49 replies to this topic

[Skrewed]

Please let us know what you thought about the class, good and bad. We've changed a number of things of up and already thinking about what to do differently for the next one. It's been a while since I did a wolfpacks class and totally enjoyed it today and hope you all did too.

[PsychoBitch]

Great Class!

[angry frylock]

it was awesome. I learned a lot about 0.0 and staying alive. thank you

[Louis deGuerre]

I thought it was a good class, and unexpectedly learned some new things and even unlearned some things I'd learned wrongly. My only point of criticism would be the fc-ing....not so great. Target calling was meh, no broadcasts or secondary target caller. Might wanna work on that a little. The suicide attack was fun but kinda pointless and made the long class even longer (I'd do it again tough lol).

[Gavin]

I had an absolute blast. And I have to agree with Louis, while I love the idea of the class being entirely held in null-sec, it probably does mean you'll have to have a fully set up fleet just in case.

Edit - Oh, I thought I'd drop this here. It's CO2's killboard link for the Battle in D-6

[Urd]

great class, i attened to see what i missed doing the advanced/hssr class and was impressed learning more everytime i come here.and far as down side it was long could have used another break but i also understand about wanting to press through it in a timely fashion. and no sweating the "fun" we had skrewed made a mistake but he owned up to it so no use beating a dead horse live learn and make more stuff go pop.

[Pesets]

Don't know what to say about this class, apart from the fact that it was great. Unfortunately it's been too long since i've attended the original wolfpacks to be able to compare on the difference. One thing i liked was how Skrewed was talking about specifics of situations. Like, "when i'm doing such and such, i'm looking at this and that" - it might seem obvious but it's easy to lose that perspective in the middle of the action. Talking about what results in you screwing up was also nice. There seemed to be some nice chat after class (i walked away to grab a drink but i caught some nice overview discussion when i came back).

My only point of criticism would be the fc-ing....not so great. Target calling was meh, no broadcasts or secondary target caller. Might wanna work on that a little.

Skrewed spent great deal of time talking about that himself tbh. And the class was made longer by the fact that we had gangs in the pipe and couldn't do much about it at that point (not with the class fleet anyways). So it wasn't the fc'ing problem really.

One thing i'd do differently though, when you ask "who wants to do a suicide run" and get half a mile of x'es, might be a good idea to ask "who does NOT want to do that" for a good measure, and maybe tell them to stay in station or something. When you have 80 people in fleet, it becomes hard to tell how many people are x'ing up after a certain point, 70% of the fleet or just 30%. And of course that first scout guy should have been warned that Agony weren't friendly in that exercise. But then, everyone has been warned to be ready to lose ship anyways.

On the other hand, i'm kinda split on whether it was worth it doing the whole class in 0.0. As pointed out, we were basically at the mercy of local gangs in terms of continuing with the class, and apart from the final exercises i don't think there was all that much stuff that had to take place in 0.0. I'd try to keep most of the class in hisec and leave the 0.0 portion for the very end (or beginning of next day's roam).

The shield strength and resistance boost is both the quickest and most visual demonstration of gang boost. Getting a few people pointed at 78km is kinda cool, but most of the class would probably accept your word on it as proof enough.

Regarding the roam, i think we could do some "ewar balancing" kinda thing with optimal ("how many people in the gang can hit at 20? 25? 35?" and determine who should fit the gyros or track enhancers from there). 10-15km really is extremely close-range for a thrasher gang imo.

[Ifi Degatoth]

I really enjoyed the class. I understand that not a lot of it *had* to be done in null sec but it was nice that we did do it down there as it gives pilots a chance to shake off the jitters of null sec being a constant bloodbath. Its helped me realize that as long as you have good scouting your the one that is responsible if you walk into a bad fight like the one we warped the fleet into. I did enjoy the fight but agree it was kind of pointless and in the end caused us to have to split up the fleet between HS and SI and wait it out. Not that it hurt the instruction as we could just do training parts that didn't need roaming to show us what they meant. I don't entire fault skrewed on the battle as the scout mentioned he didn't judge the distances well at all and that is probably the big blunder that resulted in lots of dead destroyers. and very few kills.

[Melissa Blick]

On the other hand, i'm kinda split on whether it was worth it doing the whole class in 0.0. As pointed out, we were basically at the mercy of local gangs in terms of continuing with the class, and apart from the final exercises i don't think there was all that much stuff that had to take place in 0.0. I'd try to keep most of the class in hisec and leave the 0.0 portion for the very end (or beginning of next day's roam).

We had the nice demonstration all kinds of bubbles that could hardly have been done in hisec. I understand that bubble mechanics are terribly complicated, but I think we got good practical demonstrations of the basics (even a few under live fire). Plus, these classes are the only regular pvp opportunity many of us get, so this bonus pre-roam makes a delicious appetizer. We were all warned that the class would be null sec, and we could all get blown up and podded.

We also could have been warned that we would encounter a lot of agony pilots out of fleet. I hadn't seen this in previous classes, and went in with the assumption that anyone outside fleet was a legitimate target. Good thing I hit like a girl, so the accidental single volley didn't even scratch the ship. However, to most of your students, unless they click on Show Info > Pilot, Agony outside fleet looks the same as Atlas or CO2.

I almost volunteered for the gatecamp recon report section, but got too nervous about speaking to the class on vent. The odds against the student were too high IMO. Perhaps it could have been made a bit easier, allowing a student to make it back to the gate if they did everything right. Still it's nice you guys decided not to pod the students, since that would just have required back from H6.

The quick discussion on recommended PVP skills could be expanded, and perhaps given it's own article in the wiki. Downloadable evemon plans would also be nice.

[Barret]

pacing... the first half of the class...before the suicide engagement seemed poorly paced. i cant put my finger on it but it just felt odd. after the suicide roam the class fell into a good cadence. I'll mull it over and see if i can come up with some examples or reasons... in class content... not as much bubble work, theory or practice, as there was in the last Advanced/HSSR course. i would have liked to have seen more. i like that there were demonstrations of some of the various ships that a new pvp pilot might see in 0.0. since wolfpacks is about 0.0 living and pvp i think that could be expanded. and the recon reports on a staged gate camp was fun and informative as well. it fit well into the theme of the course. reading materials... the new leadership section with its associated in class portion was good. the reading material covered the bulk of the subject...however it needs a small addition for completeness. it could use a brief explanation of mind links (cyber slot 10) and their dual bonus of helping your warfare links and their innate ability to over ride their flavor of base max 10% passive skill bonus to a 15% bonus

[Pesets]

On the other hand, i'm kinda split on whether it was worth it doing the whole class in 0.0. As pointed out, we were basically at the mercy of local gangs in terms of continuing with the class, and apart from the final exercises i don't think there was all that much stuff that had to take place in 0.0. I'd try to keep most of the class in hisec and leave the 0.0 portion for the very end (or beginning of next day's roam).

We had the nice demonstration all kinds of bubbles that could hardly have been done in hisec. I understand that bubble mechanics are terribly complicated, but I think we got good practical demonstrations of the basics (even a few under live fire). Plus, these classes are the only regular pvp opportunity many of us get, so this bonus pre-roam makes a delicious appetizer. We were all warned that the class would be null sec, and we could all get blown up and podded.

I'm not complaining about danger as such, it's just that any activity in 0.0 is dependent on the "weather". If someone decides to camp us into station from the beginning, we won't able to continue with the class proper, losses or not. For that reason, i think everything that can be covered in hisec should be covered in hisec, and only after that we should head out in 0.0 and go over stuff that requires 0.0. Otherwise there's a chance we will lose too much time to circumstances outside our control, and people who scheduled specific amount of time for this will have to drop the class early and come back in a month.

We also could have been warned that we would encounter a lot of agony pilots out of fleet. I hadn't seen this in previous classes, and went in with the assumption that anyone outside fleet was a legitimate target. Good thing I hit like a girl, so the accidental single volley didn't even scratch the ship. However, to most of your students, unless they click on Show Info > Pilot, Agony outside fleet looks the same as Atlas or CO2.

We shouldn't normally shoot at anything FC didn't order us to shoot... but i can't really say i disagree after i myself accidentally shot that taranis in the beginning :@ (I had Agony set to blue, but in default settings blues are apparently set below that silly orange skull icon that doesn't mean anything - CCP just love putting that kind of landmines in their UI. And since Agony are pretty much the only people i ever set to blue, i never had a reason to figure that out. So i pre-locked him just in case, and then activated the guns at the wrong target. Sorry :shy:)

I almost volunteered for the gatecamp recon report section, but got too nervous about speaking to the class on vent. The odds against the student were too high IMO. Perhaps it could have been made a bit easier, allowing a student to make it back to the gate if they did everything right. Still it's nice you guys decided not to pod the students, since that would just have required back from H6.

I kinda agree on that one. The way that was setup, i don't think they had any chance at all, which isn't very educational...

[Garulf Hirgon]

we were basically at the mercy of local gangs in terms of continuing with the class

class would be null sec, and we could all get blown up and podded.

I'm not complaining about danger as such, it's just that any activity in 0.0 is dependent on the "weather".

We also could have been warned that we would encounter a lot of agony pilots out of fleet. I hadn't seen this in previous classes, and went in with the assumption that anyone outside fleet was a legitimate target. Good thing I hit like a girl, so the accidental single volley didn't even scratch the ship.

We shouldn't normally shoot at anything FC didn't order us to shoot.

The odds against the student were too high IMO. Perhaps it could have been made a bit easier

I kinda agree on that one. The way that was setup, i don't think they had any chance at all, which isn't very educational...

Good points and things to note.

Typically the pipe up to SI is very, very, very quiet. Tonight was an extreme aberration.

I may be mistaken, but I believe the odds against the students was intentionally terribly high: losing ships is something you need to be able to deal with when PvPing, and often scouting you're gonna die. The education lies in the experience of going up against hopeless odds and still doing your job (keeping cool and providing useful recon first) before dying in a glorious fire. Heck, the thought in my mind just now was everyone should be in velators and churn through the gate one at a time, seeing hopeless odds, providing recon, and dying. I guess being in a ship you bought and spent a little $$ on probably cranks up the tension a hair.

[Pesets]

I may be mistaken, but I believe the odds against the students was intentionally terribly high: losing ships is something you need to be able to deal with when PvPing, and often scouting you're gonna die. The education lies in the experience of going up against hopeless odds and still doing your job (keeping cool and providing useful recon first) before dying in a glorious fire. Heck, the thought in my mind just now was everyone should be in velators and churn through the gate one at a time, seeing hopeless odds, providing recon, and dying. I guess being in a ship you bought and spent a little $$ on probably cranks up the tension a hair.

Meh. Anyone who does pvp will have plenty of experience going against impossible odds and dying, you don't need to take an Agony class for that. However, not all odds are impossible - but people attending Wolfpacks for the first time may not be able to tell the difference. You're basically imprinting that once a scout runs into a camp it's game over, and any resistance is futile - even though it often isn't. Moreover, aside from the first student, the only people who are going to volunteer are the people willing to lose their ships, so you're not teaching them anything (and those who actually need to learn will have that stacked against them on top of being afraid to screw up the report itself).

It's not hard to demonstrate that you can lose a ship. It's much harder to demonstrate that you could have not lost it. If students will at least have some time to act and see the consequences of actions, they will have something to work with ("i tried to get out of the bubble instead of trying to burn towards the gate/i forgot to activate the ab/i should have overloaded/i panicked, broke cloak too early and ran into session timer")... getting instapwned in a T1-fit Thrasher without even a DCU doesn't really give you much to work with (aside from the fact that T1-fit Thrashers suck at being scouts).

If you gave each student one of those fast T1 frigs (Condor, Slasher, etc) with some cheap afterburners/mwds, and then make them try to dodge a camp of (mostly) comparable meta, i think it would add much more educational value to that whole exercise.

[Bormand]

I really enjoyed the Class, and I did learn a lot, for each Agony Class I am passing I am more and more in the mood to turn to PvP, and in the and I guess this is the point , As SkrewedUp said , they need targets to shoot, not friends ) As for the class, I liked how was organised , I got disconnected twice, I was dragged in after right away, no problem... I have only to comments linked to the class , First, and this is just my opinion, I had real trouble understanding which are the targets when we engage CO2 , I spent like 5-8 seconds to find the primary, and when I try to lock on it , it was already gone, as for the secondary, third target I have never find it . during the time I was searching for the targets in the view, I was already in structure.. all I could do left was to align to a celestial and avoid getting poded... I don't mind loosing the ship, I just mind I didn't even shoot once . I know I have 0.0 experience in Pvp, my first kill was in a Agony basic class, but hey... the class is for us . Maybe you will be able in the future to Tag the targets, or some other mean to easy our search..I think it would be much easier for us , the 0.0 experience in 0.0 sec Second thought is related to the ships in general ... In the Forum post about this class it was written the meeting point is ESA, there is another post, where we understood we can order T1 Fitted Thrashers do Crazy, who was delivering them in ESA system... During the class we where told to move our medical clone to H6-CX8 station, because is to dangerous to pass some systems with our thrashers, and that AGONY will have there fitted ships for us in case we will get killed ... My question is What about our ships fitted in ESA ? Will you guys help us transport them ? or we will have to sell them. because there will be useless ?? :sad:

[Hydrow76]

I enjoyed the class in null sec for one major reason, we got to hear how the pvp vet's do recon to get us back to that state of mind from basic. its all good and well to have new ppl practice it but to hear how its really done and see how well the fleet was protected by it was just amazing, reminds me of my military days Great class, my only point i would make is you may want to post a outline of the class for ppl to read and follow along with in case thy get lost int he lecture something like this 1) Fleet forming a) Type of fleets (small gang, cheap, ect) what type & size of fleet is out wolfpack able to handle reasonable well 7 what is our Bane c) Why have squad leaders ect (leads into fleet bonuses) 2) Fleet Bonuses) a) Skills Modules c) Ships A class outline is very helpful for ppl to get into there minds as to what they need to learn in the current section of lecture allowing more of the information to be absorbed, that said an adult needs to do things over and over again about 20 to 30 times before they actually remember it, this is when homework comes into play, as you mentioned in class to have your recon give sitrep's on a gate in high sec, this would have been great homework prior to the classes. i have read the wiki and a lot of this is there but its in information format like a dictionary and not in a class layout per say.

[Skrewed]

Second thought is related to the ships in general ... In the Forum post about this class it was written the meeting point is ESA, there is another post, where we understood we can order T1 Fitted Thrashers do Crazy, who was delivering them in ESA system... During the class we where told to move our medical clone to H6-CX8 station, because is to dangerous to pass some systems with our thrashers, and that AGONY will have there fitted ships for us in case we will get killed ... My question is What about our ships fitted in ESA ? Will you guys help us transport them ? or we will have to sell them. because there will be useless ?? :sad:

I had to leave and I thought you all were headed back out to Esa (that was my plan at least).

I've got to go out of town today but will post further comments and thoughts when I get back tomorrow. I personally haven't enjoyed a class that much in a long while. I really wish that I could be on the roam today.

[Gavin]

Second thought is related to the ships in general ... In the Forum post about this class it was written the meeting point is ESA, there is another post, where we understood we can order T1 Fitted Thrashers do Crazy, who was delivering them in ESA system... During the class we where told to move our medical clone to H6-CX8 station, because is to dangerous to pass some systems with our thrashers, and that AGONY will have there fitted ships for us in case we will get killed ... My question is What about our ships fitted in ESA ? Will you guys help us transport them ? or we will have to sell them. because there will be useless ?? :sad:

I'm pretty sure this was just for yesterday. We were told to bring only a cheap, throwaway, T1 fit Thrasher to the lecture section of the class, while keeping the better ships for the roam. Agony had a bunch of "Cheap T1 Thrashers" to hand out if any of us lost ships; those loaners were all in H6. Now, suppose we had all left our clones in Tew. We lost at least 12 pods in the suicide fight, perhaps more, as the CO2 killboard isn't clear on that. All of those people would have been in hi-sec. Now you'd either have to risk coming out in a pod to get a loaner ship in H6, bring a more expensive fit down the pipe to rejoin us and risk losing it in the process, or have the class spend even more time backtracking to Esa to get those people in. The roam today starts from Esa, and assuming it works like the previous two basic roams I've been on, if we suffer big losses at any point we'll backtrack to Esa to reship everyone there.

[Eisenberg]

Mid-way through the class somebody (not me) suggested asking CCP to reinforce the node for Agony classes so as to cut down on lag and perhaps also minimize the grid problems. I'm not entirely sure how realistic the suggestion is since I don't know much about the server mechanics. But I think it's a good idea in principle so i'm reiterating it here.

[Bamar]

Mid-way through the class somebody (not me) suggested asking CCP to reinforce the node for Agony classes so as to cut down on lag and perhaps also minimize the grid problems. I'm not entirely sure how realistic the suggestion is since I don't know much about the server mechanics. But I think it's a good idea in principle so i'm reiterating it here. It would have been cool to have snappier server response on tonight's roam but since we're only hours away now I think it would be awesome to have it for future classes.

When you request for a node to be reinforced you request a single system to be reinforced. Considering how much our roams move around it's not really realistic to pick a system to ask to be reinforced since we could end up having a big fight in any of dozens of systems.

[Haganah]

I thought the gate camp thing was great considering I got into the same situation last night. Jumped into system and there are 4 BS sitting there camping and 2 others in the system I just left........Stayed calm reconned to my team...got blown up. But the important part was I stayed calm and gave a detailed report. I thought the class was well run and doing it with the inherent problems of nullsec was a good idea. I saw the FC avoid fights we couldn't win, the roam gangs. get in a fight that was iffy but fun for all that If you can't use a lesson like that in nullsec or empire you may not be looking at the lessons completely big cudos to cr8ter on the leadership stuff I learned things I didn't know from that one

[glepp]

Yeah, that's my bad for messing up on the fight there. I was sitting in my covops 400 off the gate, thought i was 200 off and that the Scimitar that was 100 off was 30 off. Perspective is a strange thing, and you'd think that with spaceflight and all there'd be some tool for triangulating distance between two objects in space... oh well. Skrewed saved my ass there by calmly warping you to a tactical bookmark. On the warpin to the fight, i chose to punt you to a Zealot, because i saw him in the middle of the CO2 gang earlier. As you may recall, the grid was a bit strange, so we had to punt you from an offgrid position. This meant that you had to load grid before engaging, and that i didn't have eyes on the area i was punting you into. So it was suboptimal. That your FC got primaried and had to warp off as soon as he landed didn't help either. Also, that threeway there was the first real fight in that pipe of systems while we've been living here. I wonder how they knew we were there...

[Crazed Wombat]

Jenna Krayg and Conal Orion will be unable to make the roam, as we have other commitments, but we found the class interesting. SkrewedUp had obviously gone through a lot of prep for the class and I found the introduction well thought out. He was also able to seamlessly "entertain" the group and modify the instruction, when situations arose that were introducing delay, and timed his breaks well. As far as I could tell, he covered all of his material. I found the lag situation to be only marginally better than the last Basic; perhaps it is the whole region population that contributes: but instructors/Agony cannot control lag. The "engagement" was not much different from Basic, so I have little to contribute there. I have blown up enough stuff that I am more interested in new tactics/methodology than just the fun of the gank. In that respect, the few bits of "practical theorycrafting", including the alpha against the Domi and the numbers analysis with the command links, were much appreciated. We have similar things to this in our corp for quite a while to check data, but things always seem to come up and it is not in itself "exciting", so: more was good. EFT is great but it is nice to see it, because neither CCP data nor EVEmon/EFT are 100% accurate, and putting "all skills V" into your theorycraft will rarely tell you what the average group can do. So, thanks again for that. I will be watching for "advanced advanced" classes. (Jenna has looked over these comments and did not slap me, so I guess we agree.)

[Majik]

I loved the class. All course subjects covered were clearly explained with fun, a touch of seriousness and pace. The examples were well planned out allowing us to see first hand what we had been reading in the course materials. Should the class have been held in 0.0? Damn right it should! It takes a lot of us out of our comfort zones and having been through basic made complete sense. Should we have engaged CO2 and Darkside? Probably not but when in 0.0, what the hell hey. The only error I can think of was my own performance. At the Agony station during the command bonus section I suddenly realised that I'd not updated my clone after being podded during the CO2 encounter. Can't remember how many jumps back to hi sec but I do remember that I've never been more awake in my life. I'm an idiot. Great class and thank you to scouts for guiding us back home to safety; I owe you big time.

[Esbear]

We didn't plan on making it easy on the gate camps. The fc's orders were clear:"plaster them!". It showed how nervous you can get when reporting as a scout/skirmisher if you haven't practiced it or have often been in a situation like that. The information is worth more then the loss of a scout though. A good recon report allows an fc to make the decision to go in or not. It wouldn't be the first time a gang jumped into a system without waiting for intel. In just about any follow up action the fc would send the rest of the thrasher fleet in. Attacking on the gate meant the gate camp had aggression and since most were inside the bubble they would not all have been able to get away fast enough.

[Melissa Blick]

We didn't plan on making it easy on the gate camps. The fc's orders were clear:"plaster them!".

Attacking on the gate meant the gate camp had aggression and since most were inside the bubble they would not all have been able to get away fast enough.

When we jumped through and actually saw the gatecamp, I bet a lot of us went OMG right away. There was like 1000 drones out (mostly saw warrior II's), probably assigned to someone sensor boosted to <1s lock time. That alone would insta-pop any thrasher hull, dcu or not. The bubble, webs etc were probably unnecessary 8)