As I've said with the spreadsheet, I have no horse in this war. My corp has remained neutral and we have no interest in joining in. But I do love to think about such things, and I've been saying similar since the start internally with my corp, though I was willing to give Synde the benefit of the doubt early on.
I posted this under the now deleted "Why Synde could never have won this war" thread and figured - eh. fuck it. I'm already in for a penny with the spreadsheets, why not go for the pound? Here is my take. I don't claim to have inside knowledge, this is just what I saw from outside and what I deduced as the war evolved.
But I quickly called out several things to my corp mates the day this war kicked off:
Normally, Wormhole conflicts have no concept of Strategic Depth. In K-space you can't just strike right at the heart of the enemy. Even if you do take their "Capital" they just relocate to the next keepstar over and you still have a war. You have to march through system by system, gate by gate, taking territory. This is Strategic Depth, it allows null corps caught unaware in a fight enough time to prepare, even as they are loosing systems. It gives them enough time to properly organize a response rather than reacting off the cuff.
Normally, in J-Space this isn't a thing. You can always just go for the enemies home hole, and if you do, the fact of them having other farm holes doesn't mean the same thing - its not just a few always-there-jump-gates into the besieged system - its a hope and a prayer to Bob that you can rage roll and keep said hole open to infill, and even then its not a constant stream - it caps out.
However, from Hawks side... they had strategic depth. Synde wanted to destroy the farm empire so they went after the farms. While Hawks may not have wanted to give up those farms, they none the less represented strategic depth. Even though they were loosing them left and right, and even if that was really bringing down moral internally (I don't know if it was or wasn't, but you can conceptualize) they still had lots of time. So much time. (And reportedly, there was an undercurrent of 'Fuck it, were going to loose it all, we'll go full guerilla style and camp your holes for months" even if they did loose everything in J-space)
The early leaked Synde meetings call for at least another 2 weeks of structure bashes, and probably a month or more to finish off the farms before ultimately ending the war. That is a LOT of time for a group as old as Hawks, with as many connections and external knowledge as their venerable members have, to find allies. To figure out other plans. To get eve winners to resub. That's exactly what happened. After the major core of that group of allies was built, all it took was one really good win for Hawks where Synde fed and the momentum immediately started to shift.
Synde had one selection of targets, though a vast amount of them. They scatter shotgunned their way through C6 space, rage rolling and bashing, rage rolling and bashing.
But they were made up of many different members and many different situations. Not all of them could handle hawks at their full - and lets be clear here... one of the few things that a lot of older hawks members find enjoyable is evictions. And they are very good at it. They have lots of practice with members in external sub groups such as Ugandan Death Squad - Knowledgeable and experienced, and already well practiced at the minutia of evictions - all the stuff that happens outside the hole - logistics, diplo, and more. Doing that once every so often? Sure no problem. Doing it day in and day out - even if your not using hole control - organizing fleets to hit timers and to keep people working together ... that takes a toll. And if you are not practiced in it, and if you don't have a good system already in place for handling it, it will quickly wear out even the most enthusiastic.
Synde had half a dozen corporations to coordinate, dozens of ops daily. With the initial wave of station refs I now know to be just rage rolling and hitting a timer on everything they see, Synde really dropped the ball here - they expected this strategy - spray and pray - to continue to work for them throughout the war and had no plans in place it seems for more coordinated defense and strikes. They werent ready to handle the logistical challenge, the long term moral challenge, or the strategic challenge when targets start to dry up and spray and pray is no longer a valid option for killing farms.
As soon as the war started I called it to my corp mates - Hawks is going to real on the backfoot for a few days, maybe a week or two, then start hitting the little guys. Anyone who is not Synde or Turbo or Hole Control is first on the target list. They're going to be evicted one by one, and the absolute fear and terror of getting their home evicted is going to drive them out of the war one by one until only the big guys are left.
And this is basically what happened. Atrax got evicted. Sugar got evicted. (Yes, there was more to it than just the eviction here but if anything that just added strength to the fear campaign strategy). Seriously Suspicious - a long time close (minor) ally of Synde switched sides.
If you look at zkill over the past few weeks, Atrax - who initially held on strong after their eviction - isn't seen. Sugar isn't seen (no surprise there). Disturbing Silence isn't seen. Forsaken Few - which at the start of the war were one of the more prolific attackers and quite often giving to hawks fleets as good as they took - barely makes an appearance. Hole Control takes long breaks and doesn't show up in any numbers. Turbo took major hits early on and practically disappeared from the war after the first big loss, and only is now showing back up on BRs in the last few weeks - and mainly only because they were the current target.
Any other smaller members just flat out refuse to be involved: and if you believe the rumor mill, many approached hawks leadership asking for how they can get out of this war without getting obliterated.
This was the only viable strategic path for Hawks to take - they cant fight a defensive war when the enemy can literally strike anywhere and there is 0 way to predict it because its at the randomness of Bob. Their only choice was to immediately go on the offensive and run a campaign of terror that would break up the coalition. Which is basically exactly what they did.
Anyone who has any understanding of Eve understands that wars are not won by attrition. Isk is plentiful, and people have wallets they are more than willing to burn to bankroll the side they feel most strongly about.
What wins wars in Eve is, and always has been, morale. If your alliance members loose the will to fight, they stop responding to pings. they stop logging in. They eventually leave your corp and then you have nobody to fight the war.
Blowing up stations doesn't win you a war. Isk destroyed doesn't win you a war (though it is an often used metric to see who is "winning" because it often correlates heavy to morale - loose more isk, morale falls)
Thing is... Synde made this every early on a war of survival for hawks. It wasn't just an assault on Hawks way of playing the game. It wasn't just an assault on Hawks "life style". It was an assault on Hawks existence.
And to be fair here, this is how most significant Wormhole conflicts go. Just take the recent eviction of the nazi sympathizers group a few days ago. When wormholers go to war, really truly take up the banner and not just evict for fun/profit, they do so to eradicate.
Its just most of the time, they do so against someone who is much smaller and much hated by the attacking force.
Hawks isn't small. And while sure a lot of j-space doesn't like the imbalance of power that Hawks represents... they don't *hate* hawks. Oh I'm quite certain there are a lot of people who personally despise hawks, but you'd be hard pressed to find a universal hatred like there is for the eviction of these hate groups or of nullsecers.
Synde made several strategic blunders right at the beginning of the war, and several assumptions that turned out to be incorrect and probably directly contributed to their defeat.
Synde leaned way to heavily on the thought that Hawks was already old and decrepit. That they were already falling apart at the seems, and that they would basically just fold as their morale crumbled and members just said "Fuck it"
Synde said and thought they had all of J-space on their side. They thought their casus belli would be enough to put all of J-Space against Hawks. They thought Hawks wouldn't be able to respond and anytime they did, that their Coalition would have many times the numbers necessary to blob them.
In reality, plenty of people still had good relations with Hawks. In reality plenty of Hawks were just bored and needed an excuse to get back into the game. In reality, Hawks as an entity outside of any game was and is as strong as ever.
What could they have done differently?
Yeah.
I'm one prolific bastard who writes too much.