Stages of War

Earlier this week, our two high sec wars ended. One expired normally after the first week; the other was retracted a few days after it renewed for week #2. Not because we did anything exceptional to make them run away, but more likely because their war with EM was offset a few days from all the secondary wars they had going with our allies. In that sense, it made good tactical sense to continue the war for a few days so we couldn’t act as neutral Logi support for our friends against them. These two wars kicked off an almost automated response from me, and I’m realizing now that there are some very specific things I have done in the past (and was planning to do again) in response to high sec wars. So, without giving away any trade secrets, let’s have a look at the 4 stages of high sec wardec response I personally employ. It’s entirely possible that most experienced pilots react like this, so I might be just be talking to myself, but I’m going to post it anyway.

Stage 1 – Initial Reaction

This stage is the one you hear about the most; How to react to a wardec. You sit down, log in, click on that flashy envelope and… “Crap, we’ve just been wardec’d.” The smart pilot sees this and immediately begins adjusting their plans and operations to ensure their security. You’re going to wrap up your mission running and park that faction-fit Battleship. You cancel or move up that planned freighter trip to Rens. Basically, you end up shutting down nearly all of your highsec carebear operations. Hopefully, your Corporation or Alliance has plans to fight back, in which case you might need to move some combat ships to a staging system, maybe restock you ammunition reserves. At the very least, you should be learning what you can about your new enemy. It doesn’t matter if that means you go dig up the information yourself, review any intel files your corp/alliance might keep, or use a site like EveWho(Note: I haven’t used EveWho personally, so I can’t offer any comments as to its quality). The important thing here is to have some idea of what you’re going to be facing. Once you’ve finished all this, it’s time to lean back and take a deep breath, because next it’s war!

Stage 2 – Engagement and Avoidance

OK, your war is “live”, time to start shooting people in the face! Your corporation is running fleets and is engaging the enemy. You’re being smart, traveling in groups and using proper scouting techniques. Oh look, the new guy just lost another Rupture ratting in a belt, FLEET UNDOCK, IT MUST BE AVENGED!!!! When the fleets are out hunting, you’re doing what you can to prepare yourself for the next fight. Maybe you need a replacement ship, so you’re moving carefully, or contracting with independent shippers to get that ship in to the warzone. The important bit here is, you’re not running around alone, thinking you’re invincible. If you’re not killing the enemy, your goal is to avoid the one-sided engagement. I believe the colloquial term is “gank”. Even when you move on to stage 3 and 4, Engagement and Avoidance will continue to be your Standard Operating Procedure until the war is completely over.

Stage 3 – ISK Replenishment

There are any number of ways that you can generate income without using your primary pilot. Maybe you have a stable of PI alts, maybe you’ve got a market whore, or maybe you just buy ETC and sell PLEX whenever you need ISK. But some of us still rely on our mains for a significant percentage of our ISK or, shock of shocks, only have one account/character. My preferred method for income generation during a war is to just move to low security space. I know what you’re thinking, “But Thansoli, lowsec is a dangerous, scary place!! There’s pirates wearing funny hats waiting on the other side of every gate to shoot me and take my cookies!!” Well, that’s not really true. The pirates are around, sure. But with a little prior planning, you can mitigate those risks and still make acceptable cash hiding out in lowsec. 

Personally, I have several lowsec hidey holes I can make use of (and have). One is a quiet corner that doesn’t see lots of traffic. It’s a constellation that’s good for exploration, the cash isn’t superb, but it keeps me in Exotic Dancers. Some nights I find combat sites, some nights I end up gas harvesting. (Yeah, gas harvesting.) One of my other options is to move out to a well-protected, friendly lowsec pocket where I can run level 4 missions almost as though I was in highsec. A move out to lowsec can also be refreshing, especially during a long war.

Stage 4 – Recovery

The war is ending, hooray!! There’s not really a whole lot to this stage. For some pilots it involves unplugging for a few days and getting some sun (always a good idea). Otherwise, it’s time to resume your normal operations and dust off that faction-fit Battleship. If you’ve lost ships during the war, it’s a good idea to get them replaced as soon as ISK allows and get them reset in your common staging system. Because you never know, the next war could be right around the corner!!

WAR!!

About a week ago, a COA anti-pirate fleet ran into (and killed) a Loki belonging to a GOD SQUAD director/CEO. How do I know he was a CEO? Because GOD SQUAD had filed a wardec with CONCORD before we could even get the killmail posted. Good Times..


The war progressed as most high security wars do. They ganked young pilots in Rens and industrialists not paying attention. Smack was talked in local and in a few Evemails, pretty standard stuff. About three days in to the war, apparent GOD SQUAD buddies The Devil's Warrior Alliance decided to join in on the war, making things down right interesting.


This brings us to Wednesday night, and another COA anti-pirate roam. The fleet was pretty well varied in ship composition, best described as "shield tanked with nano aspirations." The roam had been largely uneventful, although we did catch one GOD SQUAD Hurricane that blind jumped through a region gate in to our waiting fleet. Needless to say, he died. Shortly after his death, our scouts spotted a GOD SQUAD Proteus sitting on the Osoggur gate in Amamake. Is anyone else spotting the potential problem with this engagement yet? Osoggur is high security space, and the GOD SQUAD have a well earned reputation for using neutral logistics support. It should have stood to reason that this Proteus was a little bit of bait, and the rest of their "Ow, my face" fleet would likely be waiting on the other side of the gate.

The FC sent one of our Tempest's in to Amamake to engage the Proteus and get him to agress so the rest of the fleet could come screaming in to whore on to the killmail...I mean...to assist in the kill.... The point was called and the attack order was given. As soon as our fleet landed and engaged the Proteus... Oh look, local spike. Joy. To call the resulting battle one sided would be an understatement. I never got a clear count myself, but by all accounts the GOD SQUAD brought at least six Logistics cruisers and eight T3 cruisers to the party. When combined with a number of piloting failures by the members of our fleet (myself included) and the half dozen high damage Proteus', we died. Horrible, painful deaths. That pretty much eviscerated that particular fleet, the only action of note after the Amamake fight being when we blind jumped (WTF??) in to the highsec island of Anher, right in to a reformed GOD SQUAD fleet of battlecruisers. Somehow, miraculously, the one other remaining -EM- pilot in the fleet made it back to the gate in his Tempest, and I was easily able to burn back in my replacement Hurricane. After a few minutes bouncing safes in Hagilur, we broke out to highsec and the fleet stood down.

Fast forward to Saturday morning. Our war with the GOD SQUAD is set to end in about 5 hours, and -EM- leadership put out the call to both the Alliance and our allies to form up the mighty Alpha Maelstrom fleet! The plan was to park our fleet 50km off the Rens undock and camp GOD SQUAD in to their favorite station for a few hours before the official war ended. It seems our other Republic wartargets, The Devil's Warrior Alliance (Remember them?), wanted to come play!! We spent the next hour and a half bouncing around near Rens, trying to get an engagement on our terms. There was concern that the Devil's and GOD SQUAD would be teaming up, and might be trying to pincer our long range alpha fleet. Eventually the Devil's forced the issue, jumping their AHAC/Absolution/Guardian fleet in to ours in Sasta. We were in ideal position to pick apart their fleet, when they made a move that was, in my opinion, brilliant. They warped to a close, but off-grid, tactical safe, then immediately turned around and used their out of alliance scouts to warp in directly on top of our fleet. At that close range, they should have been able to tear our fleet apart, but the EXCELLENT work of our logistics pilots was able to keep everyone's shields repped up. Our Maelstroms managed to pull range and began to chew through their fleet, eliminating their in-alliance Guardian support (they had more out of alliance) before tearing in to the HACs and their Falcon support. By the time we were moving on to the Absolutions, Devil's made the wise decision to withdraw, and a lack of sufficient long point capability in our fleet allowed them to escape.

Once we were able to clear the field and sort through our combat records, the battle again looked pretty one-sided, but this time in OUR favor. Now, that battle report is admittedly not 100% accurate. -EM- also lost a Falcon, but that killmail does not appear to have been posted publicly and, in the interest of OpSec, I won't reveal that particular Falcon pilot's name here. Despite the Tempest loss earlier in the week, I'm definitely pleased with the overall result of the past week. I certainly learned some new things about Alpha Fleets, and I was painfully reminded how to properly fly a Nanopest.

I'm still pretty new at this whole blogging thing, and this is my first combat report. I'd love to hear any feedback you all might have in the comments section below.

For The Republic!