Warfare & Tactics

The following is a sketch of the battle from the CalMil perspective, focussing on territorial control. I'll be looking to work up a fuller report in collaboration with Veratrix in the coming days.

Things looked pretty bleak for BLOC's forward base in Kehjari on Friday afternoon. After some light plexing in the EU tz on Thursday, a concerted effort had been made by pilots from Spaceship Bebop to push the system up starting immediately after BLOC’s main US strength had logged off c. 0300 eve time. With little BLOC presence that day in AU tz the contested level nudged up to 50% shortly after downtime. Unfortunately for the defenders the entire Bloc FC cadre, across all timezones, and 80% of our officers and directors, were completely unavailable for the next 24 hours due to personal, family and work commitments. It was only the full and immediate deployment of FCs from the broader CalMil coalition, along with pilots from all coalition groups, that allowed a desperate battle to be fought to slow down the Gallente onslaught during these first, dark 24 hours and prevent the system being flipped on the first day.

As we built numbers and added FCs over Saturday, scraping some territorial control back in the AU tz, it started to look as if we might be able to blunt the momentum of the Gallente attack. Critical to that effort was the actions of the US timezone pilots, who fought outnumbered on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and were able to keep up their morale and fighting spirit even when called upon to sacrifice fleet after fleet against a dominant enemy force just to try to slow them down.

Those efforts were ultimately worth it. Gallente system control peaked in the US tz on Saturday at 87% and their ability to hold onto a 20 man fleet right up until down time, keeping the system roughly steady in early AU, was daunting. However, that was the high water mark for the enemy assault. The Gallente had pushed system control up to 78% by downtime the day before but had hung only 9% in the subsequent 24 hours. The battle entered its decisive phase on Sunday with Caldari forces pushing the system down throughout the EU afternoon and then continuing the momentum through EU prime, not just holding but winning in this timezone for the first time during the weekend. US tz showed the same pattern as previously, with huge Gallante numerical dominance (in the 3:2 to 2:1 range) but at the end of the US tz system control had been pushed up only as far as 85%. GalMil had failed to secure any progress over the previous day and going into the AU tz their exhaustion started to tell, with their numbers declining sharply from those fielded the day before.

By downtime the contested level was down to 75%, marking a 12% Gallente loss over the previous 24 hours and the CalMil late AU/early EU maintained complete dominance in the post-DT period, logging a 20 man fleet back into game within seconds of downtime finishing. As another 10% was taken off the system over the next three hours it became clear that the exhausted Gallente forces were spent, many of them having begun their plexing efforts 36 hours before their Caldari counterparts. The battlefield was conceded at c. 1700 eve time on Monday, with jubilant CalMil forces engaging in friendly local chats with an enemy who were battered and beaten but not broken.

Good fights were had by all and there are many stories to tell about the battle besides the territorial control tale sketched above. The concentrated intensity of the fighting was unsurpassed, with somewhere between 2500 and 3000 kills being wracked up over 3 days, peaking at over 1500 in a 24 hour period, making Kehjari not just the most violent system in the game but more violent than the whole of Fountain, the nullsec region with the most kills at the time.

If anyone has any interesting stories or anecdotes about the battle, please let me have them so I can work them in to a fuller battle report with a bit more colour.

lulz incursion.

gals didnt run outa steam was incursion that ****** our supply chain damn ccpzzzzzzzz y u troll us so hard

Eh well. We certainly did not constrain it to just just bebop. We got a lot of support from GMVA, but only a smattering of support from other groups, although fleets were open to all militia entities and ceo's were notified well in advance.

If you add up active pilots in last 7 days on zkill it's:

Galmil
BEBOP: 126
GMVA: 108
Total: 234

Calmil
BLOC: 108
Heiion: 50
Templis: 58
Total: 216

I would say we had maybe 60-70% of the Galmil number participate in kehjari at some point with an added 5-8 people from other groups join in over the course of it. Our biggest fleet number was 47 that I can remember. Just some fun stats to chew on.

... Incursion ...

Nah, actually this would have been in our favor in the long run with a much higher kill/loss ratio and considerably easier supply lines (take a look at the map).

I do not want to downtalk this victory for CalMil, but the only reason we did not take the system was a general lack of dedication and effort. No fingerpointing, some of our people did scarifice a lot of time/ money /sleep - there had been just not enough of them.

I personally think it is absolutely acceptable that one wants to have fun in a game without putting to much effort in, he should be just aware that usually effortless insta-fun and accomplishment of (longer-term) goals do not work together very well.

GF, CalMil - you have been definitely more dedicated and fully deserved this victory for this reason.

Gf cal mil another victory not at the hands of the incursion or defeat in combat but gal mils inability to focus on anything but small interesting fights and not long term operations or goals.

Wonder what would happen if you guys worked together on the offense as well as you do on defense and started snatching out of the way constellations.

Guess I will find out when blfox joins cal mil

Indeed. If anything, the manpower/holiday issue was strongly in GalMil's favour. From Thursday afternoon BLOC's FC and officer corp started signing out for scheduled RL commitments over Friday and the weekend. When I logged in after DT on Friday I knew that almost every FC in the alliance was on a break for at least another 24 hours. The three whose real life schedules I didn't know were all contacted over the next couple of hours and I found out that they all also had work or family commitments until Saturday afternoon. I had my own commitments and, although I could sneak into the game for an hour here or there, I couldn't get on comms without risking divorce.

I had to field promote some pilots so we would have at least some people online who had hangar access and when I logged off after a couple of hours of diplo work calling in our allies I was leaving the whole alliance in the hands of some slightly bewildered individuals who had just had a lot of responsibility thrust upon them unasked. Over the next 24 hours we sporadically managed to have a single officer or director online, with people nipping away from family functions or logging in at work, but circumstances didn't allow any of them to FC.

In addition, since there were no fleets scheduled for Friday, and not much at all planned for the weekend, our logged in numbers were much lower than normal on Friday (probably 30-40% down) and smaller than normal in some time-zones throughout the fight. Given that BLOC was the local alliance, and is also the biggest alliance in the militia, these facts conspired to give GalMil a massive bonus at the start of the campaign. When our guys started filtering back on Saturday afternoon the defence strengthened considerably but had we had these numbers, or some FCs or officers to rally the troops, on Friday GalMil would not have got anywhere near the contested level it achieved on the first day.

So I think, on balance, that the lack of pilots committed to the fight was a much bigger problem for us than for our opponents. There was a positive side, though, in that when our guys did come back on Saturday and Sunday (I didn't settle properly into comms myself until Sunday EU prime time) they were fresh whereas the Gal pilots who had been involved since the push began on Thursday night had already been at it for 36 hours.

BEEBOP/GMVA + friends: 203

Calmill: 275

Neutrals: 335

Total numbers that participated, Calmill is possible - 14 from that as I still have to sort those individuals between neutrals or Calmill.

10.2 bill lost for Galmill, 14.7 ish bill for Calmill (totals excluding pods.)

635 ships lost for Galmill, 1154 ships lost for Calmill.

Not reflected, total length of new neckbeard grown, was pretty humerous seeing 40 squids either side of DT, I never knew so many squids were australian!

Battle Report

That's the best one I can get but it is definitely missing a large number of kills (just count the pages for Kehjari on Zkill to see how many).

NUMBERS
GalMil: 194
CalMil: 212 (including the 14 man Pestilent gate camp which turned up for an hour but didn't get involved in the plexes)

LOSSES (based on the Ship Class summary page)
GalMil: 630 ships / 11.11 bil
CalMil: 1104 ships / 11.55 bil

NEUTS
251 pilots, 125 ships lost worth 5.29 bil

If this is representative then in terms of numbers and isk lost the fight was extremely finely balanced, albeit with a larger number of cheaper Caldari ships destroyed.


Edit:

Some more detailed AU tz figures for the 3 hours pre- and post-downtime:

Friday Pre-DT: 11 Gals, 5 Caldari
Friday Post-DT: no data / no Caldari activity

Saturday Pre-DT: 17 Gals, 27 Caldari
Saturday Post-DT: 23 Gals, 31 Caldari

Sunday Pre-DT: 29 Gals, 24 Caldari
Sunday Post-DT: 26 Gals, 34 Caldari

Monday Pre-DT: 14 Gals, 22 Caldari
Monday Post-DT: 24 Gals, 31 Caldari