Moving on...
Something that has been in the works for a few days after Proxyyyy, (who is becoming more and more like one of those crazy friends who undermines you in a purely benign and friendly sense, then gives life guidance as some sort of compensation. I'm not complaining!) struck up the thought that The Tuskers don't have any established European time zone fleet commanders. I was then coerced into putting together a wolf-pack frigate operation to get myself some experience to hopefully become an fc at a later date. I was tentative at first, yet with encouragement from the rest of the gang and an enthusiastic green light from Jolo, I began planning.
The gang consisted of about 14 people when we got to full steam (which was quite a daunting number in honesty) and we had a nice spread of e-war, gank and tackle. After looking for targets around Aeschee and being largely unsuccessful, I fell back on my master plan of some action going down in Old Man Star. It was a Saturday night, surely it should be a blood bath? There was at most 15 in local, and I'm not sure whether we contributed to that or not...
As we approached the 1 hour and 30 minute mark with naught a target in sight, I spotted a Proteus idling at a nearby planet. Understanding it was a trap from Cry Havok I asked the fleet their opinion on the fight considering space was so dead. We decided to go for it and proceeded to pile in on the ship, trying to bring it down before dying in a hailstorm of pain. Unfortunately we didn't and as the strategic cruiser fleet of overkill rained down upon us, I ordered for the withdrawal. I lost my ship, along with one other but we escaped relatively unscathed. I ordered for the return to Hevrice for a change of ships and change of plan.
We re-shipped, headed back out and chose to avoid the systems we had gone to. Moving up the Vitrauze pipe towards Mannar, we continued to have the life-blood of the fleet choked by lack of worthwhile targets until all hope had been lost. Almost as if a miracle descended upon us, our spirits sky-rocketed when Grohalmatar in his Stiletto managed to catch a Hurricane in Lermireve. Excited at the prospect of such a great kill, we jumped in and flew to his aid. Unfortunately the combined length of the warp we had and both the Stiletto and Hurricane burning away from the belt with micro warp drives meant we landed at 80km away! Grohal bravely went to scram the target to slow him down for the rest of the fleet, but was webbed and destroyed by drones. Another unfortunate loss...
We'd been out for little over 2 hours now and whilst in contrast to other fleets it is a relatively short amount of time to hunt, both the moral of the fleet and my ability to coherently command was waning, so the majority of the fleet broke off and heading home for Hevrice. I stayed behind with our only cruiser of the gang as he had criminal flagging and piloting a cruiser home is dangerous at the best of times. With a now refined fleet of 5 people, we headed back to home when Kirith who had been idly scouting about chimed in comms that an Ishkur was trying to engage, Rob gave the nod and we made best speed to Hulmate where Kirith was squaring off against this fearsome foe!
Rob valiantly took the punishing assault of the gate's guns and we assembled on the gate to support Kirith. 'Established point' Kirith promptly announced and we leapt into action. We landed just in time as Kirith's Rifter was taking a lot of damage from the Ishkur understandably and we proceeded to rip our opponent to pieces. Truly the night was over and we scouted our way back, narrowly missing a Bellicose kill on the way.
Looking back at my attempt to command a fleet I am left with a few thoughts to say the least. Firstly, it is much tougher than I imagined it would be. I lingered with the fleet on gates for too long, allowed the fleet to scatter a bit too much and wasn't well enough prepared. I didn't at the time have access to fleet warp commands, as another Tusker was filling the squad commander role to give our fleet bonuses (setting someone as squad booster only never works, sort it CCP?) and I feel that had I owned the ability to do so, fleet coherence wouldn't have been such an issue. I also felt somehow apologetic to the rest of my fleet for a few reasons; one being that most of these guys had a well of skills compared to my own, both in points and genuine ability as a pilot and I felt bad forcing them back into target restricting frigates. The second would be the lack of targets we managed to find, though I was reassured that (and I paraphrase another of my mentors Robert Mason) 'you can't manufacture targets'. Whilst it does make me toy with the idea of making a hundred alts and lining the Hevrice belts with n00bs in Reapers, I couldn't have put the life of a pirate in a more eloquent sense then Rob did there.
I definitely plan to run more fleet operations in the future, collating all my experience together and one day with hope become a worthwhile fleet commander. How long that will take I do not know, I just ask you all to bear with me as I learn. Oh and zombie, I'm sorry I took us to Mannar!
Till next time, fly smart.
It was good fun and a great laugh. Granted I think I had my worst day of ship losses ever yesterday (4!) so I was in need of some comic relief. I hope to attend the next one, perhaps we could start earlier ;D
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