Friday night, I noticed that no one had pinged for a fleet
yet, so I imported some Comets and Merlins right in the middle of Black Rise
and sent out a ping. 7 people showed up – honestly not bad considering no one
could plan their schedules around it and NC. had fleets earlier in the day that
saw a lot of people clone jump to alliance staging.
I’m sure the ship selection probably raised a few eyebrows.
My initial plan was to fly only the armor Comets, but I had space in my Occator’s
hold and decided to fill it with some ships I might use solo or on another
fleet. The Comets were MWD fit and the Merlins were AB fit, but in most cases
we were fighting on the button of FW plexes anyways, right in scram range.
This was one of those pre-planning mistakes you can make
that dramatically affects the success of a fleet. I didn’t expect to go through
as many ships as we did during the night, but I should have planned better for
the possibility by sticking to one – either MWD or AB – in case we got into a
mixed fleet situation.
Suffice to say, it wasn’t the only mistake that happened
that night.
Unlike most of our roams, I and our ships weren’t in our
lowsec staging, so one of my corpmates led them on the trek to Kinakka.
Naturally, of course, the route took them directly through an impromptu
gatecamp by Mordus Angels in Nannaras that was larger than us, consisting of a
Huginn, Lachesis, Scythe, a Vagabond, and a bunch of Cynabals.
We began to reship, but stopped when we realized we simply
didn’t have the numbers. Really, it was
the Lachesis and Huginn that made the difference there. With the Huginn webbing
any tackle that got close to ther Scythe, we wouldn’t be able to apply enough
damage to kill it, and the Lachesis would limit our ability to disengage
without taking losses, all while the nano cruisers pumped their dps into us.
Instead, I called for our ships to punch on through and
continue down the pipe to Kinakka. We lost only one Comet as we snuck by, which
I could replace at the end of the journey. It was a loss, but I wanted to get
us over to where we’d find most of our action and away from that fleet. I
honestly can’t feel too bad about that loss… it was an acceptable one.
The rest of the trip to Kinakka was uneventful, and when we
arrived, we replenished our ships and I set a destination down the southern
lowsec pipe through Black Rise towards Hikkoken. As we undocked, dscan revealed
a Cynabal sitting at a plex. Our first target of the night…
I admit, I was expecting him to be nano-fit. If we could
catch him, it shouldn’t be too difficult of a task to take him down. We warped
around a bit, but eventually landed within 20 of him. I put out the call to get
tackle, and set about an oblique approach to hopefully avoid much of his
damage.
It didn’t end very well. While his speed was lower than
expected, I assumed we simply caught him before he was able to burn too far
away; we were quick with overheating our MWDs and getting within scram range. A
lucky warp-in, right?
We were doing decent damage to his shields – about what I’d
expect from a nano-fit – and then we ran into the brick wall that was his armor
tank. He melted three of us – my Svipul, a Comet, and a Merlin – as I pulled us
back.
It was a bloody nose, for sure. Taking down that Cynabal
would have matched the cost of the entire fleet. My mistake really comes down
to the AB/MWD split between our ships. If we’d have been able to get on top of
him once I got initial tackle, we could have applied our full DPS. The Merlins,
though, were out of the fight, and that made a big difference. The effort was
doomed from the start.
Reshipping, we undocked to find more targets, again in
Kinakka, which was turning out to be quite the hotbed of activity. I saw a
Coercer on dscan, and narrowed him down to a small complex. Everyone aligned
while I warped in, and as I saw him sitting on the acceleration gate, I called
for the fleet to warp and got tackle.
My shields disappeared quickly, but that’s to be expected
when flying an armor Comet against EM/thermal beams. My armor was holding up
well until an Ishkur and Wolf showed up to help the Coercer. The fleet arrived
shortly after, but I went down (second loss of the night) and the trio of
enemies went through the rest of the fleet one by one.
We lost five in that engagement. A battle Venture, a
Punisher, a Merlin, and two Comets. We were five, they were three, but we were
all T1/faction, while they were T2 frigates and a destroyer. It was a pretty
fair fight, and we got trounced. My mistake here was in not coming in as a
group. Already, we knew they’d fight us, and it would have made a lot more
sense to be patient, warp everyone together, and act as a unit.
So far, the night wasn’t turning out very well. Yet, we were
having fun. I sent around another batch of ships and we went out again for a
little revenge. Before we could, though we ran across a beam Confessor hunting
us.
At this point, I was fed up with being prey. Another
corpmate was joining from Tamo in a Hecate, a much-needed dps boost to our
small fleet. As he entered system, we were pinning down the Confessor. Our
fleet was in a small plex safe from him, with our Hecate and I trying to pin
him down. He was exactly aligned with a celestial though, so I warped off and
back at range, landing almost on top of him. He was a true glass cannon, having
only one active repper for tank.
A Confessor for a Merlin? Now that’s a good trade. Things
were starting to get back on track.
Very quickly after the Confessor fight, the Coercer and Wolf
returned, this time with a Hawk instead of an Ishkur. Considering the range and
options available to us, we primaried the Wolf. Things were honestly looking
grim for us. We lost a Merlin and Comet quickly as we burned through the Wolf’s
armor, but we were able to maintain tackle on everything. Once it was down, we turned to the Hawk;
he exploded the exact
moment I did in my Comet. By this point, we were down to just a Hecate and two
Merlins, but we were able to finish off the Coercer. We killed 116 mil for
66 mil lost.
More importantly, though, that fight and the Confessor kill
gave me some well-needed confidence. The space between the Confessor kill that
started the whole thing and the Coercer going down was three minutes. In that
time, we adapted to changing situations, took out a kiter that had punched us
in the nose, and killed the whole fleet that had given us some trouble earlier
on. The difference was 450 dps from the Hecate.
That’s really not a big swing in the grand scheme of things.
It was a good way to end the night, even if the beginning
didn’t happen exactly according to plan. Ultimately, the fault was mine. I set
up two different kinds of prop mods. I warped us in bit by bit.
Generally, I’m starting to see that my FC style is to take
chances. I tend to fly the way I play poker- if I’ve got more than a 51% chance
of winning, I’ll take the fight. In this case, Ishkur/Wolf/Coercer versus our
fleet was too tough, but Hawk/Wolf/Coercer was successful (with the Hecate
being the difference-maker). It wasn’t by any means a safe choice to engage
with T1 resists on all our frigates. Likewise, with the Confessor. That ship
was fitted to kite frigates specifically, and I bought… a frigate fleet to
attack it (in that case, the Hecate wasn’t the difference-maker). In both
cases, it was a lot of fun.
Very nice article.
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