Battlement coalition in August

In the middle of August, an unprecedented event happened: a coalition formed, not to cooperate in taking systems and build a renter empire, but for the most noble purpose: to cleanse the Evil Goons and their minions from New Eden.

I immediately checked the July killboard data of the forming alliances and found that they did 248B damage to CFC and suffered 115B from them. Now it's time to check their first month which isn't even a full month. I received the CFC+Battlement killboard data. As always, the kills are de-whored, so if you did 1% damage to a 100B titan, you get 1B damage booked and not 100B. Above all, like you could see in the August CFC loss report, they became the #1 killer of the minions of Evil:

As I only cared about the damage CFC and Battlement caused to each other, all third parties are ignored. Let's check the data from the CFC side first: Whoa! The CFC losses from Battlement almost doubled since July. That's a good start. The only surprising result is that GSF did pretty good defending their space. The table is sorted by activity and they are followed by the usual bads: FCON, SMA and TNT. On the other hand the smaller alliances did very good, resulting in a not so bad (by CFC standards) 45% ISK ratio.

Now let's look at the same from the side of Battlement. I cut the table into half, let's see the 7 alliances with the highest activity (not ISK ratio): It's pretty good with 57% ISK ratio and very high activity numbers. While there is clearly room for improvement, it's a great start. CFC is already in trouble as Battlement became their biggest killer among coalitions and it will just get better. VFK by Spring!

This on the other hand is a shame. The main problem isn't the ISK ratio which can only be compared to renters and NPC corps, but the horribly low activity. Unlike Intrepid Crossing, which is at least trying, these alliances are either way too small to be viable or they are just a bunch of terribads who got into the coalition only to be left alone by MoA/Tri/Mortuus while farming Mordu's Legion loyalty points. They serve as nothing but embarrassment for their blues and goldmine for the Goon propaganda site. Luckily one of them already collapsed and one is kicked.

One has to understand a crucial difference between Sov-holders and non-Sov holders:

• A Sov-holder can't avoid a fight without losing Sov. As numbers matter, even if a pilot has low attendance and he is very bad, he can press F1 in a doctrine ship and contribute to the victory. If you kick him, worst case he presses F1 in the enemy fleet. So Sov holders can use, therefore should keep every warm body and kick only destructive elements.
• A non-Sov-holder can avoid fights when outnumbered by simply docking up without losing anything. On the other hand a bad pilot in their roster ruins their killboard and they measure their performance by ISK ratios. Kicking him solves not only that but has one more beneficial effect: he'll be just another target and can be farmed (he is bad). So non-Sov holders should keep their rosters tight and the bar of entry/stay high.

So I'd strongly suggest to kick the rest of underperformers from the coalition too, maybe after absorbing the (somewhat) useful corps into other alliances. Their bad performance isn't just temporary, they were bad in July too.

Finally, here is the fleet size analysis, showing the ISK ratio of Battlement Coalition against CFC in different sizes of the bigger fleet: The result is the same as I've found in the overall CFC killboard: in small gang CFC is badly beaten, in large fleet they win. This should be kept in mind when fleets are formed. Unfortunately much activity (% numbers on chart) was done in the large fleet segment.


PS: Read this very good proof that there is no player speculation (buying up for later sale) in PLEX.