Like Starting Over

One thing about FCing for the same group of guys over a long period of time is that you become very familiar and comfortable with what everyone knows and can do, so you can give an order and reasonable expect it to be followed to the best of everyone's duty. Also, when you put a fleet together asking for a particular ship type, you can look at your fleet size and immediately know what your capabilities are in terms of fights and targets you can take.

However, with the advent of Ascension and the efforts Aideron Robotics has been doing to recruit new inexperienced players, I've found myself having to get out of my comfort zone and be a more proactive and attentive Fleet Commander which means explaining things with more detail, giving more instructions repeatedly, being patient, and being aware that a significant portion of my fleet is made up of Alpha Atrons just learning PvP.

Sunday night was the second fleet I ran since the expansion and it was one in which not only the new players were trying and learning things, but also some veterans as myself and Ashterothi and Kuruk were flying Magus Command Destroyers with the new on grid links.

Overall the fleet was a little more chaotic than I am used to; some pilots need some lessons on fleet comms (i.e. I don't need to know your father is kicking you off the computer in 15 minutes) and finding the fleet, others (like me) need to be a little more careful with the micro jump field generator. But in the end we had fun and got a few sweet kills like this expensive Osprey Navy Issue we surprised and this Scythe Fleet Issue we managed to burn down before losing fleet cohesion and getting picked off.

Its a different fleet for sure but I'm confident we can help our new pilots get better and become the good PvPer's I know they can be.