War

[Simond]

I love the implied standoff over POS counts in QY6 as well - both BoB & Goonswarm have less than ten large POSes up each...but QY6 actually has 40+ moons.

So if BoB decided that they wanted to win more than they wanted furious impellers, they could just start POS spamming the spare moons. Of course, the problem with that is you can only place five towers a day per alliance or corp, so Goonswarm & friends are in a better place to spam (as we've got lots of allies and BoB...doesn't anymore). Damned if they do, damned if they don't. 

[Akkori]

Thanks Endie, that's not so hard to get on the basic level. I'm thinking one day it would be pretty cool to be a part of an Alliance where this kind of activity is part of my play time. In the next 28 days or so, I (ZynnLee) will be a stealth bomber newbie, and in about 100 days, my alt (Grayson) will be a mid-level Fleet Commander (flying a Imperitor, lol). So, this kind of info is good to have.

I appreciate you taking the time to write all that!

[Slayerik]

Thanks Endie, that's not so hard to get on the basic level. I'm thinking one day it would be pretty cool to be a part of an Alliance where this kind of activity is part of my play time. In the next 28 days or so, I (ZynnLee) will be a stealth bomber newbie, and in about 100 days, my alt (Grayson) will be a mid-level Fleet Commander (flying a Imperitor, lol). So, this kind of info is good to have.

I appreciate you taking the time to write all that!

Yeah, Endie basically kicks ass.

[Endie]

Looks like Bob may have got a touch lucky in PR-, although I totally disagree with the idea of us even trying what we just tried because of the risk of throwing bob a few crumbs of comfort in the form of dread kills at the end of a week in which they have been roundly humiliated.

Anyway, big fight at a hostile POS, we took on the dread cap fleet but most of our capfleet and almost all the support fleet) got locked out of the system due to traffic control.  At the moment, the KBs show us well ahead, but fighting outnumbered like that, I imagine we'll have lost a pile of caps when they all get posted.

Ah well, back to the grind.

[Hakeldaima]

Is the battle going on now a Kursk (important, but months left of conflict) or a Berlin? Assuming that sov3 falls and you get rid of the jammer, will you have your run of Delve or do you envision a long fight for the region after that?

[dingusxavier]

The taking of Qy6 not only gives the Coalition a real foothold in Delve, but also breaks sov 4 on F-T, the former coalition cap disaster system.

What I see happening is a few more tough fights for systems (especially F-T) with declining resistance as BoB loses more and more, leading to faster system takes. All the sov 4 constellations will be tough to crack however.

The process can be sped up if the coalition manages to destroy a sizable chunk of BoB's capfleet. This will be difficult to achieve, though, because to say that BoB is 'cautious' in the way they deploy their caps is like saying that the Pacific Ocean is 'damp'.

[dingusxavier]

Oh, and another major factor that will increase/decrease the time needed to take Delve will be how fast MC and MM/MH advance. I think it's fairly safe to say that the RSF doesn't need any more people helping it on the main front, which means that the remaining allies will probably be coordinating to force BoB to pick between systems.

I'm sure MM/MH will be advancing as soon as possible; as for MC et al, well, I know certain posts of theirs have alluded to the fact that they will be attemping to take a Delve constellation so they can setup permanent jump bridges between PB and their Querious system. They7 may stop after that, I don't know.

Which effectively means that BoB, who cannot stop RSF on on front, will soon once again be fighting two or possibly three fronts. Frankly, assuming proper coordination by the coalition, I don't see how they could do it.

[Endie]

Turned out not to be so awful after all: we messed up a hotdrop and Bob seem to have edged the day on capital kills, but I was kinda expecting them to finish off 40 or 50 dreads, minimum: instead, when we got more ships in system, and MC turned up, Bob docked up and things seem to have died down.

Just as well: that might have taken the gloss off us taking the first station system in Delve that Bob have ever lost, and doing it in just about a week.

Speaking of weeks, that's us on day 8 and Molly assured me we'd have run out of steam on day 7 and the attack would be over.  I am very disappointed in him.

[JoeTF]

Tbh, if I were to lead ze Coallition, BoB would be finished within 2 weeks. But then, you prefer the super-slow, ultra cautionous approach. Some even say that you actually don't want to win, since with BoB out of the picture that puts goons in rather uncomfortable position.

We're not overly careful with using our cap fleet, it's not fault Russians forget to bring bubbles when they do their famous hotdrops:)
Besides, loosing Cap Fleet is not an issue: it can be built, or even blatantly purchased in empire. If the BoB is half as rich as Endie&Co paints it, we could afford to lose our Cap Fleet over and over. We lose it on Monday, we buy it back on Tuesday.
Now, losing sup caps is totally different, but with those we're quite careful (though I never forget that one afk mothership we accidentally warped into middle of enemy fleet*).

Anyway, I posted because I wanted to ask Endie how the post-bob 0.0 will look like. I know you never really posted any actual news so far, but phleaze - post something new for just this time.




*luckily for us enemy though it's some tactical master stroke and started to run instead of going for a tackle.

[JoeTF]

Speaking of weeks, that's us on day 8 and Molly assured me we'd have run out of steam on day 7 and the attack would be over.  I am very disappointed in him.

Ah, you're getting on the Omnipotence itself byte.
Dropping that, it's day 8 and you still haven't got Qy6 for gods sake. As prime doom sayer in whole BOB, I'm honestly, (and I really mean 100% pure heart honest),  disappointed.

[Sir T]

The taking of Qy6 not only gives the Coalition a real foothold in Delve, but also breaks sov 4 on F-T, the former coalition cap disaster system.

What I see happening is a few more tough fights for systems (especially F-T) with declining resistance as BoB loses more and more, leading to faster system takes. All the sov 4 constellations will be tough to crack however.

The process can be sped up if the coalition manages to destroy a sizable chunk of BoB's capfleet. This will be difficult to achieve, though, because to say that BoB is 'cautious' in the way they deploy their caps is like saying that the Pacific Ocean is 'damp'.

You have to remember that BOB stripped all the guns and modules off its towers in F-T weeks ago. All there is there is a few empty bubbles. Once sov 4 breaks that system will fall in the stront timer as its totally undefended. We could do it easily with battleships.

And you should have seen BOBS capital fleet run to poses when the cyno jammer went down and 2 cynos appeared in system...

Tbh, if I were to lead ze Coallition, BoB would be finished within 2 weeks. But then, you prefer the super-slow, ultra cautionous approach. Some even say that you actually don't want to win, since with BoB out of the picture that puts goons in rather uncomfortable position.

We're not overly careful with using our cap fleet, it's not fault Russians forget to bring bubbles when they do their famous hotdrops:)

Our "bubbles" were on the FWST gate trying to get in. and I wonder how mr tactical genius would manage to defeat BOB completely in 2 weeks when it takes 2 weeks minimum to break sov 4?

In case you hadn't noticed, there has been over a hundred towers blown in the past week and 1  station system has fallen on average every 2 days. It has been a massive co-ordinated strike and your resistance across delve has been negligible since the first Monday. I cant even begin to count how many systems you have lost. This is only day 8. In QY6 alone the towers destroyed score is

Tactically cowardly cautious idiots = 15 towers
Superior reckless brilliant tacticians = 0 towers.

Ah, you're getting on the Omnipotence itself byte.
Dropping that, it's day 8 and you still haven't got Qy6 for gods sake. As prime doom sayer in whole BOB, I'm honestly, (and I really mean 100% pure heart honest),  disappointed.

We do own QY6. In fact we have pretty much owned it for the past week, though things got hairy when you guys were scared out of T-PAR by the deployment of a massive capital fleet. It falls to Goonswarm tomorrow downtime. Thats 1 day after the towers began to claim sov in system. You can hear us sobbing.

[Endie]

Speaking of weeks, that's us on day 8 and Molly assured me we'd have run out of steam on day 7 and the attack would be over.  I am very disappointed in him.

Ah, you're getting on the Omnipotence itself byte.
Dropping that, it's day 8 and you still haven't got Qy6 for gods sake. As prime doom sayer in whole BOB, I'm honestly, (and I really mean 100% pure heart honest),  disappointed.

Wait a minute: today at downtime was the very first moment we could have got sov, and we only missed that because your last two towers came out after downtime.  I know you've never really grasped sov warfare, Joe, but don't even you see that you're grasping at straws?  Bob brought everything they could, as Molle told us, and delayed us by one day.  One day.  That's how awesome Bob is.  One day.

I know that "your'e not winning fast enough" is the best line Bob can come up with, but really, do at least try.

And yes, if Molly says "this is what will happen: we will defend Delve successfully and the coalition's attack will peter out in a week" (don't make me link to it) then I will bring that up when he is shown to be 100% delusional: the problem with arrogance is that when it is unwarranted, you look dumb.

As regards your previous, rambling post, it's tricky to pick any substantive points out of the floundering, but let's try anyway.  I don't say Bob is particularly rich: I've always said that the GF economic structure in particular is far superior.  We never had the T2 bpos or the titan trade route grinding to make us cash, so we concentrated on sustainable means.  The fact that we now have all Bob's moon mining sites helps, I suppose, but I know very little about moon mining.

And don't doubt that goons want to win this and get it out the way.  There will be no "uncomfortable position".  And why does it matter to you what we do after Bob?  You'll be irrelevant by then.

PS thanks for your views on the importance of supercaps but if you were a bit more involved you'd know that we killed one of your motherships this weekend.  In that Delve station system.  The one we've taken.

[Teleku]

I'm desperately waiting for some goons to take that video clip of raving Hitler from Downfall that's been going around the internet with various different subtitles and making a BoB/Molle centric version.

If it hasn't already been done.

[JoeTF]

Geez, calm the fuck down.
I'll probably have to eat that 8 day post, but that's not important.
I never touched goon economic system*, I just commented irritatingly persistent myth that "everything will move when we kill their caps, really". When you kill our super caps, then yes, but ordinary dreads, not so important. Oh, and like everyone reading this thread I know about the Nyx.

The I'm dissapointed in you isn't BoB line, the BoB line is "we're better then you"; should have known, since you follow Sir Molle posts so passionately. It's my personal, honest opinion, in fact most of BoB doesn't share it.  

MC have biggest cap fleet in EVE, IAc had enough to block us in 49-u for quite a long time, according to important goon sources, the goons have hundreds of caps, northern monkeys had enough to provide serious opposition to MC (ze biggest cap fleet in EVE), I'm sure now they have even more, lastly RA have at least the same amount as we do. you have sucha number advantage in caps it's not even funny, the only reason we don't see 400 enemy caps operating here daily is due to internal problems and lack of really burning passion in entire (not the word entire) Coallition. you want to kill us, but you don't really want to do all nighters.

The question what will happen after BoB is the most important thing in the whole discussion and this forum is the best place to ask it. And of this forum, you're most qualified to answer it. You're the main speaker for RSF around here, so I would love to hear your opinion.  



*but if you insist - all my money flow is coming from empire and I'm new BoB player. Older ones prolly have shitloads of cash and/or t2 bpos in empire which give them ultra sustainability. On the other hand goonies seem to take majority of their money from ratting and generally living in 0.0.

[ajax34i]

From the sidelines:  this war demonstrates the resources and time commitments required to take down an entrenched (Sov4) alliance, and neither are impossible for the other alliances out there.  So, I would expect that after a short breather and pause to rebuild some ships, there's gonna be another war somewhere else.

The other possibility is that one or a few of the alliances in the coalition get unhappy with their portion of the spoils of war and throw a hissy fit, and the war continues without a break and this thread goes on to reach 100 pages.

[dingusxavier]

Goons have hundreds of caps? lol. Maybe if you count the Rorquals...

MC capfleet is demonstrably roughly the same size as yours, true. RA probably same.

And speaking for the 'nothern monkeys', our capfleet is miniscule in proportion to our size, with the exception of Morsus Mihi, who as you may recall is operating on a different front. The same, incidentally, is true of MC.

Also, your assertion that you could replace the bulk of your carrier/dread fleet and carry on the same as you did before is pretty much bullhocky.

Three points on that:
1. Even if you have the necessary resources to replace that amount of capitals, the logistics involved in replacing them would take weeks. Weeks in which your forces would be effectively neutered.

2. The morale hit of taking the most capital losses since F-T would be incredibly crippling.

3. Actually, there's only two.

[Simond]

Final score was 18 RSF+friends dreads down for 12 BoB+minions, incidentally.

[Sparky]

Big cap losses only really dent an alliance if the remaining pilots start finding themselves really busy when there's POS shooty to be done.  See:  LV after the DG-8VJ incident.  Don't think that would apply to BoB or RSF unless combined with a morale sapping string of defeats that was killing participation anyway.

[Comstar]

I had a long post written out on BoB and SirMolle's future, but here's a much better version.

As for the Collation's strategy, it's something like this: If we hit that bull's eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.

[Slayerik]

TBH, as a Triumvirate sideliner I must say I am very curious about what Joe is asking. I basically hope for good pew pew down the road. We aren't expansionist, we just like roaming. A while back I heard stuff from the goons about looking forward to a time where it wasn't going to be large blobfest warfare all the time. Something tells me thats not the case anymore, but who knows.

I do like the current Goon CAOD opinion that Triumvirate are paper tigers. We'll get a good fight out of someone due to it, I hope. The fact is, the common TRI soldier didn't give a shit about Providence. I personally went down there, roamed some, popped my first Rorqual (with top damage to boot : ), roamed some more, got bored and went home. We have as many targets up here, and I can carebear when I feel like it. We don't want that space. If someone comes knocking on our door they better come fuckin correct, our cap fleet is no joke...and I'd dare to say we have an exceptional BS sniper fleet as well. 150-200 fully tech II snipers hurts the fuckin pride (and thats just on half ass offensive ops). The difference between us and most alliances is, we don't have blues. Well, like 3 in the entire universe. It will most likely be our downfall, but we have some friends if we really need them.

Either way, I find the current war fascinating. I must say I would respect Bob more if they didn't try to spin everything...but it's just their style. They have bitten off more than they can chew and I'm glad to see them go down, though I do have a lot of respect for them as a fighting force.

[Sir T]

Geez, calm the fuck down.
I'll probably have to eat that 8 day post, but that's not important.
I never touched goon economic system*, I just commented irritatingly persistent myth that "everything will move when we kill their caps, really". When you kill our super caps, then yes, but ordinary dreads, not so important. Oh, and like everyone reading this thread I know about the Nyx.
...

MC have biggest cap fleet in EVE, IAc had enough to block us in 49-u for quite a long time, according to important goon sources, the goons have hundreds of caps, northern monkeys had enough to provide serious opposition to MC (ze biggest cap fleet in EVE), I'm sure now they have even more, lastly RA have at least the same amount as we do. you have sucha number advantage in caps it's not even funny, the only reason we don't see 400 enemy caps operating here daily is due to internal problems and lack of really burning passion in entire (not the word entire) Coallition. you want to kill us, but you don't really want to do all nighters.

IAC Had like 6 dreads and maybe 6 carriers during the invasion, with 2 motherships, one of which we got from another source (BOB) Seemingly, that was enough to stop 15 alliances including BOB and MC combined. God you must suck by your own standards.

You see, while BOB people like to yammer all about how if the opposition did this or crammed everyone into one system it would all be over in a week. Sadly that the most harebrained stupid idea one has ever heard. You scream about blobs but the only fight you understand is everyone crammed into one system fighting even numbers with BOB with its triple titans doomsdays, massive fighter swarm and superior skillpoints winning all around it. You simply cannot understand stratagy. IF we had done that (assuming the servers could handle it haha) you would (a) have used your jump bridges to run off and sit in another system (b) be sucking up isk for far longer (c) your empire would not have collapsed nearly as fast. Because we hit you 3 places at once the southern and northern fronts collapsed in 3 days. Oven up in 9-9 the goons never had their entire force in 9-9, but had raiding gangs all out interdicting your people coming up and causing havoc.

You fired your lag cannon on a MM fleet on day one but all that happened was that you guys got snarled up in the lag you generated yourself and were stuck in one place for over 2 hours. Everyone else had great fun ripping up your infrastructure. Your Jump bridge network now lies in ruins. Thats what you were depending on to move your blob from point a to point b, but we hit it from 4 different points and since BOB are allergic to splitting up their blob for any reason, all that happened was that your jump bridge poses were systematically reinforced. Hell its gotten so bad for you that you are taking down towers before we get a chance to hit them.

Whats holding things up? The fact is we are not leaving you any safe places to hide. We are cleaning out your Towers everywhere as we go and thats part of our strategy. Your income was already drying up due to the work we had been doing before last week, but basically there is no place for your fleets to run to if they try a run behind our lines which would require more balls than you apparently have left.

We only hit you hard in one point 2 days ago because we didn't need to. When we gave BOB the fight it wanted.. bob collapsed. And as for all nighters.. hahaha. Delve is already the safest place in 0.0 for the coalition. you haven't camped the route to 49-u since sunday night. Move out of PR- and qy6 and you wont see a single BOB anywhere as most of the towers they used to hide in are largely gone. We don't NEED to do allnighters, BOB is falling pretty much as fast as humanly possible as it is. You keep thinking in terms of a single huge knockout blow to shatter an alliance. You kept trying huge knockout blows on ASCN for 3 months, and it never worked out like that. Sadly, the people you are working against are not complete strategic morons. And anyway the assault has been going pretty much 24/7 since it began. Yes your infrastructure was that huge. And yes, I know you people have not been told the half of it.

Conclusion: We want BOB dead.. but we also want to make sure that BOB stays dead. And guess what, its working.

[JoeTF]

You see, while BOB people like to yammer all about how if the opposition did this or crammed everyone into one system it would all be over in a week.

Find me such posts, I want to find doom sayer soulmate!

[Raging Turtle]

Joe, I'm confused as to why you're suddenly talking like a non-native speaker. 

[Simond]

This is clearly morning-shift Joe. You'll have to wait for evening-shift Joe for a coherent answer. 

[Endie]

This is clearly morning-shift Joe. You'll have to wait for evening-shift Joe for a coherent answer. 

n:iceburn:

For explanation to those not involved in the war, Bob have historically tended to share titan accounts between multiple players so as to cover all timezones.  The pilot of the titan nominally owned by Orange Species in particular would have dramatically different playstyles and linguistic abilities depending on the time of day.  Thus we would differentiate between "morning-shift Orange Species" and the others.

Yes, it is against the EULA, but Bob were pretty confident that they'd not get punished for it so long as they took basic precautions to hide the IP changes.  And they were right.  Although I dunno if LC would be able to confirm this but I always got the feeling that Chowdown avoided getting too involved in this practise.

[Endie]

All coalition members who're not unfortunate enough to be stuck in work like me might want to log into QY6 as soon as the servers come up.  Outside chance of a titan kill.

Edit: Slayer, what did I tell you, and where did I say it would start to happen?  http://www.killboard.net/details/231357/

Poor guy trying to make a run for it with all he had in the world :D

Further Edit: Dammit Shrike made a run for it, and admittedly very wisely so.  Now Bob, have a choice: step up and take back the system from us and save their level 4 sovereignty for the constellation (they have 7 days to take it back now), or admit they can't win those fights against us and try and spam the system with POSes.

O hay look at dis:

[LC]

Yes, it is against the EULA, but Bob were pretty confident that they'd not get punished for it so long as they took basic precautions to hide the IP changes.  And they were right.  Although I dunno if LC would be able to confirm this but I always got the feeling that Chowdown avoided getting too involved in this practise.

I know that Orange was played by multiple people. And any super cap loss in RKK was probably Dianabolic logged into someone else's character. I can't remember Chowdown ever being played by anyone but chow. Same thing goes for SirMolle.

[Endie]

I could get hellbanned for saying this but I thought Chowdown was pretty ok, given that I only arrived at the time LV were getting beaten, which tends to make anyone a bit narked, I imagine.  He was pretty chill when he joined our gang in an op a few weeks ago, and had goons in T1 frigates shooting him.

Anyway, in QY6 it transpires Bob had chosen option B: just try and spam the system.  I dunno how often they'll try that, as we immediately brought in a few dozen caps at short notice: it is now 44 minutes after downtime and we're already blowing up the last of their new POSes now.  I hope that's newsy enough for you, Joe.  But presumably you are "honestly disappointed" that we didn't blow them up inside 36 minutes?

[IainC]

http://www.killboard.net/details/231357/

Poor guy trying to make a run for it with all he had in the world :D

That kill mail has got to have been scrambled somehow. The module list makes no sense - apart from the fact that an Obelisk apparently has an 8-8-8 config...

[Sir T]

http://www.killboard.net/details/231357/

Poor guy trying to make a run for it with all he had in the world :D

That kill mail has got to have been scrambled somehow. The module list makes no sense - apart from the fact that an Obelisk apparently has an 8-8-8 config...

I think it's a bug with the new killmail system. if theres over a certain amount of modules it gets confused and sorts them into high mid and low slots.

He died in Aradia, which is the exit to empire from Delve. He was probably running and taking his hanger contents with him..

"Everything in Aradia will be destroyed" - SirMollie.

[JoeTF]

Wow, that Obelisk kill was classic. Unfortunately, cannot share back story.

Endie, SHC does much better job at war reporting and by newsy, I meant more of original content - stuff that really is a news to a conflict and basically a repost from SHC or EVE-O.

Which is why I asked you: How do you see a post-BoB EVE? I hoped for, well, I'm still hoping for interesting read on how you and/or RSF sees the future instead of  smart ass " You'll be irrelevant by then" remark.



Lastly, I love how you equate everything I write with official opinion of all BoB.

[amiable]

Endie, SHC does much better job at war reporting and by newsy, I meant more of original content - stuff that really is a news to a conflict and basically a repost from SHC or EVE-O.

To be honest, I find SHC way too moderated and with more than a bit of pro-BoB bias.  This thread has definitely had the best war reporting, bar none.  Is Endie biased?  Sure, but if you read through the thread there was just us much pro-BoB bias early on.  The number of pro-BoB posts have just dwindled considerably as they continue to lose more of the war.

[JoeTF]

I don't think SHC is biased, they simply don't allow poasting, and smack in GBBS. Which is why you can have informative posts and normal discussion with people like Evil Thug, Thol, Seleene or Tyrrax Thorrk. SHC is where you go for status updates and battle reports, for crazy spins and propaganda campaigns there is always the CAOD.

[Endie]

I pretty much detest SHC, as it is full of people posting pasive-aggressively with a smiley at the end of their sly little [edit: forgot the noun] digs.

But if you are seriously saying that reading just what i say here is less informative or timeous than reading the whole of SHC, then, erm, welcome to the world of the blindingly obvious.  Perhaps it would be more informative if you updated after Bob's many debacles, instead of just after their very occasional successes.

As it is, I report our welp moments just as readily as our successes: look at last night, when I posted as the hotdrop seemed to be going badly wrong.  If I did what you did, and only posted happy smiley news, then people would just dismiss it all.  Yes, I report a lot of good news for the coalition.  But that's just because, since 9-9, it's been a pretty steady flow of advances.  Although I did get mentioned in a recent paper on Eve as a successful propagandist 

As regards what I think will happen post-Bob, as Slayerik mentions we discussed this once before, and I am just a poor little member of the Euro-TZ pos-shotting and occasional sniping crew, so I dunno.  I can speculate, of course.  The assumption there is that we manage to throw Bob out their space.  That's not certain: Goons before the revelations patch were outnumbered by a not-dissimilar factor by the GBC, and didn't have any titans or motherships.  We turned it around.  Red Alliance were far more outnumbered when they were reduced to a single system.  If Bob really don't want to leave Delve, nobody can make them: NPC stations mean that.  It'll all depend on whether they want it as much.

But if they do get thrown out, then I hope we'll get enemies that we can shoot at without POS wars in the main.  There are a very few alliances that we would like to see actually die, but I for one would be happy to simply exchange roaming gangs with Tri, the Tortugans, and people like that.

If anyone spends too long deliberately ganking our newbies like Bob did, I expect they'll bring the rapetrain down on themselves.  And I suspect that whoever shelters Molle, Dianabolic and the rest will come to regret it.  But we'll have been fighting POS wars against V, LV, Bob and a dozen pets for well over a year by then.  I imagine the choice will be to avoid lengthy grinds.

All just guesswork vOv  I could be wrong: some goons have plenty of grudges.

As regards the Obelisk kill, I imagine that the guy in question is veeeery unpopular right now, inside his corp.

[Fordel]

Insert Quote
I pretty much detest SHC, as it is full of people posting passive-aggressively with a smiley at the end of their sly little

Then the Mods go into a edit spree trying to moderate all of the replies to the jab, yet ignore the source itself, because on SHC, it would constitute "Good dialog"