Longpost: What happened in H-W?

When posting about this war I've deliberately maintained a facts-only style. I'm involved in the war and so obviously have bias, but I recognise that and I don't do chestbeating, trolling or propaganda. In the effort to remove biased language though I've also thrown away content and things I want to write about, and since this is a personal journal instead of a newspaper that stops now. Today we're going to talk about the attack on h-w and why and how it failed. Take it all with a grain of salt, of course; I'm a just grunt and most of what know about the strategic situation is guesswork based on what I see in the trenches.

First off, it was a good plan. It's what I would have done -- really true, although possibly not the best endorsement. I've worried about what would happen if the hostiles attacked h-w and wondered what was preventing it, but I got complacent anyway; I never expected them to put 800 people in staging pos and try to lock down the system 23/7; when it comes to attacking in the most effective way, they did it right.

So what went wrong? Two things, time zones and numbers.

With their famously weak player coverage in US time zones the hostiles didn't have enough numbers to keep us from taking system control during that time. When that happened we were free to bridge in reinforcements, clear the gates, get people out of the station, bring in more capitals and put up a cyno jammer and jump bridge; at this point we could lock down the system and they couldn't get reinforcements in via either titan bridge or gates. They broke our hold pretty easily on the first day, but by the second we had enough in system that this wasn't possible.

As for numbers, our fleets before the attack on h-w were weak. We saved the Stella Polaris stations and FIO, but those ops went down in late US time when the enemy is weakest. Our fleets were adequate for the job, but nothing like the overwhelming response a serious threat to stations should warrant. After a month of POS warfare and the enemy not doing anything interesting we got complacent. The SC seemed laughably ineffective and we forgot they were a serious threat.

Then they hit h-w. The attack was a red-hot poker to the eye for the coalition and we woke up and came together, as we do in times of crisis. The numbers we didn't have before came out of the woodwork, every alliance representing; we are the NC and this is how we roll, one nation, one people. Our numbers in system went from 300 or less on the first day to over a thousand, the hostiles were unable to break our hold on the system for more than 24 hours before station came out of reinforced and the attack was over.