Lessons: Is There a Downside?

A lot of times, our fleets fit into the “kill all the things” category.  Sometimes we have a general idea where we’re going, but ultimately end up hitting targets of opportunity.

After our fun times in Venal (I kid; it was horribly boring structure shooting stuff) we moved back to Doril so we could fight the new H.E.R.O. coalition.  Thousands of new targets… of course we’ll be there.

The last time TEST deployed to a low-sec system, we war-decced them so we could shoot them without losing our sec status.  It was delightful fun.  We’d camp their station in Tornados and blap anything that undocked.  That month, I think I had 250 kills.

So, of course, we had to do it again.  And for good measure, we declared war on the entire coalition.

Last night, took out a fleet of Muninns and Huginns and camped them in Sendaya (which is, incidentally, a kick-out station.  All night, we saw pilots forgetting to stop their ship and find themselves well outside of docking range when their undock protection ended.

Pro-tip to HERO… you need a unified jabber system so you can rage-ping the entire coalition NOT to undock when your station is camped.  And, for God’s sake, we were about 30, you were 330 in system, and I saw at least sixty unique pilots before I stopped counting.  If you could stop your pilots from undocking, form a fleet, and undock all at once, you had the numbers to take us out.

I’ve written before about how I was teaching my wife to play Eve.  Well, she was beside me watching a rom-com while this fleet was camping Sendaya.  At least, she was watching the movie until she heard me cackle with disbelief.  Then she started watching my screen.  A moment later, she asked innocently, “Why do they keep undocking?”

Why indeed…

But after a while, we heard HERO had a fleet in Doril, our staging system, so we jumped back into Doril and warped to the Utopia gate to find Appetite 4 Destruction fighting a HERO fleet.  A4D had a good T2 comp and HERO had their typical T1 frigate and cruiser fleet.

By the time we came into the fight, these two groups were fully engaged.  We proceeded to kill all the things (our battle was 03:20 to 03:30).  At the time, we were feeling pretty good about this fight, given that we didn’t lose any ships during that engagement.

But after I logged off, I started to wonder whether we should have given HERO and A4D the chance to finish their battle before we jumped in.  After all, as the newcomers, we had a distinct tactical advantage; it wasn’t really fair.

After all, A4D is a smaller organization that couldn’t possibly post the numbers we had.  HERO consisted of T1 ships that didn’t really pose a threat to us.  Was it really a fair fight, or just a slaughter?  If the latter, that fight really shouldn’t be something we bragged about.

Is there any form of space honor we should have kept to?  I felt a little dirty about jumping into the fight and kicking them in the head.

But then I realized that the fight happened in our staging system.  A4D knew what they were getting into when they took the gate.  One of their pilots even saw our fleet jump into Sendaya an hour before.

And as for HERO… that coalition has, what, tens of thousands of members?  Razor is down here by ourselves, so for once we’re the underdog.  I’d argue that grants us the right to engage them any time we find them.  And if we engage two fleets at once, that only makes for better fights.

I wish HERO nothing but the best of luck.  A lot of the losses and mistakes they’re making are the result of growing pains.  Integrated comms and jabber, fleet discipline, and experience against tight fleet compositions will slowly improve their fleets.  I actually like their first choice for a deployment.  They aren’t risking anything, and can make all the mistakes they want.  The HERO that comes out of this deployment will be far better than the one that entered it.

That’s a very, very good thing for PvP in Eve.

And if I get a few hundred kills, I’m not seeing any downside.