Aren’t you supposed to be the hero?
Excellent points as always, Dracvlad, but since you’re living in my head rent-free, I’m pretty sure that you read this before I even typed it up and posted it.
More like I appear to live in your head rent free, at least in your mind.
In any case your content from allying in on these wars is not so much to save their structure but to gain additional potential targets. Your motivation is of course different to us, we actually wanted to save their structure and prevent them from being looted, but most of all we were looking for fleet fights like we had with End of Life. Fleet setups with AG were ruined by the RR changes in hisec.
You found what we did, and you have gained understanding why we don’t do this, which is all good.
Therein lies the difference. For you it’s “we,” for me it’s “I.”
If I had half a dozen people, it would be possible to save structures. But I don’t, and I’m not interested in group PvP anymore, so it’s not a possibility or a consideration.
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Bro, you don’t even do anything 
That’s what we def understand.
Not really. You simply just couldn’t adapt
Yeah, I understood that you are solo and that is your decision, so of course your motivations and aspirations would be different. Still it was a good exercise in that you found what we did in terms of allying in on wars.
There was one event in that we found a perfect target for us, but all seven of the people who had been war decced did not reply to us in terms of accepting us as allies. It was in the end the final blow to these efforts on our side…, but what can you do? I think Githany is going to find this pretty frustrating too.
I should also take the opportunity to point out that we only do wars around structures, be it to remove ganker perches or to assist in defending a structure owned by our friends. Like it or not the structure forces a fight if you have the right target. Of course let’s be clear in giving an example, Blackflag. is not a good target for you or us.
I missed this post , some interesting points made
For a PvP game eve can be pretty frustrating sometimes , I am surprised by the lack of people asking for help compared to the amount that moan about being attacked.
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In truth there are not a lot of people who actually help for people to ask for help from, and that includes my group when we did it, because you have to have the right TZ and day too. But the majority just give up and don’t even reply, real shame.
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Maybe we need some kind of protection coalition. Look for groups that are active and want to survive , pre workout time zones and on line times .
And in the same area, with some pre set defence plan, that could work
That is what we tried to do, however we were just not big enough in terms of numbers, it was a sobering experience for us and a great disappointment for me. Though we did have some successes, and they were fun, deleting large numbers of wars several times.
Their best option is for these people to join some of the larger indy groups that can defend themselves, there are several dotted around, some of which my group knows and has worked with. In reality all these small corps and alliances running indy out of structures will go extinct at this rate, some may leave the game because they cannot do their thing on their own, but the ones with a bit more to them might join those groups or have a relationship that enables them to use their facilities.
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For me, it’s about personal stake or the lack thereof.
When I would get wardecced I would get a lot of ally offers but no communications or messages. I am highly skeptical of random ally offers and it has been just as effective for me to carry on solo against most enemies as it would be for me to hire an ally who is just looking to expand their target selection in highsec for free or fee.
There are local people sometimes who want to help, and these are the people I would like to hire. Granted, these people are probably just going to get themselves shot up and I’m going to lose anyway, but at least the people fighting would be personally invested and probably gain some skill or experience along the way.
This became infeasible when structures were required for wars. People I knew in the local area would not be able to afford to pitch in and help me and did not feel comfortable taking hundreds of millions of isk in hardware from me for free just to be able to field some rag tag kitchen sink fleet in my defense. (Even though I think it would be fun.) I would just decline all offers of assistance out of hand because I do not know those people, and I know they have no reason to fight for me or care what happens to me. I’m not desperate to save myself and I certainly don’t want to pour money on a fire and watch that burn, too when nobody shows up.
What I would do, were I interested in protecting someone like me from wars, would be to establish some kind of ‘first contact’ division who’s job it was to connect with potential targets before they’re under attack. This serves two purposes. 1) It establishes that in case of war, the defender has options, and a reason not to give up, and 2) It allows you to filter exactly who you want to defend by gathering information on these people while there’s time to understand who you’d be fighting for.
We’re talking about industrialists here, so it is not unreasonable for you to ask for industrial support of a sort those industrialists are best able to provide. Advise them to have ships you can use on standby, or form some other kind of treaty that outlines what their and your responsibilities are. Keep your requirements proportional and reasonable to the size of the group and their industrial capacity.
Whatever you decide, whoever falls under your aegis should have some responsibilities and only those who discharge their obligations should receive protection. God helps those who help themselves, and you should probably keep your aspirations at or below that level.
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Excellent post as always.
We did look at a specific area, we were based around Otela before its fall. So we had contacts there and knew who they were and their TZ’s so we knew what we could do. We were also based there. It was of course where the famous incident with my Vagabond occurred that winds Destiny up so much… We did save those structures by the way.
The most disappointing thing for me was those that did not reply when we had done due diligence on their structures and they obviously thought that we were only looking to expand our target selection in hisec, well we were actually looking to take out the war deccer war HQ, so I guess they had a point, hardly helps them if their structure was out of our TZ to defend them.
We used a POS, so we could ally, it also enabled us to control wars when people like Blackflag. war decced us, we just removed the POS and 24 hours later no war and 100m wasted by them. Was hilarious and we did this several times…
We even tried to train people on how to best fit and use their structures. We did find some people that did get stuck in and these people got our respect and our help, so it is not all doom and gloom, but they were few and far between sadly.
There was a few wars where I just could not get enough people committed in the TZ to defend and those did have an effect on me, because I had spoken to the defenders and perhaps got their hopes up but were unable to deliver, I remember one where I turned up anyway even though we decided not to ally in and was a pain in the ass with my Macherial bumping Leshaks around. Felt a bit pointless as I hardly made a dent in their DPS.
If we had more people it could have been fun content.
I could link some of the war HQ’s we took down, to show that it is not hot air. And I should point out that our main TZ is not actually my TZ…
Still Githany and co got 20 individual people in an AG fleet and that is the type of numbers you need, so if that is what they can do then they will be effective.
There needs to be some sort of global alliance…in much the same way as Safety is itself formed of lots of smaller groups under one corporate umbrella. That way, people can remain in their respective corps, yet still be part of Interstellar Rescue or whatever the alliance is called.
I’m not clear on how alliances work…how they are created, etc. I agree with Qia’s comment about ‘first contact’…but I also think any such alliance should target individuals too, just go to any asteroid belt or trading hub and deliberately ask people would they like to join. I’m quite happy to zoom all over Eve doing this. This would introduce not just new people to defend, but new people to do the defending.
I think the reason such thing has not worked before is that it’s never really gotten large enough to reach a self-sustaining critical mass.
Above all…all of this would be fun, and much exploding would ensue ! It really is high time people fought back against gankers within Eve itself, rather than on the forums.
Hire mercs like Blackflag.
I said that for me it was about personal stake. Mercenaries, by definition, have only a professional stake. It’s just business.
You’re not going to get a bunch of random miners and mission-runners to adopt a personal stake in anyone else’s well-being. They usually don’t even care about other people in their own corporations that way, much less people outside of them. These people only log in to grind ISK, and screw everyone and everything else.
During the days when I actively did mercenary work, most of the potential clients I’ve spoken to (who were generic high-sec carebears) expected the work to be done for free, and actually got offended when I started discussing payment terms. “What do you mean we have to pay you? You’re a PvPer, isn’t this what you do? Just the PvP you get should be payment enough! You are lucky I’m even speaking to you right now!”
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The issue about mercs was always that the cost was way above what the low level hisec player could and even should pay. Before cores were introduced you could have three structures for the cost of defending one with mercs. In terms of cost efficiency it was a no brainer… Even now it is not value for ISK, for the medium structures at least.
Then the whole thing needs a ’ you are for us, or you are against us ’ stance. Like any good protection service 
Bear in mind that what one is up against is already a Mafia style protection r̶a̶c̶k̶e̶t̶ service from Safety. Mining ‘permits’, etc. Thus those people are subsidising the gankers, whilst at the same time wanting AG protection. Well…they can’t have it both ways.
Careful, in my experience, one’s personal experience doesn’t matter for Cilla. I look forward for her zipping around systems going belt-to-belt drumming up support with the predetermined result of a unified high sec. Or resulting in a great dose of humility, but I ascribe less odds to that outcome.
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