Fleet Name: Rokh Army
FC: Kane Boirelle
Fleet 1
People's Rokhtrine: Scimis > Rokhs > tackle > else
Stay Docked
Duration: 1-2 Hours
Reimbursable: Yes
Why: Darkside and Gorgons are here. Time to Party.
I want a metric ton of Scimis (15-20 at least to get the fleet going). Need a good prober or two as well.
FRIGATES/TACKLE FIT WARP SCRAMBLERSThis was my first ever battleship-sized fleet. Many, many mistakes were made. However many lessons were learnt and improvements can only come from that.
I pinged for a Rokh fleet after hearing reports of 2 Naga fleets (Darkside and Gorgons) in and around HED-GP, we spent timing forming up, undocked when they cleared out into SV5 and warped to the staging POS and continued to form getting around 10-15 Scimis. (I ideally wanted 20 but hey-ho). Intel reported Nulli with a 60+ Drake Fleet. We warped to the Keberz gate at a perch 100KM below upon hearing they were in Keberz. We set up on the gate with frigates at ranges of 200KM-300KM all around the grid, in case Darkside and Gorgons decided to join the party on the Keberz gate when we were fighting Nulli. However Intel and my scout reported them turning around and heading back into Arazani.
At this stage Tribe had a 80+ Sniper Oracle fleet set up on the gate. I warped us to SV5 and did the same set up with frigs at perches all over the grid and dictors on the gate with some up at perches for when Darkside and Gorgons jumped into us. However scouts reported they were 300KM off the HED-GP gate in SV5 and they were sitting still, so in combination with Baki Yuku getting a Cyno and 2 dictors in system, and Tarithell logging in his bus to Hot Drop right ontop of them. I believed we could DPS down one Naga Gang and fight the other at range or force them off with TRIBE holding HED-GP against Nulli for long enough or killing Nulli out right. However I was wrong as I will explain later on. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
After several tense waits and about 10-15 minutes of slow work dictors and cyno was in position, Baki bridged his triage/cyno carrier in and Tarithell lit the bridge on the titan where the Rokh fleet, consisting for around 100 people (15 logis, 60 Rokhs and tackle). Roughly 45 people were missing however as I inspected the BR later on.
The plan started to work as we had set it out. We bridged ontop of the Naga gang and started to shoot. However this is were my first mistake came, I will go over all these later. Range started being pulled and both Naga gangs were equidistant from us so I called targets from both groups. However the situation started becoming unfavorable as an unreported and unseen bomber gang started doing its work. Their first wave landed on the main Rokh ball with broadcasts being spammed we lost a lot of Rokhs due to this,
http://i.minus.com/i55BBarEGcsco.jpg. Their second wave was directed at a Naga gang but not killing anything.
Nulli had blown past TRIBE at this point as TRIBE (or so it was reported) had lost their entire Oracle fleet to a single bomb run, they warped onto the grid and joined the fray. At this point I told everyone to align up to frigs that had made a perch as I previously ordered and we burnt/let bubbles go down and bounced. From there I bounced us between numerous off-grids and safes with a few rolling safe's provided by the frigates. Until such time the HED-GP gate on both sides was clear and we could exilate safely with the remnants of our fleet.
We managed to slide into HED-GP after bouncing to one last safe, align out to the station, fleet warp and dock up were I stood the fleet down and began to review (with the help of Shadoo) my mistakes.
Here is what I learnt.- Let shit brew, they came all this way to fight, a few more minutes won't hurt, their hand may tip and conditions may become more favorable than originally seen, or vice versa.
- Get a more clear and accurate picture of whats happening. My reported positions of the Naga fleets were not as I believed them to be, again taking time would of solved this.
- In a fleet fight like this (DPS gangs vs. volley/alpha-BS) it's better to burn through their DPS and lower the incoming damage to help reps and generally snowball from there, than it is to take out the repping and bonus units first. This is a small carry over of my skirmishes with the Naga fleets in Drakes, were reps needed to be broken before hand.
- Expect bombers, there were around 250-300 people going to be involved, and while no reports of bombers or sightings were said. I should of expected the eventually to occur. Especially with a fleet of out slow moving size.
- Call targets faster. Again this is a carry over from my smaller sized fleets. I was not used to having targets melt so quickly and as a result, didn't call targets fast enough and as earlier mentioned the correct ones either.
- Think about positioning. Rather than hotdrop Nagas directly, we could of easily just bridged into a safe spot, got a probe result and dicated that range we fought at more easily as we far out ranged them meaning the engagement would of been move favorable to us.
Overall the Main factors and issues presenting me is time and prior planning and adjusting on the fly. This was a step up from my usual BC sized fleets so was a new experince for me, however I learned a lot and for the next time round will be better prepared and things will (here's hoping) go better.
Thank you to all who flew with me, this whole fleet was fully reimbursable for doctrine ships, logis and my cloaky scouts who got blapped.
Overall BR for SV5: https://kb.pleaseignore.com/?a=kill_related&kll_id=614802
