90% of the reason that STIM's RP died is because we let it die once we realized that there was no RP entity in EVE that didn't outnumber us 10:1 (ergo, CVA) that would fight us on anything remotely close to even footing, and I've been rather :sadpanda: about it since.
I think thats a pretty wild statement really. I mean who really does want to fight on an "even footing" anyway bach? Not you, not me, not anyone else really. Stimulus/veto in your own way stack the deck as significantly as anybody else does. You put together effective roaming fleets and you shoot what you think you can kill while avoiding things you can't (like everyone else really). Sure you have good pilots, you've been recruiting the cream of roving pvp from Scrapheap for the last few years so you ought to. But when the chips are down you still want to win and wanting to win precludes fighting outnumbered for most people (including stim). When we fought last year summer you certainly never failed to outnumber SF when you could (often by crazy proportions) but it surprised nobody because thats war in space. You ganked us, we ganked you. War never changes etc. In fact the only occasions I remember Stim fighting outnumbered at all in recent memory was when your pilots made up the minority of veto led cane gangs that happened into our ham drakes in placid etc. (and even then it was pretty damned equal giving away a ship or two at most).
Still, I do think thats slightly aside from the point. SF (with stim inside) did have the alexander wept because there were no more worlds to conquer moment - prior to the 10 thoraxes against bob thing (realistically the only target left for us was CVA in providence) but while SF (without stim) went on to try that dance twice over (even building an outpost there only to lose it to ze germans) Stim didn't and was content to roam syndicate at home on your terms. Now I don't criticise this decision tactically, but I think you have to take responsibility for your own shortcomings in rp because what you wanted was other RP groups to come dance with your chosen methodology (nano group mayhem) with you guys risking nothing much in an npc station in return.
As I've learned over the years in SF - you can't really get people to fight an RP war unless you go all in and actually risk something yourself. Nobody is really interested in random skirmishing against more accomplished random skirmishers when the sensible option is usually just to ignore them.
I liked RPing, still do RP in private, and if there was an RP entity out there that would fight us in an extended campaign, we'd fight it regularly and embark on such a campaign as a road trip or something (see; IRED--we seem to fight them daily, although I think our past experience with RPers is such that I wouldn't be able to talk anyone into a wardec/making it a goal to attack IRED more than simply finding IRED gangs in Syndicate and pewing them, which is what I really miss. there was nothing more fun to me than extended campaigns against an RP target or targets).
We killed them all in the SF days bach. Those that would evolve from the wreckage moved either to 0.0 and the protection of larger non rp allies or into the embrace of FW ultimately. SF ourselves have had the dilemma you speak of in who do we fight and how and we're frankly only a fraction of stim/veto's combat power at the moment. But the issue remains - why would somebody fight you on your own terms when you risk nothing? What SF had back in the day was the RP cache of throwing down the public gauntlet and taking on a larger rp outfit that had a better combat reputation (or at least allies that did) and doing the all-in massive stakes as the underdog game. And it worked because people cared about the rp. These days what would Stimulus stake in an extended RP war really?
Think about the question seriously please - what kind of war could you declare that actually had a significant chance of you failing and the enemy winning a great victory if you fucked it up? I pretty much worked propaganda overtime last summer to paint you as the protector's of Moira's HQ simply to give some kind of closure to the skirmishing but without that it would be nothing but a smack fest and endless taunts of "come to our npc system!!!" "no attack out pos!!!" "nooooo come to our npc system noob!" and no real rp of any kind.
STIM's first goal as an entity was to blow things up because blowing things up is fun, even if we're losing ... The first goal is what I find lacking in large part from EVE RPers (and frankly, in most of EVE, so I guess singling out RPers as the issue isn't helpful, though I still watch various RP groups and find many of them lacking more than most here
See it rarely looks like that from the other side of the lines. Last summer I honestly expected you guys to blow the hell out of our towers in Ostingale and run a serious campaign to hand star fraction a significant defeat. You had an incredible numerical advantage and you know that our reponse to your tower challenges was going to be annihilate wings and economic warfare (as we did in kamela losing an incredible total of 270 odd cruisers over a couple of days) - but rather than take that challenge you backed off. What it looked like to us was that you were terribly sensitive to losing. We saw you troll entire corps out of your alliance because they lost ships to us and every time we assassinated some pimped mission runner there were 20+ comments of rage on your killboards. That sends a message to your own people bacc that reads "DO NOT ENGAGE THE ENEMY FOR FUN" - and I think sometimes you forget the impact that kind of approach has on the rank and file.
Bacch has trouble seeing that because to him, capsuleers are the next step of human evolution and anyone who is not advanced enough to become a capsuleer is essentially a step down on the evolutionary scale, and like comparing monkeys to humans. So getting a few hundred or thousand of them blown up is utterly inconsequential, even if it is only for kicks.
Its a shame to be honest, back when we were somehow peers without all the hatred and angst of our respective supporters howling this and that I would see a roleplay challenge in arguing the case for enlightened anarchist individualism against the nihilistic brand of baseline-humN-hate bacc practises now. In some ways it is a roleplay dilemma that stim has found itself in - you are the alpha dogs of the roving nbsi pvp game but you don't really have a cause to fight for - you have evolved into something thats more akin to an environmental hazard than a political movement and the problem is that when you've transformed ideology to a rainstorm it becomes difficult to find poetic engagements thereafter. Most people simply put up and umbrella or step out of the rain when the downpour begins and stimulus is very much a summer shower because your patience runs out quickly.
Ironically stimulus would probably be more interesting to engage with in a philosophical discussion than in space conflict - at least that way *something* is at stake even if its only igs plaudits and PR. But even there there are (i'll hope you'll agree) limits to where you can get in a discussion with somebody "who simply wants to see the world burn!" - "ummm yes okay thats nice."
TLDR: if you want rp conflicts you need to commit to sustained wars and risk taking of the kind you and I both accepted together when we were planning campaigns in star fraction circa 2006-2007.
That said, if people really want me to gtfo from the forums, say so. I can still read them with a deleted account.
Freespace forum posting radical here baby.
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Topic: Why fight player pirates? (Read 12008 times)