[2020-04-03] RR Drakes vs NPSI Omens+AFs

[budda_sereda]

• Comp
  • 11 x RR HAM Drakes: Shield Buffer fit with Larger Remote Shield Booster
    Keres and Stork with links.
  • We faced fleet of 31 pilots, including 5 T1 CR logies, 13 Omens Beam, 4 AFs (Wolfs and Harpies), 2 Keres, Vigil, and 3 Ceptors.
• What did you do?
  I've formed up to fight the NPSI fleet, led by my former frenemy.
  
  We formed on Onnamon and to Placid, first killed 1 straggler in Intaki and later jumped into Brarel for a brawl.
  Once weapon timers expired, we jumped to the other side.
  
  Surprisingly, Omens were on the gate at 0, not at range (as you would assume facing Beam fits). I called to anchor up, and we got to work: first killed a few logies, later DPS. We were killing them relatively fast, but we also were trading 1 Drake for every killed cruiser. There was a moment when we got 3 Omens in a raw by losing only a Keres, but after that kept trading 1 Drake for every other Omen. Due to lower number of ships we eventually lost.
  
  I was trying to extract, but a swarm of small ships on grid did not let assume this is an option at all.
  .
• Positives
  • We fly Drakes!!!
  • Good turnaround for EU TZ.
  • It was a fast form-up and quick fight.
  • New friends from Holy Cookies joined us.
  • Everyone got a decent amount of kills.
  • This is one of the infrequent cases when I FC Spider fits and it went decently well. Ok, in the end we lost the grid and ISK war, but we traded good enough and it was not a whelp. I think we could improve, but it was not a disaster and I'd try it again!
• Negatives
  • Once we jumped into Omens, many of us, due to a high amount of small ships, were scrammed/webbed and we could not come close to each other and were not able to apply reps effectively.
  • As much as I was trying to position us in range, due to the HAM range limit we were not always able to apply well to a primary.
  • Personally, I overcommitted to do many things: Anchor, call primaries, manage my own fit (which requires a lot of work: MWD, DPS, EWar, RR, cap) - I was really lagging to do my FC job well.
• What to improve on
  Don't be fooled but a long improvements list, it was a nice fleet and I love it. But I'm very self-demanding, so there are a bunch of things we are gonna do better next time.
  
  • Doctrine needs at least a single Scimitar: have him pre-locked by everyone, he would tank REALLY well and would help us to tank much better.
  • Maybe if we did use AB Drakes, we would be able to anchor up more effectively. That probably would require to use HML, not HAM and we would have lower DPS... Dunno.
  • Fit has serious cap issues: we did not really need to perma run MWD, but even with MWD off, we only had 2 mins of CAP, and as the fight took 7 minutes it was impacting our ability to apply reps.
  • I probably should have tried to lure opponents to either jump into us, or warp. But I knew they were Beam fits and we - HAM so they would outrange us. So I decided to better jump into them and brawl rather than let them warp at 60 and pick us while we are trying to close the range (which would be impossible as Drakes are quite slow).
• Battlereport
  https://br.inyour.space/?s=3789,3788&b= ... =evuvvvvvu

Please do comment your thoughts, comments, and suggestions!

[unit_12]

Good write up Budda. Was fun, spider tanking fleets are always a nice challenge, I'm just not sure if they'll ever be successful in drakes without dedicated logi support.

In addition the main issue with HAM's is always going to be projection (range/flight time). You can partially solve that with heavy long range webs and scrams (linked web loki at your service), but then you start to get to the point where you're throwing so many additional variables at a comp just to try and get it to be workable. I'd say give HML's a spin instead.