Bait plexing is best plexing!

Sometimes it's fun to read stuff like old after action reports to notice how you (hopefully!) evolved as a corp and team.

Not long after we taken over R-NAT and moved into the system, we discovered, sort of by accident, the joys of what we now simply call "bait-plexing".

Bait plexing is R-NATs team-version of the classical bait-drake "plexing" in some C2. It is simply us setting up a fleet that would be a bit extra hard to take if you wanted to gank it. It's pvp ships that are kiling sleepers in wait for something real to shoot at. Sometimes we have additional ships standing by, sometimes we just keep a bit extra watch. If anyone jumps a fleet like this they might kill us alright, but it will be a fight, not a gank, and that's often enough. No matter the outcome we get a fight, and that's the only thing that matters.

Since it was early decided that we would basically fit for pvp no matter what we was doing, we quickly ended up doing plexing in cheap drakes with points etc.. This is from a AAR posted after such a fleet got ganked. You can say this is the birth of our ideas of bait-plexing.

Its all about this gank/fight.

Last night we set out to clear some sleeper sites in our home, Natalie. We decided to go with the drakes and two basilisks this time.

Ashi, Deth, Qumar and Jimma ended up in drakes and Magger took one Basilisk. Qumar dual boxed the other Basilisk.

We warp to the first site, the sleepers melt (thank you magnetar!) and everything is fine. Then someone asks if we are scanning for new sigs... Since the corp-fit for the drake includes a probe launcher, I could pop a probe and do a quick scan of the system. And sure enough, there was a unknown sig!

I had hardly time to start pinning it down before the first ships, two canes, landed on us. Well, "there you go" I thought, knowing the feeling all to well when you are about to lose a lot of expensive ships... But this was different, this was not some 10 billion ISK fleet with faction gear coming out its ass. Now the stakes was much smaller, and we where actually pvp-fit.

A second after the canes had landed, a Scorpion, a Tengu and a Abaddon follows. I know that Qumar (which is the FC) are dual boxing, so I start calling targets.

-Scorp is primary! Get your drones on him before he jams you!

The scorpion melts quickly. In an attempt to get rid of some of their dps, I call the two Canes as soon as I see the Scorp go poof. They dies reasonably fast too, but now Magger is in trouble! They correctly realized that they could not stay in the site together with both us AND the sleepers (who have a real nack for scramming the one that wants to get out and switching to the one thats in structure) so they started with our logis, primary was Magger.

For one reason or another, Maggers Basilisk can't take the onslaught, so it goes pop. without a partner a Basilisk is just scrap-metal waiting to happen, so Qumar loses his basi shortly thereafter.

However, while the opposing fleet have been trying to kill our logis, we have made short work of them, killing their Scorp, the two canes and got halfway through the Tengu. After getting rid of our support, they turned the remaining guns on Jimmas Drake, and managed to kill it before we got both the Tengu and the Abaddon killed.

When their last ship, the Abaddon, vaporizes we have lost two logis and a drake... I order a warp out, but find myself in the focus of some sleeper-love. Some very unwanted sleeper love. They have me scrammed and I'm going into structure and pops. Drake number two lost.

All in all it was a good fight and we had fun. In fact this guys was game for some more and we kept trading some blows and ships with them after we killed their gank-fleet in the site. But I leave that for somebody else to tell about.

So, is there anything we can learn from this? Sure, here are just some;
I'm rusty about general, age-old SPLU wisdom in general, starting to plex with unknown sigs in system is asking for it... On the other hand provided it us with a awesome fight, so maybe is "blind plexing" what we always should do :)
dual boxing was necessary this time to get going at all, but I don't like it and it's not working in pvp. I thought I heard Qumar say something about not being 100% sure he had all reps on Magger when he died, and I'm not saying duel boxing was the cause for that, but it most likely had an impact.

I can only hope the Basilisks was moving... None of them had a AB, so they where not moving very fast. If they where orbiting close, that's another mistake. If you can keep them at range, you should do so. I can almost promise that things had been very different if the basilisks had been orbiting with AB at 30-40km range.

Missiles rock in a magnetar, you get all the dmg bonus, but don't have to worry about the tracking decrease.

Since this, we have refined both the Basilisk fit and the Drakes, so if this was to happen again I can almost guarantee a total victory for us. Especially since we started to understand how to fly them now.