Thrashed and do you know Cooch?

The Bastards have been taking part in an official war now against a nominally, anti-pirate corporation and their alliance friends for over a month now. We actually declared war on two corporations and are planning on increasing the number of declarations to encompass more of their friends. War declarations do cost a lot of isk and we don't like to waste it. So for now, we avoided declaring war on their alliance lackeys.

Why do pirates need to declare a war and have it recognised by Concord? Well, it is to allow us the chance to shoot said war-target on gates and stations without the interference from the cops. Yes, a war declaration is known in some circles as a bribe.

We give donuts to the cops to look away as we fire on legally recognised enemies.

However, since the war targets hang around with friends, most who are not our war targets (though we try to kill them as well) this has presented some interesting challenges for us. We have plans to deal with this as well. Meanwhile, some of us are racing out and dealing death and destruction to the war targets.

Rather than regale you with the tales, let me refer you kind reader to a video that General Coochie has put together of his (usually) solo actions. You will not be disappointed.

Not wanting to miss out the fun, we decided on the night before the big Aurora systems upgrade - we would try our luck and bum rush into the system where we knew there would be war targets. A mixed fleet of 16 ships, split into three squads made ready. It was a motley crew of t1 frigates, destroyers and ECM cruiser hulls.

We wanted fun and had Hera and RoninData ahead of us. As they entered the constellation, Hera informed us excitedly, "Maelstrom-class battle ship on scan." RoninData in his cheetah was already in system and started seeding probes around the nearest celestial object where the Maelstrom was last seen.

Banter was fast and furious on the corporation ventrilo server and finally, after a five minutes, RoninData announced a hit and started warping there. Hera gleefully asked to go in for the tackle. The rest of the fleet started to move and blasted past the rather lacklustre gate camp manned by some confused war targets.

Killing the maelstrom was easy, as was his coercer and thorax escorts. Loot was nice and some enterprising pirates also salvaged the ship wreck.

The night continued with a fun chase of a jaguar next door and ending with the fleet parking itself on the undock point of the war targets home base. We melted a deimos and then bugged out to check our loot.

Alia and Shae have both recounted the night's actions wonderfully well and much better than what I can do.

So is this war declaration and war actually working? Well our goal is simply to kill them without concord interference. We have no desire for their area of space or the moons or anything. So let's examine our two opponents:

Gemeinschaft Interstellarer Soldner
Com-Star

Their friends include:

Cloud 7 Nebulosa alliance (made up of nine corporations)
Free Doom Fighters (13 man corp)

To name only two.

There is also a lot of unaligned, pilots that we have seen, flying with them. They're either in other corporations (our list is growing) or they're ex-members gone back to the starter corporations.

The above named corporations can field some impressive numbers and COM-S are good fighters. As a whole, they have killed more of our ships then we have of them. They can bring capital ships and everything else, so a straight up slug fest will end up with us being killed for a heavy loss. This is something we have learnt. Our bigger ship losses were before the war declaration earlier this year; before we even realised that GIS and friends were moving in and trying to (and succeeding) in setting up a base that sits on one of our roaming routes.

Once we started the war declaration a month ago, we tightened up on our operations and changed our tactics.

Our campaign now....

Not bad, we have ended up with 59 kills to our 17 losses since the war declaration with a nice isk efficiency. However, we do have some distance to go to clean up the overall total head-to-head losses versus GIS and friends. We made some knuckle-headed moves in the past and we have since learnt our lesson. Now we usually pick our fights and engage them 1 v 1 or 1 v 3 with us mainly flying our t1 frigate hulls. As you can see, our T1 ships are more than a match for their T2 hull. Once again, I refer you to the excellent video that Coochie has put together, and if you're a fan of the incursus, then you are in for a treat.

Examples:

• Priest in his incursus versus a stiletto.
• Coochie (the master of disaster) in his atron versus a crow.
• Rodney in his rifter versus an enemy raptor.
• Coochie (again) in his incursus versus a raptor.

Even with their falcon support and falcon alts. They do like their falcons and here's some evidence of this on their very own killboards: most used ship in combat? The Falcon.

Now to compare, one can check the GIS Campaign against us. Slightly different statistics, partly due to the differing isk values different killboards assign to ship kills and modules. Their KB shows 42 kills against us while sustaining only 25 losses. This discrepancy can be explained due to the different dates the campaigns began and the inclusion and exclusion of corporations. Our campaign statistics includes Com-S and their non-war declared friendly corporations and alliances but does not (yet) include any losses incurred by our sister corporation, The Hellcats while the GIS board includes The Hellcats but excludes Com-S and others. So all boards need to be referred to by all pilots to get a fuller, more accurate picture. There is no hint on either side of silly killboard manipulations.

Remember I said that these chaps can bring the numbers if you give them the chance? Check this bit out here.

33 v 5 - with Ms Pwnage being killed before the main fight at the station. To be fair, the remaining four losses were part of a bigger 7-8 VHI gang that got themselves pinned to the gate. Some of the VHI chaps managed to extract themselves and jump out. Still, I am impressed by their numbers that GIS and friends can put up.

Also, here's another... 37 v 5; not bad numbers!

So, if you give them a chance - they'll bring almost over whelming numbers, including falcons by the bucket load and avalanche you with the lot of them. It's their way of fighting so everyone best get used to it, there's no need to whine. For capsuleers New Eden is all about finding your own destiny and this is one viable method of fighting. Honourable one-versus-one duels do exist but this is a war. One just a need to adjust tactics to the right situation and success will follow.

We have renewed the war declaration, that should be enough doughnuts to keep the cops happy while we continue on our way.