Rifter Drifter

This is the second part of my analysis of the Catch – Providence war. In the first part I discussed the possible motivations for CVA/LFA’s attack and looked at the tactical mistakes they made. This chapter looks at the battle for D-GTMI and its consequences.

Whatever the reasons for the initial conflict, -A-’s counter-attack was swift and brutal. Unlike the Citadelian militia, the -A- war machine is a well drilled, experienced, and well equipped military juggernaut. Sixteen titans and over a dozen super carriers were deployed to D-GTMI along with the full might of -A- and their allies in the Ushra’Khan. At each stage of the siege the defending force was summarily brushed aside with brutal efficiency. The final showdown came on the evening of the 28th January. The full might of -A-’s forces along with many allies along for the ride gathered in D-GTMI at noon and began to lock down the system.

The defenders had not prepared their position in advance and had to jump in their capital fleet once the system population was already at 800. They warped from their deep safe to a POS but because of poor communication or poor discipline not all pilots had entered the correct password and several were unable to get to safety before the hostile fleet descended and killed them. With the stragglers down the POS was bubbled and the CVA capital fleet was trapped. To add insult to injury the attackers used their knowledge of the POS password to send in ships to bump out the hostiles. This was the final straw and the CVA capital fleet jumped out of the system.

At this point they should have given up the system as lost. Poor preparation had allowed -A- to get a numbers advantage and now the system was running in a high lag state. It had already been observed that jumping fleets into heavily populated systems can have devastating effects but that did not stop the CVA leadership from jumping in their conventional fleet and then cynoing in their capital fleet to attack the SBUs. As detailed in a pair of recent dev blogs (one two), the lag meant that they did not load the system before the request timed out and they were stuck in limbo with their ship in the new system but their sensors still registering their previous location. They had no chance to load grid and the entire fleet was slaughtered.

Once the battle had died down the Providence defenders began to claim about -A- “metagaming“. As far as they were concerned -A- had won the battle for D-GTMI by “cheating”. It wasn’t just -A- who had cheated them. The defeat was also CCP’s fault. This leads us to the question of where exactly the blame for the defeat should lie.

By the time of the D-GTMI fight it had been determined that under Dominion there was more lag than before the patch was applied. Assuming all of the protagonists are in the same system then the lag is spread evenly and everyone experiences it the same. If one party choses to jump into the other, though, they experience much higher lag than the defenders (again, this is discussed in a recent dev blog) as witnessed in Geminate and Fountain. By now several incidents had highlighted this problem and already there were tactics being developed to help mitigate it. CVA’s leadership should have been armed with this information and the call to jump back into D-GTMI and fight on a bubbled gate should never have been given.

Even before they left the system CVA had already made several critical mistakes. They had the defensive advantage and squandered it in two ways. First of all they should have had every single man and ship at their disposal already in D-GTMI. They didn’t have to be at POSes or in the station, in fact deep safe spots are even better. That way they could have logged in, loaded the system, and then warped to a rendezvous point. They could even have locked down the F9E-KX gate and made it hard for -A- reinforcements to make it into the system. The main way they failed to capitalise, though, was in their use of reinforcement timers. As an entity CVA has a pretty good coverage of both the EU and US timezones. -A- has no such luxury as we are mostly a European alliance with a large contingent of Russian members. The continuous late night battles in 49-U6U took their toll on our membership and CVA should have made us do the same. By alarm clocking us they would have reduced our numbers and deteriorated our morale. Letting us attack in our prime negated a large factor of CVA’s defensive advantage. Despite these failures to attempt to work around known problems Aralis still lays the blame firmly at CCP’s feet: “And I at least am furious with CCP for their stupid Dominion patch.”

What about the accusations of metagaming and cheating? These are based upon the fact that AAA have spies within the Providence alliances and were able to listen in to CVA’s voice communications. One of the results of this was that we acquired their POS password (for the record we had this for several days, they should have changed it regularly) which allowed us to bump their ships out of the POS when we had surrounded them. This is what caused them to jump out and abandon the system. (On a side note it was pointed out by an AAA FC that one option available to them would have been to call primaries and then drop the POS shield and catch the AAA fleet off guard.) The Providence residents historically have a very fast and loose attitude to intelligence. They are in the habit of using the local channel as an intelligence tool and often leak information such as POS locations and passwords through that – take my Legion kill for an example. Infiltrating them does not take a genius.

Regardless of debates about what constitutes metagaming the key point is that CVA viewed this as cheating and its something outside their rules of engagement. Now this I find to be very odd. Spying is a key part of sovereignty warfare in Eve, just as it is in the real world. I understand that CVA are roleplaying but lets take a look at a historical example, the First Crusade. This seems to me like a good place to draw a parallel seeing as it was a church-backed attempt to drive the heathens from the Holy Land. Very similar to Project Deliverance, I’m sure you’ll agree. Anyway, the key point here is that during the Crusades the church employed vast networks of spies to undermine its enemy and achieve its goals:

In 1095, Pope Urban II called for the first Crusade, a military campaign to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Lands from Muslim and Byzantine rule. The Church massed several large armies, and employed spies to report on defences surrounding Constantinople and Jerusalem. Special intelligence agents also infiltrated prisons to free captured crusaders, or sabotage rival palaces, mosques, and military defences. The Crusades continued for nearly four centuries, draining the military and intelligence resources of most of the European monarchs.

Surely an entity such as CVA would stop at nothing to destroy the heathens and liberate space in the name of their god? At the very least they should have some form of internal inquisition to find spies within their own ranks. This “we don’t use spies and if you do its cheating” attitude is not only impractical, its terrible role play. The ranks of the heathens should be teeming with agents doing the work of god.

So we can conclude that the reason that CVA lost the battle for D-GTMI and their capital fleet was due to their insularity. They have been isolated from the combat going on around the cluster and failed to heed the warnings that the wars in Geminate and Fountain had provided. The responsibility for their loss does not lie with -A- for cheating or CCP for the acknowledged faults in the Dominion patch. No, it lies squarely with their leadership and fleet commanders for failing to prepare properly before initiating a war of this scale. The fact that Aralis says “Dominion favours the attacker very heavily. And it was always obvious AAA planned to attack us. They are napped with all their other neighbours now and it seemed likely to head that way,” shows just how out of touch he is with the realities of modern sovereignty warfare. The fact that the attackers must win four battles in order to take a system and the defenders only one to take it coupled with how much control the defenders have over when the battle takes place puts the advantage firmly with the defenders.

What of the consequences of the battle? Well, once the fight had been won and the system claimed, -A- did not make any further advances. Instead they came to CVA with a cease fire and peace proposal. The offer was very simple. Formally acknowledge the border between Providence and Catch, promise no further incursions, and -A- would hand back D-GTMI. This was a truly historical offer. After taking just one system -A- leadership were ready to return it to CVA and withdraw from Providence provided that CVA ratified the border.

More amazing that the offer on the table was the fact that CVA refused it point blank. They once again cited that accepting such a treaty was inconsistent with their role play aims. Instead of accepting the armistice, rebuilding their fleet, learning their lessons, and plotting a new, better invasion, they decided to martyr their region to the wrath of -A- and U’K. When you have suffered such a catastrophic defeat there is no dishonour in accepting terms, especially such favourable terms as those offered here. Just because you are nodding and smiling on the outside there is no reason why you can’t be sharpening your knives on the inside. There is no role play justification, beyond martyrdom, that can justify this stupidity. Again citing the examples of the Crusades, the Third Crusade ended with a treaty between Richard I and Saladin because he knew that at the time there was no way that they could retake Jerusalem. The treaty was seen as the best way holding on to the gains that had been made, especially in light of the disastrous results of the Second Crusade that led directly to the fall of Jerusalem. It also provided a footing from which the Fourth Crusade could be launched. I’m not the only one seeing the parallels here, am I? Why can CVA not take such a decision?

The hand of peace was offered to CVA with a chance to regroup and learn their lessons. The hand was summarily rejected and the war continues…

Part three of this discussion will look at the events that followed CVA’s rejection of -A-’s peace offer.