War

[Fordel]

Cyno Jammers.


No Carriers, No Fighters.



I'm sure the Traffic Cops don't help anything either.

[lac]

Can those logged RA caps and titan in nol jump out of the system when it is cyno jammed?

[Endie]

Can those logged RA caps and titan in nol jump out of the system when it is cyno jammed?

If you are in a cyno-jammed system you can always cyno out.

[LC]

I am in your home space killin your b34rz

[JoeTF]

Why can't you guys  fight fire with fire and throw 200 fighters at BoB fleets? Make it a battle of the AI ftw?

Probably because fighters do not auto agress, but hey, let's not get facts in way of our creative posting.

[Sir T]

Why can't you guys  fight fire with fire and throw 200 fighters at BoB fleets? Make it a battle of the AI ftw?

As mentioned, Cyno Jammers. If the cyno jammers go down all BOB caps IMMEDIATLY flee into Pos shields and Cyno out.

Probably because fighters do not auto agress, but hey, let's not get facts in way of our creative posting.

Incorrect. I warped into a BOB motherhship fleet on QY6 and after the lag cleared I had a BOB foghter swarm firing on me and coming in on me.. and I checked all the BOB ships on the overview and not one single BOB ship had me targetted.

Not one.

Friend of mine in U-K agrees with me an fighter auto agression as he has battles with CVA where they drop carriers on them too. Oddly the only one thes that ever seem to deny flat that fighters auto agress just like drones (a fact known to any dominix pilot that has ever flown a mission or ratted) are BOB pilots. Let be *somewhat* gnerous and say that part of thc confusion is that fighters and drones nave and active and inactive stage, if they are inactive they will just arbit but if they are active they will actively hunt for rargets. to be active they have to be given a engage order be shot at or have their carrier shot at. Remember when drones used to target your gang members.. that was fun...

The nice thing about BOBs first titan kill was that they suddenly felt all uber and started running around thinking they were shit hot again.. and their conventional fleets got hammered once again in 49-u as well as other pleces. One night (the 19th I think) IAC pilots logged in to a mail calling a manditory op as BOB were getting raped in 49-u, for instance. So much fun was had by all.

And as for BOBs accurate killboard, I have 5 kills that I know of that dont show on that killboard...

[Endie]

Probably because fighters do not auto agress, but hey, let's not get facts in way of our creative posting.

I put the true bits of this in bold to accentuate them for posterity.

[MahrinSkel]

Why can't you guys  fight fire with fire and throw 200 fighters at BoB fleets? Make it a battle of the AI ftw?

As mentioned, Cyno Jammers. If the cyno jammers go down all BOB caps IMMEDIATLY flee into Pos shields and Cyno out.

Probably because fighters do not auto agress, but hey, let's not get facts in way of our creative posting.

Incorrect. I warped into a BOB motherhship fleet on QY6 and after the lag cleared I had a BOB foghter swarm firing on me and coming in on me.. and I checked all the BOB ships on the overview and not one single BOB ship had me targetted.

Not one.

Friend of mine in U-K agrees with me an fighter auto agression as he has battles with CVA where they drop carriers on them too. Oddly the only one thes that ever seem to deny flat that fighters auto agress just like drones (a fact known to any dominix pilot that has ever flown a mission or ratted) are BOB pilots. Let be *somewhat* gnerous and say that part of thc confusion is that fighters and drones nave and active and inactive stage, if they are inactive they will just arbit but if they are active they will actively hunt for rargets. to be active they have to be given a engage order be shot at or have their carrier shot at. Remember when drones used to target your gang members.. that was fun...

The nice thing about BOBs first titan kill was that they suddenly felt all uber and started running around thinking they were shit hot again.. and their conventional fleets got hammered once again in 49-u as well as other pleces. One night (the 19th I think) IAC pilots logged in to a mail calling a manditory op as BOB were getting raped in 49-u, for instance. So much fun was had by all.

And as for BOBs accurate killboard, I have 5 kills that I know of that dont show on that killboard...

There is no fighter auto-agression.  However, they will automatically engage anyone that attacks the ship they are assigned to (including scrambling or jamming them), if they haven't already engaged.  And in the lag-hell that is your typical carrier engagement, you can often get targetted and not know it.

--Dave

[lac]

There is no fighter auto-agression.  However, they will automatically engage anyone that attacks the ship they are assigned to (including scrambling or jamming them), if they haven't already engaged.  And in the lag-hell that is your typical carrier engagement, you can often get targetted and not know it.

Please leave actual game mechanics out of this spiritual debate, thank you.

[Endie]

Things have been a bit quiet recently, with Goons having had some downtime for a while to make ISK, bring in ships, jihad hulks and the like so, apart from suicide gangs and blowing up moon-mining towers, not much has been up.  Last night, however, Molle decided that his return from wandering the earth (which eerily coincided with Bob's only relatively fail-free period in months, now I think of it) should be marked by a super-intensive round-the-clock attack on QY6 before we get sov 3 on Tuesday.  Bob pretty much always get their numbers out to dominate the weekends, so we knew that if they could take down our towers last night they'd reset the sov counter and we'd have to start it again.

So they poopsocked big time, reinforced tons of our towers in the middle of the euro day, actually destroyed 5 IAC towers because apparently their logistics guys thought 4 hours of stront was just dandy and launched a huge op last night to finish off the first three of our towers that were coming out.  We had a small numerical advantage, but Bob had wisely taken down the QY6 fitting service in advance, so their initial advantage in capitals and battleships grew as the evening went on as more and more goons (this was pretty much a straight Bob vs Goons fight throughout) ended up in frigates.

The first two towers didn't even have guns yet and so were very easy targets for Bob.  However, our FCs decided, in a recklessly risky (to the point of suicidal) move to defend them anyway, and when Bob comitted they warped in our fleet, with waves of suicide dictors pinning the enemy as we whittled him down.  At first, things seemed to be heading for an inevitable wipe, but gradually we turned it around, drove off the Bob fleet, held the battlefield, saved an allied MS that had drifted off grid and rescued our towers.

Meanwhile, goon blackops were in NOL and PR-, and managed to hold off the Bob reinforcement gang - about the same size but BS heavy - for a whole hour.  Perfect interdiction, which got them lots of kills and prevented Bob making their advantage in available ships felt.

Looks like a long weekend ahead, though.  Bob understand the implications of goons achieving sov 3 in Delve very well indeed.

[Endie]

On the downside, I just spent over an hour trying to log into QY6, followed by about 20 minutes of sitting in a Rokh next to a moon with no POS, no friendlies and only one (1) hostile visible, who I managed to lock but not shoot with my weapons telling me an attempt to activate them is under way.  I didn't even have any chat channels.  I usually suffer massively less lag than most goons, but today was the worst in a long time.  I gave up and gave the command to warp to a safespot, without even hanging around to see if it would ever obey.  I heartily expect to find my name on Bob's KB in a couple of hours, or to have Evemon suddenly tell me I nine figures richer from insurance vOv

On the upside, it was totally worth it.  Lots of people did load the grid, and the net result is that Molle's big offensive push shuddered, stalled, and slid into reverse.  Instead of them blowing up our towers they are currently trying to save their own ones.  Everything seems a bit confused, and not having any chat channels didn't help, but TS seems focused and upbeat, our KB is ticking over nicely with capitals soloing hostile battleships  , and I'm pretty sure that a predominately goonswarm fleet is ruining Bob's big push in a straight up fight for the second day in a row.

[Simond]

All Goonswarm towers in QY6 repped up and refueled, five or our allies' smalls popped and replaced with GS deathstars, all five BoB towers popped... and I think I'm still waiting for the session change from jumping in from yesterday evening. 

[amiable]

Looks like a long weekend ahead, though.  Bob understand the implications of goons achieving sov 3 in Delve very well indeed.

For the newbies, what exactly is the implication of Goons achieving Sov 3?

[JoeTF]

Cyno jammers and jumpbridges.
 

[Endie]

The effects of what Joe mentions - if we reach Tuesday still holding sov - are that Bob wouldn't be able to get capitals, titans etc into QY6 without blowing up our cyno jammer with a conventional fleet (which we could then engage with any of our own capitals and supercaps which happen to be in system).  It also means that we could jump-bridge our own ships freely, avoiding having to travel insecure routes through gates and cutting down the travel time hugely: this would make reinforcements and logistics hugely easier.

There are still three and a half days to go, though, and Bob traditionally dominate the weekend, so it's not certain by any means.

[Sir T]

There is no fighter auto-agression.  However, they will automatically engage anyone that attacks the ship they are assigned to (including scrambling or jamming them), if they haven't already engaged.  And in the lag-hell that is your typical carrier engagement, you can often get targetted and not know it.

--Dave

Thats to trigger them. Once they are triggered and their target is down they will actively seek new hostile targets without user intervention. If there are none they go back to inactive.

actually destroyed 5 IAC towers because apparently their logistics guys thought 4 hours of stront was just dandy swamp poop

IAC had a logistics failure involving POSs? Say it aint so. :P

Theres a bit of internal drama going on in IAC ata mo. Nothing of any great interest to other people but its kinda adding to the "could not give a flip about Eve" feelings that have had me not bothering to log in for weeks now...

The effects of what Joe mentions - if we reach Tuesday still holding sov - are that Bob wouldn't be able to get capitals, titans etc into QY6 without blowing up our cyno jammer with a conventional fleet (which we could then engage with any of our own capitals and supercaps which happen to be in system).  It also means that we could jump-bridge our own ships freely, avoiding having to travel insecure routes through gates and cutting down the travel time hugely: this would make reinforcements and logistics hugely easier.

Its even worse than that. First you have to understand the geography of the Delve region. Its actually like an hourglass, like this.

\/
/\

Nol and PR- are at the neck of the hourglass. To get anywhere and especially to the other side of delve you have to go through there. Theoretically BOB could seal that route by sitting there and stall everything. Of course they have been pretty crap at doing that but thats by the by. Now if you have a sov 3 system on one side of the neck and another one on the other side, then you can completely bypass it with jump bridges. That makes their control of NOL a mild inconviniance only and renders the other station systems they have on the other side of the neck totally vunrable. NOL in effect becomes fairly irrelevant. Also they would have to pull forces out of NOL to defend those station systems in case of attack rather than having their entire fleet sitting in those 2 systems all the time, making NOL even more vulnerable. Sure there are titans to go the job, but jump bridges don't go offline.

Second of course is that BOB are utterly and completely dire at attacking cynojammed systems. In FAT they had to resort to attacking the jammer at 3 in the morning when no IAC were about. And remember Paxton? That was with MC helping them. If QY6 goes Sov 3, then there may be an alliance that will be able to take it off the Goons, but that alliance is not called BOB. They are never getting it back.

[Hoax]

Theres a bit of internal drama going on in IAC ata mo. Nothing of any great interest to other people but its kinda adding to the "could not give a flip about Eve" feelings that have had me not bothering to log in for weeks now...

Should spend a weekend with BC then, we are drama free!

[JoeTF]

There is no fighter auto-agression.  However, they will automatically engage anyone that attacks the ship they are assigned to (including scrambling or jamming them), if they haven't already engaged.  And in the lag-hell that is your typical carrier engagement, you can often get targetted and not know it.

--Dave

Thats to trigger them. Once they are triggered and their target is down they will actively seek new hostile targets without user intervention. If there are none they go back to inactive.

How do you define hostile in terms of game mechanic? I'm actually curious.

Paxton thingy:
You know, I was about to write long overdue dementi to that, but then I though, hey maybe you guys are right; I wasn't present in every fight during that time and I realized we have killboard and you can actually check that.
So, to set things straight:
-FSW was a nuisance and not a strategic objective
-only part of BOB fleet was committed, MC stayed 49-/FAT
-Paxton composed of around 20% of defending fleet, but yeah brave ones that stood alone and defeated the almighty GBC.
-CVA are great to fight against though.

I kinda doubt we will be attacking QY with a fleet of 120 ships, but of course I would expect the system to be extremely well defended (read: filled with goons up to wazoo), so who knows.

[Murgos]

It's a good question.  Actually, really important as regards fleet stuff (is the enemy of my friend my enemy?).

I've noticed my own drones chase off after targets I have neither shot at or received fire from though so i don't think it's as straight forward as some think.  Once they are in kill mode they seem to go after anything that is a threat regardless of if it's an active threat or not.

I'm pretty sure they have several hidden countdown timers.  Things like have you or they been targeted, even if the lock was then broken by a warp and/or docking within x (probably 15) minutes.  Was something that was attacked ganged with other ships even if they never aggressed and etc...

[bhodi]

How do you define hostile in terms of game mechanic? I'm actually curious.

Fighters act the same way as drones. Hostiles are those currently targeting the owner (or, if they are assigned to defend, currently targeting the defendee, or if assigned to assist, engaging assist's target)

From what I've gathered, this is the drone/fighter AI:

After being launched, they are in passive mode. They sit there, orbiting. They will NOT engage any targets. This means if you can jam someone so they cannot command their drones to attack a target, and they did not already have them out or assigned, there is nothing they can do. (They may be able to assign drones to a friend as assist, however, I need to check on this)

Doing an action (setting them to defend a buddy, issuing an attack, friendly asssist attack issued) sends them into active mode. Obviously, issuing an attack bypasses the 'hunting for targets' bit below.

While in active mode, they will seek out targets that are currently target locked (red brackets, not yellow) on the defendee (if assigned) or the owner. The order seems arbitrary, it's probably hidden in a sort of 'first noticed' list, it's not by distance at all.
They will continue to attack a target until that target is dead or out of range, then will select a new target.

[MahrinSkel]

While in active mode, they will seek out targets that are currently target locked (red brackets, not yellow) on the defendee (if assigned) or the owner. The order seems arbitrary, it's probably hidden in a sort of 'first noticed' list, it's not by distance at all.

You only get red brackets if the person is firing something at you (including jammers or scramblers).

--Dave

[JoeTF]

Yup, red is shooting, orange is "locked, but guns still lagging".

[bhodi]

Whoops! :)  So flashing is locking, solid is locked, red is firing. I need to test which one activates drones again.

How's the war? Tonight's the night, right?

[Simond]

War update: Smashkill are 

[Slayerik]

Hey, I thought we were fighting Smashkill!

[Simond]

They decided to open up a second front against the Russians. 

[Hoax]

War update: Smashkill are 

I've watched their Alliance Tourny matches, this does not surprise me.  Only IAC and MC which are too afraid to take it seriously and lose are less competent.  Oh and Blood Blind they suck balls.

[lac]

They decided to open up a second front against the Russians.

That always works.
Aren't Ka-tet the RA renters over there? If RA actually remove smashkill and install a friendly alliance there they pretty much own the drone regions too?

Coalition starts spamming posses in Delve in what seems a smart move to further disrupt BoB's logistic chains, BoB start shooting all  posses down without resistance (or so I get it). Whats up with that?

[Nevermore]

I have no idea if Ka-tet are renters but before I quit, IRON had set up shop in the Drone regions as did D² Mostly Harmless.  Smashkill has a presence in the Drone regions but mostly operate out of Germinate, iirc.

[Slayerik]

Who cares, after all it is the drone regions! 

[WindupAtheist]

Well?

[Endie]

On the downside, we've had a couple of offensives that haven't lived up to our hopes.  One ran up against the problem of cynojammers and jump bridges, which let a competent enemy hold a system pretty damn strongly.  The other came unstuck when one ally failed to carry out their task, which compromised what was otherwise a pretty promising situation.

On the upside, we did manage to break Bob's jumpbridge chain to empire in a key place, which will make things more difficult for them.  We have also achieved sov 3 in our Delve bridgeheads so, given how poor Bob are at taking systems from us (I don't think they have done this since we retook 9-9) we're pretty much here to stay.

Most importantly, our Russian masters are back.

[lac]

Did BoB retake any systems when they removed all those large coalition towers (60-ish?) in the last week or was it a clean-up operation in systems they controlled?

[bhodi]

You forgot this classic GF gem:

Also, you guys may have spent all weekend killing 21 of our towers, but RoyofCA just killed 27 of our towers by contracting them to a random empire pubbie because he was high/drunk while doing logistics.

[Endie]

Did BoB retake any systems when they removed all those large coalition towers (60-ish?) in the last week or was it a clean-up operation in systems they controlled?

That was the abortive pos-spam that failed because one ally fucked up their part in things.

And it was Roy that messed up the towers?  Arf.  What they let him get involved for is beyond me.  That's got to be the results of a couple of Tolon songs gone west.