Irreconcilable differences between the great alliance of Acquisition of Empire and the hitherto unknown corporate entity known as Pod Repo have built up over the seconds, minutes and hours until no other option is left but war!
Actually, no, it isn't that terrible and dramatic.
AOE is a fairly loose alliance. It has three corporations which sit in wormholes, and a bunch of guys who print ISK in Incursions. Compared to some Alliances I have been in, the number of people in Alliance channel and the total lack of Alliance channel chit-chat is actually quite remarkable.People go about their business and corporations do their things, and every so often someone sends out a mail inviting everyone to come blow up this or that thing, but otherwise it's no dictators and dickheads lording it over everyone and telling everyone how to shit without their pants on.
AOE's admins sent out a mail, as most do, when the notification of the wardec dropped. As usual, it was an Idiot's Guide To Wardecs So Long You Will Never Finish It. And if you do, you will not get the whole import of the wisdom buried within the Wall Of Text.
When I'd go on a recruitment bender, or certain people would join or leave with their 12 alts, we'd pop up to the fastest growing/shrinking list on EVE WHO. This would gain you attention, often a wardec because they figure either they can extract tears (your corp is failing, lets grief it into extinction) or your corp is full of nubs (lets farm easy kills).
Due to my winning personality and penchant for d-scanning up shield-less POSs in hisec and throwing down the gauntlet, when I ran Sudden Buggery we had a lot of wardecs. I mean, a LOT. We would often go back-to-back or three or four at a time versus 2 man alt corps to farm BPC's, BPO's or faction guns off idle POSs in hisec. Sometimes, the corp would be an alt corp of someone big, and we'd cop a counter-dec or the corp would insta-join an alliance and we would have surprise hundreds of people to shoot at.
Generally when we were targeted, I would send round the mail. it wasn't your typical mail as far as these things go. My patented war dec solution for when you didn't want to fight?
- Move to Lowsec
- Move to Solitude
- Set JC's in NPC null and spend a week ratting
- Button up inside your wormhole
- Set one JC top of the map, one JC bottom of the map let them camp you in station for 4 hours then JC 56 jumps away
They do not dec you to disband your corp or alliance at great cost and effort. Cost and effort is required to chase people who have a corporation +6 standing to Federal navy Academy and can spawn level 4s in Solitude hisec. They do not go 35 jumps to the arse end of Aridia to chase down a lone cloaky ratting Tengu. They never go through camped lowsec systems to chase down a corp no matter whether or not their locator agents show everyone in the corp is faffing about in Upt.
It is all well and good saying to your guys not to go about their business, to dock up and wait to be bailed out, to leave their shinies docked, etc etc. It doesn't address the objectives of griefer or small wardec corps, which is to be a pain in the arse and get kills by getting in the way of your day-to-day.
Taking your day-to-day out to Solitude and getting on with it invalidates their whole business model; they don't get kills, they don't get tears, they just get a boring and dangerous 35 jump one way trip to watch you dock up and jump clone out to Stain.
It is, frankly, the most hilarious way to wash off a dec.
Nice blog, you write very well and lay out points succinctly. The loosely affiliated corps are the best kind. I've never been happy in any corp or alliance that has a dick-down heirarchy, and I always leave within a month.
ReplyDeleteAlso, some things you should know:
I think you are confusing PR with Break-A-Wish and Whores in Space. When you fight PR, what you see is what you fight. For what it matters (it doesn't) both incidents of neutral logi were done after Retribution. The errant idea that neutral logi happens less since Retribution needs revisitied. Logi have high warp out without incident rates. Going suspect in high sec is a joke outside of a trade hub undock. Even a suspect miner off a busy gate is passed over by an overwhelming percent of pilots. When engagement comes, the aggressors are often in a pimped out T3 or bring a fleet consisting of Bhaalgorns, Vindicators, Logi, and a backup Falcon. I have witnessed these outcomes multiple times. The desire to bring in ridiculous force is inherent to most in EVE, and the same reason a high sec war dec group won't fly 30 jumps to get a fight- either they will be stiffed, or be forced to bring a fleet of sub-frigate quality ships. The enemy won't engage otherwise.
Distance nor w-space will determinedly save a corp or alliance from grief war. The purpose of a PR war, at least, has never been to cause the alliance to go into 'extinction' (though this is common byproduct), but to try to extract a large scale, enduring battle out of the opponent. That isn't done by running to the enemy's wormhole or 35 jumps across Empire (which, contrary to belief above, is absolutely not dangerous, even with 50 war decs outstanding). So most of the time, lacking a fleet fight, PR blaps whatever it finds in space. PR won't turn down a target just because it is defenseless. The main desire is that the ganking of ships will cause the enemy to grow a pair and form up a fleet. It does work on occasion.
(Most of) PR does not run around looking for tears, that just comes naturally when lumbering around in space dies. What PR looks for most is large fleet fights- good fights; ones that require teamwork, innovative fits, and necessitate using knowledge of EVE PVP to snatch a victory from far odds. Popping shiny stuff is always a bonus in EVE, but the excitement of the latter vanished for vet PVP'ers a long time ago.
A vast majority of the time, the war dec'd never put up a fight. PR has dec'd up to 30k pilots at one time- assuming that only 10% of those are active pilots, maybe 0.5% ever try to aggress at a given time. This includes big name null sec alliances. Worthy of note, null pilots are usually the worst PVP'ers PR encounters.
Unfortunately for the state of PVP in EVE, I am not using hyperbole. Pilots don't recognize the best PVP is cheap frigate and cruiser PVP- the kind that also happens to be most sustainable. Instead of looking for an engagement in which they may have a good fight at the expense of potentially losing (or worse, losing a ship at all!), instead spend several hours mustering up a force that would be sufficient to defeat a titan within 15 minutes (ok there's the hyperbole). This is a shame, as constant battles would very rapidly turn green pilots and FC's into veterans capable of fighting outnumbered. I feel if they knew that was possible, they might actually invest and undock a Rifter.
Lastly, a corp of eight who started wars with a dozen plus targets are probably not the kind of people who are disappointed by the 'washing' of a war dec. It is a tactic of 'dec all the things' and see what actually comes out to fight.
-Someone who may or may not be a war target
P.S. What do level 4 Federal Navy Academy agents or low sec have to do with being elusive? Also, changing up corpies' schedules to avoid gankage is a terrible strategy that will, if a war goes on long enough, cause them to log on infrequently.
Firstly, I work from my experience, and generally my experience of highsec wardecs is more along the lines of big children with credit cards deccing people for tears and using the pimp + neutral alts shit to sort out their deficiencies. eg; Pendulum of Dumb.
DeletePod Repo may be different, I certainly see a fairly coherent bunch of ships being flown on their killmails (eg, the Flythe gang taking out the Sleip). Generally I'd assume neutral logi, its just a habit, may not apply to everyone.
I think if you are from Pod Repo, you probably should send a mail or something to your targets outlining your objectives with the war. Most people will probably assume it's smacktalk and ignore it as psy-ops but some might like a heads-up you have easily satisfiable objectives such as goodfites.
I've been spying in fail alliances which wallow about for a month under a dec, losing members to the "no shinies!" rules and emails and leaving due to ISK losses who, finally, muster up a gang of 10 scrubs get blown up 2-3 times and the dec disappears. But there's no guarantee decs go away after a goodfite, so the quavering rabbits wish it to drop from boredom and not risk "encouraging them".
However, half the problem with getting decced by people looking for a good fight is that the assumption is, as you say, falcons + neutral RR + station camps + pimp. Plus, added to this, at least for this war vs Pod Repo which went nowhere, is a lot of speculation its about griefing.
Its hard to get a good war dec because the above scenarios are wargamed within minutes (based, usually, on hard experience) and no data comes out to contradict it, eg, a mail to everyone at the start of the dec outlining your demands, eg, "We want one good fight, then you go free." It's trawling versus a tag and release method of fishing, really.
Believe me, I tried to get people into a Moa + Osprey gang to go up against Pod Repo but there was always the disproportionality argument or the "it'll encourage them" and so on and so forth. Its frustrating.
That said, I also suggested to the guys that we should contact the other people at war, organise something (a tarp, perhaps a fleet) and get out there and do shit. Again, it seems, diplomacy is a skill which is lacking. Especially in w-space, because typically people are blue one day, red the next, and blue the day after.
As you say, going 35 jumps is safe. But it isn't exciting, especially if someone disappears up their own wormhole.
T1 frigs and cruisers next time, at the sun.