A short AAR from last night.
I volunteered to lead the roam so tried to plan some kind of route that would take us away from NRDS space (MH and avoid GW since the hedal coalition is supposed to be friendly with the people there and we are supposed to be friendly with them) so my goal was to take us through the 6 or so jumps and go into Etherum Reach to kill some russians.
As usual it took a bit longer to get ready than people planned but we had scouts out (Rexxor ahead and Swuul was going to be behind), Rex was in Atlar checking it out while people were getting ready in Gelfiven.
Some had forgot insurance or clones and so on so they were fixing that and I didn't have 100% control over who was where (a lot of people where in cloaky shit so never knew if they were with the fleet, left behind or hiding somewhere else which is VERY annoying btw).
Anyway at that point Rexxor accidentally aggressed a group of people in Atlar by a station which prodceded to start to kill him, me being the person I am don't like people shooting at fleetmembers so gave the order to jump in and help him. First mistake probably as the fleet wasn't there, basically we arrived one and one to the site and were killed one by one.
Ofc the enemy gang was way to powerful for us to handle in our fairly small ships, the people on my loss were in a mega, damnation and a devoter. I didn't notice so was stupidly shooting at the damnation when the best one to shoot at would probably have been the mega. We lost Rex in his cov ops, my rupture and at least one more rupture.
So we reformed and fetched ships, which took a while and set out again. This time being careful and trying to keep the fleet together (very hard when some refuse to understand "align to" doesn't mean warp to and jump through)
We managed to get past Atlar and started down the pipe to L4X-1V in Etherum Reach. We reached Ennur without any incident, was fairly quiet, where we were agressed by a large gang by the gate or more exactly one typhoon, though I ordered the rest of the fleet away I was stupidly sitting by the gate curious about why the phoon didn't shoot (he only tried to scram someone first and had become red) when he started to target me and shooting me after a min or two I ofc shot back.
And the gang jumped in.
Something like a 10 people in the Exalted gang, 5-6 in spidertanking SR battleships and a Tengu. Only one dead this time, me, so had to run back and fetch a third ship. This time out of cruisers I was in rifter and this delayed the fleet at Ennur while I was running back and forth. (which was when I noticed the Exalted gang spidertanking by a gate).
After this when we had reunited again the fleet begun to move more as a fleet, me in a faster ship mean I had trouble knowing when everyone was aligned so sometimes became a bit stretched out.
I had at this time changed the plan a bit and we were going down to GW.
Around Egbinder some pirates picked up on us and gave chase, this time however they didn't catch us, we ran down the pipe to E02 and when we thought they were going to catch us anyway I decided we might as well make a stand. So everyone warped to planet 4 while the SB in the gang set up a trap for them. However in the system before there had been another fleet so the pirates gave up and returned without jumping into the poorly constructed trap.
Time was late so decided to end it and move back up through GW and into MH shortest route to Gelf. When we were jumping to Egbinder the server crashed and we sat around for 30min before it was up and we made best speed to Gelf and called it a night.
No kills and a few deaths.
A few things I learned from this:
1. In a normal fleet ONLY scouts should be cloaky shit.
2. FCing is a lot like herding cats.
Number 2 could be helped by people knowing some standard operating procedures.
- Align to means align to (I know I sometimes press the wrong button mistakes happen but not constantly)
- If nothing else is said you ALWAYS hold on gate. You ONLY jump at the order "jump, jump, jump" or similar.
- If the FC isn't talking atm it might be because he is plotting a new course somewhere and have to check maps so since that usually happens when you are holding at a gate just chill for a bit
Anyways, I've tried FCing now at least and know we have better FCs than me.
