89 replies to this topic

[Caldak]

Took the IRC guys on a quick run, was to see how the changes happened. Had a few fights. 1 - Improvements. Wow how few J-s we had thru gates by Mistakes. Tackle on catch points of Bubble - A good. Eyes around systems, was a few good cloaky guys, thanks for that. Recon reports getting better. Lots of WH getting there, thanks to the effort of getting those for us. 2 - To improve. Use of the J word. Tackle, would like more to be found in use. EWar, give us more, that's just me. Your feed back.

[Tsuiban]

I was not on today's roam (had to take a miss, durn it), but some thoughts from other roams:

• I realize the FC needs a lot of information to keep up his situational awareness. However, I wonder if it would reduce his load if he had some dedicated sub-commanders to help out.

Example:

Dedicated scouting commander that could deploy scouts and make sure that things are being scouted efficiently, saving FC's brain cells from having to track that.

This would have to be balanced out with the need for efficient communications. I.e. the following would not work very well:

FC -> Scout Leader - I need MOZLA scouted out
Scout Leader -> Scout - Go to MOZLA let me know what's happening.
Scout (en route to MOZLA) to Scout Leader - RECON!
Scout Leader -> Scout - Go, Recon.
Scout -> Scout Leader - CYNO activation in fleet's system, 10 battleships and a dread, 25 frigates, and maybe 15 cruisers.
Scout Leader -> Scout - Thank you.
Scout Leader -> FC - RECON!
FC -> Scout Leader - Go Recon
Scout Leader -> FC - CYnO activation in fleet system, 10 battleships, 1 dread, ... uhhh... and some other ships... one moment.
Scout Leader -> Scout - Say again what that cyno fleet is?
etc. etc. etc.

Designing a good combat communications web is not a trivial task I admit!

Also, of course, there is the difficulty of finding people who are both willing and capable of fulfilling those subcommander roles. For example, I'm willing, but I'm certainly not qualified. My epitaph would probably say something like:

His men would follow him anywhere, but only out of morbid curiousity of what he'll screw up next.

Aw, geeze, I forgot my other points. I'll remember'em eventually. It's really a bitch getting old, or would be if I remembered how good things used to be.

[AkJon Ferguson]

First, thanks to the scouts, skirmishers, TAM artist, blackbirds and hic/dictors as always. Biggest criticism would be the delayed start. I wasn't at all impressed, I can only imagine how the euro guys (who were nearing their bedtimes when the roam officially 'started') felt. The 'we're running over an hour late, now let's completely change fleet composition' idea (when we already had a perfectably respectable fleet) only compounded that. Aside from that it was a decent roam. I'd still like to see lists of roles and people filling them ahead of time, shrug. A few more battlecruisers and we could have tangled with that last gang. Oh well, maybe next time. As to why there wasn't enough tackle, that's a real mystery ... Ship types. 1 - Battlecruisers 2 - Destroyers 3 - Grifin/Blackbird/Falcon 4 - Covert - Ops = 3 at the most. 5 - Logistics - Possible. Mystery solved!

[Caldak]

First, thanks to the scouts, skirmishers, TAM artist, blackbirds and hic/dictors as always.

Biggest criticism would be the delayed start. I wasn't at all impressed, I can only imagine how the euro guys (who were nearing their bedtimes when the roam officially 'started') felt. The 'we're running over an hour late, now let's completely change fleet composition' idea (when we already had a perfectably respectable fleet) only compounded that.

Aside from that it was a decent roam. I'd still like to see lists of roles and people filling them ahead of time, shrug. A few more battlecruisers and we could have tangled with that last gang. Oh well, maybe next time.

As to why there wasn't enough tackle, that's a real mystery ...

Ship types.
1 - Battlecruisers
2 - Destroyers
3 - Grifin/Blackbird/Falcon
4 - Covert - Ops = 3 at the most.
5 - Logistics - Possible.

Mystery solved!

Brought another 25 + Agony, with. Alumni were to be my punch. I'm getting to trust you boys. Strange but true.
Took a look and seen that out of the 25 that came with to stacmon, around 3/4 had faded. = No Tackle.
1hr late start, took that long to get close to the WH from were I was with IRC.
Change in ship, had eyes on the 3 fleets that were in MHC or moving thru.

So yea frustration noted.
Will do a nice Christmas run to make it.Just my Alumni peeps.

[Silivay]

Crazy ECM Jamming - the kills all had 3-6 jammers on them. If we have a fight with more ships, the ECM will be nice. Reliable TAM artist, thanks Robbbin! Understanding what the FC considers critical (break break), good recon (recon) or just information (typed in fleet) would be useful. Perhaps a quick brief before the next roam? 1) We set up the bubble at the sun, but the target fleet managed a warp in at their optimal. Why couldn't we get a cloaky to get us a drop or warpable scan on them? We have been pretty lucky doubling back in the past - catching the tail-end of a leaving fleet. 2) What was the plan at the bubble? Blast'um when they got there? Anything more? It seems like a pretty big fleet, both logistics and battlecruisers to try and jam. We need another skirmishers class With great respect, Silivay

[Bormand]

• I realize the FC needs a lot of information to keep up his situational awareness. However, I wonder if it would reduce his load if he had some dedicated sub-commanders to help out.

........

My comment on your first point; more communication "hops" you have, more information you will loose on each hop, and misunderstanding will be created, I would go for direct comm as it is now ,but this is just my opinion.


On the other hand , the roam was more demanding than usual , we were not really concentrated yesterday. I do not know why, I'm just hopping it's a temporary thing

I personally didn't mind to wait almost 2 hours, not understanding why we are waiting did get on my nerves a bit ( not much dough, just a little bit )

When Caldak was searching for 16 minmatar bs pilots for smarties, I express the fact I cannot fly minmatar bs, nor large smart bombs. The answer I got was "Caldak don't need to know what you can't do".... Ok, but maybe FC can read between the lines and understand he has all my support , and I would love to do it , but I cant.

AS for the new roles thingy, Bormand is here with you, in the roams, to understand and learn what other roles means . He doesn't have the balls yet to get other role than dps for the simple reason he is scared to screw up and lose people ships and isk. thinking maybe to try the TAM Artist role in the future (I could fraps better from there lol )

And one more thing
Can someone explain what is this KISS CLUB thingy?
Because what I understood is this :
If Agony is the Maserati Owner Club, Kiss, is the "want to be " Maserati Owner Club member, or "want to do the same " Club... So if I am "cruising" down the road in my '97 Fiat Bravo, I can wear a Maserati T-shirt, and be proud of it.... or ?!?!? I get it all wrong again... For me Kiss Club is being Agony for a few hours a month, without quitting my friends in my corp, sharing and learning in the same time. And yes, it can be seen a bit exclusive... And yes, after each roam and each thing I am learning , I will bring more value in my corp and I can teach my friends what I am learning

I'll fly with you guys as long as you will let me do it .
Thanks

[Agnes Nitt]

I'm sorry I had to bail. I had unexpected guests and had to log off. If it wasn't for them I wouldn't mind waiting for fleet form up and late start.

[Bormand]

And the video, only the first engagement , I left right before the second one

[roigon]

After a tumbleweed slowly rolled over chat when Caldak asked for cloaky eyes/scouts I figured "what the heck, I've never done this before but I love my cov ops so lets just try it". In the end looking back, I didn't really feel comfortable in my task, I wasn't totally sure what I should be doing on own initiative and how often I should sign in with the FC. I also didn't feel I contributed all that much to the fleet, well I guess in reporting where fights weren't to be had when being sent to TXW-EI and HED-GP. I also fell into lone-cov ops mode a few times while traveling, not reporting to fleet if there where bubbles or if the system was empty even though I should have known I was just 1 or 2 jumps in front of the fleet in a few instances. It didn't really help that caldak just said "the cov ops pilot" and I had to guess if he meant me or the other cov ops pilots. I don't expect him to know my name, but small annoyances. I had a little moment of perceived usefulness in 8G, first with the archons which proved a bust and later with the cane fleet in which the enemy cov ops was simply faster in getting a warp-in spot then I was. Resulting in the enemy gang jumping into VOL-MI and warping to the fleet, instead of the reverse happening. I'm now really looking forward to the cov ops class and hope I can get better at this, although I'm frankly not so sure if I would ever volunteer for it again. While the fleet is fighting you're basically sitting there not even able to spin your ship in an enjoyable manner because you're cloaked. Travel was often slow and inefficient with having only tacs in certain parts of syndicate and in the main pipe of curse. I also felt annoyed when I heard Caldak talk about how targets where getting away because of lack of points and scrams on said targets, knowing I had previously been sitting in stacmon in a heavy tackle vengeance. I felt I could have been more useful in that ship then in my cov ops sitting on a tac watching space move past.

[Othran]

First the delay, these things happen, no big deal. However I was pretty sleepy when we did get going (it was 23:40 evetime when we undocked) so I can only imagine what some of the central/eastern Euro TZ guys felt like. Took us all a bit of time to get anywhere near up to speed - more than normal, which was (for me anyway) down to the delay. I felt a lot more awake a couple of hours later.

Not many fights, not surprising really as server had 32,000 online when we undocked and 23,000 when we finished. That's the same population as October 2008 so we better hope whatever Winter brings helps.

We had our fair share of luck too - me getting traffic control and then -A- landing on top of me on VOL-MI while I waited, we'd have got eaten alive by that gang and no mistake. I think they chickened out at the end though, probably thought we had some more peeps in KLMT.

The engagement at the sun in 8G-M should have taught us all something very important - ANY ship (except TAM) which isn't aligned between bubble and gate potentially gives them a nice easy warp-in & kill.

We should have had :

Hictor -> BCs @ 30km -> ECM @ 50km -> dictor @ 100km from hictor, all nicely aligned to the gate - so the targets would have to bounce to avoid bubbles/get the kill. Next time we'll know better.

From a personal viewpoint I learned a lot. I'm starting to understand, if not anticipate what is wanted from Mr Caldak with a hictor. I still don't know how I got out from the sun in 8G-M, logs show Caldak warping fleet at 04:13:46 and my bubble was up for another 16 secs - I thought it was more like 10 at the time. I guess we weren't the only ones having "tackle problems" mmm? Certainly squeaky bum time that's for sure

On comms - a little less "break, break" and a bit more "recon" really, things got better the longer we went on. Anyone doing covops/scout for the first time then well done, if you're doing dzu's covops class next week a lot of things will become clearer/easier. Its a role people either love or hate IME.

tl;dr slow start, sleepy Euro TZ people, better later when people woke up

Thanks to all, was fun.

[Angelio]

As spiking form the perspective of those Euro TZ guys I didn’t mind that roam started at midnight at my time but what almost gat me asleep was the docking time while light dictior was fitted. So just my suggestion don’t use to long bio brakes late at roam as it was 4 or 5 am at my local time so any brake longer than 10 to 15 min you risk losing pilots. Scouts plz don’t use “brake brake” if it is not urgent matter as I usually jump when I hear it on coms ready for action. And after hearing it for 5 times yesterday I just wasn’t so jumpy any more so I just imagine how mach the FC was irritated. For our TAM yesterday nice work Robbbin. Just next time don’t go further than 220 km form center of engagement as if I warp my BB to 100 km of you I could be out of my targeting range so I have to burn back or warp again on 100 km to some other fleet member. Both option takes to mach time I could spend jamming… Looking forward for next raom

[Othran]

As spiking form the perspective of those Euro TZ guys I didn’t mind that roam started at midnight at my time but what almost gat me asleep was the docking time while light dictior was fitted.

He didn't really have a choice there - I was still in VOL-MI bouncing around -A-'s probes for part of that. Given he'd lost all light interdictors he couldn't afford to lose the heavy too. Would have been roam over as we had hardly any fast tackle left by then.

Personally I'd have welcomed a break/stretch legs at that point as the Broadsword appears to align slower than a nanodrake, making watching the HLW gate interesting with 7 probes on short-range scan.

I guess it kept me awake anyway

Probably freaked them out a little too, wondering why a hictor kept showing up on scan every few seconds.

[Vora]

Very nice roam. A very slow start (the 1.5h waiting time could have been used to set up the proper fleet composition) but when the roam got on the way the speed stepped up rather quickly. Fleet stayed together tightly across 3 regions, splitting up the heavies were no problem, so you could see that it wasn't a class roam. Scouting ahead in Syndicate was a little complicated (for a greenhorn like me) with the many changes of direction, but that got better in Catch and Curse. Unfortunately there was mostly *tumbleweed* to be scouted. A quite empty 0.0 for a friday. I got some good opportunities to tackle, well until I met my Waterloo at the Doril gate in Jorund where I lost a Cane when I crashed full speed against the gate how embarrasing! Punishment followed on foot on the other side of the gate, while tackling a Drake, when a second batch of GENOS arrived including a Dram. Justice served, I guess... (at least we got that Drake ) With less than a mill in the wallet and all ships either in Hageken or Stacmon the roam was over for me but I flew home with smile on my face. Fortunately, there is still an Ares and a donated Firetail in Stacmon. All in all slow start, a lot maneuvering in the middle and a fast end (for me). There are still some rough edges to round. I'm looking forward to the next one.

[Othran]

Punishment followed on foot on the other side of the gate, while tackling a Drake, when a second batch of GENOS arrived including a Dram. Justice served, I guess... (at least we got that Drake )

Got a geddon too IIRC. Didn't get the pods though which is a shame as there's usually some expensive stuff in Genos/Hydra's heads. Some of those canes looked fully bonused and snaked to me, they were doing nearly 3km/sec which is LG snake/skirmish mindlink territory.

[Corywyn]

Can someone explain what is this KISS CLUB thingy?

it's just a name for the Alumni roams, nothing more, nothing less.

[Leonidas Tokugawa]

Sorry I missed this. I look forward too joining my fellow Alumnus on these roams...

[Sadamu]

Despite the frustrations, I think it was a great learning experience. The slow start was understandable in retrospect, given what Caldak was trying to set up -- though a little clearer sense of what we were waiting for at the time would have helped, I think. The main effect of the delay, at least to me, was that it took a few misses for us to figure out what role everyone was filling. It felt like there was a bit of a comms loop between "what are you flying?" and "well, what do you need?" and "well, what are you flying?". Splitting the heavies off into a separate group helped, for example. But I think it would've been more effective if we'd formed that subgroup from the outset (either as directed by FC or at least for ourselves). Speaking as one of the heavies, I'm now kicking myself for all the times in my head I thought "hmm... I wonder why the heavies aren't working closer together?". Lesson for me perhaps to not automatically assume "if the FC wanted it he'd have said it". ;-) The landing they made on us at the sun was a thing of beauty -- an excellent example of identifying a tactical opportunity and executing it precisely. Not the most epic fights I've been in, but so much to learn from. Thanks again to Caldak, scouts, TAM artists, and all the other support!

[AkJon Ferguson]

The engagement at the sun in 8G-M should have taught us all something very important - ANY ship (except TAM) which isn't aligned between bubble and gate potentially gives them a nice easy warp-in & kill.

We should have had :

Hictor -> BCs @ 30km -> ECM @ 50km -> dictor @ 100km from hictor, all nicely aligned to the gate - so the targets would have to bounce to avoid bubbles/get the kill. Next time we'll know better.

Excellent point (and if it had been typed in fleet chat like that at the time I think it would have helped immensely.) I was in my drake exactly midway between the bubblers (I had no tackle so thought it made sense to stay within heavy missile range of both) and had one blackbird with me. But had I been in a blackbird I probably would have made the same mistake our hapless blackbird pilot did (I'd have probably tried to set up at a point about 65km off each bubbler.)

I'm wondering if the TAM artist should have a cloak so that they can't get a warp-in on him (he'd mwd to position uncloaked first ofc.) Maybe not worth it.

[Othran]

The engagement at the sun in 8G-M should have taught us all something very important - ANY ship (except TAM) which isn't aligned between bubble and gate potentially gives them a nice easy warp-in & kill.

We should have had :

Hictor -> BCs @ 30km -> ECM @ 50km -> dictor @ 100km from hictor, all nicely aligned to the gate - so the targets would have to bounce to avoid bubbles/get the kill. Next time we'll know better.

Excellent point (and if it had been typed in fleet chat like that at the time I think it would have helped immensely.) I was in my drake exactly midway between the bubblers (I had no tackle so thought it made sense to stay within heavy missile range of both) and had one blackbird with me. But had I been in a blackbird I probably would have made the same mistake our hapless blackbird pilot did.

I'm wondering if the TAM artist should have a cloak so that they can't get a warp-in on him (he'd mwd to position uncloaked first ofc.) Maybe not worth it.

The thing is Jon, the ONLY reason I'm noticing this now is that I have the time to do it. I'm sitting at zero on the sun, bubble up essentially twiddling my thumbs/watching scan and you lot. You're all warping about/moving into position etc.

Next time I do that role I'll remember to check everyones' alignment - hictor is the anchor of the whole thing in that scenario anyway, which is one of the (obvious) things I learned last night. None of it works if someone is misaligned and they have probes out or covops on grid, and that is not obvious at all to anyone who is in a role other than bubbler. Hictor and dictor pilots need to sort this out and ensure alignment etc - which of course they do in regular corp roams. We're learning though.

Re TAM - if he's cloaked then someone will sooner or later WTZ on him when he's doing a quick scout rather than TAM. I don't think as a group we're ready for cloaky TAMs

Edit - also if they warp to TAM gang has time to get out, not like they land on you like last night. TAM shouldn't get caught anyway.

[Marvin]

tbh I can't recall much of the portion of the roam I attended. I realised when I lost my ship that I was way to tired and just about a lemming reason I called it for myself when I got back to stacmon (it was 2:30am my time and a meh day at work)

[AkJon Ferguson]

As spiking form the perspective of those Euro TZ guys I didn’t mind that roam started at midnight at my time but what almost gat me asleep was the docking time while light dictior was fitted. So just my suggestion don’t use to long bio brakes late at roam as it was 4 or 5 am at my local time so any brake longer than 10 to 15 min you risk losing pilots.

I was very puzzled when we flew right through Ostingele past Stacmon (without going in) to take a bio in low-sec (Dour or Dwahr in Caldak-speak) and then it dawned on me that Caldak probably did that precisely to minimize the number of people dropping fleet. Not sure if I approve but at least I understand.

I think the late start was a huge deal for a lot of people but nobody likes angering Caldak so they just drop. I could be wrong.

[Malthus]

Overall I thought the roam was good- we missed some targets and got out-maneuvered once but we still got some kills and didn't welp. I learned a LOT, especially about fleet positioning and some of the more advanced stuff. Almost burned out my MWD too (need to remember to carry Nanite Paste!). Two issues I saw were: 1) communication- we needed to call our tackle/ewar better, scouting info was spotty. 2) tackle- we just didn't have enough of it, especially scrams/webs to deal with the nano stuff. This was largely a function of us losing most of the IRC guys. The wait for the roam to start was rather long and it wasn't clear exactly what was going on- more info would have been appreciated. Thanks to Caldak and the scouts/bubblers for a great roam though!

[Othran]

As spiking form the perspective of those Euro TZ guys I didn’t mind that roam started at midnight at my time but what almost gat me asleep was the docking time while light dictior was fitted. So just my suggestion don’t use to long bio brakes late at roam as it was 4 or 5 am at my local time so any brake longer than 10 to 15 min you risk losing pilots.

I was very puzzled when we flew right through Ostingele past Stacmon (without going in) to take a bio in low-sec (Dour or Dwahr in Caldak-speak) and then it dawned on me that Caldak probably did that precisely to minimize the number of people dropping fleet. Not sure if I approve but at least I understand.

think the late start was a huge deal for a lot of people but nobody likes angering Caldak so they just drop. I could be wrong.

Frankly I lost track of how many times we were going to Dour then MHC - no joke That's roams though, got to take what comes when its quiet.

The "mixed" roams with IRC are interesting to me - you can see some of them "stepping up" and others who clearly aren't happy what they're doing. Like all of us they're learning too.

"Angering Caldak" - hmmm I think I'm the only person that I've ever heard him swearing at out of corp channels and I deserved it. So I can speak on that with a little authority - he doesn't hold grudges, he just wants to know what you can do/will do. That includes fixing what you do wrong (like me with big mouth).

Caldak is harsh with comments at times when he doesn't recognise your name/voice or he's getting no info - and in those instances you put your point of view to him when its quiet on comms - eg the Hydra drake last night when I told him it died on gate and that's why nobody went through after it. He's also harsh on people he thinks should be doing better - tell him when you feel you can't do something, I did and I'm not exactly "excluded".

I think we all tend to forget that roams like this are almost out of Caldak's "comfort zone" - he's got hardly any Agony people around, loads of people he barely knows and he has to deliver some entertainment.

That's quite stressful if you've been "herding a bunch of kittens" prior to roam. I'm not being an apologist for him (it actually sounds like I'm a fanboi but meh) but its not a walk in the park and having some "reliable" alumni around helps him. The delay didn't though - everyone was pretty quiet for a while.

I'd like to see IRC back again, maybe try to get them to dump a JC at start point this time? Its useful for alumni that they do come back because both groups probably recognise/understand certain voices (eg my dulcet tones ) but things fell apart enough last night that it'd be good to try again WITHOUT relying on voice to ID you.

There was one IRC guy who was giving decent scout info but I couldn't understand him (and Caldak wasn't reading fleet at the time). He'd have done great if he just spoke up a bit. Caldak did seem a little hard on him at times but I dunno what went on in the hours before "our" roam. It'd be nice to see him back again.

[Tsuiban]

• I realize the FC needs a lot of information to keep up his situational awareness. However, I wonder if it would reduce his load if he had some dedicated sub-commanders to help out.

........

My comment on your first point; more communication "hops" you have, more information you will loose on each hop, and misunderstanding will be created, I would go for direct comm as it is now ,but this is just my opinion.

You are absolutely right that "fidelity" of the communications goes down the more relays you have, no doubt. I think I even alluded to that in the scenario I put at the end of the post. It is difficult to get a good balance between uncluttered communications channels and fidelity of communications - sort of like balancing ECM, DPS, etc. in a fleet. I don't know what the answer is, but I sure admire the question!

Seriously, I wasn't on the roam, just scanned down WHs for the fleet before the roam this time (real life is such a bummer sometimes) so can't speak to this particular roam. I was musing in general. Hey, if ya don't try stuff and succeed or fail, how're you ever going to progress, right? (let's see... cost of learning with agony to date: 7 rifters, 2 kitsune, 1 cheetah [cheetah due to a server disconnect]). Just wait until I stat going for my Agony PhD. Probably get up into Scorpions and such as the tuition cost

(yes, I'm strange. ECM and cloaky-scouty things are what I enjoy most so far)

[glepp]

When Caldak was searching for 16 minmatar bs pilots for smarties, I express the fact I cannot fly minmatar bs, nor large smart bombs. The answer I got was "Caldak don't need to know what you can't do".... Ok, but maybe FC can read between the lines and understand he has all my support , and I would love to do it , but I cant.

Yeah, sorry about being a bit harsh there, but forming up was absolute murder and people were spamming fleet chat.

When Caldak is trying to get a complex fleet set up, he doesn't need moral support. I appreciate that you wanted to give it, but just that kind of thing really kills the FCs focus and adds unneeded clutter. When the FC asks for something, let him know if you can provide it, if not, hold your peace.

I appreciate the enthusiasm, but there is a time and place for everything.