22 replies to this topic

[Weeks]

Comments, constructive criticism, all feedback welcome. Let us know what you think! This class was the first COVOPS class in a long time that we've offered publically. Be gentle. There were numerous hiccups and problems, and we're aware of most of them. I thought the end result, the performance of all involved, was outstanding. I am utterly drained from herding all of you wild people all over the north... I'm going to bed.

[Infensuss]

The class was good overall. At this point, I have attended four classes, so I had a good idea of what to expect, and I was not disappointed. I do have a few things I'd like to point out though. 1. Too much time spent talking about fittings. Basic and Wolfpacks are pre-reqs for Covops, both are done in small ships, both give instruction about fitting for maneuverability. Both cover Ewar very thoroughly. Given this, I don't see why ewar and how to fit a fast ship were covered. I can see talking about cloak and using cloak as a defensive module, but other than that, Covops class members should know the fitting basics. 2. Too little time spent on scanning. I have played Eve since 2005, and I have a pretty good understanding on scanning, but I am no expert. But the one exercise where the instructor warped off to a random planet, uncloaked, and said, "find me," felt lacking. Basically a few people typed out where he was and then we moved on to other topics. We covered the range and setting it to various scan ranges, but other than that it did not seem like there was any in-depth instruction. Maybe you could have some of the people that are able to scan stuff down super fast give a few tips or something. 3. No mock battles or safe space simulations. I would really like to have seen samples set up in safe space with a fake camp, even without bubbles, and have a covops pilot show how they maneuver around and set up warps, and alignments etc. I realize this is a pretty big request, but it seems like there could be some concepts of covops maneuvering and fleet warp-in setup that could be covered in safe space. 4. Virtually no probing instruction. This one is probably my biggest disappointment. I realize that the probe system has changed drastically from the old courses and the class materials have not been updated, but I was somewhat surprised that we received virtually no instruction regarding probing out targets. Now don't get me wrong, overall I am pleased with the class. As I mentioned earlier, this is my fourth class, but the thing that stands out to me is that in EVERY other class I have taken, I have left telling myself, "wow I never knew that, that is awesome," about at least one thing that was covered in the class. unfortunately, I can not say that about the covops class, which seems ironic to me considering that covops should be a more advanced class than Wolfpacks, and certainly more advanced than Basic. I hope I don't sound too negative. I am taking the time to type this out so that it can serve a constructive purpose, not just to rant. Overall the class was good, and I will be back as an alumni. Now when is that skirmishing class...

[Deckerd]

reply posted in other feedback thread http://www.agony-unl...opic.php?125670

[Baka Lakadaka]

reply posted in other feedback thread http://www.agony-unl...opic.php?125670

Thanks Deckerd. Your post isn't lost - I did read it, but I've locked the other thread to keep feedback in one place.

Here's what I wrote in the other thread:

I had a disastrous day with Vent, so thanks to Weeks for stepping up. It seems to be a new incompatibility between Eve and Vent (since the patch)......I'm working on fixing that.

There was a couple of things that I would like to have covered, scan probes and bubble evasion.

I'll work out some way of getting you all through this. Probably a mini-seminar (maybe a few session so we can get everyone to one or the other). Stand-by for more info.

For now, your feedback would be appreciated.


I will be arranging some additional sessions to catch up on the probing and bubble evasion. These will be held on Sisi, so please make sure you can log in to the test server. I'll run several sessions at different times so that we can get everyone up to speed. These will not cost anything - it's all included in the course fee that you've already paid.

On a happy note, I've updated a load of drivers and managed to fix the issue I was having. (I managed to get to a point of not having any sound at all on the way, but it seems OK now - more testing needed).

[Carenthor Loon]

an interesting thing i learned: only small bubbles will break your cloak (what i was told after the fact at least - is there more to that story?) - i hit a T2 bubble and was frantically turning and hitting my MWD until i saw my cloak was still on - lmao.

None of the bubbles will decloak you themselves if you are sucked into them from warp - it is only the bubble item itself (the bit at the centre that projects the warp disruption sphere) that will decloak you, and only if you get within 2,000m of it. Since even the small T1 bubble has a warp scramble radius of 5,000m, you will always land far enough away from it to not break your cloak.

What you need to be wary of is that most camps will have ships sat at the edge of the bubble aligned with likely warp-in directions (i.e. other gates in the system if they're camping a gate), so if you warp in from there you will land within 2,000m of a hostile ship and will be decloaked (then locked then killed most likely!). You also need to keep an eye out for wrecks, cans and corpses - for a time these did not decloak you but now getting with 2,000m of any of them will break your cloak.

If you are warping into a bubble from an unaligned angle then chances are you won't land near enough anything to break your cloak, however it always pays to have an unaligned on-grid tac 200km or more (I prefer 300km personally) away from the gate (or station) so you can get on grid to have a look at what's going on without having to worry about bubbles!

[Sanpaku Deska]

I continue to be pleased with the amazing professionalism displayed by AU personnel, both in game interaction and in academics! As usual, excellent job (I think the technical glitches are unavoidable at times and, while unfortunate, can't be part of a class evaluation).

I have a question about the overall course structure:

It would be surprising to me if any two different courses had identical classroom and roaming time requirements. This seems to be especially the case when I look at a BASIC class, which is academically less complex, and COV-OPs, which is perhaps the most complex class I've attended. It seems to me that the COV-OPs class would benefit from more non-roaming time and, whiile I can see the facility in running the CO class concurrently with a BASIC class, trying to match the time requirements of COV-OPS with those of the BASIC class seems to be a difficult fit.

Would the COV-OPs curriculum not be better off if it could find its own time requirements? Perhaps restructuring it into a two-part class -- one day for academics and another day for recon with another class -- might be a less difficult structure?



BASIC - 1403091800
WOLFPACKS-2103091800
ADVANCED-0404091800
COV-OPS 1804090001

[Tlak Chilk]

Thanks for the class. I hope to come back and help with Covert Ops duty on future classes. Unexpected audio/Ventrillo issues, last minute mechanics changes, and internet outages happen but you guys adjusted well and kept the class going. Following are some feed-back and suggestions: 1) The discussion on fitting the ship could be streamlined some, although rigs were not discussed nor the use of faction probes these days (I regretted not having mine when trying to scan down the Deimos and Broadsword in AD-CBT). Combining the ECM Burst with the Sensor Damps w/Scan Res scripts was a good point. Also, WCSs saved my helios once but that is more of a hauling rather then hunting setup. 2) There seemed to be some questions with regards to using the directional scanner. One thing that I have tried with others was to have them do 15 degree scans on each of the celestial bodies rather then the 180, 90, 60, ... progression. This works best in systems with a limited number of celestial bodies but has also helped drive home the point that the directional scanner is great for finding targets on celestial bodies. 3) Scan probes were an obvious omission, I suspect due to time constraints. While I would expect many are familiar with basic scanning mechanics from exploration, I would not mind learning some tricks to get quick results and determining when to use probes. Two things I often do is use the directional scanner first to narrow down the direction and range for a target before dropping probes and looking at the number and types of wrecks to determine whether someone is just belt ratting or doing an exploration site. 4) I liked the mentoring for the roam and using a private channel allowed for some of the questions and clarifications to be addressed without clogging fleet or intel channels. All in all I found the class informative and conducted well as all of Agony's class have been.

[Meldgaard]

Sorry for not showing up i got the dates mixed up, so i was day to late

[Vora]

That was a loooong night for me petty Euro (2 am to 11 am) :dodge: %-6 don't ask me 'bout my saturday... The theory part was ofc a little hampered by Baka's Vent problems (see, I knew there must be a disadvantage in living on a continent where everything is upside down !lol ), but Weeks took over flawlessly. Then ofc the changed mechanics with two cloaked ships uncloaking each other (still wondering if that's a bug or a feature...). I guess that means that some practical exercises have to be made uncloaked in the future. Here are my musings about the theory and exercise part: Don't take too much time for the fitting. The course material is pretty comprehensive and complete on that and you can assume that COVOPS students know a thing or two about fitting ships. The more important topics on proper recon reports and the use of TACs was comprehensivly covered by Baka and Weeks. The most important part about finding targets though fell short due to time constraints. That's actually what I was in the course for. I know how to handle the directional scanner and the probes in basic (like all who fly covops most probably do) but I don't know how the hell "they probe you out in less than 30 seconds", a quote I always hear/read. For that I wanted to learn some tricks. It's obviously different to scanning out plexes or wormholes. So I dare to take Baka's word... see you on Sisi The roam was, in a word, pretty excessive for me. I don't think I have made so many jumps anywhere in my EvE career... those must have been hundreds (subjective feeling only). And I never thought that 0.0 could be so empty... I know that the NC is Euro-heavy, but seeing PB and Tribute so barren (and I think I was in every sytem in Tribute). Thankfully Deklein a.k.a. "New France" proved to be the treasure trove for the BASIC fleet. Sitting in a position in YAO where I could watch two gates simultaniously was the best I could contribute with my limited finding skills. As always, Spin, Weeks and all the Agony skirmishers and scouts left a highly professional impression... you guys really spoil us for the other corps... !lol PS: To fly a ship with a hefty price tag thru 0.0 without crapping the pants all the time was a very new experience for me...

[Baka Lakadaka]

(see, I knew there must be a disadvantage in living on a continent where everything is upside down !lol ),

There are some advantages - like a mate of mine used to be able to skull a can of beer in less than 5 seconds while standing on his head. (we won a lot of money betting on him against opposing rugby teams)

but I don't know how the hell "they probe you out in less than 30 seconds", a quote I always hear/read. For that I wanted to learn some tricks. It's obviously different to scanning out plexes or wormholes. So I dare to take Baka's word... see you on Sisi

Sadly the drop a probe and get a warpable result in 25 seconds is now part of history. But we will go through how to use probes and how to get a warpable result as quick as possible.

PS: To fly a ship with a hefty price tag thru 0.0 without crapping the pants all the time was a very new experience for me...

Now whack in some implants as well.......just to be really tough.

[Kazella]

I found the lecture part of the course good as always, Even with Baka's communication problems, and the changed game mechanics that had to be worring him ("OMG - I have a class of idiots! Nobody cloaked befoire they warped"). I would like to learn more how the directional scannner works, because I'll admit now, Weeks - I found you by pure luck. I was going to warp to a ranom spot and start probing you down and there you were at the random planet I picked. I suppose I will just practice up in high sec and figure it out. One question that I have though is can you get a warpable result off of directional scanning? At the end of the theory portion I was still afraid of bubbles and still wasn't quite sure of how they work and how you counter them, but learning to warp your fleet in off line of them was very helpful. I think possibly covering their mechanics more could be helpful since that is when (at least in the classes I have been in) we seem to lose the greatest numbers of ships. Then came the practical. I was teamed up with Muffcobb and Agent Dogfire was our instructor. After a brief introuction and some more helpfull information Dogfire says "OK, I am in this system. Get here without dying." OK - Piece of cake!! Once we arrived in system, Agent Dogfire has us warp to him at an off-grid tac, and he gave us some more good tips, then he warped us to an on grid gate tac and he went over how we would assess the situation, what ships were good, which were bad, etc. Then he told us to bookmark our position and warp back to the off grid tac. That was when both Muff and myself said "We didn't bookmark the off grid tac..." and when I suppose Dogfire started drinking... LOL! Once Dogfire sheep-herded us back to our off grid tac, we went back to the gate tac and our little group figured the Broadsword was the best target and then Dogfire said "OK Kaz! Your target!" at which point I crapped myself and promptly forgot everything! I spent probably 90 seconds trying to figure out "How do I get close to the Broadsword???" and then I finally remembered my probes. Luckily Muffcobb was able to save face for our group by calling in the calvary perfectly which led to the whole camp getting wiped out. Anyway's my performance after that wasn't much better, causing poor Dogfire to drink even more I suppose, because by the end of the night the could barely type out "Kaz, where are you?", "Kaz, what are you doing?", "Kaz, say SOMETHING!!!" anymore on our private channel . In closing, it was a very humbling experience. Learing what you guys do behind the scenes to make our classes go so smoothly added to the experiences of those classes. CCP is lucky to have you all providing this service to their community. I hope I can refine through practice what you have taught me and one day possibly come back and actually help you guys with a class. Kaz

[Bergon Darek]

Sadly the drop a probe and get a warpable result in 25 seconds is now part of history. But we will go through how to use probes and how to get a warpable result as quick as possible.

I've got to ask:

I haven't even made it to a Wolfpacks class yet, never mind Covops. But I see a lot of people asking about probing. Do folks really find it that hard? It takes me like 5 minutes to probe an immobile ship to a warpable hit; that's in an unbonused ship, with moderate character skills. At this point probing is all about player skills; character skills and covops bonuses would at best cut my probe time in half. (Sounds like a lot of improvement, but we're still talking 2-3 minutes.)

If it is an issue for a lot of people, probably a visual demonstration of how to position probes and scan is the only thing that's going to help, followed by a lot of practice.

[Deckerd]

I will be arranging some additional sessions to catch up on the probing and bubble evasion. These will be held on Sisi, so please make sure you can log in to the test server. I'll run several sessions at different times so that we can get everyone up to speed. These will not cost anything - it's all included in the course fee that you've already paid.

This sounds like just what i could use. How will we find out about your plans? keep an eye on the forums? or perhaps a sign-up list?

my access to SiSI is confirmed

[Vora]

But I see a lot of people asking about probing. Do folks really find it that hard? It takes me like 5 minutes to probe an immobile ship to a warpable hit; that's in an unbonused ship, with moderate character skills. At this point probing is all about player skills; character skills and covops bonuses would at best cut my probe time in half. (Sounds like a lot of improvement, but we're still talking 2-3 minutes.)

If it is an issue for a lot of people, probably a visual demonstration of how to position probes and scan is the only thing that's going to help, followed by a lot of practice.

The probing itself is no issue here... within a couple of minutes I can probe down a ship as well. The big question was if there are any special tricks to accelerate this procedure since speed is king for probing "nervous" targets.
I have often heard "within 30 seconds" but Baka already confirmed that this is no more under the new system...

Sadly the drop a probe and get a warpable result in 25 seconds is now part of history.

[Gizznitt]

I enjoyed the class. Some additional thoughts: 1.) I agree, a little more on scanning would be nice. 2.) In some ways, I felt like there were too many of us.... for the gang, that was a good thing, but for individual learning, it felt somewhat disconnecting.

[Bergon Darek]

Special tricks? None that I can really think of. If you can probe a ship in a couple of minutes, you probably already know all the tips I could give you and have better character skills and a covops ship to boot.

[ROX Genghis]

Good news about the "interesting" new cloaking mechanic we encountered. The one wherein 2 cloaked ships would decloak each other, severely nerfing cloaked fleet ops.

http://www.eveonline...1037660&page=45

1. cloaked gangs decloaking each other during gang warps or in proximity whilst orbiting a location.

We are looking into fixing this so cloaked ships will not decloak other cloaked ships as the whole point of the covert ops cloak was to allow the element of surprise and this is not possible when in a gang with other cloaked ships or some alternative solution to better allow for this without spoiling the surprise factor.

[Weeks]

Good... knew that had to be a bug.

[Baka Lakadaka]

Good news about the "interesting" new cloaking mechanic we encountered. The one wherein 2 cloaked ships would decloak each other, severely nerfing cloaked fleet ops.

http://www.eveonline...1037660&page=45

1. cloaked gangs decloaking each other during gang warps or in proximity whilst orbiting a location.

We are looking into fixing this so cloaked ships will not decloak other cloaked ships as the whole point of the covert ops cloak was to allow the element of surprise and this is not possible when in a gang with other cloaked ships or some alternative solution to better allow for this without spoiling the surprise factor.

This is excellent news.

[muffcobb]

Thanks for the class. Worth every penny to me...... I find it hard to give feedback in general on the course without seeing what it's supposed to look like due to the difficulties that Baka had administering it. It wasn't his fault, but it makes providing useful feedback difficult. All of Agony's other classes have been excellent in delivery and I assume this class would be as well without the troubles.... That said, I learned a great deal from the course, more in the practical portion for the previous reasons.... There was plenty in the theory to learn from, but it was a bit disjointed and off pace for obvious reasons.... There seemed to be a lot of mixed experiences from the students and I think, of course, luck had plenty to do with covops being in the right place at the right time (or vice versa). Rather than give criticisms, I will just tell you what seemed to work for me. My Agony mentor (Agent Dogfire) allowed us to apply what we had learned without spoon feeding us. That is what the lecture is for. 1. He made the correct assumption that we could move around in 0.0 by ourselves and we did just that. And if you are not comfortable doing so at this point, you will be after this course or you never will be. 2. He kept pushing us to think for ourselves as scouts. Kazella and I kept asking, "Where do you want us?" and he kept saying, "where do you think you should be?" "Listen to the FC. What is the he looking for?" By the end of the night, Agent Dogfire was asking us WHERE WE WERE and providing feedback, not the other way around.... 3. He also had a private chat going with Kazella and me which made it very easy to ask questions quickly and get prompt feedback (even with the alcohol ) without gumming up the other comm lines. 4. He HARPED on us to give recon reports. "ok Muff, it's your turn....Send it!" No way to get better at them than actually doing them. Confidence is born out of experience. 5. Our mentor stayed with us for the entire roam providing guidance and advice and some history lessons if I do recall . Some of my corpies were in groups where their mentor had to leave VERY early and had a somewhat different experience than I did. From this standpoint, one thing I would recommend, is that IF you are going to have mentors as part of the course, they should stay with the students since the students were required to stay for the roam.... Which brings me to my next point. [blanket statement] I vehemently disagree with Sanpaku [/blanket statement] about splitting up the course. All anyone had to do was read the sign-up thread, the WHOLE sign-up thread, to know they were required to stay for the roam. And if they couldn't make it, then make room for another person who could. Have the lecture, then have the practical at the same time as the basic course. Trial by fire is always better, especially in Eve. And it worked well this time. Introducing ANOTHER possible scheduling conflict is not a good idea when you are trying to coordinate people from all over the planet for a video game. It's hard enough as it is to get one course going. I do not need to be PUSSY-footing around in high-sec being spoon fed stuff that I should have a basic handle on before I arrive to an advanced Agony course on one day and then go to null-sec on another day after I have had time to reflect and think up other ways I can suck up to Agony without submitting my application to join. If I want high-sec training, I will go back to missioning or trying to scan down wormholes in Jita on my own. Along that line Agony Unleashed, don't ever slow down. I think Sanpaku's nose has a really high inertial multipier. The thing I was looking forward to the most was better learning the tricks of the scanning trade, but that wasn't possible this time and Baka is already trying to make that up for us so no harm no foul. Sometimes the internet just inconveniently sucks. My only concern is that I won't be able to hook up with Baka and 'this' covops course did not allow alumni to attend... Would it be possible in the future to attend as alumni for just the class portion? I totally understand not wanting to have too many covops during the class with a limited vent server and other coordination issues..... But I would really like to pull some gold nuggets from some of your covops pros if at all possible....

[Baka Lakadaka]

The thing I was looking forward to the most was better learning the tricks of the scanning trade, but that wasn't possible this time and Baka is already trying to make that up for us so no harm no foul. Sometimes the internet just inconveniently sucks. My only concern is that I won't be able to hook up with Baka and 'this' covops course did not allow alumni to attend... Would it be possible in the future to attend as alumni for just the class portion? I totally understand not wanting to have too many covops during the class with a limited vent server and other coordination issues..... But I would really like to pull some gold nuggets from some of your covops pros if at all possible....

The Alumni thing was because we hadn't run a CovOps in ages, a lot had changed in patches since the last one was run and we were trying something different. The class portion will most likely be open to Alumni next time round, so you can catch up on anything you missed.

I'm trying to find a time when I can run the seminars required, but it won't be this weekend........it's ANZAC Day here in Australia. It's pretty much compulsory for us ex-service people to go to the dawn service then drink heavily and play two-up (an Aussie gambling game involving throwing two coins, which is only legal on ANZAC Day). You don't want me teaching anything on ANZAC Day - except maybe two-up.

There will be several of the seminars, so if you can't make one, there'll be other opportunities and as a last resort, alumni on the next course.

[muffcobb]

Sweet thanks Baka.... I will try to catch the seminars then. Happy ANZAC Day!

[Tlak Chilk]

In light of the recent snafu with regards to the MWD + Cloak I figured I would share this with everyone. Not the best work around but it might be enough to keep us scouts alive until CCP gets it head on straight. While the cloak now deactivates the MWD (or AB), you can still get a few seconds of MWD by activating it after you are cloaked. You will only get a few seconds of boost, not the full 10 seconds, but if combined with heat it might just be enough to keep a scout alive. Trick here is to be quick but not too quick with activating the MWD.