EVE Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Once battle was joined and Goonswarm was knee deep into Esoteria, things began to fly apart at the seams at the strategic level. Strategy in EVE is a hard concept to grasp, given the many nuances and irrationalities of sov warfare. However, with an engaged directorate and a clear goal for a war, a consensus can develop which protects an invasion from the more obvious blunders. Having neither of these, Goonswarm wallowed about making newbie alliance mistakes. For example, the hardest target for an alliance to attack is an enemy outpost (as opposed to a R64 moon, a bridge tower or a CSAA tower). Goonswarm attacked SysK with their allies Zenith Affinity, a younger and less numerous alliance. However, rather than sending the main force against the hardest target, Goonswarm deployed against a bridge system and Zenith Affinity attacked an outpost. Not wise! Then we deployed the wrong sort of tower to try to seize the bridge system - 'deathstars' rather than 'dickstars', in nullsec parlance. Our previous errors in planning blossomed into errors in practice.

In addition, we had screwed up the diplomatic side of war. When you think about invading a target and you run the idea past your allies and friends and they respond with crushing disinterest, that needs to be carefully weighted. The reaction of our war-buddies and allies to the Esoteria adventure was a resounding 'meh'. We went through with it anyway, and found ourselves fighting nearly alone, save for Zenith Affinity. By contrast, SysK had friends close at hand geographically and motivated emotionally. Goonswarm's allies had nothing to gain from attacking SysK (just like Goonswarm had nothing to gain) while SysK and their allies were fighting to protect a near and dear friend. This little miscalculation saw the normally blobtastic Swarm outnumbered 700:100 at one point. Yikes. If you're going to invade somewhere, make sure you consider the diplomatic situation more carefully than we did.

Of particular embarrassment to me, the espionage angle of the invasion was completely neglected. Because SysK was no real strategic threat to Goonswarm, we had practically no intelligence on them, and no GIA agents deployed to their alliance. We went to war blind anyway, and my network hadn't done any real preparation - again, the fault of director disengagement, but a special black mark for me.

That is quite a laundry list. Within about five days, the invasion of Esoteria was faltering, SysK's allies were energized and engaged, and we were the butt of even more jokes than usual. Even though Goonswarm is not an 'Elite' alliance - we readily admit we're terrible at the game - this was bad, even for us. However, amidst all of the idiocy, we did manage to do one thing right - we acknowledged that the situation was unsalvageable and severed.

When faced with trying to belatedly sell the war in Esoteria, we half-ironically settled on a Vietnam gimmick. The problem with so many mishandled invasions is that they end up quagmiring, like a real-life Vietnam or Afghanistan. Having made an obvious series of blunders, invading forces will most of the time double down, throwing more pilots and towers into a war which, viewed clearly, has already failed. Alliance leaders are politicians, even in a spaceship game; losing a war is hard, but admitting defeat is even worse.

The second most common alternative to doubling down is lying furiously while trying to escape with dignity, but this tends to result in a public relations disaster. So many invasions have failed in EVE over the years that all but the most sycophantic of observers can see when an attacker has embarrassed themselves. In 2008, BoB loudly proclaimed that their failed MAX campaign against the Northern Coalition wasn't actually a disaster. After suffering a series of losses, they abruptly moved to the other side of the galaxy and began attacking Goonswarm. 'Attacking elsewhere' fooled no one; they were mocked unceasingly for months.

The hardest choice is to cut one's losses, opting for a quick and unsubtle severance of the attack. This is, to our credit, what Goonswarm did in Esoteria. By not dragging out the war and admitting defeat, an item of daily news and drama dropped off the playerbase's radar in record time; one of the big problems with doubling down on a failing invasion is that it drags out the 'news cycle' for the chattering classes to giggle over. From messy invasion to abrupt withdrawal, the SysK/GS war was in the spotlight for less than a week, and quickly overwhelmed by more interesting stories, such as CVA's disbanding due to a hacker and IT Alliance's formation and well-publicized assault on Pandemic Legion (which is going about as well as these things typically do).

The essence of wisdom is learning from the mistakes of others; perhaps you can profit from our errors. Good luck with your next invasion, and try not to repeat these common mistakes - or let your leaders get away with lying to you about them.