Finally!

The right time, place, situation all converged today for me to get out and show my FC chops to my, now not so, new alliance.

As I was sitting cloaked at an entry system waiting to scout my alt through, a 50+ red gang began roaming through our space. I kept my eye on intel and then in the FC channel the Alliance lead asked if anyone was available. No one responded, so I said fuck it, why not? I said I was there and he asked if I could form up a defense fleet. Of course I said I would, and burned straight back to home, dodging the enemy fleet in my Cheetah and gathering my own intel on them.

They were light, mostly t2 frigs with 4 guardians and some dictors and a couple command ships. I had already gotten the fleet formed and asked for Battleships, thinking they would be their usual sniper HAC gang. It was too late to change my mind, that would look indecisive. Fortunately, only a handful of us were able to even field a BS so our gang was good anyway. After an agonizingly long time, we got numbers I was comfortable with, about 28 people, while the enemy moved further into our space. We'd move with what we had and get ahead of them via jump bridges.

We moved out, the gang topped out at 36, and our enemy made our jobs easy, slipping into a single entry dead end constellation. We also got word another 40 man gang had formed up to fight them and then another gang of unknown size, so we had to use text comms to coordinate with the 3 FC's. Ok, the fight was going to be one sided, but nothing I could do about that.

We grouped up and held the single out gate for awhile before the main FC decided to move in and scare them up. Long story short, we ended up splitting our fleet up to two gates (stupid, I know, with that many fleets involved) and on the WRONG side of their escape route. Yeah, I know where this is going. The enemy fleet bolts for the out gate and we all jump, warp, and jump through after them. Fortunately the main FC was prepared and the enemy only found lots of bubbles. We hit the gate and jumped in.

I took a short time to take in the situation, had to swap overviews quickly to ensure blues were engaging, then ordered uncloak and began calling primaries. I wasn't going to use the main FC's primaries he was typing out, it would take too long. I had my fleet sort by name, and anyone with an A or B name was wiped out quickly. I ordered the fleet to sort by distance and began calling out more primaries.

I called a Damnation Secondary and hesitated a second, then said scratch that, new secondary, xyz in a wolf. Soon enough though, I was left with very few targets and the Damnation came up, I called for tackle on it but he got away by either jumping or warping, I didn't see. I have no idea how long the fight went, but I felt pretty good with my target calling, my decision making, and my general fleet movement.

While it was a decisive victory for us, and all of that due to our overwhelming numbers advantage, it did a lot for my confidence by giving me a larger list of targets than I was used to and earned me some respect among my alliance and some coalition members as well. It's just what I need to start taking some fleets out that they may not be used to.