Warfare & Tactics

Tuesday, 23rd May 2012 was an historic day. It still IS an historic day.

No, not just because the BBQ chicken pizza I ate for dinner gave me gas and i am up with flatulent insomnia at 3:30 a.m. WST, nor the fact that this almost gassed my wife to death, which would have been a Bat Thing. No, none of this.

Today, Sudden Buggery became the first corp to send out a help request for alliees under the new, shiny, War Dec system with inferno. CCP_Punkturis, may her adventure sports be forever cooler than mine (consisting of dodging snakes and dehydration in the Australian desert), confirmed as such. So neener neener, butt monkeys.

Who are Element of Power RUS? Aside from being terribad PVPers Our Campaign So Far, we believe they are roleplayers of some degree. Their corporate articles are very official for such a disorganised corp. I have tried parlaying with Combatwulf, but whenever any of us log on, they all log off.

It is, therefore, a pity that they are the aggressors in this war. This means that when I tickybox the free ally requests that come in, they will find themselves drowning in a sea of BAMFs and idle thugs looking to expand their highsec station camping skills.

I demand tribute, being one fully fit Thundercat tengu, which I am sure they have, loaded with alcohol, tobacco, exotic dancers and tourists, to redact this war, as it is painfully boring.

You are quite wrong.

I have plotted the course of this war on a statistical thingy wotsit and by the end of week 5 THE ENTIRE OF EVE WILL BE INVOLVED IN THE WAR. THIS IS THE INFERNO.

It's possibly the most hilarious "war" I have been a part of. They're the aggressing party (now for a second week!) and other than lose a 350mil active tanked Drake to our own nubs they've barely undocked.

Also, they will tell you about their need to "return the purple Axe"

When questioned how they feel about losing the war, they will tell you "You are thinking too small, we are not losing on an eternal timescale"

**** it real, yo.

This war, grandfathered as it was from the archaïque système de déclaration de guerre, is a pretty good illustration of the opening few days of the brand new dec system.

Corp A decs Corp B.
Corp B, whether for safety, lols, ennui or apathy puts an adert up for allies.
Moment pass.
Ally requess flood in (we are up to 15 requests now). These are a mixture of;

• 1 to 10 man corps joining the effort for free, intending to camp Jita 4-4 in a Tornado to pop unsuspecting WT's or just because
• 1 man corps spamming you with a help request with a 5 billion ISK fee, hoping to strike it rich via a "scam" (could work, very enterprising of you)
• 1-10 man PVP corps which have no experience at PVP and probably figure, what could go wrong? Well, probably lots, including "our Russian foes are crazy as a mad woman on LSD" and the war could go on for months
• Random alliances of "pro mercs" offering to "deal with your problem" for a modest 1.5Bn ISK. I'm can assure you, if our foes were rational human beings in search of a fight, not only would your offer be tempting but we'd have tried dealing with it ourselves
• Actual (semi)decent PVP alliances looking to amass a serious to-do list of wars, who charge relatively little (like, 50M ISK for PIRAT Alliance), which seems like good value for money

The upshot is what was a hilarious act of war inspired by, I presume, adult-onset fetal alcohol syndrome on behalf of EP-RUS that used to be 14 vs 50, is now 14 vs 150. What initially cost 2M ISK now costs about 150M ISK per week to pursue - and as soon as we join our alliance, will probably cost in the vicinity of 250M ISK.

So the lessons are becoming fairly clear; when you enter war these days you require a vague comprehension of your enemy's friends and their capabilities and numbers. You require a concrete goal you wish to achieve as griefing might backfire on you as low-cost allies enter the war and will pump the cost up significantly. You need a budget - it could go on for a considerable length of time. You also need an exit strategy, and be prepared to dump a gift Tengu at your foes to settle the war amicably.

As for whether it's really much different? No. Not really. We're doing our thing, they don't sign on, stations get camped and no one undocks. I don't know what all the histrionics was about.