And I'm not sure that most of our immersionist leadership would be happy with this concept. We don't pick wars for good fights, we pick wars we think we can win, or at least make a difference*.
2 pages of replies too late, but:
Why does your leadership choose wars based off of ones they think they can win?
I would have thought the greater challenge/reward would be to get involved in a fight where you can contribute somewhat, but the battles are good or epic in nature?
I don't think very many people in history have declared wars they thought they would lose. My theory on battles even is that either one side has been trapped into a fight they don't want (in Eve it is often difficult to get a competent opponent to commit to a battle they don't want), or both sides think they can win before the battle is joined - Usually, at least one of those sides is wrong. There is a whole art to scouting and deception to convince people to engage, while hiding enough resources to make that a mistake, and still scouting enough that they can't do that to you. One theory I have some sympathy for is that most battles are decided before the first shot is fired.
We have other criteria for declaring war on corps than "can stomp them into the muck" but "good fights" is not one. Most characters in the alliance are aware that when they lose ships, IC they're losing people. While some of them try not to think about it. It's there. So we try not to do it without cause.
Perhaps I need to clarify a little. Electus Matari is an immersionist alliance. The decisions that the leaders of the various corps make about who to shoot at and who to declare war on are made from an in-character point of view. Our mission statement includes defending and strengthening the republic. IC, we don't shoot people for the challenge, we do it to make the republic a better place. Convincing pirates to go shoot people in Khanid space is a win for us. Convincing Pandemic legion that hanging around Amamake will get them good fun fights is not.
We will war dec reds when we can think of Specific Measurable Achievable, Relevant and Timely goals. Relevant, in this case means to the Alliance's goals. This may be as simple as "reduce the number of kills in the republic by pirate alliance X for the month by 50%" or "Convince Corp X to stop providing support to Amarrian Militia pilots". When Alliances couldn't join FW, it could be "Let our pilots chase the more common plexing Amarrian FW pilots without taking GCC" - In one war, getting our targets to leave the militia for a week was a success by our measures even though we didn't kill any of them.
You can't win a war without defeating the morale of your opponents. Losing ships is not that big a deal for most pilots*, but getting a corp to the point where they're scared to undock, or they don't trust their comrades to come to their aid, to fit sensible ships, or to actually do their jobs competently, can badly damage a corporation. If the good PVPers in an alliance get tired of seeing stupid loss-mails on their killboard, that damages their morale and makes them less efficient. We know this IC. Shooting ships without addressing the mental side of the battle is suboptimal.
I guess this is just a different philosophy between leaders but I would prefer to lead into a tough fight that win or lose at least we had a good fight out of it, versus attacking a foe that I know well that I can beat every time. Barring standard eve exceptions.
It is not the case that we only fight people we think we can beat every time, but we don't tend to start wars that we don't think it is possible to "win". From an IC perspective, that would be stupid, and we do try to play our characters (at least, those of our CEOs) as if they're not stupid. As mentioned above, we often define what a win will look like before the war, and tailor our tactics towards those victory conditions. And sometimes we don't achieve our objectives, but before we started, we thought we could.
* I think we once convinced someone who war-decced us that they weren't going to win because on the first day they stomped a fleet of faction battleships, and the next day we were out chasing them in even more ships. We never did make up the isk difference, but they stopped chasing us, and eventually ended up blue by promising not to pirate in the republic any more. From our point of view, a win!
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Topic: Let there be WAR! (Read 15244 times)