I formed us up in Hawk doctrine then did a short training drill in TVN to show my new logi anchor how I wanted him to position (relative to a jetcan labeled "BAD GUYS".) After the fleet positioned flawlessly we blapped the can for our first victory of the night.
Intel was received of a wandering Tengu so I took a chance on him choosing the MC60 pipe and burned us there quick but he had chosen a different direction. That was actually fine as it was a more interesting way to travel to where I wanted the fleet to go, we took the NCG jb and headed into Geminate.
Senshi had mentioned a new alliance moving into Gem called Flame something so we were heading to pay them a visit. En route I couldn't resist checking out the heavily ratted system of SV- but it was practically empty and besides my devious plan of having a dictor bubble the station was spoiled by their dastardly tactic of not having a station.
True confession time - I had slightly messed up my fleet comp. I assumed that someone would be coming in a random interceptor or frig that I could use as a scout but no, everyone was perfectly in hawks bursts plus one dic one eaf. You know what they say about assumptions....
I used two ab hawks as my scouts (Minchurra and Sploink). They did a wonderful job.
We did some interceptor fleet style shotgunning of ratting systems as we headed for FLAME space without any catches. In Flame's new station system I had my scouts play docking games for 5 minutes to see if they could convince a Deimos to slowboat off the station but he let them shoot him without taking the bait.
We moved to Flame's other systems looking for kills without luck and I decided to take us back via BWF or FDZ for a bit of danger. En route we did some shotgunning and actually got someone on grid with a rorqual which for some reason was in a grav site but sadly it entered warp just as senshi was about to scram it.
We then happened across what at first glance seemed to be a fight in OEY-OR. With hindsight it was a couple of roaming neut cruisers from Choke Point and a strong XDeathX hac gang (about 40). I took us bravely into the fight and the XDeathX FC panicked and told his guys to burn back to gate. We shot a Caracal (I thought we killed it but kb says no so he must have managed to jump out in deep structure) and we killed a Hurricane and his pod. Expert work from our logi prevented any losses.
Now I assumed we'd be in real trouble so meanwhile I had been anchoring the fleet, burning us out of the bubbles. As soon as the Cane died I warped us out to a planet. making a safe on the way then took a long warp to a second planet making 2 more safes. I bounced us into one of the safes and aligned the fleet by burning out a little ahead of them, aligned to one of my safes, then having the fleet anchor by approach to approximate an align. (Quite a neat technique, I came up with it on the fly).
The hostiles were a bit reluctant to jump into us. They pushed a sabre and a couple of inties in for a look so I took us back to the gate and we alligned out. After we took a few potshots at a sabre their tackle ran back to gate. Despite having twice our numbers and bigger ships they didn't want to come in, possibly because a similar FCON gang was also in the vicinity, possibly because he was worried all their tackle would die.
I wasn't going to go into them, I wasn't going to send in an ab Hawk to scout so I thought about it for a couple of minutes then took us out of Geminate the back way to 9-G. As I said at the time what we did was equivalent to a 14 year old kid running up to Mike Tyson, punching him in the leg and running away again - we killed their cane and extracted without loss against a fleet superior in both numbers and comp.
We burned back home and it was pointed out to me I'd forgotten to pap so after a heroic feat of frantic multitasking I managed to get a paplink put up just as the fastest people were docking.
Thoughts:
Fun fleet, it was actually more entertaining than the killcount suggests because we moved fast and had a continual chain of possible kills. It felt good to draw blood then disengage against a much superior fleet.
One small room for improvement. I did say "load scourge fury" as we were in warp to the ahac gang but most people didn't. Dps on the caracal and the cane was a bit lower than it could have been. I also don't think people were overheating enough. (If you're on the cane kill compare your dps with top dps).
I'd also ask a couple of Hawks to switch their scrams for webs next time. 8 scrams and no webs isn't optimal. (assuming no one brings a hyena).
What was an absolute delight was people's willingness to step up to responsibility. I delegated a lot and people keyed up willing to be scouts, anchors, to take particular anoms on shotguns and so on. Very good work guys.
Thanks for flying Air Callduron!
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