Warfare & Tactics

There is nothing wrong with frayed knots. In fact, all the cool kids (like Crosi) have them.

There are many ways to be "better" than someone.

Better fits, better back up, better funding and high levels of expirence.

Also, you can only kill that which is put in front of you.. you're not party to the internal elements of Snuff.. but we take great care in trying not to blop.

Can we help it if people "pat" phone us? not really... we also have a VERY short blue list and very true "friends"

The fact is... and this is what makes us "better" is choice.. we can choose who we fly with, kick those that don't fly the right fits and sadly, I speak with a great deal of expirence of FW and FCing FW fleets, FW has none of those choices. Nor do you have the control of the SP levels or fits of the fleets you can muster.

Full props to SNUFF for the things you can pull off with your high end fleets - watching to dismantle Gewns when they tried not to suck at lowsec made me downright giddy with schadenfreude. And you're similarly correct in that having clear standards about fits, required implants, etc is part of what allows you to fly those high end fits and fleet comps. Finally, specializing in those kinds of fleet comps lets you get really, really good at them - and make no mistake, noone in GalMil thinks you're bad at what you do.

Where I object is that you seem to think that unless a corp/alliance has such rigid standards, we're not "better" at what we do. I further object to the idea that simply because we're in FW we have no quality control or standards that folks need to work towards. Finally, I strenuously object to the notion that the only valid content is the high end stuff and that nothing else matters.

The simple fact is that the mainline oldskool GalMil corps actually have very high standards for pilots to meet, and the nature of FW requires us to be competent at a very wide variety of fleet comps across the entire spectrum of ship sizes. Add in our efforts to push the high end of that range into T3s / Pirate or Faction BS / Capitals, and it becomes obvious that becoming proficient at every point in the "Derptrons to Dreadnaughts" continuum of conflict is no easy task at all.

But - and here's the interesting thing - because we have such a massive range of doctrines, our pilots will generally end up naturally filling similar roles across those doctrine spectrums. We further require pretty much everyone to fly logi, and guilt them into training the relevant skills to 5, so we're always able to fill those roles as needed. Lower SP pilots actually tend to be shunted into DPS boats rather than EWAR recently, since we've been relying on shinier boats for tackle / web / paint support and haven't had many pilots who can't fly our mainline DPS doctrines.

So, really, we're looking to get "better" by taking a group of pilots - from different corps and alliances, sure, but those have remained fairly stable entities over time - and pushing the higher end of our capabilities while retaining our ability to run lower end and solo / small gang comps as well as we ever have. That's a much different challenge from an individual and organizational perspective than just lopping off or excluding anyone who can't pursue the higher end of that scale in the same way.

To give some perspective, our veteran pilots are able to competently fly the following doctrine boats at a moment's notice, and switch between them multiple times per hour if needed:

- DERPTRONZ!!!
- Armor Brawling Tristans (neut and AC variants)
- Shield Kite Tristans (including max range variant)
- Breaching Kestrels
- Sniper Kestrels
- Beam Slicers
- Shield and armor logi frigates
- Shield and armor Maulus / Griffin / Crucifier plus long range fit Vigil
- Shield kite Kitsune / Keres / Hyena / Sentinel
- AB Thalia / Deacon plus Shield MWD Kirin
- Armor Brawl Algos / Dragoon
- Sniper Cormorant
- Attrition Catalyst
- Breacher Corax
- Kawkbag Thrasher
- AC MWD Brawl Thrasher
- MWD kite Talwar
- Shield Harpy / Enyo / Jag / Ishkur
- Shield Svipul
- Armor Hecate / Confessor
- Armor Vexor / Maller / Thorax, with Augoror / Exeq support
- Armor VNI / Armor Ishtar with T2 logi support
- Aug Navy Issue / Zealot / Sacrilige with Guardian / Oneiros support
- Shield Gilas / Ishtar / Cerberus with Basi / Scimi support
- Lach / Huginn / Rapier / Falcon / Rook
- BLASTER MEGAS
- Navy Megas
- TFIs (artillery and AC fits)
- Scorpion Navy Issue
- Cruise Phoons
- Beam / Pulse Abaddon
- Neut Armageddon
- Bhaalgorn
- Rail / Blaster Proteus
- Beam / Pulse Legion
- Tackle Loki / Proteus

Then you've got our Carrier alts, Dread alts, and FAX alts. We've not needed to integrate Command Dessies as a doctrine boat yet, but those will be coming along soon enough. As it is, maintaining competency across such a huge skillset isn't easy, but we've been doing it for a while and it's paying dividends.

Just don't call it easy mode or imply our pilots aren't "good enough" just because we're not elitist to the point of booting folks who don't meet SP thresholds or run Slave sets.

For the record

Loved this post and your arguement is awesome

also for the record

I never used the term "eve on easy mode"

I will also concede that you guys do need to have a much wilder range of doctrines. It's fair to say, Snuff will pick fights that suit our style of play and that nearly all of us have alts for caps.

also also for the record.

I used quote marks on the word better due to it being wholly subjective

It gets even more complex than that once you factor in corp level micro gangs and personal favorites outside alliance fleet comps, and each one has to work around FW plex restrictions.

Is there any way we can schedule a group counseling session with you?

Actually that's my alt on the same account as this one, I don't know why it posted to that one. -_-

I think we have remained a lot more civil then people have expected and hope it stays that way. While we have our disagreements that have caused months of passive aggressive bitterness followed by open violence I for one hope to leave it at that.

I hope it doesn't escalate to ihub bash interference or attacking each other's anchored infrastructure. I'm sure a lot of third parties would love that but in the end I really hope we can just bloody each other's nose for a week or two then move on.

Might be anti climactic, might be overly dramatic, but it's not like we had a good working relationship to start with and at least now we had a chance to vent some of the pent up feels openly and can move on after.

I believe the totals are 10 times larger than when Snuff dec'd Black Fox.