War

[Endie]

Mo'chuisle is actually pretty cool, he's a longtime SA guy and is fairly goony

Who is he on SA?  Though if he'd a shitty D&D poster I'll never see it.  Anyway he's getting pretty emo on his forums (and seems to discount the importance of the Russians, which seems unwise).

[Endie]

Also I hope Pezzle is going to give us an update on AAA's Big Day Out in Catch.  It sounds like CVA are doing rather well.

[JustinMead]

3BK jammer is down. I counted about 400 coalition on TS. PL had about 80 in fleet without soT, which is the most I have seen since I joined, and were setup for RRBS aka Jihad. We went in thinking we were all gonna diaf. We were at the jammer at 0, hoping for them to DD us. Firehawk logged in but did nothing. He logged off as we finished off the guns.

Rather uneventful

[Endie]

Speak for yourself!  We just killed a couple of Kenny carriers and a small fleet that tried to save them.

[Dallan]

Mo'chuisle is actually pretty cool, he's a longtime SA guy and is fairly goony

Who is he on SA?  Though if he'd a shitty D&D poster I'll never see it. 

I'm pretty sure he's "dreamin'" on SA, and a regular poster in the GS thread, but don't quote me on that (though I recall him using the same nick on SHC, so I'm pretty sure of it).

[Endie]

Kenny didn't even bother to time the towers in 3BK.  They were all on 1d12h timers, except a few of the smalls which were on 1d13h to 1d15h timers.  It's like they've given up or something.  Bear in mind that 3BK is their main logistics drop-off poingt and hub, due to them never offlining the jammer in 49- (for obvious reasons), and an essential part of their dreams of a jump-bridge route to 1-SMEB.  Of course, the timers are still achievable for them if they persuade enough Russians to save them, but it would take something like that since we've been killing their towers every day in that TZ for a week or two.

The cloning and fitting services are down in 49- and the services in 3BK are dying, now, as well.  It's not a huge thing (they can always use some of the nearby Catch outposts like 25S, I suppose, since I imagine that they and their pets have docking rights there), but it all adds to the pressure.  Plus, we'll hopefully get to kill another couple of triage carriers next time they try it...

A report from a fine, upstanding, heroic operative n Kenny, risking all to bring us news from the enemy's base:

Good evening ladies & gentlemen,

Looks like the station camp & services shooting sealed the deal for many members of the Band of Kenneths. Multiple people have asked during the day if anyone had room in their carrier and could kindly help them GET THEIR SHIT OUT OF THAT SYSTEM. The last "official" op was scheduled for last Saturday. Only roaming gangs are "advertised" right now.
Enjoy!

That was before tonight's op.  Also, some firesales have popped up, though nothing really amazing yet: discounted battleships and the like.  Browsing them passed the time while shooting their cloning services.

[Thrawn]

Carrier losses are the new battleships losses and titan losses are the new carrier losses...or something like that.

http://killboard.madhatters.dk/index.php?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13293

No report because honeslty, I don't really even know who The Initiative or Ethereal Dawn are off the top of my head.

[trevorreznik]

It seems like titan kills are gaining in frequency.  Was there a change in patches 4-5 months ago that let them be produced easier? 

[JustinMead]

Not really, surging highend moon min prices, more people buying bpo/bpc's, drone regions.

Its just all catching up now.

[Koyochi]

http://killboard.madhatters.dk/index.php?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13293

No report because honestly, I don't really even know who The Initiative or Ethereal Dawn are off the top of my head.

Ethereal Dawn are one of the brave non-russian defenders of the drone regions, although since the last week of April they are really starting to feel the pressure of all that happened since IRC attacked the RA capital. This Titan was apparently tackled at a gate, performed an unsuccessful DD, and reinforcements didn't came quickly enough.

[setar]

Also I hope Pezzle is going to give us an update on AAA's Big Day Out in Catch.  It sounds like CVA are doing rather well.

I'm not so sure about doing well (http://a-kills.com/related.php?id=255811), but every single post on the -A- and BDCI forum has been euphoric about the fight.

[Pezzle]

I am guessing the Providence people took a bit of a beating.  Most Providence forces have no experience with this type of combat and it takes practice to get things right.  Teaching people to bring the right ships with the right fits etc.  Fleet doctrine.  Learning how to align and bubble and move around.  Coordinating with others.  Plenty out there with more experience.  CVA did alright and the feedback I have seen is positive.  No real excuse for 28 drakes at a sniper fight..

Jammer and bridges are repped.  No caps were involved.  Might have been a reaction test, might have just been to draw a fight. 

[trevorreznik]

6 people on the -a- kb were on over 100 kms, good lord they must have had fun.  When I saw the kill totals I immediately assumed titans were involved, but looks like it was just a good old fashioned slugfest where neither side wanted to call it quits.

[Kovacs]

-A- et. al. apparently went after a Sylph POS last night and somehow didn't get it (no KM) but there was a lot of chatter and a lot of "How do we get reimbursed again?" getting in the way of my damn mining.   So it was something.

Doesn't this sort of roaming gang with no strategic gain just season an obviously green alliance?  Why give some pretty awful FC's (been a long time since I had to adjust the compressor settings on vent.  He was THAT screechy) a chance to get better, and cheaply?  It's this more than anything the Catch/Prov. thing isn't serious.

[Slayerik]

I am guessing the Providence people took a bit of a beating.  Most Providence forces have no experience with this type of combat and it takes practice to get things right.  Teaching people to bring the right ships with the right fits etc.  Fleet doctrine.  Learning how to align and bubble and move around.  Coordinating with others.  Plenty out there with more experience.  CVA did alright and the feedback I have seen is positive.  No real excuse for 28 drakes at a sniper fight..

Jammer and bridges are repped.  No caps were involved.  Might have been a reaction test, might have just been to draw a fight. 

God, it must be nice to be CVA and no matter what you do you just go 'hey we're providence folk, we kinda suck no biggie!'

Hey, I was in TRI MK 1 or 2 when we attacked you guys and totally pwned our faces. heh

[Randall Alba]

A Paxton/LFA gang was forming for simple training op when scouts reported 100+ hostiles leaving HED and heading our way. More intel told us they were BS heavy (30 Apocs, 20 Megas etc). Those of us in D-G were split between a POS and the station when they jumped in, half of the gang was still en-route.

Being massively out gunned at this point we asked the other Holders if they could bring some help. -A- started taking out one of the jump bridges.

As -A- finished incapping the incapping the second JB our reinforcements were just about in position and started entering system by multiple routes.

-A- fleet moved to Planet 1 and the allied fleets moved to engage in what became about 4 hours of constant combat PXF/LFA, CVA and the other holders, Sylph and a fleet from thecitadel all trying to coordinate and take the fight to them.

Lack of experience in these sort of engagements cost us extra casualties and many people not knowing how to deal with gun lag issues meant we didn't kill as much as we should.

All the incapped modules were repaired and online within an hour of -A- leaving system.

Great fight, no smack and an excellent response from all our friends and allies in Providence and Catch for forming so quickly to help.

[rand]

Does AAA always go after CVA when they need to boost participation/morale?

[Endie]

Also I hope Pezzle is going to give us an update on AAA's Big Day Out in Catch.  It sounds like CVA are doing rather well.

I'm not so sure about doing well (http://a-kills.com/related.php?id=255811), but every single post on the -A- and BDCI forum has been euphoric about the fight.

Ouch, even with the increasing number of people posting their losses now that's still not what was coming through the grapevine.  Looks like a long, fun fight, though: from the look of it it reminds me of our Sunday-afternoon-long fights with Stain over the Esoteria moons where they would come back in three or four different ships each and I had to swap back to an Eagle just to pod them back in the end.

[Predator Irl]

Does AAA always go after CVA when they need to boost participation/morale/KD ratio?

Fixed that for you!

[Sir T]

Does AAA always go after CVA when they need to boost participation/morale?

In short, Yes.

Right now AAA have expertly surrounded themselves in a situation where literally everyone around them is Blue, aside from CVA, Goons/NC and XXXdeath/RA. They dont want to go after RA themselves as that would spoil the propaganda they are flinging in RU-Coad (so they are prepping Atlas to do it instead), they don't want to go after Goons as they don't want to go after goons (as I said a week ago to screaming denials from the opposition gallery, but this has been borne out by every event in game since. Remember AAA was the first alliance to run from the C-7 massacre) so CVA is the only people left. They have turned themselves into BOB 2.0 in yet another way, by having blue everyone nearby who can possibly be threatening while telling everyone they are an alliance thats about having as few blues as possible. -A-, in short, don't have an identity anymore, and don't have any easy targets left to farm kills from.

The best thing AAA could do for themselves right now is do a mass standings reset. But E.T. won't do that as it would piss off Sir Lordex, and also because hes too terrified of Goons to leave himself open to goon raiding gangs without the option of Pet help. Killing that freighter deep in AAA territory seems to have shook the AAA leadership more than I realized.

As for the fight the prov Residents appear to have done fine. A few more of those and they will be batting even. I remember the Tri invasion of Providence, and how for that week CAOD was filled with k/d ratio drivel, but the fact was CVA stalled Tri and defeated them, and only called on outside help twice, once for literally half an hour at the start of the invasion, and calling in IAC and Goons to help at the end of it. The hard grind was done by CVA.

[Endie]

Does AAA always go after CVA when they need to boost participation/morale?

In short, Yes.

Right now AAA have expertly surrounded themselves in a situation where literally everyone around them is Blue, aside from CVA, Goons/NC and XXXdeath/RA. They Dont want to go after RA themselves as that would spoil the propaganda they are flinging in RU-Coad (so they are prepping Atlas to do it instead), they don't want to go after Goons as they don't want to go after goons (as I said a week ago to screaming denials from the opposition gallery, but this has been borne out by every event in game since. Remember AAA was the first alliance to run from the C-7 massacre) so CVA is the only people left. They have turned themselves into BOB2.0 in yet another way, by having Blue anyone possible that they can possibly be threatening while telling everyone they are an alliance thats about having as few blues as possible. -A-, in short, don't have an identity anymore, and don't have any easy targets left to farm kills from.

The best thing AAA could do for themselves right now is do a mass standings reset. But E.T. won't do that as it would piss off Sir Lordex, and also hes too terrified of Goons to leave himself open to goon raiding gangs without the option of Pet help. Killing that freighter deep in AAA territory seems to have shook the AAA leadership more than I realized.

As for the fight the prov Residents appear to have done fine. A few more of those and they will be batting even. I remember the Tri invasion of Providence, and how for that week CAOD was filled with k/d ratio drivel, but the fact was CVA stalled Tri and defeated them, and only called on outside help twice, once for literally half an hour at the start of the invasion, and calling in IAC and Goons to help at the end of it. The hard grind was done by CVA.

This thread convinces me that we need a snail facts thread on this forum.

This stuff is exactly the sort of thing that I used to get to laugh at the Bob posters here for posting.  AAA members are not terrified of Goons, and there is no way on God's good earth that you can spin the AAA/Providence fight (example lol K/D stat: 20 battleships lost, 133 killed) as the Providence forces "doing fine".  A few more of those and they'll only get a tenth of the shittier holders turning up, and CVA will be standing almost by themselves, with the PvP cores of a few like Sylph and Paxton.

Kenny are clueless and rudderless, and AAA obviously weren't convinced that they had any plans or reasonable chance of success to warrant them doing more CTAs to bolster them for the last few days, so they went where they knew they would get a ~good fight~.  Yes, that speaks to their commitment and focus, as well as their underlying attitudes towards their hapless ally.  Thank goodness that when we were the struggling ones (though not as badly as Kenny), Razor in particular didn't decide that they would take off for a week as well.  But I would bet you ten pints to one any day that the vast bulk of AAA members would be a mixture of hilariously amused and rritable to hear someone saying that they were "scared of Goons".

The idea that ET is terrified of Goon raiding gangs is particularly daft.  He'd love us to send small gangs at AAA all day long.  It's grinding pos warfare that demoralises people who think they are ~elite PvPers~, not getting to chase each other in HAC gangs when the opposition also have a dozen t1 frigates and cruisers with which to pad your stats.  The freighter died because he was a dumbass who didn't check intel channels nor do his recon.  I imagine he got laughed at.

If I was Setar and needed to entertain or rile up the troops I'd be merrily copy-pasting your post to their boards right now.

[Pezzle]

God, it must be nice to be CVA and no matter what you do you just go 'hey we're providence folk, we kinda suck no biggie!'

Hey, I was in TRI MK 1 or 2 when we attacked you guys and totally pwned our faces. heh

Dunno what to tell you Slay.  I personally hate huge fleet fights, so many enjoy them though.  Do not misunderstand me.  It is fantastic that so many people show up.  The number of unaffiliated (not holders and not including Sylph) that showed up were higher than the number of CVA.  These folks may or may not even have a tower up in the area.  They come and help.  It proves that our way of building 0.0 can work which makes me happy.  We may never have the success of other, larger outfits with a more unified command, but that is fine.  Empire building, patience and time.  We're aliens, that's what we do.

Oh, and I was there for the night of 100 Vagas with TRI.  Yea.. 'goodfights' :P

[setar]

Interesting to see the different perspectives. I'm not sure having 'everyone blue except GS/RAWR/Razor/TCF/KIA/... is going to cause us a lack of targets as long as Querious is still contested, and once that changes I'd expect a standings reset of some sort.

Abaolutely agree though that it would have made sense to take an approach similar to Razor: go in full force and prop up Kenny as long as is needed. I'm just not confident that participation would have remained high enough for this to work. Goons also have this amazing charactertistic in that they go riding bikes when all goes well or long campaigns get boring, but come back in force when it's really needed. For most alliances it's the other way around, members bugger off once stuff goes south.

As for CVA:

A few more of those and they'll only get a tenth of the shittier holders turning up, and CVA will be standing almost by themselves, with the PvP cores of a few like Sylph and Paxton.

Not going to happen. -A- would probably side _with_ CVA if there was ever any serious threat to their space. At least that would be my hope, and probably the sentiment of most AAA grunts. And in their defense: it seems they simply never experienced the non-cycling gun problem before, the next fight should be a bit more even.

[Comstar]

I suspect AAA doesn't want to fight Goonswarm right now because that entails attacking another Station, which after 3 failed attempts so far, won't be much fun. Attacking CVA for a fleet fight after not doing anything for 2 weeks was probably a lot of fun.   As long as Goonswarm and the North doesn't attack 49- directly, AAA doesn't have much else to do except ring the CVA bell.  If there's no direct attack on 49- I'd expect AAA to do it again, to keep the troops awake.

If ET wanted to go down in the history books, he would reset Kenny and lock them out of the stations. This would  be the nail on the coffin and ET could add Kenzuko onto his list of alliances he killed. Once Kenny is dead, the North will go back home, and Goonswarm vs AAA fights would be more fun I suspect.

[Pax]

The urge to quote SirT's analysis with a "~signed, Mo'SirT" is strong with that post 

Tomorrow is a holiday in central Europe - I fully expect the Romulans and the Ferengi to at least swing by and gank a ratter or two.

[Endie]

To clarify, I certainly don't think ET would drive CVA to breaking point. They are the perfect neighbours, able to provide fights without posing a substantial risk, and determinedly unaligned so long as the aggressive, HED expansionist party is outnumbered. I was merely discussing Himo's assertion regarding what would happen after a few more such fights.

Back on the subject of Querious, the presence or absence of 200+ Russians in 3BK tomorrow morning will determine how long kenzoku have left. I genuinely believe that nothing short of a miracle on the scale of NC civil war or a first-line alliance changing sides can save them, now, but they could linger in some form for a long time if aggressively and continuously supported.

I'm kinda intrigued by whether AAA would accept an entire kenny corp (Dice? Finfleet?) or even whether they would solicit mass applications, if they lost the GKC bloc as choate allies. ET would surely look for ways to bolster his numbers when that happens, but he may have learned from kenny's mistake in destroying their own esprit de corps with uncritical US-timezone expansion? Might he feel that Atlas are probably a better option than diluting his already-altered alliance (and holding eastern tenerifis is a good insurance policy against someone who holds omist), and let them keep hoovering up the anti-goon refugees? Goons tend to make fun of Atlas after chasing them around for a while, but I'm on the record as saying that their core corps (not so sure about their latest arrivals) have extraordinary cohesiveness. Bobby must be a charismatic figure within his alliance.

[Cippalippus]

Yeah, here's the choice AAA had: grind their nuts in weeks of POS warfare to get another "I'm so great RAWR!" post from Molle, or go to Providence and get a fight. Providence never fails to deliver.

Yeah, I know what I'd choose.

Besides, even if by some amazing twist of fate tomorrow Kenzoku started winning again, that would mean at least months of uninterrupted POS warfare to reclaim their old space, and with constant AAA presence because they surely can't do it alone and the GBC now exists only on paper (and to think they had 18k+ players during MAX...)
Edit: if I'm not wrong, during the last CTA for the H74 offensive, AAA had over 100 pilots and Kenzoku about 70.

[Pezzle]

Imagine the forum spam from some corners if Ken tried for Providence.  It would also likely end up with EVEN LARGER LAG BATTLES.  My guess is goons and pals would be on them following the 'die bob' war objectives.  You would have AAA showing up to help Ken.  You would have us shooting at everyone.  A three way slug fest!  The node death would get so bad the devs would have no choice but to make Providence into proper empire space so the fighting ends.  Amarr Victor?

Yeah, it would never happen that way anyhow, never mind.  The forums would probably crash the eve site at least once though.

[JustinMead]

Kenny is in no state to take anyone on. I'm fairly certain CVA could take kenny on.

[Pezzle]

my attempts at humor must be simply terrible.

[Sir T]

The urge to quote SirT's analysis with a "~signed, Mo'SirT" is strong with that post 

Tomorrow is a holiday in central Europe - I fully expect the Romulans and the Ferengi to at least swing by and gank a ratter or two.

Hee hee hee

Frankly, I've been prodding AAA in various boards under various guises in the hope of trolling them into turning up, in the hope of actually getting a fight tomorrow. I seriously doubt its going to happen however. Like Mahrin said, the bullshit line is creating its own reality.

And Endie, I never said they were scared of goons, just that they don't want to fight goons. There's a difference :)

Anyway I'm in 3BK staring at their jammer tower right now. The jammer is still incapped as is every gun. There is no Kenny in local, just one red, and he is skunk works.

En fin.

[trevorreznik]

Kenny is in no state to take anyone on. I'm fairly certain CVA could take kenny on.

I doubt you'd find many people who'd disagree with you, especially considering the number of POS/Stations to go through in sov3/4 systems.  I think a big part of what happened in Querious is the good old sov3/4 swings-attackers typically got spanked hard, and the other side would try to ride that momentum into a counterattack on a station only to get stopped as well.  There's definitely exceptions but that's definitely the general course of action since GS+buds took over the southwest.

The amusing thing about all this is historically looking, the decision to give up in Delve after shrike's (and waagaa's) death (when earlier in the day it looked like -a-+gkc might make a decent push over the weekend) was by far the worst strategic move ever made in eve - nothing's even close to it. 

[Endie]

The urge to quote SirT's analysis with a "~signed, Mo'SirT" is strong with that post 

Tomorrow is a holiday in central Europe - I fully expect the Romulans and the Ferengi to at least swing by and gank a ratter or two.

Hee hee hee

Frankly, I've been prodding AAA in various boards under various guises in the hope of trolling them into turning up, in the hope of actually getting a fight tomorrow. I seriously doubt its going to happen however. Like Mahrin said, the bullshit line is creating its own reality.

And Endie, I never said they were scared of goons, just that they don't want to fight goons. There's a difference :)

Anyway I'm in 3BK staring at their jammer tower right now. The jammer is still incapped as is every gun. There is no Kenny in local, just one red, and he is skunk works.

En fin.

"I am not bad at Eveposting I am controlling your gameforums."

I like you Himo, but you are a worse poster than Butter Dog, than Joker Deville, than [DS]Helen.  AAA's decision as to whether they were going to help Kenny this morning will have been guided by intel on us, by the recent trend in turnouts, by their pilots' morale and commitment to helping their allies, and by whether there was any chance whatsoever of getting a tactically winnable fight (even if the system was lost).  Since they realised that we were probably going to bring 100+ capitals (I believe it's at 150 or so, now), the odds against Evil Thug proclaiming "Himo Amasacia has trolled us once too often!  To our space-steeds!" were pretty fucking astronomical.  Which is just as well for you, and just as well for our corp.

I am entirely serious in saying that you would do yourself a power of good in the alliance if you would stop posting outside the corp forums for a few months, never post painfully unfunny chatlogs in TWR, and pretend that CAOD doesn't exist.  I say that as a friend.

[Sir T]

The amusing thing about all this is historically looking, the decision to give up in Delve after shrike's (and waagaa's) death (when earlier in the day it looked like -a-+gkc might make a decent push over the weekend) was by far the worst strategic move ever made in eve - nothing's even close to it.  

To be fair trev, they didn't really. There was at least one more big battle for J-L after that, but the striking thing about it was that it was almost 100% pets on the other side. Since we were at war with Kenzuko at the time, I could count the number of Kenzuko in local. There was only one, Tholarim. There were also battles over 5BTK

[Endie]

The amusing thing about all this is historically looking, the decision to give up in Delve after shrike's (and waagaa's) death (when earlier in the day it looked like -a-+gkc might make a decent push over the weekend) was by far the worst strategic move ever made in eve - nothing's even close to it. 

In hindsight, it seems to reveal something about the sclerotic nature of the leadership of Kenny by that point, too.  The Bob of 2006 or even early 2007 would have reacted aggressively, looking for an opportunity and filled with self-belief that they would bounce back.  After 46DP and 9-9, after all, they defended Omist in D2EZ and 66- for weeks.

By the time the J-L fights came round (and the fight Sir T refers to was just a dead cat bounce which formed up through inertia more than anything else), Bob were in the habit of losing, and that really matters, while their leader had managed to suffer his dumbest titan loss yet, and was revealed even to himself as a genuinely pretty bad pilot.  That also scared off their remaining titan pilots, robbing Kenny of a major tactical option.

All of which meant that, when camped into PR-, instead of aggressively responding and risking substantial capital losses in order to regain strategic flexibility and the power to manuevre, Kenny's leadership wrung their hands and frittered away their pilots' morale.