A Tale of Two Fleets

I suppose it was more like a lead-in and one-and-a-half fleets, really. The evening began with my CEO, who's been a sweetheart about encouraging me to FC (much to my chagrin), pulling me in for an after-action review after listening in on the FCing of a corpmate. (Shout-out to Stalking Mantis for doing better than I did tonight!) The review was full of useful information, especially tips on fleet decision-making and intel management. Little did I know, i would end up getting spectacularly pwnt at both.



The first fleet was a larer scale than anything I'd run before. A cruiser gang had been harrassing Stalking's wolfpack fleet immediately before I rounded people up, so I decided to try to counter it with a mobile sniper fleet - HML Drakes, arty Canes and enough tacklers and scouts to make sure nothing was going to get away without working at it. I turned out accurate in my guess than nothing would get away - unfortunately, it was because nothing engaged. I'm not entirely sure how long we were out, probably 2-3 hours, and got absolutely no bites from the Gallente militia in either Heydieles or Nisuwa, two of their largest bases in the region. Eventually we decided to cut our lost time and I ran the fleet toward Enaluri, our home base.

A few of the boys wanted to go out for a second run, so we took a break for a half-hour or so and reshipped for the overly-specific "uh, BCs and tackle" I'd asked for when people wanted to know. We ended up with a mixed back of a few Drakes, a few Hurricanes, a Harbinger, a Falcon and a couple of interceptors. After checking the surrounding systems, we hopped over to Nennamaila with the intent of trying to catch either some Gallente militia or pirates around Aldranette, one of the entrances to Placid lowsec. Our forward scout reported an enemy Drake sitting close to the gate in Aldranette, so the fleet held up in Nenamaila while he tried to burn out to it.

Suddenly, our fortunes changed. Due to some combination of noobishness and absentmindedness on my part, none of us in fleet noticed the local spoke - and a few moments later, 4 Drakes and a Navy Caracal landed right on top of us. They didn't aggress right away, so I ordered the fleet to align back to Enaluri, hoping to make a break for it instead of getting engaged and having a blob jump on us. As it turned out, we found the blob. They were sitting on the very gate we were warping to, which I hadn't managed to get a scout to in the heat of the moment (and because "it was clear a few minutes ago").

One of our fleet members lost his Drake as we were warping off to Enaluri. Three more of our Drakes plus a friendly Cane managed to jump back to Enaluri, but the Gallente militia was fast enough to jump in and get points on us. Somehow, I ended up getting primaried last, but after my fleetmates fell I suffered my second loss while in command of a fleet.(At least this one didn't include the drop of a deadspace afterburner like the first one.) I limped back to station in Enaluri and posted a belated "gf" in local, while thinking over the night's experiences.

Things to remember for next time:

• "All the gates" and "your inbound and outbound gates" aren't the same thing. I'd checked my inbound and outbound on the second roam. There was also a third gate, which I didn't check. I imagine that's where the Gallente militia came in from.
  
  
• Scout in more than one direction. I actually did a really good job of keeping multiple directions covered with scouts on the first roam (when nothing happened, of course). The second roam, not so much, which is when we got wiped out.
  
  
• Watch windows. When I'm not FCing I'm one of the first ones to notice a local spike. This time I didn't, nor did my fleetmates, or anyone else apparently (the WT gang was reported in intel about the same time my Drake popped). I wish I had a justification for it, but I'll settle for knowing that it happened so I can correct it next time.

I'm honestly not happy about how the fleets turned out tonight, but for different reasons than I thought. It bothers me that I made a mistake that resulted in us taking losses, especially when there weren't any kills to make up for it, but that's more from feeling bad for the people that lost their ships than anything. (I lost my ship too, though, so at least people can't claim I was trying to save my own skn.)

Did I make a noob FC mistake about intel? Sure, but it was only my second time FCing, so I'm not all that concerned with the fact that I was making mistakes. What DOES annoy me is that we'd had the conversation about it earlier the same evening, and I'd made the same point in my review of Stalking Mantis' fleet. On the other hand, hindsight is 20/20, and it's much easier to see those things clearly after having had a chance to think it over than when you're in the middle of a fleet battle.

All in all, I think it turned out pretty well like the first time - I did well at some things, and learned about others. Given that we've had a rash of fairly poor FCing in the Caldari militia lately, I think I could have been far worse off than I was. Just more to keep in mind for next time.