49 replies to this topic

[Dior Saursi]

I really enjoyed the class. Everything was explained well. I actually liked that enemy roams came near us as we got to experience a bit of how to maneuver and work around fleets. All of the practicals really helped with our understanding. Actually seeing that domi start to melt with an alpha showed the power of distributed strikes. I really enjoyed the recon practice. Skrewed asked for volunteers that were not afraid of making themselves looked stupid. I expected to jump through and see a ship or two, jumping into a buble with a few interceptors locking me made me start to panic. It was great practice.

[Barret]

damn it...i slept through the first half of the roam. ...despite alliance mates calling my cell. many sads are being had hope the roam is going well!

[dzu]

Thank you for another great class, Agony! I loved the hands-on bubble mechanics information, the list of must-have skills, and the great POS demonstration and sudden eject !lol!lolI did miss the scan-down-the-pilot exercise from my first Wolfpacks class, and the practical exersices for making TACs. Thanks Matt Andrews for great, clear FCing, and to the support team for guiding us through the pipes.

[Roidsterr]

First let me thank you guys for a very entertaining and education class. Ive been playing for about a year so I knew a lot of what you covered, but there were a lot of great gems I didnt know, which will definitely help me in future. As for the class, I think you guys did a great job. Even the failed suicide fleet was good practice, and to be honest, we were gonna wipe sooner or later, it was just a question of how many kills we would get. For those who live in highsec I think it was a great experience. There are two things however I think you can improve on. First, the rolecall int he beginning is too slow. All the people are already in the channel and in Vent, there must be a faster way to verify them. Second, the gang bonus explanation was complete, but not very clear. By the end of it I understood it, but that was also partly due to my personal experimenting on other occasions. It would be nice if we could break the fleet up into smaller fleets to show how the bonuses stack as ranks progress, and point out where they fail. For that you will probably need info on people with lower leadership skills to demonstrate. Overall it was great

[Pesets]

On the roam part, i think the FC did a good job considering what he had and what we were up against. But as far as i could tell, we had way too much firepower and way too little range. Most of the time i couldn't get a shot off at anything, because it either popped way too fast or was out of range, i heard quite a few people saying the same thing. Since there doesn't seem to be any shortage in the number of students showing up, i think the priority should be on getting everyone's range to around 35km. Could be a case study for an introductory reading material on fitting...

[Carenthor Loon]

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.

I'm glad you go the chance to put your evasion skills to use, but you should be able to updated your medical clone in Agony's SI or H6 stations! :-)

[Melissa Blick]

For me, the best part of the class was when we insta-killed a scorpion. I couldn't believe the alpha of the class was so high we took out a battleship in one volley. On a different note, agony classes showed me why I want to stick with this game for the long haul. My first six months were almost up, and I decided to buy a 12 month subscription. So agony classes help CCP retain players. !lol

[Eisenberg]

Thanks again to AU for a very well run fleet. It was fun. One idea to consider: from what I've seen, small-ship classes seem to run into trouble in Providence. The opposition comes in large numbers and they come prepared. It's really hard to run the optimal class no matter how good the FC may be. So here's one thing to think about: why not run frigate and thrasher classes in Syndicate like last year? The nullsec dynamics in Syndicate are very different and our roams would mostly face smaller gangs. That has its advantages from a pedagogical standpoint. Also, we would not run as high a risk of a single crushing encounter. Cruiser and battlecruiser classes work well in Provi so I'd be for keeping them as they are now. Anyway, that's a suggestion. In either case, I really had fun and I enjoyed the class very much. A big thanks to Matt for keeping excellent control of the fleet and to the scouts for their hard work.

[Skrewed]

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...

Glepp, it's been interesting after have several convo's with students today how much they actually liked this part of class even though it was a bit of a mess. Sometimes there's much to be learned by things not going right and being in a frame of mind that it really doesn't matter.

A day later I can say that from my perspective there were at least 4 different times where we had grid problems unexpectedly and from my perspective caused a bit of improve each time. I hope on the things that you all took away is that part of the beauty of null sec is that unexpected things happen and there are option. Knowing your options and not letting fear overtake you is a HUGE step in pvp.

Again, I hope you all had as much fun as I did yesterday. For anyone reading I'll be doing another wolfpacks in Mid-October and we should have some basic classes setup for Sept in the next couple days.

[automa]

Great shame about the 30sec gate lag - really cramps a small ship fleets style. The most interesting thing for me was our effectiveness against stealth-bombers. OK, they didn't have bookmarks to fight between (perhaps they weren't very good SB pilots tbh) but i didn't expect us to be able to fend them off as well as we did. As to ship loss, I don't think anyone cares about the loss of a thrasher. However what they do care is the ability to reship and rejoin the class/fight quickly and easily. More stocks of Thrashers in H6 (and perhaps another load somewhere else (the other end of Provi)? To save Agony "staff" time and effort, why not just put them up on contract the Friday before for 3 days. Say for 1mil each for the T1's and 2mil for the rigged/T2's (or whatever they work out to be rounded up).

[Melissa Blick]

To save Agony "staff" time and effort, why not just put them up on contract the Friday before for 3 days. Say for 1mil each for the T1's and 2mil for the rigged/T2's (or whatever they work out to be rounded up).

I second that idea. Some of us who are flying as alumni (for free) wouldn't mind paying a 20-50% markup over the jita price for the convenience, especially when the margin is going to help replace some t2 hulls agony loses during the roams.

[Crazy Kalibanov]

I enjoyed the roam.

A suggestion: it would probably be educational if someone did an AAR on that last fight in 49GC-R. According to Agony's and CO2's killboard (http://www.eve-co2.org) we lost 57 ships and 18 pods in about 4 minutes and didn't kill any of them. It was a nicely executed trap.

Regarding the suggestion of having ships available, I agree it's convenient, but it is a lot of work. Also, part of learning to pvp is making sure you have enough ships on hand to look after your own needs.

[ROX Genghis]

According to Agony's and CO2's killboard (http://www.eve-co2.org) we lost 57 ships and 18 pods in about 4 minutes and didn't kill any of them. It was a nicely executed trap.

Probably because we primaried a drake while there were scimitars and blackbirds on the field within our range. I would be curious for an AAR as well.

[Pesets]

As to ship loss, I don't think anyone cares about the loss of a thrasher. However what they do care is the ability to reship and rejoin the class/fight quickly and easily. More stocks of Thrashers in H6 (and perhaps another load somewhere else (the other end of Provi)?

Even if there were more ships, having to reship effectively limits the range of where we could go, and it's still a lot of wasted time each round. And quite a logistical pain in the neck to set up a reshipping point (especially outside Agony territory). 100 Thrashers is what, ten runs in a rigged indie? (I really don't think this stuff is worth risking a jump freighter). Then each has to be manually fitted. Well, the mods can be auto-fitted if you have the fit saved, but it's still 30 seconds per ship.

To save Agony "staff" time and effort, why not just put them up on contract the Friday before for 3 days. Say for 1mil each for the T1's and 2mil for the rigged/T2's (or whatever they work out to be rounded up).

Crazy mentioned it in the other thread that somebody bought off all of his Thrasher contracts. I assume that may be the main reason Agony haven't done that themselves. I guess it would be less enticing for someone to buy off contracts in H6 instead of Esa, but it's still a relatively cheap way to disrupt the class.


Regarding the last fight AAR, from what i understood the FC was in a hurry to finish the roam due to some RL issues. Which may be the reason we took the bait perhaps against better judgement. We ended up in a close-range fight against a BC/HAC gang of comparable size, so it really isn't much of a surprise that we got popcorned.

As for why we didn't kill a whole lot, again, 15km isn't a whole lot of range and AB Thrashers aren't terribly fast, so our targets are more or less defined by where we land. And the fact that half of the fleet got stuck in jump lag and manually warped themselves into the bubble didn't help. We probably would be able to instapop something if we were to land right on top of it, but as it was i remember seeing very little damage on the primary (less than half shields). The Scimitars on the field might have had something to do with it too.

[Melissa Blick]

Regarding the last fight AAR, from what i understood the FC was in a hurry to finish the roam due to some RL issues. Which may be the reason we took the bait perhaps against better judgement. We ended up in a close-range fight against a BC/HAC gang of comparable size, so it really isn't much of a surprise that we got popcorned.

Didn't realise how badly outmatched we were in that fight in 49GC [CO2 KB Fight Details]. After we all hit the bubble, we started firing at the primary (drake?) and moving out of the bubble. Got targeted the another drake, and overheated the ab. Almost burned out my ab (67%), but managed to get out of the bubble and warped out under fire from the drake and 3 other ships. Couldn't believe I made it out!

But then I still had no idea we were badly outmatched, warped back into the fight outside the bubble. There were hardly any thrashers left, and this time I got popped even before I could align and warp out. 18 bc vs. thrasher

It was only after I joined the 80-pod party I realised what happened.

[Vjorn]

Wow, another great learning experience had by all! The class reading materials were well written, and definitely worth the time to study. Thanks to Cr8r for the new article about fleet bonuses. There were a couple of things that he covered in his lecture, but not covered in his guide...but that is why we attend these classes. I am quite happy that the class was conducted in null sec; especially since the bulk of the demonstrations involved the use of bubbles. There were a few things that maybe could have been explained in hi sec, however, I liked how Skrewed used the time we were waiting in station/safe to talk about those portions of the class. The scouting/recon portion of the class was definitely an eye opener for me lmao. I was the first scout to go through this portion. And as I had never scouted a gate in null sec before, and was only my second recon report ever given....I made some critical mistakes. I liked how Skrewed asked me and each scout that went through this exercise what they did right/wrong. However, since I was initially surprised that suddenly Agony was the opposition (when I saw the 4 Agony ships on grid/gate, I had assumed they were friendly and reported them as such), I GTFO when Glepp released my pod and headed via my tac's to the H6 station. Perhaps it would have been a better learning experience for the pods if we were directed to an on grid tac to observe the following students (which also assumes setting up security at the beginning of the pipe). Regarding the 2 gangs that came, we all need to remember that the enrollment portion of the website is public, and as such, anyone can see when a class will happen. Even tho the suicide run ended up being...well...suicidal lol, there was much to be learned (at least by me) by observing how the scouts were keeping tabs on them, and how Skrewed was maneuvering the fleet to keep us safe. Thank you Matt for leading us on the roam. There was so much that you and your scouts did that I am still trying to assimilate it all lol. My biggest problem with the roam was the lag during jumps, as well as within the bubbles. I was just barely able to get my client to operate enough to get out of the bubble to warp my pod out lol. It was amazing just how quick a primaried ship will go down to destroyer volleys. I am very happy with what I experienced in this class and am eagerly awaiting the next one, to hopefully learn what I didn't pick up this time around. Fly Dangerously VJ Edit: A subject that I was expecting to be discussed during the Wolfpack course, but I don't remember hearing anything about (perhaps I fell asleep momentarily...it was 2am when class started for me lol) is Cap Dumping to assist in making tacs. I had heard, both from several Agony members, as well as on the forums this was a subject taught. If it isn't meant to be discussed during the lecture anymore, perhaps a section could be added under the Bookmarks chapter of the 0.0 Survival Guide.

[Mar Gregorios]

Great class. Having class in 0.0 was much better than having it in the empire. Also learning by doing/showing approach is better than what I had in basic class, which also was good, but had many lectures. This way, absorbing information was much easier. And it was good that the instructor actually assumed that we had read the reading material and didn't just repeat it again. The gate scouting exercise could perhaps have been more instructive by diving the class into observers and participants. By having observers in the side of the camp and seeing how the scout reports the situation would have been instructive (if not for anything else, at least one could see how fast one can go down to a camp). Roam on sunday was nice, although beset by gate lag to some extent. I think the most instructive part of the roam was getting our fleet destroyed and this way learning also about the weaknesses of our gang.

[AkJon Ferguson]

I thought we did okay but that there was a lot of room for improvement. (Including myself, I accidentally let one friendly fire volley loose in the moment of confusion when we landed during the fight in HED, sorry Agent302, not sure if you dropped fleet or what happened but I felt awful about it. I see that several classmates made the same mistake.) Against experienced opposition, great warp-ins and target selection become critical. I think we lacked a bit of both. Primarying a hurricane in one instance and a drake in another when there are machariels on the field that would melt to 2 or 3 volleys. Choosing to engage a gang that outguns us is fine, but I think you need to have a sexy target to kill before warping out (or EVEN IF you're bored and suiciding the fleet) if you're going to do that and a t1 bc isn't it. Here's how I kinda pictured things going: Fleet is in a rolling safespot a few hundred k km off enemy position. FC to Covops (preferably off comms): 'Can you get me a warp in within 10 of a Machariel, preferably out of range of any dictors? Take your time, I want the best warp-in possible.' A minute or two passes. Covops to FC: 'warp to me at zero' FC warps pre-aligned fleet at zero. FC to covops: 'in warp, get out of harm's way' FC to Fleet: 'larry lunchmeat in the machariel is primary, lock him, activate/overheat guns, align to x celestial (roughly in line with rolling safe), the second he melts or you start taking damage, warp to rolly in the watch list' (BTW, warping out when you start to take damage is not because you care about a 6-10M ISK ship, it's because you have no tank and want to preserve as much fleet integrity as possible for the next run, instead of everyone having to screw around for half an hour while people reship.) Fleet lands on grid. 3 or 4 destroyers get popped. Machariel melts. Rest of fleet warps away (and repeats until the opposing gang gets tired of losing 1B ISK ships.) Is that really so implausible a scenario? With a bit of practice/repetition, most of the orders won't even be necessary. Just calling primary, with the cov ops pilot (might even make the cov ops pilot the FC since his role is the most critical) finding high-value victims. (And yes, I realize this wasn't a fly-bys class but if prevailing conditions call for fly-bys, you fly-by, don't you?)

[tigkill]

I thought the class was well worth the time and isk spent. I learned several things that I had not known before, so i consider the class a great success in that regard. The last lecture on bonus's seemed to me to be a bit like a time filler, and the teacher didn't seem to have much energy. As we all know, an energetic teacher brings enthusiasm to the class, and gets the students hyped about the subject. Plus, a class is meant to bring things out that weren't in the study materials. It would be fun, for example, to hear about what kinds of gangs a particular type of bonus might be used against, or how you might organize a fleet to take advantage of the most bonus's (shield ships under a shield bonus'd SC, etc.). Perhaps that sort of thing is considered to be obvious. I thought it was GREAT technique for the FC to send "scouts" across gates and report on what is there while getting shot at. One wonders if there is a way to bring a student class across a gate and have a bunch of agony in superior ships attack to see how well the class might do on tactics. Sadly, I had to work Sunday, and thus didn't get to attend the Sunday roam.

[AngryMusheen]

Another great class and roam. I very much enjoyed the fact that we did the class practice in nullsec, so students can actually see bubbles in action, as well as the demonstration of alpha strike on the dominix (and who can forget the REAL action vs that Scorp!!!??? freaking alpha instapop haha). I have 3 concerns about the entire affair: 1. roam area - I understand Agony has sov now, and prefers to roam about their home system with plenty of eyes/intel...but to me, the roams we did out of Stacmon area were better, more dynamic. Sure, some enemies knew an Agony class was in the area, but that was back when Agony didn't hold sov and were much more dynamic with their roaming routes. My suggestion would be that we hold the class in Esa or wherever is convenient to Agony, but we aren't told exactly where in nullsec the actual class roam will be. Once everyone is fleeted up and we are ready to roam, why not make 15 jumps to another highsec-to-nullsec entry that takes us somewhere unexpected? example - we undock from Esa, and the FC announces "hey, we are going to Biggles system which leads into ZZZ-FF0 nullsec system" Sure it would be 15 or 10 or 30 jumps from Esa, but Agony would have plenty of eyes/scouts already in the area beforehand to set us up with intel. This would also give enemies no time to prepare any traps, as they would have to make the same 5, 10, or 30 jumps through nullsec to try and catch up/meet up with us. We have it easy, going highsec the entire way with no delay on jumping through gates (mostly/hopefully lol). The nullsec enemies though...they have to navigate all of those jumps through bubble-infested territory, running into roaming gangs and such, making it much harder for them, and also giving the class roam more surprise when we finally jumped down into nullsec. I know this is probably a huge logistics nightmare, and some students would complain about the initial 10 or 15 jumps to get there, but it would help us I think, and make our roam and targets more dynamic. (it is just an idea) 2. Primary a drake - ??? When jumping into that last ball of enemies, Frylock and I are still wondering why we would primary a drake, especially with logistics ships around. No one ever primaries a drake unless it is the only ship. We should have gone for the Cyclone first, and any other non 100,000+ EHP shield tanked, logi-repped target. Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but the instant we were told to primary a drake in a grid full of non-Drake targets, I kind of knew we were screwed. Now, I don't care about losing the ship, it is why we bring T1 ships that are easily replaced, but once we got on grid, we were rich with better targets, and knowing now we lost 40+ ships and didn't score a single kill kind of makes me frown. 3. FC - our FC was great, and I know english isn't his first language. Please remember I am not, and would never bag on someone for their english skills, but the FC, especially if english isn't his first language, needs to remember to be CLEAR AND CONCISE when speaking to the fleet about what we are doing, who we are shooting at. FC's english is definitely easy enough to understand clearly, but not when he sort of mumbles or talks in a low voice. Remember, when giving orders, you should speak in a clear, commanding (not a-hole or rude) voice and make sure to remember to enunciate things properly so we don't have to continually ask each other 'what did he say?'. The FC did a great job, and we burned I don't know how many bombers who were too $%#$@# stupid to realize that thrashers can hit at 30+km so bombing us solo was an idiotic exercise at best (the only bombs that hit us where when we were engaged on a gate). I did like that we purposely camped safes to bait bombers and others in. But during a 'regular' fights, the FC tended to mumble or talk low a bit, and didn't clearly state objectives or targets or instructions. So again, I'm absolutely not bagging on his english ability (better than most southern USA rednecks honestly), but hoping he will read this and understand that when english isn't your primary language, but you do speak very good english, that you have to be a little more forceful and clear in what you say, as 70+ people are relying on you to tell them what to do, and only other Agony guys are familiar with your tone/speech patterns. ok, enough verbal masturbation from AngryMoron. I can't wait for more wolfpacks to roam as alumni, and more advanced classes like the Cov Ops and HSSR's that are coming up!

[Lem Skall]

Very good class and a great roam on Sunday. I think I learned more from the online material than I learned from the live lectures but I think that is okay. There is little time to cover a wide array of topics and we have to move around too. As a suggestion, I think the practical lesson on bubbles is worth more time with practicing how to get out of a bubble in different scenarios. And, personally, I think that deserves more time in this class than recon. I see recon as something more advanced, I would rather learn first how to escape from dire situations before I learn how to report them. It may have been intentional to add the stress of recon on top of the stress of getting killed but I'm not sure how efficient that is. The way I see it, each one of us should have gone through the gate and not just the recon volunteers. I recognize that may have taken too long but THAT would have been a good practical exercise. And yeah, I didn't volunteer but that was because I was not interested in practicing recon. Many thanks for the roam (I left after we first got back to Esa, I didn't have time for another long run). I have 4 kills on our corp's killboard and that makes me #1 for the month (we are a carebears corp ;P). I have 0% damage on 2 out of those 4 but still, I was thinking that I got no damage at all, it happened so fast! And I got out alive too! I wasn't happy with Matt in the beginning how we were losing people on the way because of the lag but I think he made some great tactical decisions during the battle: getting us in and out, when to take cover and when to run for the exit. Thanks, Matt! I sensed some reservations from SkrewedUp especially but also from Matt about using us as cannon fodder. I don't think that was necessary. I'm glad I got out alive but that was not my main goal for the roam. Fortunately, my main goal was also achieved by being involved in several kills and a big battle. Being chased over and over again and getting away was a bonus. So I think that taking us into that big battle was the right decision even if it was not the original plan. Agony, my suggestion is that you set the right expectations from the beginning of the roam. For instance, say that we will look mostly for small fights but we will go into a big one too if the opportunity arises. And just establish a limit in advance that we run from it only if it's hopeless or if we lose half of the fleet. I would have gone with that and I think others would have too.

[cael]

The class was very informative and the roam a lot of fun. Skrewed presented the material clearly and well, and it was fun to take the 20 minutes to jump into a fight. I think more time spent actually warping into and dealing with bubbles would have been helpful, if the schedule allows for it. Skrewed put it well when he said a big part of this class is getting over fear, and spending some time landing in bubbles and learning how to react instead of panicking seems like a worthwhile investment. As for the roam, I had a lot of fun even though the last encounter didn't go that well. The FC did a great job maneuvering a big, unwieldy around, and the scouts did a great job of keeping us out of bubbles and finding targets. The FC seemed to get quieter as the roam went on, and didn't adjust his volume or mic even though a number of people said they were having trouble hearing him. I don't know if this is true or not, but it seemed like a lot of tactical planning was going on in private Agony channels while we were being chased around in that last system (HED I think? Don't remember). If it's feasible (and it may very well not be), I think it'd be fantastic to have an Agony person relay some of the considerations that are being discussed in private. I'd love to get a clearer idea of how these strategic decisions get made and feel like that'd be of great help to me when I go back and FC in my own corp. That being said, I know that there are a lot of split second decisions and certainly don't expect the FC or the scouts to compromise the fleet so the students can peek under the hood. All in all, fantastic class. Thanks very much to all the Agony personnel, looking forward to Advanced!

[Srialia]

Sounds like it was an informative class. Sorry I had to bail on it, but when one's friend from the military makes a surprise visit, one doesn't say, "Sorry, I have to play EVE today." I do have a couple questions. I was told I would get a credit and be able to take this class next time it was offered. Do I have to jump through any hoops for that to be added to my account or do I just link to the thread as if I were an alumnus? Also, is Wolfpacks going to be a prerequisite for Advanced again, or has that decision not yet been made? Looking forward to next time, regardless.

[Gavin]

When the update the main thread later, they'll mark those who paid but didn't attend in the "Credited" section. Then, when you sign up next time, just link back to this class's signup thread and note that you received credit from it. I missed my first attempt at the basic course, had to skip the next few, and finally managed to attend one some months later.

[michagorov]

Hi, Is someone going to update the graduates list for this course?