After Action

I logged in alone last night. I was tempted to chill out in my emo scissor room, but decided I'd better head up to the common channel just in case anyone else logged in. I scanned down the new static and proceeded to scout the rest of the chain in my super-elite Helios.

Surely You're Joking (SYJ) was active and had likely come from an incoming C6 which was connected to our static C4. I jumped into a class 2 system, the static exit of our C4s. The C2 was a Black Hole system with static exits to hi-sec and class 3 systems.

In the C2a I saw a lot of SYJ activity and decided to let it die down before making my presence known. They are a large group and with only myself and now one other Cold Moon pilot on I didn't want to attract their attention.

Once all their ships had been off dscan for a while I dropped probes and scanned down the HS and C3a. After checking out the hi-sec for any massive SYJ gang I warped to the C3 and jumped through. Almost immediately I heard the wormhole activate behind me so I burned off and cloaked in time to see a blockade runner - a Viator to be exact - from Weyl Manufacturing warp off.

I followed the blockade runner to his POS and found several piloted ships: a Megathron, a few Ravens and Drakes and the Viator. There didn't seem to be much activity and I suspected that SYJ had been hunting these guys, but bungled the attack somehow, allowing them to escape back to the POS.

Soon enough, though, these guys would get back to business, but with their superior numbers and larger ships I was a bit worried about our ability to keep up with their tank. Fortunately we had some more pilots logging on and the opposing numbers were becoming less of a problem.

Eventually our targets warped off to one of their null-sec wormholes and we formed a fleet of covert strategic cruisers with a couple of HACs and Guardians piloted by Henry and Fischey as auxiliary deeps and logi support.

Because of the prior SYJ activity I was weary of putting our non-claoking ships in the open, but I did want them close by in order to actually fulfill their support role. I decided to err on the side of caution and put them in the hi-sec system off of C2a. It was a safe spot and they were one jump closer to the rest of us than if they had remained in our home system.

While the auxiliaries got into position I set the trap. One of our covert Proteuses, Teseer, remained in the C3 on the NS1 wormhole. I went into NS1 with my covert Proteus and cloaked up on the wormhole. We also had No'Wai in a covert Proteus sitting at the enemy POS watching a Drake that had been chilling out there.

The ratting Drake docked up in NS1 while the Raven mopped up. Once finished the Raven warped back to the wormhole. At the sametime the Drake in the POS in C3a warped to the other side of the wormhole and jumped through to NS1.

I decloaked and engaged the Raven. Thinking they only had to contend with a sole Proteus the Raven and Drake both engaged me. Teseer jumped from the C3a into NS1 and I called the Drake as primary. Meanwhile our support group of HACs and Logi was moving toward us in the event that our targets conjured up some reinforcements.

When the Raven and Drake jumped back into C3a they were engaged by No'Wai in our third covert Proteus and Henry in his Hound. Teseer and I followed the targets back into the C3 where they were finished off on the wormhole before our support gang arrived on grid. Even though they couldn't whore themselves out on the kill mails they did get to live vicariously through us.

ze pod
Navy Raven
Drake

So here's my thoughts on things that went well, what might be improved on and a few other deep thoughts.

Sustain
1. We had really good fleet comms. There wasn't any chatter or talking over people.
2. The fleet movements, separated into two groups as they were, was excellent.
3. The springing of the trap went well. No one got polarized or anything like that.
4. The scouting was solid.

Improve
1. Auxiliary fleet positioning. I didn't really like having them so far off, but I didn't want to leave them exposed while the forward group waited for that initial contact. I should have placed inside C2a on the wormhole to HS. That would've put them even closer to us, but still provided an easy route to safety if they were jumped.
2. After the fight was over we had some loitering going on. In the future we need to clear the field or cloak up to minimize our exposure to a possible counter-attack or third-party-ganking.

Deep Thoughts
I'm tempted to say I'd have liked to have had more versatility in the auxiliary fleet like EWAR or neuts, but from the very outset this engagement was geared toward burning down tech 1 battleships and battle cruisers, so I wanted to bring a lot of DPS in order to burn through their potentially large tanks. With that in mind I think the entire fleet comp was perfectly suited to burning down the scouted fleet.