The Dance

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.