Post by Kevin on May 6, 2009 0:37:09 GMT -5
Just a view from an NDA guest fighter, Source covert operative and (later) AoA grunt.
So this mid-February, quite a bit before the larger war. At this point Source and NDA were competing against each other in the Jexian elections. From what I hear, both sides were very strong. At some point Source loses a couple elections. At this point some random and (very well-financed) pilot named Celaeno has gone around suiciding ships, and been averaging a very good kill/death ratio. I know he hit AoA, as well as Source. Anyways, we get a post from Geff (faction leader-Source) here:
forum.pbbghub.com/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=6745&start=0
Basically, it says that an old faction member of Geff had been trying to convince him that Celaeno was being funded by Source's election rivals, and showed him proof. This Geff thought was good enough grounds for war, so he gives NDA 24 hours to leave Jexia or face war. NDA refuses, Geff attacks. I believe he destroyed a BFR in his initial attack, I am not sure.
At this point, AoA thinks that it'd be best to back up NDA in this conflict (Source has been historically aggressive, getting in wars with AIA and SFA, but I'm not qualified to speculate who's at fault here).
So me (Kick) and Aurelia join NDA. At this point the kills were slightly in favor of Source; anyways, NDA had destroyed an FG, and I took part in an attack on an HFR. I think Source offered a ceasefire at this point, though it seems that during the MSN convos a couple of Source warships jumped into Gratia (NDA home planet) and killed Smaug's (NDA faction leader) FG. Bit of a strange situation there. Also, due to a monumental blunder of stupidity on my part, I lose my CV :/ to 3 Source warships. Oops :/
Anyways, there's a ceasefire, Source gives a lot of verbal abuse to NDA on the forums, things are back to normal. Sort of. With no warship, and a lot of points, and some imagination, I figure Source will be back in a distinctly unfriendly manner, so might as well spy on them. At worst, I get target intel, at best, I hit the jackpot with a spacedock (seize function). So I restart under the name 'Crow_Point'.
Fun interlude here: while I was in Source, some guy named Remus starts randomly shooting Source ships, so I get loaned a warship (damn, within first 3 days!) to go shoot up a BT.
Anyways, within 2 weeks, Geff announces that he will be claiming Jexia (Source owns one planet in Jexia--I believe still some blaming of Celaeno), and this time tells everyone--NDA, AoA, etc. to leave. So this effectively means war, seeing as we've decided to sorta-kinda merge at this point. Geff's Jexia claim here:
forum.pbbghub.com/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=7088
Corwin's declaration of war here:
forum.pbbghub.com/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=7142&start=0
Source fires the first shots, killing a CV of an AoA inactive. At this point it kind of gets muddled as to the killcounts (this is undoubtedly the bloodiest war in CS v2 history, I'd bet about 50 ships killed total). Still in Source when hostilities break out. At the moment Source is basing out of the Netrea Grid 13 dock owned by Absolute Zer0. However, he announces he is taking a real life vacation, and is giving it to Zuleika...who tells the Source fleet members to leave the dock.
Still remember when Hyperion MSN messaged me "Do you have a spacedock?"
Yes, I did.
OMG.
And then an order to move to my spacedocks, so there are 9+ ships docked there now, totaling 247k points. I wait for nighttime, when Source got or 13-so beacons when AoA hit the Netrea 13 dock (not mine)--anyways at least 2 ships go down.
To make it a bit more painful, I decide to pull the trigger on my SD at that point, total haul was i think 1 BFR, 1 MR, 5 FGs, 3 DSes. I estimate that at least took 3 captains out of the fight.
Anyways, threadnaught aside, the war rages on. Gotta credit Source's resilience here--we trade even losses for about 5 days (at an average of 2 ships down for each side), before the Source inflicted casualties take a nosedive (going to maybe 1 a day). I'd say the war proper lasted about 3 weeks, which is a lot longer than the AIA vs. bandwagon war (which was about 1 week). One of the really special things about this war were the tactical adjustments made: effectively, it made spacedocks irrelevant, noncombat scrubbers incredibly important, and some stuff I'll keep secret (just for the future).
As to how its like fighting in these slugfests:
There's always that dread you have when you see 3 beacons, and the guy isn't, and you know he is going to die. You can't jump to him to save him too, all you can do is hope you can get one of them before the scrub erases their trail. Once spent 15 minutes just looking at this guy's attack stats, seeing the damage tick up, hoping that Source had made a math mistake (they didn't, he died. For the 2nd/3rd time--can't remember--grr!).
BBA does join the war a week in, taking down an NDA FG. I remember we killed 2 of Rambo Shotta's ships 2 days after that (CV/CV or CV/FG), so they took their share of losses. Still, it looked like AoA/NDA were eating into Source's warship reserve, and it showed in the lack of beacons: the attrition was really hurting their offensive capabilities. There's a certain rolling amount of actives you have to have to compete in wars like this (the magic number is 10, on average, if you have that many on, you can gank a warship and run the scrub).
Some funny attack logs from that time, when a BBA DS wasted 400 turns shooting ions at Corwin, who was doing a drydock dance. He was in armour. Oops.
In the waning days of the war, Source attacks some AoA econs, we retaliate by making their econs fair game. Down goes a construction ship. Furthermore, Source had hired some mercs, which weren't all that damaging to our warships, but did manage to hurt some econs (not sure if AoA/NDA incurred any econ damage though). Anyways, I do remember killing Monarch's HMR (we were joking about the fact he had parked it in an SD on a Sector 1 Grid 1 square--made scouting incredibly easy ;D), though, it took a hella lot of turns while in light dock.
Seems like after Source goes silent (its basically dead now), Mikefett starts harassing them (don't know the casualty count there). Its clear they can't secure their claim to Jexia, so the war ends gradually.
All in all, I would estimate a 30-15 kill ratio in favor of NDA/AoA. I'm not sure however, and I'd pity the guy having to collate attack logs.
Some notables/fun facts:
Bluesman holds the pod-killing record of the war (6? I think). Also he had a coveted Geff pod-scorch.
I believe Durban, Dragoninferno, and me combined contributed to the majority of AoA losses. lol.
From my vantage point, on the Source side, the SCSY Typhoon piloted by Partisan had a ridiculously high kill participation rate--hats off.
Also we managed to kill people that were online--through jumping them with 6 people and barraging. Quite, quite impressive. Shows that there is some depth to V2 warfighting.
So this mid-February, quite a bit before the larger war. At this point Source and NDA were competing against each other in the Jexian elections. From what I hear, both sides were very strong. At some point Source loses a couple elections. At this point some random and (very well-financed) pilot named Celaeno has gone around suiciding ships, and been averaging a very good kill/death ratio. I know he hit AoA, as well as Source. Anyways, we get a post from Geff (faction leader-Source) here:
forum.pbbghub.com/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=6745&start=0
Basically, it says that an old faction member of Geff had been trying to convince him that Celaeno was being funded by Source's election rivals, and showed him proof. This Geff thought was good enough grounds for war, so he gives NDA 24 hours to leave Jexia or face war. NDA refuses, Geff attacks. I believe he destroyed a BFR in his initial attack, I am not sure.
At this point, AoA thinks that it'd be best to back up NDA in this conflict (Source has been historically aggressive, getting in wars with AIA and SFA, but I'm not qualified to speculate who's at fault here).
So me (Kick) and Aurelia join NDA. At this point the kills were slightly in favor of Source; anyways, NDA had destroyed an FG, and I took part in an attack on an HFR. I think Source offered a ceasefire at this point, though it seems that during the MSN convos a couple of Source warships jumped into Gratia (NDA home planet) and killed Smaug's (NDA faction leader) FG. Bit of a strange situation there. Also, due to a monumental blunder of stupidity on my part, I lose my CV :/ to 3 Source warships. Oops :/
Anyways, there's a ceasefire, Source gives a lot of verbal abuse to NDA on the forums, things are back to normal. Sort of. With no warship, and a lot of points, and some imagination, I figure Source will be back in a distinctly unfriendly manner, so might as well spy on them. At worst, I get target intel, at best, I hit the jackpot with a spacedock (seize function). So I restart under the name 'Crow_Point'.
Fun interlude here: while I was in Source, some guy named Remus starts randomly shooting Source ships, so I get loaned a warship (damn, within first 3 days!) to go shoot up a BT.
Anyways, within 2 weeks, Geff announces that he will be claiming Jexia (Source owns one planet in Jexia--I believe still some blaming of Celaeno), and this time tells everyone--NDA, AoA, etc. to leave. So this effectively means war, seeing as we've decided to sorta-kinda merge at this point. Geff's Jexia claim here:
forum.pbbghub.com/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=7088
Corwin's declaration of war here:
forum.pbbghub.com/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=7142&start=0
Source fires the first shots, killing a CV of an AoA inactive. At this point it kind of gets muddled as to the killcounts (this is undoubtedly the bloodiest war in CS v2 history, I'd bet about 50 ships killed total). Still in Source when hostilities break out. At the moment Source is basing out of the Netrea Grid 13 dock owned by Absolute Zer0. However, he announces he is taking a real life vacation, and is giving it to Zuleika...who tells the Source fleet members to leave the dock.
Still remember when Hyperion MSN messaged me "Do you have a spacedock?"
Yes, I did.
OMG.
And then an order to move to my spacedocks, so there are 9+ ships docked there now, totaling 247k points. I wait for nighttime, when Source got or 13-so beacons when AoA hit the Netrea 13 dock (not mine)--anyways at least 2 ships go down.
To make it a bit more painful, I decide to pull the trigger on my SD at that point, total haul was i think 1 BFR, 1 MR, 5 FGs, 3 DSes. I estimate that at least took 3 captains out of the fight.
Anyways, threadnaught aside, the war rages on. Gotta credit Source's resilience here--we trade even losses for about 5 days (at an average of 2 ships down for each side), before the Source inflicted casualties take a nosedive (going to maybe 1 a day). I'd say the war proper lasted about 3 weeks, which is a lot longer than the AIA vs. bandwagon war (which was about 1 week). One of the really special things about this war were the tactical adjustments made: effectively, it made spacedocks irrelevant, noncombat scrubbers incredibly important, and some stuff I'll keep secret (just for the future).
As to how its like fighting in these slugfests:
There's always that dread you have when you see 3 beacons, and the guy isn't, and you know he is going to die. You can't jump to him to save him too, all you can do is hope you can get one of them before the scrub erases their trail. Once spent 15 minutes just looking at this guy's attack stats, seeing the damage tick up, hoping that Source had made a math mistake (they didn't, he died. For the 2nd/3rd time--can't remember--grr!).
BBA does join the war a week in, taking down an NDA FG. I remember we killed 2 of Rambo Shotta's ships 2 days after that (CV/CV or CV/FG), so they took their share of losses. Still, it looked like AoA/NDA were eating into Source's warship reserve, and it showed in the lack of beacons: the attrition was really hurting their offensive capabilities. There's a certain rolling amount of actives you have to have to compete in wars like this (the magic number is 10, on average, if you have that many on, you can gank a warship and run the scrub).
Some funny attack logs from that time, when a BBA DS wasted 400 turns shooting ions at Corwin, who was doing a drydock dance. He was in armour. Oops.
In the waning days of the war, Source attacks some AoA econs, we retaliate by making their econs fair game. Down goes a construction ship. Furthermore, Source had hired some mercs, which weren't all that damaging to our warships, but did manage to hurt some econs (not sure if AoA/NDA incurred any econ damage though). Anyways, I do remember killing Monarch's HMR (we were joking about the fact he had parked it in an SD on a Sector 1 Grid 1 square--made scouting incredibly easy ;D), though, it took a hella lot of turns while in light dock.
Seems like after Source goes silent (its basically dead now), Mikefett starts harassing them (don't know the casualty count there). Its clear they can't secure their claim to Jexia, so the war ends gradually.
All in all, I would estimate a 30-15 kill ratio in favor of NDA/AoA. I'm not sure however, and I'd pity the guy having to collate attack logs.
Some notables/fun facts:
Bluesman holds the pod-killing record of the war (6? I think). Also he had a coveted Geff pod-scorch.
I believe Durban, Dragoninferno, and me combined contributed to the majority of AoA losses. lol.
From my vantage point, on the Source side, the SCSY Typhoon piloted by Partisan had a ridiculously high kill participation rate--hats off.
Also we managed to kill people that were online--through jumping them with 6 people and barraging. Quite, quite impressive. Shows that there is some depth to V2 warfighting.