Wardec redux, or how it's gone

I predict that one of these days, CCP will allow us to paint our corporate logos onto the sides of our ships.  Not only that, CCP will also allow for some variations to the corporate logos.  When that day comes, I am changing our logo to a series of concentric rings. 

I engage in PVP, or rather, I have PVP engaged upon me.  In our corp, we fly wormhole space, lowsec and highsec.  We have lost industrial ships with too much loot.  We have been caught up in a wardec that our previous alliance set to mutual.

I have no significant or serious objection to someone shooting at us in Eve.  Its a spaceship shooting game, with a relatively strong industrial sub-game.  That does not mean that I intend to make it easy for someone to shoot us.  In fact we go to some lengths to reduce the incidence of anyone shooting our ships.

Red Frog are great for getting wormhole goods to market.  We can get our goods to highsec and create contracts.  We do not know of any hauling corporation that will haul into our wormhole space safely on 12 hours notice.  For that, we need our own haulers.


While we are primarily a wormhole corporation, we still have highsec pilots.  These pilots haul into and out of out of the wormhole, and engage in some highsec manufacture, station trading and hauling on the side. We get our thrills inside the wormhole; we don't need them in highsec too.

So, the wardec was a nuisance.  When we broke with the alliance (on good terms), we were apparently stuck in a mutual wardec. We were sad pilots; but resolved to fix the problem.

The first order of the day was to establish one or more pilots with +7 raw faction standing to allow for highsec POS.  Our highsec pilots only travel into the wormhole every few weeks, and some of our highsec pilots happen to have high research skills.

The second one was to set up a new corporation for our highsec pilots.  There is some loyalty between pilots; we know each other and know that there is not going to be an arbitrary awoxing because that is what the players do.  We also have a one player per division rule (unlimited pilots) to somewhat enforce this.  We have little loyalty to a specific corporation name.

The final order of the day was to chat to more experienced but friendly players. 

Veteran : "Why are you making a new corp?"
Foo : "Because we can't get out of the mutual wardec at a price we are willing to pay."

Veteran : "You can drop the mutual part any time."
Foo : "We tried, you can't.  We went into the war itself and tried to click on everything; nothing worked. "

Veteran : "Yes you can, CCP made it so no-one would be locked into mutual wars"
Foo : "Huh?"

I don't have a screenshot, but on the Corporation -> Wars -> 'Our Wars' tab, on the right hand side of the screen, there was a flag stating that the war was mutual.  All I needed to do was click on this and confirm a dialogue box to unset the 'mutual' section of the war.

One week later, and the aggressor corporation saw no value in paying for a war where there had been zero conflict for months.  The war expired.

I simply had missed the button to unset the war away from mutual.  I seem to be very good at facepalming.

How (not) to ditch a mutual wardec

TL: DR. When your corp leaves an alliance with a mutual wardec, you not only take the wardec, it remains mutual.

We are a wormhole corp.  We do PI even with our highsec pilots.  You can reset your planets from highsec. Why that works is beyond me, as you can't refresh research jobs from outside the wormhole system, but I am not complaining.  The pilots come back to the wormhole every week or two to deliver goods to the POS and maybe even take some goods to and from highsec markets.
Our pure wormhole pilots simply treat every unknown ship as hostile, and quite a few of the known ships too.  DScan and mild paranoia are bred into your nature and you slowly forget that local ever existed.  Even those of us with highsec pilots in our accounts slip into this role very easily.  War declarations are meaningless for some of us.

Our part time wormhole pilots however find war declarations somewhat more painful.  Hauling pilots like to fly AFK with the knowledge that Concord will eventually come to the rescue.  Mission pilots like to fit for PVE and not PVP.  Wardecs mean that highsec becomes troublesome.

We don't mind being shot at, but we want there to be a cost for shooting at us, at least in highsec.  We also don't like staying in stations.

Our alliance got caught up in a mutual wardec, with our alliance as the defender. To be honest, without a lot of shooting on either side.  But when you are travelling 30 jumps to get home, there is a strong temptation to go AFK, and regardless you don't pay full attention for the entire trip.

After discussing it within corp and up the chain with the alliance leadership, we decided it was time we try to shake the wardec.  Research said that if we break out of the alliance, we would end up as the aggressor in a brand new war.  This war would last a week by default and then we could let it expire.  Nothing would prevent our 'nemesis' from re-declaring war, but at least then they would be paying for the privilege of shooting us.

No organisation wants to lose members.  As a corp, I don't want to lose those highsec pilots.  That applies to our alliance as well.  We will perform all the social graces to ease the sting, but I can't believe our alliance likes see us wanting to leave.

After one last pang of concern I break us out of the alliance.  We have the acceptance of the alliance.  Bless it.  That wardec is not only still there, but it is still mutual.  We are still the defender!

Time for plan (B).