Stabs makes some very cogent points in his post about how Nullsec is on an inevitable trajectory of consolidation. One of the most important for this particular analysis, is point 5, one aspect of which is "It fails for many alliances because their highly egotistical leaders fall out with each other....Most of these alliances have very little concept of the new style of
diplomacy that CFC and HBC use - they're mired in early Eve thinking -
we are elite, we are unique, we may temporarily set someone blue but
ultimately everyone else is an enemy."
Today, with Retribution, we saw the introduction of the poor man's Guardian. The Augoror, today, is as vital to any armour fleet in k-space as the Guardian is to a T3 fleet in w-space. I know this sounds bullshit, but the price difference is what makes this work.
Today, Fweddit came up against Late Night Alliance. They had 46 ships in fleet; a rump of DPS Ruppies, Omens, Vexors, a few oddballs, and one Celestis, numbering about 20-24 cruisers (I didn't keep track). They had a lone Blackbird, about 8 destroyers, a few frigates. And 6 Augorors.
LNA / SWIFT and the elite of Minmatar fielded less than 24 ships (there were 26 in fleet including 2 booster alts, and some people were out of position and not present). This was 2 Guardians, and a backbone of the SFI Blob; majority Stabber Fleet, Omens, and a couple of AF's.
We got owned, hard.
The Fweddit guys perhaps read my previous posts, and fitted ECCMs on their Augorors; they tanked properly (except their tankless gank thrashers); they used their extra mids for EWAR (I had every single type of EWAR on me when I went down), and although their fleet discipline was as per usual, it didn't matter. We couldn't break the reps on a fucking Talwar - all because they deployed 6 Augorors.
Our 2 Guardians were raped, and then we were all raped. No two ways about it.
LNA, dare I say it, are shell shocked. They don't want to fight the Fweddit FC, Almity, because they can't match the numbers. They can't match the numbers because these are, dare I say it, elitist, stuck-up, arrogant bittervets who don't trust fellow Militia as far as they can throw them. Solutions to Fweddit's unbreakable hero RR T1 were discussed, including trying to co-opt the pubbies from Militia channel - though this was basically heresy to the LNA guys.
All props to them, they are awesome PVPers, but just like in nullsec, they really, really need to get with the program. Nullsec was won by TEST (aka Fweddit) and Goons by enlisting in bulk, flying cheap ships, making the game fun for the pubbies, training, mentoring, getting them sorted economically so they can affford their losses and enjoy the game play for what it is, not beat their heads against the wall uselessly trying to make ISK. This beats a -AAA-, Raiden., Black Legion or Morsus Mihi business model hands down because once you teach a scrub how to make enough ISK to fly a Drake, and tell him it doesn't matter, he will eventually pwn the shit out of an elitist Tengu fleet and inflict 100 times the ISK loss. Eventually, the smaller, elite can't afford to keep losing billions, and ship down and lose their edge - and then it's just numbers.
Todayy, I think, with the advent of T1 logi cruisers and frigates, we have seen a major threat to the stranglehold of the Elite in Minmatar militia. You're all nice guys, but if you don't bring in recruits, you're fucked. You'll lose the war to blobs of Mallers and Augorors, Merlins and Bursts and you can do shit all about it.
It sounds to me like you guys had some serious tactical problems regardless of any philosophical issues. I bet that if you guys had six guardians, that fight probably would've two packs of idiots ineffectually wailing on each other all night.
ReplyDeleteI think the buffs to E-war ships and the inevitable proliferation of logistics is going to make small-scale (i.e. not 200-man fleets) less about punching through logistics and more about prising it off the target. Of course, if you want to have any dps left over once you're done filling out the demand for logistics and E-war, you're going to need more people.
I absolutely agree there were tactical errors. For a start, no one is perfect. So you will never win them all, and never make perfect decisions - but ignoring 6 Augorors as the crux of the Fweddit blob was a bad decision. The decision should have been to not engage twice and die futilely. Twice.
DeleteAlso, if your primary doesn't die, swap and don't come back. Or go free fire - shit logi pilots will never save everyone.
I think we wouldn't have needed six guardians, probably just 4. But it was pretty much annoying that my Augoror didn't get reps in one instance because people ostrich-necked everything and didn't add it to watchlist.
Tactically, fighting at zero on a gate isn't essential to get tackle and force a fight - 30 or 50 off gives your long-point ships a chance to engage the edge of the sphere where people spawn without being at the core of a blob. That concentrated us in the centre of a fuckfest. Bad decision.
Once you've got tackle on even a handful of ships, the enemy FC either sacrifices them and gets everyone out, or commits. Which given Fweddit had 6 Augorors, they would.
Again, this was a decision made on an old assumption that LNA would prevail due to their better ships, better discipline, and skills. The reality has changed.