After yesterdays encounter with CVA, Easley Thames and myself decided to take a battlecruiser gang to Curse. 4x Nano Hurricanes,1x Sacrilege and 1x Nano Drake with me in a Falcon is a nasty gang. We can outrun anything that can kill us, and the Falcon allows you to engage gangs with twice as much in numbers as you.
We hit the 40 jumps to Curse, and upon arrival narrowly missed a Domi. The pilot was quite adept and managed a quick cloak and reapproach of the gate. Its amazing how someone with good skill can do crazy things with large ships. With all of us aggressed (no one thought he would make it back with overheated webs and scrams, but he did) he made it through and out. We did catch an Ishtar who was completely buffer fit. Easley had him tackled in a belt and was quite amazed at his tank... until he hit armor. He basically popped the moment shield dropped. It was surprising to say the least. We talked to him in local a little before moving out.
We caught a Rupture jumping into our gang a little while later... in stark contrast to the Dominix pilot from before, this guy didn't know what to do. Domi pilot = makes it back to gate and jumps. Rupture pilot = sits 20km off gate and allows himself to get webbed and bumped. We thought the Ishtar went pop... the Rupture beat even that for quickness of death.
Kirith Darkblade, one of the new blog pak members wrote an article describing his dislike for battlecruisers. Maybe due to the fact he can't fly them or fly them well sullies his opinion, but battlecruisers are the ultimate balance between speed/tank/damage. Throw a couple logistics in with your gang and you are sitting quite pretty sofar as survivability is concerned. If you want more speed with good damage and no tank, HAC. You want tank/damage, RR BS. If you want pure fun without actually killing much, T1 Frig/Cruiser, to add survivability make it T2 Frig/Recons. In my honest opinion, if 30 people is not fun (blob) it means the gang isn't moving fast enough and/or the FC is failing. Try fleets of 500-1000. That gets messy. With the route planned, familiarity with the area and a good FC a 30 man gang of BC and smaller should be able to fly.
Outbreak, which has become one of the larger forces in Curse (for the time being) ended up trying to drop us with the only thing we needed to worry about, RR BS gang. 4x Domi and 1x Typhoon with a Falcon for ECM dropped on our gate. We had them on directional the moment local spiked and were jumping through and safing up before they hit the gate. I jumped through last, and held position until the last of our gang was in warp, in case jams were needed to free anyone.
At that point we had been roaming for an hour or so, and with Sunday night/Monday morning luck we were finding few targets. We headed home without event.
I'm not going to go into fleet compositions and applications too much (I'll save that for a later post), but needless to say forming a fleet is like a puzzle, or piece of a pie. Gangs need ECM and tackle, and from there its up to the FC. You need to have the right balance, and know how to apply the shiptypes/formation that you have chosen (or have available). I prefer BC/HAC/RR BS gangs because I like to do damage. Frigs are generally worthless in and of themselves, unless you are a cloaky gang with recon support or just simply bombing targets. My CEO likes kills and doesn't really like losses (don't most CEOs?) so killing one or two BC/BSs and losing 20 crap fit frigs isn't a very good idea despite the ISK balance. Losses also tend to hit morale a little, even if it is a crappy little frigate. But, to each their own.
That is all.
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