Losing at Faction War

Black Shark Cult is constantly seeking new challenges so that we can test ourselves to the limits. We consistently bite off more than we can chew, and lose ships and objectives on a regular basis.

Are we losers?

Yes we are losers. However the list of areas that we lose at grows shorter each week.

Campaign to learn defensive faction war

Black Shark Cult just finished a 3-month campaign in defensive faction warfare. As an organisation and as individuals we had no experience in this area of the game. The majority of our pilots are fairly young. We have a few pilots with some experience in Faction War.

Black Shark Cult set a goal of seeing how long we could hold on to South Placid. As a young organisation with a focus on training pilots, we wanted to test ourselves.

We had purposely chosen South Placid as it was an area that was traditionally not held by the Caldari. This meant that we could measure all success and failure in terms of our ability to influence the part of the warzone. CalMil were not interested in this area, so any assistance they provided would be due to us motivating them to get involved in the area.

The stage is set

Our corp of just over 100 pilots against the entire Gallente Militia. The Gallente Militia did not have any bases in our area at the start of our deployment. Our goal was to take valuable assets from them and see what they would do to try and take them back. We knew that our 100 pilots were up against over 700 pilots in the main organised GalMil corporations. Our organisation was brand new to this type of defensive warfare. Our logistics ability consisted of 1 day alts flying T1 badger haulers. We were up against the strongest militia that Faction War had ever seen, Organisations with 3 years of experience controlling the warzone. Organisations who had multiple capital ships and jump freighters and huge savings accounts that had been filled by 3 years of owning the warzone. We were the solo frigate facing up against the cruiser fleet.

When choosing a frigate to fight a cruiser fleet your first priority is to make sure you can avoid being pinned down by the enemy. We knew that GalMil had a history of targeting CalMil staging systems. They recently caused one of the largest CalMil alliances (Amplified) to fail cascade by capturing it’s staging system. To avoid being pinned down like this Black Shark chose to stage out of highsec and non faction war lowsec, with a minimal number of ships in key faction war systems to allow a small quick response fleet.

Stage 1 — Frigate fights

At the start of our campaign, our pilots were flying t1 frigates such as the punisher and tristan. We had an average of 4 pilots online most days in US and EU timezones.

Within a week the Gallente corp Aideron Robotics deployed to Ostingele in the centre of South Placid. They had over 200 members and an average of 15 pilots each night in US Tz and 5 pilots in EU Tz. They were also flying T1 frigates, mostly Atrons and Tristans.

For two weeks we lost territory against Aideron. We would fight and usually kill at least as many as we lost despite being outnumbered at least 2 to 1 in the US Tz.

Stage 2 — Learning to fly nano gangs

At this point we had a few high skill small gang PvPers join Black Shark to help train our newbies. We started flying kiting ships and started to escalate to more expensive ships to counter the 2 to 1 numbers advantage.

For the next 2 weeks we dominated the area. Even when outnumbering us two to one Aideron were too afraid to attack us and would run and hide in station. Aideron then trialed using sniper cormorants to counter us. We countered these with DPS Mauluses.

Stage 3 — The Exequror blob

Aideron then escalated to flying 10 man Exequror fleets. We found it very difficult to defeat a blob of 10 logistics ships with 3 or 4 kiting cruisers. A lot of fun creative tactics were used but in general when Aideron had more than twice our numbers all in Exequrors they would usually beat us.

Stage 4 — Comets and snake pods

At this point more and more pilots from Mecha Enterprises began joining Aideron Fleets. These pilots had a higher skill level and quickly brought the the odds we were facing up to 3 to 1. Aideron and Mecha Enterprises together had 300 pilots vs our 100.

Our pilots rose to the challenge. We moved to regularly flying Ospreys Navy Issues which we could buy cheaply with Caldari LP. Our faction cruisers supporting a higher skill pilot in a kiting battleship allowed us to regularly defeat the exequror blobs in large complexes even when out numbered 15 to 5.

We moved to using sniper hookbills with kiting comets or slicers for tackle to contest novice plexes.

The Gallente started using 3 billion ISK high-grade Snake pods to get the extra speed required to catch our fast kiters. We lost expensive ships but GalMil also lost expensive pods.

Stage 5 — Diplomacy and perseverance

Seeing as we were outnumbered 3 to one at this point and were losing systems at about one a week. We asked for some allies to come help to even the odds. Our dedicated pilots put in a round the clock effort and brought Vey to 90% then some Caldari allies assisted for the final capture.

We then did the same for the Gallente staging system of Ostingele. The Gallente had allowed their staging system to get to 50% contested. Black Shark brought it up to 90% after a solid day of conflict then a big allied fleet came to help bash the hub.