War Decs n' Neuts

     Yes, that kind of war dec and no, not that kind of neut.

     Our "welcome to the alliance war" is not going well, IMO.  Quite likely in a lot of people's opinions too.  The corp that dec'd us has swollen in number to more than double what it originally was.  Lots of accounts coming out of the woodwork, quite likely, I think, by design.  They seem quite adept at their method of war which is station games and neutral reps.  The neutral reppers have all the time in the world to set up shop, target everyone they need to, get their cap chain(s) going, and then, when it looks like the DPS boat is starting to hurt a little, they nail it with about 100,000,000 HP of repping power and they're fresh as a daisy.  Try to drive off the neutral reppers after they go flashy, and more show up.  No doubt each member of their corp each has a logi ship in the neutral alt corp.  Even though the newly implemented feature, that disrupts neutral repping, kicks their reppers off after about 30 seconds, they have had the time to bring the target ship back to like-new.  At that point, the neutral-now flashy logi has the option of sticking around for a couple more reps, or docking up.  if the logi starts taking some major damage, they just dock up.

     Our response, in a number of variations, has been ineffective.  It's non-conventional fighting we're doing, so non-conventional fits are required.  They have exceedingly large amounts of RR - we have next to nothing.  They have concentrated DPS, we don't.  They have seen that we bring one or two ECM boats, so they have ECCM fitted theirs and added cap boosters.  We know - they've been scanned.  They bring an insanely tanked Scorpion with dual cap boosters, we have nothing even close.  We bring a rag-tag response to a well rehearsed, well coordinated combination of pure DPS and pure RR.  It can't be beat by what we're doing, and hasn't been beat by what we're doing.  Not even close.  Part of the problem, but not all of it, is the neutral repping exploit.

     Neutral repping should generate an aggression timer.  I can see the up-sides and down-sides of a 60 second timer, and in the bigger picture, if you don't have the DPS to bring down a BS or below ship in a minute, you've got bigger problems than just the timer length.  So, if the neutral repper gets a 60 sec timer like any other combat ship, I think that would go a long way to fixing things.  But there's more.  Part of the problem is that they have time to set everything up FIRST, before anyone gets to agress them.

     If there is some spontaneous or unanticipated aggression, then a 15 minute timer is sufficient for the neutral repper - like for can flipping.  If however, just like in a real war, if a neutral party aids either side of the war, they are now in the war.  If a neutral repper helps either side, they are now in the war for the duration of the war.  Definitely that specific character is now a real war target, but I haven't worked out all the permutations on whether it would/could/should be viable to include their corp as well.  If the corp was included, a simple fix would be for the player to put their toon in an NPC corp first.  But anyway, the neutral rep things blows.  I think we need a ton more DPS and TDs than we are fielding if we hope to deal with 5 to 8 Guardians.

     By the time this posts, hopefully, the war dec will have come and gone.  Word/rumour was that the corp was paid by a dude who lost a couple billion isk in a freighter because a few days earlier he had ganked a corp member of mine.  The corpy patiently waited to exercise his kill rights, and then, along came the fatty, so he popped it.  Less than happy, the dude apparently then hired this corp to war dec us.  Hopefully that is nothing more than a great story to tell our great great grand kids, and these dudes get tired of us throwing ships at them to 'splode, they let the war dec expire, no one pays for a renewal, and we get back to business.

The Point?  I guess, go big, or stay on the porch where the big dogs have a couple wheels up on the curb, that won't let their elevator go all the way to the top floor with a couple cards short of a full deck in it.  Savy?

War! . . . oh, and welcome to the alliance ;)

     Yeah, it's been a while.  From back to back war decs, to a nice long slow spell.  Maybe a month ago, we had a war dec from a tiny corp, but the alliance pretty much owned them and camped their ass into oblivion, so an agreement was made and the dec was dropped.  That was the OLD alliance.  The old alliance just wasn't working out, for a number of reasons.  They're definitely gonig a lot of places and killing a lot of players, but I don't think they have the active numbers, PVP or otherwise that I saw, to hold any particular area.  Nice guys though, and I hope we haven't left on bad terms.  I'd need to check on that I guess, but I'm really not too worried.

     So after a few days of alliancelessness, discussions started to commence with a new alliance, one that is hopefully more in line with our corp's timezones and our playing style.  I was forming up with an Incursion fleet a few days ago and talking to a couple dudes, and my CEO was talking to me on and off, and also talking to our new alliance's CEO, who also happened to be simultaneously, and at the same time, forming up with an Incursion fleet.  My CEO, being the clever shaved monkey that he are, put 2 and 5 together and asked if a certain person was in my fleet too, and he was!  turns out I was fleeted up with our new alliance CEO.  I tried to be on extra good behaviour to keep the stupid actions and questions on the down low, and I didn't not cause him or any other fleet members to get popped.  It was a good thing.

     Apparently, there are a fair number of alliance members that also run incursions, and as the CEO seems to be fairly savvy with incursions, I'll start seeing about how we can get some alliance and corp Incursion fleet action going.  Lots seem to be on in my play time too.  It'll be like a play date n' junk.  Awesome!  As I was doing ok on the isk front, due to the Incursions, I went to Jita and finalized the last few bits and pieces on my Bhaalgorn and logged off there for the night.  Why there?  Because the next day I'll be able to jump my arse in it and fly it off to Incursion glory!!  That's why!  Well, mostly, except for the war dec the next day . . .  No problem, I can get at least one day of Incursioning in, thought I, but life conspired against me with REAL STUFF to do!  More meh.  Well, by the time the war dec is done, I'll have Minmitar BS 4 and that will make the Sansha webbers fairly minty for range.  I guess the Bhaalgorn can sit for another week while its paint dries  :(

     So, about the war.  There are about 400 toons in the alliance.  How many are alts, I know not.  The war dec corp is small - 10 to 12 characters.  They war decced 2 other small corps, both under 10 members.  The corp tends to hang around trade hubs, ganking boats as they show up for trade.  According to the killmails, they do mostly small gang/solo pvp and they seem relatively competent at it.  The timings associated with their kill mails seem to mainly put them in a western North America time zone, at least according to Battleclinic.  400 vs 7?  First day/night of the dec, we camped their asses in Jita and they didn't come out.  I scooted off another few systems to their home and set a bunch of cardinal BMs around the 2 gates and their HQ.  I was hoping it was going to be a fast war, with maybe a mid-week cancellation.  Did I mention that I was hoping for an early war dec cancellation?  Yes?

     So, day two, not so good.  Turns out, how they work their magic is with a ton of neutral logis that like to duck in and out of station.  I don't know what the PVP history/character of the new alliance is like, but a bunch of boats were lost to the station bunnies.  Seems like they come out of Jita 4/4, sit there, wait to be engaged, then out pop all the neutral reppers and their boats then become pretty much invincible.  If anything untoward starts to happen to their logis, they dock up - NO aggression timer for neutral repping.  I heard this is one exploit that might be addressed with this new update coming.  Good.  If the odds don't look good for them when they undock, they'll likely dock up again without firing a shot.  Engaging them in their home system isn't really on the table when they play station games like that and there's no real reason to move away from Jita.  It has all the amenities they need, right there.  Only way to deal with them is to get them out in the open.  they seem pretty well schooled in the tactic and likely aren't dumb enough to get drawn out into the open where they will loose their advantage.  Trying to be sneaky and show up with big DPS boats isn't going to accomplish much either, I don't think.  It doesn't take a Sun Tzu War Academy graduate to realize that a bunch of BSs that show up at range, aren't there to take in the sights, especially if they are all red and flashy-like.  No, I think the best way to deal with them is make them move their rolling circus away from a station.  Get them at a gate, engage them, and hopefully get another bunch of boats on the other side in case the logis try to jump back if aggressed.

     The upside is, if all they are interested in is their station game, due to it's success, the chances are good that business can cautiously be carried out, almost like normal, if it is farther afield.  Oh yeah, there's also more than 20 members in their corp now, but a fair number might be alts.  So much for early cancellation . . .

The Point?  Location, location, location and it never hurts to plan for the long haul.