14 replies to this topic

[Greygal]

So today's class was this really bizarre mix of absolute, total, utter disaster.... and beyond belief brilliance .... and we haven't even been on the roam yet!!

CCP forgot to feed the hamsters, so they went on strike. The (*insert favorite curse word*) server kept having node crashes (oh ya, I was getting frustrated lol!), most of the class was dumped from the server for 5, 10, 15 minutes at a time, multiple times. I myself got kicked from the node at least 6 times before downtime, then again after DT before they did finally did an emergency reboot and, apparently, appeased the hamsters, at least temporarily. A few handful never lost connection at all, but most of us did. This not only put us behind, it put us way behind, and made it pretty much impossible to do most of the practical in-space stuff we do in the basic class.

On the other hand... heroic and creative efforts on the part of all involved - including students! - led to the class getting more recon practice off of overview screenshots than even our Skirmishing class does (well, not quite, but close!) We ended up in this random seminar-like open-floor questions and answers atmosphere (never has a basic class had as thorough a discussion of overheating before!) that was a heck of a lot of fun - ya'll had so many really smart questions!! Everyone was picking apart the screenshots and thinking about the situations displayed and what they meant, etc. Was brilliant, really good fun, and I cannot thank everyone involved, students, alumni, and Agony, for their patience and good humor with the situation

But ... we actually only flew in space as a fleet for, what, five minutes? If that? LOL!! And that was a full two hours AFTER downtime! Didn't get to demonstrate midsafes or safespots or the dscanner or spiralling or any of that stuff, but the demonstration of dropping on-grid in-warp bounce TACS went off brilliantly.

Seriously, I cannot express how much I am looking forward to roaming with each and every one of you tonight. Ya'll were such a fun, smart, patient and just plain enjoyable group to spend hours looking at the Eve login screen with Even though we didn't get to practice moving as a fleet like we usually do, I have no doubt we're going to fly together like we've been doing it for years nearly from the moment we undock.

I'll update the graduate list later today - and yes, I'm graduating all of you who attended

Will update this with info about the roam after it happens, but in the meantime, please feel free to share your feedback, good, bad, or indifferent! We love feedback!


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TERRIFIC roam, we had some really good fights!!! We traveled 114 hops, I'll write more about the roam later - time to go for a bike ride

 

Here is the brief AAR our FC, Quest, wrote (it's posted below, but copying it here also):

 

 

Thanks for coming guys, it was a fun fleet, challenging at times, but overal some very competent flying by all of you, nicely done. Also, the discipline was good, aligning, holding cloak, shooting primary, all adding together for some nice fights and good kills.

It was a fun fleet and made all that much better thanks to awesome Agony skirmishing and support and our oponents willing to take fights (ok sometimes they didn't really have a choice).

It was a cool thing for me as when I first joined Agony I wouldn't have thought that I would FC a basic class skirmished by Caldak. We got some nice kills and some cool fights. The first one against some well organised kiters was pretty chellenging, i think that I did some 20-ish fleet warps accross the grid.

Also that fight against CVA was cool, especially loosing a couple of frigs for a Rapier, Navy Caracal, Talos! Cynabal, Baddon etc. To top it off we got more shiney to offset some of our support loses.

All in all good fun!

 

 

 

Blitz created a little video for his corp showing some of the highlights of the roam.  He didn't include the coms (I'll see if I can sweet-talk him into rending a version with our coms, cause we like to hear all the mistakes commands we made) to post, but meanwhile, here is his video!

 

[Garwulf74]

Well I blew it. Totally misread things and had the class pegged for tonight. Timezones are HARD. Being on call 24 hours a day is the pits too. ( I am a Towtruck Driver in Washington State, US) Don't know when I can get my schedule to line up with the classes again, But I WILL be on for the roam tonight/this AM for me.

[nephmon]

Great Roam tonight, bunch of kills, minimal losses. Nice to meet a great bunch of people.
Thanks will fly agony again.

[Veerus]

Class
This was great fun. Despite the server issues preventing us from getting some in-space practice, I enjoyed the "theory" part, and the smart questions asked by my fellow students.

As someone with some PvP experience already, I was pleasantly surprised by the server tick affecting safespots demonstration - you learn something new every day!

Roam

So I wake up, glance at my phone and realize the roam started half an hour ago. Shiiiiiiieeeeeeet! Grab some food, coffee and log in to comms and EVE asap. I must have timed it just right, as the fleet was coming back to Berta for a reship.

What followed was great - nice discipline, awesome kills (Navy Geddon!) and lots and lots of fun. Great leadership from Quest, on-the-ball fleet invites in the middle of fleet warps and general badassery demonstrated by everyone involved.

I'll definitely be coming back to future roams/classes, and I'll send my corpies to the nearest Basic class so they stop being bads.

[paulodesousa]

I really enjoyed everthing about the class im really coming back and try to learn as much as i can so i can have this kind of fun
Im still a newbie but really liked Quest leadership and GG good humor Tks.

[Timu Tomodachi]

I caught a bad case of the flu and couldn't make myself go on eve. Any chance that this means I have credits to use for the next class? I used the PLA corp account. Thks.

[Greygal]

I caught a bad case of the flu and couldn't make myself go on eve. Any chance that this means I have credits to use for the next class? I used the PLA corp account. Thks.

I don't actually charge corp accounts until you take the class, so your corp's account hasn't been charged for your noshow. You'll be able to take it in the future using the same corp account (assuming you are still in PLA, of course!)

Hope you fell better soon!!

GG

[Aele Achilles]

Most enjoyable and informative!

Very professionaly run. Absolutly the most organized fleet op I have ever been in.

Look forward to futurn classes and roams!

[Stian83]

Since I only attended the roam, I can only comment on that, and it was one of the best roams Ive been a part of. Awesome kills, good discipline, fast movement and very good explanations as we went along.

[Quest]

Thanks for coming guys, it was a fun fleet, challenging at times, but overal some very competent flying by all of you, nicely done. Also, the discipline was good, aligning, holding cloak, shooting primary, all adding together for some nice fights and good kills.

It was a fun fleet and made all that much better thanks to awesome Agony skirmishing and support and our oponents willing to take fights (ok sometimes they didn't really have a choice).

It was a cool thing for me as when I first joined Agony I wouldn't have thought that I would FC a basic class skirmished by Caldak. We got some nice kills and some cool fights. The first one against some well organised kiters was pretty chellenging, i think that I did some 20-ish fleet warps accross the grid.

Also that fight against CVA was cool, especially loosing a couple of frigs for a Rapier, Navy Caracal, Talos! Cynabal, Baddon etc. To top it off we got more shiney to offset some of our support loses.

All in all good fun!

[Serendip]

Thank you again for the class GG and for Fcing the roam Quest. I'd also like to thank the other Agony members who went out ahead of us both to warn us of danger and provoke fights for us. Thank you for losing your ships on our behalf.

I'm sure you're going to be looking into it now but perhaps a more organised contingency would be useful for classes with similar connection issues where they just don't ask as many questions as ours did. Not that there was anything wrong with what we did but there's only so many recons we can look at.

Personally I found it a little frustrating hearing things explained for the 6th, 7th, 10th time, particularly when it was part of the readings we were supposed to do, but GG and Quest remained unflustered and didn't tell anyone to RTFM despite those same questions being asked again and again.

Thanks for a great class and an exceptional roam. I look forward to flying with you in the future and being in 'bait squad'.

Statdasan

[Zudalian]

Thanks again for all your help.

Was a real eye opener for all of us toothless carebears

[Lev]

Let see ...

1 lost rifter 8.8 million isk
15 destroyed targets 1.98 billion isk
Agony roam .. priceless!

Quest did a great job as FC. Non-stop fleet movement for 114 jumps (yes I said the J word), managing scouts and leading the fight all at the same time for hours on end.

It was the fastest moving fleet I've seen, very impressive.

[Silana]

Thanks guys for showing us a really enjoyable time.

 

So much fun, very informative and extremely professional. Highly recommemd this class to players of all levels.

 

Can't wait for the next roam

 

Hope to see you all then.

[Greygal]

Thank you again for the class GG and for Fcing the roam Quest. I'd also like to thank the other Agony members who went out ahead of us both to warn us of danger and provoke fights for us. Thank you for losing your ships on our behalf.

I'm sure you're going to be looking into it now but perhaps a more organised contingency would be useful for classes with similar connection issues where they just don't ask as many questions as ours did. Not that there was anything wrong with what we did but there's only so many recons we can look at.

Personally I found it a little frustrating hearing things explained for the 6th, 7th, 10th time, particularly when it was part of the readings we were supposed to do, but GG and Quest remained unflustered and didn't tell anyone to RTFM despite those same questions being asked again and again.

Thanks for a great class and an exceptional roam. I look forward to flying with you in the future and being in 'bait squad'.

Statdasan

 

We actually have contingency plans for things like Teamspeak going down, the server going down, etc., but none of those contingency plans ever considered hours of repeated hamster failure... I "ran out" of contingency options after about 15-20 minutes, to be honest!  We were winging it after about that.  I honestly thought that downtime would resolve the issue and we'd be able to get back on track and rush through as much of the practical exercises as we could after downtime, but as everyone there is aware, the server continued to be unstable until they did the emergency reboot at 11:45ish; even after that it wasn't in very good shape but at least it was up.  Hindsight tells me I should have just called the class over at downtime and do the practicals before the roam and/or as the first hour of the roam, but hindsight is 20/20, as they say! Needless to say, I'll be building up on our contingency planning asap!  

 

We're very patient with people asking questions that are in the reading material, or asking something that was answered 2 minutes prior to their asking.  It's "Basic" class after all  We recognize that everyone learns at different rates (and prepares at different levels of seriousness).  One of the things we have noticed is, that not reading the material for a class doesn't seem to happen much at all at the classes above the PVP-BASIC class, something we really appreciate!  But yes, I know for others in the class it can be frustrating at times to listen to people who didn't take the time to prepare that you did.  Sometimes we'll direct people to hold their repetitive questions to after downtime in order to cut down on this; since this class was so far off the track, and so much wasn't covered on class day that normally would have been, we were more accommodating than perhaps, maybe, we should have been.