40 replies to this topic

[Caldak]

Right SISI turn out was 26 strong. Nice turn out and thanks for taking the time to set it up. Covered alot of material, Highs and Mids and Lows, Tacks and lots more covered. I liked the practical approach to the things covered. Seeing is believing. Thanks to Agony for bring the Ships for the Demos.

[Vjorn]

First off, an apology for suddenly disappearing out of TS at 0740am (for me)without nary a word; but I was extremely frustrated, and in fact damned angry, at the fact I just couldn't get Sisi reloaded after 9 hours. I had ended up staying awake all night trying to fix Sisi, while listening in on TS to the class. It just finally got to the point where it wasn't a conducive learning experience (or fun for that matter), and I didn't want to interrupt the bombing practical. I do still think that doing the class portion of Stealth Bombers on Sisi is a good idea considering all the different risks (and isk) involved; for the students as well as for the Agony instructors and assistants. I just suggest now that when (if) planning for the next class, try not to schedule a class on Sisi when nearing a major expansion The discussions on the different slots/mods (altho perhaps a bit long-winded) was quite invaluable to me, opening up new ways to use stealth bombers in gangs. The Advanced Stealth Bomber Tactics wiki article was exactly what I was hoping to get from this class as well. Very well written. Unfortunately, most of the class were unable to view all of the linked pics. I do hope Agony considers running this class again. Thank you Caldak and Agony for putting the effort into such a specialized class.

Edited by Vjorn, 20 November 2011 - 08:43 AM.

[Othran]

Chat was good, as usual I have to stop thinking in terms of solo/VERY small gang. Classic example of that was damps, where scan res damps are better for solo and range damps are better for gang. Always nice to have to rethink assumptions.

Wiki article was good even without pictures, easy enough to work out. Whiteboard didn't work at all for me, no idea whether it was meant to or not - no big deal anyway, again easy enough to work out what was occurring.

Bomb runs. I was a bit puzzled as to the way Caldak was calling the squads - decloak, align, drop etc. Didn't seem like the right time to start a discussion about it though, was taking long enough to organise anyway.

I have always followed the mantra - align, decloak, drop bomb, warp. I don't decloak until I'm ready to drop & warp - I never decloak at zero velocity in other words . Maybe Caldak can explain why he was calling it the way he was? Seemed like a fair few people had bombs falling short because they weren't up to align speed - I know I got bombed twice at bookmark 2 (you know who you are ) and I was 35km from can.

Thanks to the Agony guys for bringing the BOPS battleships - nice for people who haven't bridged before, although I think we could have dealt with the timing of covert cyno/bridge a bit more. I'm not sure how many people now know the duration of a covert cyno and a covert jump portal - probably most do. Edit - the cyno going down as one guy jumped the bridge late was very fortunate, you need to remember to include that info for future classes as its not something most students would know.

Good class

Lets see how it goes tonight, will be a shorter roam than usual for Euros I guess as Monday beckons

[Angelio]

Morning all Roam was very good in general. Some stuff to do better next time; Information on scheduling class on Sisi had come late. I didn’t have problems with the installation and Sisi worked fine for me but my character was disabled. Luckily for me mass test has take place some 3 days before roam so developers reactivate my character. Different modules discussion was nice but for next time like the module you are talking about in the chat window. Few times you ask for an opinion and I couldn’t give one as I was not sure to which module question refers. Bomb practice was real great, there is no better way to learn something than to try it your self. Just one improvement, for next time as a squid drop bombs and warp out please use TS to give info whose bomb hit target or how many of them hit target. I can always check log to see did my bomb hit target but maybe some people don’t use it or don’t know how to use it. Reading material is great for a part I read. Ill finish it today as last night I was occupied playing with SB fittings and give you more feedback if I consider it necessary. I can still see only second picture on that material and don’t have permission to see others, so if you can fix it would be great. I fall a sleep just before the gate camp practice so can’t give you feedback on that. I can guess it was a lot of fun. And I am really sorry for not participating in skirmish practice if you had one after the gate camp practice. I was really looking forward to that one. Big thanks to Agony for bringing the bridge out for us to try it and see how it actually works. It was firs time for me to use it and it is wary valuable experience.

[Kalar Freno]

Bomb runs. I was a bit puzzled as to the way Caldak was calling the squads - decloak, align, drop etc. Didn't seem like the right time to start a discussion about it though, was taking long enough to organise anyway.

I have always followed the mantra - align, decloak, drop bomb, warp. I don't decloak until I'm ready to drop & warp - I never decloak at zero velocity in other words . Maybe Caldak can explain why he was calling it the way he was? Seemed like a fair few people had bombs falling short because they weren't up to align speed - I know I got bombed twice at bookmark 2 (you know who you are ) and I was 35km from can.

I would guess that the reason for doing it this way was that people were having problems with ranges as it was (cf. your reference to bombs falling short). Decloak, align, drop means that you have the most accurate range on your bomb, as you don't have to account for time to get to max speed (which is different for different people due to different skils/fits). So if I'm sat at 30km with caldak's method, I know that my bomb will land dead centre on my target. With your method, I have to guess how much additional distance to add due the time it will take me to get to warp speed, and the FC has to guess when everyone has hit warp speed before he calls for decloak/bombs. Caldak's method has no guesswork involved.

The drawback is a larger window of vulnerability (equal to roughly whatever your align time is), but this has the mitigating factor of giving bombers the time to target and paint ships in the enemy fleet. It's possible that the enemy might have ships which would make this approach more dangerous (seboed thrashers and (post-buff) courmarants? spring to mind), so (as always) bear enemy fleet composition in mind when deciding between them.

As to my feedback - I think the course could do with better developed class materials. A lot of the module discussion could be moved to written material which could be reviewed before class, which would speed up that part of the course. A diagram of the bombing method used would also have helped with initial comprehension, as I think a lot of people didn't really understand what they were doing until they saw it in action.

I would also have liked to see (and practice) some of the other bombing methods. We did "decloak, bomb, warp" but it might have been nice to see "warp, bomb, cloak" also, as well as talk a little bit about the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Finally, if I'm honest, I'm disappointed with our performance generally at bombing. It's extremely sensitive to errors (far more than most fleet compostions in eve), and one small mistake in execution can mean the difference between 25 enemy ships blowing up and ridicule in local. I realise it was getting late and people were tired, but I would strongly encourage people to get on Sisi today before the roam and have another practice as we will need as close to flawless execution as possible.

[Sir Locutus]

I was worriend about SISI idea of training. I had problems with loging into it for at least a year. But when i was ready to give up i said to myself , ok lets try for the last time and it worked, i was so happy taing class to SISI was good idea , we had time to set all up and we didn't need to worry if we mess "2" and "f2" and bomb ourselves or fleetmates. Now i know that bombing run requires steel dicipline and good organisation. One person with diferent type bomb can destroy whole operation. DC is important , at first aproach i messed something with bookmark nr "3" and caldak almost killed me , that almost was thanks to DC. Practise, practise , practise and when you think that you are pro , just practise some more. I was hoping that we train some torp fly by. Before that class i was total noob with bommbers now i'm a noob with some theory and know what to train. White board didnt worked for me at all. It was a good class , as always i've learned much and sometimes diferent aproach to specific fitting / flying ways.

[Othran]

Mmm I'd argue its exactly the same thing - you should be able to cope with lining up a bomb cloaked or uncloaked. IME if you decloak then align you're going to be a very dead bomber very rapidly and I've lost some bombers in :doh!: moments I can tell you He did start out calling it like I expected but then changed so I guess you're probably right. The bombing was dreadful if we're honest. What else do we expect when people haven't done it before? Its just practice and tacs really, people will improve. Edit - I'll be on sisi in X-M about an hour or two before roam if anyone wants some more practice runs as Kalar suggests.

[Vora]

Very informative evening. The theory part had a good dense of information, good speed, good timing on breaks.
It would have been a good thing if we had access to the advanced reading material beforehand, with pictures. The whiteboard scribblings weren't that helpful.

The "seeing is believing" approach concerning the modul effects (damp, paint) is very good as it keeps the learnt stuff better in the back of your head.

Also, the BlackOps bridge was a very welcome variety in this long class. It felt good, for once, not to be on the receiving end of hotdrops.

The practice bomb runs were extremely informative for me.

Bomb runs. I was a bit puzzled as to the way Caldak was calling the squads - decloak, align, drop etc. Didn't seem like the right time to start a discussion about it though, was taking long enough to organise anyway.

Actually, I never heard Caldak calling "align". He called "decloak, bombs away" assuming you were already aligned...? Being in squad 4 I only listened to commands to sq3 and sq4.

For me the tricky thing in a multi-squad attack was to time the align run. My attack point in squad 4 was 40k away so I started my align run when when sq3 had released their bombs. That would have me at 30k off the target when the "squad 4 decloak, bombs away" order came. The second paint-damp attack made this timing trickier since sq3 was longer on grid.
What struck me kinda funny was that my shrapnel bomb always yielded exactly 40.0 damage according to log. Was there a concussion bomb in my squad, is Fortuna a bitch (yes, she is) or was that a bug of my log?

What was dearly missing, probably out of time constraints, were torpedo tactics. In the advance material I saw the very familiar FlyBy maneuver, but this is only familiar to me since I trained it in the FLYBY class with arty Thrashers. Maybe in the future, with prepared BMs on SiSi, you could include 1 or 2 flybys as torpedo attack practice.

Anyways, I'm now really hot hot hot on a live run on Tranq, even if it turns out to be a "Night of the Decloaking Death"



P.S.: Tranq looks really ugly after the SiSi sessions.

[Othran]

P.S.: Tranq looks really ugly after the SiSi sessions.

Indeed. I loved watching the effect when someone jumped the bridge. It'll take a while to get tired of that one.

[sundarbolt]

Enjoyed this immensly. I think people were fairly unaware of there being a level of finese involved with bombing, more so than most eve warfare.

Sisi, was a fantastic idea tbh, sure there was some pain getting it working, but awesome for everyone to do live excercise, see just how dangerous every moment in your Stealth Bomber is, without the usual risk/reward factor of Eve.

Thanks for reminding everyone i'm a total gimp Sir Locatus I honestly still cannot believe I actually managed to inadvertantly press "f2"... worst was I had no idea i'd even done it or where it had gone as i was focusing on bookmarks at the time, until Caldak started shouting at me :-/ Pretty sure that one goes down in the "Fail Journal".


OKey, the TL;DR technical stuff.

Ewar Discussion: Gotta disagree with some here. This was imperative. How to utilise specific modules is very different from the other gangs we have run, and the time and detail was highly nessescary. Most of the modules did get linked randomly in chat I thought? But to be honest, everyone should have a grasp of the different varieties by now. If not then your not practising what you've been learning, and/or just turning up to the roams and further classes with cookie cutter builds, which is kinda the 90% of what these classes are teaching us how not to do.
Gotta agree with Othran, I also tend to have a certain perspective on a particular module for a particular role, but in Caldak's classes often he'll highlight when a module I'd overlooked or disregarded would be valuable, this also comes from other Students too I might add.


Bombing Runs: Pretty good I thought. Went fairly well. Again, being honest with you guys, if at this point you're still having trouble setting up tacs, figuring out ranges, following instructions (aside from don't press "f2") maybe you need to revisit the earlier classes.
This probably did take too long to get set up, but that is not a fault of the instruction, this was an advanced class and therefore it is expected all students should be proficient in the previous class material.
In the end, there was a fair old amount of damage being done, and people begining to get to grips with the timing, and being able to get some Ewar applied, which I think was the point in slowing dowing the "Uncloak, align, engage, warp" process.
I think everyone can see this is all down to practise and lots of it. Without this class, all the initial messing about to figure out how the hell it all works is very expensive.


Jump Bridging: Invaluable. Took me a while to get up to speed on exactly, who was where, using what modules and fuel and how it worked. But was worth puzzling it out, excellent knowledge to hold. Perhaps alittle more step by step explantion of exactly what was happening would help? I'm no stranger to having used bridges, and cyno'd in plenty carriers. But never done the covert cynos, nor wholely understood jumpbridging from the perspective of actually setting one up, so thanks for this especially, but yes, a tad confusing.

Gate Camps: Almost forgot this. Perfect. Exactly what folks need. A real live fire gatecamp to see exactly how to get through.
I lived in null before I'd even understood how to evade gate camps. At first they seemed inpossible (especially bubblecamps) but got a couple of bubblers in my corp to set up a camp while we practised getting through. Nothing more valuable than actually doing this. I urge anyone to even practise what you learned last night, when you come through friendly highsec gates. Hold your cloak, gather your thoughts, imagine your in a bubble and there are hostiles. Run throguh exactly how to escape. It can only help

For day one;
I'll give the written Class material: B
I'll give the practical lessons: Pass with distinction
I'll give Caldak, his instruction (and shouting at me): 5 Stars

Edited by sundarbolt, 20 November 2011 - 02:22 PM.

[Prudance]

I wont be as verbose in my reply as most of things have been covered by others. Excellent class, was very detailed and material presented well. Really loved all the great info about bombing which was very informative for me as Ive only ever used the SB for torping. Got some other nuggets of cool info as well (such as the size in Overview). Lots of fun. Looking forward to the roam now!

[John McGuirk]

Sundarbolt has it right, if you're in a cloaky ship, no matter where you are, I recommend treating every jump as if you jumped into a camp. That is, take a pause before jumping and picture the worst that could be on the other side, and after jumping go through all the steps you would in the worst camp you can imagine. This helps drill it into muscle memory and make it second nature. Hit screenshot (or fake it if you're not in a camp) hit d-scan, take your session change timer or most of it to pan around, assess what's there (consolidate report if you're going to be giving recon, finding the geometry of the system (where would you warp to, is your out gate or any other celestial within or out of scan range, bubbles on grid/scan etc)). Pick a direction to move, figure out what your steps are going to be, then execute. Double click, cloak FIRST then prop mod, change direction, and you're safe. If you treat every gate this way for a while you will have the steps as second nature and when the time comes where your ship, pod, and even gang are on the line, the only thing you'll have to deal with is the actual novel information like gang comp, bubble alignment etc. Sorry couldn't make it it sounded awesome

[Caldak]

Right the prove was in the pudding.

Experience for the guys coming down from Stacmon to 31-MLU. I would say that was worth its weight in gold.
Use your Intel, Take advantage when one fleet scares another away. Slip in between and get safe, not 1 ship lost as prove that you can do it with having agony leading you along.

Wormholes found, down to 1 that could be used. To Fountain, some targets but nothing we could take advantage of. Carriers, Mining Ops ect all to the POS's when a unfriendly was in system.
The big fleet was do-able but with the lack of getting a bubble anchored to setup on. Wasn't going to happen.

2 Tempest kills in LSC and missing out at the end as the POS was re-enforced was a pity. Note to self to read other channels.

1 - very nice kill in PF on the gate was a nice touch and proves that it can be done.

Strengths:
Lots of Deeps and Ewar. Very mobile and ability to reach far into enemy space. Even with chaining cyno's it can be done.

Weakness:
The lack of scouts that can light Co-Ops Cyno's is very telling.
Only 1 Blackops ship also limits abilities.
More Wormholes and scouts a big plus.

Looks like people don't want to fight a class, seeing fleets engage others in systems next door then just by pass us is, well jaw dropping.
We had no Logistics, no Falcons or any other recons, they had eyes on us. Just goes to show that they will fight Agony with class or not.
The last few times has been a big No.
So we will have to lift our acts in getting setup or use more cloaking Dictors to catch stuff.
Have thought of a few more ways to engage, but thats for the next class.

Will run the class again and polish my material, will be on SISI the theory. It showed its self as the way to run practical show and tells.

A Big thanks to the Agony that came along as support and help.
Another to the class people that were scouting, reconing and looking for targets.

[Alistone Malikite]

Bomb runs. I was a bit puzzled as to the way Caldak was calling the squads - decloak, align, drop etc. Didn't seem like the right time to start a discussion about it though, was taking long enough to organise anyway.

I have always followed the mantra - align, decloak, drop bomb, warp. I don't decloak until I'm ready to drop & warp - I never decloak at zero velocity in other words . Maybe Caldak can explain why he was calling it the way he was?

Sometimes there is a lag; especially if there is a large fleet that you're trying to bomb running on the server node. As a result; if you don't give the server a second or two to register that you are decloaked then you can't launch your bomb and may accidentally be warped away without ever deploying your bomb.

This is less of an issue when you are warping in and immediately dropping your bomb because you're invulnerability from your warp tunnel keeps you save and you can "spam" your bomb button as you land knowing you are fully aligned with your warp tunnel

When you are already on grid with the targets often they will be landing in a bubble and will have a few seconds of their warp left where they can't target you to keep you safe.

But if the enemy is already sitting on grid and you are not in warp then being decloaked for that extra second can often get you killed. Bombing run fits often use stabs or a medium shield extender to survive a volley and avoid being tackled by a long point. But you are correct that the less time you are decloaked on grid the safer you tend to be.

For large fleets we use optimized overview settings with nothing on them except, no brackets, maybe your warpout celestial if you're feeling brave. But lag kills.

[Freerunner]

I was looking forward to the SISI training, but circumstances didn't work out. I even came in 2 days ahead of time and put together ships and everything. Perhaps the CCP implementation schedule should be kept in mind when planning SISI class dates. Enjoyed the roam, just wish we could have caught a carrier

[Prudance]

Good roam, fewer targets than normal but thats the way the cookie crumbles sometimes I guess Learned lots, tons of independent moving around was good. The targets we did catch and kill were nice kills. Had fun which is the important thing. Many thanks to Caldak and Agony. Thanks also to all the support and cov-ops pilots. Looking forward to the next class/roam!

[Bormand]

I see you guys had fun Sorry I couldn't make it this will be the last time I will try to go in a class while On Duty

[Othran]

Sorry, had to pull out of roam with 10 mins to go. Strange things happen at times - you wouldn't believe how strange sometimes I'm not surprised about the lack of people with covert cyno ability. I have two characters who can do it and two who can't but in retrospect it was a complete waste of training time. The last time I used it for real was January 2011. I guess over the course of 2.5 years I have lit maybe 6 covert cynos (for real, not practice) with bomber/covops, of which maybe 4 ended up worthwhile. Perhaps others use it regularly, I've never spoken to anyone who does though - BOPS ships are usually covered in a thick layer of dust and at best (IME) get flown in PvP a couple of times a year max. Agony probably differ there, I dunno. Were I training again I think I'd probably do cloaking 5 rather than cyno 5, you'll get much more use from it. Doesn't help in this case of course.

[Sir Locutus]

I was disappointed when they called me to work earlier and i wasn't on roam

[roigon]

The roam has thought me one thing, scouting is pretty hard. You can repeatedly do well and it might amount to nothing, and make one mistake and cost the fleet their much needed opportunity for engagement. In the fleet you know exactly when times are critical and when they are not. As a scout it's a bit more difficult then that. I made a pretty big boo boo during the roam, actually costing the fleet a potential engagement, which unfortunately illustrated this point quite clearly. At a certain point the fleet was positioned in LSC4-P, while I was hanging back in OLTQ-C on the 2P-4LS gate, after having verified that a drake gang went into 2P instead of LSC. The main fleet had gone into LSC to assist some people. This just to draw the situation in the roam. Then we got a report that another gang had just jumped into OLTQ-C from 31-MLU, I notice the jump in local, and a little bit later the full gang lands on the 2P gate. I call in and report that the fleet was on the gate. I was expecting them to jump trough, I had my mouse hovering over the group which shows the brackets in a list and I saw the ships disappearing in short order. So I reported that they had jumped. A second later someone else reported that the gang had landed on the LSC4 gate. Caldak obviously questioned this inconsistency in intel. I couldn't believe I was wrong so said that I surely saw them go into 2P. A moment later they jumped into LSC. Now what happened was that when you hover over a group of ships with your mouse so that they form a list, you will actually not see them warp off, they will just disappear from the list as soon as they leave grid. Regardless of that I failed to notice local didn't drop, or notice the absence of gate flashes. All in all a pretty big fuck up. But it did show me one thing, that losing focus as a scout at any moment can in fact have a pretty big impact, even when watching something as common as a fleet land on a gate and jump trough, something unexpected might happen, and if you miss it, you fucked up. Luckily later 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.

[Othran]

Any chance of Caldak/dzu doing a joint AAR on the roam? I missed it but I'd like to hear what you both think worked, what didn't, what needs work. Gives those of us who missed it some pointers for next time. There will be a next time as its a good combination for the classes. I suspect bait may be required on roam but what's new?

[sundarbolt]

Think this roam pretty much summed up Stealth Bombers. Fantastic power in the right circumstance, but be prepared to wait forever for that circumstance. 2 Tempests and a T3 Cruiser was a nice haul though, I did struggle a bit with the length of the waits though. Again, as a learning experience, did was what expected. to listen to the intel and follow Dotlan, this time without so many expert scouts was pretty neat. Though I'd have to say if these are rookie CovOps pilots then I'm pretty impressed. Wondering though, is Syndicate played out in terms of class roams? Also, was reading of some article on current politicing and mobilisation going on with TEST atm, so they probably didnt have much of a standing fleet protecting their bot.. er... I mean carebears. Thanks again Caldak, would be up for another SB roam if you fancy it? Maybe somewhere totally random that we can all expect to pod-express home from? oh yeah, learned last night that there IS local in Wormholes

[Othran]

Wondering though, is Syndicate played out in terms of class roams?

Possibly but a gang size 20+ is likely to meet the same response in most npc space now.

[dzu]

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.

[DocD]

Caldak and AGU, Class as a whole was great. Learned a tremendous amount by actually doing the runs ourselves. 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. Sorry I missed the roam. Will definately have to make sure I can join the roam when that class is run again.