War

[Phildo]

Another set of -A- SBUs were just destroyed in 49- a few minutes ago.  Looks like Paik thought everyone had gone to bed.

[Endie]

I'd like to post my own update about how last night went but I had a nice meal, watched an episode of South Park that I'd not seen before then read a few chapters of Christopher Brookmyre's Pandaemonium.  His dialogue is as superb and hilarious as ever and his ability to produce believable characters for the schoolkids is impressive but from the prologue it seems awfully like he's writing Doom: the Novel so I'm going to withhold judgement on that one.

I thought about playing Eve but I'd been messing around a few times over the weekend in fun roams and stuff and got a few dozen kills so I decided that since there was no pressure in my timezone I'd just hit the sack.  It's important to try to go to bed at the same time as your wife, I find.  I sure do hope that no Euros ruined their productivity for work and endangered their personal relationships by alarm-clocking several times over the last week, only to see it all go back to square one. :(

[setar]

I hope that isn't your attempt to participate in the latest "I enjoyed my weeend" meme that GS is using to flood threads on CAOD, Endie ;-) We gave it a try, but the current sov system forces at least 2-3 rounds in the enemies' prime. Don't think it will be the last attempt, although needless to say participation will be suffering, not the least due to repeated server crashes.

Keep arguing that it would make more sense to ignore the sov areas and just tear down your infrastructure, but that's merely a grunt's perspective.

[Sir T]

To be fair that was tried too to some extent, but all that resulted in is Stealth bombers getting chased off Jump bridges by newbies in t1 frigates

No I'm not kidding.

They also tried to bubble up NOL station PR- style last night. The attempt failed as we are not Kenny, but they had something like 15 t2 bubbles up at one point.

[Endie]

I hope that isn't your attempt to participate in the latest "I enjoyed my weeend" meme that GS is using to flood threads on CAOD, Endie ;-) We gave it a try, but the current sov system forces at least 2-3 rounds in the enemies' prime. Don't think it will be the last attempt, although needless to say participation will be suffering, not the least due to repeated server crashes.

Keep arguing that it would make more sense to ignore the sov areas and just tear down your infrastructure, but that's merely a grunt's perspective.

I genuinely don't read CAOD, as a rule.  Now, someone is going to find me posting a link to it only a few weeks ago, but I really don't remember the last time I visited it.  I admit I was being a touch facetious, but there was a serious point: if it really came down to it we still have all of us Euros who've not bothered to turn up for a single weeknight op, yet, and who are fresh as daisies.

IT explained that they were going to hit moons straight off, and not bother with sov warfare.  It was even explained (with rather faulty math and a misunderstanding of where we make money) just how this tactic would ensure that GS would die as a result.  But, Molle being Molle, he just can't stick to an idea, and has poured his pilots into 49- anyway.  Perhaps he feels that he cannot allow AAA/Sys-K etc's assault to fail, but he certainly shows that he has learned nothing from all those defeats.  Like a certain Austrian, he knows no other way than va banque.  And he is addicted to the doubling dice.

The "let's shut down Delve" thing is fine in theory but dubious in practise. Fine for a few days or even a week or two.  But jumping hac gangs around Delve or camping systems will end up with the same results as today's dumb 49- camp attempt: the best stealth-bomber FC in the game will impose eye-watering losses.  Soon you have fewer and fewer people willing to spend their time searching for unaligned Battlestars pilots.

And since Goons are mostly US TZ, are you going to alarm-clock nightly to cockblock them?  Or just get gutted by substantially larger defence fleets run by Han, Plague Black, scavok, JB etc?  I've loved killing hostile hac gangs this weekend.  Quite apart from the fact that Goon income is probably amongst the most diversified in the game: it's no exaggeration to say that I've not made a single penny in Delve since we moved in, other than bounties off pods or gate rats when waiting to jump in.

Goonswarm has killed more alliances than anyone else in the game through the strangulation method: Black-ops.  And we know that they're not really useful against the ratting activities of a premier alliance.

The moons idea might just work, done right, I admit.  I'd say it's the only potentially-winning bet that doesn't depend on AAA, Sys-K and the IT/GBC hybrid acting in a way none of them ever have before. But it will take a long time: it takes time to take all those moons, and even longer for the money to dry up afterwards (especially when someone like me would happily chuck ten billion at the alliance without getting so much as a receipt, and care not a jot, and I am not one of the super-rich).  The assault doesn't have infinite amounts of time.  I suppose we'll see when the focus shifts to moons over the coming fortnight.

Of course, when 49- eventually falls there will be a boost to the invaders' participation.  But how long will that last?  We tried that in Delve I and it's just not that easy to persuade normal alliance members to fight beyond a certain point, no matter what their level of indoctrination against the enemy.

[Sir T]

Well to be fair Endie, the assault now has far less supply line issues than Delve I. Both blocks are striking from home base within easy reach and beside Delve, so one of the reasons the first assault failed is not a factor.

[Endie]

True: although capitals aren't all that easy from either direction, subcaps can replenish easily.  I dunno if IT will have had much chance to set up logistics, though.

I sounded like I was saying that the attackers can't take Delve there, though.  That's not true, of course.  Leaving aside some internal GS issue causing participation problems, if Molle can find a way to bring one of Tri or Atlas into 49- without the north being able to follow then that will probably be enough to lock down the node for the night.  Believe believing that it would be enough will bring more of them to log in again, and the resulting three-to-one is probably the sort of odds that the Southern Coalition need to beat Goonswarm right now.

[Vedi]

The "let's shut down Delve" thing is fine in theory but dubious in practise. Fine for a few days or even a week or two.  But jumping hac gangs around Delve or camping systems will end up with the same results as today's dumb 49- camp attempt: the best stealth-bomber FC in the game will impose eye-watering losses.  Soon you have fewer and fewer people willing to spend their time searching for unaligned Battlestars pilots.

This! Personally, even though I have little time, I've reupped and already fitted four Rokhs and a bunch of throwaway blackbirds to throw at these roamers. We even got some good FCs going for once - screw ratting, this is awesome!

[Slayerik]

From when I logged on, I warped into an SBU getting destroyed. This lowered the enemy SBU count in 49- to 3 (minimum needed to allow stuff like ihub and station to be vulnerable to damage). Local climbed steadily to around 1100, the Ihub came out of reinforced and we raced to kill the enemy SBU before it was destroyed (killing the SBU would drop the enemies count down to 2 of 4, not giving the 50.1% needed to inflict Ihub damage). The Goons won the race, I looked at local and it was around 1200). As we were getting a warp in to enemy sieged dreads, the node crashed.

After about an hour and a half, the node came back up with a rollback to the start of the SBU/Ihub race. Goons were behind, but our decision to log on the kitchen sink proved fortunate, as Molle chose to not risk their caps. We destroyed the SBU first, thus negating a weekend of work and alarm clocks by our enemy. The lag was bad, but not horrible. I was able to warp out with about 20% armor at one point, the BS slugfest was won by goons, as we had cap support. Near the end, however, we ran out of tacklers and many ships escaped in deep armor. Molle eventually recalled the troops, and we cleaned up the rest of the SBUs. If I were to guess, I'd say a 2:1 BS margin (unimportant).

Black (or is it spec) OPs absolutely worked them in 4-0.

This morning, they tried to Ninja deploy 4 SBUs, all were destroyed (1 billion isk POOF)

[Gets]

Having TeamSpeak die literally minutes before the fight was worrying. Goons and ZAF rushed to Morsus Mihi TS Lobby to use it as a backup, where we were greeted with a friendly "Don't come north, thanks." While we had issues of communication ("Shudup! Shudup! Bark!") and running out of tacklers, IT had an odd problem of their fleet splitting in two thanks to a smaller than normal grid. Naturally, much like the node crash, this was also blamed on goon 'sploitz.

After the main battle DBRB took Sub-BS and Apocs through bridges to chase roaming hostiles into the Sakht station, where they logged off. So there was only the little issue of a derelic POS on one of the R64s there, which we took care of along with the incapped mods, and replaced it with one of our own. When it finished onlining, that's when the report of the first -A- SBU anchoring again in 49- came in. Within 10 minutes we were back in there with 150 people killing the blockade units with the opposition being one Transport ship.

[Sir T]

IT dropped 3 SBUs in NOL at around 2pm eve. They died. They also dropped a tower in 1DH before DT that was immediately reinforced with a 3 hour timer. Its dying as I type this.

Not sure what they think they are doing tbh

[Endie]

When i expressed scepticism about the possibility of "shutting down" Delve with roaming gangs, this was the sort of thing I had in mind:

https://killboard.goonfleet.com/battles/1687 36 hostile losses, 4 friendly losses (only 1 hostile kill)

And that's a pre-planned IT gang coming into Delve at short notice and in Euro/Russian time, losing 36 ships and killing one scorpion (the other 3 kills were friendly fire from goons not used to working with waffe).

Similarly, Molle's girlfriend was sent with a largely-HAC gang to try and shut NOL down yesterday:

https://killboard.goonfleet.com/battles/1674 - 78 hostile losses, 17 friendly losses.

It's not all successes, of course: you'll see some successes from camping, usually when the PvPers of Fleet, Waffe and Home Defence are elsewhere.  But FCs get wary of taking people places where they get gutted.  It's human nature.

[Fordel]

IT dropped 3 SBUs in NOL at around 2pm eve. They died. They also dropped a tower in 1DH before DT that was immediately reinforced with a 3 hour timer. Its dying as I type this.

Not sure what they think they are doing tbh

Could they still have assets in the NOL station and are trying to somehow wriggle them free?

[Phildo]

That's a less likely motivation than trying to disrupt what was previously our main market hub in Delve, and to lock people out of ships if they haven't already relocated their PvP supplies to NPC space.

[Endie]

Could they still have assets in the NOL station and are trying to somehow wriggle them free?

Oh, they have assets all over the region, no doubt about that.  But they probably believe that they'll get them all so long as they exercise ~Patience~

Which, of course, they will.  Nothing in Eve is constant and Goons, too, shall pass.  All we're doing is haggling over the year.

No, Nol is a supply dump and a hub, and I'd try to take it too, before the last will to alarm-clock wears off.

[Endie]

CVA and AAA fought it out over an iHub.  AAA won that fight, but Goonwaffe tried to balance things out by killing over thirty AAA battleships when it finished.

Waffe also had a guest on board:

https://killboard.goonfleet.com/player/Balinn

[setar]

Tonight should be interesting for 49-U. Love the move to online your own SBUs, though I am unclear how this works in practice -- assuming they become vulnerable once the station comes out of reinforced, and assuming we manage to kill them *and* deploy our own... will the station still be vulnerable, or (more likely) reset at some stage?

Clearly, CCP really thought long and hard about the new Sov system. Gah.

[Endie]

I don't think that anyone is 100% confident what the outcome will be. Who knows, maybe it'll lose us the station?  While my own initial reaction is that CCP has to fix it, I suppose that we would only use an alt alliance instead (probably Band of Brothers for added irony).

CCP's flowchart and original devblog both say that for the TCUs to be destroyed the iHub must be blown up and the Station needs to be taken.  Recent stuff from CCP is vaguer.  If you have faith in the design actually occurring then you have a touching belief that I sadly lack, and I somehow doubt that that is the case.  I don't believe that CCP would bet much money on what will happen, because they plainly do not test this stuff.

[setar]

Looking at numbers in local I don't think we'll get a chance to find out this time around. Meh. Let's go for round... four? next weekend.

[Sir T]

Mollie had the marvelous idea of moving his entore fleet and capitals to Sakht to bridge in tonight. Unfortunatly we onlined a cynojammer and he went, "er..."

Then we dropped the jammer and lit a cyno to let them know we had dropped it. They are a noshow

We had something around 500 in fleet, around what we had the other times.

1 and a half hours to the station onlining. The comedy continues.

(Mollie sucks)

[Fordel]

Just to clarify, Goonswarm is defending their own system by essentially "attacking" it? 

[Slayerik]

Honestly, a brilliant move since everyone sucks at these new mechanics.

[Endie]

A kinda unstructured day killing various people. In various smaller ops we've killed five carriers, and a combination of titans and a drake gang have killed three hostile dreads. Then waffe hit an it fleet and killed 70 of them (mostly battleships) in return for seven losses. That was all in euro time, of course. How people manage to keep the simultaneous ideas of 'killboard stats matter', 'goons are bad at eve', 'we are great at eve' and 'we have a thirty*-something percent efficiency in our campaign versus goons' continues to be beyond me.  

*Edit: twenty-something percent efficiency for the week and for the campaign righ now: http://www.it-kills.us/

[Endie]

Oh and we killed a hostile tower, too. One of the ones planted by the SoT reincarnation of daisho, who were of course the first alliance t lose their space thanks entirely to a single goon trolling them on a single fleet op.

[Endie]

Here are some battles from yesterday's euro timezone that cast doubt on the sustainability of an attempt to take Delve with roaming fleets and harrassment:

https://killboard.goonfleet.com/battles/1695 - IT alliance versus Goonwaffe

https://killboard.goonfleet.com/battles/1696 - IT Alliance versus Goons in (mainly) battlecruisers

One of those fights had some allies in it so it's not quite the lose-nine-ships-for-every-one-you-kill slaughter it looks like since their losses don't appear on our boards.  But it's not far off it.  If they can push on through those level of losses (which far exceed those of lol-goons in T1 ships in the earliest battles, then they really have changed as a culture and we'll have real problems.  But if you define yourself as far better than your enemy just how do you get around being repeatedly (and their killboard is stressing just how sustained it is) beaten by those awful pilots?  The cognitive dissonance must be painful to maintain.

[Sir T]

Looks like they went up to outer ring for some variety this morning

http://www.it-kills.us/?a=kill_related&kll_id=128613

Losing 8 caps to Vanguard RRbs gang = ouch

[Endie]

We hot-dropped IT in euro-russian crossover prime, one gatejump from their staging base on an op they planned and called several days ago, killed 26 dreads and lost 27 and we're disappointed.  How times have changed...

We made a dumb fittings-related call or we'd probably have wiped out their entire capfleet.  Still a good thing to do to them, as they know that their 40-50 ship dreadfleets are vulnerable in our off-prime timezones.

[WindupAtheist]

Here are some battles from yesterday's euro timezone that cast doubt on the sustainability of an attempt to take Delve with roaming fleets and harrassment:

https://killboard.goonfleet.com/battles/1695 - IT alliance versus Goonwaffe

https://killboard.goonfleet.com/battles/1696 - IT Alliance versus Goons in (mainly) battlecruisers

One of those fights had some allies in it so it's not quite the lose-nine-ships-for-every-one-you-kill slaughter it looks like since their losses don't appear on our boards.  But it's not far off it.  If they can push on through those level of losses (which far exceed those of lol-goons in T1 ships in the earliest battles, then they really have changed as a culture and we'll have real problems.  But if you define yourself as far better than your enemy just how do you get around being repeatedly (and their killboard is stressing just how sustained it is) beaten by those awful pilots?  The cognitive dissonance must be painful to maintain.

Not only does Delve being under attack mean you have Good Fights™ like all the time, but look at those K:D ratios!

 

I kid. Sorta. I almost feel bad for knowing this much about the game without having played it, but then I can't imagine how playing space-miner newbie somewhere would make the forum fun any more or less relevant to me.

[Sparky]

For a mere :10bux: you could be Eve royalty and mine it up in finest Delve!

[Jayce]

For a mere :10bux: you could be Eve royalty and mine it up in finest Delve!

Alternatively you could pay me 10 million isk and I'll be sure you get in 

[eldaec]

I almost feel bad for knowing this much about the game without having played it, but then I can't imagine how playing space-miner newbie somewhere would make the forum fun any more or less relevant to me.

Seriously, there is no newbie space miner role, you go direct to the super space fleet endgame.
 


That aside, looks like AAA and hangers on are going after Providence holders more seriously, starting with Paxton. I'm not sure what they hope to achieve through this, unless its just that they want a win to break up the 49- grind.

[MahrinSkel]

Molle *should* be smarter than that, it's obvious that under Dominion you don't win system control through sheer mass, a defender has all the cards.  But he's slow off the mark adjusting to the new dynamic, reinforcing AAA's dagger thrust at 49-U rather than opening a second front.  If you've got a numbers advantage, you want to split the defender's attention and win where they aren't showing up, maximize their opportunities for mistakes.  Piling more bodies on the fire in a "hot" system makes "good fights", but lousy strategy (goon mass bomber experience just draws an underline on an already bad call).

AAA deliberately splitting their own focus is just more  .  They want Providence residents sitting it out while they're focused to the west.  More failure to adjust, AAA's default position to strategy has *always* been "Hit somebody!  Anybody will do!"

--Dave

[Sir T]

IT has been hitting 1-SMEB, the system next to Sakht over the last few days. In Pos warfare.  

Its a 6 moon system so I guess they need to kill a tower to get a tower down... but... why? It has no stations and killing the towers wont win them sov. It has a jump bridge from beside Nol to low sec (Sakht itself) but... I really don't see what the hell they are doing. Is he trying to kite towers and then claim "progress"? At a guess he is trying to break us with one system, the same trick hes been using for years. He just doesn't want to fight a long war, I would say.

Mollie ordered everyone from fountain into sakht so I guess he feels this his Homeric epic charge from lowsec to reclaim Delve or something. Ok and somehow ITs campaign stats jumped from 27 to 40 something percent after yesterday, despite only killing 2 more caps and 29 more subcaps...  

Paxton is famous for holding up BOB for a month in the first great war. If I was really parinid I;'d suggest AAA got ordered to attack them by Mollie to even up old scores.

[tgr]

Ok and somehow ITs campaign stats jumped from 27 to 40 something percent after yesterday, despite only killing 2 more caps and 29 more subcaps... 

I was wondering if I'd misread that as 37/38 which jumped to 40+, but I guess not.

Actually, I'm wondering if I might not have misread it, because if I deduct the 55b we lost from the killed stats, and 48b from the lost stats, add the resulting numbers together and calculate the percentage of that which is killed, I end up with 39.57%.

[setar]

Paxton is famous for holding up BOB for a month in the first great war. If I was really parinid I;'d suggest AAA got ordered to attack them by Mollie to even up old scores.

May or may not be the case, but it's actually the rank and file who've been calling for blood ever since the CVA attack coincided with our assault on 49-U. I'm not aware of any additional moves from our side on GS space, so we are fairly focused for the time being.