Better Luck Next Time

The last few days have seen us pull out of H-W. The op was unsuccesful in securing H-W. That being said, it did allow for other victories elsewhere. Those, however, don't help the morale that was lost during the operation.

What went wrong you ask?

Several things.

In my original work up of the plan with Manny we called for the operation to start on a Friday morning USTZ (Euro Prime). This would allow first reinforcement timer to come out while the weekend was still going on. This didn't happen, and the operation kicked off on a Sunday. Not sure why.

The original plan also called for enough committed numbers to keep the system filled with allies, much like Atlas did to RA back in the day. This also didn't happen. Not enough people stayed logged in after the initial assault. The key was holding initial numbers. NC ended up doing just that, with everyone and their mothers alts logged on even if they were in station when the reinforcement timer neared 0. Someone snidely commented on the last post asking since I approve of the logoffski how I felt about the "logonski". I simply replied that it was a valid tactic. I guess the person didn't realize that that was the whole point of our operation to begin with... so obviously I approve of both the logoffski and logonski.

Nice try.

The last and most important issue was that short of the first day, there wasn't enough cooperation going on between alliances. The blame falls on leadership for this one. The NC has an advantage in that although they are seperate alliances, they all form up under the same fleet and same comms consistently. Well practiced and second nature, the lines between alliances don't really exist. For IT & Allies this has been a very new experience... and the idea of just jumping onto allies comms and their fleets isn't first nature. It showed. Sure we had some major victories during the H-W conflict. But in the end we had to pull out, and allies lost some supercaps doing so. Not exactly the morale booster I had in mind.

What next? I'm not sure. We are still in the theater of operations. We are still fighting. NC jumpbridge systems are switching back to NC hands, but must wait 35 days before JBs can be put back up. Although some can be re-routed, not all can perform from alternate systems. Moons come and go.

The dissapointing part is that same sentiment shared by military commanders since the dawn of civilization; when the political elements supercede the military elements, things go wrong. Or in Layman's terms, when the recommendations are twisted to suit a political agenda and end up failcascading. Best recent example is Somalia and President Clinton. Most US are familiar with the situation... whether from news or the book "Black Hawk Down" which was turned into a well known movie. Operations were sanctioned to take out Somali warlords, in particular one in Mogadishu. Serious limitations were set by Washington DC, from officials far away with little perspective on the actual fighting and a political agenda. Those constraints limited and forced the hand of the ground forces into compromising positions, but with no adjustment in the goals. As such, military personnel died and were captured.

All in all, there were some good fights. There was also epic glitching and blackscreening. There was no skill involved in this fighting (from either side). It was simply who had the most people in fleet and active. The real winners were the small gangs that would go into H-W and score lemming kills. Those were fun, and were usually found USTZ. A glimmer of sunshine in a dark situation.

That is all.