Hooooooold up here, people. This is the first I see of this thread, yet we're on page 3, and people are already assuming to know what I'm thinking by my original comment?
First things first. The Archbishop reference? It was from the SF-Amarrian Bloc War...
six years ago. Namely, the incident when Archbishop got killed in the opening fight of the war, only to be seen in-dock from there on out for the remaining 3-6 months of fighting. I've made no commentary on PIE's current status, or any contributions it's made to the Amarrian Militia, and to assume that was my intent is jumping the gun.
I'll grant you, it was a bit of an obscure reference, I'll give you that one. When you've been a vet of the game for almost 8 years, things tend to blend together a bit, and this is one of those times.
As for the second topic that's arisen, namely "blueballs to frustrate an enemy", I'd like to point out that there's a time and place to use said tactic. For example, if you're a mining corporation of 10 players that just got dec'd by a mercenary corp of 30 combat specialists who are active. Even then, I'd recommend parking the metaphorical Hulks, and looking at either hiring mercs of your own to fight back, or a single individual to train your guys to fight if the will exists.
Case in point, my earliest "real" corp was a group of college students IRL, including myself, who ran a mining operation in lowsec that produced industrial goods (ships, modules, etc). We got harassed and dec'd by pirates - we could have docked up for the duration, but we bought cruisers, my BC, and our
flagship of awesome, a simple Dominix. And we fought them, and actually held our own in the war, with very little prior experience or skillpoints.
I raise this as an example because to dock up in station when threatened by something is a double-edged sword. You may deny the aggressor a chance to kill you, and in turn get loot/satisfaction/whatever out of the deal, but you're also essentially taking your ball and going home because you don't like the situation you find yourself in. Again, I can understand it in certain circumstances - however, when you're like I-RED, a corp established in nullsec NPC space with local allies, established infrastructure (POS) in space, etc., and someone comes to town to take down your things, I would hope you'd fight. Defending organizations can not only time towers as necessary to their advantage, in a fleet fight they have the advantage of locally staged ships to replenish any losses they take. RK, by comparison, would likely not have the depth of staging, leaving us susceptible to being ground down in a prolonged fight, or running out of "fleet appropriate ships".
And on that subject, let's say that the Goons hit TXW tomorrow, move in, and continually pester us for fights. Provided we can physically undock, and not get meat-grinded into a pulp, you bet your ass we're going to get ships out into space to harass said invaders... tier3 BCs, bomber gangs, Falcon gayness everywhere, you name it. Even if we were rapecaged into station, we have options to get around it.
The point I'm getting at is the first couple of times an organization docks when it could have fought a decent battle, it annoys the aggressor. After that, though? It becomes expected, and more harmful to the corp executing the tactic. It chips away at their confidence, at their members who question "why am I paying $15/month or so to spin my ship in station?" - I
Gorion Wassenar these days, and all of the other former-Kimotoro Directive people who jumped into Stimulus and Rote, but ask them how that tactic fared for them in the old days. TLDR, it didn't - KD died from the siege.
Anyways, just my two ISK. I'll check later tonight for any follow-up questions / comments... plus I've only read the thread up through page 2. Working on it.
