Sansha's MOM has got it going on (AAR)

  Yesterday I was in an incursion fleet working vanguard sites when word came down the MOM was up for our system and a fleet was forming to take it out.  Fortunately for me the FC of my fleet was some kind of head honcho type for the incursions so I got a backstage pass if I wanted to help out.  I was in my Basilisk and agreed to go along and help heal.  We got word on what system to head to, got into the new fleet and I was invited into the basilisk channel.  I thought I was all set for the fight when the guy who formed the channel says we need to have two LSE's or we won't survive the bombers.

Being Logical

Those that have read my earlier posts (all two of you) know that I prefer support class ships in PVP.  I’ve created one post already with my opinion of the ECM ships I fly and I wanted to take some time to discuss the shield logistics ships.  

When I first started flying logi ships I read through several different forums to help gain a baseline understanding of which ship is better in which situations, and to what level should skills be trained.  One thing that kept showing up over and over was that if you’re going to commit to flying logi you should train logistic ships to V.  The reason to spend over 20 days training is capacitor stability.  The additional boost to capacitor efficiency is usually the different between an additional Large Shield Transporter (LST) or having to downgrade to a smaller sized repper.  Tank can also be affected due to a requirement to add a capacitor recharger or capacitor booster in a mid slot.  Overall the value of training to Logi V is completely worth the training time for anyone that intends to fly a logistics ship as a primary playstyle.

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.

Taking the longcut to a great fight (AAR)

Task: Conduct fleet operation with shield BS arty fleet
Conditions: Combined alliance group looking to engage WT's around the Rens area
Standards: Get into a fight with the WT's and win  

  Situation:  Enemy fleets ranging from 15-30 war targets have dug in at the Rens star system and send out raiding parties to nearby systems. Friendly force commanders desire to engage and defeat WT's in a system away from Rens thus causing the enemy to potentially lose some neutral support and put the fight on more even terms.

  Mission: Coalition forces assemble fleet and conduct roam through outlying areas in order to engage the enemy in pitched battle.

  Execution:  Assemble in REDACTED with long range shield BS, preferably maelstrom class minmatar battleship, with logistics, recon, and ECM support.  FC will determine route based on scouting reports.

  Service/Support:  Logistics and ECM support will be traveling with fleet.  Stations along the route of march can be utilized for last second module exchange or repairs.  No capital or supercapital support will be expected during operation.  Follow on forces will be dependent upon themselves for movement to link up with fleet, no scouting will be available.

  Command and control:  Voice coms will be located on ventrillo at REDACTED.  FC will be in overall command.  Wing or squad commanders should be prepared to execute individual command over their echelon as needed.

  Summary report:  I logged on late tonite for the planned op but my corp leader linked the system the where the fleet was loitering.  Jark is only 6 jumps if I'm willing to cruise by Rens, but in this war the enemy is turned Rens into a wasp nest of neutrals and spies.  Instead I decide to route through metropolis, back into heimatar, and finally into delve.  I think the total jumps was somewhere around 18, but I wasn't counting because I was trying to get voice to work.  Eventually I realized Ventrillo was required and no matter how much I checked the info in TeamSpeak just wasn't gonna work. I started downloaded ventrillo about the time I was heading through two low sec jumps, in a blackbird, and I had to pay attention to flying.  At last I joined the fleet and was about to switch back to loading ventrillo when reds jumped through the gate.  Battle was upon us and I would just have to fight without coms.

Nulling about

A new blog came out about reshaping null sec (bloggity bloggity) and my interest it was piqued.  I've been into null sec all of once so far and I ended up losing both my ship and pod.  I was very new to the game still and bought a Heron from a corp or alliance mate not knowing the ship was in null.  I decided to go fetch it before I could use a cov ops cloak.  I was at the high sec gate and decided to jump to 100 to check the gate for a camp.  No bubble was up so I proceeded to slowboat to the gate instead of turning to 150km for a warp.  Part of the way there a bubble went up, my cloak got dropped somehow (still don't know if bubbles can uncloak you), and I died.  All in all I had fun seeing something new, found out I needed to learn much more about bubbles, and I've been curious about null ever since.

War!

  My alliance got war decced this week.  Not my first war but this time I've got a lot more PVP experience from all of the recent roaming.  I want to work on understanding the in's and out's of tackling this time around so I plan to keep the logi and ECM parked and get in some smaller ships that can hold the enemy in place.  I don't want to switch to tackling for large fleets, but I do wish to further my knowledge of how tacklers work and think so I can better avoid them in my support ships.

ECM comparison

  When I started figuring out what I wanted to do in PVP I decided to try ECM.   The first ship I lost in a war-dec was a Kitsune.  I've since flown BlackBirds (BB) and Falcons on several occasions, sometimes even in a fight.  I thought I'd take some time to talk about the strengths and weaknesses I've seen in the ECM ships in case my experiences can be of use to someone else.  Hopefully there will also be some comments to point out ways I can improve my understanding of ECM.