57 replies to this topic

[O'Kais]

Echoing both Caldak and Smantis when I say this roam was not only fun, but it was worth losing my ships for the new tips and tricks you pick up.

High points for me were learning from our initial mistake putting all our ECM in one basket (like 11C/11M on the first push) and refitting according to John McGuirk's balanced hydra principle (~40%M, ~30%C, ~20%A, ~%10G) with much greater success (especially since we ended up fighting a lot of Amarr and Gallente during that Covryn push, no Caldari after the Raven at the beginning, and a handful of Minmatar).

The AGONY ECM channel seemed to work well coordinating between us Jammer pilots finding TACs/TAMs to warp to and when, calling targets, and informing the others when our ships were inevitably primaried and turned into space dust. It also worked wonders allowing us to communicate what to refit to, and for trading hulls/mods between ourselves in order to rejoin the fight at best speed. I'm hoping to hear more from the ECM guys on this roam to see what their thoughts were, and especially whether or not the dedicated ECM chat channel was useful to them.

Excellent work from my ECM squad; Odontempme, Kalar Freno, Andrei Taganov, Tsuiban, Xolonie, and of course John McGuirk; the real ECM guru.

Kudos to Andrei and John for sticking it out during that kite gang, not dying (thanks in part to our expert logi), and getting jams on that Falcon. You finally got on a Falcon KM, John, despite their best efforts to kill us both.

And if Andrei's Kitsune didn't die, I'll be pissed. He was in that thing close to the whole roam while John and I both lost 2x Kitsunes and a Blackbird each. Completely unfair.

---

What can we do better?

We should be more diligent calling jams gained and lost. I caught myself a couple of times trying not to clutter comms with five jammers cycling at once, so I understand that it's sometimes inevitable (don't want to step on the FC's comms), but then we need to be on our game in the chat channel letting each other know whose targeters to shut down next, especially when dealing with very dangerous sniper battleships, interceptors, and Falcons warping on and off grid.

Next time, let's also try to coordinate what ships and fits we'll be flying before the roam, so we are more standardized when it comes to battle positions and jammer range coming off TACs. If we're all in roughly the same spot, I imagine it makes it easier for logi to get in a position to cover all of us, too.

Other than that, I'll likely be more directive than reactive next time when it comes to calling jams and moving to TACs. A dedicated TAM artist, or flyby TACs set up on both sides of a gate, would make our ECM squad that much more effective. I'll get to work on those bookmarks. In the meantime, I hope to see you guys again and hope you had as much fun as I did.

Remember, Jammer Pilots,

No Penetration without Radiation.

[Greygal]

As always, awesome roams, on both days. Countless thanks to all in Agony who put this together and let us join in your fun So many epic and awesome battles they are almost a blur! The battle that really sticks out in my head is the one where the rorqual self-destructed... the way the targets kept switching as their logis kept switching was really nifty to watch. A bit tricky to keep up with, but after a bit got the hang of it. I thought the target calling and bouncing and reshipping we all did during that battle was particularly genius - what a way to keep a fight going till more help arrived! Brilliant there were no *oops* friendly fire incidents, either - awesome that everyone in the fleet stayed disciplined and on target. I still can't believe they stayed engaged as long as they did - and I kept wondering why their logis didn't just split their repping between multiple fleet members, instead of mass-repping one ship at a time. Got on 39 killmails and only lost one ship. Kinda :sadface: I only lost one ship... I brought six over to Stacmon fully intending to lose them all in two epic days of Agony roams - especially with Caldak as FC The only bad thing: That big bag of M&M candies I purchased that usually lasts me about 2.5 weeks is gone, completely gone, after 16+ total hours of roaming. Caldak roams are hell on a chocolate budget Guess I'm gonna have to hit the grocers in the morning! Looking forward to the next roam, whenever and whereever it may be! Hope ya'll do another Alumni roam again in the future - soon!

[Moriarty]

Awesome class! Had fun flying the Griffins. Next time DPS. Thanks Caldak for FCing - was superb. Taught me much more than just how to PvP. Jen

[Strazdas]

Awesome fight last night. no capital killmails, but i been sucked into a lot of battleship dealths new record too, from 0 to ready to giht in 2 minutes when i had to come back to the fight, luckily stacmon had everything for sale i learned a lot about pvp here, definitely will be coming bck for roams Too bad i was aware that we should have parked something bigger too so i ended up tackling the BSs.

[Kaeda Maxwell]

The roam was awesome :-) The first fight vs. VETO was a bit of an embarrassing bloober we got properly steamrollered by their guardian/zealot gang. Shit happens I guess! vOv It did wake everyone up though and things were much better after that. The stuff in Covryn was different, originally -I'll be honest- I though the fleet was going to get whelped again with a bhaal and all those carriers on the field. Turns out I was wrong and I should think better of the people I fly with. Downside I spend 90% of that fight 80km away from everybody keeping a rorqual that self-destructed pointed. CCP please remove the self-destruct mechanic from the game. The the third major brawl of the night in 97X-CH was a dream we engaged a nano-gang with claymore support and dual falcons + fast tackle (dramiels) and ripped them a new asshole, forgive the language, but we lost nobody and killed very nearly all of them including the Claymaore Then the Server fell over! Anyways was an awesome Saturday night in the end. P.S. Jamming smartbombing battleships is pointless btw ;-)

[Othran]

Another fun night Rorqual was annoying, as was the second carrier. Its getting silly - over the course of two nights we've had 2 (or 3?) carriers and a Rorqual self-destruct on us Always nice to make a system the most violent on dotlan though, we must do that again. Oh and I made it all the way through a Caldak class roam without dying. I think thats a first

[Aethena]

Both roams were so much fun, especially the fight in Covryn – as others have mentioned, it was truly epic! Lost my ship, reshipped, lost that one, got podded, reshipped (podding just speeded the reshipping process) and managed to hang on to that one. Our logi/reppers were absolutely amazing and kept me up more than once. And thanks to Caldak and all the folks at Agony who makes these classes and roams happen. It always amazes me that they're willing to invest so much of their time in teaching all of us. I learn so much every time I take an Agony class or go on a roam – it's definitely worth getting up at 5am for. Thanks again and I can't wait for the next one

[Vora]

For the newer peeps, I would recommend making as many as the alumni roams as possible as they will really reinforce the material that has been taught and you will find that you are picking up new tips and tricks all the time.

^^This^^

Flying roams as alumni since 2009 it never gets old. EvE is evolving and so are fleet tactics... this assemblage of mad tacticians keeps you current on the hottest maneuvers and meanest traps.

Rorqual was annoying, as was the second carrier. Its getting silly - over the course of two nights we've had 2 (or 3?) carriers and a Rorqual self-destruct on us

Caps self-destructing during a BASIC roam is an accomplishment in itself. (one carrier made it on the killmails)



One thing worth mentioning during the brawl in Corvyn: when quick-switching targets please mind to switch to a target not too far apart from the first one. We had a lot of smaller ships on the field (I was in a Wolf) and at times the two targets were 80-90 km apart.

Both roams were terrific from start to finish.
Lost 3 ships and 2 pods.... good weekend

[Sander]

Class was very educational and best of all, a lot of fun. Aside from the basics covered the first night (as one would expect), it also dealt with some advanced topics. I've been in 100+ of fleets and fights and wasn't expecting to learn anything new, but.. I did. The roam the second night was both fun and very educational. Showed some very good tactics and insights and lots of kills. The fights in low-sec against the pirates with their 3 Chimera's as support was exhilarating. Even though we only managed to kill a harbinger, I was surprised we managed to kill anything at all. Kudos to Caldak and the Agony-members As to what might have be improved, the first night, the class was a bit long (5 hours) probably because the getting the class up and running and everyone in the right channel/fleet took almost an hour As such, the class ended past 02:00 in euro-tz and I can imagine some people left early or weren't really sharp at the end.

[Mike Monoid]

this was my first agony class + roam with you guys. although i had some RL issues preventing me from reading some of the material before and making me leave both roams after just 4hours, i really enjoyed it. the way the class worked, i.e. tons of material up front, going through the material in class, asking questions like literally every 3-5 minutes, all the practical aspects... yeah, seems like you guys know what you're doing (of course you do) and you should continue that way. again, really enjoyed it. also liked the roam on the 7th, never had that much fun in eve so far while also learning a ton at the same time :thumbsup: i'll make sure to attend any upcoming class/roam that i'm eligible for

[Sadamu]

Awesome fun! Sadface that I burned through all 5 of my ships before the 97X fight, but absolutely worth it.

Main lessons learned:

1. Taranises (Taranes? Taranii?) are wicked fun - except against smartbombs.

2. I was reminded again why I love flying Jaguars. Besides the cool green lighting, I mean.

Thanks again to AGONY and especially Caldak for running an excellent roam.

(And extra thanks to Caldak for the shiny new Firetail to play with!)

[AkJon Ferguson]

Thanks to the scouts, skirmishers and dictors as always. Thanks to the jammers and logi for being awesome amazing (CCP has ruined the word 'awesome' for me.)

Epic roam on the 8th.

If we're fighting a decent sized gang I think it would be a good idea if primaries were broadcast as well as called. (If you're the first person to decipher the FC's intent, clue the rest of us in.) Maybe there's a good reason they're generally not.

Maybe it should be added to the pre-op checklist that a 2nd/3rd target caller is assigned so that there's no confusion. Yes, people should step up anyway, but a lot of people are more comfortable stepping up when they've already been assigned that task explicitly. I think it also adds to fleet confidence when they know that this eventuality has been prepared for/was expected rather than having a few seconds of silence followed by 2 strange voices talking over each other.

Maybe the guy burning TAMs should also be EWO and call tracks/damps. He's got relatively little else to think about and can see the enemy fleet. I also wonder at the idea of giving everybody in the same group the same script, I'd think that if there are 3 guys in a group, 2 of one script and one of the other would probably give you better results overall. (Of course with groups almost never mentioned once the roam starts it doesn't matter all that much.)

I tend to think that the default response to bombers (if we're in frigates, and especially if it's a single bomber) should be shoot them and not jump/warp off, but that's a split-second judgment. The option to kill should at least be on the table, though. It was made to sound that you just see a bomber and jump, then later when people did that (when a fail bomber launched a bomb well out of our range) they got chided.

Moar battlecruiser roams please (I promise I'll bring a MWD next time, missing out on most of the kills against that kiting gang was very frustrating.)

[noise]

I had tried to get on the basic class almost 2 years ago when I first started shooting other players but could never grab an open slot. When Max Torps pointed me and Penelope to the new thread I knew I would do the course. I thought that I would be bored but boy! Was I wrong. There was quite a lot that I just thought I knew but didn't or my knowledge was plain wrong. Getting the few kills on the class night was a bonus that I wasn't expecting. The night of the (first) roam was enjoyable and we got some nice kills, I was torn. I wanted to stay longer and finish the night but I was so tired after staying up late during the class and I knew I had to get some rest for work early Sunday morning, that also meant that I wasn't able to make the second roam. Thanks for the great lesson and roam Caldak and thank you to the other Agony members for scouting.

[Othran]

P.S. Jamming smartbombing battleships is pointless btw ;-)

Apart from one Typhoon - who decided to get off the gate anyway - the only other SB fit was predictably the Dommie, who sat next to me for a while bombing away until he realised he couldn't get me below 80% shield. Gotta love hictors Only dodgy moments were when the Bhaal neuted me and I had to turn the invuln off to keep the points running (I was nos'ing off the carriers and cap boosting). Soon as they did that I got primaried by all the abbadons and had to cycle points a bit to get reps. Was a lot of fun, as was later on in null - great tips on using hictors from Gizznit there.

Looks like the Tuskers went back later and kicked the ninja unicorns about a bit more. Probably best to leave them alone for a while before another class goes to visit. Next time we WILL need more dps available from the start. We were quite lucky that we could call in more dps from Tuskers/Veto but it'd be nice if we didn't have to rely on it.

97X fight was about as close to perfect as they come though. Be hard to top that one.

I don't suppose anyone fraps'd the Corvyn fight? Edit - I mean the second night, not the first. I wish to annoy a couple of bitter vets alumni who said "bleh, boring" when I pointed them at the 8 Oct roam thread

Edit 2 - Corvyn fight stats and obviously add in the second carrier and the Rorqual to that list. For you ISK/efficiency stat freaks I reckon we won the isk war by 9-1 (self-destructs included).

[Muris]

The roam on the 8th was great, amongst the most enjoyable EVE experiences i've had so far! We started off rather rusty against that AHAC gang. We weren't focussing fire enough, allowing the guardians to rep the primary zealot back up. Gradually we grew into the roam as a fleet, with an outstanding battle in Corvyn. Low sec might have some silly game mechanics, but that surely doesn't prevent epic battles from taking place! Props to Ninja Unicorns for having the guts to take on that fight while being heavily outnumbered. Guess we took them by surprise when we came back with heavier ships during the fight and getting backup from Veto and the Tuskers. Good target calling / switching during that battle, even with Caldak off the field. That last fight in 97X was the cherry on the pie, taking down 10+ of their ships without losing a single ship ourselves. Great work by the logistics and ECM pilots there, keeping the fleet alive. Thanks Caldak & Co for organising this awesome alumni roam. Scouting, skirmishing and FC'ing was top notch. More of these in future!

[Tee Jaay]

Excellent class, that covered all the basic bases and I picked up a few new tricks (to me), it was a good teaching style. Wished I had taken it a lot earlier in my EVE career. The roam was a lot of fun, with good FC'ing from Caldak. Thanks to Caldak and Agony for organizing the class and roams.

[Caldak]

Just watched the fight with guys in Corvyn.

Lots I learned from it.
Got a few more tips to hand out from watching it.
1 - Lock up 3 - 4 of the 5 you can target. " Know the range of your Guns & Missile "
2 - Scram, point someone else if the primary has been confirmed as tackled, think we will do tackle groups as we do with ewar.
3 - Very well done by the EWAR group.
4 - Alumni is thinking on your own, not having the FC hold your hand, no Damp or Track targets called " Put on the ship closest to your name were possible "
that's a lot better than not using it at all.

Total fun, seen that Balghoorn warp out ... made me cry.

But would do it again at a drop of a hat. We all learn and get better.
Thanks for the Fraps.

[Kalar Freno]

I already gave feedback on the first day - so this is just for the roams:

Both were amazing. I learnt a huge amount seeing a very different fleet to what I'm used to in action. As loads of others have said already, these roams are an unparalleled learning experience - you'll certainly see me again in the future!

The AGONY ECM channel seemed to work well coordinating between us Jammer pilots finding TACs/TAMs to warp to and when, calling targets, and informing the others when our ships were inevitably primaried and turned into space dust. It also worked wonders allowing us to communicate what to refit to, and for trading hulls/mods between ourselves in order to rejoin the fight at best speed. I'm hoping to hear more from the ECM guys on this roam to see what their thoughts were, and especially whether or not the dedicated ECM chat channel was useful to them.

I found the ECM channel invaluable. It was really helpful to be able to relay tacs to jump to, and warpin points between the ECM pilots.

Next time, let's also try to coordinate what ships and fits we'll be flying before the roam, so we are more standardized when it comes to battle positions and jammer range coming off TACs. If we're all in roughly the same spot, I imagine it makes it easier for logi to get in a position to cover all of us, too.

Other than that, I'll likely be more directive than reactive next time when it comes to calling jams and moving to TACs. A dedicated TAM artist, or flyby TACs set up on both sides of a gate, would make our ECM squad that much more effective. I'll get to work on those bookmarks. In the meantime, I hope to see you guys again and hope you had as much fun as I did.

I think these are both great ideas also. When we took on the AHAC gang at the start, even with the wrong jammers, we should have been able to consistently shut off two of the guardians. If the third had been primaried, we'd have been able to break their tank. Also agreed with regard to having more tacs to bounce around to.

Special thanks from me to all the scouts/skirmishers - you guys find the targets! Also, thanks to O'Kais and the rest of the ECM guys - you taught me a lot about ECM support in a fleet. I'll be back to do it again in future!

[Othran]

Thanks for the fraps Bormand, much appreciated. For anyone wondering, yes the fight was longer but I think Bormand reshipped mid-fight. First of my hictor tackles went on at 22:05:15, last tackle came off at 22:40:31 when Mazargar self-destructed, so the fight must have lasted a good 40 minutes or so from when you guys baited them off-station. Now that's not something that you'd expect on a PvP-Basic roam - a 40 minute fight with 3-4 capitals involved Couple of points : 1) Regarding target calling, it genuinely didn't seem that quiet at the time but watching the fraps I guess it was. Perhaps there's a tendency amongst some of the more experienced alumni to assume Agony will call it (I know I'm guilty of that) and its the wrong thing to do as the Agony guy may have less experience/be more reluctant to call than you. He may just be too busy staying alive/doing his job to call. One of the hictor pilots should have called it when Caldak was out as we had the time to do it - I dunno whether in fact the other hictor pilot was calling it as he was Agony (didn't recognise voice). Lesson learnt; 2) For those of you who lay out your screen like Bormand, then don't. Move the locked targets down so that they line up across your cap/health dial. The reason for this is simple - target fixation. You're concentrating so hard on killing the target you are unaware of your cap, shield, armour and by the time you notice all is not well then its too late. Running out of cap is the classic target fixation problem in Eve; 3) Bait squad stuff - anyone running this then learn from my mistakes. You need to get a chat channel up and running ASAP then get that squad balanced for points/scrams. Make SURE you do this. You then as an absolute minimum need to assign probe duty, TAMs and one pilot who is happy to go look at stations etc. Also split the squad in half so everyone knows who is going through/who's staying if you need to be both sides of gate. You have to do this early on because you won't be able to run the squad with voice unless you got battlecomms. Depending on what you have you want to look at warp speed too as its usually a mixed bag. Most importantly for everyone in the bait squad don't die. Dead bait is no use to anyone Dying to keep tackle is another matter..... Oh and a last bit of advice which will make Caldak laugh (he knows me too well) - don't stress about it. You are going to screw up sooner or later, everyone does. I also thought the little discussion on low-sec mechanics after Covryn was excellent. Kaeda is very good at explaining things clearly and I reckon a few people learned things they didn't know about timers Lets do it again, but not for a couple of weeks eh Edit - Kaeda the reasons the logis get gcc isn't "gay" (people should watch the vid). Ask me about it sometime but the tl;dr is a corp called Space Invaders is pretty much responsible for that even though we didn't have logis back then - hint is think cap transfer. Could tank high sec guns that way - all 8 of them in the puny EHP BSs back then (40k EHP was "decent" then). Edit2 - after some more "experiments" CCP decided that it'd be easier to say that if you kill in high-sec then your ship has to die.

[John McGuirk]

Haven’t finished writing up feedback, but did have some thoughts on what other people have written, as some of my points are covered.

High points for me were learning from our initial mistake putting all our ECM in one basket (like 11C/11M on the first push) and refitting according to John McGuirk's balanced hydra principle (~40%M, ~30%C, ~20%A, ~%10G) with much greater success (especially since we ended up fighting a lot of Amarr and Gallente during that Covryn push, no Caldari after the Raven at the beginning, and a handful of Minmatar).

I wouldn't go so far as to call that a mistake, and say that the rainbow is all that much more effective. It's situational, and like all ECM, chance-based. We could just have easily run into Min/Cal only gang. This reinforces how critical intel can be. ANY fleet comp we can get from scouts and skirmishers either before undocking or while carrying extra jammers in the cargo hold is worth its weight in gold. Case in point of doing my own intel: as soon as the field filled up in Covryn, I grabbed a screenshot of what we were up against. After getting promptly blown up and waking up in Stacmon, I updated my clone, looked to my left, and saw O'Kais sitting in his clone vat shaking his head. We were down two Kitsunes but now we knew what to bring to the fight. I think we both refitted to AAAGM in Blackbirds, came into Covryn and ran the gauntlet at the gate, bouncing out to range and set to work. So my feedback to scouts and FC: if you know you have a dedicated ECM team, it will never hurt to specify racial distributions of a gang we're chasing, especially the jam-worthiest stuff like Falcons/Blackbirds/Kitsunes/Griffins, or what race of logistics we'd be up against,etc.

The AGONY ECM channel seemed to work well coordinating between us Jammer pilots finding TACs/TAMs to warp to and when, calling targets, and informing the others when our ships were inevitably primaried and turned into space dust. It also worked wonders allowing us to communicate what to refit to, and for trading hulls/mods between ourselves in order to rejoin the fight at best speed. I'm hoping to hear more from the ECM guys on this roam to see what their thoughts were, and especially whether or not the dedicated ECM chat channel was useful to them.

Seconded. Kudos to O'Kais for stepping up and coordinating this. He's taken it from private convo between the two of us on the last roam to a 5-8 person dedicated ECM channel. I think this should be a feature of all basic roams.

Excellent work from my ECM squad; Odontempme, Kalar Freno, Andrei Taganov, Tsuiban, Xolonie, and of course John McGuirk; the real ECM guru.

I'm pretty sure ECM is about not dying first, and jamming the right stuff second. Which makes Andrei the guru, as he's been dragging his 2007 Kitsune around to every roam I've ever been on and it's still not dead. On the other hand, I’m starting to lose hulls like they’re going out of style. As long as I learn from what I did wrong, I see this as a good thing

Kudos to Andrei and John for sticking it out during that kite gang, not dying (thanks in part to our expert logi), and getting jams on that Falcon.

The kudos for me get passed along directly to Gizznit, who kept me from having to dance out. I was hovering over the Warp To button as I watched my bars go from white to red, when suddenly bursts of white started appearing in the sheild bar! The only reason I stuck it out was thanks to Gizznit.

You finally got on a Falcon KM, John, despite their best efforts to kill us both.

Yes, a year-long dream finally realized (my first ship loss was a year ago today... a Griffin to a DNS hotdrop on a Basic roam). It must be all the more infuriating for the Falcon pilot as I'm on the mail with an Amarr jammer. Ahh, it's the little things that make me happy.

And if Andrei's Kitsune didn't die, I'll be pissed. He was in that thing close to the whole roam while John and I both lost 2x Kitsunes and a Blackbird each. Completely unfair.

Speaking only for myself, I die because I'm too aggressive/inexperienced. In the majority of cases I probably could have gotten myself out, but I'm too focused on jamming to notice what's got me targeted and the state of my HP (I like Othran’s UI suggestion, I will try this in the future). I've been getting better with this, and every roam I tend to warp out more and more (I even had a few roams with 0 Kitsune losses). But ultimately my inexperience hurts the fleet, as dead jammers = no jams, and thus I'm depriving the fleet of jammers by dying in avoidable situations. It's something I am continuing to work on

What can we do better?
We should be more diligent calling jams gained and lost. I caught myself a couple of times trying not to clutter comms with five jammers cycling at once, so I understand that it's sometimes inevitable (don't want to step on the FC's comms), but then we need to be on our game in the chat channel letting each other know whose targeters to shut down next, especially when dealing with very dangerous sniper battleships, interceptors, and Falcons warping on and off grid.

Agree, I'm guilty of this as well. Would be interesting to know if the FC/other ECM pilots/ the rest of the fleet thought there was too much jam chatter or if it was getting in the way. It’s also somewhat important to call names if there are multiple people in one shiptype. I’m terrible at this most of the time, but after the fact it seems straightforward.

Next time, let's also try to coordinate what ships and fits we'll be flying before the roam, so we are more standardized when it comes to battle positions and jammer range coming off TACs. If we're all in roughly the same spot, I imagine it makes it easier for logi to get in a position to cover all of us, too.

Again, totally agree. We can talk offline about what resonable expectations for ranges are, and this will help inform how TAMs or TACs are made.
I don’t know if it’s reasonable to expect people to pay attention to / follow through with a thread like the “What are you bringing” thread, maybe I need to incentivize...

Other than that, I'll likely be more directive than reactive next time when it comes to calling jams and moving to TACs. A dedicated TAM artist, or flyby TACs set up on both sides of a gate, would make our ECM squad that much more effective. I'll get to work on those bookmarks. In the meantime, I hope to see you guys again and hope you had as much fun as I did.

I'm 100% on board with you here as well. If it were up to me, I would have TACs set up everywhere (I have actually been working on this over the last week, but I get very little game-time, sadly). Until that happens, I would love to have a dedicated TAM artist that sticks with the ECM team, is in the ECM channel, and does not need to be directed by the FC. He can either be ECM-experienced and know where we want them ahead of time, or we can pre-brief him on getting the critical TAM burnt, then maybe the nice-to-have ones (like one aligned OUTSIDE a gate if we're on the edge of a system) before being released into the fight himself. It may not even be a bad idea to have the ECMO doing this, as may have been mentioned previously.

No Penetration without Radiation.

I'm stealing this and there's nothing you can do to stop me.

[John McGuirk]

Brilliant there were no *oops* friendly fire incidents, either - awesome that everyone in the fleet stayed disciplined and on target.

Big lesson learned from ECM here: I need an alliance column in my overview. How did I learn this valuable lesson? Well, when the cavalry arrived (Tuskers, Rote Kappelle, etc), everyone was flashy red, and I became fixated on all this new high-threat stuff showing up. OMG recons and logi, recompute firing solutions! As a result, I'm pretty sure ECM locked down the Basilisks, Arazu, and a couple Rapiers until we realized what was going on. These were all here to help us, if I'm not mistaken. Caldak, if you could apologize on my behalf for my terrible behavior, that'd be nice. Poor guys respond to a call to arms only to have the guys that called them jamming them. Thank goodness it didn't all go to hell, I'd be on a couple killmails that I shouldn't have been on. I think I even had an Eve University former director (wasn't Dierdra Vaal someone important in E-UNI for a while?) jammed in a Basilisk. Whoops.

The first fight vs. VETO was a bit of an embarrassing bloober we got properly steamrollered by their guardian/zealot gang.

I feel partially responsible for this, as despite setting up at range, getting aligned, and actually surviving for more than a minute, every jam I threw out there failed to land. Every. Single. One. Then I got dead, as I refused to leave the field without having even done a part of my job.

P.S. Jamming smartbombing battleships is pointless btw ;-)

This is not entirely or always true. I'll assume you're talking about the Covryn fight. First off, I have to know which BS are fitted with SB to know which ones NOT to jam. I never know this, and may get better at identifying this in the future. Second, while dedicated SB BS may fill their mids with cap boosters (kinda going out on a limb here, I don't have much experience), the ones on the killboard that have SBs fitted also have points, scrams, and webs in the mids. So jamming them nullifies those. Furthermore, perhaps someone can explain to me why a couple of them are fitted with ECCM and SeBos? Is this just to maintain control over drones? I would argue anything that fits an ECCM is automatically something that needs to be jammed. I understand that the chances go down with ECCM fitted, but philosophically I guess what I'm saying is someone that fitted that ship took steps to protect against jamming. Which means that they don’t want to be jammed.

[Marvin]

Overall a great class and roam. As someone that already had a lot of the theory knowledge beforehand I even picked up a few things (some not that relevant to my w-space living). A few things I noticed that could be improved / converted to wiki articles. Firstly timers, this was confusing for people and it catches a lot of people I know from experience as our KB reflects. D-scan useage, I know this is a bit more advanced and would probs extend the class to long but some tips and tricks on it via the wiki could be good. BM explanation, again I'd more like to say a wiki article than going through that much more in class. Manual piloting, it can be invaluable. My ship survived on the Alumni roam the 8th because of it (see next point) Brackets, this one I am really not sure about. It causes lag however not having them on was the cause for my ship loss on the first roam. While orbiting my target my ship got in range of another Smart Bombing BS on the roam of the 7th, the 8th when we went against the Unicorns I survived a lot better due to manual piloting, ended up still getting my ship and pod blown when I strayed to close but that was a lot further into the encounter and it allowed me to go buy a drake. As said overall good class. You can't really look at putting these things in as it'll make it go on to long but definately wiki articles could help

[Othran]

The problem with GCC mechanics/timers is that Agony as a corp don't really understand them. Some pilots in Agony will understand them fine but most won't - as you saw on the roam. Eg - first thing I'd do if I'm going GCC is launch the drones after I have tackle so there's 5 more GCC targets for the gate guns to cycle through. I think the low-sec fights add a lot of fun to the roam. Null is cool but low-sec is pretty much "next-door" to everyone in high-sec so its nice to have a play there too. For anyone struggling to remember our little discussion about GCC and timers here's a summary.... Pilot A aggresses Pilot B in Amamake : Pilot A now has 4 timers running - 1 minute gate/dock timer; 15 minutes Global Criminal Countdown (GCC); 15 minutes aggression timer to Pilot B AND a 15 minute aggression timer to Minmatar Republic (Faction timer). Any of those timers will be reset to 1min/15mins if you do various acts - or someone does them to you, too long a discussion for here. However the faction timer is what gets people killed, not the GCC timer. The reason is that every time a Minmatar Republic npc "sees you" (ie you land on grid with it) then that 15 minute timer will reset back to 15 minutes. Remember that sentry guns ARE faction npcs. Here's the classic "wtf?" moment that everyone has in low-sec : shoot ship, loot ship, wait for a minute then dock up. GCC timer is now at 14 minutes but the faction timer is at 15 because you went on grid with the npcs as you docked. GCC timer disappears, undock and get wtfpwnd by the guns as you align because you still had 1 minute on the faction timer - which is now 15 minutes again because you undocked. I have watched as one guy died 4 times - remember you have undock immunity so it looks like you're OK until you do anything. Its elegantly evil and I tip my hat to the dev who thought of it Edit - the answer of course is insta-undocks, so you can dump loot and get back out without taking serious damage. Or sit in station/safe for 15 minutes.

[Gavin]

Overall a great class and roam. As someone that already had a lot of the theory knowledge beforehand I even picked up a few things (some not that relevant to my w-space living).

A few things I noticed that could be improved / converted to wiki articles.

Firstly timers, this was confusing for people and it catches a lot of people I know from experience as our KB reflects.

D-scan useage, I know this is a bit more advanced and would probs extend the class to long but some tips and tricks on it via the wiki could be good.

BM explanation, again I'd more like to say a wiki article than going through that much more in class.

Manual piloting, it can be invaluable. My ship survived on the Alumni roam the 8th because of it (see next point)

Brackets, this one I am really not sure about. It causes lag however not having them on was the cause for my ship loss on the first roam. While orbiting my target my ship got in range of another Smart Bombing BS on the roam of the 7th, the 8th when we went against the Unicorns I survived a lot better due to manual piloting, ended up still getting my ship and pod blown when I strayed to close but that was a lot further into the encounter and it allowed me to go buy a drake.

As said overall good class. You can't really look at putting these things in as it'll make it go on to long but definately wiki articles could help

Most of these are the same comments I had after I did my first Basic class. What I know now, but did not know then, is that all these things are covered in the later classes. It's probably because of the roam structure, but I thought Basic was a "how to fly a frigate in PVP" class; it's not. It's really a "basic PVP concepts" course. Bookmarks, timers, and bubble mechanics are all covered in Wolfpacks. The class is already 4-5 hours long on the lecture. I guess over the years Agony has sorted these topics by priority (what do you need to learn first) and grouped them accordingly.

[Bemir]

The problem with GCC mechanics/timers is that Agony as a corp don't really understand them. Some pilots in Agony will understand them fine but most won't - as you saw on the roam. Eg - first thing I'd do if I'm going GCC is launch the drones after I have tackle so there's 5 more GCC targets for the gate guns to cycle through.

I think the low-sec fights add a lot of fun to the roam. Null is cool but low-sec is pretty much "next-door" to everyone in high-sec so its nice to have a play there too.

For anyone struggling to remember our little discussion about GCC and timers here's a summary....

Pilot A aggresses Pilot B in Amamake :

Pilot A now has 4 timers running - 1 minute gate/dock timer; 15 minutes Global Criminal Countdown (GCC); 15 minutes aggression timer to Pilot B AND a 15 minute aggression timer to Minmatar Republic (Faction timer).

Any of those timers will be reset to 1min/15mins if you do various acts - or someone does them to you, too long a discussion for here.

However the faction timer is what gets people killed, not the GCC timer. The reason is that every time a Minmatar Republic npc "sees you" (ie you land on grid with it) then that 15 minute timer will reset back to 15 minutes.

Remember that sentry guns ARE faction npcs.

Here's the classic "wtf?" moment that everyone has in low-sec : shoot ship, loot ship, wait for a minute then dock up. GCC timer is now at 14 minutes but the faction timer is at 15 because you went on grid with the npcs as you docked. GCC timer disappears, undock and get wtfpwnd by the guns as you align because you still had 1 minute on the faction timer - which is now 15 minutes again because you undocked.

I have watched as one guy died 4 times - remember you have undock immunity so it looks like you're OK until you do anything. Its elegantly evil and I tip my hat to the dev who thought of it

Edit - the answer of course is insta-undocks, so you can dump loot and get back out without taking serious damage. Or sit in station/safe for 15 minutes.

this is not correct
if player A goes GCC on player B in open space he will not get any counters toward any npc faction(other than concorde)
if he shows up on grid with other faction npcs with GCC and they atleast manage to lock him, only then will he get a counter towards them

this matters if you have agression towards gate guns but nolonger any GCC, you are free to warp to a station and will not be agressed by the stations gun (unless its a concorde station) even while still running a counter towards the gate guns, also matters if you jump into a new system since agression will not transfer unless you still have GCC
so in a very real sense its GCC that kills you

also im sad i missed saturdays op, the other guys were all very happy about how things turned out =/

Bemir - The Tuskers