Disclaimer: This piece is written from the perspective of a Gallente militia line pilot. Inaccuracies or bias are not intentional but a result of the writer’s limited personal experience.
Over the course of the last month, the Gallente-Caldari warzone initially went through a phase that seemed almost like everybody was coming to terms with the events of early spring. I have previously interviewed some members of the Caldari militia forces about their state of mind during that period. Back then they declared quite uniformly that they are dedicated to fighting back. At the same time, the Gallente side appeared pleased with it’s successes and waited for their opponent’s next move.
Following words with actions, the Caldari militia proceeded to reconquer Innia. That system is an important staging point against the Gallente and a strategic lynchpin. It connects the North of Black Rise with the South and it’s a gateway into Placid, one jump from “Fortress Eha” , a major defensive position of the Gallente militia.
In the meantime, Gallente militia forces had set their sights on systems beyond Innia, but they did not grant the Caldari a lasting victory either. Turning back from their march into Northern Black Rise, the Federation forces managed to snatch the system from the Caldari again. Within the same week they also flipped a number of other systems in the vicinity. At the time of me writing this, the attack on the North has come to a temporary halt after a bitter back-and-forth struggle for Kehjari. For now, the Caldari hold the North, but Pavanakka, Aivonen, Akidagi and Rakapas are in Gallente hands. The frontline has been consolidated but a central constellation of Black Rise is now completely controlled by the Federation militia.
One thing that the Caldari currently manage much better than their opponents is plexing and warzone tier management. The PVP centric attitude of many Gallente militia corporations seems almost like a stumbling block when it comes to that. Rather than plexing a lot themselves, they would hunt and kill the Caldari who do it. Instead of pooling loyalty points for upgrades they seem more inclined to spend them on faction items for personal consumption or to sell them as a means to keep PVP financed.
For that last purpose, a lower tier is actually beneficial in a way. On higher tiers, more loyalty points are received for clearing a plex. That leads to a higher supply of faction items on the market. Assuming that demand remains equal, there would be downward pressure on prices. That effect becomes particularly pronounced when high LP rewards begin to attract farmers. The whole purpose of farmers is to collect as much LP as possible with the least risk. To achieve that, they will gravitate towards the factions which have higher tier levels and more systems under their control.
At this point, the Gallente faction militia actually does control more systems, so the decision to stay at a lower tier could also be a strategic one that is designed to keep farmers out.
Despite a generally strong fighting spirit, the Caldari militia is not quite as effective in actually capitalizing on the systems that plexers make vulnerable. The Gallente often deploy structure shooting fleets as soon as a system has been plexed to vulnerability. This way they make sure systems are changing sides quickly. That does not seem to happen with the same urgency on the Caldari side.
There appears to be another PVP related factor that offers a possible explanation for the lower plexing performance of the Gallente militia. Some major corporations are now becoming more focused on advanced fleet combat. They are beginning to grow out of the frigate PVP and want to do bigger stuff. Such fleets are not suitable for plexing because of the ship restrictions in the faction warfare sites.
The regularly spawning plexes start with novice sites which only allow T1 frigates. The next step are small plexes which allow ships up to T2 destroyers. Finally there are medium plexes with T2 cruisers as the upper ship restriction limit. With the arrival of Kronos, the elusive large plexes will spawn more regularly. Those sites allow all kinds of ships and that might change the face of Faction Warfare PVP quite significantly.
So far, with a rather comfortable amount of systems controlled, the way was open for those among the Gallente militia who would like to broaden their PVP horizons. There are enough powerful pirate and outlaw groups which haunt Placid and Black Rise. The standard militia fleet has little chance of engaging those groups successfully, but with fleets of more advanced ships that does become a possibility. Several Gallente militia organizations are now starting to include Black Ops drops and HAC fleets with T2 logi into their repertoire.
There is no shortage of more advanced fights either. It has recently become a regular occurrence to see nullsec alliances and their affiliates roam around in lowsec. Sometimes they even end up in major battles like the recent one in Daras. Escalations have been a dodgy proposition for some time because Sniggwaffe lived in Black Rise. Taking a fight against them, or escalating fights to capitals, almost inevitably resulted in Pandemic Legion hotdrops which turned potentially interesting fleet battles into rather predictable one-sided affairs. Now they have moved to the South together with their PL parent alliance and capital ship escalations could become an option again.
Last but not least, the Kronos expansion brings new opportunities to lowsec in the form of ship skins, Guristas Data and Mordus Legion blueprints. It is very likely that the prospect of obtaining those will attract fortune hunters of all kinds. The next weeks and months will tell how the Gallente-Caldari warzone develops under those new conditions.
