Friday 27 December 2013

Tech 1 Cruiser Gang vs Tech 2/3 Cruisers with Guardians

This post relates to the following fight - http://killboard.the-tuskers.info/?a=kill_related&kll_id=84234 which was once again recorded from my POV:


Background:

I announced an Tech 1 Cruiser roam due to the recent Tech 1 Cruiser buffs. Fleet ended up significantly larger than I anticipated, but we managed to scout a gatecamp in the Hagilur pocket which was of significant weight to pose a challenge to us and vice-versa. We baited with a section of our gang (kept 1 Exequror, Celestii and a few DPS ships back iirc), got them to engage then got everyone in.

This was the first time we ran with Mallers instead of Thoraxes as our main source of DPS as Thoraxes did not seem to fare well in the past (poor damage application, poor tank).

Friendly gang:

6 Mallers
4 Ruptures
5 Thoraxes
3 Exequrors
3 Celestis

Hostile gang:

1 Megathron Navy Issue
1 Blackbird
1 Zealot
1 Omen Navy Issue
1 Vigilant
1 Hurricane
1 Sacrilege
2 Legions
2 Proteii
4 Guardians

The Fight

Similar to the last post, on paper our DPS should not have been enough to break anything with a respectable tank (any Tech2 ship, possibly faction) as 4 Guardians with Legion links in system is a significant amount of rep ability. However, our 3 Celestis enabled our victory allowing us to break most of their ships before they caught reps (exception - the 1 Guardian we killed).

Their mistakes:

1. Their low amount of Ewar committed them to slugging it out with us.
2. Lack of focus fire - they split DPS a fair bit (can't see in video)
3. Un-organised gang, with ships of varying value/tank, ranging from the incredibly tank Tech3s to the fragile Blackbird.
4. Their logistics did not prelock their more fragile ships.
5. Their Blackbird was at 0 and therefore easy pickings for our DPS ships.
6. They underestimated our Celestis - with a 1:1.33 Celesti to Guardian ratio, our Celestis had a field day damping their Logistics down to crazy low scan resolution.

Our mistakes:

1. My poor target calling, confusing the Omen Navy with a Zealot etc.
2. Once again, 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 did not micro my drones particularly well.
4. I should have primaried the Sacrilege rather than the Hurricane as it's worth more and has comparable buffer but takes the enemy Logistics longer to lock.

This fight made us swap permanently to Mallers for our primary DPS ships, with our remaining Thoraxes being slowly lost and not replaced in future gangs.