Saturday 7 December 2013

Armour BCs vs Ishtar Gang

This post refers to the following fight - http://tuskers.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=16927632 which was frapsed below from my Point Of View (POV):


Background:

I announced an Armour BC roam and we set out, finding very few fights until we ran across the above gang inside a FW Medium Complex, with us unable to enter with our BCs. After a short wait, they warped out, regrouped and grabbed another Guardian and another Ishtar iirc then warped to us at 0.

Friendly gang:

1 Loki
6 Armour Battle Cruisers (1 Hurricane, 1 Harbinger, 4 Prophecies)
2 Thorax
4 Exequrors
4 Celestis

Hostile gang:

~16 Ishtars
1 Stiletto
1 Deimos
5 Guardians

The Fight

So, on paper we probably should have lost the above fight as 16 HACs = ~8000 DPS, which none of our BCs could even remotely tank with only 4 friendly Exequrors on grid for Logistics. On the other hand, with our 9 DPS ships (two of which do less than 400 DPS), we couldn't hope to break any of their ships under reps. However, there were a number of mistakes that both sides made that ultimately won it for us:

Their mistakes:

1. They primaried our tankiest ship from the get-go - our slaved Loki with 300k EHP and 85+% across the board resists. This wasted their DPS for a few crucial seconds.
2. They did not have great drone skills - a few of them had Tech 1 Drones out, a heresy with an T2 drone bonused ship.
3. They came in at 0 and some dropped Sentries - remember this was before the HAC rebalance so Sentries had some issues tracking ships up close.
4. We had Armour Warfare Links, where it appears they didn't. Whilst this made no difference once their Logistics caught Remote Reps on their ships (see the single Ishtar that caught reps in time and survived), it meant they had significantly less buffer than our ships.
5. They underestimated our Celestis - with 1:1.25 Celestis:Guardian ratio, our Celestis had a field day damping their Logistics down to crazy low scan resolution.

Our mistakes:

1. Lazy selection of drones on Prophecies - As I bought & fit up all of our ships with the exception of the Loki, I cut a few corners, in particular with the drone selection on the Prophecies, with the primary DPS drone groups being 3 heavy drones rather than 2 heavies, 2 mediums and 1 small which do significantly more DPS.
2. Poor broadcasting on my side - we lost a few seconds between each ship dying due to poor broadcasting on my part. This has yet to be fixed :(
3. I forgot to turn on my Information Warfare Links with my alt, which would have given a huge boost to our Celestis' ewar and my Target Painter. Same deal with our Skirmish Warfare Links, which would have reduced incoming DPS by a fair amount in most likelihood.
4. I didn't put my neut on their Logistics. Small thing in the grand scheme of things, but could have helped.

So, everyone makes mistakes :(. But, it was a good fight with an interesting gang comp!

Will do another fight with Fraps footage next week.