War

[Pax]

Does this also mean that DDing -inside- POS shields will not affect ships -outside- of it?

[Pezzle]

Hopefully they cannot be activated inside the shield?

[Endie]

Sorry for the length of this, but it's less one engagement and more a story of a campaign so far.  For those interested in F13's part in this, the last paragraph is the bit to skip to, though it'll make marginally less sense.

For those who don't know, we in Goonfleet have been fighting some ex-RA people called Red Overlord in Feythabolis, along with their allies of convenience, Stain and Coven (Atlas gave up and left).

Red.Overlord are the creation of Nync, who basically uses them to provide ISK which he then sells on eBay.  They've been squatting a Cosmos Complex constellation that belongs to Goons, and ignored both RA and GF when told to stop.  So RA threw them out, and they formed their own alliance.  Their ISK-selling activities also had a lot to do with the retreat of RA from the Delve campaign (despite their refusal to actually help), so we're none too fond of them.

They're tremendously rich, so have a huge capfleet, but they've relied on our ongoing enemies in Stain and Coven to provide numbers.  We've been following a strategy of attrition: engaging with caps when outnumbered because we feel we can replace our losses faster than them (Goonfleet T1 frigate strategy come of age).  Thus, last week, we engaged with dreads while massively outnumbered, and took out 30 caps for a loss of 30 ourselves.

The main fleet has been engaged in 0OYZ-, which was a major battlefield in the Feythabolis campaign against BoB.  It's a very low mooncount system (six, I think), which makes it immensely defensible, and Bob would defend it by putting large numbers of capitals, motherships and their titans on the entry gate, with masses of fighters deployed, behind bubbles, knowing that the game would not allow an attacking force even to load the grid before dying in such situations.  You cannot get a base in a fully-towered, low mooncount system without first destroying one of the enemy's towers, which is extremely hard if he has a fleet present.

Red.Overlord don't have high enough sovereignty to avoid us using our capital fleet, however, so they cannot try that tactic (which, thanks to huge improvements in the game code, is not in any case quite so guaranteed a success at lagging out the enemy these days).  So we managed to get a POS up in the system, and to defend it successfully when attacked, giving us a base in their home system.

The new patch went live today.  Before the patch, Red.Overlord, thinking that they were awfully clever, timed their towers so that if they were attacked before the patch then they would come out during it, and would recharge their shields when nobody was in the game.  Sploitz!  Unfortunately for them, GF either guessed or discovered this, and so those of us in capswarm got SMS messages at about 3am saying to log in and attack.  Red.Overlord being Russian, their logistics guys had not bothered to change the timing on their towers back, post-patch, so they were still on short timers.

The result is that we started shooting their towers in the early hours, they started coming out of reinforced at about 7am (except for one that wasn't even stronted, and one on a proper timer), and we have reinforced them alll, and destroyed all but the long-timed one (which will be a big fight in a couple of days.  All of their towers have been replaced with Goon ones, and they will have to pull off a massive success to hold the system now.  What they have discovered is what others found out in the year-long southern campaign: boundless stupidity and pretend-incompetence aside, Goons have a pretty relentless attitude once we decide on taking a system.

Meanwhile, those of us from F13 have been working in Northern Feythabolis, camping another one of their station systems pretty much by ourselves, with hald a dozen of our capitals in the system for logistics and fighter support, doing hit-and-runs where we can, taking the station, shooting their POSes, reinforcing tower mods and generally tying down about 20% of their entire alliance membership.  If they choose to throw everything at the defence of 0OYZ- at any point, then we'll take down their station services or POS defences.  It's been long and tedious for most of the time, with occasional bouts of excitement, but we're forcing a two-front fight on the enemy,and it is working.  It's also pretty cool to see F13 posters changing the strategic map of the entire game.

[Amarr HM]

[Endie]

Touché.

[Simond]

And Goonfleet awards its first medal, to Bob From Marketing:



 

[WayAbvPar]

Heh that was a funny story.

[Pax]

WTS the frozen corpse of the guy who did that to BFM 

[Thrawn]

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=923071

[Pezzle]

AAA vs Goons.  I wonder if this means UNL also? 

[Comstar]

-A- scares the hell out of me. Glad I got most of my stuff out of Catch 2 weeks ago. On the bright side, if we take FAT-6P back I can use the 20 tech 2 frigs I have stuck in there.

[Nevermore]

So Red.Overlord are tremendously rich ISK sellers and I assume, Russian?  I wonder how much they paid -A- to declare on Goons?

[Goumindong]

AAA vs Goons.  I wonder if this means UNL also? 

I do not believe so. You guys should claim AAA's space for the empire and get the zealots rolling. You guys need a mission anyway.

[Amarr HM]

AAA vs Goons.  I wonder if this means UNL also? 

I do not believe so. You guys should claim AAA's space for the empire and get the zealots rolling. You guys need a mission anyway.

You should hold some diplomatic talks me thinks.

[Goumindong]

AAA vs Goons.  I wonder if this means UNL also? 

I do not believe so. You guys should claim AAA's space for the empire and get the zealots rolling. You guys need a mission anyway.

You should hold some diplomatic talks me thinks.

This will be good for us.

[NiX]

Heh that was a funny story.

Go on...

[ajax34i]

Go on...

They were in 0OYZ-, lots of reds in local, good size fleets on both sides, and during a lull in the fighting a red/enemy managed to x up into the Goon fleet and then gang-warped EFHR's mothership into a trap (warp bubble plus dozens of battleships positioned for ganking).  The mothership died fast.  Much drama, and much teasing and joking ensued.

[NiX]

Wow... that's impressive

[Phildo]

AAA vs Goons.  I wonder if this means UNL also? 

Set us blue so we can fly on ops together!

[Pezzle]

That is a job for the diplomats ;)

Oh Wai..

[Predator Irl]

AAA vs Goons.  I wonder if this means UNL also? 

Set us blue so we can fly on ops together!

Yeh, would be great GS + CVA!

[Sparky]

-A- scares the hell out of me.

Why?  What have they achieved apart from beating around a demoralised and failing IAC?  I'm asking seriously, haven't been paying attention really.

[Pax]

BFM didn't want that Wyvern anyway. 

-A- sandwiched between two blocs, which at least have some mutual respect for eachother - this might prove the war of the year.

[Endie]

AAA vs Goons.  I wonder if this means UNL also? 

"We got offer from AAA to sit quietly and keep our heads in safe place. This offer certainly was very tempting, but isn't according the spirit of our alliance. So we are rejecting offer and resetting standing with AAA. Stain Empire, RED.OverLords and AAA from this moment are outlaws for us and should be eliminated. We'll get into the war on Goons' side." http://forum.eve-ru.com/index.php?s=...dpost&p=446827

"UNL will support Goons, TCF and co and join into the war"

UNL choose allies over Ebayers.  Won't be forgotten.  I'd expect more to take the same stand, including a couple of very significant players.

There are a lot of Goons resubscribing for this: we needed drama and the Realpolitik of killing Smash and repeatedly throwing out Stain didn't really provide it.  Now we have the whole Stab In The Back schtick to focus on and I've not seen the forums buzzing like this since the Bob war.

I'd expect a couple of weekends of full-on assaults from our enemies.  They need to steamroll: AAA have not shown themselves to be keen on sustained, grinding warfare, against either IAC or CVA.  They'll be prepared, have logistics in place, and have momentum on their side.

Even with their huge number of caps and titans added by the people that left RA they must know that they have to score some big hits, soon, at the very least retaking 0OYZ- (which I think we'll take today), C9N/DTX and establishing a foothold in one of the AZN cluster.  If they do all that, then the war is going well for them.  If they don't stop us getting sov 3 in 0OYZ- then things are going very badly for their attack.  If they let us reset the sov counter in ZS- even for a while then they are really struggling.  Timezone coverage will be a big issue.  Hopefully they'll waste time grinding out the regions we announced we were giving away a while ago.

The real problem for our enemies is that Goons stood completely alone in 9-9, outnumbered and up against game-breaking mechanics, and didn't show a particular tendency to fracture.  Now we have some cool allies, big and small (much to little Zenith Affinity for reckless commitment last night!) and we know we don't break easy.

In F13/ZS-specific news, we continue to harass the rear areas (pfnar) of Red.Overlord, notching up a bunch of battleship kills alongside Arsed and ZAF.  Nerf is on particularly fine form, seeming to be either top damage or killing blow on about ten BS and dictor kills over the last day.  We also shot station services and took down a bunch of POS mods, just to keep the enemy guessing, though we're very much set up for skirmishing at the moment, despite our local cap superiority (but we know very well what can happen within jump range of so many hostile caps!)

[Endie]

-A- sandwiched between two blocs, which at least have some mutual respect for eachother - this might prove the war of the year.

Whether or not CVA and GF set mutual blue, the second front is there.  And a third for Red.Overlord, given that UNL are in their rear.  And I suspect that we'll see a fourth front announced soon.

In the meantime, here is some chatlog fun from Kugutsumen:

Baab says hi ya'll, wants to tell you a story.

Tbh, money's to blame for everything.

1 Part of the "what the fuck is this word" ballet
After the war with bob and the freeing of Feithabolis, it was split between goon and RA. There's a cosmos const with a stationary 10/10 plex. On it was agreed that it'd be farmed by RA, goons, and tcf. (When questioned goons have reports that an agreement did exist, after questioning Nync he also said something about an agreement. RUS-1 buggered off. After a day Nync also buggered off.) Later RUS-1 poopsocked the plex for 13 months alone, not letting anyone in. (This is about 2kkk/day income.) 2 months ago goons against tried to enter the plex, but got shut by RUS-1. After that, talks began, in which RUS-1 said "This is our cow and we're milking it." (c) Everyone else can fuck off we won't let 'em in.
Goons made an offer: exchange for 2 constellations in Feithabolis for the entire Scalding Pass region. RUS-1 said fuck off, won't give it away. "Grandpa", me, and [Faer?] made an offer to compromize. We trade const for region, RUS puts their alts into neutral corp and continues farming. (Anyone who remembers plex wars knows that if someone's in there, getting them out isn't realistic.) Alliance got region, RUS keeps farming... But RUS-1 held their ground, and don't want to give anything away.

2nd part of [name] ballet
Corp [Leta] was made by Nync sometime ago, and claimed 2 Feithabolis stations. He later sold it along with all his chars stations and territories, for crunchy dollars to its current CEO. (Fact of buy+sell is confirmed by BOTH sides.) To an offer to move to new stations in Scalding they answered that there's no Promethium moons there, but here they had it. Later followed a long story about great life in real life, and lots of bullshit and ideas "everyone who comes with me vs goons I'll buy 'em the wheels and will compensate everything" I have 5 titans (which nobody knew about and has never seen on an op)

3rd part of [nae] ballet
Rise of ghosts

The second a threat that the flow of crusty greens might stop, on scene appeared people who in EVE rarely appear while the money was coming in. Расатан, Пупс and even Еретик appeared.

Together they started to agitate everybody onto war with goons with slogans like "we're Red Alliance and we don't leave our men behind" "they're beating one of ours" and etc. Forgetting apparently that when alliance needed help they happily legged it and didn't appear 'til now.
Especially amusing were thoughts by Расатана that we're all fucking carebears and for the year where there was no wars didn't event manage to build a titan for each of us, but man look at Nync he's got 5. Look at that guy, working for the good of the alliance! And MY wallet is so fucking huge that for anyone who flies caps I'll buy new ones in case of fuckups.
Not to mention the rabble rabble to replace the executor of the alliance for a new one.

No man in the right mind will want to fight for someone elses' wallet and lose everything that he made and achieved through his own toil. Nync promised everyone that if he's booted from the alliance, he'll kill us all and take everything.

The end. 

[Goumindong]

The fight for c9n started today.

[ajax34i]

Of course it's about money.   The 2-3 people who are milking that complex will do whatever, WHATEVER they can, to keep the RL cash flowing in, including, I think, computer hacks, trojan infections, DOS attacks, and shit.  And I don't believe that the rest of RA will buy the line that they're being "used" by these guys, being asked to lose ships and be online for the sole purpose of padding 2 people's RL wallets.  I think there's a whole network of little RL deals, you scratch my back I'll scratch yours, that will keep the whole alliance fighting at the absolutely hardest level that they can, all of them.

[Endie]

They'll have to be careful.  CCP banned a lot of these people for ISK-selling previously.  Drawing attention to themselves may not be their smartest move.

[xorx]

Oooh, eve alliance drama .. this is shaping up to be a doozy.
I  this thread.

[Thrawn]

They'll have to be careful.  CCP banned a lot of these people for ISK-selling previously.  Drawing attention to themselves may not be their smartest move.

That would be just about the most boring way to end a huge conflict.

"Uh, our backers and reason for fighting in the first place all got banned for isk-selling.  Soooooooooo, yeah...blue now?"

[Amarr HM]

If my limited view on how Goons work I severely doubt they'll except a renege on this deal in any shape or form so you have no fear there Thrawn.

[Pezzle]

Or goons will set them blue and shoot them anyway?   

We are considering the next options here.  That and it is not entirely clear what goons, or is it USF or RUSF, URSF.. hell no.. it is FURS!  Yeah, what do you FURS want anyhow? 

[MahrinSkel]

-A- scares the hell out of me.

Why?  What have they achieved apart from beating around a demoralised and failing IAC?  I'm asking seriously, haven't been paying attention really.

AAA is (or at least was) hard-core PvP focused, similar to how RA used to be but with a different "business model" (instead of farming plexes, they rented space to chinese strip-miners). In FIX, we learned not to engage them without a 50% weight advantage, BoB thought we were just being whiners but wound up doing the same.  Then we figured out it was their implants that made them so tough, and started fielding small teams (scan-optimized coverts plus a couple of frigates or a destroyer) whose entire job in battles with them was to scan down and kill their pods.  Hard to know how much that cost them before they stopped wearing high-grade implants against us, but we took out at least 5 full sets of Snake high-grade in a couple of weeks, their effectiveness against us went way down suddenly as they jump-cloned out of their implants, and pretty soon after that they pulled out of the Querious offensive.

So, go for the pods, and be aware that if they *really* pull out all the stops, having them outnumbered doesn't mean you have them outgunned.

--Dave

[Amarr HM]

So this begs the question how did you know they had snakes fitted? Also snakes only give you 20% speed bonus now so I can't imagine anyone wearing them anymore, in fact podding someone with snakes you are probably doing them a favour.

[Goumindong]

So this begs the question how did you know they had snakes fitted? Also snakes only give you 20% speed bonus now so I can't imagine anyone wearing them anymore, in fact podding someone with snakes you are probably doing them a favour.

Likely to be slaves now. But previously you could tell well enough when someone had to be using snakes.