An After Action Review, or AAR, is a review of the previous combat with the aim of understanding what happened and why, what objectives were achieved, what failures were experienced and examining lessons learned for next time. AAR's in TEST are required for all Scheduled Ops and all Reimbursable Ops.
An AAR thread should contain, at a minimum, the 5W's and H. These are:
This is very simple and can be accomplished in a single paragraph. Please also link any significant killmails and the battlereport from a killboard if it's available. See other AAR's and ask in the fleetcommand channel on Jabber if you have further questions.
AAR is actually a military term
Just to preface this: I don't think we've ever had any guidelines on writing AARs; Medea likes mine, and I'm certain of what they need to contain. Also noone seemed to want to get the ball rolling.
The role of the AAR is to give credit to the FC and everyone the FC feels needing crediting. Don't expect anyone who isn't on your fleets to defend you when they don't know if you fleets happen, fleets last a few hours and viewable by anyone in TEST, AARs are however visible for months. It to allows FCs to defend their decisions and themselves, to give our military directors an idea of the engagements what has taken place and to give our reimbursement directors the information they need to fairly reimburse the fleets. It also is a place for people to give their opinions, advice and criticism on the fleet. For the rest of us, it is to let us know that ops have really been happening, that we do fight and what is happening.
So at the very basics of your AAR - you need to include:
If you can take the time to look at your failings, or triumphs in the fleet, then it will only make you better next time when you have the decisions to make again.
Finally you need to clarify whether a op is reimbursable, and list all the alternate fittings you asked for.
Now that upvotes are “worth” something, I will personally upvote anyone who writes a good AAR for their ops and anyone who writes something which will useful to the FC or their supporting players.
The only time you don't need to write an AAR is if nothing happened and nothing was achieved. The rest of the time. Why not. There are a few people who are very bad at writing these. They are bad people.
ALL (yes all of them) AARs will now follow a new title format so that my OCD can rest easy knowing that you troglodytes aren't hamfisting the only way I can reliably keep track of everyone's activities and progress as an FC.
YYYY.MM.DD @ 0000: [TAG] OP TITLE
Let's break this down shall we? YYYY - the year in all four digit glory, such as 2012. MM - the month of the op expressed in two digits, such as 01 for January, 02 for February, etc. DD - the day of the op expressed in two digits
Notice the @ symbol. It's got a space on either side! Holy shit, yes it wants those spaces there. So oblige it and put them there!
0000 - the time in four digits. Use 24h format with 1pm being 1300 and 9am being 0900. Use EVE time (also known as UTC)
There's a colon at the end of the time, don't forget that.
Then just add the title along with the tag that you had used for the op post. If you didn't have an op post here's the list again:
STRATOP, ROAM, GATECAMP, HOMEDEF, SLOSHOP
Follow these simple, easy to follow (and slightly condescending) directions, and you too can not earn the ire of my OCD.