4 replies to this topic

[Gizznitt]

This fleet was formed with the intention of giving CCP's New Player Training Session's PvP Fleet a good fight.  They were to form up at 17:00, head out about 18:00, and meet us about 19:00.  They were forming up 4 fleets in each "faction" space, and we had the honour of fighting CCP Phantom & CCP Falcon's Caldari formup fleet.  I thought we'd be facing quite a large battlegroup, especially when they announced they'd limit their fleet to 100 members in size.  Unfortunately, they had a little over 35 members at max fleet size, and while we had 25-30 members ourselves.  

 

We formed up at 17:30, and it took some time on my part to get in contact with our welcome adversaries, and determine where to go.  I knew there would be other fleets out and about, and we were by no means the big fish in the pond.  At the start, I thought we could get warmed up by heading into lower Eastern Syndicate.  We had intel of an 80-pilot fleet heading down the Poitot pipe, which was fast and mobile enough to make it very difficult to engage.  We flashed them our fleet in MHC, and quickly moved into UM-Q with the goal of having their intel gatherers follow us into the fairly untraveled sections of far-eastern syndicate.  Alas, they caught some of our members in MHC area, and didn't give chase.  

 

At this point, I brought the fleet around to EZA / PVH / 6-C area looking for fights.  This is a fairly active section of Syndicate and I hoped to find a good fight here.  In 6-C on the EZA we had our first gank of an enyo that engaged our scout while we were positioned on the other side of the gate.  Moments later, our scout mentioned The Cursed Few had a gang on the Reb Gate, including command ships and t3's.  I warped the fleet to the reb gate as they tackled a Sleipnir.  Upon arriving, there were quite a few ships on grid, as Moon Warriors and The Cursed Few were battling each other, providing wonderful targets for us.  We managed to take down several billion in ships with minor losses, primarily because they kept shoot each other rather than us:  http://www.agony-unl...related/117442/

 

At this point, we headed back to Stacmon to reship, and the headed to Black Rise lowsec to engage CCP.  On route, several targets were noticed, but we only ganked an Enyo before engaging CCP in Ikoskio.  CCP had recently engaged a pirate BS group before fighting us, and was at considerably weaker numbers for our engagement.  I wasn't aware of their strength and warped us in at 100.  In a twist of fate, they warped their fleet in at 100, too, landing right on top of us.  With only half as many pilots, and many of those pretty young, it was a slaughter rather than a "balanced fight", which wasn't my goal.  Unfortunately, sometimes that's how things happen.  At least we got some CCP km's, unfortunately we didn't get their pods (darn lowsec).  http://www.agony-unl...related/117505/

 

We took a bio, and Markee Dragon came into the area with a 13 man tanky cruiser fleet.  This seemed like a great fight to me, so we chased them down, warped to a blatantly obvious celestial, and waited for them to engage. They obliged, and what followed was a brutal fight were both fleets pretty much decimated each other.  TBH, I'm not certain where our BB came from, but it played a pivotal role in the end-battle where there were only a few of them and only a few of us.  That, and we had members reshipping into noobships rejoining the fight, cluttering up their overview with constant targets.  Overall it was a very fun fight.  http://www.agony-unl...related/117488/

 

With most of our fleet in noobships or pods, we headed back to stacmon and reshipped for our last venture.  We went back into Syndicate via MHC looking for fights, and ran into a small Goonswarm in X-M, netting us a couple kills:  http://www.agony-unl...related/117520/ There were several targets in the area, and we hung around FD- & PF- looking for some kills, particularly hunting some snipers in PF- near the Orvolle gate.  We weren't a particularly large group at this point, with about 16 combat ships on our team & half of them t1 frigates.  The Cuban locals decided to engage our gang with an assault frigate group, which result in a nice brawl to end the night.  Strangely, this brawl was more unbalanced than I expected.  We didn't enter the engagement as a single fighting group, thereby stringing us out nicely for them to take down.  However, we had a lot of medium-long range dps that allowed us to systematically destroy them before they entered autocannon/blaster range.  http://www.agony-unl...related/117516/

 

Overall, I thought this was an excellent roam, although I'll admit we had a slow start and some periods of inactivity.  Please post your thoughts and feedback.  

[Othran]

I'd forgotten how much fun lowsec can be.

 

The CCP fight was a welping for them and not much more interest than getting on a CCP dev KM. Zero-range frigate fight, inexperienced people on one side, us on the other. Pretty sure everyone on our side had multiple targets locked up before they even thought about it so it was all over in 30-60 seconds (bar the Vultures). It occurs to me that Agony might want to offer some of the "slaughtered" a free PvP-Basic spot

 

I liked the way the fights developed. When you get the big 50+ Basic class roams it can often be a gank or a welp (bombs/holy hand grenade) and that's it. With the numbers/composition we had then we never really looked that much of a threat - scouts/skirmish out and about etc - so I think that worked well.

 

All change next week though as we zip around....

 

Was a very enjoyable roam Gizz. Would definitely do again.

 

Edit +1 to Koldz who made at least one fight even remotely winnable

[Bear Tullius]

I enjoyed this roam.

 

Command and control was clear and concise couldn't ask for much more! 

 

Kicked myself for getting distracted at one point and not selecting the gate that we had just been fleet warped too, so when told to jump I had another gate targeted and therefore fucked off in completely the wrong direction -  - can't promise I'll never do it again but hey hopefully I've learnt from that little blunder.

 

Also is there an SOP (standard operating procedure) for when you find yourself in a pod and you've escaped off grid - as I was a little confused the first time and having a quick one liner in the initial briefing before the fleet left station as to the 'Actions on' in the event of ship destroyed, pod safe/pod destroyed would have assisted in the command and control just a little.

 

Thing I did have problems with is Drones, I think both of my losses involved enemy drone use against me .... is there a proven tactic to escape them?

 

Other than that I can't come up with any other productive feedback - less to say the Agony fleets are some of the best organised and well run that I in my short time in game have been able to take part in (some of the war fleets I've been in would make you cry!) and hope that more roams and courses will be available soon.

 

Until next time keep up the good work guys/girls.

[Itkovian Beddict]

If you're in a pod and have escaped grid, keep bouncing between celestials, make a safespot and wait there until the fight is over.  Assuming not everyone dies, you can probably get a scout out for all the pods to the nearest highsec, before reshipping.

 

If you can't either tank the DPS of drones, or move too quickly for them to apply it effectively then you have two options (assuming you can't just kill the drone boats).  Either you burn out of drone control range (usually 80km but does vary) until they leave you alone or you warp off grid and come back.  Warping is far more likely to succeed and although you might waste 30 seconds not being on grid, you'll be alive and contributing a lot more.  If you were still in shields or have active armor tank you'll renew your tank resulting in more overall tank for the fleet than you just dying.

[Zor'katar]

I enjoyed this roam.

 

Command and control was clear and concise couldn't ask for much more!

 

That's pretty much what I had to say. It was my first PvP since the Basic roam months ago. As an all projectile/Minmatar pilot, I was flip-flopping between the suggested Slasher and Rifter alumni fits. Then, unexpectedly (even to myself), I said "Screw it, let's try something different" and fit up an MASB close-range Breacher. Loved it. During the early Sleipnir battle, I took some aggro but was able to tank it. After he went down I reloaded the MASB and headed to the next primary. Shortly after the reload finished, my shields disappeared in one big alarm-inducing blap. MASB to the rescue again. Managed to survive the fight. We came upon a Fleet Scythe that was doing a pretty good job of kiting the group... I think I won the race to catch him and apply a web/scram. That was probably the highlight of my night. Later on, in the big war of attrition, I managed to last for a bit, but I finally took more aggro than I could handle and popped. I spent a few minutes randomly warping my pod around before remembering that I could dock up and grab a Reaper. Got in a couple more kills (including an epic 5 damage wrecking shot) before that one got popped too, and by the time I grabbed another, the fight was over.

 

All in all, the best organized and one of the most engaging roams I've ever been on. Great FC job, and generally pretty fantastic discipline on the part of the rest of the group. Not too many leroys/early decloakers. DPS was pretty well focused as far as I could tell. Will definitely try to get in on some more of these alumni roams. Thanks for organizing!