So we attempted to run Wolfpacks as a single-day class with emphasis on practical exercises, and of course, as always, we were overly optimistic that we'd be able to do everything we wanted to do in the time we wanted to do it in. Still, not too bad, as the reasons we didn't get to do as many practicals as we wanted was because we kept getting interrupted by targets of opportunities!!
We got the most important stuff covered, we got some kills, and we got to roam a bit before downtime. The roam will continue after downtime of course
Edit: The roam continued after downtime, the fight that stands out for me was the fight against several battleships. Overall, the HSMR doctrine worked as we had designed it to. For example, pretty sure we didn't lose any ships to stealth bombers (although there was remarkably few bombs thrown at us, due to the rather quiet time of day we were roaming in). Maintaining range worked well, and despite the small armor tank, speed and agility wasn't too negatively impacted. The concept got a better test during the Caldak roam later in the day, and again seemed to work well. The one thing negative that showed up in both roams was a decided lack of scram/web. When we developed this doctrine for the Wolfpacks class, it was expected that we'd have enough Agony members flying chaser/heavy tackle roles to supplement the main fleet - and while we did have outstanding Agony support and what seemed like enough scram/web pilots, there were times we definitely didn't have enough scram/web pilots. The reasoning behind having a small armor tank on this doctrine is two-fold: improve survivability against bombing runs and to allow alumni to fly logi frigs in support on future classes. We're now thinking maybe we should encourage Alumni on future Wolfpacks roams to fly chaser/heavy tackle, along with logi frigs
I think we'll move some of the discussion about range control into the stuff we go over in hisec, to reduce our interruptions
We had numerous fleet movement practicals that we had planned to do in nullsec, but thanks to interruptions, didn't get to do - some of which ended up being done while we were roaming, and many of which ended up being used during the Caldak roam (which of course wasn't part of the class roam but many of the same pilots were in both!). So anyways, think some of those we'll do in hisec, so that way they don't get "dropped" from the class due to time issues like the did this time.
The playing with bubbles section worked great
I did record the class, and am considering clipping some of the sections where we are just discussing/lecturing into our wiki to be recorded lectures for future offerings of this class, to free up even more time to play with bubbles, fleet movement, and, of course, the roam
So we love feedback, please let us know what you thought of the new single-day format, what we can improve, what we did good, ideas and comments of all kinds!