Operation Blue Thunder Debrief
What a night. It started off looking good but we were ambushed. I learnt a lot from this (expensive) night and want to thank all my corp mates for sticking around to the bitter end.
Summary: The operation started on time (16:00 EVE TIME) with CODEX and Nathan Maynhee unable to attend or late respectively. IPS was locked down when the fleet arrived and so under Lionsan's direction, an alternate route was taken. However, 4 jumps into the other direction, the news came through that IPS was open, so the fleet reversed direction and and once again headed to IPS.
Entering IPS was easy but a quick glance at the star map revealed that there had been a high number of ship and pod kills. This is to be expected as BWF-ZZ is essentially EVE's first 0.0 space for carebears. This attracts PvPers and pirates. With instas, we gang warped ourselves out of BWF-ZZ and headed towards O1-FTD; which lies just outside of The Big Blue space.
The fleet then encountered numerous battleship rats around the asteroid belts - the largest one being 1.25 Obliterator. We failed to see a Conquistadore this time round. The ratting in and around O1-FTD went on for about 90 minutes however there were some very odd spatial and temporal anomalies affecting gang warping. This was to prove fatal later.
Nathan M was late and was making his way through Empire and into 0.0 space, IPS was still open at this time.
Local was empty except for one or two pilots, one who convo'ed Hal and asked him (and us) to leave the system. A bit rich as we didn't cause him any hassle so why should we?
A couple of minutes later, Nathan was one jump away having negotiated his way from Empire. Local had four to five ships in it, all were from the Veritas Immortalis (-V-) alliance.
A message from Nathan on corp chat told us everything: 'I am DEAD'.
We checked local and he was gone, he was ganked at the gate leading into O1-FTD and then quickly podded. Of course, Nathan had joined a pirate corp a day out of the academy (as we didn't take anyone less than 14 days old) but he could have picked a better first corp!
The situation worsened - the fleet had cleaned out another field, this time with two scorpions in it. Eryrin had already lost his ship to a volley of cruiser missiles and was warping out when TFAce called out that an executioner was in local and was FIRING at him - the pilot was called PALX. There was a moment's hesitation as we tried to figure out whether he was hostile but the order was given. Then things happened very fast.
A Raven, piloted Ryysa came into the system, warping to 15km off the executioner's position. He became our primary target but he started to jam and scramble us. A crusafer and a stabber also warped in. Lionsan's APOC was scrambled by Palx and Ryysa. The former was taken heavy damage from Hal and Max but the raven was too scarey and everyone targetted it.
The Armageddon and Apoc were too close to the enemy to deal effective damage but were taken a hammering from the Raven and others. The Armageddon was the first to die, it's armour finally overcome by the barrage of cruise missiles.
My mighty Apoc was next - could not fire back due to the range nor could I warp as the rest of the enemy fleet targetted the ship. The two ferox's proceeded to provide covering fire but without the Apoc joining in, the damage rate from the UAERO fleet was seriously depleted.
Nothing could be done to save the Apoc and the UAERO fleet had to warp out to a safe spot. I was pod killed by Palx who should have been in a pod himself if the fleet had fired one more missile at him.
Things got worse, the spatial and temporal anomaly did not improve and Max's Ferox did not follow the UAERO gang into warp. Just as the remaining UAERO fleet, comprising a badly damaged Celestis, ferox and two pods; jumped out of O1-FTD into BND-16. A pirate called Kovalsky entered the O1-FTD system. Max manually activated his jump engines and then crawled to the SG at 120ms. Kovalsky wasted no time in targetting the slow battlecruiser. Max tried to tank the damage but the thorax and drones ate into his armour and then destroyed his ship. Max's pod popped out and was close to the SG but not close enough. UAERO suffered a second Pod death.
Something very odd happened and Kovalsky appeared to jump ahead of the retreating UAERO fleet. As the UAERO fleet decloaked to warp to the next safe spot, the ferox was targetted and webbed and scrambled. Hal tried to get back to the SG but the webber slowed his ship down to a crawl and he was easy meat for not one but six ships. A third Pod Death and Votrian punched his screen in frustration.
However, he still had to take Eryrin and TFAce home and back to safety. The journey back was harrowing as Kovalsky chased and ambushed the UAERO fleet, now a damaged celestis and two pods at all the SG between BND-16 and the Big Pill.
Finally after the jumps into BWF-ZZ, the system was undergoing another lockdown as yet more pirates were marauding through the system.
With a sigh of relief, TFAce, Eryrin and Votrian docked. Votrian was the only pilot to have brought his ship back, though it had only 20% hull left.
Hard lessons learnt.
1. Even though we were rigged for NPC work, when in 0.0 space - come with PVP modules. This includes warp scramblers and NOSFERATUs.
Action: come with WCS or scramblers or webbers equipped.
2. We were too bunched up. This was an artefact of the warp gang. In effect, two thirds of our ships were NOT in their optimal firing ranges. When the enemy jumped in, Lionsan and TFAce were too close to hit the ships. This reduced our combat effectiveness down by at least 50%. Without the big guns, we're toast.
Action: next time, I will NOT use the warp gang as much. I will warp in myself (or someone else) and then pilots will warp into optimal distance for weapons fire. In other words, if I was the lead pilot, Lionsan would then warp to Votrian at 80KM so he lands at 95KM from the rats. Also, this will mean that if we get jumped, some ships will be out of webbing, scrambling and targetting range and have a better field of fire.
3. Hitting small ships. The TWO BS were primary targets, I chatted to Ryysa later and they had nominated the BS as primary and secondary and their tackler (Palx) went in close. We had nothing to take down the tackler. The BS had nothing for anti-frigate work (see forum posting on ship fitting) such as a webber or drones or a heavy NOS. Also, we had lost our own anti-tackler in Eryrin. We have to deal with the small scrambling ships and pop them. I think we need to come with at least one Inty.
Action: for BS class of ships, ensure that you can hit smaller, faster targets such as frigates and interceptors. Pack either a large smart bomb or drones or a webber or a heavy NOS.
4. Target calling was bad - this was my fault. I told everyone to target the Raven when Hal had the executioner in his sights. If Palx was taken out, that would have been one less scrambler and the BS may have had a chance to warp out. I had to warp out due to Ryysa hitting me and should have passed the target calling to someone involved in the fight.
Action: Be clear who is calling the targetting. If someone is scrambling you, please inform the group with 'X is scrambling me'. This at least tells the leader who to target.
5. EW - we lacked this as we had only a celestis. Losing Nathan and his EW caracal was a blow. The ability to lock a ship and remove it as a threat is something we need to have. This works with NPCs as well so we're not losing out. IF the Raven was removed from the fight, if only for the first few minutes then it would have made a big difference.
Action: improve my EW skills and get Blackbird qualified asap. The Celestis needs improvement too as Signal Suppression is something I need (forget to train this up).....so any fleet going into 0.0 needs to be EW. This was something we had already chatted about when we started going into Syndicate space.
Notes: however we fought back quite well. No-one panicked and the ventrilo server wasn't filled with needless chatter. Our positioning was bad and negated a lot of our return firepower and we had to contend with some very odd spatial / warping behaviour. There was no smack talk and I am determined to do better next time.
You have all seen what 0.0 space is like now. Combat comes in thick and fast. I suugest that we all come back with interceptors and frigates and form a fast hard hitting gang and engage these PvPers. I need to lie down now. Thanks for a GREAT night. Most fun I had in ages.
Final Toll:
Loss: SIX ships (X1 Apocalypse, x1 Armageddon, x2 Ferox, x1 Caracal, x1 Incursus) - though Max and Hal lost their ships due to a combination of lag and something 'odd' with the gang warping. Considering petition once I get more information.
Pod deaths: Four (Lionsan, Max, Hal and Nathan)
Chat logs:
[ 2006.04.16 19:10:22 ] Ryysa > gf
[ 2006.04.16 19:10:34 ] Hal Amaterfar > You too
[ 2006.04.16 19:10:47 ] Palx > gf
[ 2006.04.16 19:10:58 ] votrian alpha > gf
[ 2006.04.16 19:11:13 ] Maximilian Bozark > heh - gf lads
[ 2006.04.16 19:14:08 ] votrian alpha > U guys jumped us real quick. Nice raven setup btw
[ 2006.04.16 19:14:13 ] Ryysa > ty
[ 2006.04.16 19:14:22 ] Hal Amaterfar > Very nice indeed. Good tank
[ 2006.04.16 19:14:26 ] Ryysa > lol
[ 2006.04.16 19:14:30 ] Ryysa > i have almost no tank on that raven :p
[ 2006.04.16 19:14:52 ] Hal Amaterfar > Well its a tough one even so
[ 2006.04.16 19:15:02 ] Ryysa > yeah i am glad u guys fought tho, it was cool of you
[ 2006.04.16 19:15:08 ] Ryysa > most people just run
[ 2006.04.16 19:15:17 ] Maximilian Bozark > gotta have a go
[ 2006.04.16 19:15:20 ] Hal Amaterfar > Where's the fun in that?
[ 2006.04.16 19:15:34 ] Ryysa > i don't know that, hehe.... but very much respect to you
[ 2006.04.16 19:15:43 ] votrian alpha > yeah - gotta have a go but u caught us as we were collecting cans
[ 2006.04.16 19:16:41 ] votrian alpha > we should have taken palx out straight waway
[ 2006.04.16 19:17:03 ] Palx > hehe, those feroxes were killing me;p
[ 2006.04.16 19:17:15 ] Ryysa > yeah the feroxes are nasty
[ 2006.04.16 19:17:20 ] Ryysa > good sensor strength too
[ 2006.04.16 19:17:26 ] Hal Amaterfar > I like Feroxes
[ 2006.04.16 19:17:37 ] Ryysa > we went for the bigger ships first tho
[ 2006.04.16 19:17:44 ] Ryysa > ferox probably have dual shield extender tank
[ 2006.04.16 19:17:46 ] votrian alpha > we saw that
[ 2006.04.16 19:17:47 ] Ryysa > that takes aeons to get through
[ 2006.04.16 19:18:03 ] votrian alpha > well u scrambled the APOC right?
[ 2006.04.16 19:18:05 ] Ryysa > it's like killing a BS with uber resists
[ 2006.04.16 19:18:08 ] Ryysa > ya
[ 2006.04.16 19:18:09 ] Ryysa > kept a point on it
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