10 replies to this topic

[glepp]

Well guys, that was enjoyable. Thanks for coming, I'll post a full After Action Report in this thread tomorrow, but for now I figured we'd just get the feedback thread up and running. 

 

Please feel free to give feedback, both positive and negative, and especially on what we could improve.

 

Personally, I felt a bit rusty at the start, but eventually it scdestroyd off and things started running smoothly. I had a great time, and it was very enjoyable both giving the lecture and FCing you. We got some good fights. Again, thanks for coming along, hope to see you back as alumni or for other classes.

 

<3 

glepp

[SayGen]

Thanks for running these. I gave a small verbal AAR in comms, but I'll be writing my perspective as a member of the enemy fleet in my thread here on the Agony forums.
http://forums.agony-...ge-updated-614/

Looking forward to Glepps version.

Edited by SayGen, 12 July 2015 - 05:42 AM.

[glepp]

AAR incoming, will try to keep it a little brief. 

 

After the class finished, we balanced up the fleet with a nice sprinkle of EWAR and headed off to roam. Agony scouts had identified a close WH to Thera, and another one in Thera leading to Wicked Creek, which is a reliable place to get fights these days. So we headed there. Getting into Thera was no trouble, but the exit into Wicked Creek was camped by a 30-man Zealot/Legion gang, so we hung out in space for a bit. They left, and we soon followed. I was a bit rusty so i missed the location of their main fleet, and hoped to catch a straggling Zealot, however that play soon got us in trouble. We caught a Zealot, but their main fleet was pretty quick to warp back in and started nuking us. Oh well, we wiped a bit and then headed back to Stacmon, having killed a ship worth more than what we lost, so no biggie. First blood was ours, students had targeted a ship and fired their guns in anger. Good start. 

 

On the way back to Stacmon, we got eyes on the Black Legion fleet that an ex-Agony member, Amnesty Saygen had assembled to give us a good fight. You can read his excellent Battle report from the carnage soon to follow here: http://forums.agony-...ge-updated-614/

Sorry about being a bit slow to respond, Saygen. I thought you had more, but once we got confirmation it wouldn't just be a one-sided slaughter, we went for it. 

So anyway, we reshipped in Stacmon and agreed to fight BL in the MHC system in Syndicate. This was for a number of reasons: 1. Fighting in lowsec means all kinds of mechanics issues and potentially getting shot by gate guns. 2. Agony knows MHC like the back of our hand and has it bookmarked to hell and back. 3. It's nullsec, so it allows for bubble usage, offering more tactical options. 

 

Heading towards MHC, our scouts found the BL gang, consisting of 6 or so Gilas and two Scimitars along with an assortment of smaller ships. A very decent fight. We had about 40 dps/EWAR frigates and a lot of interceptors. We had every ship switch out their tracking disruptors for damps and the ECM ships switch for minmatar jammers (sorry, Saygen) just to mess with them. The BL gang was sitting at a bookmark off the 2X gate in MHC, and we warped on grid, landing about 300km off them. Now, for us to have any chance at killing stuff in this fight, we needed to land tackle quickly and get in close to kill it. We're in slower ships than theirs, and their ships are really well set up to kill us with drones and light missiles, so they can just kite off and kill us from a distance. The setup was a bit rushed and I feel I should have taken a bit more time to go over what you're supposed to do in a fight like this, but we managed decently anyway. Reverend Ellecon got us a great warpin by sacrificing his interceptor in a mad burn straight at their fleet, so we landed about 10km off their gang warping in. Sadly we failed to get any scrams when we landed, but our chaser tackle eventually managed to catch one Gila and we got to work on it. Jams and damps were distributed, making it harder to lock us up and rep, and we soon got the first Gila down, having lost 5-10 of our own. 

 

Seeing that they were 50km off us, i was in no mood to burn toward them and sacrifice more ships to the kiting gods. We warped back up to a bookmark and then got another warpin via interceptor, landing us at pretty much zero to some of them. We grabbed another Gila, and very very slowly killed it. As it was going down, i noticed one of their scimitars sitting about 30km behind the rest of their gang and figured we could kill that with a good warpin. So I asked one of our inties to go get us a drop, and Yamir obliged. Just as he got in position and I initiated warp, however, their Sabre pilot burned in and bubbled us, leaving half the fleet stranded with me, with the rest warping off to the scimi. For those of you who aren't used to PVP, spotting a play like that and executing a counter that effectively in the ten-second time window you have to react, is the sign of a truly great FC/dictor pilot, whoever spotted it first. It was a truly excellent play by them, winning them the fight without any risk of more losses. We were pretty decimated already, but I'm confident we could have gotten at least one more of them, if they hadn't played it so well. So kudos to BL and GF GF! Here's a BR from their side. It's missing a Kitsune loss, btw: https://zkillboard.c...","98167628"]}/

 

 

Wiping in MHC, we moved back to Stacmon to reship, and were now down to about 30 hydra frigs. I decided to take us through Syndicate, up to Cloud Ring to see what we could find. Sadly, Syndicate was dead, as was much of Cloud Ring. We got a few ganks on the way, but nothing really exciting. Moving up to Fade, however, we found that the Spacemonkeys were up to something and soon found a fight in C4C. There apparently were two fleets out and about, some cruisers and a frigate gang. Our most excellent skirmishers won both for us, grabbing tackles and setting up warpins. 

 

We then moved on to O1Y, where there were about 70 Spacemonkeys docked in station. After much mucking about and a failed covert cyno drop by a proteus, we finally got the closing fight of the night, wiping us and grabbing us some killmails. We probably could have gotten more if I'da set up the fight better, but I was getting pretty tired. I got the feeling you all had fun anyways.

 

So thanks for coming, it was most excellent both instructing and FCing you all. Please feel free to come back as alumni, hopefully for even more PVP goodness.

 

<3

glepp

[roigon]

Was fun doing the pvp-basics thing. I hope I didn't heckle too much seeing as people paid good money to participate.

 

As for the roam, sometimes you just get bad dice. The engagement with gorgon legion/zealots was, I felt, just one of those split second decisions where you can't really reason it out and you just have to go by a gut feeling. Sometimes that doesn't work. But as things stand, it could have honestly ended much worse. I don't think the call to engage was terrible, regardless of main fleet location. The burning back to gate and wait out a timer perhaps not ideal.  But the other option, getting safe in system might have resulted in a salty gorgon camping the fleet in for a little while. Especially with an eye on getting people into the thick of it and getting as much content as possible, it was probably the right call.

 

The BL fight was actually quite interesting. Not often do I find myself on the chasing horde side of things and this change in dynamic actually proved to be disadvantages to my normal flying style. My maulus was effective in a 60km to 90km range, which I expected would be a cushy job where I could just hang back, watch the carnage and be a dick to the other party. But with having to move forward instead of backwards it became quite hard to find good warp-in spots to get back into the fight after having to warp off because some BL anti-supported didn't appreciate my presence.  With the agony fleet moving forward to brawl the BL's fleet main DPS, the anti-support actually created a zone of denial to warp safely back into damp range of the logi's. 

 

So all in all my little cushy job became a painstaking avoidance of slicers and interceptors. Thanks Obama Glepp.

 

From a higher level view I think the BL fight was the high-light of the roam. Especially after reading that saygen and the BL FC kept their fleet balanced with the hydra fleet in mind. I must give them kudo's for that, their little fleet had just enough bite to be dangerous, but was also flawed enough to be engageable.  And I know how difficult it can be to tell people they can't fly something, or worse that they can't fly in this fleet because it's full.

 

In the end the outcome was also very acceptable for both parties I think.

 

Saygen's BR link is a bit bugged though. (because I'm not on it.)

So I looked at this BR.

http://evf-eve.com/s...65&e=60&t=b&r=1

 

As for the SMA fight, it was 3am and I just wanted to go to bed, but SMA was too incompetent to kill me, thereby refusing me my much needed sleep. Bastards.

 

Overall it was interesting to see how the hydra fleet functions anno 2015. The meta has changed a lot in recent years but it seems the hydra fleet can still be somewhat competitive for what it is. And more importantly then that it served it's purpose for the class I think. Getting people new to pvp a taste of being the hunter as well as the hunted.

 

If I can make wolfpack or advanced I'm sure I'll drop by to annoy everyone again.

[glepp]

The burning back to gate and wait out a timer perhaps not ideal. But the other option, getting safe in system might have resulted in a salty gorgon camping the fleet in for a little while. Especially with an eye on getting people into the thick of it and getting as much content as possible, it was probably the right call.

Nah mate, it was a complete brainfart on my part. What we should have done was stick with the plan, burn out of the bubble and warp away and then just bounce safes. But my hinges were creaking with rust from not having FCed a basic class in a LONG time. I just forgot how incredibly slow we are when compared to how we normally roll, and seeing how long it took for us to get out of the bubble made me second-guess my decision. Second guess worst guess.

[eleanoraverti1]

I'd like to thank Glepp for showing us students a great time. I learnt a lot, not least that a good FC + scout + interceptor team can wield a bunch of mostly inexperienced frigates to impressive effect.

Thanks

 

[Dog Walker]

So, since I came here to the forums today to try to figure out how, when, where, why, etc to post my killmail from the roam (as we were asked to do on comms yesterday) I thought I would throw in my feedback.  Part (maybe even most) of my desire to add some feedback and post my killmail was to apologize for my disorganized last minute jump into the roam while spamming the chat window with rookie questions and also to say thanks for putting up with me trying to get in on things last minute and providing some fun.  I have essentially been away from the game since the early this year and it has been even longer since I have done any PvP.

 

I got home from vacation and pretty much out of the blue decided to log onto Eve Online for the first time in months.  After waiting for the update patch I sign in and see the mail from Agony Unleashed about the roam.  At first, I figured it was probably way out of date and then thought, "what a perfect coincidence: it is on for TODAY!"  I knew I had plenty of ships lying around that I could use if I could only figure out where everything was stashed.  So, I started flying around to collect a couple of ships, mods, ammo, etc, throw them all into a freighter and cruise over to Stacmon V thinking I had several hours to get ready.  Well, it suddenly dawned on me that the class wasn't starting in a few hours, it was starting NOW!  I was completely flustered and I apologize for spamming the Agony chat room with my rapid fire barrage of annoyingly unprepared rookie questions.  Also, thanks for nobody completely loosing it on me and booting me out of the chat room or blocking me from joining the roam.  

 

Anyway, one thing I tried for the first time that I really liked yesterday and will continue to do myself in the future and recommend for others was to use a Teamspeak app with my android phone and a bluetooth headset for comms.  It allowed me complete freedom to move about untethered to my computer without worrying about loosing comms if the computer, the Eve game client, or even my internet service went down.  I downloaded the app for the first time ever, set it up on my phone from scratch, paired up with my headset, adjusted all the settings and logged into the Agony Teamspeak all while getting my ships packed up and flying to Stacmon.  

 

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

As far as the roam itself.  I did get killed pretty quickly in our first engagement by a couple of Gorgons in Legions while stuck trying to jump back through the gate with the aggro timer still counting down.  However, this was probably about 80% my own fault due to being so rusty and out of practice that:

1) I did not take into account the aggro timer in the first place

2) I froze up when I reached the gate and got the message that I could not jump.

3) I completely lost situational awareness, developed tunnel vision and did not make any attempt to save my ship by taking evasive actions and, in fact, didn't even realize I was taking damage until it was too late.

 

I guess I can take some consolation in the fact that I did get in on a kill before being destroyd by the two Legions, but it could have been a much different outcome if I had kept my wits about me, been aware of the timer mechanics, applied my tracking disruptor to the first legion targeting me and got the hell out of the bubble at max speed and suitable angular velocity before the second one had a chance to pile on.  There were only 2 ships involved in my kill and if I hadn't been sitting at the gate looking like a deer in the headlights, I have every reason to believe I could have reached the edge of the bubble and warped off safely with little to no damage taken if I had done the right things.  This was a valuable lesson smacking me in the face like a ton of bricks and I'm glad it happened so early on in the roam.  

 

After waking up in my medical clone back in Stacmon, I reshipped, and while waiting for the rest of the fleet to arrive, I walked down to kitchen and made a cup of coffee, grabbed a danish (thanks to the Teamspeak app enabled cellphone and bluetooth headset arrangement that I now love) and took a bio break, all while never loosing comms.  

 

The rest of the roam went well and if I hadn't had other things to do around the house I would have stuck around even longer.  However, I can say that I did find myself in tighter spots at times during the rest of the roam and the subsequent fights and managed to do a much, much better job not getting tunnel vision or freezing up and I was able to keep my cheap basic T1 fit Atron (after having lost my more expensively, T2 fit Kestrel), despite taking heavy damage more than once, until the very end of the roam.

 

Thanks everybody for the lessons learned, the fun, and the fact that you guys put up with me and allowed me to join at the last minute like that.

[Reverend Ellecon]

Fun night skirmishing! (They never let me skirmish anymore)

 

In the BL engagement props must go to Schlummor. He made it possible for my TAM by drawing off their screening fast locking Slicers so I could dive in from behind fast before the Gilas could lock and their drones could get on me. It gave you a very narrow time frame for the TAM but you guys took advantage quick enough so I could get my Inty out in one piece. I returned to the fight later when you guys were struggling to get the 2nd Gila tackled and I dived in for a quick scram but got caught by one of the Slicers.

 

Hope to see some of you guys on the next one!

[SayGen]

Fun night skirmishing! (They never let me skirmish anymore)
 
In the BL engagement props must go to Schlummor. He made it possible for my TAM by drawing off their screening fast locking Slicers so I could dive in from behind fast before the Gilas could lock and their drones could get on me. It gave you a very narrow time frame for the TAM but you guys took advantage quick enough so I could get my Inty out in one piece. I returned to the fight later when you guys were struggling to get the 2nd Gila tackled and I dived in for a quick scram but got caught by one of the Slicers.
 
Hope to see some of you guys on the next one!

Wait, your inty lived when securing the initial engagement? I thought for sure you pop'd.

PS: If anyone has video footage, I'd love to see it.

Edited by SayGen, 13 July 2015 - 12:11 AM.

[Essellone Reactor]

Great fun and most educational - would volunteer to get blown up again!

 

Thanks to Glepp, Yamir and Koldz for the class.  Thanks to them plus the all the agony skirmishers for the roam.  Hope your cold gets better soon Glepp!  Also, thanks to everybody who joined the class and roam, it felt like we had a good bunch.

 

First time in null for me so the bubbles were pretty much a new experience.  Great to see how an experienced set of scouts and FC work together.  Was impressed how well we did considering how new we probably all were.  Interesting to see how distributing the EWAR out worked.  I guess if we were all a bit more experienced it would make an ever greater difference to engagements.

 

Hopefully I'll be able to do some more practice fleets to see how well it works when it "really comes together" plus I think I'll try it out on some solo engagements as well.

[syrenskall]

I'm probably a bit late to the party.

 

Nevertheless...

 

Great class. The level of detail you guys go into is excellent, and I liked the question led interactions. I think it was pretty successful at getting the students engaged and also encouraging them to ask questions of their own. (I don't know if that's the intention or not.)

 

The roam was definitely the highlight for me though, with a really nice cross section of the types of things that can happen in eve pvp, we got caught by a superior force in Wicked Creek, we got a straight up fight off of Black Legion (Which was nice, I kinda miss those guys since Brave moved out of fountain), a sampling of the quiet stretch between fights, and finally beat up some space monkeys before annoying them into sending us home the quick way. The variety of situations we actually got into is something I think a lot of the people new to pvp will remember.

 

What I really enjoyed was watching the way the more experienced skirmishers (and the FC) worked together to isolate and catch targets, which was most easily visible during the space monkey fights but was definitely a running theme.