Ok, writeup of the basics from yesterday, let others do the more juicy details.
Class started with balancing the fleet (about 50 boats) using an ingame webpage where everyone could enter their loadouts so that the fleet coordinator (FC) could see what was missing and what we had too much of. After some ppl changing loadouts to fit FC's taste, explaining what did what, going over communication rules and assigning ppl to groups and squads in fleet, we undocked.
Oh no! Class started 15 minutes before Beo cared to arrive, that was how it started!
Several basic (fleet) flight techniques were then explained to us. Among others:
- When warping as a fleet, everyone aligning to the target beforehand will make you warping and arriving in one group, thus having more chance to surprise and kill a target. Even with fast ships like frigates, the aligning takes time and this will cause delays in a lot of ppls warp.
- Spiraling towards a targets was explained and practiced. Essentially it means that when you have to travel a distance (say 50 km) to a battleship in a frigate in a straight line, he is able to hit you easily. When you travel in a 45
o angle towards him, he will have a harder time hitting you, cause his guns will have to track you.
We were told this also applies to missiles. In this case it is not the tracking, but the explosion velocity that has to keep up with you. Getting hit head on is worse than getting hit from behind.
- Next up was orbiting speed. They went into detail about orbiting, rad/sec and stuff. I already studied this myself when thinking about speedtank tactics, so not many surprises for me there.
What was also a major theme of the course was communications. Agony uses several keywords for different situations. Like certain codes for everyone to shut up and listen, emercency codes (another shut up and listen essentially) and a code for reporting intel. Not so much visible to the students but a major issue on voicecoms was the reporting of intel (codeword: recon). Agony had about 3 pilots constantly on watch for incoming ships. When in a system with 3 exits, this ment we received intel from those 3 gates, stating how much ships were where, what alliance and such. Other than just visual inspection local channels were checked for pilot spikes (groups entering system) and doing a 360
o scan on ships scanners (for scan probes for example). The ship scanner was also used for checking out the state of a jumpgate from beyond visual range (in 5
o modus).
After the theory section was over (after 2-3 hours in high/low sec) we went to truesec to find us some kills. Not quite remembering all the details on kills, losses, sequence and such, I leave this to ppl with the writing skills to offer you a juicy report.
I might add another post about bubble warfare later, if noone else chooses to adress it before that, that is.
