[AAR] NSC Anniversary Fleet

[Archemide]

So, first, thanks to both Earl and Fweddit for providing this night's content. As you probably saw in you Eve Mail, Earl's wardec on E Uni was done for fake drama. Earl has been a pillar of the NSC Community, and kindly donated an Atrahaus for our entertainment. Fweddit volunteered to defend the structure (structure bashing on its own is boring-trust me).

Video here.

First we traveled down to NSC from Stacmon. That was uneventful, though we went through a Nullsechanaya gatecamp. Now, if you've been living down at the NSC recently, you'll know that this means trouble. NSH have recently moved in to Syndicate, and have a propensity for dropping caps. But we got through fine, and they didn't chase us. That means we're safe, right?

So we get to PC9. I go through Newbro speech and fleet comp, and we head into T22. The station (Magenta Moxie) was currently undefended, so we started getting some dps on it. Then, Fweddit came in. Ishtars and Guardians. Our Caracals had the job of shooting down enemy drones, while I started us off going for the logi. I started dps on one Guardian, which we almost broke before reps started landing. Once we were in antimatter optimal, I swapped damage to a different logi which we broke before enemy logi could react. From there, breaking the enemy logi crumbled. Fweddit warped off to a tactical shortly thereafter. The Astra launched fighters, and we played the game of swapping between fighters and the Astra for a bit.

Then, Fweddit came back. This time with a Cyno. A Revelation came through that cyno. Atecake, lurking in system, decided that this was a good time to warp in his carrier too. Mistake 1: I should've immediately had someone reship and combat probe down Atecake (400km off or so). He was 3p, and killing 3p should've been my top priority. The Chimera launched fighters, and I left them alone in favor of taking out the Rev that was practically alpha'ing us. Fweddit logi burned in too close to us, so we swapped to them to clear them out. We got one, the other warped out, and we swapped back to the Rev.

The Rev died, so we swapped over to Fweddit DD, starting with their Loki. Loki first, because he could easily be logi or support or DD. I (finally) called for a combat probe reship. VNIs became the new primaries. No obnoxious ADC to worry about. I died for the first time here. Sounds like Fweddit warped off again while I was reshipping. Fighters and the structure became the new primaries.

Another mistake: while I was reshipping, we got the Chimera probed down. I decided to wait until the bookmark propagated, instead of using the guy who probed it down as a warp-in. Chimera lit a cyno. I got on grid, and took over FC'ing, while leaving 2IC as anchor. A Thanatos came through the Cyno. The bookmarks finally propagated, and we warped in on the carriers. Thanatos was our primary. My next mistake: Should've primaried the Chimera as it was the active cyno. I ignored fighters, which I think was the right call? Defanged was just going to take too long, and I wanted to clear caps before more stuff came through. Next throught the cyno: An Apostle. Thanatos was almost dead, so we managed to kill it.

Thanatos died. Next mistake: Primaried the apostle. Of course, a Chimera is going to receive awful reps from a Apostle, and the Chimera is still the active cyno. Should've been our primary. And a second apostle came through the cyno. They can rep eachother all day long. One of the apostles lit another cyno. At this point, Fweddit joined our fleet. We had already arranged to join up against any 3rd parties that tried to crash our party. We got the Apostle to 50% armor before Analiese told me to primary the Chimera (duh). I'm not sure if we were actively breaking the Apostle, or just getting baited. The Chimera was easily repped up by two Fax's in triage, however.

Hey guys, remember how I said NSH didn't follow us, so they weren't going to be a problem? Yeah about that. They Titan bridged in a Leshack/Zarmazd/Guardian fleet. I tried to break their logi. After all, FAX logi has a hard time holding up cruisers. Just too little total HP. However, 7 T2 logi can hold themselves up pretty well. I tried swapping primaries, but it was ineffective, to say the least. Then I went after their tackle so we could leave grid. We pretty much alpha'd their tackle. So that's something.

I had us burn out of the bubbles and warp back to the structure. 1) I still wanted to kill the structure and 2) the structure could start helping us out. I was caught, however, and died. I called full dps on the citadel, as we couldn't kill the enemy, and were running out of time on the structure. From here, it just kinda turned in to suicide runs on the structure to try to pop it.

The structure died, NSH got the killmail, but they left a surprising amount of loot on grid. Over 1 bil, all said. Great job by everyone, and we had some great fights. Another note on something I should've done differently. I should've had everyone leave their drones on the structure pretty much all fight. 25 DD of drones would've kept the timer paused even when we were fighting the enemy fleet.

TL;DR: https://br.inyour.space/?s=3287&b=8514600&e=210&t=yELv

The question I'd like to pose here is, given Uni skills, what could we have brought? This is the question that's been going over and over in my mind since yesterday. Uni has 40ish guys. Enemy is 10 Leshacks, 5 Guardians, 2 Zarmazds, 1 Bhaal, 1 Vindi, 1 Eos, 1 Damnation, 2 Apostles, 1 Chimera, and assorted bubblers/inties. We outnumber the enemy 2:1 essentially. Is there any way we could've won, or at least been isk positive against that?

Here's my best answer to this question. Once the video gets uploaded, you'll notice that the enemy caps never warped in, they stayed at their perch. Only the subcaps warped down to the structure. I'm pretty sure FAX's can't rep that far. Now, they might've just left them that far out from laziness, but I'm not sure. I think the best call would've been to reship into 20 Blackbirds, all full yellow jams. Their job is to jam the logi. The other 20 people ship into some kind of DD. Buffer rail Moas with long point? And then just kill their logi. Reship as necessary, we're on home ground. We can easily trade 10 ships per logi we kill and come out ahead. The main weakness is they can warp down the faxes, which are immune to ECM in triage. I'm not sure 20 moas can break T2 Cruisers before capital reps land.

But I'm curious to hear everyone else's thoughts on how to counter this. Again, great job to everyone who came out, and we were technically isk postive. We even managed to kill one of NSH's caps.

[Earl Reneshan]

First, this was a great fight from all responses I've gotten. To answer your questions, FAX's range of reps isn't much better than standard logi, even with triage hot, 50-65km maybe. It's their volume of reps that is the pain (or boon depending on what side of it you are on) that make them hard to deal with. As far as fielding 20 Blackbirds, you wouldn't of had such an option. Looking though what I have and the hangers, I could have built 5 for sure with another 5 partial fits. The rest would have been Griffins or a Kitsune (me). Most UNI's don't have much for ECM skills (SP or otherwise) which would put any ECM right in scrap range. That being said, just 10 hulls of ECM would make their Logi miserable with the rest of our fleet in Logi and DD. With Logi blinded, you could keep the our Feroxes on grid and either target Logi (if in range) or start removing their DD. We would only need to take out 2 to 3 of their anything to put us isk positive. They will have a choice to either eliminate our ECM or retreat to the FAX. They can't hit the structure from there, but could continue to warp back and forth until reinforcements arrive. I don't see a scenario they would relocate the FAX in Astrahaus range (which was fit for subcap anyway).

[Glen Burney]

WOW! Amazing fleet and great job with the "Rogue Pilot" ruse! I missed most of it, had to drop right when the Dread was landing on grid, but many thanks to our friends in FWEDDIT for their participation and quick swapping to our side against Sechanaya.

With respect to their fleet: Just get a few guys with good piloting skills in Command Destroyers to boosh off a few Guardians at a time, then kill the guardians. Booshers in a wing with a combat prober can be really awesome. Maybe include a few ecm burst dudes to get rid of the counter scrams? I think that's far better than hobbling half your fleet for ECM games, but I have not tested this approach in practice.

I do believe that a Ferox composition is the best approach for the broad range of skills we have in the UNI, and it works against a large range of fleet compositions. In order to get an idea, though, what was the composition of our fleet roughly? You said 40 pilots, how many Ferox and how many Logi?

Again though, WOW! What a great report, how many UNI fleets are there with a structure, carrier AND a dread, as well as assorted T2 Cruiser Logi and etc? An excellent anniversary fleet indeed!

[Raido Kudonen]

NSH left their Apostles at a perch because you didn't have enough DPS to break their logi. Had you started breaking Guardians, they would have warped one Apostle down, triaged, and continued to engage.

The second Apostle is there so 1) if the first Apostle is breaking slowly, it can coast out of triage and catch reps, 2) if their DPS starts chasing you around the grid, they can warp a second Apostle down to a different ping and extend the range that they can rep with triaged FAXes.

One Guardian is worth about six Feroxes and the Zarmazds are worth a lot more, so if you could have broken the logi before the Apostles got down (perhaps by probing and warping a dictor up to the cap perch and bubbling them when you engaged the subs), that might have gotten you some kills. Still a pretty big lift to break seven logi in that kind of comp; NSH formed about as risk averse as they possibly could have because they were hoping to farm easy kills against people who couldn't possibly break their logi.

I'm skeptical that ECM would have changed much about the outcome. Zarmazd reps spool up hard and are nearly impossible to jam, while Guardians are merely difficult to jam. The real weakness of the Zarmazd reps is target switching (since that cancels the spool-up), so damps on logi plus aggressive target switching is probably a better bet overall.

Sorry for missing this; I was very sick this weekend and didn't feel up to anything spaceship-related. Sounds like it was fun for everyone.

[B'aldrick Aivoras]

Just to echo the thanks going to everyone involved in setting it up. I think it was a fitting tribute to the Uni as we all learnt alot.

I haven't been in many big fights either arranged or spontaneous so it was good for to bite the bullet and step up as 2IC. I'll admit it was daunting but you do have a bit more time than the usual engagements to think. From my prospective, I wasn't sure whether the 3rd party was actually part of the plan rather than an opportunistic foe.

When in control, I was overwhelmed by the opposition Leshaks, guardians and apostles so I just engaged what was closest to the fleet whilst burning us away as much as I could. My first reaction was to disengage when out of the bubble but stayed on grid until killed. Unfortunately, Archemede was reshipping whilst still on grid in my pod. I called on Coaxster to take over not realising he was now neutral and not in fleet. I've flown with him before so trusted his judgement as a friend of the Uni. A 3IC would've been good. When he said we weren't holding and didn't want to call it - I made the decision to scatter.

I personally had a lot of fun that was worth losing some sleep over. More importantly, I learnt a lot personally and recognise that in these fleet fights getting a grip of the strengths and weaknesses of the opposition is key to developing a strategy to counter.

Perhaps, an EWAR wing and a another CD pilot would have been good as we lost ours early on I think? Overall, we were never to going to break anything later but at least we achieved our tactical aim in destroying the Astrahaus.

Nice job FC and logi o7

Thumbs up

[Guiliano Thellere]

Just speaking with NSH about this, they have said they basically were watching for Fweddit to escalate having noticed them all forming around PC9 and not knowing what was going on. That's why they chose the heavy Leshak doctrine. Their intention was to shoot Fweddit caps, expecting them to be brought in, but once the the Rev went down and nothing else jumped in (which they were expecting but obviously don't know why) they just decided to shoot us all for fun instead

[Athena Firefly]

Should perhaps also point out to NSH how incredibly mature it is to spam corp recruitment ads as well as "Basic PvP Training" links literally hundreds of times in quick succession in local, completely flooding it up from anything else...

Really awesome event otherwise! Thanks to everyone who came out and took part — Uni and Fweddit alike!

[Grygr Anzomi]

Aww... You'll should have pinged me... I din't even realise it was the NSC's anniversary...

Also Thanny is more squishy than the Chimera so not to bad an idea to focus on him. Also the carrier was probably hoping to pull you off and cyno anyway, so don't stress about killing the dread first.

Edit: realised it is the Uni's Anniversary not the NSC's

[Coaxster]

Yes, sad to say, I was hanging with Fweddit on this one rather than EUni.

For the fight with just us, y'all did good. Analiese made some...iffy choices and you capitalized wonderfully, with right range and ammo. Some scattering of drone killing to keep up a distraction. Perhaps a non-perfect co-ordination of timing of firing (not so critical with feroxes but it does delay the warning logi get by a smidge). Oh and something I like to do in those types of fights: have everyone lock up 4ish random enemies (assuming you can lock 7 targets); it can open chinks in discipline.

The Fweddit Dread was mostly killed by the UFO chimera. If all parties had switched to the chimera the moment it appeared, could've gotten that kill (yes, escalation probably would've then happened sooner, but still). Though as said, I think there were range issues with that (but didn't you have 100+ perches around the citadel for just that reason??).

As for the NSH silliness...well, no, not really a chance of winning, since they'd out escalate even Fweddit (even with their not-blue blues). BUT: oh yes, booshers and more booshers, along with a prober. Heck yeah. And maybe a few suicide ECM bursters, oh yes. That would've mucked with their logi and (if committed) even the faxes (since as stated, they do not have 100km range). Add a few durable tackle and I think that would've seriously out ISKed NSH. Not an easy task (co-ordination wise) but doable, since the NSH anchoring discipline was not perfect by any means. I've played this version out in my head and I'm still laughing...

The only thing that bugged me about this whole loverly pew pew: seeing the euni zkill just spool and spool and spool with loss after loss as you suicided to get the citadel. Silly NSH. No honor.

Keep flyin deadly!

-Coaxster

[Jessica Farrish]

I've done fleets before, but nothing on this scale. It was chaotic, crazy, stressful, and a BLAST!! I had a great time and hate I didn't get in on any of the killmails (running logi). It was great. Thanks to everyone that set it up, and to all that participated.

Farrish

[Psychotic Fickity]

I had a blast with this, I think a few more " prop mods on" from those in command could of helped with a bit of slack positioning ( yes, i am looking at myself on that one too).
I will have to study the different ship types a bit more ( go go printer ships trees), so I know a bit better what ships are what. It was a bit confusing going between player names and ship types, without targets being pinged. I was a bit lost, a few times but figured it out as i went along. I loved the challenge.
Thank you to all who were there, especially those who planned it!
I kept getting messaged by the NSH ppl, about " what are you doing? Do you want x" because they thought I was FC and i was busy moving about and killing things to reply.. I think they dropped on us, when I wouldnt answer.