Having taken over from the previous FC (big shout out to Otto Jarvis, renouned target-magnet and master of all things E-War), I found myself immediately overwhelmed with tasks. Where are all of our scouts? Where is the rest of our fleet? How do I get that window thingy to come up where I can see who is flying what? Why are 4 people relaying information to me at once? Who is "me" and where is "here"? Gahhh!
The goal was to get our merry crew home safely while looking for potential customers. I decided that the rest of the roam would be doomed to an epic fail of disorganised confusion unless I started slowly from the ground up. I'd have to keep things simple as not to puzzle myself and to keep a hold on things. Once the fleet was fully assembled in a safe spot I sent out a pair of scouts to stay ahead of us and report their findings. The rest of fleet was with me.
Our scouts had begun relaying information on the next system over comms. I drew upon my experience of previous roams to aid my duty...
"Fleet warp to the gate, jump on contact and hold cloak"
Was that right? I'm sure that's what I'm supposed to say. After a while one of our scouts reported a flashyred Cynabal hovering on the gate on the otherside of our system. All I knew was that cynabals were expensive, looked cool and put out silly DPS. Our Blackbird pilot was confident he could jam him up while we pecked away at him in our frigates. We wouldn't incur a GCC and if things went badly we could just GTFO. At this point in the night we'd had no action and the general consensus was that we would give it a shot.
The gate read clear on D-scan and thus I signaled the fleet to warp. We landed on the gate and began orbiting it, waiting for the word from our man on the other side. Suddenly the overview is an endless list of expensive-sounding space boats. Panic stations!
"Everybody jump now!"
Literally as I gave the order, our scout on the other side checks in on comms.
"Erm you guys..."
He didn't have time to explain what had happened. There was an even larger camp on the otherside, the overview at this point being an endless list of doom and impending fail. You know things are bad when you are having to use the scroll-down button. Zealot, Myrmidon, Hurricane, Hurricane, Drake, Drake, Drake, Thorax, Harbinger and our good friend Mr. Bait Cynabal. We Were were trapped in what I like to call a "Gate Sandwich".
"Everybody warp to something you are best aligned to. Every man for himself!"
(rofl every man for himself, what a great leader I am)
There is silence over comms as each pilot prays to get into warp. The frigates managed to escape but our faithful and heroic Blackbird pilot (shout out to Caps!) just did not have the agility or the acceleration of the prodominantly rifter-piloted fleet. He was toast. Either we were the victims of some very bad timing or more-likely, we had been the victims of a very well executed trap. With our prized E-War boat blown to smitherenes, we decided to burn for home but for one reason or another the stars had aligned and we were treated to another gate-related fiasco on the way. We jumped into one of the remaining systems en route home and were duly greeted with another overview-rape-fest.
"Don't panic, everybody remain calm!"
I hurridly scanned the overview looking for anything that might have a fast lock time. Oh dear I thought to myself, theres a few ships here I've never even heard of before. Burn back to the gate? I didn't fancy the chances in our paper-thin fleet of T1 frigates and I wasn't about to dock up and log off in a rifter. We've got to warp and we've gotta do it fast and in unison. I fleet warp us to a safe and cross my fingers.
"Is anyone getting locked?"
There was no reply. Inundated with an overview full of flashy red pirates, the gatecampers failed to get a lock on our nifty little frigates and we had successfully made it through the camp with no casualties. Phew! From here on the path home was relatively safe. We docked up in our home system and called it a night. Despite not blowing up any spaceships, we'd only lost one pilot and I managed to get some valuable experience in the field of Fleet Command. I have been nominated as emergency FC again since the events of this post but unfortuneately it didn't go as smoothly, being victims of some serious bait (no officer I swear I do NOT have a cloaked Falcon sitting 10km from me).
Conclusion? FC'ing is just like anything else in EVE and requires practice. It is certainly very knowledge-based in the sense that you need the knowledge and experience from which to base your decisions; common sense will only get you so far. At it's core, fleet commanding relies on the ability to multi-task, make decisions and maintain good communication with the rest of the fleet. Will I be trying it again? Definately.
-Mr Kha
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