Faction War and small scale fleet combat in general is a different
kind of PVP than most everything else in eve. You are not
fighting over an objective, you are fighting for the sake of
fighting. You build your fleet to counter an enemy fleet or pick
something you think your enemy can and will fight. Why?
Because you want to blow stuff up.
While we have had many good fights recently, some lost some
won, I have gotten a bee in my bonnet about some of my
enemies. Before I get into specifics let me walk you through
the making of a low sec small fleet engagement.
Normally your corporation/alliance/allies are hanging out talking
about the latest internet cat sensation while a few try hards are out
soloing. Maybe you have a person or two out scouting and they see
something worthy of your time to fleet up and go kill. At this point
you get some numbers, choose a ship size, frantically search
for that mod someone is missing that's never on market even though
someone always needs it, and then go looking for the fight.
They key thing here is bringing a fleet composition your opponent
will fight but still gives you a decent chance of winning; if you and
yours don't royally fuck something up. This is the dance.
If you over ship the enemy runs and you don't get a fight. You
go too small and you get welped. If you have a numbers
advantage you ship smaller than the enemy. If they have a
numbers advantage you can go a little bigger, but not too much
bigger. You have to look at things like logi, ewar,
range, and speed. You do some quick math in your head and
if you would fight you with what the enemy has you did it right.
If you wouldn’t fight you with what you have you failed and need to
start over.
So back to my bee and bonnet issue. Late Nite Alliance has
been getting active once again. Over the summer their numbers dropped
pretty drastically and we're no longer good for a fight. Since they
are getting back into form our elite scouts and spies have once again
been looking at them and seeing if getting a fight is possible.
Earlier in the week I took a corp fleet down to their home
system. We rolled mostly tech one frigs with a few faction in
the mix. Numbering around 15 strong I decided to set up in a
medium plex just in case a lot of them were afk. Doing so
allowed them to bring cruisers, this is like me letting the
Minmatar lead the waltz, or salsa, or whatever kind of
dance we had going.
Sure enough they bring cruisers. But not just cruisers,
cruisers with logi. I was about to have us warp out but
figured, why the hell not? They staggered into the plex,
that was their tactic to get us to stay, and the fight was on.
We ended up getting a jam on their dual eccm Augs and killed
both. We killed another cruiser and a few frigs and dessys
before we all were headed home in pods. The fight was fast hard
and fun. We lost but we killed more than we should have by any
means. Battle report
But why did the Minmatar go cruisers? They matched our
numbers. They had links in system and could reship in no time.
They had every single advantage in the fight but they still decided
to over ship. I barely took that fight and I only did so because we
all wanted a fight. Most nights we would have left local
trolling them about being scared of Punishers. I gave them the
benefit of the doubt and thought maybe they wanted a cruiser fight so
we reshipped and came back. Late Nite docked up and logged off.
Some people will say it was good tactics for the Minmatar to bring
what they did because I took the fight. Not so. They know
I'm a fairly conservative FC who rarely welps a fleet even if it is
just frigs. I like to take good fights. They want easy kills
and ganks.
Now I am told Late Nite will not fight our cruiser fleets because
they can't beat our doctrine. They don't want to ask people to have a
specific ship with a general fitting to use to fight us. If it
can't be beat with a mish mash of whatever they have in the hanger
they won't fight. How bloody stupid is that? They have
lived in the same system for years. They are rich and fat from
many tier 4 and 5 pushes yet they won't ask people to keep an armor
cruiser laying around or an Aug? They will tell you this is not
their fighting style. That they are lone wolf solo and small gang
elite. But they will sure as hell undock a fleet of faction
battleships to fight a neutral gang before you can count to three.
Its not that they can't do it. Its that they are scared to do
it.
This brings me to last night. We did the whole bit.
Bullshitting on comms, scouting around. Found some active
people to shoot at and picked a fleet comp. Twenty people in
eleven AF, four logi frigs, the rest t1 frigs. We
expected cruisers and we got them. Late Nite brought ten
cruisers, one HAC, and one Battle Cruiser. They also brought a
blackbird. We had both danced the dance and the fight was on.
I would have fought either fleet with what we had brought. But
Late Nite must be scared of dancing. They cannot waltz or salsa.
They can't even tap their feet to the rhythm of a beat. They
had to call in back up. Another 15 man fleet of Talwars and
other such things spoiled the dance. We left field soon after
once again narrowly loosing the isk war. Battle report
A Late Night member once blogged or said in local or whatever that
“this is not pick and choose PVP”. Meaning we cannot show up in
destroyers and expect them to fight us in destroyers every time. I
don't think anyone especially myself ever expects that. What I expect
is my opponent to dance the dance. We are not risking SOV worth
billions in ratting or renters fee, we are not fighting over some
super lucrative moon, we are where we are to pew. When your opponent
forgets that, when they become so bitter and wrapped up with winning
a fight at any cost that they would prefer to dock and play DOTA then
risk a loss, well it kind of spoils the fun for everyone.
