My First Experience as Fleet Commander

Captain Sheridan of Babylon 5 FC'ing, like I did :)

When I signed in last night our CEO asked me to take our small fleet of four pilots out in cheap Atrons and "just see what happens, get some fights, get blown up." We had free ships to hand out to people so I was encouraged to take fights and get some FC experience.

My first opportunity to get some glory was *just* missed as we undocked alongside a war target Manticore (stealth bomber) and Imicus. Our small ships could have probably taken them on, since Manticores are often fit for Faction Warfare missions running, not PvP combat. But I was too slow in remembering what a Manticore was, so they got away.

The rest of the night, about 3 hours, was very smooth. Luckily for me our targets appeared one at a time and our pilots were very quick to pin down targets of opportunity. They reported their location and we'd all just warp there and kill the ship. The first to go was a neutral Merlin in plex, then an Incursus, Ishkur (plus pod), another Incursus and a Harpy. The last was particularly satisfying for me as we'd encountered this Harpy a couple of times hovering 80-100km off several gates. He was reported as being on short scan outside a medium plex and I had a quick idea to have our pilots warp to a random distance between 20km and 100km short of the medium plex. I figured there was a chance one of our pilots would land close enough to point him...and they did!

I mostly emulated what I'd seen other FCs do on a slow night. Put most of the fleet in one plex and one or two pilots in the other available plexes, and be ready to warp to them and assist. When no plexes were available we went to a neighbouring system and did the same thing there instead. We capped about a dozen of them and lost on average one ship in each encounter.

Thanks to Marcel for pushing me into the FC chair on a nice slow night and to the pilots who made my job very easy with their initiative and understanding.
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In other news I finally got my Epithal to the Customs Offices and liberated some of my valuable factory production. I got a shipload of Toxic Metals to Yvangier.  I'm also setting up what I hope will be a very profitable production run of an item that sells for far higher than its production cost.