Warfare & Tactics

Fantastic read! What we need is more of this kind of historical write-up for the sake of posterity! I know many would love to read more about the early battles, statecraft, and spycraft at work in the early years of Eve!

Thanks again for a beautiful write-up!
--kat

+20, Great read! Here's another brief history of the Cal-Gal war written a 18 months ago that precedes Stalking Mantis' tale.

http://www.eve-search.com/thread/1282339-0/page/1#1

And somebody needs to do a writeup about the "Battle of Tama" in January 2011. This fight, FC'd by legendary QCAT chatgris, was a pivotal moment in FW history.

http://gallente.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=8460050

And somebody needs to do a writeup about the "Battle of Tama" in January 2011. This fight, FC'd by legendary QCAT chatgris, was a pivotal moment in FW history.

http://gallente.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=8460050

A battlereport of The Alamo in Tama - having fun when things become ******ed:

Last night we form up the usual late shift patrol. We quickly kill any target in Tama and head off on a roam. Coming up to Heydelies we banter in local about finding nothing to fight... turns out we would.

A few minutes later scouts report a 30 man fleet is heading right for us. We're in Abune and get stuck, but managed to find and fight our way out, and head back to Tama.

In the process we get new people into the fleet. Our numbers rise to 51 (which was the max in fleet during the whole fight). It's divided into two wings, with the primary wing sitting on the Kedama gate at optimal. Gallente jump in. We kill them and hold the field - a brief sense of victory, but spirits are high!

Some good pilots have to leave fleet for RL reasons as our numbers fall a little. Then the Gallente come back, and an epic fight of willpower & attrition begins.

They are using their now familiar kiting tactics against our Drake/Cane heavy gang. We have a mix of veteran and new players, but it doesn't hamper us in the start. The initial battle goes well, but things start to lag. We warp on top of them, they burn to 70k. Their Lachesis'es are key to holding onto a single friendly while their fleet pounds. We kill their long range tacklers, but they keep reshipping in new ones. Both sides reship and resupply several times. Ship types become more random, we become a militia:)

Then Pirates appear. They are in few numbers and get dispatched by whichever fleet is closest, though I see they get counted on our side in the eve-kill battlereport.

Lag starts to become hard for any player that still has brackets on. I'm unable to have anything showing except war targets. I ask for people to broadcast the close wrecks to get a fleet warp-in. It's during one of these that we notice that someone in a carrier has joined our fleet...

Gallente manage to burn out as we land over and over, by now we're starting to see which pilots to repeatedly kill, and which we're unable to unless we land on top of them. Excellent piloting on their part considering that fatigue must be setting in on all sides. As the second hour draws to a close we're starting to get continuously outmaneuvered, and we're now gone from winning to losing badly.

So we go back to a rallying point to build up numbers again. We won't give up on holding the field though. There's billions in loot on it. People not get forever to rally up. It becomes a battle of willpower. Calls go out for X'es on all channels, even general militia, we get some people, our fleet swells back to 46, sadly half never fight in any organized fashionSad

We continue fighting and we lose many ships, though we have many kills in this last period. It went full ******. All experienced pilots on fleet voice stare at the battlefield in disbelief, the newbies ask "this normal for you guys?".

In the end it becomes apparent we cannot hold the field by willpower alone, and have to call it quits.

The final battlefield had wrecks stretching 750km from the gate in one direction and 300km in the other. We killed 76 and lost 186 by the last BR.

We were soundly beaten in the end, but we also felt happy. All in fleet agreed it was more fun than we've had in months, and it was incredible learning experience in attrition battles in high-lag environments. Few of us had experience with 3 hours of continuous fighting. Now 40 more CalMil fighters have.

My hat is off to Chatgris for leading our enemies. Never seen anything like it. Kiting and maneuvering non-stop for 3 hours. I'm waiting with bated breath for that video. Also thanks to the Gallente militia members to gave us loot from the battlefield after the fight.

To our fleet members, thank you. It was a blast. When we do this again, we'll be the winning side:)

To our detractors. Keep theorycrafting, we'll be fighting! Though you might be right, since fools rush in where angels fear to tread, the experience our newer fleet members gained today will bear plenty of fruit for the Caldari Militia in the future.

I was repeatedly being called primary for about a third of the fight, and spend a lot of time warping between tacticals and off field with secondary taking over. Now I need to go run missions for 4-5 hours to replace the 3BS, 1 HAC, 1 Recon & 2 BC's I lost. Leading by example I guess, even in losses.

To all who partook on all sides: True Gladiators you are! Damn I love Faction War.