How after are pilots in large empire space structure fights given new ships to throw themselves into the fight once more? Replacing a small number of lost ships to continue to add DPS on the enemy makes sense. But I imagine if you got to the point where 3/4 of your pilots lost their first ship and are on a replacement, it probably means you are severely outgunned and chucking yourselves back into the fray isn’t going to help much since they can just blow all of you up again. I guess maybe in a wormhole it can make a difference if one side just couldn’t bring enough mass into a wormhole. But in empire space, both sides can replace lost hulls. I’d imagine the side that lost most of their initial ships is the one that would lose. Or maybe I’m wrong.
I’m having some trouble finding the question here.
Also, what’s the context?
What win and loss conditions are you considering? I would say the side that would lose is the side that cannot accomplish their goal. That does not necessarily have to be the side that lost most of their initial ships.
Even if one side loses all of their initial ships, if they went out to defend a structure, came back with a second fleet and saved the structure, that would be considered a ‘win’ to them, don’t you think?
But there are other win conditions:
- did you destroy more ISK than you lost?
- did you show the other side that you can and are willing to put up a fight, even if outnumbered and outgunned?
- did you have fun?
- any other goal you can think of
Yes, just chucking yourself into the fray with replacement ships probably won’t get any different result than the first engagement if you keep engaging the same fleet with the same ships, so if you lost the majority of your fleet already, perhaps change your strategy?
On the other hand, if it’s a defensive battle and you can simply undock and lose more ships while taking some enemy ships with you, you have the benefit that it takes you less time to reship than it takes the enemy fleet, who probably stage somewhere much further away.
Hmmm… I guess I forgot to consider what’s a victory condition! I usually just take our client’s word for it when he tells his corpmates if we won or lost. Then since we were hired for a job, if the client won, we won.
I agree that would probably be a win. However, if they lost all their initial ships before the attackers, doesn’t that probably mean being outgunned so much they aren’t inflicting a lot of losses on the other side? In empire space, it’s not hard for both sides to be able to replace ships. the attackers could have brought stuff to an NPC station ahead of time and the defenders could have stuff stocked nearby.
In null or wormholes, I can think of using replacement ships to turn a losing battle into a winning one since I can think of a scenario where one side has easier access to hulls.
In empire space, both sides have access to this, so I assume the side that loses the initial clash will also be at a sereve disadvantage since replacements isn’t something unique to their side, but it is symmetrical. And if a factor is symmetrical, then I don’t seeing it help the side that was losing.
That’s kind of what I was thinking.
So that’s the other side of the coin I didn’t see.
Fights in EVE are rarely symmetrical.
Number of players on each side, number of accounts on each side, type of ships, value of ships, skill level of pilots… even if one side loses much more ships at the start of the battle than the other side, depending on the cost of the ships and the amount of players present, the side with a lower number of lost ships might still have lost more ISK and/or a larger part of their fighting force.
I don’t know what your relation with your ‘client’ is, but if your victory depends on whether they think the battle was won or lost, I’d say it’s a good idea to both have an agreement over what the win condition for a fight is going to be.
People in EVE can and will spin battles into wins or losses all the time. One side might claim victory because they accomplished their objective of destroying a structure, while the other side proclaims victory for killing far more ISK value.
If you are expecting any payout from your client based on a win, you better make sure you both know what the win condition is, in advance.
I know fights are rarely symetrical.
However, my thinking was replacements would be a symmetrical factor if both sides are capable of stashing hulls in the area. So if one side lost a lot of ships and the other side a little, a second round is probably going to go the same way.
People plan to lose ships in battle, and have replacements on hand. As soon as one ship gets destroyed, the pilot will likely self-destruct (some fleets have smartbombers in the back of the snake for this purpose as well as drone/missile/bomb firewalling) and respawn at staging, where they hop in another ship, bridge or warp to the fight, and warp to the FC to rejoin the line. Capital pilots are sometimes the same way, especially in defensive fights. If killing a ship only temporarily removes it from a fight, the other side is going to have a much much harder time winning an objective.
it seems to me that you don’t really know what you are talking about
most often, the staging for one side (usually the offender) is less close to the system where the fight is than for the other side. So no, ship replacement is NOT a symetrical factor.
Hey CCP even introduced the clone bay thing in supers to allow for pilots who die to reship directly in system, because reshipping can actually be a problem.
Also take into account things like cyno jamming or not, reinforced jump bridges or not, hostiles camping the way to come back to the battlefield, …
So no, reshipping is not symetrical at all
If you’re interested in this PVP tactics stuff you can just join an active PVP group and get a proper taste of it yourself
Here’s something to think about.
If there is an objective like a structure timer, and you are the defender, you might lose (these numbers are completely made up) 25% of your ships to kill an attacker’s 10%. If they can’t reship quickly, you replenish your numbers faster to make up that 25% faster than they can make up the 10% missing in their fleet. That can then sometimes be enough of a factor in the second go-around to make losses even – 25% and 25%.
Of course, in these sorts of multi-battle engagements, there is always the clock to race against (the structure timer). So at the end of the day, they can still “achieve the objective” on the structure (triggering the next timer), and have brought more dudes than the defender, and still have more losses than the defender – because of (not in spite of) the defender’s ability to quickly re-ship.
I know fights are rarely symetrical.
However, my thinking was replacements would be a symmetrical factor if both sides are capable of stashing hulls in the area. So if one side lost a lot of ships and the other side a little, a second round is probably going to go the same way.
An important lesson that I learned the hard way: Prepare.
Never underestimate how lazy your opponent can be. Close fights will be won by those who spent more time preparing. I once lost a winnable war because I didn’t ensure that my pilots had at least two to three replacement ships in reserve.
Oof. So you won the initial engagement and then when they came ready to chuck back into the fray, you didn’t have the hulls to do a repeat?
Thanks for your story. A lot of people like to gloss over their failures.
I know I’ve lost some small-scale fights because of reasons I’d rather forget.
I think @Captain_Phil meant that a single battle turned the tide in a war, and they lost (even with superior numbers/positioning, I presume) because when one of their ships died, they couldn’t immediately undock a new one and continue fighting as if nothing had happened. Or they could do that, but only once or twice instead of three+ times.
If you look up the corp Drunken Clowns you’ll find in the 2014 war history Drunken Clowns vs. That Random Burger Lounge (we initiated the war).
Based on the killmails, the first day of the war it was about equal, with both sides fielding 4-5 ships. We claimed three out of the first four kills, but we then lost the next three. I distinctly remember we couldn’t continue the fight because we didn’t have ships in reserve.
This translated into them being able to control the field while destroying our POCOs.
Even if we were prepared, they may have come back in force and overwhelmed us (there’s always a bigger fish). But it was eye-opening to see the impact just a few ships in reserve can make.
Don’t forget about the mental aspect of the game: You may only have ten ships in reserve; your opponent doesn’t know that. For all they know, you have a hundred.
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