Syndicate 21/01/12 ongoing (over a quarter of all posts in this thread are deleted)

[Booley]

Just a small correction to Namamai's report, Agony had 10 in gang, not 15. Also, since when is "if we had more or you had less we'd fight, good bait though" considered smack? It was meant as a compliment, the Chimera cracked me up

Honestly though, you guys just have more activity than others in Syndicate in the US tz. You consistently have about twice our numbers, and fly kiting/alpha gangs that are pain in the ass to fight with inferior numbers. It's not a matter of willingness to fight, just a matter of numbers. I'll go on a recruiting binge for US guys so we can have good fights though

Out of curiosity, would any other gang comps get engaged? We went with tornado fleet because we figured AHACs would be too scary and any sort of logistics would be too scary, but felt like if we showed up with hurridrake fleet everyone would somehow blue up and roflstomp us, so we picked something in between. And I suspect it won't be an issue too much longer as we're looking for new places to go in other regions anyway, so will probably be on an indefinite road trip in the nearish future so you all can go back to your 10 man fights (except when it's 30). Anyway, I think it was frustrating seeing local double our numbers and knowing that Flatline had another two dozen and Psychotic Tendencies had another couple dozen and between everyone no one could put much in space. Credit to Agony for at least warping onto the field though.

Eh, depends a lot on the perspective I suppose. The issues with tornadoes are a few.

1) Alpha - One option fighting against superior number is to compensate with more logis, but if you guys can just alpha your primaries, then this is no longer an option.
2) Tackle - It's bad enough engaging superior numbers on even terms, but if you guys kite, and we're short-range then we need a tackling advantage to engage. When you consider #1 can lead to tackle being primaried off the bat then there's not much we can do to keep kiting Tornadoes held down and killed.
3) Bailing - If I'm engaging superior odds then I want the option of being able to bail out, and preferably to keep the larger gang from being able to bail when the fight turns bad. In this case we were short-range armor ships, and you guys were kitey shield ships, so chances are if we engage we're either wiping or close to it if the fight goes badly. On the flip side if you guys start losing you're in a position to bail out pretty easily. If I'm going to take the extra risk engaging 2:1 odds then I want the extra possible reward of a full wipe of the hostile gang, not a few kills then them running away.
4) Value - Tornadoes are cheap and killing them isn't terribly exciting. If you're out flying machs or whatever then there's some motivation to go kamikazee and attack against superior odds in order to kill one or two shinies. Against T1 though there isn't that same motivation

Really #1/2 can be resolved from my side by switching up tactics, but there's not a lot of motivation to because of #3/#4. If we go and refit to take you guys on you'll either just take off outright, or hang around kite a bit, then bail out when the fight turns against you. It's not worth the bother for a few T1 kills.

From my perspective anyway if you want me to engage against 2:1ish odds then you either need to be at a tactical disadvantage (ie I can kite you, trap you, or tank you at least to some degree), or you need to be a juicy enough target that I don't care.

Tornadoes are nice for engaging against superior odds, but the qualities that make them that way also make them unappealing for smaller gangs to take on.

So what can we bring that you guys will fight?

[Bamar]

Eh, it depends a helluva lot on the situation. Generically though if you have 2:1 odds against me then I won't engage if

1) You can alpha through my ships. I'm already at a disadvantage and I can't be instantly losing ships one by one.
2) You can kite me. If I'm at the numbers disadvantage then I'm probably also at the tackling disadvantage, and if all my tackle is dead within the first 30 seconds of a fight then there's not a lot of point in engaging.
3) You can tank me. If I'm not going to burn through your reps no matter what I do then why bother?

Last night 2 was the primary reason, with 1 being a factor but not the deciding one.

Could I have run my fleet 12+ jumps back home to go refit to take you guys on? Yeah, probably. Am I going to bother to to try snagging a few Tornado kills? Hell no.

If you want random roaming gangs to engage you then you need to be easy to fight, if you want people to go reship in order to take you on then you need to be catchable and worth refitting for.

Kiting tornadoes doesn't really fit into either of these categories, so I'm not sure exactly what you were expecting. I suppose the POCO thing was a mitigating factor that we just kind of stumbled into.

I think the real question is what type of gang could you see realistically wiping out yours? Now what 10 man gang could you see wiping out yours? The longer that list is the more likely we are to fight.

[Bacchanalian]

We were half expecting Flatline+Psychotic Tendencies to bait and blob the shit out of us since they were in local and knew of the POCO, so I think that's where the comp came from. Alpha > triage, and Tornados at least can fuck off out of range when a cyno pops and 30 BS jump through. We probably misjudged the situation, but with 50 in local and probably a total of 70 within three jumps I guess we went in expecting at least a 3-way if not a 4-way.

Oh well. Another day another fleet. Looking forward to the next fight though.

[Bamar]

Yeah, we were just out for a random roam, so just bad luck I suppose (we were hoping for a fight from them too ).

[Namamai]

I'm genuinely trying to make a non-trolly response to this -- partly because I don't want to make Graxx sad, and partly because I'm in one of my rare productive moods and am genuinely curious.

If you want random roaming gangs to engage you then you need to be easy to fight, if you want people to go reship in order to take you on then you need to be catchable and worth refitting for.

There were six different alliances in the S-U pocket that night, four of which were blue to each other, and one of whom had just RFed one of our structures. We rolled down there with twenty people, because we assumed to meet no less than 30, and potentially more in the case of a 3-way fight. TBH, I figured I was doing folks a favor by leaving the capitals offline and taking a single logi :P

I think the real question is what type of gang could you see realistically wiping out yours? Now what 10 man gang could you see wiping out yours? The longer that list is the more likely we are to fight.

I can sympathize with the argument of "we don't want to fight stuff that we can't beat". God knows, I'm usually pretty cagey when I FC. But, to be blunt, nearly every fleet comp we've run in the last month has been dismissed as Too Hard To Fight. AHACs, AC welpcanes, Podla Drakes, Tornado balls, RR Dominixes, Vagabonds, Thrashers, AFs... the list is long, and all of them involve gangs running away from us. Velator fleets have been discussed in a non-ironic way! The general belief among our FCs is that we're going to get "Math PvP Is Hard, Let's Go Shopping" consistently, no matter what ships we fly or how few pilots we bring.

FWIW, the Rote philosophy is that sometimes you just have to go balls deep and see what happens. A few nights ago, we rolled up to Fade with a no-logi Tornado gang, and ended up facing off with a Maelstrom gang that had 15 Scimitars in it. If you look at their relative firepower, EHP, and logistics, it was obvious that the Maelstroms were going to wipe the floor with us in the long term. (And, in fact, they did.) But we engaged anyways, because frankly, not everyone in Eve flies perfectly all the time. Pilots fuck up, pilots lag out, pilots burn out their guns, pilots get drunk and stoned, pilots crash, pilots don't pay attention to their FCs, and sometimes FCs make bad calls. Sometimes, you just have to go for it, and pray that you're actually fighting a bunch of baked bads.

Now, speaking practically: We're really not as active, or as large, as Syndicate seems to think. A typical USTZ weeknight has around 15 people available for a fleet. You're asking us to intentionally cripple ourselves in order to give you a fighting chance; while it's understandable, doing that to my guys is lame! If I've got fifteen people online and wanting to fight, it's really hard to tell a third of my available fleet, "Nobody will fight us if you all come, so five of you have to stay home and go fucking rat." No thanks. if I can get X warm bodies in fleet, I'm going to do a sane fleet comp for X people; at most, if X>20 and we have a second FC available, we'll split a fleet into two smaller fleets and have them roam in different directions.

We're going to continue to run small, well-comped fleets. We're not going to intentionally run folks out of the region, but we're also not going to make ourselves into Harrison Bergeron in space. Sack up, and aim higher for yourself. (If nothing else, convo one of our FCs and tell us how many people you've got, and if we've got nowhere better to go, we'll try to roam in your direction in something vaguely resembling a fair fight.)

[Lexa Hellfury]

v0v. There's a reason I didn't run Tornado fleets that often. Nobody in their right mind fights them. It really is a case of q:"How do you counter a Tornado fleet?" a:"With a better Tornado fleet". There really isn't a proper 'counter' to it that can be run by a small gang.

[Bamar]

There were six different alliances in the S-U pocket that night, four of which were blue to each other, and one of whom had just RFed one of our structures. We rolled down there with twenty people, because we assumed to meet no less than 30, and potentially more in the case of a 3-way fight. TBH, I figured I was doing folks a favor by leaving the capitals offline and taking a single logi :P

That's all well and good, but I only run one of them, and we aren't blue to anyone. I'm giving you my own personal perspective, not a comprehensive statement from the region of Syndicate. I'm simply explaining why we didn't engage, as for everyone else I have no idea.

You're asking us to intentionally cripple ourselves in order to give you a fighting chance;

I'm not asking you to do anything, I'm simply explaining why I didn't engage and what would get me to engage. If you want fights you need to give your opponents a fighting chance, otherwise they won't fight you. The choice is yours, I honestly don't give a damn.

[glepp]

And in other news, the Agony Euro Boys ran another Tweed gang last night. Since we're european and such, we've actually started referring to Tweed as Le Tweed now, which inspired one of our artists to compose the following image:



So anyway, we had about 25 again in Euro TZ (5 Oneiros, 8 Deimos, some support and stuff) and figured noone in the VV-area would fight us today since we had shown them the power of tweed last time. Set our sights for new arrivals Legion of xXPizzaXx in CIS since the map showed a big bright spot down there. Entered system and they seemed to be forming up some Alphanados (does anyone but me think that sounds like a tasty tasty mexican dish, btw?) so we figured what the hell, let's give it a try - worst thing can happen is we die horribly in a fire. Set up our hictor on the gate, logis on gate, bubble up, Deimos' at catchpoint from their assembly point. They decided to leeroy their 10 or so ships straight to gate (or maybe at range) but ended up in our bubble. We killed the few we managed to scram, while they burned to gate. So they got some reinforcements in a nearby system and then looped around us into 4-J and we moved over to that gate. They came through, we started tackling and burning after while they kited. Killed a couple of 'nados and their Huginn and Lach, but the rest were too fast. They had more thrashers than Tornados, so reps held on everything bigger than a dictor. Big props to Pizza for bringing it and forming up quickly to face the frenchies on their doorstep. GF GF!
http://www.agony-unleashed.com/killb...related/75324/

So we scooped the loot from the field and moved on home. Scouts reported they were forming up again and we figured we'd go for round two. Set up in E9G on the VSIG gate and decided to do the "break-cloak-and-stop-your-ship" trick to maximize scrammage on the tornados. Got a little surprised when their bonus Loki decloaked 1000m off one of us, but we got over it and promptly dispatched him and scooped the faction loots. http://www.agony-unleashed.com/killb..._detail/75316/
As soon as he popped scouts reported their Alphanados moving back to station and docking, which i would have done as well, were i in their shoes.

So we moved on and decided to head for Cloud Ring where Black Mark now reside. Plotted a course for OOTY and when we got there, we spent about half an hour waiting for them to form up. They finally got about 5 logis and a good number of shield BCs (canes, drakes and harbis) and fighting commenced. We had originally set up on the catchpoint of a hictor bubble again, letting us catch their all Gallente jammer falcon when he warped to gate at range. We then put the bubble down, and they warped straight to gate. Fighting ensued, reps held, they deagressed and left. GF Black Mark, thanks for bringing it, but could you make it a little snappier next time? Our FC had to beg permission from his wife to extend the stay a little, and believe me it wasn't cheap for him.
http://www.agony-unleashed.com/killb...related/75353/

[Evanga]

Nice setup you got there Agony

[Bacchanalian]

We got some fights tonight. \o/

First, we roamed through FD. Predictably, Free Beer vanished from space while we were two jumps out.



We managed to nab one of them in an unfit Oracle who for some reason decided to warp to the gate we were on as we were landing. Derp.

http://www.rotekapelle.com/killboard...l&kll_id=65826

We made our merry way down towards the other side of Syndicate and found a cruiser/BC gang in Center for Advanced Studies. They docked up immediately, but we warped in and poked around outside their station for a bit, and lo and behold as our FC called for us to align off to out gate, they pour out of the undock. Cue pew pew.

http://www.rotekapelle.com/killboard...d&kll_id=65836

Hats off for the fight, and they nearly baked Ituralde's Tempest. Always good for a laugh because he squeals like a little girl on TS whenever he's primaried. Because I'm a softie, I sent 10m and a thank you to all of the t1 cruiser newbies after the fight.

We head down towards the T22 pocket, find a Flatline drake on a gate and introduce ourselves while asking in local if we should bother waiting for them to form up. We got a no-go, so retreated back out of the pocket after dispatching the Drake and his Purifier buddy.

http://www.rotekapelle.com/killboard...d&kll_id=65841

We then make our way down towards 97X on our way, killing 1v1 one kill at a time (sorry, I kinda feel bad any time we do this). http://www.rotekapelle.com/killboard...l&kll_id=65842

We get reports of a fleet and they seem horny, so we get to the 97X gate and one of our Hurricanes fails at life and jumps through. And then fails to report that he's jumped into the gang we're chasing and they're all shooting him. We figure this out when his pod jumps back into us. Derp.

http://www.rotekapelle.com/killboard...l&kll_id=65856

We chase into 97X and bounce around system a bit before we find them on a gate and all hornied up. Thank you Pfizer!



They have, IIRC, 3 Scimitars (cba to check the fraps, but I remember 2 for sure and think there was a third--we were doing a good job keeping them jammed or forcing them to jump out with deepeeess.

http://www.rotekapelle.com/killboard...d&kll_id=65856

All in all, a successful roam and we were glad for the fight. Our Scimitar very nearly burned his reps out keeping our Gila alive as they all piled onto it, and I managed to burn my MWD to 99% in the Tengu trying to run around bumping shit and tackling shit outside of the bubble (you'd be surprised what you can do with a snaked Tengu). Thanks to whoever the CAS duders are, and thanks to FIGL for the fight.

[depili]

ASo anyway, we had about 25 again in Euro TZ (5 Oneiros, 8 Deimos, some support and stuff) and figured noone in the VV-area would fight us today since we had shown them the power of tweed last time. Set our sights for new arrivals Legion of xXPizzaXx in CIS since the map showed a big bright spot down there. Entered system and they seemed to be forming up some Alphanados (does anyone but me think that sounds like a tasty tasty mexican dish, btw?) so we figured what the hell, let's give it a try - worst thing can happen is we die horribly in a fire. Set up our hictor on the gate, logis on gate, bubble up, Deimos' at catchpoint from their assembly point. They decided to leeroy their 10 or so ships straight to gate (or maybe at range) but ended up in our bubble. We killed the few we managed to scram, while they burned to gate. So they got some reinforcements in a nearby system and then looped around us into 4-J and we moved over to that gate. They came through, we started tackling and burning after while they kited. Killed a couple of 'nados and their Huginn and Lach, but the rest were too fast. They had more thrashers than Tornados, so reps held on everything bigger than a dictor. Big props to Pizza for bringing it and forming up quickly to face the frenchies on their doorstep. GF GF!
http://www.agony-unleashed.com/killb...related/75324/

So we scooped the loot from the field and moved on home. Scouts reported they were forming up again and we figured we'd go for round two. Set up in E9G on the VSIG gate and decided to do the "break-cloak-and-stop-your-ship" trick to maximize scrammage on the tornados. Got a little surprised when their bonus Loki decloaked 1000m off one of us, but we got over it and promptly dispatched him and scooped the faction loots. http://www.agony-unleashed.com/killb..._detail/75316/
As soon as he popped scouts reported their Alphanados moving back to station and docking, which i would have done as well, were i in their shoes.

Our first whelp fleet of syndicate \o/ On our part we tried the patented NC fighting style of derping everything from a nullified t3 going to get a warp in fleet warping the whole fleet to zero on to that t3 loss. The fact that we had just returned and stood down from 2 hour blue ball operation in fountain didn't help either. But betting we shall have a hopefully more even rematch in the nearish future.

[Ruri]

v0v. There's a reason I didn't run Tornado fleets that often. Nobody in their right mind fights them. It really is a case of q:"How do you counter a Tornado fleet?" a:"With a better Tornado fleet". There really isn't a proper 'counter' to it that can be run by a small gang.

Bombers. Destroyers. AFs. Sniper HACs. Proper sniping Tr3s. Old fashioned nano. Maelstroms (or other long range high buffer battleships). Even an equal number of Rifters will win the efficiency battle with consumate ease, and take enough Tornados down to send that fleet home. Of course much depends on piloting, positioning, fitting excellence etc. But to claim that there's no counter except numbers is just plain false. Armor HACs and welpcanes do not fare well, and since that's apparently the most popular meta in Syndicate at the minute of course Tornados appear overpowered. In all honesty though every time Rote flies a Tornado fleet we move in constant fear of any or all of the above counters, precisely because many of them are cheap and common.

[ROX Genghis]

v0v. There's a reason I didn't run Tornado fleets that often. Nobody in their right mind fights them. It really is a case of q:"How do you counter a Tornado fleet?" a:"With a better Tornado fleet". There really isn't a proper 'counter' to it that can be run by a small gang.

Bombers. Destroyers. AFs. Sniper HACs. Proper sniping Tr3s. Old fashioned nano. Maelstroms (or other long range high buffer battleships). Even an equal number of Rifters will win the efficiency battle with consumate ease, and take enough Tornados down to send that fleet home. Of course much depends on piloting, positioning, fitting excellence etc. But to claim that there's no counter except numbers is just plain false. Armor HACs and welpcanes do not fare well, and since that's apparently the most popular meta in Syndicate at the minute of course Tornados appear overpowered. In all honesty though every time Rote flies a Tornado fleet we move in constant fear of any or all of the above counters, precisely because many of them are cheap and common.

I dunno. We're talking equal numbers here, right? Destroyers, AFs, and Rifters do well close up but Tornados could just starburst and pop them from range. Nano, Maelstroms, sniper HACs, and proper sniping T3s won't be able to hold the Tornados down so they can just disengage. And bombers, well, sure, catch anything with its pants down and bombers are a counter, but against small gangs usually not.

[Sudden]

v0v. There's a reason I didn't run Tornado fleets that often. Nobody in their right mind fights them. It really is a case of q:"How do you counter a Tornado fleet?" a:"With a better Tornado fleet". There really isn't a proper 'counter' to it that can be run by a small gang.

Bombers. Destroyers. AFs. Sniper HACs. Proper sniping Tr3s. Old fashioned nano. Maelstroms (or other long range high buffer battleships). Even an equal number of Rifters will win the efficiency battle with consumate ease, and take enough Tornados down to send that fleet home. Of course much depends on piloting, positioning, fitting excellence etc. But to claim that there's no counter except numbers is just plain false. Armor HACs and welpcanes do not fare well, and since that's apparently the most popular meta in Syndicate at the minute of course Tornados appear overpowered. In all honesty though every time Rote flies a Tornado fleet we move in constant fear of any or all of the above counters, precisely because many of them are cheap and common.

I dunno. We're talking equal numbers here, right? Destroyers, AFs, and Rifters do well close up but Tornados could just starburst and pop them from range. Nano, Maelstroms, sniper HACs, and proper sniping T3s won't be able to hold the Tornados down so they can just disengage. And bombers, well, sure, catch anything with its pants down and bombers are a counter, but against small gangs usually not.

If you can force a tornado gang to jump into a gang/bubble they are pretty easy prey for bombers as they burn for freedom. They key is to force them to jump through. vov

[Ruri]

v0v. There's a reason I didn't run Tornado fleets that often. Nobody in their right mind fights them. It really is a case of q:"How do you counter a Tornado fleet?" a:"With a better Tornado fleet". There really isn't a proper 'counter' to it that can be run by a small gang.

Bombers. Destroyers. AFs. Sniper HACs. Proper sniping Tr3s. Old fashioned nano. Maelstroms (or other long range high buffer battleships). Even an equal number of Rifters will win the efficiency battle with consumate ease, and take enough Tornados down to send that fleet home. Of course much depends on piloting, positioning, fitting excellence etc. But to claim that there's no counter except numbers is just plain false. Armor HACs and welpcanes do not fare well, and since that's apparently the most popular meta in Syndicate at the minute of course Tornados appear overpowered. In all honesty though every time Rote flies a Tornado fleet we move in constant fear of any or all of the above counters, precisely because many of them are cheap and common.

I dunno. We're talking equal numbers here, right? Destroyers, AFs, and Rifters do well close up but Tornados could just starburst and pop them from range. Nano, Maelstroms, sniper HACs, and proper sniping T3s won't be able to hold the Tornados down so they can just disengage. And bombers, well, sure, catch anything with its pants down and bombers are a counter, but against small gangs usually not.

http://failheap-challenge.com/showth...aming&p=361099

Let's move the discussion out of the BR thread before Grarr burns all our houses down.

[Grarr Dexx]

While I appreciate the effort that you guys want to have fights, this is a thread about battle reports and ancillary discussion, please make a new one that doesn't give me as much headaches.