Pirates and honour

I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday, who is also the CEO of another pirate hunting corp. He's a very honourable fellow, and believes that honour is the most important element of a corp's actions. He believes that without honour, it's simply a pointless exercise. We had an interesting debate.

He believes that the anti-pirate that chooses to fight with honour is far better than the anti-pirate who chooses to fight without honour. His opinion is that it's better to die with honour than to survive without.

That just doesn't make any sense to me.

It doesn't make sense to me that some people believe that choosing to fight while knowing you're going to die is better than choosing alternative tactics in order to survive and win. He disagreed with the tactics I used, going back to the concept that it's better to fight than to hide.

What is the point of fighting though, if you know you're going to die? What is the point?

If someone wants to kill you, isn't it better to try and make sure they fail? Isn't the preservation of your own life and those you care about better than 'dying with honour'?

So-called honourable people feel differently, of course. And yet, space is littered with the bodies of honourable people, all dead, while those who ignore honour continue to live. And by still living, they can still fight.

In my mind, surviving in order to continue fighting is far better than dying, and surviving in order to choose the battles you can win is certainly far better than fighting a losing battle simply because there's a battle to fight.

Pirates are the kinds of people without honour, but they absolutely love going up against people with honour, because honourable people will rarely avoid a fight, and that works to the advantage of the pirate.

If you have an honourable pilot in a cruiser who is confronted by 3 pirates in battleships, it will 'violate' his honour to back down from the fight. And so he'll die.

Pirates encourage this, as they want more honourable pilots to challenge them! Why? Because they want to win.

This is completely natural, of course. But when a pirate finds someone who chooses to avoid honour and avoid combat, it upsets them. It upsets them a great deal, especially if their target avoids combat and still causes the pirate to lose.

They feel ripped off!

What I really find amusing about Darkside Inc is that they have been engaging in piracy for a long time; attacking weaker targets and weak corporations, ransoming or destroying these innocents. They have caused a lot of death and destruction in their time, and they have become used to succeeding. So when they lose, it hurts them. And it hurts them even more because they were unable to fight and destroy an 'honourable' opponent. Instead they fought an opponent who preferred to win than preferring to die.

It's been interesting for me to see the comments of so many people, on the forums and as replies to this blog. I have a lot of support, of course, because a lot of people are against the pirates. But then there's the other kinds of comments.

Apparently I 'gloat' over the methods I used against the pirates.

Well, why shouldn't I?

Darkside initiated war against my corp. Like the classic bully, they tried to attack a small and weak opponent, which they have been doing for quite some time now. However, this time they failed. And now all they can do is cry about it and 'smacktalk' on the forums and spread abuse and anger.

They're so angry right now, and I think that's great. They're a pirate corp, and anti-pirate corps are at war with pirates, whether it's official or unofficial. They lost, and they can't deal with that.

Well, you funny pirate fellas, if you don't like it - get the frack out of the pirating business. You're going to lose, and the harder you try to win, the more you'll lose. Change your ways and you'll find that you'll lose less.