November 9, 2010

Tactical Mistakes

Last night was embarassing for epic reasons.
I may get into trouble posting my thoughts, but at this point I don't really care.

Forming up a fleet to hit an NC.dot tower coming out in Serp Prime. I had just gotten home and had about 10 minutes to get to YZ-LQL for eyes. I was not the FC, but was asked to be sub cap fc. Fleet was forming up snipe bs. I asked what tank... was told both...

wtf?

I told FC "I will be sub cap FC but I want it on the record that I'm protesting the shiptypes". Its retarded as hell to have both armor and shield. Armor tank is slower and sacrifices damage and range for tank... shield gives better agility (barely) and range and damage but has shit tank (vulnerable to bombers). To mix it up means that the armor guys are slower and either A. holding gang up or B. going to get left behind. I was not happy with being handed a catastrophe in a bag and asked to run with it.

As I entered YZ- and got eyes on enemy tower, I watched them forming up. I noticed 10 guardians and hacs. Armor HAC gang. Our shiptypes were snipe bs.

"FC, change the shiptypes. They're in armor hacs, this is a nightmare waiting to happen"

"Hmmm.... welll.... maybe, but this is what we have"

"I'm not FCing subcaps if you want me to take mixed snipe bs against armor HACs"

"Ok. Fleet, switch out for bcs". Then a rant to a supposed spy on comms about watching us or something. I mentioned that that isn't the most professional or intelligent thing to do. Sure there are probably spies but yelling at them on comms doesn't actually help.

So after switching out, with the tower timer comign down to 0, NCdot moved into Serp Prime to the tower in question.

I mentioned on comms that none of their supers were online, which is unusual. Usually a few are online during their ops, floating in POS' and such. This tingled my sixth sense and I mentioned it, but no one was listening. The armor HAC numbers were also rising, and asking for our numbers and composition over CC was not yielding great results. So when timer hit 0 and cyno was lit on friendly pos, I didn't have information on what I was supposedly FCing.

I also wasn't sure why we lit on a pos, as FC called only for capitals and not supercapitals to jump. A station would have been more appropriate, but I didn't bother asking questions. Sitting on the hostile POS I watched them warp to the cyno the moment it lit.

Uh oh.

I followed as quickly as I could, with FC yelling at me to start helping. I found this amusing, as I as told to sit on their pos and provide warp ins and FC. We never got there.

I yelled for everyone to get inside POS shields over comms... but FC had capitals ALIGN off POS towards hostile POS. This took them directly away from shields. As enemy ahac gang landed, he told capitals to warp. I landed shorty after and surveyed the situation:

Some made the warp, about 5-6 didn't. They were stuck aligning off of pos, in bubbles. I immediately had sub capitals start kiting in and out of the pos shields, trying to kill bubblers, but it didn't matter. The reps were too strong (Phobos was cycling bubble like a champ, allowing for the numerous Guardians to prop him up), and the sub capital gang (which was outclassed and didn't have "blob" like numbers which allow shitty ship types like that to survive against ahac) was popping like moths in a campfire.

Meanwhile the dreads on the hostile target pos were told to siege.

yup...

I saw in someones after action report that the sub capital FC "dissapeared". I found that hilarious, as that person was either not there or had their head up their ass. I was told to shut up numerous times by the FC... and after half my guys popped I just told them to chill in pos. Capitals were lost at this point, no use throwing more meat into the grinder.

Then NCdot lit cyno and in came those supers. After their cyno went up FC finally told capitals who were getting face raped outside the "friendly" pos to start approaching.

Too little too late.

They were well outside shields and webbed to hell. They went down like sacks of shit with 12 supers on field. After they went down the hostile supers warped to the sieged dreads. At this point I told all sub caps to gtfo before the YZ- gate was camped.

Dreads had 3 minutes left on siege, and spread their cheeks when the supers landed on them.

I hobbled back home and answered the several convo's that came my way asking what the hell happened. I gave a couple people the full report, but for the most part deferred them to the person in charge, who wasn't me.

Things that went wrong.

A. Insufficient numbers. We should have never engaged with the sub cap numbers we have.

B. Capitals. With insufficient numbers of sub caps capitals should never have been called for.

C. Cyno location. With no supers being used, it should have been on station.

D. Sieging. Assuming A-C are ignored, dreads should never be sieged with hostile sub caps in system without sufficient support to counter.

E. NCdot supers. Most NCdot have super alts. They are not logged on and not seen. This is unusual and should be treated as such, and even if they did have the usual few on, you have to say to yourself "if they bring the hammer, do we have enough to counter 20-30 supers"

We didn't.

We should have scrubbed the op, which I suggested but was rebuffed by "there are towers to hit and I will not let them go untouched"

When I say scrubbed the op, I mean forget the damn towers, which NCdot doesn't give two shits about (they want kills/fights) and switch to something fun, like a snipe hac gang or ahac or anything mobile and fun, and go shoot things. Leave the capitals at home, and the fail snipe bs at home.

As it is, we gave ncdot nom nom nom and honestly accomplished nothing. It was embarassing as hell to be a part of, as we could and should have done better. Playing right into your opponents hands never ends well. Ever. It wasn't as if we didn't know what they had to bring; it was just ignored.

That is all.