Duel or Battle

[Panzer]

A question has been troubling my mind for a couple night now. A lot of complaints I got in the recent weeks concerned the use of superior numbers against inferior ones. Such... practise was several times called ganking and generally despised.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but We're all wasting more or less of our time here to Role-play, right?

So... Suppose there's a flight of fleet fighters and all the sudden a pirate jumps out from behind a rock and starts shooting. What should the four fleet pilots do?

option a) The leader shields his men with his ship and calls the pirate out on a duel of honour
orption b) All pilots, following military doctrine engage attempting to eliminate the threat before it causes any harm/damage to anyone.

Suppose we picked option A. The flight leader might be defeated. And then what? The three surviving officers say "Begone now, leave us to our murning"/"Well fought pirate" and ignore the pirate as he buzzes off, heavily damaged. Or maybe they should avaenge their leaer and do a 3:1 vs a damaged pirate, triggering accusations of practising the unholy GANK?
Suppose we picked B. The pirate can hardly make a joust-turn or see who's shooting him without buying a handful of lead/photon/neutron/missle. He's shield-running, cursing under the nose that someone stood in his righteous and justified path of collectiong blue messages, sends a wad of whines at the four pilots and/or writes a colourful and eloquent complaint in some feedback thread.

Well... I think it's bull****. (Oops, I just defiled this holy board with foul language!)

In the end I'm quite confused. Do we RP here or not? Should a military outfit respond to a threat as if it was a military outfit or should we practise de-facto completely outta-roleplay duels? Always even, always fair. Or maybe duels are the desired "RP"? Maybe every time RM and LN or BAF/KNF mett each of their pilots should pick a duel partner from the other side and decide the battle in the course of several, simultaneous 1 on 1 fights? Like in the Middle Ages?

or maybe the bretonians should exploit the KNF's supply weakness, hit their trade lanes and starve them to death in their cockpits? Maybe the LN should just play delay and wait till the already-weakened Rheinland economy collapses completely because of the strain put on it by the prolonging war?

And now Ladies and Gentlemen, your flames. :rolleyes:

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