Mixing It Up

While blogging may have suffered due to life and work, I'm still getting in game for activities such as my industrial projects and my PvP fix with stalwart corporation Aideron Robotics.

In the past when we were facing off with multiple strong Caldari Militia fleets every night, I tended to stick to the script so to speak with our core Rogue Squadron doctrine ships. They are not flashy but the consistency of using the doctrine week in and week out built a solid foundation of expectations and actions that pilots in each of the roles could depend on intimately. Our Algos fleet was in particular feared by many and only engaged at their peril or with significant numbers or hull size advantage.

The downside of having the same fleet so often is that the enemy works to counter it with the best possible options. Caracals with Rapid Light Missile Launchers, having good mobility and an amazing alpha, range, and RoF weapon barrage became a common foil for us.

But something happened while we were tinkering with ways to counter this counter. Summer hit and took a toll on our participation and when we got back to regular flying again it seemed that our main antagonists in Caldari Militia were a lot less active at the time our fleets were out. That was not necessarily a bad thing because it gave us some room to try out new things and get a feel for some different fleet types.

We tried some Black Ops fleets which were exciting when we found targets. We played with Command Destroyers in a few fleets (still my favourite new ship), last week was a Speed Force frigate fleet wherein I tried out a Garmur for the first time (can confirm, lots of fun), and this week we broke out our Dingo fleet and roamed around in that.

The Dingo is your standard afterburner fit Rail Thorax, supported by Exequror logistics and tackle frigates. The goal of the fleet is to skirmish instead of brawl, to fight at a range and mitigate incoming damage via low signatures and reps. Its a trickier fleet to manage as opposed to the Vexor brawling fleet but has the advantage of long range with Spike ammo and an easier time disengaging should the need arise.

Unfortunately last night we didn't run into a fleet willing to stand and fight and let me test the theory against practice but we still secured some nice kills here and there, and a good time was had.