Thirteen Public Enemy [LICMY] Ventures killed an Orca belonging to Exaile Belkar of Tau Ceti Federation [TCF] in Gelfiven (0.6, Molden Heath) at 22:28 on May 24. The action was sanctioned by a war declaration between LICMY and TCF that started on the 11th and ended today.
The Ventures were fitted with warp scrambler IIs and loaded with Hobgoblin IIs—obviously prepared for battle. The Orca had mining links, a tractor beam, a survey scanner, three empty mid slots, and nanofibre internal structures—that’s less than no tank. No support came to help the Orca. The Venture fleet incurred no losses.
It’s not clear why LICMY decided on a Venture fleet. TMC has sent out requests for comment to all pilots involved and will update when they respond, but for now we can only guess as to their intentions. Maybe they realized that a Venture fleet killing an Orca would be comedic gold, or maybe it’s because they have a solid grasp of Sun Tzu’s seminal treatise on military strategy, The Art of War.
Lessons
Let’s look at how this engagement demonstrated some of the lessons that The Art of War has taught to generations of strategists and men of industry around the world for over two thousand years.
“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.” —Sun Tzu, The Art of War
In this scenario, the LICMY had the strength of greater numbers, more guns, and better preparation for battle. They concealed this by being in Ventures, which are industrials and thus present a weaker profile.
“To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy.” —Sun Tzu, The Art of War
This group was hunting an industrial, so they first became industrials, and then they knew their enemy, and knowing is half the battle. Pretty straight-forward.
“The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.” —Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Really it doesn’t matter much what the attackers brought, the Orca was providing the opportunity for defeat by traveling in a negative-tank fit while in an alliance that was under war dec.
“Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy.“—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
If you look at the history of this war, it’s pretty clear that TCF’s strategy was to not fight back and die a lot, acting like they don’t care. LICMY is attacking that strategy by attacking them, using ridiculous ships to hit them right in the morale until they can’t ignore it any more.
Update: Morgan La Faye of LICMY contacted TMC after publishing to share their side of the story.
First, the reason for our venture fleet was to show that high sec pvp is not always in need of shiny t3 cruisers, neutral boosters and suspect logistics. Good content can be delivered even in the smallest ships. So we decided to form up a small gang of battleventures.
Our fleet was intended to survive combat against much bigger targets, so we not only fitted them with scramblers and guns, we also brought some ventures with ecm, sensor dampenings and even logistics. Each member of the fleet had his own purpose and role.
We were roaming around for about an hour when one of our scouts called out for an mining operation of Tau Ceti Federation, including an hauling Orca side on side with the mining barges. Irritated by the fact that the pilot of a vexor we shot minutes before didn’t warned his corpmates we made best speed to the mining system of Les Scorpions du Desert.
Our dedicated fast warp and fast tackle venture immediately hit the belt and engaged the orca.
After our fleet dropped on the target we immediately primaried the hostile drones and our logistics locked on our fast tackle.
The following results of the fight you allready reported well from the killmail.
After we successfully destroyed the orcas hull we remained in postion waiting for all the members of Tau Ceti Federation which were docked in system to take their revenge, but our prayings for a fight weren’t answered so we decided to head back to our batcave.
This article originally appeared on TheMittani.com, written by Ramon Rakow.
