Almost ruptured

Alinana was waiting for me when I awoke, and this time she had her Rupture, all set up to take me on. Tech 2 weapons and, I think, drones. We fought, with the odds being in her favour this time; just the way she liked it.

I lost, but I think we were both surprised by the result.

She had easily fought off 3 cruisers earlier, and was on a high from that. When she fought me, cruiser against cruiser, I think we were both expecting it to be much easier than it was.

We agreed to the duelling conditions again: first to get the other to 25% armour. Alinana won, but I got her to about 40% armour. It was close.

Again, we bowed, and parted ways.

Why duel, I hear you ask? A lot of pilots disagree with duels. They lead to dishonourable tactics, where the friend of one of the participants warps in and ambushes the other participant. I know these things happen, but you just have to be careful and make good judgements about who you duel with. If you go in expecting to be ambushed, you might end up happy not to be.

It goes back to the golden rule - never fight if you're not prepared to die.

So, aware of the risks, I like to duel, especially against those pirates honourable enough to engage in duels and keep their word. Ultimately, it's about the challlenge of fighting against another warrior. You don't need to die in order to know you've lost. In the process of combat, you learn more about what you're doing, especially if you're fighting those whose goal is to destroy those like you.

Some people advocate duels only with other corp or alliance members, but the problem I see there is that they don't have the mindset of wanting to kill you. They don't have the experience that pirates have, and they don't have the same setups as pirates do. If you can learn how to better fight the pirates in controlled duels with those honourable enough to trust you and be trusted by you, then it gives you a much greater learning curve to engage in combat with those who have no honour at all.

What I've learnt this past few days is that I am slowly becoming a more capable pirate hunter, and it's thanks to Alinana that I've learnt that.

Which is why I've linked her blog on the right there. I hope you enjoy her writing as well. Maybe you can learn something from it. :-)

Some success at last!

The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated. IF there were any rumours, that is. I know it's been a little while since I last wrote, but I've been busy.

Rebuilding a corp that's been scarred by war has been an interesting journey, so to speak. I learnt who the traitor was, and to say I was shocked is putting it mildly. To find that one of your most trusted members has betrayed you to the enemy....

Well, I can only now understand the depth of Ceasar's impassioned and gasping, "Et tu, Brutus?" And then he collapsed, dead. Luckily for me, it wasn't quite as dramatic.

Needless to say, the traitors of the corp are no longer with us, and their names shall forever shine in red wherever they be met. Along with the blood that befouls their hands.

But I must move on, before I get too caught up in the feelings of anguish over lost friends and betrayals.

Alinana was her name, and piratin' was her game. I know, it's an overused cliche, but if I avoid the cliches, what is there left to write about?

We met in a dark system, so dark that I almost didn't see her. But a pirate and a pirate hunter in the same system... we did the only things we could - we came together in battle.

Using my scanner I found her in a Blackbird, orbiting one of the planets. Warping in on her, we engaged in battle. It was my first time against a Blackbird, and I had heard of their ECM capabilities. I thought to myself, how bad can it be?

It was bad.

For about 2 minutes I simply was unable to get a lock on the Blackbird. I got a momentary lock at one point, for about 2 seconds before the lock was broken again. In that time, I was able to see that she was down to about 60% armour.

That was when I smiled. It was a big smile too. My own armour was about 95%, but it was being held at that point by my armour repairer. In the past, my ships have been vapourised around me before I can say 'holy cow!', so it was a really nice feeling to sit back and know that my armour was holding while hers was being disintegrated. My drones were the only things hitting her, and they were doing exactly what they were supposed to do.

However, she warped away before her ship could be destroyed. This was fine by me, as I didn't have a warp scrambler fitted. My setup was not designed to hold a pirate, but just to see if I could actually defeat them. I could, and I was happy.

However, Alinana, being the pirate that she was, was NOT happy. As you'd expect, under the circumstances. So she got herself another ship and came back for another fight. This time it was a Stabber.

After a short period of time for her to set it up and for me to replace a drone that her Blackbird had destroyed, we engaged again, dancing around each other like small darts in the vastness of space. This time I was able to get a lock on her ship, and it was on!

And just as quickly, it was over. Again she warped away, my armour at 90% and her hull at around 70%.

We bowed to each other within the comm link, with each of us thankful we had survived. It was a good fight.

Tomorrow I'll fit a warp scrambler and try again. Now that I've achieved some success at combat and damage dealing, I'll now see about replacing the cap recharger with the warp scrambler and testing how that works for me.

I'd like to thank Marshal Kaenon Steel, my SpecOps CO, for suggesting the skills that I should be training. It seems to be working, thankfully. I feel that my long period of time encountering only failure is at an end.

More soon.

No more public announcements

I've just learnt that public discussions on the Eve forums is frowned upon within the alliance, so I won't engage in any more of them. Fair enough too, I imagine. I'll just continue writing in here, and from now on, I'll delete any negative or derogative comments from pirates or others.

The death of Praetor Sarum

I heard a rumour, which I don't know is true or not, but... it seems Praetor Sarum, the CEO of Knights Justicar, has died in battle against 'the darkened ones'. ('Darkened ones' is a term used by NMTZ. I like it, so I'll use it too.)

It's unfortunate that such a noble warrior has fallen in battle. I hang my head with sorrow, and say a prayer for his soul. Wherever he is right now, I'm sure he's still doing battle with those that need to be shown the error of their ways.

He will be missed.

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.

The Art of War

I've been an avid follower of Sun Tsu's Art Of War. I re-wrote it as a guide for my corp and its activities during war, and use it as the foundation of my strategy.

Some people seem to feel that the 'art of war' is to go toe to toe with your enemy, engage in battle and may the better pilot win. Nope, that's not the case. In fact, the main proponents of such a foolish strategy are usually those who think they have the biggest dicks... I mean, the biggest ships.

Instead of comparing dick sizes... I mean ship sizes, I instead try to follow Black Scorpion's Art of War. Contact me if you want a copy.

I'll go through some of it here. Maybe it'll inspire other corps to engage more in strategy than in tactics, especially if the tactics can be stomped on by the enemy.

It was obvious to me that Darkside had the military and tactical advantage. Therefore, I needed to outwit them instead of outfight them.

In the wise leader’s plans, considerations of advantage and of disadvantage will be blended together.

The enemy's strengths were the size and technology level of their ships, and the skills and experience of their pilots. They had been fighting much longer and much harder than most of the members of Black Scorpion Ltd. Therefore, we had to turn their strengths into weaknesses.

A clever leader will avoid an enemy when it is strongest.

Since their strength was their combat ability, we had to avoid combat. Since they relied on tactical superiority to achieve their goals, we had to deny them tactical opportunities.

Their strength became ineffective.

Another strategic move is based on this: If your opponent angers easily, seek to irritate him. When you anger him, he makes mistakes. Well, we certainly angered Darkside.

The highest form of leadership is to prevent the enemy’s plans. The next best is to prevent the gathering of the enemy’s fleets. The next in order is to attack the enemy’s fleet in space, and the worst policy of all is to besiege stations.

The skilful leader subdues the enemy’s fleet without fighting. He captures their stations without laying siege to them. He overthrows their leadership without lengthy operations in the field.

With his fleets intact, he will dispute the mastery of the Empire, and thus, without losing a single pilot, his victory will be complete. This is the method of attacking by stratagem.

When you are unable to succeed engagements of tactics, you must instead engage with stratagem. Once you know the Art of War, you can use that knowledge to aid you in the fight.

Where the enemy was strong, we avoided them. Where they were irritable, we angered them. Where they were weak, we hunted them.

This is the art of war, and ignoring it results in defeat.

The war is over!

The war is over, and Darkside Inc lost.

The war is over, but there were casualties. My allies deserted me, succumbing to Darkside's strategy to divide, all thanks to a traitor within my corp who was passing information on to the enemy.

But still, I was confident that my own strategy would succeed; the strategy of guerilla warfare, of choosing the battles to fight, of knowing when to run and when to stand and fight.

And then there were the losses of some of the members, cowards who decided that being part of an anti-pirate corp that actually fought pirates was not the kind of anti-pirate corp they wanted to be in. If not this, then I'm not exactly sure what they thought they were being part of. I wish them luck in their endeavours though, as they run and hide from the pirates. I'm sure they will find there is no safe place to hide.

Black Scorpion Ltd is now part of the Namtz'aar k'in (NMTZ) alliance of anti-pirate corporations within the Molden Heath region. As a result of my last post asking if any corporations wanted to join in the fight and support us, I was approached by NMTZ's leader who offered membership.
After brief negotiations I signed up. We became part of the NMTZ alliance.

A few hours later, Darkside retracted their declaration of war. But thankfully, the alliance answered my call for Darkside's bullying to stop. To repay them for not just attacking Black Scorpion Ltd, but also for their bullying tactics over time, the Alliance organised a fleet and attacked one of Darkside's POS's. It was destroyed. You can watch the video of it here.

Darkside's losses have greatly exceeded anything they could have expected. In the process of writing this entry, I've learnt that they lost TWO of their POS's.

I have also received a 'death threat' from one of their members.

I'm gonna strangle you.

I think he was a little upset to log on and discover their losses.

I replied to him with the following message. I was hoping to send it on to their CEO as well, but it looks like he's blocked me and all my corp members. Oh, this is so hilarious.

Do you think your 'death threat' would be justification enough for a wardec against your corp?

I do. However, I'll let it go for now.

Please note that your corp declared war against mine. I offered your CEO reasonable terms of surrender in reply, and he declined to accept them. What resulted was the fault of yourselves. You actively 'bully' smaller corps, holding them to ransom, and happily engage in acts of piracy.

I told your CEO we would never surrender. He would be the one who regrets the wardec he made against us. Only now is it realised by all of you that your bullying will not be tolerated.

Black Scorpion Ltd was never going to bow down before you, and never will. We will stand against you and other pirate organisations like you. As I said in my blog (link in my bio), the bullying stops now, and it stops with me.

Kind regards


Black Claw


--------------------
2006.10.15 03:23
Im gonna strangle you....

This was has seriously cost them a lot more than the original 500m I demanded from them when they wardec'd me. When I reduced it to 250m, they should have accepted.

This is their fault, and this is what happens to pirate corps that try to bully the smaller guys. They will eventually get their noses bloodied, and in this case, they've gotten the crap beaten out of them!

I've been laughing and dancing all day. I think I'll rest now.