And just as quickly as it arrived, the war our Corporation was embroiled in in EVE Online, has gone away again. Somewhere under two weeks, and, as I speculated previously, our aggressor has decided 'we're not worth it', and issued a retraction, effectively cancelling the state of war between us. This happened in a largely unsolicited manner, without any wheedling or diplomacy on our part, and is probably about as near to a victory condition as one can expect in EVE.
To win any more convincingly, in an environment where it's not possible to actually die in any meaningful sense, we would have had to have hit the enemy corp hard enough and often enough to force it's members to all leave and seek employment in a different corp, and most likely undeclareable NPC one, effectively causing the enemy corp itself to die, through lack of membership. We're not quite that good, and merely driving them off is good enough for me!
They continue to assault the other two corps we were temporarily allied with however, but without us declaring war on them, and going on the counter-offensive, we are now unable to assist our erstwhile allies.I feel a bit bad leaving the other two in the lurch like this, but these decisions happen at a Higher Level than me - I'm just a trooper. Still, from what I saw, they aren't pushovers themselves, and the fighting is likely to continue for some time, the aggressor corp keeping them on as some kind of training exercise, while they use their now freed-up war-slot to have a go at extorting funds from some other poor saps, probably to replace the ships we'd cost them over the weeks.
(A corp may only declare war on three other corps at a time you see, but there is no limit to how many may declare war on it at once. War declarations are important, because they suddenly remove all the police protection and 'guard' mechanics in Empire space, for combats between those two corps, making nowhere safe, and providing a non-consentual way to attack people you don't like.)
The last few weeks have been undeniably exciting, and I'm actually missing it already, which I never thought I'd say. After the first large fleet engagement, which cost the enemy a large amount of ISK in destroyed Battleships and Tech 2 Equipment, they quickly resorted to skirmish warfare and guerilla tactics, using the very small, very agile Interceptor class of ship. Not cheap for what they are, but still much more replaceable than a Battleship fleet per night, which we'd already proven we could eliminate.
Each night our patrols would stage up and go hunting for them, most of us seemingly quite relieved for something different to do for a change, rather than mine or mission. A large combined network of Location Agents helped enormously, allowing us to keep track of the enemies movements on a alarmingly regular basis, and find them quite quickly each trip. Actually bringing them down proved to be much harder, as the Interceptor is a very fast and agile class of ship, and flown by someone who knows what they're doing, it's almost impossible to tackle and destroy one that does not want to be engaged.
This led to a number of nights where we'd be run around in circles by lone enemies in these tiny ships, and they even managed to pick off the occasional straggler of ours in Tech 1 Frigates. Impressive flying all in all, and somewhat inspirational - I'm training up to fly a Taranis now as a result of seeing how good they are at basically toying with a much bigger enemy fleet. By the time most of us had locked them as a target, they'd swooshed well out of range of any of our weapons - could almost hear them blowing raspberries at us.
Mind you, aside from the odd T1 Frigate, there was not a lot of offensive these small ships could mount - coming near enough to any of our main ships to do damage would swiftly invite Webber/Nosferatu/Drone death. And as the nightly patrols progressed, we learned and adapted and started going out in long-ranged sniping ships with massively boosted target locking and turret precision, and the enemy Interceptors started taking lucky long hits, and then more reliable pounding, making further taunting unwise.
I can't speak for the 0.0 Game, but EVE PvP in Empire does seem quite balanced, in a paper-scissors-stone way, and it seems that as long as you're adaptable enough, there are ways to deal with most kinds of threat. Shortly after it became apparent that not even Microwarp Drive Interceptors were a guarantee of safety from our sorties, the war came to an end, with our aggressors evidently deciding that we were too much trouble for too little gain. They were probably right, as while our PvP prowess wasn't overwhelming in itself, pretty much our entire corp mobilised, leaving almost no targets of opportunity left out mining or hauling, and presumably, it's only by threatening these types of defenceless targets, that extortion becomes possible. They tried on us, but none of us cared, or had much to lose by fighting.
In terms of post mortems, well, things that went well for us include hitting them hard early on. This large-scale loss of enemy ships did wonders for morale, removing the illusion that the enemy might be invincible. We then kept the pressure on, fielding a fair number of ships on active patrol most nights, and although subsequent kills themselves were minor and infrequent, simply not letting them rest or regroup helped keep them on the back foot, and in small ships they could afford to lose a few of. A large pool of location agents helped a great deal too - even the folks not engaged on active duty could help here, and for most of the war, we knew where most of their pilots were, for most of the time. This extends beyond the game into the 'Meta' too, and some of the Google-Fu employed in creating complete dossiers of all the enemy pilots, including ship perferences, M.Os, and the rest, was quite frightening and why you'll never see any character names or corp names on this blog!
One of the best things that went right was opening lines of communication with the other corps under attack by our aggressor and presenting a united front, pooling resources and the like. It was strange that the enemy had three wars going at all to be honest - even the Nazis only tried to attack two and look where that got them! I can only imagine that they thought we'd pay the demands without any trouble - a bit of extra quick cash to help fund the other two wars. As any commited Priate will tell you, it's hard work living off PvP alone. Player ships may drop valuable loot, but a lot of it gets destroyed in the explosion, making it an inconsistent income at best, leaving ransom/extortion as the other earner, in a game where many players would self-destruct, rather than give the Bad Man the satisfaction. This leaves Legitimate Income as the alternative, missions, mining, etc, which is a bit of a failure if you're supposed to be a dedicated pirate or empire extortion corp.
Our corp profile does come across a bit as a soft target - words like 'small', 'friendly', 'casual', 'mining' and 'production' feature. I guess the implication is that those things are mutually exclusive with words like 'veteran', '40 million skill points', 'money to burn', 'ex 0.0 players' and a 'a little bit bored, frankly'.
Things that could have gone better include a distinct lack of micro-level tactics. For much of the war we were just zerging about, and letting them lead us around, particularly in their Interceptors, and a couple of needless deaths could have been avoided by tighter focus and stricter chains of command, and the patrols were quite democratic in nature, with a lot of people asking what the plan was, and very few people telling us. A marked reluctance to commit Batleships or Tech 2 ships of our own didn't help matters, leaving us much more reliant on numerical superiority than our collected SP would otherwise have dictated, had we been willing to put up the cash to unlock our full potentials. Don't fly what you can't afford to lose is all very well, but if fighting for The Corp, as we were, it should be don't fly what The Corp can't afford to lose. The Corp was significantly richer than me, and I'd have been much more willing to take risks in expensive ships (i.e. The Powerful Ones that are more likely to win a 1 on 1), if I could have been confident that I wouldn't have to personally replace them afterwards.
Travel times from where our main bases were, to where the other corp's main bases were, and where most of the fighting took place, could have been reduced with some form of minor secondment or garrisoning. Also, plain lack of PvP experience from a lot of the members of our three defending corps did slow us down somewhat, although that, by implication, is a problem that will solve itself.
Still, lessons learned and all that. I was mostly out there in the same Battlecruiser I'd tried to get blown up in 0.0 some weeks back, providing some bulk backbone to the patrol groups, and latterly dedicating my systems to remotely boosting the other ships abilities to hit Interceptors. It's still got it's Platinum insurance, and I STILL haven't got it destroyed yet! Personal war tally; three assists (during the big battle at the start), no killing blows, no deaths. I'm pleased with it though.
And now, all of a sudden, it's peacetime, and I'm a bit at a loss really. I can't remember what I was doing before the war. Agent 4 Missions I think, and some listless Exploration. War does change you though and the Universe seems a little flat now. Our corp seems to have all dispersed back to their solitary pursuits - missions and mining, and I miss the camaraderie of being part of a combat unit. Still, I expect another war will be along soon enough, and next time they might be a much better organised and equipped force.
That's not to say I could do the war thing 24/7 mind you - ships cost money and it's good to have a break to build up some funds, mainly by missioning without having to look over your shoulder the whole time, which is nice. A lot of it, just as in pretty much all the MMO PvP I've ever played, seems to be about numbers though. We'll see how enthusiastic I am with numbers of more than 2 to 1 against...
So after a big musical number involving Ewoks and medals, etc, it's back to Civvy Street for me, and just to illustrate the dangers of complacency, and because I like to supersize my Irony, during the first peacetime NPC mission I went out on (Enemies Abound 5/5 - Level 4), I got my Tech 2 Fit Missioning Dominix - the one I'd been keeping safely hidden all war - blown to bits, sans insurance. More on that later, damnit...