Cascading Blood in Curse

Entry: seven hundred ninety-one.

Curse is tearing Cascade Imminent apart.

Some weeks ago, Cascade deployed to Curse in order to aid Against All Authorities in getting rid of Red Alliance. Shortly after, when it became clear that Pandemic Legion was essentially going to attack us at every opportunity, combined with the abysmal job scouts were doing, leadership called for a temporary halt on our objective. As we were and are still deployed, ISK generating activities have largely been frowned upon. So the alliance has been attempting to entertain itself with roams.

Delve was a very forgiving place for us: blobs, blobs, and more blobs were the typical fare. Everyone that was down there was essentially a sov holder, with a few hundred pilots backing each at the minimum. As the saying goes, there's safety in numbers, and when it's numbers versus numbers, many fights devolve to numbers. Curse, however, is very different from Delve, and the quality of the alliance in terms of fighting ability is clear. If you take a look at the alliance killboards, an ocean of red assaults your vision. How did this happen? Why does this continue to happen?

I've been told this, and realized the truth of it even before, although I had not yet realized it consciously at the time: Curse is small gang heaven, and Cascade is not suited to it. The actual statement was "larger alliances get picked apart", but it amounts to the same thing.

This goes back to my previous entry about knuckle-draggers. The majority of alliance stays logged off or spins ships except for CTAs. Why? Because they have no practical combat skill and no real desire to attain it. Most of those that are dying are trying to attain this skill, but are still stuck in the blob paradigm, where for argument's sake let's define a blob at twenty plus. To top that off, fleets not lead by an official alliance FC usually have hour long formups or don't get off the ground at all. If such a fleet does get off of a station undock, many pilots are inexperienced enough to actually think for themselves in a fight. Thus the sea of red.

And I'll admit, I'm not a fantastic combat pilot. Aside from not having links or drugs or the typical Vagabond, I'm still learning. I feel pretty safe in saying that I'm a step or two ahead of most of the alliance in terms of solo and small gang warfare, but I still pale when it comes to other alliances in the area who have been doing this for a while, such as Gorgon Empire pilots, Darkside pilots, and yes, even the occasional Pandemic Legion pilot I see rolling through.

I will also admit, that my corporation, while combat-focused, has quite a ways to go in terms of overall combat ability. While we have more pilots trying to learn small gang warfare than other corporations, we are still new to it.
 
Personally, I think an extended stay in Curse would do wonders for the corporation and the alliance, in that order. We have numbers, and we do reasonably decent in larger engagements. The old criticism holds true here, however: as of right now, this sov holder can only blob. Staying in Curse will force us to learn small gang warfare, or stay docked for our duration here. People would rather get blown up than be bored however, so we'll be learning the hard way.
 
So, the real question is this: how long will we be here, and how much will we be able to learn?
 
Computer: terminate recording.