Winners, losers and training for excellence
Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose.
The best way to learn PvP is to go out and lose 100 frigates.
Most EVE players are familiar with these catchphrases and the ideology behind them. In EVE you will lose. You start as a weak powerless loser. It is only by exchanging losses for an increase in knowledge that you will begin to win.
While most EVE players will agree with this sentiment, there appears to be a point at which a lot of players give up on this ideology.
Some players master one aspect of the game. They become winners at that part of the game. Often they will settle at this point. There are many other areas of the game that they are unfamiliar with. They are likely still losers at these other areas of the game because they have not yet trained in these areas.
What happens if we explore the extent of this ideology?
Everyone starts as a loser. They gain knowledge by trial and failure. Once enough knowledge is gained that player then gains a level of mastery in that task.
This can be applied to the solo PvPer as seen in the first example. It can also be applied to growing a group or corporation.
Whenever an organisation attempts a new activity they will start as a loser. Through trial and failure, they will gain knowledge. This knowledge will give them a level of mastery over that activity.
As an individual or organisation are you challenging yourself to learn new tasks?
Are you willing to put yourself in a situation where you are a loser so that eventually, you will become a winner?
When trading losses for knowledge, are you trading assets that you can sustainably afford to lose?
Losing to Win
The ideology of Losing to Win is a key value of the Black Shark Cult training program.
On an individual level, we encourage our pilots to go out and lose 100 frigates in order to learn PvP. These losses are not wasted as long as there is some knowledge gained in exchange for each loss.
On a group level, Black Shark Cult is always working toward a group goal or campaign. The purpose of this campaign is to gain knowledge of that area if the game, so that we can eventually gain mastery of that skillset.
Once our organisation has gained mastery over a skill set we aim for a new, more difficult challenge to master.
In the beginning, we will often fail to achieve our campaign goals. This is because we have not yet gained the knowledge or resources required to achieve that goal. However, as long as we trade each loss for a gain in knowledge, we will eventually gain mastery.
Solo PvP example
There are a lot of situations that a solo PvPer faces. Some of these situations can be won through skillful piloting or through bringing the correct counter to the enemy. Sometimes the enemy is completely outside of your power level.
A situation like this would be a solo frigate pilot facing a 30 ship cruiser fleet with logistics. In practical terms, it is impossible for the solo frigate pilot to defeat this entire group. The frigate pilot faces some choices before beginning this engagement. He could not engage at all. He could engage with the aim of testing his limits against the enemy drones and ranged weapons. He could entice the enemy to send drones after him and then kill the drones. He could follow the enemy fleet and wait for moments of weakness, such as catching a straggler who is slow to jump a gate, and in this way pick off enemy ships one by one if they get isolated. Finally, he could tackle an enemy ship and hold it long enough for more powerful allies to come and kill it. Despite the frigate pilot being completely outmatched by the cruiser fleet, he still has opportunities to inflict losses on the enemy and to improve his skills through practice.
Corporations face similar challenges. Some objectives can be achieved through the use of skill and appropriate counters. Other objectives are completely outside of the power level of a smaller group.
In a situation where a corporation is in a situation in which it is facing an enemy that is of a much higher power level must make similar choices to the frigate pilot in the above example.
Are there opportunities to develop skills on an individual or organisational level? Are there opportunities to inflict losses on the enemy. If the answer to either of these questions is a yes, then it is likely that engaging the overwhelming enemy will be beneficial for your organisation.
Losing at Faction War
Black Shark Cult is constantly seeking new challenges so that we can test ourselves to the limits. We consistently bite off more than we can chew, and lose ships and objectives on a regular basis.
Are we losers?
Yes we are losers. However the list of areas that we lose at grows shorter each week.
Campaign to learn defensive faction war
Black Shark Cult just finished a 3-month campaign in defensive faction warfare. As an organisation and as individuals we had no experience in this area of the game. The majority of our pilots are fairly young. We have a few pilots with some experience in Faction War.
Black Shark Cult set a goal of seeing how long we could hold on to South Placid. As a young organisation with a focus on training pilots, we wanted to test ourselves.
We had purposely chosen South Placid as it was an area that was traditionally not held by the Caldari. This meant that we could measure all success and failure in terms of our ability to influence the part of the warzone. CalMil were not interested in this area, so any assistance they provided would be due to us motivating them to get involved in the area.
The stage is set
Our corp of just over 100 pilots against the entire Gallente Militia. The Gallente Militia did not have any bases in our area at the start of our deployment. Our goal was to take valuable assets from them and see what they would do to try and take them back. We knew that our 100 pilots were up against over 700 pilots in the main organised GalMil corporations. Our organisation was brand new to this type of defensive warfare. Our logistics ability consisted of 1 day alts flying T1 badger haulers. We were up against the strongest militia that Faction War had ever seen, Organisations with 3 years of experience controlling the warzone. Organisations who had multiple capital ships and jump freighters and huge savings accounts that had been filled by 3 years of owning the warzone. We were the solo frigate facing up against the cruiser fleet.
When choosing a frigate to fight a cruiser fleet your first priority is to make sure you can avoid being pinned down by the enemy. We knew that GalMil had a history of targeting CalMil staging systems. They recently caused one of the largest CalMil alliances (Amplified) to fail cascade by capturing it’s staging system. To avoid being pinned down like this Black Shark chose to stage out of highsec and non faction war lowsec, with a minimal number of ships in key faction war systems to allow a small quick response fleet.
Stage 1 — Frigate fights
At the start of our campaign, our pilots were flying t1 frigates such as the punisher and tristan. We had an average of 4 pilots online most days in US and EU timezones.
Within a week the Gallente corp Aideron Robotics deployed to Ostingele in the centre of South Placid. They had over 200 members and an average of 15 pilots each night in US Tz and 5 pilots in EU Tz. They were also flying T1 frigates, mostly Atrons and Tristans.
For two weeks we lost territory against Aideron. We would fight and usually kill at least as many as we lost despite being outnumbered at least 2 to 1 in the US Tz.
Stage 2 — Learning to fly nano gangs
At this point we had a few high skill small gang PvPers join Black Shark to help train our newbies. We started flying kiting ships and started to escalate to more expensive ships to counter the 2 to 1 numbers advantage.
For the next 2 weeks we dominated the area. Even when outnumbering us two to one Aideron were too afraid to attack us and would run and hide in station. Aideron then trialed using sniper cormorants to counter us. We countered these with DPS Mauluses.
Stage 3 — The Exequror blob
Aideron then escalated to flying 10 man Exequror fleets. We found it very difficult to defeat a blob of 10 logistics ships with 3 or 4 kiting cruisers. A lot of fun creative tactics were used but in general when Aideron had more than twice our numbers all in Exequrors they would usually beat us.
Stage 4 — Comets and snake pods
At this point more and more pilots from Mecha Enterprises began joining Aideron Fleets. These pilots had a higher skill level and quickly brought the the odds we were facing up to 3 to 1. Aideron and Mecha Enterprises together had 300 pilots vs our 100.
Our pilots rose to the challenge. We moved to regularly flying Ospreys Navy Issues which we could buy cheaply with Caldari LP. Our faction cruisers supporting a higher skill pilot in a kiting battleship allowed us to regularly defeat the exequror blobs in large complexes even when out numbered 15 to 5.
We moved to using sniper hookbills with kiting comets or slicers for tackle to contest novice plexes.
The Gallente started using 3 billion ISK high-grade Snake pods to get the extra speed required to catch our fast kiters. We lost expensive ships but GalMil also lost expensive pods.
Stage 5 — Diplomacy and perseverance
Seeing as we were outnumbered 3 to one at this point and were losing systems at about one a week. We asked for some allies to come help to even the odds. Our dedicated pilots put in a round the clock effort and brought Vey to 90% then some Caldari allies assisted for the final capture.
We then did the same for the Gallente staging system of Ostingele. The Gallente had allowed their staging system to get to 50% contested. Black Shark brought it up to 90% after a solid day of conflict then a big allied fleet came to help bash the hub.
Learning objectives complete — FC what do?
Throughout this whole time Black Shark had known that if the Gallente made a full coalition deployment that they could easily recapture the area. Each week we were surprised that Galmil had still been unable to evict us from their space.
Our general pilot skill had greatly improved due to fighting outnumbered 3 to 1 for over a month. Our logistics pilots had been improving and we now had access to more advanced methods of transporting ships to staging systems. We built stronger relationships and gained new allies as we were able to provide regular content and were able to bait the Gallente to provide fights whenever we wanted. We had been regularly recruiting and had increasing numbers of new recruits join the cult.
We had achieved all of our goals. We were able to hold onto our territory for three months and we were far more successful in combat than we had predicted — after all, we had only expected to hold territory for a few weeks. We had our next campaign planned for mid January. We were going to deploy to nullsec for a short campaign to learn about nullsec sov fighting for two weeks. However, because we still held territory, we postponed the deployment to the start of February. February came and we somehow still held territory. Full preparations were made for mid February, but at the last minute our client had to cancel.
At this point we had achieved all our goals in learning how to defensively hold faction warfare systems. We wanted to go out with a bang.
Get a big experience and be properly setup for short term null sec deployments.
We had experience in defending when outnumbered 3 to 1. But we did not have any real experience in full scale faction war system sieges. We also were preparing for one of our next goals which was to start to get practice in strategic operation fleets for attacking and defending structures.
To achieve these goals we deployed two Astrahus Citadels. These were privately funded by leadership so that we could easily lose them with no loss to line members. The citadels were there to bait for GalMil to attack us so that we could practice strategic operations fleets and working with allies on that level.
We also wanted a system siege so that our line members could experience it, and start to learn about the skillset it requires. System sieges rely mainly on assets and logistics. It is about having a massive volume of ships to give out for free and a huge number of pilots to fly them.
GalMil could not evict us with anything short of a full siege invasion. We needed to wrap up the campaign as we had learnt what we needed from it and it was time for the next area of study. So we aimed to bait a full Gallente Siege invasion with a propaganda campaign.
Propaganda and identity
Black Shark Cult has its identity tied up in the pursuit of excellence through training. Our Gallente foes on the other hand have thier identity tied up in holding territory, winning, and some degree of roleplay.
We wanted to test out our propaganda apparatus. So we designed a campaign to hit the key areas of the Galmil identity.
We challenged their ability to win, and repeatedly reminding them how embarrassing it is that they could not capture territory from a new player training corp. We challenged their roleplaying identity in which they act as defenders of freedom. We attacked one of thier most prolific roleplayers and accused him of being the opposite of his roleplay character.
We also speculated on the possibly of a complete loss of territory by the Gallente.
Our propaganda campaign achieved its objective. Galmil were finally motivated to bring us a system siege. They deployed two citadels and an estimated 2 to 6 billion ISK worth of ships to fight us.
The final showdown
More than 700 pilots from all major Gallente corporations deployed to fight 100 new players in training. On a day to day basis this worked out to an average of 30 to 55 gal mil pilots fighting 5 to 20 Black Sharks and friends.
The first week involved a preparatory attack on Covryn Iges and Uphallant. GalMil aimed to get the system highly contested in preparation for the weekend assault. We had all 3 systems under 50% at the start of the weekend when the full invasion force deployed. Covryn was the most contested so they focused on that first. We fought hard and held control for the entire weekend from Friday until the end of Sunday. When fighting with between 5 to 20 of us vs up to 55 enemies.
At one point our 20 person Vexor and Exequror fleet killed a 30 person GalMil Vexor and Exequror fleet. With our side losing 3 ships vs. their side losing 15...
This week we were the top Caldari corporation in terms of kills and we traded more than evenly with gal mil despite being outnumbered at least 2 to one and often 4 or 5 to 1.
After this weekend, we went back to normal life and weekly schedules, and a heap of Gallente college students on break kept up around the clock plexing fleets of at least 30 pilots for a week.
We fought and learnt. We practiced our diplomacy. Our pilots learnt the terror of a full system siege invasion, and we made the Gallente recognise that our small training organisation was such a threat that it required 700 pilots, a daily 30 to 55 pilots, a multi billion ISK and 2 week campaign to evict us.
The fallout
Black Shark had been prepared for this invasion since the end of December, but we wanted to test our logistical capacity and the resilience of our line members. Some of our members were surprised, as they had gotten used to winning when out numbered. Some of our members had focused on tactics more than logistics and had deployed a few too many ships to vulnerable stations.
Lessons were learned and our new corp-run logistics wing was able to help out people who had some ships stuck in stations.
All in all Black Shark has shown extreme resilience and is a far stronger organisation now than we were 3 months ago.
So long, farewell and … see you tomorrow for round 2
There are more skill sets to learn, and new areas to explore. We congratulate our Gallente foes and wish them the best. Aideron brought great content. It has been fun challenging ourselves against the rest of the mob.
There are lots of vital skills left for us to study. We will continue to learn and grow. We will continue to choose to undergo hardship. When young soldiers undergo massive hardship, they become stronger and more resilient. The Black Shark Training program involves intentionally submitting ourselves to hardship so that we become stronger and more agile.
If you are interested in self sufficiency and are willing to pay the “Iron Price”, then come join our Spartan training program.
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