War

[LC]

I wasn't daring them to blow it up. I was completely serious. I hated that POS, and I hated being forced to fuel it so I didn't have to pay 1bil isk to the corp weekly to keep my membership.

This is a particularly fine LC troll, no?!?

Wait, that's 40+ hours a week ratting.  You are kidding.

No it's really what they said we had to pay.

[Arthur_Parker]

Not sure I understand.  If you fueled it ok, then you didn't have to pay them anything?

[Yoru]

Not sure I understand.  If you fueled it ok, then you didn't have to pay them anything?

Ever fueled a POS before? They're aptly named.

[LC]

Not sure I understand.  If you fueled it ok, then you didn't have to pay them anything?

You had to fuel it and transport the billions of isk worth of t2 components it made back to nol.

[Arthur_Parker]

K, what do you think is going to happen to BoB over the next few weeks LC?

[LC]

K, what do you think is going to happen to BoB over the next few weeks LC?

I see them slowly losing chunks of delve. Most of the eastern side probably.

[Meester]

Are there any efforts in taking BoB's last remaining outpost in Querious in 3BK-O7. Or will that be an afterthought? Just curious.

Well, Mr Singlepost who is asking for our strategy, I am sorry to disappoint but I am not yet finished my long ascent to the highest levels of Goonfleet.  Specifically, I know nothing.  I'd say "first to go, last to know", but only the second part of that is true.

Quite alright although I am not neccessarilly asking GoonFleet (unless by "our" you mean coalition) :) IRON and Razor, since they hold stations in Querious are equally valid folk to ask.

[JoeTF]

LC:
Do you have some interesting tidbits on other BoB corps?

[Sir T]

It's their own fault really. I watched the recruitment forums for months, and noticed a few things:

1.  Friends of directors were let in no matter how awful their app was. I guess this happens everywhere though.
2.  US/NA players were usually rejected. Even for the smallest mistake in how they fit their ships.
3.  European players were almost always accepted even if they made the same mistakes in their apps. Excuses like "Well he lived in the north, and they fit ships differently up there. I'm sure he will learn quickly." were made for them. The only exceptions were those that the directors had a beef with.

It's really no surprise to me that they will lose in US primetime.

Most of the BOB poses yesterday were destroyed in QY6 in BOB primetime. 8 or 9 or them anyway.

1 billion isk a week? 

[LC]

LC:
Do you have some interesting tidbits on other BoB corps?

You mean recruiting or what?

[cevik]

Cevik, come fly with us, its pretty fun being able to pirate at will once you l2p which usually takes about 4 trial attempts.

Okay, I couldn't resist it anymore and I downloaded the trial and made a character (cevikd) and joined the f13 channel.  I talked to Kitsune (that was Kitsune, right?) for a minute or two, but the download finished past my bedtime so I'll bug you guys tommorrow about what I need to do to be of any real help..

[Kitsune]

If you talked to me on the channel, then some ratfucker has stolen my account.  I only logged in for a minute tonight to keep the skill training rollin'.

[Furiously]

I think he was talking to Katiri....

[Endie]

This was a very different day from yesterday.  Molly threatened his alliance-mates with the red pen, so Bob actually managed a pretty decent turn-out, with over a dozen supercaps, scores of caps, three (I think) titans and a sizable support fleet.  The obligatory compromised POS shields password mularkey yielded Bob what looked like a couple of dozen BS kills in a doomsday.

Outnumbered, the rest of us sat around, occasionally nipping out to kill a few bob ships that got separated from the herd, and generally being a nuisance.  We stuck it out for five or six hours, reading, chatting, masterfully trolling Lady Scarlet etc (I played Hearts of Iron 2: Armageddon, personally), while Bob reinforced some POSes, shot some guns and extracted the remainder of their capital fleet we'd trapped at the former 6-6 pos.

I got doomsdayed on the second occasion: rather infuriating as almost everyone escaped or survived it, and I had a perfectly good EM doomsday tank in place but module lag lol...  This marked the end of the HMS Oh Poop Dead Again, which had lasted, despite being in structure more than once, since 9-9 back in August (lol suicidal goons), and killed dozens of times her own value, plus a score of POSes.  So long, girl...

When Bob ("we're in it for the epic fights") and ourselves finally fought - sadly after I headed back to replace the HMS Oh Poop Dead Again (a ship who died six months late) - their tactics were, um, questionable, and they lost heavily in a fight on the gate.

The thing that amazed me was the lack of aggression in Bob's strategy.  If the position had been reversed there would be nothing hostile left in this system by now: we'd have fucking levelled it.  It would have been a big propaganda coup and recovered the system's sov counter.

As it is, we were able to tough it out, save all our POSes, rep guns, destroy Bob's cynojammer, reinforce all the POSes they put into the system, and generally run a profit on the night.  On top of that, we did a bunch of stuff elsewhere, blowing up stuff, disrupting jump bridge networks to make Bob's travel harder, and generally running around breaking stuff while Bob sits in QY6 staring at us and oblivious to everything round about.

To me, it just feels really like 9-9 again.  I can see this being one of the last systems to fall, but being the place where grinding attrition in both ships and hours of play are the key to taking Delve.

[Sir T]

While all this was going on  IAC was not exactly Idle. I logged into QY6 (11 bob in local at that point LOL) and saw there was an IAC op called for, so I flew back to FAT in my Covert ops of super slippery sneakyness. When Coalition forces left QY6 to blow the crap out of 5 or so BOB poses elsewhere Mollie obviously pushed the panic button and BOB threw everything into QY6 to try and lockdown the system. Everything.. including the repping crew that was currently repping a Jump Bridge POS in 3BK-07. They left, oviously thinking that nothing would happen and they could come back to restront it as they had not quite repped the shields back to 50% (meaning they could not install more strontium)

Wrong move sadly as we locked down the system and poared the clensing baste of Free Beer into the tower with our battleships and some capitals (along with a few IRON chaps, which I guess would make this officially a guinness op) It duly blew up, meaning that BOB lost control of a station system while they were busy not achieving a lot in QY6. I think that was their last holdout outside Delve too, so its all about Delve now. 

After that I tried to get into Qy6 but the gates were too camped. I logged out just before the big fight in my usual sense of timing... 

Oh and the worst fit taranis ever award goes to Braincandy of RKK, who not only lost a Taranis.. actually I'll just post the mail..

2008.02.01 00:59

Victim: Braincandy
Alliance: Band of Brothers
Corp: Reikoku
Destroyed: Taranis
System: J-LPX7
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 1717

Involved parties:

{lots of people}


Destroyed items:

1MN MicroWarpdrive II
Stasis Webifier II, Qty: 2
Overdrive Injector System I, Qty: 2

Dropped items:

Overdrive Injector System I

Yes an interceptor with no guns.. and t1 overdrives and for some reason this was not put  up on the  BOB killboard 

[cevik]

I think he was talking to Katiri....

Ahh yup, Katiri, sorry.  Trying to do tutorials and read stuff all at the same time.  Sorry about that.

[Endie]

Stuff about 3KB and awesome killmail.

The killmail is posted to the GF forums.  Brilliant stuff: I can't begin to explain it.  At least if he had guns on it it might be ok for fighter shooting or something.  I notice he previously flew an Ares with T2 blasters (I suspect that might have been an odd inty fit, too, somehow) so it's not like he simply cannot fit any guns beyond civilian railgun...

And it's good to hear what's going on while we dangle the little birdie in front of Bob's noses through their peaktime (eurosquad: proudly outnumbered in primetime since 2006).  We get once- or twice-daily updates at the moment on what is happening on the other fronts, and it really makes it worthwhile when we hear that our brosefs in IAC, the northerners etc are using the distraction to break stuff.  It's even pretty sweet to hear that the Tortugans are merrily stealing systems unopposed as a result.

[Simond]

The killmail is posted to the GF forums.  Brilliant stuff: I can't begin to explain it.

The only possible explanations I can see are 1) Freighter-aligning gimmick-ship (but that still doewn't explain why an inty instead of a newbie ship with a webber, or the overdrives, or why it was in combat at all), 2) Suicide-insurance claim (on a T2 ship?),  or 3) He ran out of ships and modules in-system (which would be a very, very Bad Thing for BoB).

[amiable]

Is it true that Shrike just lost his titan? 

Edit:: NM goonie fake-post on CAOD.

[LC]

Yes an interceptor with no guns.. and t1 overdrives and for some reason this was not put  up on the  BOB killboard 

Report it to one of the RKK directors. They really do get pissed when they catch members not posting loss mails. I'm not kidding. Not posting repeatedly will get you booted. I got screamed at once for being an hour late during a long pos battle. Better yet go on irc.stratics.com and send a message to "dmZ". I'm willing to bet 99% of the people kicked from RKK for trivial reasons were kicked by him.

That guy was probably trying to fit his ship by running around to different stations in delve. RKK has a corp shop, but it takes forever to get a director/manager to fill your order unless you get lucky.

[lac]

That guy was probably trying to fit his ship by running around to different stations in delve

Yea, that was what I thought happened too.
When flying around half fitted or with modules I scraped out of the nearest hangar, I can't help thinking what a comedy killmail I'd make at times..

[JoeTF]

Or trying to get to proper ship maybe.

[dingusxavier]

Oh lookie a Molle post. Highlight:

Tooth and nails, sticks and stones, fire and ice. Bring the kitchen sinks. We're standing tall. It's our ******* island. The last week has seen more carnage then any other week. Roughly 25000 pilots has been trying to invade us, and utterly failed. Choices we're made, and the coalitions main push into QY6 has been halted to a dead stop. They now know how it is to run into a brickwall at full speed. It hurts.

I'm pretty sure anyone who's better following the news can see for themselves how utterly delusional this is.

[amiable]

I'm pretty sure anyone who's better following the news can see for themselves how utterly delusional this is.

"They are not near Baghdad. Don't believe them....  They said they entered with...  tanks in the middle of the capital.  They claim that they - I tell you, I... that this speech is too far from the reality. It is a part of this sickness of their plan. There is no an... - no any existence to the American troops or for the troops in Baghdad at all."

[LC]

Looks like BoB just lost another mothership.

[Teleku]

OK, dear god, does it really cost 635 Million ISK to to fit a carrier, or is that just some special BOB thing?

[Ragnoros]

OK, dear god, does it really cost 635 Million ISK to to fit a carrier, or is that just some special BOB thing?

I was about to post the same thing. I man really 

[Sparky]

Add another 0 to that figure and you'll be closer to the truth.  Thier killboard seems to only count the mineral cost for deadspace/officer gear

[MahrinSkel]

Counting fighters, mine cost about 650M to fit.  You *can't* get by for much less than 350M, for DCU's and Fighters.  I dropped another 150M worth of Faction hardeners on mine so I wouldn't have to train T2 hardeners, and some high-end cap recovery and shield repair stuff to fill it out.

--Dave

[Sir T]

They said it could never happen again..

http://will.neoprimitive.net/ohgod/2008.02.03.08.58.42.jpg

It did. RA titan blew 42 bob battleships and 100% of their support fleet into ash inside their own tower...


{edit}

Friday: http://killboard.net/details/229493/

Compare with

Sunday: http://killboard.net/details/230402/

[Endie]

Disclaimer: I was asleep during most of this stuff, having done my bit by sitting in a POS for hours, earlier (Eve is really helping me read a lot right now, which is a good thing).

Anyway, last night was the biggie: Bob traditionally dominate the weekends with good turnout, while the weeknights oscillate between the two sides depending on timezone.  We had all (I think) of our towers coming out of reinforced over the weekend, and knew that if we could save them, Bob would lose sov 3 in QY6.  If Bob could destroy them then we would have to start again for another week.

Sov 3 is vital, as it means you can erect a cynojammer, which (while it is up) stops you jumping capitals into a system.  While a cynojammer is up, Bob could use titans and motherships more freely, without the risk of Russians hot-dropping them with massive dread fleets.  Much of the past week has centred around us hitting Bob's cynojammers and them repping them back up.

So we had to hold a majority of towers in one of Bob's key, constellation-sovereignty level systems for a full week.  Bob knew that they had to destroy our POSes last night or lose sov 3 this week.

In the end we did it: we are repping our towers now, having nursed them through the night.  Numbers of ships lost over 12 hours of what seem to have been steady fighting are broadly equal but, as LC says, the big morale boost is for us to have killed a Bob supercapital.  Or maybe we can say Shrike killed it, as he seems to have bumped it out of the pos shields in a piece of maladroit titan-steering.

I honestly thought it would be like 0OY again, and take forever to take this system.  I am fucking delighted at what happened last night.

Edit: I had to go for breakfast, but a few final details:

1) Like Sir T says, RA doomsdayed another Bob POS, whose password had been passed to us.  Presumably another busy salvager given control of a POS in a critical system?

2) One of the Bob capitals we killed had a T1 (substandard, for the onlookers) cap power relay fitted.  He'll be getting carpeted for that fitting.

3) Some Bob members were running out of ships and fittings after a few hours' fighting.  We have screenshots of them in T1 and even noob ships.

Further edit: spoke too soon I see we still have a ton of POSes to defend.  Argh.

[Akkori]

Is there some sort of historical overview of the political struggles in Eve? Most of what Edie says is waaay over my head (sovereignty, reinforced towers, doomsday, etc...), but it is intriguing enough that I would love to find a history book to look through.

[Murgos]

I think if you started at the beginning of this thread, and maybe a few of the others in this forum, you would get most of it.

I'm sure there is more info on the actual different corps main sites but we had a pretty good cross section of the involved parties here pretty much from the beginning.

[Sir T]

All goon towers saved. Carrier killed. Towers bubbled. The few BOB that came out did drive bys and wound up pathetically sniping at the 4 bubbles around one of their poses for 30 seconds before running like hell. And then there was a machariel killed.

Tempest Kane claimed hat he was attacking dreads hitting his tower. Unfortunaltly he made it sound there was more than 10- bss sniping sentry drones on the other side of the tower and dipping pack inside the shield when targetted. Before this he was having fun warping 400km off the J-L gate and then warping back to his pos. He went in in structure in his mach sat there furuiosly repping his ship and then was smacked by Dread missiles that followed him in. he then sat there for half an hor before self destructing his pod, losing himself some snakes no doubt.

BOB participation is in the doldrums. I think they scraped together maybe 50-60 people to defend their jammer POS, and then never actually engaged the gang hitting the tower. Superbowl sunday indeed. Shrike never logged on but his covert alt was online.

[Endie]

I'm really confused by what is happening in QY6 at the moment.

I think one major difference is the Gooncannon: the new Goon titan.  Traditionally, Bob would have been able to keep us out of the QY6 system by putting 30 carriers and 10 motherships, all with fighters out to cause maximum lag, on the single point of entry: a choke-point gate, 2 jumps away.  We would have suicided fleets into this camp in order to attempt to get to the target POSes, but it would have been bloody, slow and demorailising.  Now, we just knock down the cynojammer and then goons swarm in on the jump-bridge from a safe system light-years away.



As Sir T says, though, Bob's participation after getting some bloody noses from fleet fights and doomsdays was exactly what we'd always said: people who joined up to be on the automatic-win team melted away like snow off a dyke*.  They'll be back for more red-pen operations when Molly throws a tantrum, but the level of participation required is brutal: I remember when we were the ones in the last-ditch defence, back in Tenerifis and Detorid, and I spent a whole week working til 5, coming home and eating, logging in and then only logging out at 3am or 4am.  Three or four hours' sleep and back to work (to read about what the US TZ boys did).

In summary, you can tell how it is going by who isn't posting at the moment.

*A dry-stone dyke, not the sort of dyke with comfortable shoes and a buzz-cut.
-----

Akkori: here is how you hold space in Eve ("sovereignty"):

I put a Player Owned Structure (POS) in a system, set it to claim sovereignty.  After a week I get sov level 1.  A timer keeps counting, until after a while more I get sov levels 2 and 3.  Three is important, because I can then put a cynojammer up, which stops people being able to get capitals into my system: capitals are the only reliable way to kill some really tough towers, and if I have capitals in the system but my opponent doesn't, I am at a huge advantage.

There is a stage beyond this: sov 4.  Soverignty level four takes even more time, and acts for the shole constellation.  Beyond POSes, you also need three station systems in the constellation, and you need to hold sov three throughout all six system in that constellation.  This lets you designate one system as the capital: no opponent can attack your poses or drop his own, there.  This makes this system excellent for putting high-value capital shipyards in.

So how do you take the system from me?  Basically you need to have more POSes than me in the system (there are different sizes but ignore that and just assume we're talking about larges).  Now  you can usually (depending on the number of moons in the system to anchor them at) do this in one of two ways: you can destroy mine or you can put your own down (while limited to 5 a day).  The latter route, POS spamming, is basically buying the system, although it requires you to be able to stop your opponent wiping your towers out.

The former route means you have to first reinforce the tower (get rid of its shields, basically).  Once this happens, the tower goes into "reinforced" mode: it is virtually invulnerable to attack, but needs a special fuel ("strontium clathrates") to stay invulnerable, which it uses at a fixed hourly rate.  The defender therefore needs to guess when an attacker will knock his tower into reinforced, work out how many hours it will be from then until a good timezone for him to defend it at, and put that amount of fuel in (it cannot be altered after the tower goes to (I think) 50% of shields.

In other words, to destroy my tower you have to attack it, then wait an amount of time I decide, then come back and finish it off.

Bob's problem is that they are very bad at following through when they have reinforced our towers: we have destroyed literally hundreds of their towers, whereas Bob have destroyed only a handful of ours (I'd guess 10-15 or so, almost all a few moths ago and due to such bad POS management by our erstwhile ally, KoS that everyone suspects spies).  Bob's logistics people are also increasingly bad at stront timing, leading to towers coming out in our primetime.  This is avoidable: when my POS gets attacked, I get an evemail.  I can then rush there and alter the strontium levels so that the tower will come out in my primetime.

Not finished yet!

Once you have a majority of towers in my system, a timer starts.  You need to keep that majority for the next week.  Once that happens, the system will swap to your control (or neutral if our tower count is even).  This is what will happen in QY6 now.  Importantly, sov 3 being broken (the sov counter resets completely, and now builds up again on a new counter for the new owners) means no cynojammers.  I think that if we hold sov for another week then Bob loses constellation sovereignty (level 4 sov) for all the other systems in that constellation.

It's really complex, really hard to achieve, but we've been doing it ever since the tide turned at 9-9, in the middle of last year: we're the only people ever to break and take a sov 4 constellation and we're in with a shout of doing it again, here.  The advantages all still lie with the defender, though (on every level except morale).

Simple, eh?

Tl;dr version: you get a majority of towers in a system, and the longer you keep it the better your defences get.  If you ever lose the majority it's back to square 1, though.