War

[Fordel]

Crux of the issue, any measure which would make holding a small portion of space for a small alliance easier, would also work for the already much more powerful large alliance, to an equal or superior degree.

Unless they do something silly like enforcing hard caps on number of pilots before a mechanic 'shuts off'. I'm pretty sure that would cause screams of bloody murder in 0.0 though.

[Sir T]

BoB was able to win euro TZ pretty handily in DG-, it's amazing at how much they're struggling in Delve.

Not that I saw. All I saw is them retreating to their towers when goons had any sort of numbers in local. In o-w they never dominated at all. They Did the Dg- account hack because they were getting nowhere in DG- (and the morale hit from that was probably a reason why a lot of goons rode bikes for a week or 2). And TCF was working on taking Wicked Creek right then and NC was concentrating on Curse. You really have to stop looking at things in isolation.

Bob getting murdered in Delve without their crutch is no surprise to me

[trevorreznik]

BoB was able to win euro TZ pretty handily in DG-, it's amazing at how much they're struggling in Delve.

Not that I saw. All I saw is them retreating to their towers when goons had any sort of numbers in local. In o-w they never dominated at all. They Did the Dg- account hack because they were getting nowhere in DG- (and the morale hit from that was probably a reason why a lot of goons rode bikes for a week or 2). And TCF was working on taking Wicked Creek right then and NC was concentrating on Curse. You really have to stop looking at things in isolation.

Bob getting murdered in Delve without their crutch is no surprise to me

bob/-a-/etc killed 29 goon larges in the course of a week in dg- after the sov was reset to 1, goons held sov because they would spam each night in us tz, and bob refused to spam early on.  During that week BoB+buds dominated EU TZ.  It's quite the reverse in Delve now, despite the same groups being involved (with less -a-/more bobpets), and both areas were sov1, so it's kind of surprising to me.  GS did take over most nights in US TZ and BoB would go sit in POSes, but that's how timezone war works. 

TCF/NC stayed in Curse/WC during that period because they couldn't contest the hostile numbers.  It is pretty silly to think they couldn't fly the 10 jumps or whatever down to DG- while towers were being kited/killed daily, they just simply didn't have the numbers (partly because GS didn't have eu numbers then either, which they do now).

[slog]

To me, it seems the obvious answer is to eliminate tower spam.  Each zone should have 5 towers that designate sov.  The other towers can still be used a POS, but don't count for SOV.

[eldaec]

Raph's blog on the headshot, it's EVE, Raph-style.

...The most intriguing aspect of the whole thing to me isn’t the way it happened, but the overall social dynamics of it — the fact that it was completely inevitable. There’s been lots of talk about how this was basically a sort of exploit, that one person should not have enough power to destroy the work of thousands. But I’ll make the case that this is exactly what CCP should want to have happen.

Band of Brothers was an alliance, a network of networks, so to speak. It existed within a preferential attachment system, meaning that the clans of EVE are a system whereby the big tend to get bigger. A new entrant into the system tends to attach to an existing, larger group, over time.

Because of the external pressures of sheer survival, you tend to try to join a clan of a reasonable size, and then the clan gets drawn into alliances of a certain size, and so on. There is safety, and strength, in numbers, and the game system is essentially zero-sum for any given conflict. And given the way in which time equals power in EVE, there is a natural tendency towards growth, solidification, and continued existence.
.....
Scale-free networks are notoriously hard to kill. In fact, mathematically, if you start randomly removing connections in the network, you have to remove a ridiculous percentage of the total to make it cease to exist as an entity. This is how guild social structures can survive for years.

But there is a way. The characteristics of a scale-free network are that there are hubs. And the hubs are the vulnerable spots in the network. Take out hubs, and you can make the network fragment to disconnected bits, because the hubs hold subgroups together.

Band of Brothers was a hub, and the before-and-after images show clearly that separation into component pieces, each then no longer indomitable.

This was good for the game under its own terms, because the game is premised on conflict. In any PvP scenario which has a temporal component — even one as simple as leaderboards — you need to “overturn the anthill” or else you will end up with a static power structure. The guy who held the record will hold it forever. The top guild will stay the top guild, etc. This is why you often see leaderboards offer different time spans — “best today,” “this week,” “all time,” etc. Otherwise, it’s hopeless to compare yourself against statistical outliers who always win.
....
Lots of folks lose their livelihoods when an empire falls, and players invested in BoB are likely upset that years of work were lost. But EVE is not a game about the height of the Roman Empire. It’s a game about the sacking of Rome by barbarians, so that they can become the next short-lived top dog. BoB existed to be torn down, and anyone who dreams of permanent glory in a game like that should understand that their destiny is to be taken down by the next upstart, in a dog-eat-dog world.

If anything, the fact that it takes a betrayal by a single high-level user with extraordinary powers reveals that perhaps the network is a little too strong; it should have been easier for GoonSwarm to take BoB down, because the system as it stands now means that political intrigue is where the excitement lies, and that leaves out (in a power-law distribution of clans and alliance sizes) the majority of the users.

Yeah, I'm just quoting the most Raphy bits.

[Goumindong]

Well IMO the added strategic layer isn't worth the shitter gameplay for boots on the ground.  Eve can already feel like only alliance bigwigs get all the metagaming fun and grunts are left with forum whoring table scraps.

edit: love that new "every ship counts" poster.

if you thought that POS warfare was shit after the strategic changes you should have played it before. The strategic changes were a huge boon to the game.

[Endie]

Too much theorycrafting in this thread 

We've killed two towers in O-H this evening (in Euro prime, of course).  I don't know if the Kenny and Barbie fleet in J-L I've been trolling is their main fleet body right now, but there are only about 160 of them, assuming they are all active, and there are a hella lot less pets.  Considering that we just took tower majority in that system, I'm surprised that they aren't getting a bit more serious about trying to stop us.  I gather that we now meet the requirements for sov 4 in that constellation, making the huge and doubtless incorrect assumption that nothing else changes between now and then (then being a long time away for sov 4).

I suppose that we have to assume that the Kenny fleet is so light right now because they intend to alarm-clock the ten QY6 towers they reinforced during their red pen op yesterday.  Killing them would be a decent morale boost for them, and as i think T-Rez said it's hardly impossible for them to stay up til 1am as a euro TZ force with lots of US members.  Failing to kill them would be a huge blow, but not as huge as simply not trying, and they do have a huge number of titans and supercaps to throw around (if Molle and Waagaa didn't make individuals think twice about using them).

Also, there is yet another CSAA coming out in J-L in a couple of hours, which Lady Scarlet reinforced herself in order to assure a good (well not that good) timer: presumably either another baby titan or a terribly subtle honeytrap.  Either way, that one has the afore-mentioned Kenny/Barbie fleet in-place already.

We currently have pos majority in a bunch of Delve systems - something like seven I think?  It would be eight but i don't know if we can put two fleets out in Euro Prime in order to kill the towers coming out in two different systems at once, so I suppose we've had to choose?

I'm not as up on the other fronts, so I don't know where spam has occured, or whether systems will flip-flop further, but on the Querious front, Razor has taken one Kenny station system (I1Y-IU) and removed Kenny sov in another outpost system (3BK-O7).  Rebellion have taken the 49- conquerable station system.

On the Period Basis front, KIA has stripped Kenny of their sov in one outpost system (1-NJLK).

[Fordel]

One thing I really wish they would do, is give all these systems real names.

Keeping track of JK-28 or QX-751 is a giant pita.

[Sparky]

And here I was expecting a rough weekend.  Looks like a failed CTA hurt them harder than the usual CAOD spin and internal damage control can paper over.  If BoB don't pull themselves together for their traditionally strongest time then things are looking grim indeed.

Maybe, as Endie suspects, they're saving themselves for post-midnight Goon towers.  Closer to Goon prime than BoB's would be an incredibly risky strategy.  I don't think they've had control at that time even before all the moral sapping defeats we've seen this week.

[Pax]

One thing I really wish they would do, is give all these systems real names.

Keeping track of JK-28 or QX-751 is a giant pita.

Cartographers are scientists - they care little for names.
0.0 systems are neither sanctioned nor controlled. To an average Empire citizen, 0.0 is pretty much uninhabited.
/RP

[Endie]

Kenny sat in J-L while we destroyed four of the five Y5C towers (Kenny saved one before we could get there!).  So whatever is in that J-L is important enough to Kenny to give up any chance of saving their pos majority in 0-H (if we bothered to drop another then numbers should be equal, I think) or Y5C (again, if we dropped towers we'll get majority there (for now at least) but i don't know if we're bothering right now).

[Meester]

http://killboard.executive-outcomes.info/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=62810

Whats the cause of this I wonder?

[Arthur_Parker]

I seem to remember reading he was afk and drifted into the open, they blasted him to prevent goons getting the killmail.

[trevorreznik]

BoB's best bet right now is to do some hardcore jewing in their backend systems and defend systems where they have 100% coverage.  It won't matter much, but if they're sitting around each day in their timezone with the biggest fleet they can get, and they still can't attack other fleets, they might as well be doing useful stuff like setting up for fights they can win. 

[Endie]

Kenny sacrificing those systems to defend the J-L CSAA didn't work: we melted it in minutes despite the valiant (but hopelessly incompetent) efforts of Barbie to do something (anything) about it.  Melted in a couple of minutes total.  DBRB's dog started barking as we warped in so we were pretty confident it was going to be a success.

Now we are skirmishing around the system in medium-sized fights and waiting for their next move.

[Comstar]

The Mittani just reported via TS that that CSAA had an Erebus in it.

[Sparky]

Because people were asking earlier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDf1Y3mQopw&feature=PlayList&p=9A9DCA0B274A6B7B&index=32  PL vs RuR alliance tourney final.

Based on our tests I just about shit myself when we didn't drop sentries right away.  Then we were popping so fast I didn't think PL had the DPS to close the deal.  But somehow 2 RUR caracals popped at once and totally changed the match.  Finally a hero Shamis and Achmetha duo ground out the win for us.

Awesome match and safe to say every PL spectator earned a few gray hairs watching that shit.

Apparently we gambled they'd be close range gank hence the t2 gardes.  If we'd bought long range sentries it wouldn't have been nearly as close.

[Grand Design]

What a great battle.  Good job, PL.

[Fordel]

Why the sentries, superior DPS or just to avoid potential smart bombing?

[Sparky]

Why the sentries, superior DPS or just to avoid potential smart bombing?

Better DPS, directo damage, harder to outrun.  OTOH you have a fixed range.  It's a gamble with the Navy Vexors as you don't have room for waves of drones unlike an Ishtar but we salvaged a win anyway. 

[Fordel]

What was that one tiny ship on the Vexor side?

[Phildo]

Hyena, the Amarr Minmatar electronic attack frigate.  Bonuses to webbing and neuting target painting.

Edit: Curious that WarGod was the first Vexor to go down.  Didn't he just rob his corp in PL blind?

Edit 2: Wow, did I ever mix up those two EAFs.  Sorry about that.

[Pezzle]

Hyena is not Amarr, it is Minni.

Hyena gets mwd cap bonus, web bonus (sig bonus) and target painter.



Sentinel is Amarr which gets cap warfare bonuses + cap recharge and TD bonuses.

[Endie]

For those anxiously biting their fingernails, and who are unable to enjoy Valentine's day with that date from Adult Friendfinder who it turns out sent pictures of herself from six years ago when she was three stone lighter and still had both ears due to your concerns about the fate of our QY6 towers in the face of kenny and barbie's unstoppable all-out defence op: be at peace!

All the towers are now repped and all mods onlined again. Therefore, the net result of kenny's shock assault was to lose a titan, mothership, caps, baby supercaps, 10bn of CSAAs alone (another last night), fleets, morale and participation while failing to destroy a single tower of ours.

Edit: in other news, Morsus Mihi just hopped aboard the train.  Also, everyone on Kenny's side seems to be terribly excited about being able to pop that titan which Trevor told us is building down south, as if that (if it's real, I 'unno: let's not play at being Dianabollox and claim that all we use CSAAs for is cooking lovely cakes) will shatter our moral and send us back to Jita.

[Quinton]

... will shatter our moral and send us back to Jita.

We'll be in for a rude awakening, because I hear that Kenny is going to set up their new headquarters in Jita 4-4.

[Sparky]

Hyena, the Amarr Minmatar electronic attack frigate.  Bonuses to webbing and neuting.

Edit: Curious that WarGod was the first Vexor to go down.  Didn't he just rob his corp in PL blind?

Yeah he dinged OSHIT for a handful of dreads which is far from blind considering how much we make moon mining, but still an annoyance.  Don't think he really wanted to hurt PL so much as go out in a big dramabomb as it could've been a lot worse.

[Sir T]

Oh and QY6 is sov Neutral today

Well in other news Shrike has found the perfect way to console himself after losing his avatar.. attack a Pos in an Apoc fitted with smartbombs to get that Miniture titan feel! And lose it...

Kenny and barbie have around 200 up and about on Valentines day so...

[Samprimary]

welcome to the universe's largest gatecamp

[Meester]

http://killboard.executive-outcomes.info/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=62810

The dread pilot on the above kill ended up here - http://killboard.executive-outcomes.info/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=63069

Karma?

[Endie]

As noted above, Kenny and Barbie somehow rustled up a few hundred fleet members in Euro prime on a Saturday.  We thought better of jumping or bridging into their gatecamped system, but we did go a couple of jumps to O-HDC8 and destroy two of their towers there, then another in 8WA.  All they seem to have done with their flash of numerical superiority is reinforce some TCF towers, which seems kinda pointless when only a 24 hour timer would seem likely to give them any chance of a result.  I suppose that their FCs had to pretend to do something, though, or people would have stopped showing up.

Also, Kenny seem to have burned an agent in an attempt to take down Graham's titan.  Two bumps failed, so he went 30km away and MWDed straight at him.  Graham saw it coming, ctrl-Qed, then as the guy passed through where the titan would have been (just as it disappears) Graham manned the OPS guns on an alt.  The guy immediately ctrl-Qed himself, but died.  Then he logged back in and promptly got podded while loading grid, and then booted from corp.  I imagine that a titan kill would have done wonders, and doubtless there will be strenuous attempts to pull something like this out of the bag again.

Meanwhile, OEG (Goonswarm's Russians) seem to have been running amok in NOL this evening.

Also:

NEW GBC REGROUP LOCATION PR-8CA ( DELVE)

Please assist your corporation members to get all stuff moved from Sakht to PR-8CA ASAP.

Yeah I'm sure that Barbie will be lining up to move assets into Delve from lowsec.

[Simond]

If one had a cynical frame of mind, one could suggest that Kenny gave that order so that they could potentially 'hide' an increase in their own logistics going the other way. After all, a stream of blockade runners and jump freighters leaving Delve would be a bad sign (and also huge targets). Mixed in with ships coming the other way, empty ships heading back to lowsec, scouts, etc. and it suddenly becomes a little harder to spot an evacuation.

Theoretically speaking, of course.

[Sir T]

Kenny had a good night. After actualy saving a tower for the very first time in J-l, and evading a titan trap due to the fact that lag was so bad the titans took ages to cyno inn and otherwise evading fights even when outnumbering the opposition 3 to one (to the extent of not even manually repping their tower) they timed their towers we hit tonight to come out monday morning US time.

Monday is Presidents day in the USA, a public holiday.

They have all their towers in 3 station systems all coming out in a timezone where most of Goonswarm's fighting strength has nothing better to do than blow the crap out of them. That's 20 towers that if they lose the Systems will immediately go sov Neutral.

Oops.

[Edit] And we have captured QY6 station.

[Sparky]

No I don't think Kenny is quite ready to throw in the towel yet, remember they came back from a pretty bad situation last time so are probably hoping for Goon determination to wane.  Though I'm told a couple of their more intelligent pets got sick of playing the unappreciated meat shields, said "fuck it" and left the theatre.

[Goumindong]

No I don't think Kenny is quite ready to throw in the towel yet, remember they came back from a pretty bad situation last time so are probably hoping for Goon determination to wane.  Though I'm told a couple of their more intelligent pets got sick of playing the unappreciated meat shields, said "fuck it" and left the theatre.

They had Sov 3 and were only fighting goons last time. Its a lot different now.

[eldaec]

Also, last time they weren't mosrtly flying shit fit Ravens and Assault Frigates.