Get into Faction Warfare, they said...

... make some ISKies orbiting buttons they said.  Well, I figured I'd spend my time orbiting buttons to make ISKies whenever things were quiet.  Turns out I've been too busy fleeting to kill all the things to actually do much of that plexing business.  I am not disappoint.

Each of these is probably worth a full blog post, but instead I'm cramming them in...

BLOPSing around the Universe

Quick, get your BLOPS in before the jump nerfs.  We had a training BLOPS where we were mostly getting used to what it takes.  Keeping everyone cloaked and within a short-radius of the also-cloaked BlackOps BS definitely took some institutional learning.  Tricks to makings sure you can also take the bridge were also learned.  This is much better than being in mid-jump when the bridge goes down and being a sad Arazu with nobody on grid.  Thank you Templis for providing the targets we successfully smashed once we figured out what we were doing.

Muninns - apparently they are useful

So in Rifterlings there had been a long chat at one point about the uselessness of Muninns.  Fast forward to flying in a fleet of Assault Frigs and support, with me in a Maulus.  We spot RAZOR running about in a gang with a Muninn backbone and move into a Medium plex to set up.  After some dithering they came in.  Ooof.  the Muninns were two-shotting people.  My Maulus was apparently a priority, but I warped out in low armor.  Perhaps foolishly I tried to duck back in without repairs, but was immediately picked back up and popped.  The Muninns were able to get range and really put a hurt on with their artillery.  Nice job, RAZOR.

Intense Heat in the Templis Kitchen

Templis decided to attack one of our POCOs, so we musted out in battlecruisers and an admittedly (and unintentionally) high number of Exequors and they ran away.  So we shipped down to Vexors and chased in hopes they'd be willing to fight that.  Answer is yes they would.  This was the most intense fleet fight I've been in yet.

I had wondered if I would start to feel like an F1-monkey in larger fleets.  Apparently a 30-something fleet is still small enough that this wasn't a problem. Between applying drones, ECM, Scram, and trying to get on top of something close enough to use blasters, I was doing a lot.  And not necessarily well - there was a lot of time where I was forgetting to MWD close enough to get blasters on something because I was focused on drones following the primary and using my own initiative on where to apply ECM and scram/web.

Templis had a fleet that featured a Scorpion, Vulture, Slepnir, multiple Drakes, Moa, Ferox, Scythe, Scimitars, and then a wing of Algos.  I was certainly worried about the Command Ships and Drake's legendary ability to soak up damage.  But our DPS dropped them one by one, and the Logistics wing was doing an incredible job keeping people up.  The Caldari targeted our Logi for a while, but they managed to keep each other up, though many of them left the fight in 10%-ish structure.  Amazing work.

Summary and Lessons

I need to be able to keep on top of more things at once - particularly keeping my blaster-Vexor on top of targets to apply gun DPS/scram/web while the drones follow the primary call, while also applying Ewar where appropriate.  Whew.

Lots of small lessons about fleets in terms of knowing what the FC wants.  I was congratulated at one point for being succinct in providing intel on a fight, which was great, but I know I was not as disciplined at other points.  Much to learn