War

[Simond]

-A- actually got an apology from a head GM about that one, saying (basically) "Yeah, our bad. Sorry, shouldn't happen again"

Edit: And Theta Squad is the best squad. 

[dwindlehop]

Stain Empire is not to be underestimated. Xenobytes excel at laying traps, utilizing intel, and being patient. They're really a great example of what a dedicated mid-size force is capable of.

[Sparky]

Holy crap report more!

PS. You're from western coast US timezone, right?

D-L pilots were undocking unfitted battleships for suicide insurance while I was down there last night.  Apparently it had been happening all day.  I'm pretty sure they're pulling out but no idea if BoB intends to seriously contest that space or install someone more capable.

[JoeTF]

If that's true, they should join goonswarm, they really, really should.

[Sparky]

ISS is out of the war.  As Mittani noted they were clever about it, make nice with BoB long enough to secure your assets then GTFO.  Another score for BoB diplomacy.

[Comstar]

BoB has comitted a cap fleet to knocking down goon towers in D-L space, and putting up their own to stage out of. So expect some heavy ship action in D-L space.

I still say D-L is doomed, BoB needed to be doing this 2 weeks ago, but they may well blunt the RSF assault. POS Spamming will probably start now.

[JoeTF]

Dear goons, make sure you will keep the pressure during euro times as well.

http://www.killboard.net/fleetbattle/1317/
http://www.killboard.net/fleetbattle/1358/
http://www.killboard.net/fleetbattle/1358/
http://www.killboard.net/fleetbattle/1356/
http://www.killboard.net/fleetbattle/1357/

[Endie]

Joe, Joe, Joe.  Haven't we covered the "killboards lol" angle before?  Goonfleet fleet actions for a couple of weeks now have seen us maintaining a roughly 2:1 K/D ratio over D-L.  Have we mentioned it?  No.  Because it's K/D ratio and that doesn't matter.  On our own boards we've been laughing about it, with the general feeling being that we didn't know anyone could actually achieve a losing k/d ratio against goons.

Killboard links, especially those from bob who famously hide the pet losses, or showing larger gangs (in 4 of the 5 you post) winning over fleets they outnumber by as much as 5:2, are just material for the strategically losing side to console themselves with.  But if you enjoy them that's a good thing!  Because as we continue to do what we were doing there, and push into bob's home systems, you'll be slaughtering a whole load more goons, in far llarger numbers than those engagements.  The question is whether we will care more about losing ships than you will about losing more of your remaining space.

[Miasma]

Yeah the killboard links have come up repeatedly in this thread and not meant a damn thing as far as I can tell.  You should pay less attention to killboards and more to that system map which shows you losing on all fronts.  This is as an outsider who doesn't play eve but finds the thread entertaining.

Especially you Joe, I don't want you to take this personally because it's not, I don't really care about this virtual space war, but the vast majority of your posts come off as "rawr omnipotent BoB is laying the smack down and everything the goons say are lies".  But it always turns out that the goons were right.  You routinely deny that BoB is having problems and then when they lose more space, allies and resources you don't acknowledge them.  Instead you point to minor tactical victories while being mauled on an overall strategic level.  Actually conceding mistakes and losses, as the goon posters in this thread often do, lends them a lot of credibility.  I can see you one day as the last surviving BoB member, holed up in a station you can't leave because you'd be killed, and thinking to yourself "Hah! Those goons are in for it now, we have nowhere to go but up from here, look out universe".

[WindupAtheist]

Not to pile on, but Joe, you've been making "lol killboard" posts for like the entire duration of the war and so far BoB doesn't exactly appear to be winning for it.

[Endie]

On another note, I thought (incorrectly) that someone had mentioned this here: ISS sweetened things with Bob, acted nice, got docking rights back again, got all their stuff out to NPC stations, then something wonderful seems to have happened: they spontaneously jumped three stages of evolution (no pun intended), grew a spine, reset standings, and told Bob to go fuck themselves.

The official thread about it is a strange mix of RSF saying "we'll still try to kill you* but hey, at least that deserves some respect" and Bob suddenly discovering that they always hated those guys anyway.

*Since goons in particular are NBSI Not Blue Shoot It, and recently in the cases of DS1 and Theta "The Best Squad" Squad seem to be BSIA (Blue Shoot It Anyway), this is pretty much immaterial, since we'll shoot get blown up by anyone we're not allied to in any case.

[JoeTF]

Ok, non killboard version for you killboards haters.:
There was a shitload of fun yesterday night (not sure if goons found it funny but meh) and it clearly contradicts Comstar reports of US BoB team being essentially 1-3 guys sneaking round. so sad fun stuff only happens during US timezone.

Regarding large strategic victories I'm going to be blunt - there isn't much to report and our tactical mishaps are already way over reported by Endie and Co.

Oh BTW, where is that rapetrain of yours that was supposed blow us into pieces? The jumpbridge network was finished like month ago (at least according to GS) so well, the fourteen goons we have in local isn't so impressive.



I would also like to officially declare that I fucking hate D-L and cannot bloody wait till they change standings/die.

[Endie]

Ok, non killboard version for you killboards haters.:
There was a shitload of fun yesterday night (not sure if goons found it funny but meh) and it clearly contradicts Comstar reports of US BoB team being essentially 1-3 guys sneaking round. so sad fun stuff only happens during US timezone.

To be fair to comstr, he is seeing Bob in his TZ, and Bob have, until the last couple of days, been throwing all they had at HED (which we distracted you from pretty effectively: were those gang fights worth the chance to destroy the AAA towers that came out of reinforced?)  But Bob have certainly been around in bigger numbers in their own peak time zone, I agree.  And as i said, our newbie FCs have been learning the hard but fun way.

Oh BTW, where is that rapetrain of yours that was supposed blow us into pieces? The jumpbridge network was finished like month ago (at least according to GS) so well, the fourteen goons we have in local isn't so impressive.

Um, there are so many mistakes there I'm not sure what you're trying to do there.  The jumpbridge network went to the RIT triangle in Rise around a month ago.  Since then we have been consolidating logistics, and something you should know about jumpbridges is that you actually need sov 3 to erect them, which depends on an unalterable timer.  So we need to wait several weeks to erect each stage of it as we go along, in the wake of the GBC retreat.  It would be impossible for us to be "finished" yet.  It'll be ready when it is ready.

I would also like to officially declare that I fucking hate D-L and cannot bloody wait till they change standings/die.

Understandable, but they were better than Rise, Executive Outcomes and Soco at actually undocking and fighting.

[LC]

I would also like to officially declare that I fucking hate D-L and cannot bloody wait till they change standings/die.

I almost made the same comment about them last night. Does anyone like D-L?

[Drogo]

Does BoB like any of their pets? It seems like BoB dislikes their pets almost as much as RSF. I am amazed that so many pets have actually stuck with BoB this long. The pets keep getting treated badly, told that they are terrible, have to pay the rent on top of that and yet they still keep coming back even when BoB does not defend the space the pets rented from them. It makes no sense to me.

BoB gives a pep talk to help demoralize Rise, they give no help to CoRM when they are driven from their system, they order all other pets to give up their territory and  to retreat to Fountain, then they strip docking rights from ISS for trying to take space in Fountain, and now they are bad mouthing D-L. Can someone explain to me why there are still any pets that are defending BoB?

Even BoB's allies MC and FiX were tossing around the idea of turning on BoB and they at least do not have to pay BoB rent. So why are the pet alliances such lemmings that still pay BoB for the privilege of being ordered around by Molle while being told how terrible they are? Is being a part of the Greater BoB Community really so wonderful that they put up with that?

I am not surprised that ISS left the GBC, I am just surprised how long it took.

[Comstar]

Fair point to BoB, the day after I was in E2- they accomplished 2 things: Broke the AAA sov in HED (thus removing AAA's jump bridge to low sec for a month) and forced a retreat in E2- of the attempt to take it from D-L.  Period Basis is still doomed, but BoB has won them a reprieve. 

Now that BoB's tactical gain in HED is completed(?) which has taken a few weeks, what's next? Finish off IAC? Launch an assault on the Goon Bridge head at GQ- before the jump network can be completed?

[LC]

Does BoB like any of their pets?

D-L is extra annoying. They put up secure cans in PB that say things like

 "YOU ARE ENTERING D-L TERRITORY NO RATTING, MINING, OR EXPLORATION ALLOWED THIS INCLUDES BoB"

[Yoru]

Does BoB like any of their pets? It seems like BoB dislikes their pets almost as much as RSF. I am amazed that so many pets have actually stuck with BoB this long. The pets keep getting treated badly, told that they are terrible, have to pay the rent on top of that and yet they still keep coming back even when BoB does not defend the space the pets rented from them. It makes no sense to me.

Ever hear of Battered Wife Syndrome? 

[Sparky]

I would also like to officially declare that I fucking hate D-L and cannot bloody wait till they change standings/die.

I almost made the same comment about them last night. Does anyone like D-L?

I'll give them their MAD PROPS for actually fielding fleets and being eager to engage even if they didn't always end well.  In stark contrast to my experiences with say RISE, who've fled from inferior fleets.  For pets they had heart.

[JoeTF]

Does BoB like any of their pets? It seems like BoB dislikes their pets almost as much as RSF. I am amazed that so many pets have actually stuck with BoB this long. The pets keep getting treated badly, told that they are terrible, have to pay the rent on top of that and yet they still keep coming back even when BoB does not defend the space the pets rented from them. It makes no sense to me.

BoB gives a pep talk to help demoralize Rise, they give no help to CoRM when they are driven from their system, they order all other pets to give up their territory and  to retreat to Fountain, then they strip docking rights from ISS for trying to take space in Fountain, and now they are bad mouthing D-L. Can someone explain to me why there are still any pets that are defending BoB?

Even BoB's allies MC and FiX were tossing around the idea of turning on BoB and they at least do not have to pay BoB rent. So why are the pet alliances such lemmings that still pay BoB for the privilege of being ordered around by Molle while being told how terrible they are? Is being a part of the Greater BoB Community really so wonderful that they put up with that?

I am not surprised that ISS left the GBC, I am just surprised how long it took.

We like most of our pets, my grudge with D-L is more on personal level and not a official official BoB stance. If you're looking for official BoB policies on various topics, contact our diplomat extraordinarie Siddy.
Why there are people in GBC? Because we actually do threat them with respect and maybe because that the alternative are bigest assholes in entire galaxy? It's a by-product of Goon be-with-us-or-be-gone policy, by making everyone who does not agree with them or want to pay them rent into sworn enemy and de facto member of GBC, wel they make them members of GBC:P

In short: Due to goon policies if you don't like goons, GBC is your only option:/

I can happily say that your diplomats fucked this one.

Ps. SE is exception that confirms the rule.

Understandable, but they were  better than Rise, Executive Outcomes and Soco at actually undocking and fighting.

Weren't you guys saying that they were suiciding ships to get insurance just one page away?
from what I have seen all they do is running into traps so obvious it makes baby Jesus cry and generally doing funny stuff like npcing in system with 15 goons instead of maybe fitting a warp scrambler on that raven, getting together and maybe killing those goons?
I  don't have high expectations from renter alliance, in fact I'm fully aware they're here to carebear and thay pay rent money to be proteced. Every pvp activity would be huge plus, but all I actually expect from them is simply not acting like utter idiots.
Maybe they magically transform into SUPER ALLIANCE during US TZ, but form what I have seen I doubt that.

[Sparky]

Weren't you guys saying that they were suiciding ships to get insurance just one page away?

I didn't intend to mock them, merely reporting that it looked like D-L were leaving.  if your odds are 50:1 and the order to pull out has been given it's either that or a firesale.  Guess they could've gone down in a one volley blaze of glory but that would have just given us some loot.

In short: Due to goon policies if you don't like goons, GBC is your only option:/

I can happily say that your diplomats fucked this one.

Agreed, not sure if "no mercy for pets" is more slogan than policy but it does limit options.  It's not like GS is hurting for space and a few olive branches could make the alliance crumble fast.  When you've a choice between empire or disbanding at least holding out to the bitter end might open doors in the future, at least from the leadership's POV.

[Endie]

Weren't you guys saying that they were suiciding ships to get insurance just one page away?

D-L fought for a couple of weeks without much backup from anyone, including Bob who were busy elsewhere.  What we're saying is not that they were competent (as I said they had a losing K/D ratio to goons!) but that they at least tried to fight, unlike most of the current refugee camp like RISE.

In short: Due to goon policies if you don't like goons, GBC is your only option:/

I can happily say that your diplomats fucked this one.

Agreed, not sure if "no mercy for pets" is more slogan than policy but it does limit options.  It's not like GS is hurting for space and a few olive branches could make the alliance crumble fast.  When you've a choice between empire or disbanding at least holding out to the bitter end might open doors in the future, at least from the leadership's POV.

The "no mercy for pets" thing is PR, and it works well in so far as that is concerned.  But MPire, MC and others have shown that there is, in fact, real flexibility from Vile Rat (who is, after all, a real world diplomat) and others in some cases.  Bob, of course, is in no position to criticise anyone on diplomacy: their relations with their dwindling band of pets (now less than a third in number according to Joshua's - a Bob Pet - map), let alone the rest of Eve, speak volumes about their mistakes on that front.  It can't help that their chief diplomat - Siddy - is a proud and actively contributing member of the furry community: I mean, if the guy likes his sexual partners to have fur and paws that's his own business and fair play to him, but it's hard to see Bismarck or Palmerston having succeeded in shaping European affairs if the people round the table were thinking "hehe, he can't get excited unless Mrs B. dresses up as a squirrel."  At least he, for one, can say he genuinely likes pets vOv

[Slayerik]

In response to Joe, you do know there are other options besides being a Bob pet if you don't like GSF or GBC. Join TRI or Drone Region peeps. I'm sure their are other true Neutral entities. Just because we wtfpwned Youwhat doesn't make us a supporter or GSF. Hell, I was just down roaming IAC last night. Was fun. Tomorrow it might be Bob.

[JoeTF]

The furry argument just broke me in two. I guess you have to be real world diplomat to be a diplomat in EVE.

Anyways, we did manage to blow up the sov in HED while having those awesome gangfights in E2 area, now our poor Russian brethren will have to move their freighters the slow way for entire month (in the most optimistic scenario).

Regarding the goon offensive in E2-, it totally and utterly failed. All the goons in proximity were driven into single station, with three scouts from three separate gangs just sitting there and playing shepherd dogs;-)
If you are to continue with this level of performance, Period Basis might indeed be lost, but not really for BoB.

[neep]

Some time ago somebody wrote a nice post, it postulated that whichever side lost its pets first would lose the war.
He made it sound really good and convinced a lot of people.

The ragoons too figured it made a lot of sense, mostly because they had been busy eradicating the renter alliances in the fringes of the BoB provinces anyway and also because the guy who wrote the post was one of their own.

After the ragoon armies created various extra orifices in the self esteem of most renter alliances, the GBC surrendered its provinces, took its ball and went home.

What the cocksafari* didn't realise at the time and quite possibly still doesn't, is that pets, while providing a nice side income in peace time, are A HUGE FUCKING MICROMANAGEMENT BLACKHOLE during war. Its like having kids, only worse.

ISS reading the 8ball and deciding they are a pro pvp alliance. STK wrecking their alliance because of old grudges between members of long dead corps. etc ad nauseum.

Yay for the drama but please do it somewhere else.

A BoB fighting in their home systems is stronger than BoB fighting in the provinces
A BoB without pets is stronger than BoB with pets

Or so I say, lets see if the doctrine stands, now the pets are mostly gone.
BoB went home and part two is about to commence

* yea, yea asterix but you really can't expect me to remember what the acronym stands for

[cmlancas]

That was a really, really verbose way of saying that an empire with a strong center can't defend its fringes. It's not like there aren't glaring examples of that in history of anything. 

[Endie]

The furry argument just broke me in two. I guess you have to be real world diplomat to be a diplomat in EVE.

Well, it has to help, but actually what half decent reading comp would have helped you understand from my post was that I was suggesting that a diplomat that is (a) halfway competent (we all have the examples of Bob diplomatic cockups to hand) and (b) not laughable on a personal level must help.

Anyways, we did manage to blow up the sov in HED while having those awesome gangfights in E2 area, now our poor Russian brethren will have to move their freighters the slow way for entire month (in the most optimistic scenario).

Regarding the goon offensive in E2-, it totally and utterly failed. All the goons in proximity were driven into single station, with three scouts from three separate gangs just sitting there and playing shepherd dogs;-)
If you are to continue with this level of performance, Period Basis might indeed be lost, but not really for BoB.

You know, if you put those two paragraphs together then even you, as apparently the only person not to have a goon spy account, might work out what the openly discussed reason for our little jaunt into PB was!  Yes, it would have been pretty damn cool if it had also seen us take sov - it would be stupid to deny that - but that would have been a bonus.  But we didn't commit capitals, and we didn't involve our allies, and that should be a bit of a clue as to what we were up to.  Especially since it worked so well in Feyth, too.  And as a bonus, we killed about a dozen capitals in the course of the little campaign, and that went a long way towards demoralising D-L.

And the predominant goon view of this war has been fairly clear for ages (again, the many people with spy accounts can reflect this).  With the exception of a few fun-loving, freewheeling individuals who expect it all to be over by Christmas, a great many of us accept that it may even take the best part of a year to crush bob.  That's cool.  We're doing what we really, really want to do.

And if we accept that it will take such a long time then we also have to accept that many of our sieges will be driven off.  We'll have tactical reverses and even temporary retreats.  Bob may have been shown not be the alliance they claimed to be, but the sov system still offers huge advantages to defenders who are able to emply invincible supercap blobs.  And since we managed to repulse Bob's invasion of our territory under the old system, without the advantage of cyno jammers and sov 4 mechanics, then Bob will obviously be able to use those to achieve some successes.  But eventually they'll fuck up (most likely in the area of their logistics team, which is about as good as their diplomats), and the grinding advance will begin again.

[Comstar]

In unrelated War news, MC revealed a new titan (of a different type from the old one, so they bought it off someone, or bought the old one off someone) by DDing a BRUCE fleet. The BRUCE fleet was on the way to, and eventually went on to, and took a RISE station in BoB's backyard. BRUCE is expected to now commence POS spamming wars with RISE over the station.

BRUCE is hostile to Goons, but somewhat friendly to Groons (who used to live with them in Syndicate).

KOS sent a 80 man fleet to defend Goons...from ..something (no one, including Goons, understand what). After spending 6 hours guarding a gate, the first offensive move they made resulted in Shrike DDing them within 15 minutes of arriving in Period Basis. Ouch.

[Slayerik]

Well TRI is back at war. Looks like we decided to wardec 4 alliances: CVA, Sylph, Paxton, sev3rance.

From my understanding, they were the most worthy targets out of the so called Neutrals (to the big war).

Also fighting with KOS and IAC quite a bit (I got my first rorqual kill, yay!). Overall, we havent performed well as of today. People bringing nano ships to fleet ops and other asshatery, too many guys in ceptors, other lame shit. Seems like we fly tech II ships just to fly T2 ships sometimes. Some poor FCing on our side...maybe a little rusty.  CVA seem to have their shit together and have good intelligence. We need to do the same. I think our coming OPs will go better but suffering a couple losses is a good wakeup call for us.

[Ragnoros]

All I can say is that if someone put some actual fun gameplay on top of all this awesome metagame they would have a monster on their hands.

[ajax34i]

Wish EVE was more of a spectator sport (wish we could somehow have access to instant-replay or re-animated recordings of these encounters).  This thread is fun.  If CCP could figure out a way to record battles and then make them available for viewing by letting the game interface re-animate the recorded script, and if they could add some sort of pseudo-reporter commentary to it all (or even let the two sides add their own commentary if they so wish), it would be fun to watch.

Of course, the viewers would be missing the Vent chatter, which is I guess half the fun of the battle, but still.

[Fordel]

You wouldn't be missing much in terms of replay. EVE is a lot like baseball in that regard, a newspaper sport. 99% Percent of watching nothing happen, 1% of "HOLY SHIT WTF WAS THAT".

You can catch any of the WTF moments on EVE Files or YouTube easy enough.


The folks here that fly in large fleets don't actually see the fights either, they turn off all the graphics and zoom so far out, all they see are Dots on the screen and their spreadsheet like interface. The graphical combat itself doesn't actually relate very well to how the fight is progressing. It's very detached and abstract.

[Endie]

Wish EVE was more of a spectator sport (wish we could somehow have access to instant-replay or re-animated recordings of these encounters).  This thread is fun.  If CCP could figure out a way to record battles and then make them available for viewing by letting the game interface re-animate the recorded script, and if they could add some sort of pseudo-reporter commentary to it all (or even let the two sides add their own commentary if they so wish), it would be fun to watch.

Of course, the viewers would be missing the Vent chatter, which is I guess half the fun of the battle, but still.

Fordel is right that sometimes it is a bit of a letdown, but not always.

Take the destruction of the Bob titan: you can hear the teamspeak recording of the event here, and it is pretty intense to listen to (right-click and save).  Especially when you realise that the end of that recording is months of frustration being let out, as the skill-free I-win button that has allowed Bob to dominate the game for so long is going down in flames, marking one of the real turning-points in the war.  It's also pretty impressively restrained until he gets podded.

The video version is also good watching (unless you're watching your alliance's chance to win the war going pop).  For low res here is Stahlregen's glossy propaganda version.  For high-res download it from eve-files, or watch the version on youtube complete with the teamspeak track (and kinda annoying pubbie intro).  That said I like that last version best, as it is nicely narrative in nature.

Edit: Oh and hey... why not take a look at some Bob POS warfare tactics?  These are good ones, too.

Other Edit: on a more neutral level, the pvp tournies are a useful way to find out a bit about what is happening in fights, even if they are a little unrealistic.  Here is one fight, and here are Bob and Goonswarm each winning a battle.  The latter is notable not just for GF finishing a fight with a positive K/D ratio, but also for GF actually managing to count the right number of ships and not getting disqualified.

[Endie]

The folks here that fly in large fleets don't actually see the fights either, they turn off all the graphics and zoom so far out, all they see are Dots on the screen and their spreadsheet like interface. The graphical combat itself doesn't actually relate very well to how the fight is progressing. It's very detached and abstract.

This is very true.  On my alt, I fly in small gang fights mainly, and it is rapid stuff, which tends to get my heart pumping quite a bit.  On my GF character, I fight in fleet fights (well, actually I shot PoS, but I used to fly in fleet fights), and I find them strangely tranquil.  As Fordel describes, I am zoomed right out to the extent that I don't really see individual ships (the viewpoint is about 1000km away) with a list of targets and somebody prioritising them on teamspeak.  I am 200km away from my targets, and I never "see" them.  The modules are often lagging to the extent that if I am lucky I have only a a minute or so between clicking a button and the action happening.

The start of the fight almost always starts with the enemy utterly invisible to me.  Fortunately, shouts of devsploits to one side, I am no doubt equally invisible to most of Bob's pilots, and since my name is nicely down the alphabet and my warp-in point well away from the enemy, there is little immediate danger.  Who loads grid first is a massive advantage.   These fights can easily last 45 minutes or more between the various warp-outs and warp-ins, though they seem to last only a few minutes.

[Fordel]

I did say there was 1% of cool  !


Even in the small scale stuff, there is this total detachment in the movement from the fighting. I think this is one of the big turn offs for a lot of people who try EVE. They go in expecting something they see in StarWars or BSG or Babylon 5, and what they end up with is dramatically different.  There is no jockeying for position in the traditional sense. I'm not going for the blind spot or trying to out maneuver anyone.

What I want is my ideal range, at my ideal speed so I can commit to my ideal orbit. Which is probably more 'realistic' in terms of space combat, but it's very damn boring to play as well.