You Won the Battle! Now to Convince Everybody

Fleets clash! A battle is fought!  A thousand ships or more duke it out in null sec!

This is what you and your alliance live for!  These are things no high sec capsuleer ever sees!  For a time, the fate of empires hang in the balance.

But no battle lasts forever.  At some point the opposing parties disengage.  Fleets dock.  People log off.  Kill boards are checked.

And then EVE News 24 puts up a story about the battle and they either completely get it wrong and imply in some way that your side was not totally victorious, or they fail again to moderate the lying comments of your enemies, who are claiming victory for their own side.  And we all know that any forum open to the public that does not delete a message clearly endorses it.

Isn't it obvious we're winning here?

Or else somebody posts a bogus account of the battle in one of those awful forum threads at Kugutsuman, that wretched hive of scum and villainy, claiming victory for themselves.  There ought to be a law!

Either way, somebody on the internet is wrong and it is up to you to fix it.

Fortunately, I have done the ground work for you.  After reading through various comment and forum threads, I have distilled down how to claim your victory online to 10 easy concepts.

Now you have the tools.  Now you can make sure that random strangers on the internet will not be deceived into thinking you achieved anything less than total victory.  After all, what value is there in winning the battle if you lose the meta game?

1 – Define Victory by Your Own Standards

Did you get more kills but lose the ISK war?  Did the enemy save their tower?  Did you fail to save your own?

Do not worry, the outcome was still a clear victory.  More kills shows superior skill… unless the situation was the reverse, in which case doing more damage in ISK shows how you made the enemy pay.  Of course, sometime neither of these work out for you.  Even then, you were making the enemy react to your moves which clearly shows you were in control of the situation.  And that counts for a lot more than, say, that crappy tower they managed to save… this time!

Make it clear that, from the only right, and true perspective (your own), the whole thing was an indisputable victory and imply that it was all part of the master plan.  Or just come out and say that last bit.  We have a master plan, bitches!  You have the enemy right where you want them!

2 – Complain About the Battle Conditions

If the odds were against you, your enemy obviously lacks fighting ability.  If they hot-dropped super caps on your sub cap fleet, clearly they only want cheap kills and have no interest in a fair fight.  Was the enemy able to re-ship and return to the battle quickly?  Blob tactics require no skill.  No matter what, things were stacked against you.  Your enemy was distinctly without honor, using their momentary advantages against you.  For this they must be despised.

3 – Reveal Your Foe as a Coward

Bring up early and often how your foe won’t ever engage in battle unless they feel they hold a significant tactical advantage.  What sort of messed up cowards insist on a good chance of winning before diving headlong into battle?

4 – Play Down Your Own Advantages

If you are complaining loudly about how the enemy was able to reship and return to the fight, be sure to omit that the battle occurred within your own territory, practically on your own door step.  If the foe came in elite PvP ships like strategic cruisers, call them out.  Just don’t bring up how your Drake fleet out numbered them 3 to 1.

5 – Blame CCP

Titans should not be able to kill sub caps.  Strategic cruisers are too weak.  Drakes need to be nerfed.  Time Dilation clearly benefits your opposition.  Sovereignty is totally screwed up.  Local chat should not show who is in system.  Overview bugs screwed you again.  Plus, people who were at one time associated with your enemy now work at CCP and are obvio0usly conspiring against you! (Otherwise, you know, that stuff would have been fixed ages ago!)

Whatever your particular beef, you must make it clear that it isn’t merely your cowardly enemy, who couldn’t find honor in a dictionary, that is the problem.  The whole freaking game is rigged against you.  People ought to be in awe that you were able to pull off the victory you did, given the circumstances.

6 – Outright Lie

Look, the ends clearly justify the means.  So find a messed up kill board total on eve-kill.net.  Rig one yourself on dog-net.org that omits half your allies.  When faced with indisputable facts, call bullshit and refuse to elaborate.  Be Saddam Hussein at the end of the First Gulf War, stand in the street, fire your gun in the air, and tell everybody how you were totally victorious.

Would I do this if I had lost?

That analogy worked for Steve Jobs, and look how well he did in the end!

But remember, only use the First Gulf War as an template, not the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.  That does not further your interests at all.

...at least not during down time.

Some of you are probably too young to get that joke.

7 – Foretell the Future

Make sure you let everybody know that even if this might seem like a loss, which it clearly was not, any future engagements will clearly and unambiguously show that your alliance owns.

Don’t be afraid to get personal on this one.  Your foes are, after all, cowards and racists scammers who line their pockets with the spoils of their illicit RMT and mining bot operations.  Their existence harms game itself, exploiting, as they do, the very mechanics of EVE to make mockery of the work of CCP.  The time will come when other alliances will see the light of day, join together, and smite this abomination from New Eden.

Don’t worry about going overboard here, nobody ever remembers this sort of thing.

8 – Remain Steadfast

Regardless of what occurred or what twisted “logic” your detractors might bring up, in the grand scheme of things this was clearly a strategic victory for your side.  Brook no dissent.

9 – Claim the Battle Did Not Matter

If your enemy is marshaling his lies against you, you may not be able to get 100% of your audience behind you assertions.  At this point, you may need to change the focus of the argument.  You still did not lose the battle.  Remember item 8.  But your enemies claims are now made meaningless, since their attempts to display themselves in a winning light are shown to be empty boasting.

You didn’t need that tech moon, that titan, that fleet, that system.  They were superfluous to the real strategic objectives of the alliance, a feint, a ruse de guerre,  and anybody who cannot see that is a damn fool.  Remember item 1, you have a master plan and the enemy is dancing to your tune.

10 – Don’t Be This Guy

Poor Zarks.  He lost his titan and then admitted it was his fault!  He obviously needed to invoke items 2, 3, and 5 (and possibly 7 and 8) to support his alliance.  Instead, both he and his alliance lost face in the all important meta game.

Bonus Items – Remember, posting your comments anonymously gives the impression that you are an unbiased external observer, and will add weight to your argument.  Also, be sure to use sock puppets to support your claims if at all possible.  Just make sure you know what that really means before you start.

Lambchop agrees, we're on the road to total victory!

Remember, this isn’t just idle smack talk in local, this is about winning the game!