Last night I made my debut as Fleet Commander(Henceforth known as FC)
I felt a bit nervous and uncomfortable at the prospect of leading ships for the first time, and I really didn’t feel like I was ready yet. Having lost the bulk of our veterans of the last few months the CEO position was thrust on me rather promptly. Either way, it’s sink or swim, and I gave swimming a try. Albeit with lead weights on my feet and hands, it felt like.
For the roam we had nine participants. For RPSH that is unusual, and it made me quite happy. The fleet was compromised of mostly new people, with perhaps 3 people with over 10 million skill points. This means we had a lot of tech 1 frigates, and not much deeps. Considering it was my debut, that was fine. I wouldn’t have wanted to take out battlecruisers only to have them whelp at the entry system into nul-sec.
As soon as the fleet was assembled we left our high-sec jumpoff point Jarizza. We headed through our old home in Asabona to Sendaya. From Sendaya we jumped into Doril, which is the first system in Curse. Curse is known for being a real shithole of death. From all the nul-sec areas I have been in, Curse is the most inhospitable. There are Dramiels everywhere, and most of them are very good due to the fact that there are Dramiels everywhere. You don’t go into Curse just for the lulz, if you do, you die. Which is sort of what we did.
As soon as we jumped into Curse, I had my scout go check out our out-gate. As we were holding the gate a HAC, otherwise known as heavy assault cruiser jumped in. It was a Muninn and from zooming inon it I could see it had 720 artillery. So I ordered everyone to burn and tackle it. Burning is basically engaging your afterburners or microwardrives(typically mwds in the case of burning) and barreling towards the target, tackling is getting close enough to warp disrupt or scramble it.
As I was about to shout “Engage at an angle”, I got hit by the arties first volley which took my shields, my armor and put me deep into hull. The issue was that I had clikcked approach and engaged the MWD. This means that I was heading straight toward the ship which means I have 0 transversal velocity to the enemy ship. Which means that the artillery cannons can get a clean hit on me. As soon as I got hit I tried getting my transversal up, but it was too late and the ship’s drones popped me.
At this point we had, hurr hurr, point on the ship and the fleet was engaged. Our Blackbird which is a ship that can ECM jam and make ships unable to lock had been forced to warp out due to him being the first one to be engaged, and thus we couldn’t prevent the Munnin from sending drones on us. This lead to two frigates dying, after which I called a disengage.
Tails behind our legs we fled, went back to Asabona, reshipped and went back to Doril. Once in Doril we had gangs of 20 moving about. So I left FCing to my previous scout as I was gonna check the two outsystems of Doril and see if we could safely pass through. The reason I did this was that I was in an interceptor, which means that I am quicker than the normal frigates and ought to be able to get way. The first system was camped, so I jumped back into Doril.
When I jumped into the second system I noticed it was camped by a fleet of 10+. As soon as they saw my gate flash they put up warp disruptor bubble, a bubble that basicaly prevents warpdrives within its area of effect, which made me unable to warp away to safety. I tried burning out of the bubble to warp to the sun, and then try to get safe, but alas they had sebod people on the gate which meant I got instalocked, scrammbed, and popped. Even my pod.
A Dramiel was the one to put the most damage on me. Oh Curse.
After that I gave command to the previous scout and told him to get everyone home.
When we headed back to reship we almost popped a Taranis, which would have been neat. Other than that I consider the roam a succesful debut. At least I didn’t whelp the whole fleet, eh!
Stop Being A Moron - And learn to love the game 