Hawking My Wares (AAR)

Task: Practice and learn tackling procedures while solo

Conditions: Given a disruptor fit Hawk in the Auner system

Standards: Don't lose my pod

Summary: 
I wanted to hang out in space tonight so I hopped in my Hawk and headed out to Auner again.  I got on the Resbroko gate and waited to see what came through.  Soon enough a red (no GCC) Wolf landed on top of me and I locked him up. 

Losing a Logi (AAR)

Task: Conduct anti-pirate roam in low sec area around the Arant system

Conditions: Given a shield tanked BC fleet and access to low sec systems while personally flying a Scimitar logistics ship

Standards: Have fun, fly smart

Summary:

The fleet was engaged in combat almost from the start on this roam.  There was a small gang engagement and later on a fleet fight.  In both fights I made a few mistakes but the fleet did well overall.

Circle in Space (AAR)

Task: Conduct solo patrol of Auner space for familiarization and experience.

Conditions: Using Hawk AF with long point move around the Auner area looking for possible engagements.

Standards: Have fun and ensure pod is removed from fight if at all possible.

Summary:  This is a short note, I didn't engage in a fight but I did have a situation occur worth writing about.  I was in my Hawk and orbiting a gate in the Auner system when a red security status Megathron jumped into system.  My first instinct was to prepare for warp off in case he locked me so I aligned to a station.  Nothing happened though and he left the area.

Personal Notes:  I have no illusions that my Hawk could have broken the tank on the Mega before he could get back to the gate.  Calling in friendlies was a possibility, but I wasn't expecting to engage anything that big so I hadn't arranged for support.  I also wasn't sure if the gate guns would engage me for starting the fight but I found out later they wouldn't.  The more I thought about the encounter the more I thought I could have done things differently.

  At a minimum I should have locked him as soon as I saw he was low security status.  Whether I wanted to engage or not the time wasted locking could have been critical, and it's a good habit to get into.  Second instead of moving away from the BS I should have closed range to put him in a tight orbit by manually flying in an arc towards him.  Finally picking a warp out point that was on the overview and doesn't require clicking on the screen would have made more sense.

  Improves-
Locking pirates whenever I'm not cloaked is a good idea, no requirement to engage them
Plan some possible reactions for different size ships whenever I setup a patrol to help initial decisions occur faster
Practice aligning to smart warp outs instead of panic selecting where to go

  Sustains-
Continue getting out into space
Finding answers to questions

Because of Falcon (AAR)

Task- Conduct anti-pirate operations in Auner and surrounding systems.

Conditions- Given an operating environment consisting of small gang, a mix of BC and support ships, with voice coms in a two to three system operational area.

Standards- Engage and destroy ships with horrible security standing or that are GCC while maintaining maximum advantage and avoiding unfavorable pitched battle.

Summary-

  I recently moved to the Amo system and part of the motivation for the move was to conduct anti-pirate operations in the Auner system.  I have little experience with small gang warfare as well as little experience with solo fighting.  Last night there was a defense fleet up so I hopped in my Hawk and went join in the fun.  When I found out our fleet composition was mainly BC in size I reshipped into my Falcon and joined the fleet on the gate.  I established an orbit of 30km which provided optimal range for all jammers if/when the enemy came through the gate.

Black Bird Loss (AAR)

Task: Travel solo to join up with fleet located in low sec.

Conditions:  Using  a Black Bird ECM cruiser travel to and coduct pvp with friendly fleet deployed in low security system.  Travel will be solo and can occur in both low and high security systems.

Standards:  Arrive at fleet location with ship intact and appropriate ECM modules fitted.

Summary:  I was moving to join a fleet in the Todifraun area last night and decided to take my Black Bird as I've had good success moving during times of war and through low security systems with this particular ship.  In addition the fleet was low on ECM support so two birds, one stone.  I opted to travel through low sec along a route I'm familiar with and when I jumped into Eifer a gate camp was in place.

Flight of the Rumble Bees (AAR)

Task:  
Fleet: Conduct anti-piracy roam
Personal: Use tackle frigate to better understand tackle role

Conditions: 

Fleet: Given low security space in small fleet setting with frigate class combat ships
Personal: Utilize an AC equipped Rifter with AB and Scram to conduct short range tackle

Standards: 

Fleet: Engage only pirate or GCC targets, follow FC commands, have fun
Personal: Tackle at least one enemy ship, preferably being the tackle that holds the ship in place for great justice

Personal notes:  Several kills were made during this roam, and a few losses as well.  The losses were expected considering the choice of light ships.  Overall was fun trying out a different fleet mix and I'm looking forward to the next roam.  I'll detail the overall fleet activity first and then my personal performance before getting into the sustains and improves.

  I flew a Rifter for the first time ever because I failed to plan my JC's last night to coincide with the roam today.  My ECM character was in his PVE clone and wouldn't be able to jump until over an hour after the roam started.  In addition I'm out of EAS so I needed to spend 30mil or so to get a good ship to fly tonite.  I might have gone with a griffin but neither of the alts with accessible JC's is trained in EW warfare.

  The Rifter was shield tanked with 200mm AC II's, an AB, scram, DC II and MSE II for tank, a TE to boost falloff, nano II, and resists coming from the rigs.  I know most PVP Rifters are armor tanked but every fit I came up with using armor had a speed less than 1k mps which I felt was too low when using a close range ship.  I put on the scram to offset the use of an AB and I figured our primary targets would be cruiser or BC class.  If I could get in range of the scram I wanted the AB to keep my transversal up.  I knew I'd have trouble tackling frigate sized targets but we had inties for the speedsters.

Fight week (AAR)

  I've had a fun week in game although I've failed to post about it so far.  Allow me to remedy that situation.

Fight 1

Earlier in the week I went on a Nano BC roam.  Once again I flew my rusty scimitar (although to be fair the scimitar is a rather beautiful ship) into battle and we ended the night with an impressive fight. 

Cruiser Roam (AAR)

  Yesterday I went on a T1 cruiser/T2 frigate roam.  The roam was a lot of fun although the value of cruiser sized ships was called into question by the end of the night.  I spent a chunk of the day moving various cruiser sized ships to the start location and on a whim I took my Kitsune electronic attack ship.  I've used a Kit once before and it died rather quickly when I was first learning about ECM ships.  I wanted to start off in a support role and for some reason the Kitsune seemed to call to me.  I think it regretted picking up the phone by the end of the night.

Sit, Stay... Good logi (AAR)

  Another roam in my scimitar and while I had fun again I'll admit that switching to a logistical ship mind set can be a bit tough sometimes.  I'm not that interested in being in a DPS boat and turning the enemy's ship into a modern art sculpture.  I much prefer scouting, moving around cloaked to setup a fleet warp to have proper range, utilize EW mods to tactically shape the battlefield, or apply reps when needed.  Basically I enjoy being a combat multiplier instead of a line dog.

Strangers in the night (AAR)

Tonight I went on another roam with Mistersparky from the Estrale Frontiers corporation and once again he did not disappoint.  Recently I missed a roam that saw the death of two carriers so tonight I requested more carrier action and Mistersparky happily obliged. 

The evening started off with a few hours of jumping and no one that wanted to fight.  I'd like to think that the pirates are scared and hiding, but it could just be an off night.  Eventually our scouts found some targets in the Onatoh system and we shuffled our forces around to encourage a fight.  Just as we were ready to get things started our scouts reported a POS that was almost out of reinforcement which just happened to belong to the targets in system.  This thickened the plot faster than a Danielle Steele novel and we promptly moved the bulk of our forces to a neighboring system.

The move paid off as a T2/T3 fleet with half a dozen logi's in tow showed up at the gate we were just orbiting.  The opposing fleet was sized up and it was assessed to severely overpower our forces.  However since the POS was a factor we stuck around and let our scouts see what they could find.  Lo and behold another fleet was assembling on a different gate.  Com's were established and we were invited to tag along and add to the carnage.

Our plan was to get into a fight and hopefully have some fun culling people from the blob.  Fleets were adjusted, voice com's were changed, new FC gave new orders, havoc was cried and the dogs set loose.

We jumped into the T2/T3 fleet and began to kill them quickly.  Capitals were brought in and things were going great until another cyno lit off and PL dropped a few dozen supercarriers and carriers into the mix.  We warped off, GF's were sent in local and the new FC had us all dock.  Apparently the fight wasn't over and the plot was thickened from a hearty stew consistency into something resembling brick laying mortar.

The POS was still a ripe target and we still had a significant number of forces on hand.  Once the carriers left the system our FC had us head towards the POS.  We engaged the defenders until they brought another round of caps onto the grid.  Our FC was waiting for this and called in his own group of supporting supers and caps.  The plot mortar hardened at this point and was too thick to follow.

The help was red to our original fleet and a good chunk of the new fleet as well.  The FC was desperately trying to keep people on the correct target and the help was hindering the process by shooting our forces as well.  No one panicked though and eventually the POS defenders were whittled down and our fleet left the area to allow the caps to mop up without worry of hitting the wrong folks.  We settled back into the station and waited for the helpful caps to leave the system.

Soon enough scouts were letting us know the POS grid was clear and we warped back into the fray.  Some enemy ships were still present but they stayed inside the shield for awhile before jumping out.  A few subcaps showed up but were killed or warped off as well.  The POS eventually dropped, champagne flowed, fireworks were displayed, kill board links were flung across the channels and GF's were broadcast one last time.

All in all we spent about 6 hours roaming and fighting, lost a handful of ships and killed a few carriers, a bunch of command ships, and a few other ships.  This was my third fight with capital ships and the first cap fight that I was on the winning side of (well, the super cap pilots are the only true winners once they hit the grid).  I had a lot of fun and gained a bit more insight into what the future holds.

Kill board link

You won't see my name on any of the kills as I was once again flying my trusty scimitar and learning the fine art of support.  I'll save that discussion for another post though.