[2020-04-10] Phantasms roaming

[budda_sereda]

• Comp
  • 6 10mn AB Phantasms
  • 2 100mn AB Scimitars
  • Decent support: Rapier, dessie with links, doctor, ceptor
• What did you do?
  Niv jumped us into Pure Blind, and through Fade, we moved to Decklein. After that, I realized what half people in the fleet already new: Decklein is blue to us, so rather than burning through Venal or Branch to Tribute we decided to make a filament jump. We jumped into Curse. Ratters were docked, nobody formed up the response fleet so we moved to 0SHT-A and further to Catch.
  Got one fight in 0SHT-A and another one just a few jumps further.
• Positives
  • Good form-up, had a well-formed fleet with nice support.
  • We got 2 fights and I think that I did not completely screw up
  • In the first fight I pulled attackers from their staging and probably gave us a bit more time to kill with against decent composition which gave us an opportunity to kill something
  • We did run from the first fight quite well even fighting overwhelming forces: lost only 1 scimi and a dictor.
  • We did move in the system quite well and even though I was blamed that warping fleet will cause us losing people, before the final fight in B-3QPD we only lost those who were hard-tackled (with webs on them).
• Negatives
  • Our kills were non-existent, literally a few tackle ships.
  • Did not find much content so had to engage with overwhelming forces.
  • Niv had pretty bad internet and I was losing 30% of what he was telling me.
  • My internet was not perfect so due to that I was losing some things he told but the rest of fleet did hear
  • Somehow, we could not break anything. Even with Rapier on grid.
• What to improve on
  
  • I honestly don't remember what prevented us to boosh Bhaal from the gate, I just did not think we can break him till his backup arrives. But when Domi jumped into us we did successfully boosh him. What we had to do before is to come close to him so once we boosh him.
  • During the 2nd fight, we run from V-3YG7 to B-3QPD, first we were followed by Sabre, which tried to bubble us, but had to run. After that, we got Jackdaw and later Harpy trying to tackle us.
    Until this point, even we lost some ships, we still could give it a fight. We had Rapier to screen, we had command dessie for speed...
    But we could not break anything. Only when I scrammed that Jaguar we could finish him.
    One of the reasons I see is that till this moment we had quite low DPS: just 4 Phantasms, and somehow 1 was not even applying
  • Thing turned up to be very messy: was really hard to get control over the fight, considering there was so much sh..t on grid, I think I did not do too bad, yet, I guess I need to improve in general awareness. Maybe just warp to the tactical, align to another tactical and take time to think. Though, when you face 30 ships that have as many tackles as you have DPS ships ... the only option is to turn around and run away.
  • Niv tried to tell me what could be better but I literally could not hear him. Let's post further down below.
• Battlereport
  https://fleetcom.space/battlereport/ypBsoTsxNbuP3cLyM - there was a bunch of other stuff on grid, but they did not get on killmail.
  https://fleetcom.space/battlereport/riHy8YxiformbcSAk

Please do comment your thoughts, comments, and suggestions!

[budda_sereda]

As another thing to improve I think what I should have done before engaging Brave was to get intel on them first before jumping ahead. And with that intel, prepare at range to the gate and let them jump into us rather than fighting in their system.
That actually would make a big difference.

[unit_12]

Heavy Beam phantasms are pretty strong and I very much enjoy flying them, but they have a couple weaknesses.

1. They're slow if you're not in HG snakes, so pulling range from anything is going to be a challenge.
2. Tracking - killing tackle without webs isn't going to happen unless they're literally not moving or unless they decide they want to just sit 60km off you and not warp out as you slowly kill them.

Fight 1:
The first fight against the BS's we spent too much time shooting at the Bhaalgorn that wasn't aggressed and could have jumped gate whenever it wanted. Also I'm not sure that booshing anything off of the gate was a good call (maybe the bhaal just to get the nuets away from us). Target would have needed to be booshed in the direction we were pulling range, a little bad luck in this situation considering the domi got booshed behind us requiring us to either cross or fly around the BS's that were now jumping into us. This is probably how Valcent got caught in his scimi.

Fight 2:
As soon as our Rapier died (it was the 2nd ship to die on this grid) we basically had no chance since we couldn't track any light tackle. When you fight overwhelming numbers you have to be able to kill tackle so pilots that are danger of dying can ping off and re-enter fight to reset the grid (so basically anytime you decide to roam null as blobbing with light tackle and ranged DPS is the nullsec way). I would recommend not using AB fit Rapiers/Huggins; these recons need to have a chance to pull range from gate or warp in location and keep friendly dps ships between themselves and hostiles. You then focus DPS on any tackle with active webs on it.

[budda_sereda]

Thanks Unit!

I would recommend not using AB fit Rapiers/Huggins; these recons need to have a chance to pull range from gate or warp in location and keep friendly dps ships between themselves and hostiles. You then focus DPS on any tackle with active webs on it

I guess what you are suggesting is that even if Rapier/Huginn got tackled, he puts webs back and we prioritize killing whatever keeps it first. After - with MWD on it will pull the range?
This sounds reasonable, the only problem is that if recons fits have MWD then while it is tackled it is absolutely not moving. While with AB it still can move (depending on amount of webs on it). With MWD it would move faster... and this would allow it to be further from the gate and from opposing DPS (when they WILL jump).

I guess we can try, but in this case, the concept should be recons and logies push further from the fleet so tackles are closer to DPS than to recons. and with AB Phantasms have a good sig tanking while logies and DPS are further away and are out of DPS range.

I guess another important thing is to not yolo, but instead, position on the gate (another system, so they need to move and let tackle be more isolated from the fleet), let them come and disengage when needed. This also needs to have a decent amount of tactical BMs on gates so it is feasible to warp at different ranges and don't land into bubbles.

Now, I'm encouraged for another try... maybe even LS first?

[unit_12]

@budda

Yeah, my thoughts can basically be sum'd up to:

1) AB fit recons are going to find it difficult getting off of any gate on jump in. (easy target to get called primary)
2) I wouldn't have rapiers/huggins anchor on a fleet of phantasms. They should manually position themselves.

LS might be batter if you want to stick to AB fit recons with this comp, since bubbles aren't a thing, but I still think AB's gimp webbing recons hard.

[budda_sereda]

I guess a big thing that is not visible on paper is that over-sized ABs need time to get up to full speed. This means staying longer in proximity to the targets... Ok, I guess we will do this way next time.