Hokkaido Run Event - after-action report.

[aerelm]

Man of the match: DSE)Tech-2.
A Repair Ship is absolutely invaluable for extended combat. He helped a Mammoth escape combined fire from two bombers and a vhf, while under attack from those ships too, and even managed to find time for idle chatter while he thrustered to safety. Eventually the oponents just broke off.

Sorry for being a buzzkill, but the repair ship pilot didn't know what he was doing, at all. The only reason he survived was because of poor group work on unlawful side (i.e. Me shouting in group for 5 whole minutes, asking for one single bomber to come and finish the RS off, but getting no reply because our bombers were busy dueling other side's fighter escorts while 2 Katanas had to shoot down a repair ship and a Mammoth... Or when the RS jumps to NT, and after a minute or two I notice I'm the only one pursuing, because rest had decided to jump the lone USI escort back in Hokkaido), so really no need to try and make a hero out of him, cause it looks kinda silly. Also, it wasn't "two bombers and a vhf", it was only 2 Katanas.

In terms of roleplay, the corporate side won. We successfully delivered our cargo to its destination with only two transports lost.

Wasn't that already set before the event? I thought the corp side was meant to win, when they had 30 free slots for their transports/escorts -and- a repair ship, while unlawful side had only 8 total. So I don't really see what's there to debate, it was a "meant to win" event from the very beginning, 30v8, no?

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That aside, I've already passed this to ]bd[ leadership, but gonna post it here as well just for the record:

To me, this event was nothing more than a silly mess that felt more like a waste of time than anything else. Because the unlawful side wasn't organized at all. I warned the group of 3 things before the event started, and I told them not following even one of these might mess the whole event up. No one took me seriously, either because people were too busy pvping each other, or because what I was saying got lost in "))))" spam in group chat.

1. I told the whole group multiple times to move away from Sapporo (KSP station near NT gate) and try to catch the convoy near the sun instead. No one listened, and in the end, the whole group came in and engaged when the convoy was right next to Sapporo... Resulting in half the transports docking before we were even in weap range!
   
2. Before we started, I told the the supposedly leaders of the group to assign one person to call target for fighters, and one person to call target for bombers. When the fight started, most of the targets were called by something along the line with "shoot transport!", like I have sixth sense and can tell which of the 15 transports they mean! So, the fight turned into a couple of smaller fights, where each of us picked on a random target pointlessly while many of the transports escaped.
   
3. Just like the other two points, before we had started I pointed out that the key move of this event should be taking out the repair ship as soon as possible. Insta-ing a RS is not really that hard, it just needs good teamwork and timing between 2 bombers... And when the RS finally arrived alongside a Mammoth, all our bombers were shooting random fighters and refused to break off and actually come and shoot what they're supposed to shoot. At one point, it got so silly that it wasn't even funny. Whoever flying the RS wanted to jump back to NT, but NPCs were blocking the gate, so he was literally sitting in front of the gate for 5 whole minutes, while bashing regen keys. Why didn't he die? Cause only 2 Katanas were shooting him, bombers were too busy being l33t and trying to SN fighters instead.
   

Another issue was the spam in group chat, which made it nearly unreadable, and I got accused of "raging cause people didn't play my way" in the end, and getting the usual "Oh c'mon it's just a game" B.S. when I pointed that out somewhere in middle of German, ))))) and badgerbadgerbadger spam. Sure it's a game, but if I want to play this game, I want to play it right. Not flying around pointlessly like a retard and wasting time doing nothing while I could have done something constructive and fun on another char during the time I wasted on this event (Roughly 2.5 hours). My definition of "playing right" is not playing my way. My definition of "playing right" is getting whatever needs to be done, done. A 30v8 was going to be a huge mess no matter how well-organized it was, that was unavoidable, but the way it turned out, was stupid at best. So I don't say "I didn't enjoy it" because people "didn't play my way" - what I was accused of -, I didn't enjoy it because people technically did nothing. This is not what I expect from an event. There are different ways of getting something done right, which may or may not be the way I propose for each event or group activity, I don't care if people "play my way" or not, but I do care about people getting things done right, not jumping on a single fighter with 3 bombers, while a transport is running from 2 fighters not 5k away.

Hopefully, there will be a similar event sometime in near future where both sides try to run it better-organized and turn it into what an event should look like, not a random encounter between 2 groups.

In the end, I didn't take a lot of screens, but I think the very few I took are worth posting.