War

[lac]

I like the idea, believe me!    I know we already pay out for some losses in combat (Alliance wide and even outside the alliance at times).  We have a corp Cap ship program to stockpile which is also used for Alliance purposes.  You would probably cry if you saw the prices I pay for ships(cheap).  There are now 9 CVA outposts in Providence with towers to maintain.  We have no CVA exclusive systems and share the wealth of the region (haha) with others.  For that matter we gave away administration of the richest section in Providence to our friends.  We do not charge residency fees, our station services are fairly inexpensive and on top of all that we do not even pay taxes :P  We live in one of the top 2 poorest regions of 0.0 (pure blind I think is the other?)  We do not get officer spawns or bistot/ark etc.  I think we are doing exceptionally well =)

There are 30.000 players online. 75% of the players never leave empire(?). That would leave us with 7500 0.0 dwellers. 550 are in the providence defence channel right now. That is 7.3% (plus all those who dwell there but aren't in on defence thingy). There are +-30 0.0 regions in eve, so Providence must be one of the most densely populated 0.0 regions (and I'm not even counting the roaming -A- guys).

That's quite an achievement on CVA's part.

If CCP is really so keen on getting people into 0.0, they might consider giving people who want to use NRDS policies some love so it's easier to implement such policies and maybe consider adding some lower quality 0.0 space for people to get their toes wet.

disclaimer: math, numbers, stuff.

[MahrinSkel]

FIX eventually settled (after much screaming and cussing by yours truly) on a principle of "entrenchment" for our defense POS.  The theory was that if the enemy has system dominance, the POS are going down and the only question is how long it's going to take them to drop each one.  The longer for each, the fewer they can do in a single op and the more time we had to coordinate strontium timers.  Originally that meant hardeners, and lots of them (the 14-hardener "D2 Specials" were actually copied from our designs in ED- after their failed invasion), when they changed everything up it meant a couple of scramblers, a web, 5 hardeners, a bank of 4 neuts (use them as a batch to break a capital tank, then shift all but one to the next target), a couple of small guns, a small high ROF turret (these were for small fry that might try to drain the guns or tackle something big at the edge of the bubble), and then all the medium guns the tower could handle.  We also standardized on Amarr and Minmatar towers (I wanted us to go all Minmatar, but we could get faction Amarr equivalents and the fuel for them in our space).

If you're on the defensive, what you need most is *time*.  Everything that slows the enemy down is good, everything that forces a decisive battle on unfavorable terms is bad.  Very Sun Tzu, if you can't win, stall.  I cussed up a storm making sure that every system defense POS had a full load anchored, even if most of it was left offline most of the time to save fuel.  Lots of corps would pinch pennies by anchoring the POS but only fitting a handful of guns and nothing else on it, if they were allowed to get away with it.  Somebody has to actually go and check every once in a while.

It was too bad they didn't follow through on Fortress Querious Mark 3 after I quit.  It would have been freaking awesome watching them try to crack that nut.  Instead, they took all the POS/ship numbers I had come up with, tripled them, *and* tried to force a mandatory Titan project contribution through, but didn't fill out the JB network (in fact, they fucked up the part I had already built) or build the third outpost for Constellation Sovereignty.  3 months later they had nothing because only a couple of corps had even tried to come up with their share, and Querious fell without a shot.

--Dave

[Fordel]

Try to defend everything and you will defend nothing.


There is also the mind games having a shitload of brickwall POS's provides. "Holy Fucking shit... we have to kill 12 more of these... just for THIS system? /wrist"

[Sparky]

75% of the players never leave empire(?)

I keep seeing this figure about but I'm pretty sure the report actually said "pilots", excluding those characters which never move systems as alts.  Which is of course very different to players as nearly every 0.0 guy has at least a shopping alt tooling about in empire, if only to avoid pesky war decs and the like.  Personally I have 2 empire only "pilots"(by their definition) and I'd consider myself an 0.0 player.

We're a minority for sure but it's not that clear cut.

edit: here's the report I believe we're talking about.  It makes quite interesting reading if you're a huge Eve nerd http://ccp.vo.llnwd.net/o2/pdf/QEN_Q4-2007.pdf

One thing that surprised me is only 49% of "pilots" stayed exclsuively in high-sec during the time period they discuss.  Carebears are the minority! 

[Fordel]

Is it counting people who cut through 1 or 2 'low sec' systems or people who take a shuttle out to some 0.0 spot 'just to see' ?

[Sparky]

They only snapshot a 2 week period so if you ventured out to 0.0 once upon a time just to look around you most likely wouldn't have been branded a sock shitting pvp'er in that report but I didn't really delve into the methodology too closely.

[tazelbain]

With the vast amounts of metagaming, it would be hard to know whats going on without account ids.  Even removing the carebear alts to 0.0 players, it would still have to be a ton of them otherwise I doubt CCP woud bother to set up FW for a bunch of market alts.

[lac]

In our previous issue, we examined the location of pilots and found
that 76% were located in high security areas (security status of
0.5 and above), 13% were in low security areas (security status
between 0.1 and 0.4) and 9% were located in zero-zero space
(security status of 0.0).

I based myself on this quote (from the above mentioned paper and its predecessor). Apparently I forgot to take in account low sec in my awesome calculation :)

[Fordel]

I would hazard a guess in that a large number of low sec visits were just that, passing on through to save half a dozen jumps as quickly and quietly as possible.


The only people who go into Low-sec and stay in Low-sec instead of 0.0 are pirates, wannabe pirates and people who want entire systems to themselves to rat in, despite mediocre returns. (compared to 0.0)

[Sparky]

With the vast amounts of metagaming, it would be hard to know whats going on without account ids.  Even removeing the carebear alts to 0.0 players, it would still have to be a ton of them otherwise I doubt CCP bother to set up FW for a bunch of market alts.

Think FW is aimed at the huge number of newbies who play out their free sub and leave muttering "mining sim".  I could be wrong.

[Endie]

Well, not war but still somewhat entertaining.

BoB guy builds titan, goes afk for a year, wants titan back, his ceo tells him to go fuck himself so he makes a coad-poast about it.

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=798494

Looks like he decided to self-destruct the titan when they told him to give it back. Everything I have heard indicates that the post is legit.

One problem quickly pointed out on the goon forums is that self-destructing leaves no wreck.

[Hoax]

Right now the universe is waiting to see some important things:

1.  When will everyone come out and say that RA are the most vile and fucked up alliance ever?  I mean its plain as day to me and I have very little sekret information from IG contacts and nothing IG at stake in the matter.

2.  What can be done about it and who will do it?  As long as its Redswarm its going to be an almost impossible task to beat them.  So someone will have to make a stand in a way that splits or attempts to split that alliance up or form an even bigger coalition which might not even be possible.

3.  What's BoB going to do?  How much does that still matter?  Sure they have the titans & its assumed that since they never technically buckled under the weight of pretty much everything being poured onto them...   I still say its a semi-valid question though.

4.  How pathetic is "the north"?  Will RA try to take their moons?  Can they do anything about it?

5.  What will Goons do next, I haven't ever paid as close attention to Goon history/posts/drama because they are hard to read and I dont like GS but it seems like w/ RK fucking owned they are out of "well we've always said we were going to kill those guys" targets.  What's next?  Hydra?  I always hear them mentioned as one of the lamest space holding entities.

Those are the big 5, so far the implosions of TRI, MC, BRUCE and other minor characters hasn't resulted in any new alliances that are inspiring anybody.  I expect that to change but who can say how it will.  Also there is the question of AAA.  Me personally I hope to god that BoB is in talks with them and some others and they are going to come back after RA when the time is right.  But I've been rooting for BoB this whole time..  vOv

In terms of what matters to Provi, we've got BoB pets in FAT, IAC seems to be holding steady so far and AAA seems to be not beating them.  Provi has been quiet/boring lately with major AAA, eXceed and Axiom roams vanishing not to mention no more TRI.

[Simond]

Right now the universe is waiting to see some important things:

1.  When will everyone come out and say that RA are the most vile and fucked up alliance ever?  I mean its plain as day to me and I have very little sekret information from IG contacts and nothing IG at stake in the matter.

2.  What can be done about it and who will do it?  As long as its Redswarm its going to be an almost impossible task to beat them.  So someone will have to make a stand in a way that splits or attempts to split that alliance up or form an even bigger coalition which might not even be possible.

3.  What's BoB going to do?  How much does that still matter?  Sure they have the titans & its assumed that since they never technically buckled under the weight of pretty much everything being poured onto them...   I still say its a semi-valid question though.

4.  How pathetic is "the north"?  Will RA try to take their moons?  Can they do anything about it?

5.  What will Goons do next, I haven't ever paid as close attention to Goon history/posts/drama because they are hard to read and I dont like GS but it seems like w/ RK fucking owned they are out of "well we've always said we were going to kill those guys" targets.  What's next?  Hydra?  I always hear them mentioned as one of the lamest space holding entities.

Those are the big 5, so far the implosions of TRI, MC, BRUCE and other minor characters hasn't resulted in any new alliances that are inspiring anybody.  I expect that to change but who can say how it will.  Also there is the question of AAA.  Me personally I hope to god that BoB is in talks with them and some others and they are going to come back after RA when the time is right.  But I've been rooting for BoB this whole time..  vOv

In terms of what matters to Provi, we've got BoB pets in FAT, IAC seems to be holding steady so far and AAA seems to be not beating them.  Provi has been quiet/boring lately with major AAA, eXceed and Axiom roams vanishing not to mention no more TRI.

This post is the best post.

[Endie]

Right now the universe is waiting to see some important things:

1.  When will everyone come out and say that RA are the most vile and fucked up alliance ever?  I mean its plain as day to me and I have very little sekret information from IG contacts and nothing IG at stake in the matter.

2.  What can be done about it and who will do it?  As long as its Redswarm its going to be an almost impossible task to beat them.  So someone will have to make a stand in a way that splits or attempts to split that alliance up or form an even bigger coalition which might not even be possible.

3.  What's BoB going to do?  How much does that still matter?  Sure they have the titans & its assumed that since they never technically buckled under the weight of pretty much everything being poured onto them...   I still say its a semi-valid question though.

4.  How pathetic is "the north"?  Will RA try to take their moons?  Can they do anything about it?

5.  What will Goons do next, I haven't ever paid as close attention to Goon history/posts/drama because they are hard to read and I dont like GS but it seems like w/ RK fucking owned they are out of "well we've always said we were going to kill those guys" targets.  What's next?  Hydra?  I always hear them mentioned as one of the lamest space holding entities.

Those are the big 5, so far the implosions of TRI, MC, BRUCE and other minor characters hasn't resulted in any new alliances that are inspiring anybody.  I expect that to change but who can say how it will.  Also there is the question of AAA.  Me personally I hope to god that BoB is in talks with them and some others and they are going to come back after RA when the time is right.  But I've been rooting for BoB this whole time..  vOv

In terms of what matters to Provi, we've got BoB pets in FAT, IAC seems to be holding steady so far and AAA seems to be not beating them.  Provi has been quiet/boring lately with major AAA, eXceed and Axiom roams vanishing not to mention no more TRI.

This post is the best post.

I think it must be a subtle troll

[Phred]

One thing that surprised me is only 49% of "pilots" stayed exclsuively in high-sec during the time period they discuss.  Carebears are the minority! 

Nm Saw you posted their definition of high sec. Still seems very hard to believe though. Maybe mission runners who get suckered into storyline quests in low sec.

[MahrinSkel]

4.  How pathetic is "the north"?  Will RA try to take their moons?  Can they do anything about it?

Very.  Every single time the north and south have fought a significant campaign, the north has lost.  The only ones the north even claimed to have won, they retroactively designated an invasion of the south as a "Road Trip" after it failed.  I'm not sure exactly why that is, but it seems to work that way every time.

On the other hand, huge swaths of the South remain effectively empty after having traded hands 4 times in a year.  So population-wise, the North probably leads right now.  But they have before, and it didn't matter much.

--Dave

EDIT:

Considering the number of otherwise high sec travel routes that bottleneck through 0.5 systems what is their definition of high sec?

I'm pretty sure they just looked at the systems people logged out in, not all those they travelled through.  Otherwise, they should have had considerably more than 100% total.

[Hellinar]

One thing that surprised me is only 49% of "pilots" stayed exclsuively in high-sec during the time period they discuss.  Carebears are the minority! 

Nm Saw you posted their definition of high sec. Still seems very hard to believe though. Maybe mission runners who get suckered into storyline quests in low sec.

As someone who's main runs courier missions, I moved to 0.0 when I got to the level 4 agents. The PvP threat makes it interesting.

[Endie]

Looks like Smashkill just had a big meeting last night and told everyone to start evaccing assets.  This is annoying.  We were having fun.

Edit: as was widely rumoured, KIA (and worthless Daisho, who I once shot even though they were blue to us that day, for which act I got in zero trouble) will be getting Geminate.  As someone pointed out on GF, way back in the day KIA helped us take space.  Now, the roles are reversed.

[Pezzle]

Are there any MC corps still in Daisho or am I thinking of the wrong group?  The Geminate deal sounds like a recreation of the superbestfriends thing that was happening in the south, or am I way off?

[sanctuary]

No BDCI left in the last couple of days, thats after FRICK left when we moved to fountain.

Daisho is in a bit of a tizz at the moment. Lots of recriminations and cascades of the failure kind

Edit: To clarify; Daisho, KIA, ODD and MC leave Period Basis when BoB goes "BOO!" KIA and Daisho then play with Hydra and Pure (contract I think) for a week or 2, it was about this time that FRICK and BDCI join. ETNY form Project Alice alliance. When the contract finishes it's decided that we will settle in Fade, until that is RA go "BOO!" 

Leadership decides on Fountain, BRUCE are doomed and well PL, pfft nanofags. FRICK politely state that Fountain is too close to BoB and part their ways. Well it turns out that Fountain is much harder to settle in than we thought it would be. PL have more caps, our attendance is down, much yelling and morale is plummeting. Corps aren't happy, fair to say that there has been a bit of a culture clash with Daisho leadership and BDCI, such that we part our ways. Now we're off to Geminate. 

[bhodi]

smashkill is heading for the hills, and goons wardec'd them to try and nab them evaccing assets.

I led an op tonight, and happened upon this (among others). It's a freighter from a corp that fled SMASH after the wardec. Too bad for him, wardecs remain active for 24 hours even after you leave an alliance. If he had waited just 24 hours, he wouldn't have been vulnerable. Yeah, the loot sucked, but hey - freighter hull.

An interesting thing was noted by a fellow goon, during a discussion of where we might turn next. Obviously, we have to turn somewhere, otherwise we'll turn on ourselves in short order:

Okay, here's the problem as I see it. These are the top 20 alliances:

1 Band of Brothers
2 GoonSwarm
3 Red Alliance - blue
4 Tau Ceti Federation - blue
5 RAZOR Alliance - blue
6 Against ALL Authorities - blue
7 Pure - northern block
8 United Legion - blue
9 Imperial Republic Of the North - northern block
10 Curatores Veritatis Alliance - meh
11 Morsus Mihi - northern block
12 Mostly Harmless - northern block
13 Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate - blue
14 Intrepid Crossing - blue
15 Ka-Tet - dieing
16 SOLAR FLEET - blue
17 Hydra Alliance - northern block
18 R0ADKILL - dieing
19 Ethereal Dawn - blue
20 SMASH - dieing

Everyone left is blue, the north, dieing, or bob.

[Phildo]

CVA is "Meh"?

[MahrinSkel]

Goons seem to see CVA as sort of "pets" (and not in the feudal sense), CVA has no expansionistic goals and isn't a threat, and their space (Providence) is very "meh", poor quality with crappy ores and spawns.

They're going to have to either turn back towards BoB, or declare the anti-BoB coalition history and turn on one of their allies.

--Dave

[Fordel]

The Goon alliance will disband and they'll all join the Minmatar faction to pewpew in Rifters.

[Phildo]

They won't get velators from the Minmatar though!

[Endie]

Goons seem to see CVA as sort of "pets" (and not in the feudal sense), CVA has no expansionistic goals and isn't a threat, and their space (Providence) is very "meh", poor quality with crappy ores and spawns.

It's not generally understood that Goons pretty much love to go overboard liking people.  Thus the hero-worship personality cults around suas, the Mitanni, Seesfan etc.  Of course, they over-react when let down (then do a revisionist "hey they weren't so bad" thing, and so on). Sometimes those targets of affection are external, and CVA (and Paxton, amongst those who know who they are and can tell the difference between them and CVA) are examples. There are a bunch of reasons: CVA are the competent role-players; they stuck and continue to stick by IAC even when they are repeatedly on their last legs; they stood up to Bob in FSW (if I remember the system rightly) over the Paxton cyno-jammer; they are the enemies of Jade Constantwhine.

So if by pets you mean Goons see CVA as smaller, kinda cute in their ways but generally worthwhile, and have in many cases an affectiobate sort of outlook then yes, as can be seen in the fact that the Goons turned up a couple of times during the Bob and Tri invasions, the former with frigate gangs and the latter with a large, mainly volunteer capital-heavy gang which had a lot to do with Tri giving up and going home.

[Keddren]

Little known fact is also that one of Goonswarm's member corps used to live right next door to CVA and were on fairly friendly terms at the time.  Most of us are still pretty fond of our old RPing brosefs from Domain.

[Endie]

Little known fact is also that one of Goonswarm's member corps used to live right next door to CVA and were on fairly friendly terms at the time.  Most of us are still pretty fond of our old RPing brosefs from Domain.

You still get lost Merchi guys popping up in Mista from time to time.

[Hoax]

1 Band of Brothers
2 GoonSwarm
3 Red Alliance - blue
4 Tau Ceti Federation - blue
5 RAZOR Alliance - blue
6 Against ALL Authorities - blue
7 Pure - northern block
8 United Legion - blue
9 Imperial Republic Of the North - northern block
10 Curatores Veritatis Alliance - meh
11 Morsus Mihi - northern block
12 Mostly Harmless - northern block
13 Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate - blue
14 Intrepid Crossing - blue
15 Ka-Tet - dieing
16 SOLAR FLEET - blue
17 Hydra Alliance - northern block
18 R0ADKILL - dieing
19 Ethereal Dawn - blue
20 SMASH - dieing

That's a funny list, I wonder how long Goons official line will be that there are really 3 Russian alliances and the rest of eve just doesn't know the Russian community well enough.

My List:
1.  The 3 totally separate Russian alliances  
2.  BoB
3.  Goons
4.  Those North guys who might do something any day now!!  
worth mentioning.  The stronger coalition alliances (presumably AAA, TCF and UnL from looking at maps and the original list seems to agree)

Here's what your left with.

10 Curatores Veritatis Alliance -- no offensive power.
13 Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate -- would be toppled in all likelyhood if somebody from that top 5 came gunning in a serious way.  AAA doesn't quite seem serious atm.
14 Intrepid Crossing -- Will die to RA in the next 6 months
15 Ka-Tet -- already dead
18 R0ADKILL -- hiding in empire
19 Ethereal Dawn -- Will die to RA in the next 6 months
20 SMASH -- hiding in empire

Once you take the North as a single entity you see there really isn't anything beyond

[Endie]

At the moment, I think I can see our next target right on that list you gave there, especially after what they were up to in the last coulpe of nights.  There are a three other pretty obvious targets as well.

As Darius said earlier today, I don't see us not being at war very much in the foreseeable future.

[Pezzle]

CVA has a loooong memory.  We still like our old merch buddies even if they are technically KOS right now.  We were fairly leery of Goons in their earlier days but as leaders have changed and Goons have changed so has our general outlook.  Not forgetting your friends seems to have paid off.  Goon activity drops off and the idea starts to sink into the heads of the locals.  Actions speak loudly and Goons showing up with IAC or on their own to shoot at some troublemakers like TRI does make an impression.  Yeah there is still some shooting.  That business in IS-R was curious.  The general policy is trying to ignore passing Goons.   Given how crappy Providence is the policy is easy to maintain.

As for territory ambitions, maybe if CCP cuts a deal with us we might do something else.  HAH!

[Phildo]

Funny you mention that MerchI shows up in Mista, I was running a mixed gang from Providence last night to respond to a pirate BS gang in that area when a lone MerchI came through.  I was able to keep him from getting splattered, but it was a close call with some pilots who were pretty new to Providence and just wanted to shoot at things.

[bhodi]

Ka-Tet officially disbands.  Three of their corps are joining MASS in esoteria.

[Fordel]

Not to be 'that' poster, but who?

[Endie]

Large but useless drone region alliance who had done something to annoy the Russians.  Which is daft if they constitute 50% of your borders.  They were nominally pro-RSF/Anti-Bob but - apart from turning up in small numbers a few weeks when the fighting was in the Detorid to Omist area - they did nothing worth speaking of.  Another lesson (like Bruce, MC and (gratuitous mention) the NGE) in why you should effort into dancing with the ones that brung ya.