29 April 2005

BNC and The Great Northern War 2

The lines were pretty much drawn for 6 months plus of warfare, just to recap we had PA vs RKK, Evol, BNC & NORAD, JF, CoD, FU and 2 or 3 other unafiliated corporations.

NORAD's war declaration can be found at http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=84539

PA must have been wondering whether they'd bitten off more than they could chew by aggravating RKK! From one lone corp they thought they could intimidate they were suddenly faced with about 50 corps including Evolution, LOD and BNC, Evolution of course needing no introduction but BNC and LOD being relatively unknown included some of the more capable pvp pilots in the north outside of the PA, RKK and Evolution (when they arrived).

However, in true PA style their arrogance hit new heights with incredible forum smack at the start of the war. In retrospect they were made to eat their words like no other group of players in Eve's history has... thank goodness! They certainly deserved everything coming to them. At this time it was my perception that PA really looked down on just about everyone else in Eve and that they had a really hard time controlling their pilots who it seemed, from the repeated diplomatic incidents they caused, were allowed to run riot with no recourse to the alliance as a whole.

There are all sorts of famous posts by Halseth Durn, Inkz and Eddz from around this time talking about how our little coalition was gonna get mullahed by the PA. In retrospect they are of course highly amusing but at the time I remember PA's arrogance giving slight pause to our intention to attack them.

It looked like a long bloody war was in store.

So BNC mobilised and encouraged as many NORAD as possible to come with us. On day one of the conflict a NORAD fleet of 60-70 converged on torrinos and proceeded to move north into Venal to engage the PA. Sadly over the next week the involvement of the other NORAD corps declined so that to be honest at the end of week one only BNC and half a dozen other assorted pilots (most of whom eventually ended up in BNC) represented NORAD up north in the war. So began the rift that led to BNC leaving NORAD.

It's worth a paragraph or three to talk about NORAD's position and involvement in this war. To begin with BNC were the only NORAD corporation with strong ties to the other protagonists in the GNW with perhaps the exception of Chon who had been involved in the taking of the Fade stations and the RSA. DG and I persuaded the NORAD council that entering the war was the right thing to do, NORAD had a strong isolationist policy up to this point that DG and I tried hard to break, believing strongly that an inward looking NORAD was never going to prosper and succeed. How true that proved when 6-8 months later CA disolved and half of the ex-CA corps moved to the Outer Ring!

After the first week most of BNC totally lost faith in NORAD due to their inability to lay their mining lasers aside and participate in a conflict beyond their borders. I think that we already knew by this time that BNC would be leaving NORAD and spreading it's wings. I am being polite if I say that NORAD, outside of BNC, were totally and utterly inept at fighting a war let alone fighting one away from their home soil. DG and I had to exerpt considerable pressure on the NORAD council to even keep the alliance in the war... that is when we could be bothered to even attend the council meetings, participation seemed fruitless at this time because of the frankly pathetic nature of many other NORAD corps.

So the war moved on past the initial week which saw huge PA blobs of 100-150 pilots defending their territory against smaller coalition forces. PA probably felt rather confident at this time, their blobbing tactics were in the main succeeding and they clearly had a huge response from their members.

BNC quickly slipped into a niche of operations that we repeatedly returned to throughout the war i.e. basing ourselves out of Torrinos and working on keeping Pure Blind clear of enemy shipping. With help from RKK and JF Pure Blind and EC-P8R soon became very hot for PA pilots. Unless PA brought the blob from Venal down EC-P8R was held for long periods by allied forces.

Allied forces soon became known as the Northern Coalition Of Allies, NCA being far more convenient than listing the individul corps/alliances on our side, which led in turn to various hilarious sigs, banners and our own forum.

Coming next.... BNC and The Great Northern War 3 (Empire wars)

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