested I solo tackle the Drake to pin it down for the rest of the fleet.

We burned through the entire bubble field, > 70km, to reach the battlecruisers and either they were slow to flee or intended to fight and stuck around. As planned, the rest of the fleet swarmed the Hurricane and I tackled the Drake. I successfully held it down until the Hurricane was burned down, and called for reps as the Drake very slowly whittled me down, but the carrier's fighters showed up and took me out almost immediately -- either before the logis could react to the sudden DPS spike, or else simply alphaing me in one volley (I probably had ~5500-6000 EHP at that moment).

Lessons learned: Since we did, in fact, kill both the Cane and the Drake as planned, I mark this up as a victory overall, but I could have improved my situational awareness; the fighters showed up right when I thought the situation was under control. Also, I might stand to fly cheaper tackle; a 50m Jaguar is a pretty big hit to take when trading for two T1 BCs, but it was a blingy doctrine overall.

Hurricane +84.8m
Drake +64.0m
Jaguar -45.6m


Second was a solo loss. I was flying a replacement Jag into the WHC via a short wormhole chain that emptied out near Jita. I played it safe around Jita, used a neutral alt with a hauler and safely got my Jag into the wormhole chain... when I saw a Magnate hanging around the hole. It quickly cloaked up but then uncloaked again -- I think I might have brushed past it while I was aligning to warp out.

After confirming on Mumble I warped back to the hole and tackled it. Halfway through burning it down, a Loki appeared from the hole about 35 km away and attacked me.

This was a really frustrating loss, because in retrospect I could have had a lot of options had I been on my toes. I was much faster than the Loki and had range; I should have made the immediate decision to burn away. Instead I froze up, and then tried to warp off, and by the time I aligned it was too late.

In Mumble, Penelore explained that she had been blapped by the same artillery-fit Loki after taking the same Magnate bait ten days ago. Whoops.

Lessons learned: Be on more careful lookout for late entries to a fight. Stay away from the hole if I'm not sure who's on the other side. Don't take obvious bait (oops). If I'm fast and have range, then burn first, align later. Or better yet, align before the problem even arises.

The good news: after it was all over I found the bait Magnate had died after all. I'd killed it on my very last volley.

Magnate +7.6m
Jaguar -47.3m


Third, a small gang loss. I purchased yet another replacement Jaguar, this time directly from Urban's market offers in the WHC to skip the fuss around Jita. I heard on WHC Mumble about a Dominix in Bacon. I parked on the Bacon wormhole and after an extended cat and mouse game, our scout reported the Dominix was pointed and I jumped in.

The fight took place less than 20km from the exit WH to highsec and I and other reinforcements webbed the Domi to slow its escape. However, we didn't have the DPS to burn it down quickly and its powerful neuts took our tanks and prop mods offline in short order. I didn't really understand WH mechanics yet and didn't realize the Domi didn't have to wait for an aggression timer, so when it reached the hole and didn't jump in I thought I should try to burn it down (at this point it was almost into structure) but I realize later that that was the point where the Domi had complete control over the situation. It could jump to the safety of highsec at any time; it chose not to in order to get some kills. We lost a Stratios and my Jaguar, but in retrospect it was totally preventable as either of us could also have taken the wormhole into highsec, we just didn't think of it as we were too focused on the Domi.

Lessons learned: once an enemy has reached a WH to highsec, the fight is over as soon as they want it to be over. Memorize neut ranges and keep out of them if needed. If the enemy can get away with a highsec WH, so can you, so don't hesitate to jump through and flee.

Jaguar -42.6m


Last and decidedly least, I lost my first Jackdaw on her maiden voyage while trying to blitz the Caldari Epic arc mission Right Tool for the Job. Not to a war target or anything, just to the rats. Yeah, it was embarrassing. The idea behind the blitz was that I would avoid any standings loss vs. Gallente, though there was another option -- use a BC or BS and blow up ships but leave the structures -- that would result in only a trivial standings loss.

I didn't kill the frigates as quickly as I thought I would but I still went for the hack, thinking I could still finish in time. Unfortunately I got bogged down in the hack, started to take too much damage and tried to warp off... and found that I was stuck hitting the large mission object and couldn't align. The saddest PvE loss of my career.

Lessons learned: Pretty much everything went wrong here. I was imagining the Jackdaw would easily mop up the frigates around the can, hack the can quickly and warp off, but literally any other alternative plan would have worked better. Specifically, 1) don't try to blitz a hack mission without a huge tank; 2) if your blitz plan starts to get bogged down early, don't continue with the same plan without modifications; 3) pay more attention to the relative position of each wave, 4) for Bob's sake don't get stuck on structures and 5) if in doubt, warp first, plan later.

Jackdaw -83.1m
Last edited by Kano Fiera on 2018.11.19 16:19, edited 1 time in total.
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Troven Smalvard
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Re: Three Jaguars and a Jackdaw

Post by Troven Smalvard »

Kano Fiera wrote:I didn't really understand WH mechanics yet and didn't realize the Domi didn't have to wait for an aggression timer, so when it reached the hole and didn't jump in I thought I should try to burn it down (at this point it was almost into structure) but I realize later that that was the point where the Domi had complete control over the situation. It could jump to the safety of highsec at any time; it chose not to in order to get some kills.
50 mil well spent if you remember that always and forever from now on

nice write up, always good if you can reflect with clam head after the fact and find something to improve
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Zako Maken
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Re: Three Jaguars and a Jackdaw

Post by Zako Maken »

Awesome write up, so glad to see new folks getting involved quickly. Very valuable experience for the amount of isk that was lost. Just need to join some bearing fleets, make that WH money, and buy more ships to lose! :D

A few small things to add.

I think our unofficial motto is never NOT take bait, so no shame in taking bait! I think the main thing is to have a plan. Check Killboard and related kills and see if that explo ship pilot is consistently connected to another pilot who counter ganks. I think in this case that would have given it away. Then if there are others online, come up with a plan to counter gank the counter gank!!

As troven said, wormholes not having combat timers is a tough lesson a lot of people learn the hard way, so no worries there.

Lastly, I see in your killmails the Jag has an ADC. I have not used the ADC much and am curious how you used it in these situations? Did you wait until you were in low shield, armor, or hull, or did use use it right away when you were spiraling in to tackle? Were any of the engagements long enough to use it more then once? Lastly, did you ever not have enough cap to use it (maybe with the Domi)?
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Kano Fiera
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Re: Three Jaguars and a Jackdaw

Post by Kano Fiera »

Zako Maken wrote:Lastly, I see in your killmails the Jag has an ADC. I have not used the ADC much and am curious how you used it in these situations? Did you wait until you were in low shield, armor, or hull, or did use use it right away when you were spiraling in to tackle? Were any of the engagements long enough to use it more then once? Lastly, did you ever not have enough cap to use it (maybe with the Domi)?
Oh, thanks for mentioning that! I forgot to put it in my write-up but I did have thoughts on the ADC.

In the first fight I used it as soon as I started to take damage. If I had waited until the more dangerous carrier was on grid it would probably have been enough to save me (quadruples my EHP). I might stand to trust my logi more and save powerful temporary effects like that for true emergencies.

In the case of the Loki, I don't think I reacted fast enough to trigger it before I was in serious trouble.

And you're right -- in the case of the Domi I was neuted out to zero and couldn't activate it. I should have hit the button as soon as I was redboxed, since I knew from Mumble that the Domi had powerful neuts.
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Re: Three Jaguars and a Jackdaw

Post by Zako Maken »

Interesting, thanks for reply. See ya in the hole!
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