40 replies to this topic

[roigon]

I got a chance to redeem myself at least a tiny bit by informing the agony skirmishers and petra whom where doing a roleplay engagement that an earlier spotted proteus was coming their way, which I like to think at least contributed a little bit to them expecting it and being able to catch it.

Thanks for stepping up on scouting, roigon (and any of the other CovOps students that helped out on the roam). Caldak is a great FC to run as eyes for.

I was very sorry to be shut out of the action due to internet problems so I'm happy you were there to contribute to the killing.

Well wasn't so much stepping up as at least in my eyes the practicum roam part of the class ^.^

Weren't a lot of us though, but the fact that it was a sunday evening for the euro's probably had a bit to do with that. (america? asia? australia? nah never heard of those places. There's only europe)


As some more feedback on the roam, a bit of a pre-roam briefing for the student scouts would have been nice, getting a clear outline of what is expected of the scout for the roam and how it "should" play out. Which inevitably will go different, but having some firmer handles on that would have been nice. It did happen partly, telling us to go look for WH's, and giving us systems to go scout, but Caldak was more concerned with the SB fleet then with the scouts, which perhaps wasn't that strange since we had a hand full of scouts and at least 30 SB pilots and obviously a FC needs to rely on scouts not hold their hands. But seeing as we're not experienced scouts yet some amount of hand holding would have been nice.

The initial fleet form up was pretty messy/slow as well. It felt like it took a while for people to sink in that they had to go from stacmon to 31- more or less on own initiative with the help of various people scouting the route. I think mostly because of expectation, in both basic and wolfpack the class forms up in stacmon and moves from there, this break in format probably created some confusion.

That would certainly be a point of potential improvement for the SB/cov-ops roam portion; A more formal briefing before hand in terms of initiative and self-sufficiency. Perhaps also add in the class sign-up post that people are expected to have at least a certain coverage of tacs in syndicate. I personally have been greedily bookmarking all the free tac's I could get during previous roams, but some others hadn't, and not having tacs does impede travel speed quite a bit. Especially if one does not yet feel completely comfortable navigating null. Obviously there will still be people who won't have tac's, but those who want to be prepared will be able to go out in syndicate before hand and create some. (yes the catch-22 did not escape me in this, with having to go out in a cov-ops to make tacs so you can go to a cov-ops class)

[Vjorn]

Especially if one does not yet feel completely comfortable navigating null. Obviously there will still be people who won't have tac's, but those who want to be prepared will be able to go out in syndicate before hand and create some. (yes the catch-22 did not escape me in this, with having to go out in a cov-ops to make tacs so you can go to a cov-ops class)

To be honest, when Cr8r started the Covop class back up...I did the exact same thing. It is sloooow going burning out to 1k for an off-grid tac whilst cloaked, isn't it heheheh

However, there is a quicker (and cheaper) ship to use for making your INITIAL on/off-grid gate tacs.....a cheap t1 frig such as the vigil. This is what I now use:

Spoiler

[Vigil, TAC Maker]
Damage Control II
Overdrive Injector System II
Overdrive Injector System II

Catalyzed Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
'Cetus' ECM Shockwave I
Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters

Prototype Cloaking Device I
Auto Targeting System I
Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Auxiliary Thrusters I
Small Low Friction Nozzle Joints I

Rigs are personal choice. ECM burst and auto-targeter are for cap dumping when my internet connection is slow (90% of the time ).

Obviously, for the more specialized BM's, you return later in a covop and create them.

[roigon]

Especially if one does not yet feel completely comfortable navigating null. Obviously there will still be people who won't have tac's, but those who want to be prepared will be able to go out in syndicate before hand and create some. (yes the catch-22 did not escape me in this, with having to go out in a cov-ops to make tacs so you can go to a cov-ops class)

To be honest, when Cr8r started the Covop class back up...I did the exact same thing. It is sloooow going burning out to 1k for an off-grid tac whilst cloaked, isn't it heheheh

However, there is a quicker (and cheaper) ship to use for making your INITIAL on/off-grid gate tacs.....a cheap t1 frig such as the vigil. This is what I now use:

Well personally I just burn them unclocked in a cov-ops with MWD on, which goes at about 2.5km/s, fast enough for me. (although I did just finally finished interceptors and now own a Crusader that goes about twice that )

[Othran]

Could someone explain what Caldak was saying about the size column? My daughter was sleeping next to me (wife at work) so I couldn't ask any verbal questions.
For some reason even when we were TPing Cat3 I couldn't see the size increase as was indicated.

He was saying that you could see whether people had mwd on or not, whether they had shield extenders etc from the size column. The only problem is you can't - and as far as I'm aware its never worked.

I found an old post of mine on eve-o from February 2009 asking exactly what you're asking now - I sat on a high-sec gate ship-scanning everyone that went past, made no difference to sig radius whether they had shield extenders fitted or mwd on. Right-click and show info doesn't show any difference either. Edit - right-click does appear to show sig radius change with a painter on target though, but not when target is mwd'ing.

I think Marvin noticed that the size column seems to simply be the length of the ship and nothing else?

[Pesets]

I was kinda confused about that too, to be honest. For me, it never worked, but some people seemed to be saying that they can see the difference. Will need to look into it later i suppose. Overall, i gotta say that the whole "let's test this out live" approach began to get a bit tiresome towards the end. I've kinda come to expect Agony lecturers to have specific curriculum and the timeframe to cover it. This time, four hours into the lecture we still weren't done with basic bombing practice, because earlier we got sidetracked measuring how much fuel a frigate consumes, how stacking penalty affects target painters, etc etc. I ended up having to log off before the lecture was over, because i didn't plan on it being that long and RL stuff has come up. I mean, i also like to experiment - but i feel it's better to leave that sort of stuff for either after the lecture, or before the roam. Also, yes, the whole whiteboard thing was confusing. If you're going to use that, you want to draw all bookmarks at once and explain what's going on. Going back and forth and creating bookmarks one at a time, without clear sense of what we're trying to do, seemed to get a lot of people a bit disoriented. Still, learned a lot of useful stuff as always. Unfortunately, couldn't participate in the roam... here's hoping for a re-run of this class some time later

[Totshiessemann]

I enjoyed the class and learned a lot. I am going to focus only on things I think can make the class better. So while my comments may seem all negative my overall experience was overwhelmingly positive. 1) SISI Although my opening statement says otherwise, I must comment on what a great idea to hold the class on SISI was. I know that it was a pain to set up and CCP snuck an update in on us the day of the class to make it even worse. BUT, I cannot imagine holding this class on TQ. Even if we could find a place where nobody showed up to interfere with the class (unlikely), the ability to hold live fire exercises with only pride at risk was an enormous help. The thought of turning 30 complete (or relative to Agony) bombing noobs loose with bomb launchers on TQ gives me the heebie jeebies. So for a little bit of pain you get a lot of goodness. This probably has applications beyond just stealth bombers. It would also have been a good idea to suggest that everyone preassemble and have ready a handful of stealth bombers set up for bombs and torps, a couple of small ships to gatecamp with and a cyno capable ship if skills allow to expedite things during the class. 2) Time The 5 1/2 hours was a little bit long. I am sure that we (or at least I) would have benefitted from an entire Caldak hour (1 day) practicing bombing runs but by the end of the class my mind was really starting to tune out. It also seemed like the later parts (cyno and gatecamp evasion) were somewhat rushed and we never actually did a pure torp run. I admit that if you can do a bomb run the torp run should be easy but the mechanics are somewhat different. Further development of the reading material should help speed things up in later classes. 3) Reading Material The original page of reading material was very good and I felt that it was a pretty complete overview. The advanced stealth bomber material that we read during the class was very interesting reading, well written and very complete. Well, it would have been if we could see the pictures but I had dug up some similar illustrations from another location so I had some idea what they looked like. It would be nice if a write-up of the bombing run(s) (and/or torp run(s)) that the class is going to attempt to execute be added. The discussion of fittings was very good but the vast majority of that could have been covered in the reading material. It is nice to "see" the effects of the various modules but realistically the only person seeing the effects was Caldak and he was telling us the results. That works equally well in writing and saves considerable time. SISI is right there is anyone wants to test the results. That would be readily follows by a suggested class fit, a sample bomber fit and a sample torp fit. Of course you could have 30 different fits and still not cover every use a good solid baseline always helps. The cyno portion would also be well served with a reading section talking about duration, capacity and application. 4) White Board I found this to be completely ineffective. I can see the potential there but it was not realized for me in the class. Even when the board was not under attack by anonymity tanked graffiti monkeys, trying to alt tab back and forth between my client and the whiteboard meant that I never did see anything useful there. 5) Bombing Run Practice As the heart of the class we spent the most time doing this and could have spent much more time on it without too many complaints. It was great to be able to do live fire bombing runs in a controlled environment. The feedback on how much damage we were inflicting was also good. The execution of the bombing runs was a little confusion though. What we were executing was a combination of the methods we were presented and the timing of the commands varied. The part about you-can-exit was about as simple as it could get. As presented in the reading material a pure bombing run should entail a minimum amount of time on grid uncloaked with bombs on target. I think that a structured graduation of the bombing runs with each run detailed in the reading material would have been more useful and suffered from less confusion. What I envision would be: Here is your set-up without your warp-in bookmark 40km off the target (can) aligned to your out bookmark. Now you are going to make the following runs: Run 1, Noob Bombing: Warp in, align to the target and stop at 30 km. At the command decloak->bomb-> warp. This run would be without possible retaliation from the target and just to give everyone of picture of what a near perfect bomb placement looks like and to burn off the jitters. Run 2, Basic Bomb Run: Warp in and hold. At the command full align and just before 30km decloak->bomb->warp. This would be opposed (target trying to kill you.) Run 3, Paint+Damp+Bomb: Warp in->align->decloak->paint+damp->bomb at 30 km-> warp. This one uses the TP's to assist the wave before you, the damps to try to keep you alive and your practice from before to get your bomb on target and your ship out. This one is obviously opposed. Run 4, Maximum Carnage: Add in torps to the previous run. After that people should have a pretty good idea of what they are doing. Then you can do the warp-in on a new bubble location with the "target 2 jumps out" call and let everyone set themselves up and see how well the runs go. I think setting up a good bookmark pair under pressure is the real test here. But it is good practice and I felt really gave a good feel for actual operations. 6) Cynos This was interesting as I had never made a cyno jump before. I already mentioned about including the information in the reading material. I can’t think of a good way to make this useful in the class so I cannot suggest an improvement. When we were setting up for the gate camp I did wonder for a second if in reality we were about to be hit from a stealth bomber attack cyno’ed in behind us but decided that would be too hard to pull off with common comms and not enough Agony around to do it on their own. It would have been funny though. 7) Breaking Gate Camps This could be a class all its own. In a Covops it should be very easy to get past a gate camp if you take your time and execute properly. The basics are simple, if you spawn deep in a bubble power re-approach and cloak. If you are near a bubble edge or out of it completely all you have to do is get cloaked before you get locked, don’t be where they last saw you headed and warp to your selected spot before somebody manages to decloak you. I spawned near the edge of the bubble. I thought, heh, this is gonna be easy! I was scrolled out looking around and saw 2 campers cross in front of my nose. I should have waited but I saw my chance and decided to pop out behind them and be gone before they had a chance. Unfortunately, I was scrolled too far out and rushed so I hit MWD first, then clicked in the wrong place and was an early show on grid. Not a good combination and I went ‘splodey like I should have due to carelessness. That is how it should be and another plug for SISI training. Overall I thought that it was a great class and I hope that some of my comments make it even better for the next groups.

[sundarbolt]

As a quick update, been reading about these new BCs. People are going mental as they appear to be a ganker's dream, especially this Tornado with it's 8 x 1400mm guns. Obvious prey looking like Hi-sec Orcas, hulks, freighters etc. How's a ship with 8 x 1400mm guns gonna hit anything destroyer sized or less though? Occurs to me; Stealth Bombers would have a field day against them, not to mention our wolfpack and Basic tactics. Hope you are all practising

[DocD]

Thanks Othran. I didn't think the size meant what was being implied but I've gotten used to hearing nothing but astonishing facts from Caldak so my brain just couldn't say no to the results I saw. Pesets: in defense of the class, this was just the first run of the SB class and I am sure AGU will go back a do a write up with our shared ideas/results. Still, I enjoyed in the light moments where we tested theories out. I will easily say atleast half the class didn't know to use SiSi as a testing grounds for tactics (among other things) Caldak, will we still have access to the advanced wiki SB materials after the pics permissions have been fixed? I for one would like to see the rest of pics in that article.

[Othran]

Did a bit of a test on size etc and this is what I saw : 1) makes no difference what is fitted on target; 2) right-click->show info says the same as overview; 3) another pilot painting target shows no difference on overview or right-click; 4) painting target yourself shows no difference on overview but does on right-click. Make of that what you will Edit - you should have the pics now Doc. I do.

[DocD]

I see most of the pics now on the Adv. SB article, but 3 still missing: clawcallin.jpg, DanCloCall.jpg and flybycallin.jpg One can guess the look of two of these images, but seeing the DanCloCall image that shows the Wheel setup/flow would be helpful.

[Marvin]

I will say it was a great class. Firstly Sisi was a good idea, maybe just mention that we will have 'live' targets on Sisi. It definitely beats setting up in a wh with an effect negating what you are trying to teach. Also having it on Sisi and the ability Whiteboard, can't really comment as it didn't let me in on it. Things I felt was useful for myself. The detailed discussion of modules for fitting, it really made me think about why I fit some modules. Imho it's great that not one fit was prescribed, a SB is a very versatile ship and you fit it according to your preference / needs, to many viable options came out from there. Putting it in a wiki article could be a good move to speed up some time for the practical, I do feel that considerations around rigs could have been a nice added, I personally like the missile velocity rig not for the extended range but for getting to the target quicker, I've though not considered a Polycarbon housing and maybe swap out my nano in the low. A lot of EFTing needs to happen after the class I feel. To the guys that was against the practical of the modules like the sensor damp and the Target Painter, I felt it was good and a lot better than just rambling the figures off, it added a lot more meaning to the words. I do agree that the fuel calcs were a bit to much and rather just have it in that the mass (MWD), distance and skills of the BOps pilot all play a role in the fuel consumption. It's something to consider but the practical and checking of the useage of a fuel I feel could be better used in an article rather than the detailed information we went into the fuel useage. On the bombing runs, I can say they went down great. Was good to see from BM 1 (way at the top) the other groups with tactical overlay on helped a lot in seeing where the bombs were going of everyone. The gate camp running was a nice 'extra' or it seemed like an extra, I def need to know more. I've not much 0.0 exposure, though thanks to my wh live I know bubble mechanics well enough just not the camps, would love to at a later point have some more practise on them I was just getting What could have been done was giving potential considerations for fitting before going through the modules, things like your cloak is your tank, movement speed while cloaked and not warping, gtfo ability, increasing DPS and survivability through these. Fleet composition considerations and fittings i.e. recon / T3 supported fleet vs a pure SB fleet. DIfferences in flying / fitting between these 2 fleets. Overall great class, meh roam with lack of targets wanting / to engage. Did end up with the nice Proteus bait.

[Othran]

I see most of the pics now on the Adv. SB article, but 3 still missing: clawcallin.jpg, DanCloCall.jpg and flybycallin.jpg

One can guess the look of two of these images, but seeing the DanCloCall image that shows the Wheel setup/flow would be helpful.

Actually yeah I'm the same, I can't see them either.

The wheel is very nice and is the only one I haven't seen/worked out before. It looks quite easy to screw up with current decloak mechanics but if whats on sisi makes it to TQ... Clever stuff and annoyingly I don't think I'd ever have thought of it.

[Kalar Freno]

A couple of responses to previous posts, and then I'll do my feedback on the roam:

To be honest, when Cr8r started the Covop class back up...I did the exact same thing. It is sloooow going burning out to 1k for an off-grid tac whilst cloaked, isn't it heheheh

However, there is a quicker (and cheaper) ship to use for making your INITIAL on/off-grid gate tacs.....a cheap t1 frig such as the vigil. This is what I now use:

The Vigil works well (tho my fit is much cheaper than yours! I pretty much only fit a T1 MWD and 3 overdrives!), but another trick you can use (stolen shamelessly from Azual's blog on bms) is to log off and then on again. When you log back in, you'll be 1m km from the gate in a random direction, and you just need to drop an off grid tac as you warp back to the gate. You can also bounce off the tac three times to easily create a 300km on grid bm, and best of all you can do it all while cloaked and in a ship without any speed mods at all.

The only downside you need to be aware of is that you will drop cloak as soon as you log out, and you'll be vulnerable to being pointed for as long as it takes your ship to warp, so don't do it when there are hostiles on grid. Overall though, I find it definitely the fastest way of creating an on and off grid tacs at gates.

The wheel is very nice and is the only one I haven't seen/worked out before. It looks quite easy to screw up with current decloak mechanics but if whats on sisi makes it to TQ... Clever stuff and annoyingly I don't think I'd ever have thought of it.

I agree that it's a very clever idea, but as far as I can see, these techniques (i.e. the ones on that wiki page) are largely designed to get around the problems of bombers decloaking each other, and they will all be largely obsolete next week. With the new expansion, you can simply warp your wing of bombers in to 30-40km off the enemy fleet and bomb them. You no longer need clever techniques to leave everyone spaced out but in the right ranges, which was the main goal of each approach on that page. Maybe there's a case for some of them to be adapted for fleets with multiple squads (each will need it's own spot), but the fact that everyone can find them cloaked means the whole thing will be far less complex - KISS, remember?

Feedback:

I enjoyed the roam, and learnt a lot from it, but I also felt there were several things which largely detracted from it, mostly due to bad luck.

I thought the practical task of getting to 31- at the beginning was very useful, and was a good opportunity to practice gate camping. We got to see some torpedo combat, though unfortunately the only time we got set up for bombing runs, the target didn't bite. I've never done hotdropping before, so it was interesting to see how that worked (a lot of sitting around hoping for good intel from scouts!)

I think it was really unfortunate that so many people had to drop out at the last minute, including Dzu. While Caldak is an outstanding FC, I think he understandably found trying to manage two very specialised classes, one of which was a completely new class, very difficult. The general lack of targets also added to this, and increased the level of pressure both on him and the scouts.

If the roam were to be run again in future (and I really running the two classes simultaneously is a great idea - there are lots of very useful synergies to be exploited), it might work well to do the following:

- Have a list of modules that people should bring (similar to basic, though obviously far fewer). Bombers can stick their current fits in the fleet manager, and then fly independently (but while on coms) to 31-. While the class is doing this, the FC can sort people into the right groups for bombers, and make a list of the fitting changes he wants to make (Pilot A swap a damp for a point, Pilot B swap a painter for a ship scanner) once the class reaches 31-. Everyone can load the right bombs for their squad once they reach 31- (supplied by Agony?).

- Covops can be out looking for targets during this time, and scounting the bombers through at the same time. Perhaps it would be a good idea for the Covops instructor to be in a "scout master" type role. I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for the covops guys who were enthusiastic and trying to give recon reports at perhaps not the best times, or at points when the FC had a bunch of other things to deal with. A scoutmaster would allow maximum practice at recon reports for covops pilots, while having someone experienced to gather and filter that information and feed the useful stuff at the right time to the FC. Managing a stealth bomber fleet is a lot of work in itself, especially when most of the fleet has little experience bombing or hotdropping, and having someone else to manage the intel would allow the FC to focus on that.

PS: A couple of people followed up (I think) on my previous point about moving all the module discussion in the theory part of the course to written material students could look at beforehand. My intention with that wasn't that it shouldn't be discussed at all, but that there might be an approach similar to basic, where the pluses and minuses of different modules are outlined in the material, and then covered in class in a more practical manner (what would be good modules for a solo fit/fleet with arazu support/single squad of 6 bombers/etc.)

[Marvin]

I thought the practical task of getting to 31- at the beginning was very useful, and was a good opportunity to practice gate camping.

It was useful though initially confusing. I recall having a command of people to go to the last low sec and then there was a bit later "Everyone should still be docked" which I realised only a lot later was meant to 31- people. I think it could have been handy also for Caldak to state we are going to move on our own as well as give the potential for someone to step up to take WC of moving the members, it's quite a bit frustrating when you are not with the fleet itself to issue orders.

- Have a list of modules that people should bring (similar to basic, though obviously far fewer). Bombers can stick their current fits in the fleet manager, and then fly independently (but while on coms) to 31-. While the class is doing this, the FC can sort people into the right groups for bombers, and make a list of the fitting changes he wants to make (Pilot A swap a damp for a point, Pilot B swap a painter for a ship scanner) once the class reaches 31-. Everyone can load the right bombs for their squad once they reach 31- (supplied by Agony?).

I'd say that the potential of Agony having bombs at market prices available and making it known ahead of the class could be a good idea rather than just handing them out. Modules wise you are asking people to haul modules around and swap them either in some station on the way or remember what they should swap to once they get to 31-, not the best idea imho. Tbh it's an advanced class if you couldn't after the theory session and previous classes be able to get into fleet manager and have a good idea what you'd be looking for, what were you doing in the class? I don't recall that much being swapped out, I think we added a point or 2, I did realise when I saw what we had we'll most likely need a point but with rigs I further knew I'd not have the CPU to swap for a point.

Lastly arranging squads while we are traveling is a very bad idea. While it's frustrating being moved around in fleet while traveling through hi-sec it's deadly to get a session change timer because you were moved to another squad as you are in warp from the tac to the gate you want to jump through. i.e. You'd need to go warp back somewhere and sit waiting out your session change timer while the fleet potentially move further ahead of you.

[Kalar Freno]

I'd say that the potential of Agony having bombs at market prices available and making it known ahead of the class could be a good idea rather than just handing them out.

Supply them at market price, or provide them free, I don't think it really matters. Students are paying 40m for the class, so I don't think it's unreasonable for some of that money to be used to supply bombs. In our roam it wasn't necessary in any case, and if we're likely to stay in syndicate (for hotdropping or whatever), bombs could be handed out as and when they're needed (much like jump fuel was).

Modules wise you are asking people to haul modules around and swap them either in some station on the way or remember what they should swap to once they get to 31-, not the best idea imho. Tbh it's an advanced class if you couldn't after the theory session and previous classes be able to get into fleet manager and have a good idea what you'd be looking for, what were you doing in the class? I don't recall that much being swapped out, I think we added a point or 2, I did realise when I saw what we had we'll most likely need a point but with rigs I further knew I'd not have the CPU to swap for a point.

While I take your point, only the FC really knows which way he wants to go with EWAR, and I think it's good to have balancing. We were short points, probably largely for the reasons you mentioned (lack of CPU is a common problem in bombers), and that needs to be co-ordinated. Otherwise you end up with the attitude of "I can't fit that, someone else will do it".

Lastly arranging squads while we are traveling is a very bad idea. While it's frustrating being moved around in fleet while traveling through hi-sec it's deadly to get a session change timer because you were moved to another squad as you are in warp from the tac to the gate you want to jump through. i.e. You'd need to go warp back somewhere and sit waiting out your session change timer while the fleet potentially move further ahead of you.

Good point, I'd forgotten about session timers. Having said that, it's not really a problem. Organising the squads will take one, perhaps two moves at most, and that can be done by the pilots themselves (which is what we did). Provided everyone knows about session timers, and moves at a convenient point (e.g. while they're cloaked and in warp to a tac), I don't think it's a problem.

[Othran]

In general guys its probably easier for Agony to hand out/sell modules at 31-M rather than bombs. Assuming they still operate the same way then they'll have a load of T1 mods in corp hangar. I wouldn't imagine they'd have many bombs but given you can carry 4 bombs in a Hound (2 in launcher, 2 in cargo) AND carry hundreds of torps do you really need them? What are the chances of more than four bomb runs on a class roam?