The Dreaded FAIL FLEET!

So it finally happened, like I knew it would. I lost my first Incursion battleship last night. All the tell tail signs where there staring me in the face however I chose to ignore them. This blog post will cover what to look out for so you don't fall into the same trap I did.

THE LOSS MAIL

Normally you don't post npc loss mails, however I wanted to have a reference for the blog and to show friends just what happened. eve-kill killboard link

I was lucky, most of my expensive faction mods where saved and the fleet all donated 5m to me to help with the cost of replacing my ship. It was an eye opener for me however, prior to this encounter I had taken for granted just how easy incursions where. Now I see that even though they are easy your life is in the hands of others and that increases the risk factor alot.

THE SIGNS! - what to look for

Fleet formation - Have they got the right setups, ship types and know what they are doing? I failed to notice my Maelstrom was the biggest DPS boat in fleet. We had an un-skilled Mach and some hurricanes... that should of been the first warning.

Knowledge - Knowing you need ore for the mining sites, knowing how to D-Scan a site prior to warping into countless sites either complete or being finished off by other fleets. I ignored this, however its a good indication that the fleets FC is either new or not good at it, either way its not worth the risk of your ship.

Logistics - The guy I usually fly with will not use out of alliance/corp logi and for good reason. It only takes a single bad logistics to causes the death of your entire fleet. In my scenario, I didn't hear them talk about watch lists and I believe the reason for my demise was they where not using the watch list to rep, relying instead on the broadcast system, this is a clear GTFO of fleet indication which I also ignored.

Tags Vs Broadcasting - Tags are nice, most decent fleets will use tags as it removes the split damage factor. If an FC cant/will not use tags it will make it alittle harder for the fleet. This is only a minor detail however.

Language - For the most part this isn't anything done wrong, however I "blame" the fact that the fleet I joined was a french speaking fleet and I'm English speaking with very little known french. The failing of the fleet where nothing to do with my lack of understanding of what was being said on comms but I should of left the fleet at form-up on hearing that it was a french fleet, I didn't because I didn't want to appear racist. DO NOT MAKE MY MISTAKE! if you cant understand fleet comms then that's not the fleet you should be in, if you do continue with the fleet don't use the excuses of the language barrier to forgive mistakes listed above.

ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH

So, with the survival of my faction mods and the donations from fleet members combined with the standard insurance cover I actually didn't lose too much isk. I've already purchases a new Maelstrom this time with no faction gear and I will see if that reduces my chances of joining fleets without a faction web. Instead I've opted for a 2x tracking computer setup as I believe it will allow me to put out more dps in fleets. I will update the blog with my results, until then,

This has been Skadi WinterHunt,

See ya in space o/