Dread Our Might

I want to let you all in on a bit of an ongoing project. I honestly hoped it would be further along by now, but we have had some setbacks. This should outline all of what is going on, and maybe we can work together to advance this agenda.

Goal: We want to use Dreads.
Why: We desire to grow to be able to handle some capital situations. In order to truly be successful in this theater, at least some capital capability must be demonstrable.
Additionally, we would like to expand not only our ability to knock down enemy battlements, but also tear down POCOs we that we can continue to enjoy our small POCO empire.

Problems: Dreads are expensive, cumbersome, and risky. People need to know how to fly them, and how to fly with them. They are too expensive to waste, and Sisi is no place to test environments determinant by enemy operations.

Solution: Use Taloses as the subcapital equivalent to Dreads. Move with Taloses with a support fleet, treating them like they are several billion isk Dreads. Conduct POCO bashes with corporation equipment to evaluate readiness to attempt with Dreads.

I purchased 7 new Taloses, using the old Cormanthyr fit, modified to have Higgs rigs, which should allow them to be fully aligned to an exit without moving away from the target. This ended up taking over a week longer than I expected, purchasing supplies from buy orders in Jita is quite time consuming for certain items. Building up capacity to build certain ships ourselves may be of value.

I decided to use the Taloses as corporation assets, assigning them out and checking them back in each fleet. I imagine that this is likely how our capital forces may go, with capitals in reserve to be handed out to pilots who are available at the right time. These Taloses are labeled "Door Knocker " 1-7

Now they are ready to go, however in order to hit the POCOs on Sunday, they have to be reinforced on Friday. This experiment should have at least 12 people (7 Taloses + 5 supporters) to really call it an exercise, and lately we have had some difficulty getting up those numbers.

Additionally heightened pirate presence in the form of FETID has made delicate operations such as this one difficult to execute. Increasing the need for higher numbers.

So there you have it, the project, the whys, and the challenges it is facing. We want to focus more on doing major operations on the weekends, but we need people who can commit to those times. This should be from a combination of recruitment (which we are doing) and communication with our forces to let people know there is a reason to be there (which is what this is).

In the meantime, other projects continue to move forward, and our consideration of capital escalation grows as our wallet does.