RvB Ganked 146: Oh My Gods

Work has been naggy this week, but I managed to sneak out of Thera for a few hours to run with RvB. This week's roam was Gods of War, a collection of hurricanes, faction canes, and sleipnirs. I hadn't flown in a GoW before (or sat in a sleipnir for that matter), but it works best when the high alpha and long range of projectile BCs combine to volley targets off the field before their logi can land reps. The cycle time of the guns is rather slow, so the GoWs have only one, maybe two volleys before the reps land and the target needs to be changed. Because of this, the battlecruisers have no prop mods and in this regard the composition is not completely unlike line infantry of the 18th century. Opposing forces would stand up tall and just shoot each other until one side couldn't shoot anymore - no moving around, no flanking, no special tricks. The fleet was led by Apex Aubaris, after organizer Rebecca Neresh apparently flaked at the last minute.

We came up with over 100 dps ships and a few dozen logi, EWAR, and tackle. I have flown with Apex at least once before, a much smaller Spectre moonwalker fleet that turned out pretty well. Apex is a more flamboyant and outspoken FC who talks a lot. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but today he seemed less confident than usual and made uncharacteristically hasty decisions.

We started about a half hour late and headed straight from Stacmon and into Ostingele, only one jump over. There we dithered around with a Gorgon gang for the better part of an hour. They were mostly ishtars and wanted to engage at 90k, which was out of range of our canes. During the dance a cyno went up in system which caused some brief excitement, but we ultimately disregarded it - there is a guy who likes to light cynos in Ostingele while sitting next to his deathstar POS in a troll-tanked Quafe megathron and collect killmails from anyone who takes the bait.

After enough dancing around, we got in a decent range of Gorgon and began to trash their support ships, like a lachesis and a few huginns, before starting in on their ishtars. It was then that Apex inexplicably warped the fleet away without clearing tackle, leaving several of our pilots stranded with Gorgon on grid. Apex explained that another fleet was inbound and he wanted to get in on that action as well. I can understand that sentiment, but ditching one engagement for another is generally not good practice, especially when the first gang is still partially in range and you have comrades pointed.

We then started a limited threeway with Gorgon and the newcomers, a CVA armor gang. We took out a decent proteus, an interestingly-fit on-grid booster damnation (whose alliance I recalled from my Naraka days), and an oneiros. We took down an onyx whose pilot seemed to be lost, as there were no supers on grid for him to point and he certainly didn't use that cyno. Like the first scuffle, Apex again attempted to fleetwarp us out when we had the advantage. Wtf?

Friendly smartbombing

During these fights we discovered our fleetmates regularly using smartbombs, even when no enemies were in smartbomb range. I get it - you want to whore as much as possible, and because this is an NPSI fleet, whoring on fleet losses doesn't look like an awox. Battlecruisers take minuscule damage from small smartbombs so that's not the problem. The problem is our legion of fragile light drones that provide much needed dps against small tackle. It also hurts our own frigs who remain with the fleet, like a keres. The smartbombs were included on the sleipnir and other official fits, which was probably a mistake. During the roam, Apex was too lenient on these miscreants and it was only late in the fights when we began to open fire on friendly smartbombs.

After a short break we again tussled with both gangs, taking out some logi and other ships. EVE-U crashed the party as they often do and we began tearing down their t1 cruisers, mostly moas. Our fleet was holding strong and eventually everyone else bailed. Hearing of a Snuff gang in the area, we jumped through into Loes and began to engage their large armor BS/t3 gang. This is when we finally used the God of War doctrine for its express purpose. Because Snuff relies so heavily on slave implants and always has copious logi support, the only way to kill their ships was to volley them off the field, one carefully prepared weapons cycle at a time. Their logi was slow on the first target, a pulse napoc. We then managed to coordinate first one loki and then another. After that, their logi was onto our little scheme and spread reps around, and our discipline was so low we couldn't properly coordinate.

We withdrew and flew back to Ostingele, tangling briefly with a French alliance that derped on a gate and found themselves on grid with our much larger blob. Our tackle at this point was limited but we caught some t2 cruisers before going home, like some eagles and a vag.

At the end of the day I got some great kills and had fun, but this was one of the weaker RvB Gankeds I've flown on. I know it's not easy to come up with decent doctrines, keep track of intel, herd cats and all of the other lame shit that FCs have to do, and I'm grateful to Apex and Rebecca for their content. I do like the doctrine and as a bonus I kept my sleipnir, as I somehow didn't die. Perhaps I will have use for it again soon. Below you can find a very fast video of the entire affair, and here is a somewhat confusing battle report. Props to EVE-U for planting spais in our fleet and even using one to warp our entire gang onto theirs, which put us at a huge advantage.