So I'm still up in high sec doing the burn-out thing while my characters skill flip. But it was a Saturday night. And there was an EVE meet. So I went and after the usual someone pipes up, "hey I've reactivated - we should get together for a dessy roam. And it was agreed upon that the next day we would get together at 2:00pm local time and head out dessy in hand looking for a fight in low sec. So there were 5 of us with a boosing Loki run by an alt. I was in a close in gank Thrasher and the rest were using mid to long range Cormorants.
After the usual "wait for everyone to gather and get in an appropriate ship", we were off, dreams of mayhem in our hearts. After some inconclusive puttering around we eventually found some Jaguars patrolling the Mannar area. Turns out these jags were not afraid to engage. But were rather tricky to get any damage on. The engagement finally happened in the Raeghoscon system. And it was quite a swirling fight. It started off in Lemireve with us engaging the flashy pirate of the pair. What followed was a rather extended engagement where the jags would keep us at distance, the Jags and the Cormies would trade sniping shots and I kept trying to get a close warpin with the enemy trying to keep us at bay.
In the end one of the jag pilots made a serious mistake and stayed way too long in range of cartboard's Cormorant after breaking away from me and getting me into armor. I had managed to get a scram on him but he was still way too fast. I had assumed he was Microwarp Drive fit. So I was rather confused when he pulled away so easily (horrible ammo choice on my part was a LARGE part of my problem in this fight - lesson learned). We found out why after the fight.
But eventually the yellow Jag slipped up and we were able to finish him off (well Cartboard was, I was still trying in vain to get within range). Hail just does not have the range unless you can get within something like 2km. Which is rather easy against a cruiser - not so much against these jags. And
here is why. Yep that's right. A faction cruiser afterburner slapped on a frigate.
Much was explained. There was no real way we were going to get the remaining pilot to engage and with the kill taking so long, the odds of "friends" showing up was increasing. So we then repaired to Olide with the kill and no losses to show for our roam. Good long fight though 3km/s AB jags are rather tricky to fight. I'm going to assume that for the most part it was our lack of truly long range (at least on my part) that made it such a difficult fight. On the flip side, the cormorants tracking disruptor and my medium shield extender kept both Cartboard's cormorant and my Thrasher alive when we otherwise would have died.
Also interesting was the "let them chase us" tactics the jags used. Fighting outnumbered they were able to use the fact that since we outnumbered them we would be trying to take the fight to them to their advantage to reduce tracking issues for their artillery. It also explains the lack of disengagement even if there was a lot of run and chase.
Moral of the story - I had the wrong fit for this type of fight. Totally. But it's not like it would have been totally useless under different circumstances. I was much less vulnerable to larger ships on gates than the rest of my dessy pack mates, which meant I was designated heavy tackle for the roam. My ship was setup properly for that. And the rest of the dessies were setup for sniping so even if in this particular engagement I felt quite a bit like a 5th wheel for a good part of it, viewed from the point of view of the squadron - it was fine.
It does give me ideas for messing with one of my Loki's fits though...