Funk

Entry: seven hundred ninety-five, supplemental one.

I'm a bit frustrated lately. I've been roaming around, but I haven't been able to kill anything. Honestly, that's not what really has me annoyed though, since I normally make good calls concerning fights. 

What has me annoyed is that I was sitting in a safe spot in H-A, got probed down, and killed. A completely avoidable loss, to be sure.

So first, I got probed down. Guess I need probes on my overview. Second I made the wrong call in trying to warp out as soon as I saw a Loki landing on grid. It was a close thing, another half second and I would have been gone, but it was the wrong decision. So third, I aligned out with overheated MWD and started to pull range.......and then got webbed down enough that I was done for.

Sigh.

Then ridiculed in local. I suppose I deserve it to an extent, but it's still annoying. Eighty mil tornado for nothing. Seems like if the ship isn't a frigate I'm doomed to lose it the same day I use it.

I don't know, I'm clearly doing stuff wrong in that my roams aren't getting kills. It feels impossible to compete with tech two and faction ships and tech three ships all the time, and I know it's not, but the schmucks in alliance can't seem to do anything except feed killmails to anyone who comes around, and I certainly didn't help that situation, a fact itself which annoys me further because I was a schmuck then.

I was pretty excited to take out an armor gank Maller, but now I'm questioning whether I should bother. Tier has a great idea for a plate BS gang to tell those stupid kiting gangs to piss off, which is great to that point, but doesn't provide much in the way of roaming I feel like. More like a gatecamp buster, which will work given all the stupid gatecamps around here.

Gonna have to find a way to get my morale back up for sure...I feel like I'm reliving my first days where all I did was lose ships. Those were dark, frustrating, heartbreaking days...
  
Computer: terminate recording.

****

Computer: append to previous log.

I need to man the hell up, and stop being such a damn whiner...sorry to everyone who waded through that.
 
Computer: save and close.
 

Cascading Blood in Curse

Entry: seven hundred ninety-one.

Curse is tearing Cascade Imminent apart.

Some weeks ago, Cascade deployed to Curse in order to aid Against All Authorities in getting rid of Red Alliance. Shortly after, when it became clear that Pandemic Legion was essentially going to attack us at every opportunity, combined with the abysmal job scouts were doing, leadership called for a temporary halt on our objective. As we were and are still deployed, ISK generating activities have largely been frowned upon. So the alliance has been attempting to entertain itself with roams.

Delve was a very forgiving place for us: blobs, blobs, and more blobs were the typical fare. Everyone that was down there was essentially a sov holder, with a few hundred pilots backing each at the minimum. As the saying goes, there's safety in numbers, and when it's numbers versus numbers, many fights devolve to numbers. Curse, however, is very different from Delve, and the quality of the alliance in terms of fighting ability is clear. If you take a look at the alliance killboards, an ocean of red assaults your vision. How did this happen? Why does this continue to happen?

I've been told this, and realized the truth of it even before, although I had not yet realized it consciously at the time: Curse is small gang heaven, and Cascade is not suited to it. The actual statement was "larger alliances get picked apart", but it amounts to the same thing.

This goes back to my previous entry about knuckle-draggers. The majority of alliance stays logged off or spins ships except for CTAs. Why? Because they have no practical combat skill and no real desire to attain it. Most of those that are dying are trying to attain this skill, but are still stuck in the blob paradigm, where for argument's sake let's define a blob at twenty plus. To top that off, fleets not lead by an official alliance FC usually have hour long formups or don't get off the ground at all. If such a fleet does get off of a station undock, many pilots are inexperienced enough to actually think for themselves in a fight. Thus the sea of red.

And I'll admit, I'm not a fantastic combat pilot. Aside from not having links or drugs or the typical Vagabond, I'm still learning. I feel pretty safe in saying that I'm a step or two ahead of most of the alliance in terms of solo and small gang warfare, but I still pale when it comes to other alliances in the area who have been doing this for a while, such as Gorgon Empire pilots, Darkside pilots, and yes, even the occasional Pandemic Legion pilot I see rolling through.

I will also admit, that my corporation, while combat-focused, has quite a ways to go in terms of overall combat ability. While we have more pilots trying to learn small gang warfare than other corporations, we are still new to it.
 
Personally, I think an extended stay in Curse would do wonders for the corporation and the alliance, in that order. We have numbers, and we do reasonably decent in larger engagements. The old criticism holds true here, however: as of right now, this sov holder can only blob. Staying in Curse will force us to learn small gang warfare, or stay docked for our duration here. People would rather get blown up than be bored however, so we'll be learning the hard way.
 
So, the real question is this: how long will we be here, and how much will we be able to learn?
 
Computer: terminate recording.

An Almost Fruitless Roam, a Useless Death

Entry: seven hundred eighty-four.

With some free time on my hands for once this week, I and a former pirate friend now corpmate roamed from H-ADOC to Utopia in a Crusader and a Wolf. On the trip up, we found nothing except a gatecamp sitting on a drag bubble which we easily bypassed, and another gatecamp on the Jorund/Utopia gate.

On our way back, we decided to make a bunch of pounces for the route, since Curse seems rife with gatecampers and cloakies. As I warped to the outgate in Hemin, I noticed an Incursus sitting a hundred off. I called for Jason to wait while I burned at him. It seemed pretty clear he was bait, but with me piloting the interceptor, I felt reasonably confident of getting away.

At forty kilometers, I called for him to warp to me. A few seconds later I had the Incursus tackled. A few seconds after that, Jason landed, and that's when the Incursus webbed and scrammed me. With Jason on field I knew we could kill the Incursus extremely fast.

It lasted ten seconds or less. There was enough time left over before the gatecamping gang landed that I tried to loot the wreck. I wasn't quite able to, however, and barely managed to get away from a Rapier and Sabre, having been webbed and momentarily inside of a bubble.

The rest of the trip to H-ADOC was uneventful.

After a few minutes in H-ADOC, we joined an alliance fleet. Waterboard came into local with an eighteen strong gang: Vagabonds, Canes, Scimis, etcetera. The FC decided to take the fight, and warped to them below the station. He called for us to warp to him, and as I was in warp, he called for fleet to leave the field. Fantastic. My cane was pretty brutally murdered, and I didn't manage to kill anything with it. Suffice to say that I was fairly ticked off at the horrendous call the FC had made.

It would not have been such a bad call had the fleet already been in space: something would have died. But half the fleet was docked. Five of us lost our ships for no reason and took nothing with us, four being battlecruisers like mine. That's the last time I join one of his fleets.

My night was a bit ruined at that useless action. I went and got another cane from HED-, only to run through a gatecamp that that FC's then active fleet was chasing. Thankfully, they hadn't reported it in intel at all, so I got to view the enemy gang up close and personal. Also thankfully, the enemy gang didn't jump in after me, probably assuming that their opponents were on the other side instead of running away.

It was fairly frustrating. 
 
Computer: terminate recording.

Humbling Experience

Entry: six hundred eighty-nine.
 
Today is day two of trying to flip the W-IX station to Cascade control. Black Legion have come back yet again to mess with us while we handle our business in subcapitals. We know better than to light a cyno and take the easy way out with Dreads: we do that, and Raiden or Pandemic Legion or anyone else itching for capital kills will come knocking down the house to save the couch.
 
As Black Legion attacked the TCU, the main FC, who was overly tired, asked for bombers. I took command as no one else was going about organizing any sort of bombing run. His fatigue and frustration are egging me on.
 
I ask bombers to "x up" with bomb types. Four scorches with mine, one shrapnel, one concussion. I create a group chat with the scorch bombers and a prober, simultaneously setting up a pounce at the TCU while Black Legion takes a brief break in K7D-. Just as I make my pounce, Black Legion warps in on the TCU and starts attacking it. Bubbles go up at zero on the TCU: I hoped I wasn't wrong in my next judgement.
 
I ordered the scorch bombers only to warp to me at ten and to "x up" when they landed. No one is being vocal and the fleet FC is getting frustrated in part because his fatigue is so intense. The only bombers talking are the ones I don't want around for the bombing run.
 
Finally, my scorch bombers "x up". Warpin is fifty behind them towards the P4- gate. I order a warp up to the warpin at ten, we end up twenty from the nearest. FC is infringing on me, and I make a bad call to get thirty from the nearest, turn around, bomb, warpout. 
 
First scorch bomber decloaks and launches, and I call a stop because I read shrapnel. I see it as scorch a moment later and call the resume action. Too late, first bomber down, second going down, random shrapnel bomb from the damn shrapnel bomber, my bomb goes out. I lag, try to warp out, but I'm not in my bombing fit because I was shooting the station, and I die.
 
No bombs hit. Not a single one was set up for a proper bombing run, mostly because of alignment, partially because of fit, and partially for the mixed bomb that blew up bombs immediately behind it. What a cluster****.
 
"Computer: playback forum post."
 
Computer: "Confirmed."
 

*****

While working on the W-IX station BL came in with Gilas and started knocking on the TCU. I asked for bombers to x up with types. 5 scorch including me, 1 shrap, 1 concussion.

I had a pounce on the TCU and had the scorch bombers warp to me at 10. None of them decloaked. We got a warp in behind them and began bombing. Our target was the drones, but 5 bombs should have done a substantial amount of damage to them as well.

Problems:
1) Bombers that died lagged out or got insta locked and killed.
2) Mixed bomb types were launched despite only scorch bombers only being told to make the run.
3) Our warp in position had no aligned warp-out. We did have time to do it, but I felt rushed and made a bad call
4) Main fleet chatter was pretty active despite our setting up to bomb. It's very hard to coordinate when non combatants are talking about anything.
5) Squad members did not speak on comms. Do not know why.

How I'll be looking to fix this:
1) I will not execute any bombing run when "lone bombers" with bombs not part of the main group are present. They get impatient and disobey orders because no one can see them. If a TCU falls, so be it.
2) Bombing runs will be aligned with a warp out if time permits. Ambushes will be set up ahead of time, defensive bombs have a short time before the enemy target is destroyed.
3) Even though I lagged, I still took a few hits before dying due to the Invuln I had active. If I had had an MSE fitted and online, I could have survived long enough to warp out despite the damage. Instead, my bomb never hit because I died. Will bring an offline MSE from now on. Cannot use this bomber on thorn fleets period since I can't switch between the MWD and AB. Can still fit torps for structure shoots by toggling off the MSE and MWD as necessary.
4) Will use separate comms channel instead of staying in main fleet channel.
5) Will tell squad members in this separate comms channel to reply over voice comms instead of holding silence.

Are there any suggestions on other improvements that could be made? Any bomber FC can learn from this, so I encourage constructive criticism.

*****

 
Computer: "Playback terminated."
 
Such a humbling experience.
 
Computer: terminate recording.