War

[Endie]

I understand on the motivations thing: best to hide your hand as long as possible, especially if some outcomes might be a mixed blessing.

One of the first things that people said, before the 0OYZ-, VNG and O-W results went our way and we thought there was a chance we would go down before the combined AA/GBC/SE/ROL etc assault, was that we were confused as to what our enemies thought was a desirable outcome.  Obviously, Bob wants revenge and a morale-restoring campaign victory (after a horrible few years), and can happily leave afterwards.  But if we were evicted from Feyth, Esoteria and Tenerifis, what then?  Even if someone (and AAA is not that someone, as their history amply proves) had the grit and determination to grind through all our sov 4s and take all our space, what then?

I don't want to come over all RISE and "we are freed from teh shackles of POS warfare and our reavers are more dangerous than ever :twisted: " but the logical outcome would be to do what Bob did in Delve and retreat to the nearest NPC space, which is Stain, and is as good as anything outside Delve.  Which, after all, is what about a third of the alliance shouted and voted for only last year anyway.  So SE in particular, and AAA to a large extent would have a still-formidable number of Goons messing around in the New Syndicate (where their individual members make their money) and shitting in everything nearby.  The ISK-sellers in Feyth would still have their complex camped and their farmers ganked etc etc.

It's an odd decision, especially for Stain Empire who had a nice thing going with taking our high-ends for months every time we went away.  I wonder if that's part of why SE have been pretty low-key (for them) outside Esoteria.

[setar]

Way above my paygrade, so I cannot really comment on the motivation of -A- or SE (as I've also not been privy to the information posted on the russian sites). What's more, the russians keep their cards pretty close to their chest, and even within their community most are just rank and file. Those that I'm speaking to seem to be enjoying the change of pace: constant CTAs, fights wherever you look, but the majority also expects (or at least acknowledges the reasonable chance) that we'll be losing a large majority of the currently AAA-held regions.

From my point of view that is a perfectly acceptable tradeoff for being able to motivate members to play, for an alliance not to stagnate; the motivation of leadership might be completely different from that though. GBC helping us is a bit of a mixed blessing or curse as it brought all of NC into the area instead of just TCF, but at the same time it does open a lot of strategic options. And while BOB are certainly not in their prime anymore they are still one of the top tier alliances currently around, with the ability to influence any battle heavily. Anyhow. I'll report back after I've actually got something to shoot.

[Phildo]

GHZ is stil at sov 3 and will be for a few days, our towers haven't been up for a week yet.

Edit: Setar, you're not also Jokull in-game are you?  I see that guy everywhere.

[Endie]

It's a good thing that luckyduck and dianabollox have told us that PL are insignificant and never ever win fleet fights against Bob, or else I would believe the reports that a Bob+pets fleet of well over 300 had engaged a PL+pets fleet of 240-odd and had been slaughtered, losing a bunch of caps and the vast majority of their subcaps as well.  No doubt someone from Bob can put us right and inform us why PL would go to all that trouble with making up KB stats and pictures...

[Sparky]

Couple of points; SoT aren't pets, they're our always underestimated bestest buds and extremely valuable allies.  Secondly, you've inflated the numbers a bit.  GBC pets bought maybe 250, we had like 120.  Had near enough even battleships but they vastly outnumbered us with support and bought maybe 30 caps (we had none).  I'll leave a battle report for Shadoo on Crapheap as he's actually good at them. :)

To give the pets their props they did keep coming back with new ships time and time again.  Shows a good deal of heart.

[JoeTF]

Wait, what?
You say BoB fleet got it's ass kicked by PL fleet, but there was not a single BoB ship in that engagement.



Sure, I would love to see our pets kick PL ass (mostly for hilarity on your part), but then our pets are the guys who fit 4 Damage Control II and 1400 howitzers on Megathron (even the goons cannot possibly dream of a way of fitting fleet battleship worse that that!), so...

[Endie]

Couple of points; SoT aren't pets, they're our always underestimated bestest buds and extremely valuable allies.  Secondly, you've inflated the numbers a bit.  GBC pets bought maybe 250, we had like 120.  Had near enough even battleships but they vastly outnumbered us with support and bought maybe 30 caps (we had none).  I'll leave a battle report for Shadoo on Crapheap as he's actually good at them. :)

To give the pets their props they did keep coming back with new ships time and time again.  Shows a good deal of heart.

Re the numbers, at the time I posted that the SoT engagement report had 289 hostiles on it, and I assumed that a few wouldn't have turned up.

Also, the pets thing was just to avoid the Bob+pets and PL+pets thing being too jarringly juxtaposed.  I know very well that Goons, the North, Stain and PL tend to have allies (though PL also have pets) where Bob, AAA and both the drone Russians and RA tend to have pets.  But I wanted to avoid getting into that whole semantics thing.

Anyway, this seems to have gone exactly as we all said it would when announced .

Edit: hostiles that appeared on mails is now 293, but a few of those are presumably going to be friendlies who get counted on the wrong side, whereas usually with such a low number of friendly deaths a few hostiles will get away who did not get on SoT kills, as well as PL killing stuff that SoT don't get on the killmails of.  So Shadoo's original estimate of 300 with a few dozen capitals seems fair.

And sorry, Joe, I didn't realise it was purely the GBC and none at all of their lords and masters.

You have to wonder how long the GBC will hold up to this sort of stuff.  They've been through a horrendous clusterfuck of a campaign loss (Max) where their participation plummetted, and now they are up against PL and friends where they are already starting to get more of the same treatment.  It's not like Hearts of Iron where you can just build disposable units as fast as possible to throw into a holding action on some minor front.  When the pets are gone, they're gone.  You'll always going to get some fresh-faced mission-runners from empire to replace them, but you're faced with the horrifying possibility that the next lot might not be as good as Axiom Empire... 

[Phildo]

My first loss of a ratting ship was to Axiom Empire...

[Endie]

"Sacre bleu!  What doz zees button do?"

http://killboard.sectionxiii.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=43108

"Zut alors!  Eeet blurs up le fleet de la enemy avec toute vitesse!  Et attendez-vous!  Eet makes zem forgot zer sense of irony and makes zem zee laughing-stock by complaining on le scrapheap challenge about zee lamesness of zee doomsday!  Quelle domage!"

[Phildo]

xxDeathxx just hit the GBC fleet with another Doomsday too.  I know because I was caught in it.

[Pax]

"Sacre bleu!  What doz zees button do?"

"Zut alors!  Eeet blurs up le fleet de la enemy avec toute vitesse!  Et attendez-vous!  Eet makes zem forgot zer sense of irony and makes zem zee laughing-stock by complaining on le scrapheap challenge about zee lamesness of zee doomsday!  Quelle domage!"

I work at a French company and this is just golden! A+

[Sir T]

 

{Edit} Ahh clarification in local.

Himo Amasacia > I'm confused. Why was the Bob member in a newb ship
silent uk > he was told he was shooting goons today...
Himo Amasacia > so he came in a ship he could afford to lose. Makes sense

[setar]

Not much going on in O-W today after yesterday's DD-fest which is a bit of a disappointment. All BOB POS repaired, POS in D-G repaired, a couple of skirmishes around a friendly and hostile POS with a few capital kills as highlights -- one Phoenix trying to get away from a tackle by warping to the gate where it promptly got re-tackled, one Phoenix which ended up, probably de-synched, 250k outside of a friendly POS; total of 7 capitals down for the day.

NC/RA/GS decided to sit this one out, another round is expected tomorrow. I don't even know why we are fighting over this particular system, to be honest.

[Meester]

NC/RA/GS decided to sit this one out, another round is expected tomorrow. I don't even know why we are fighting over this particular system, to be honest.

Look up the Battle of Pork Chop Hill.

[Endie]

The Bob poses may be fine for now but the pos we reinforced today should be fucked.  I think it was Exe.

Also, Atlas is broke.  Like, even more broke than normal: proper broke.

[Endie]

As to why we're fighting over 0-W... well, we're fighting for it because it's ours and we don't want to just give it away for nothing.

I don't know why Bob started fighting for it, but what they're doing now is, in the military terms we're all so fond of, reinforcing failure.  "You see, Eve is a lot like the battle of Kursk..."

We know from their forums porn that their members hated doing this in the north, but their leaders lacked the courage to just change direction when it wouldn't have been obvious that they had tried everything, and now they feel that they cannot be seen to just give up and be comprehensively beaten in yet another battlefield of their choosing.  So they keep gambling that they'll get another good timing on towers or a titan kill or a substantial cap victory or anything lucky for them.  And, this being the game where CCP fucks things up, nodes crash and Goons time towers only marginally less awfully than Exe, their desperate gambler's mentality might just work one of these times.

I am drinking their complaints about gratuitous use of titans and how lame it is.

[setar]

Pretty sure the EXE POS is done for, but as it resulted in 5 capital kills that's probably quite alright. Sov in system isn't endangered in any way. Atlas.. yeah, they are struggling, not exactly a secret. Individual member corps are doing quite well, question is whether they want to hold it together, or where they end up if not.

[setar]

Did sov flip in GHZ-SJ today?

Turns out GHZ is safe (well, for now).

[Sir T]

Turns out GHZ is safe (well, for now).

No great surprise since AAA commenced Pos spamming.

As for Fountain, that campaign can be summed up in a single picture....

[setar]

No great surprise since AAA commenced Pos spamming.

Well, someone had to counter the 10 (?) POS you guys put up -- but my comment was aimed at the brief confusion on whether the one POS killed at the sacrifice of 20 capitals would be sufficient.

Fountain.. yeah. Didn't really expect anything else, but I guess it does keep PL entertained and away from the south. Doesn't look exactly sustainable though ;-)

[MahrinSkel]

It does seem a little pointless to be fighting for GHZ.  It's not a chokepoint system, it's not a hub system, the whole constellation is a dead-end and it's not particularly strategic even for the constellation.  If they were doing something meaningful in Esoteria, Paragon Soul, or Catch it would maybe make sense as a diversion.  Is it part of a jump bridge highway?  Because otherwise it's only strategic utility seems to be that it's in your space rather than someplace that would threaten them.  But since being spread too thin is more of a risk for them than for you, I don't know what the fuck they were thinking, unless you're right and it was intended as a "short, victorious campaign" to restore morale and is now a tar baby that's sucking them in.

It's not like BoB to be doing pointless shit because they've run out of ideas, but that's sure enough what this looks like.

--Dave

[Phildo]

It's a potential sov 4 station system within close range of Goonswarm's home systems and someone forgot to check the sov 4 button when Reunion corp switched over to AAA.  Aside from that, there's some history to that particular constellation that I'm fuzzy on, and it IS on their jump bridge network.  I suppose it's also the 2nd best constellation in the region after ROL's last holdout.

[MahrinSkel]

It's still a reactive move, an exposed salient that is a far more convenient for you than for them.  Used to be they'd never come near a battleground like that unless they were on the other side of it, taking you off balance instead of over-reaching themselves.  AAA must have made a do-or-die stand there a condition of the deal.

--Dave

[Comstar]

Also, Atlas is broke.  Like, even more broke than normal: proper broke.

Any more information on this? I thought they had taken some rich moons in Estoria lately. And even if they start running low on cash, don't they still rent 1/3 of Stain from Stain Empire? 

[Phildo]

Stain, Systematic-Chaos and C0ven are the ones taking space in Esoteria.  Atlas are living in Curse and begging for scraps from uncle BoB.

[Predator Irl]

Stain, Systematic-Chaos and C0ven are the ones taking space in Esoteria.  Atlas are living in Curse and begging for scraps from uncle BoB.

Yeah Im watching them camp gates in Frigs right now. They must be totally broke!

[setar]

BOB and NC wrapped up the fights in O-W with NC removing the last BOB POS at the cost of another 8 capitals, but at least they should be free now to help out elsewhere. -A- took care of two friendly POS coming out of reinforced in JDAS which should be sufficient to break Sov3 in system (and break the JB chain, but that's second hand info).

Got a visit from the inty Outbreak/eVoke/Havoc-gang that disposed KIA in HED earlier; since we were still at the POS it didn't turn into much of a fight though.

Oh, and nearly forgot to reply to an earlier post: nope, not Jokull ;)

[setar]

Can someone shed light on DG-? I know we hopped over from O-W now and then to repair POS there, but I didn't realize that was enough to get sovereignty. Looks like we have a new system to fight over.

[Sir T]

BOB hacked someones account and used that character to uncheck the sov claim boxes on enough towers to claim it (See half the systems that fell during the ASCN war for similar crap) Its been petitioned and will be back to GS sov tomorrow due to sov 4, but I look forward to seeing BOB making excuses for cowering in Poses terrified of hotdrops in DG- for the next month.

See: Reinforcing Failure

[setar]

We'll see about the second part, but the first part is a classic 'welp'. Getting tons of fights out of a system like O-W and they pull of a stunt like that rather than fight in the next one? Gah.

[Jayce]

Wow, I didn't believe it at first, but apparently one of our corps (OEG) has proof positive that it was a stolen account with POS fueler roles.  18 GS, 11 BOB towers.  11 towers were OEG, all had "claim sov" unchecked before downtime.

It appears that GS Sov1 will be restored but in :ccp: fashion not sov 3.  Thanks, we could have handled that ourselves.

[Pezzle]

Wow, if that is true... what the fuck.

[Endie]

Must feel shitty to be on Bob/AAA's side right now if you're a decent Eve player.  You lie down with dogs, you get fleas.

[setar]

Would love to see that proof. The way you describe the POS situation it might have just been the 11 BOB POS claiming Sov due to 11 of the 18 GS POS never being set up to claim sov. You'd never notice that a corp was sloppy in setting up the towers unless someone started to contest sov.

Again, not saying that's the case, but a bit more information would be nice.

[xorx]

That has to be a troll right? I don't mind a bit of vicious competition and forum trolling, but if someone actually hacked someone elses account to win at internet spaceships, that's not metagaming, that's cheating. At Internet Spaceships.

Let's get this clear. This is like cheating at Windows Minesweeper.  Sure you could, but you're a total douche. Hopefully whichever bright spark did this is currently feeling like a complete loser with no perspective on life.