War

[Endie]

As far as I could tell Barbie were fielding similar numbers to us, at least until the pr-8ca fiasco and Ken's unwillingness to try to break out.

I don't mean numbers of pilots in a system.  I mean that McAAASEROL/Kenny/Barbie have 15,230 pilots in their bloc, while we have 15,782 (which counts UNL for us, although they are not actually here, because I am fair that way).  Their peak numbers outnumbered us about 4:3.

[MahrinSkel]

On the logistics: Goons have a slight disadvantage because they don't have enough Sov 3 for a jumpgate chain (and when they do, it will start from A2- and wind down from the north through Delve rather than taking the much shorter route through Querious).  But Jump Freighters or Titan spacelift can do it in two jumps even if they start from Efa.  A bigger deal is the reaction time for standard fleets if they are getting hit in central or northern and southern Querious/Delve at the same time, it's 14 jumps from 3-F to 49-U by standard stargates, 19 to A2.  49-U isn't really the best place for them to be staging an offensive, it's helpful if AAA is going to support EXE and company in Period Basis, but it's also very close to the new goon "center of mass" in southern Delve and even with JB chains it's a bit of a hike from HED.  If I were on their side of it I'd be trying to chop links out of the potential JB chains in northern Q and take central Q outright, these are much harder places for the Goons to defend.  The biggest weakness for the goons right now is that their lack of JB chain denies them effective "interior lines", making movement of standard fleets cumbersome and complicating logistics (lack of Cyno jammers is also a weakness, but the logistic/strategic impact of JB's looms larger).

The only way their move makes sense is if EXE and the rest in Period Basis are actually quite close to logistical failure and it's not practical to bring stuff around the long way, through Paragon Soul.  Or at least the PB alliances believe they're close to collapse and will drop out without this lifeline.

--Dave

[Endie]

Just to clarify, although for obvious reasons I can't really go into details, as I understand it Querious will all be ours when things blow over (assuming we win) and our first sov 3 in Querious and Delve ticked over today with JB POSes already onlined and finishing fitting.  Within a bit less than a couple of weeks the whole JB network should be up.

[Fordel]

  The comedy twist was that at one point last night our carriers were sitting at an Exe POS repping their cyno jammer while an Exe fleet were shooting the same jammer trying to destroy it.

Why would you want to shoot your own jammer?

[Endie]

  The comedy twist was that at one point last night our carriers were sitting at an Exe POS repping their cyno jammer while an Exe fleet were shooting the same jammer trying to destroy it.

Why would you want to shoot your own jammer?

We had incapped Exe's jammer.  They desperately wanted to stop us getting caps into the system.  A cynojammer would do this, but you can only have on anchored in a system.  Unless you have a bunch of carriers about to triage then you are faster blowing up your own cynojammer and anchoring a new one than repping it.

[Phildo]

Speaking of the PB alliances, Southern Cross Alliance has lost some membership lately.  I know The Maverick Navy has left them outright for a lowsec pirating alliance (that includes Slackers among their member corps), and just yesterday I saw some guy in a noob corp for four days griefing empire miners with his Bhaalgorn.  Former Anzac Alliance member.

[Fordel]

  The comedy twist was that at one point last night our carriers were sitting at an Exe POS repping their cyno jammer while an Exe fleet were shooting the same jammer trying to destroy it.

Why would you want to shoot your own jammer?

We had incapped Exe's jammer.  They desperately wanted to stop us getting caps into the system.  A cynojammer would do this, but you can only have on anchored in a system.  Unless you have a bunch of carriers about to triage then you are faster blowing up your own cynojammer and anchoring a new one than repping it.

I hope someone had Yakety Sax playing in the background the entire time for that.

[Sir T]

49-U isn't really the best place for them to be staging an offensive, it's helpful if AAA is going to support EXE and company in Period Basis, but it's also very close to the new goon "center of mass" in southern Delve and even with JB chains it's a bit of a hike from HED.  If I were on their side of it I'd be trying to chop links out of the potential JB chains in northern Q and take central Q outright, these are much harder places for the Goons to defend. 

....

The only way their move makes sense is if EXE and the rest in Period Basis are actually quite close to logistical failure and it's not practical to bring stuff around the long way, through Paragon Soul.  Or at least the PB alliances believe they're close to collapse and will drop out without this lifeline.

--Dave

On this, I see it slightly different. I strongly suspect that them hitting 49- is bugger all to do with overall strategy for winning the war. Its everything to do with protecting -A- strip mining operations around FAT. I have heard on the crapevine that -A- have been stripmining that area for months.

Mahrin and I both know how juicy that area is, having lived there. If 49- is secured for us that gives a base for kill hungry goons to start rampaging all around that area, meaning that it becomes far less useful to them, if they can use it at all. They certainly cant use... ahh... certain rather dodgy programs to run their strip mining as the programs won't react fast enough to hostile incursions. Certainly the sweet -1.0 truesec of 4-0 will become almost impossible to use.

Kenny is attacking there becasue AAA wont budge anywhere else and they need -A-s support, and the rest of the bunch were panicked by -A- screaming about an invasion into their space, which if I am right gives -A- props for conning already panicked idiots into flying 40 jumps to protect -A- industrial space.

I say McAAA, because although the hostiles had 14 alliances present only AAA actually did very much.

They actually had 21 alliances present. We had 7 including the lone Legion of xxxdeathxxx guy that came along for the laugh.

On EXE I just logged in that system as I logged there. I cant speak for the rest of our towers but the one I logged in on was fully online and not rienforced.

[amiable]

Unless there is a game-changer relatively soon in 49-, Ken and -A- are pretty f-ed.  The countdown to Sov 3  is less than 2 weeks away in 49- and so far all we are seeing is a stalemate.  Every day more systems tick to Sov 3 and our jumpbridge network becomes more active while the window of opportunity to attack other targets closes.

Of course we are still treated to endless threads on K/D ratios and how we should be demoralized. 

[Endie]

Unless there is a game-changer relatively soon in 49-, Ken and -A- are pretty f-ed.  The countdown to Sov 3  is less than 2 weeks away in 49- and so far all we are seeing is a stalemate.  Every day more systems tick to Sov 3 and our jumpbridge network becomes more active while the window of opportunity to attack other targets closes.

Of course we are still treated to endless threads on K/D ratios and how we should be demoralized. 

I dunno... I fully expect that they'll pull an old BoB-blob special like they used to in Feyth 15 months ago: a huge red-pen op this Thursday to kite our 49- towers, and absolutely pack the system with every worthless PvEer they can to make loading grids unfeasible for US TZ goons coming along six hours later each day, and try to clear-cut as many towers as they can, assuming that they don't use caps (with which they could just level the system).

If they find their balls and get caps into the system early then they have a pretty-much unbeatable advantage: cynoing our ones in all at once is suicidal right now thanks to ccp's latest failure on the QA front, combined with the lag of a 1200+ local-count.  A cap going flying when you have 700 friendlies and 150 hostiles in local is a different prospect from when you have seven hundred hostiles and six hundred friendlies, half of whom are loading grid.

With the advantages of earlier timezones and huge numbers-advantages for a good ten hours there is no real excuse for them not taking 49- this week.  Of course, the same was true in DG- and Bob's fleet commander there (cflux?) fucked that up, too vOv.

[eldaec]

If they can't win when attacking sov 1 and 2 (the very circumstances we've been told it is trivially easy to attack under, but it seems that only applies when the month is February), it is difficult to see how they will make any progress once sov 3 comes down.

But Ken is pretty much fucked already even if they do start to win some small amount of space back - so long as they continue to refight February's war they are going to keep hemmoraging corps and players whatever happens, because actively fighting with AAA and Goons on grid (and for that matter EXE as well) will continue to show Ken up as second rate, and their internal e-honour bullshit image will hang them; AAA, on the other hand, can legitimately claim this was all about good fights, and carry on being the only alliance who can stand up to the coalition of the socialist revolution, and carry on being about as rich as us, and carry on pointing out how they've captured the south.

A long but mostly pointless war with little progress either way but lots of CAOD nonsense is probably the best possible situation for both goons and AAA, it keeps the military industrial complex ticking over, keeps participation going, and removes any likelihood of Ken restablishing space unless they first find someone who understands logistics and then fuck off to the other side of the map in search of easy kills (which if they had any sense at all, is exactly what they would be doing now).

I dunno... I fully expect that they'll pull an old BoB-blob special like they used to in Feyth 15 months ago: a huge red-pen op this Thursday to kite our 49- towers, and absolutely pack the system with every worthless PvEer they can to make loading grids unfeasible for US TZ goons coming along six hours later each day, and try to clear-cut as many towers as they can, assuming that they don't use caps (with which they could just level the system).

Thing is, if they can still do this, it makes no sense to do it now and not to break out of PR two weeks ago, or not to nip the whole goon invasion meme in the bud four weeks ago.

[trevorreznik]

On this, I see it slightly different. I strongly suspect that them hitting 49- is bugger all to do with overall strategy for winning the war. Its everything to do with protecting -A- strip mining operations around FAT. I have heard on the crapevine that -A- have been stripmining that area for months.

Mahrin and I both know how juicy that area is, having lived there. If 49- is secured for us that gives a base for kill hungry goons to start rampaging all around that area, meaning that it becomes far less useful to them, if they can use it at all. They certainly cant use... ahh... certain rather dodgy programs to run their strip mining as the programs won't react fast enough to hostile incursions. Certainly the sweet -1.0 truesec of 4-0 will become almost impossible to use.

Kenny is attacking there becasue AAA wont budge anywhere else and they need -A-s support, and the rest of the bunch were panicked by -A- screaming about an invasion into their space, which if I am right gives -A- props for conning already panicked idiots into flying 40 jumps to protect -A- industrial space.

There's a lot of (worthless) innuendo in here and it doesn't make a ton of sense.  Until last November (I think?) when -a- blued Bob, FAT was always right next to hostile space.  Stripmining might be occuring there, but it seems like a silly system to do it in, when there's another 35 station systems to do it that aren't right near hostiles.  It's much further down the JB chain than the main cluster of -a- stations, so it's not like logistics of getting minerals to empire would be better.  Also, does Catch even have ark?  I'm honestly unsure.

That being said, If -a- is busy macroing a shitload of retrievers in FAT and convinced GKC to fight a huge battle for weeks to protect their mining operation, that's pretty hilarious.  I kind of want -a- to turn heavily to macroing just to piss people off that already are steamed about the alumininiinimum guy.

If they find their balls and get caps into the system early then they have a pretty-much unbeatable advantage: cynoing our ones in all at once is suicidal right now thanks to ccp's latest failure on the QA front, combined with the lag of a 1200+ local-count.  A cap going flying when you have 700 friendlies and 150 hostiles in local is a different prospect from when you have seven hundred hostiles and six hundred friendlies, half of whom are loading grid.

I think one of the biggest problems with fielding caps is that there are no station systems left for GKC to base out of (and -a-/se/rol to use).  Without that, it's really hard to fuel/refuel caps.

If they can't win when attacking sov 1 and 2 (the very circumstances we've been told it is trivially easy to attack under, but it seems that only applies when the month is February), it is difficult to see how they will make any progress once sov 3 comes down.

A long but mostly pointless war with little progress either way but lots of CAOD nonsense is probably the best possible situation for both goons and AAA, it keeps the military industrial complex ticking over, keeps participation going, and removes any likelihood of Ken restablishing space unless they first find someone who understands logistics and then fuck off to the other side of the map in search of easy kills (which if they had any sense at all, is exactly what they would be doing now).

Sov 1/2 is trivially easy to attack, compared with sov3.  If 49- was sov3, there wouldn't have been many fights, just a ton of titans warping around with impunity.  Granted, this could happen right now due to capital disparity, but sov3 simply makes one side a ton more confident and the other less so.

On your other points, you're pretty much right.  Ken could win, but only through a long slow horrible grind of pos warfare which they haven't shown any ability at all to do.

I hope the tz difference doesn't affect things too much and that there's a lively fat to 49- corridor of pvp gangs running around.  EVE is boring as hell when there aren't nearby enemies to fight.

[Sir T]

There's a lot of (worthless) innuendo in here and it doesn't make a ton of sense.  Until last November (I think?) when -a- blued Bob, FAT was always right next to hostile space.  Stripmining might be occuring there, but it seems like a silly system to do it in, when there's another 35 station systems to do it that aren't right near hostiles.  It's much further down the JB chain than the main cluster of -a- stations, so it's not like logistics of getting minerals to empire would be better.  Also, does Catch even have ark?  I'm honestly unsure.

That being said, If -a- is busy macroing a shitload of retrievers in FAT and convinced GKC to fight a huge battle for weeks to protect their mining operation, that's pretty hilarious.  I kind of want -a- to turn heavily to macroing just to piss people off that already are steamed about the alumininiinimum guy.

Trev, I never said it was happening just in FAT. I said, and I quote, "the area." Fact is that area is extremely megacyte rich. My old corp, Fade to Black built a mothership just from doing mining ops in one system around there, 6DPS. The rest of Catch is comparatively worthless. And your second point the fact it was next to hostile space, is nuts. BOB was not hostile to AAA since the middle of the great war, as we now know, and was actively conspiring with -A- for months. In that situation the FAT area was the safest carebearing and industrial space they had, and had the advantage of SEEMING to be so dangerous that no-one would look at it.

[trevorreznik]

There's a lot of (worthless) innuendo in here and it doesn't make a ton of sense.  Until last November (I think?) when -a- blued Bob, FAT was always right next to hostile space.  Stripmining might be occuring there, but it seems like a silly system to do it in, when there's another 35 station systems to do it that aren't right near hostiles.  It's much further down the JB chain than the main cluster of -a- stations, so it's not like logistics of getting minerals to empire would be better.  Also, does Catch even have ark?  I'm honestly unsure.

That being said, If -a- is busy macroing a shitload of retrievers in FAT and convinced GKC to fight a huge battle for weeks to protect their mining operation, that's pretty hilarious.  I kind of want -a- to turn heavily to macroing just to piss people off that already are steamed about the alumininiinimum guy.

Trev, I never said it was happening just in FAT. I said, and I quote, "the area." Fact is that area is extremely megacyte rich. My old corp, Fade to Black built a mothership just from doing mining ops in one system around there, 6DPS. The rest of Catch is comparatively worthless. And your second point the fact it was next to hostile space, is nuts. BOB was not hostile to AAA since the middle of the great war, as we now know, and was actively conspiring with -A- for months. In that situation the FAT area was the safest carebearing and industrial space they had, and had the advantage of SEEMING to be so dangerous that no-one would look at it.

Well, I wasn't positive about the megacyte stuff, so fair enough.  If it's strip mining in catch, that's pretty cool that those dudes can go nuts mining with macros (that's what you are unwilling to say, right?) at the expense of the GKC.

You're off your rocker if you think bob wasn't hostile to -a- because molle approached thug at one point and got turned down.  A lot of people misread that chatlog and keep misrepresenting what it was.  Plus, all the bob pet alliances (and there were tons) would've easily went to fat area if there were tons of retrievers in belts.

Once again, there's no  real way to have a discussion about this, because you're just saying 'what you've heard' and that's not possible to refute beyond a 'no they don't' 'yes they do' argument.

[Phildo]

I also lived in FAT for a while.  Tercios (now members of TORMENTUM and ATLAS) were roaming there all the time, along with Blade and SCA.  I don't imagine they stopped when Reunion decided they liked our space more than we did.

[lac]

Did Reunion end up living out of the FAT area or were they simply on towering duty when -A- took over the area?

[Endie]

Did Reunion end up living out of the FAT area or were they simply on towering duty when -A- took over the area?

It's pretty safe to bet that you know better than most of us vOv

Anyway, it looks like Kenny grew a ball, if not quite a pair, since they have a decent force of caps logged-off in 49-.  Now to see if they will dare use them, I suppose.  They have a tower coming out on Thursday evening at an absolute gimme of a time for them - in both russian and euro prime during US finals week - so it looks like we may be down to a single-tower majority: if not they should just go home now.  I imagine that the real battle will be to stop them capitalising on that for their usual Thursday, pre-weekend setup op.

Balancing that, we got our first jump-bridge links up and running yesterday, knocking a few gate jumps off the route to 49-, and we have four or five more sov 3 station systems due to tick over in the next two days.  Where Kenny failed to hold onto a single outpost system for the required month we already have some, which is a nice reminder of why they are outnumbered 5:1 in their fleets with McAAA at the moment.

[lac]

It's pretty safe to bet that you know better than most of us vOv

Why would that be? I haven't been online for 3 months.

[trevorreznik]

Did Reunion end up living out of the FAT area or were they simply on towering duty when -A- took over the area?

It's pretty safe to bet that you know better than most of us vOv

Anyway, it looks like Kenny grew a ball, if not quite a pair, since they have a decent force of caps logged-off in 49-.  Now to see if they will dare use them, I suppose.  They have a tower coming out on Thursday evening at an absolute gimme of a time for them - in both russian and euro prime during US finals week - so it looks like we may be down to a single-tower majority: if not they should just go home now.  I imagine that the real battle will be to stop them capitalising on that for their usual Thursday, pre-weekend setup op.

Balancing that, we got our first jump-bridge links up and running yesterday, knocking a few gate jumps off the route to 49-, and we have four or five more sov 3 station systems due to tick over in the next two days.  Where Kenny failed to hold onto a single outpost system for the required month we already have some, which is a nice reminder of why they are outnumbered 5:1 in their fleets with McAAA at the moment.

Just an FYI, it's always midterm or finals week somewhere in the US :P

[Meester]

Hows Period Basis holding out atm? Or is Executive Outcomes and co evacuating all their goods through wormhole space and other such shananigans?

[Phildo]

EXE is going to lose their jump bridge midpoints unless they counter-spam or destroy some POS very soon, as I understand it.  I'm not clear on their situation beyond that.

[Endie]

EXE is going to lose their jump bridge midpoints unless they counter-spam or destroy some POS very soon, as I understand it.  I'm not clear on their situation beyond that.

Unless they managed to reinforce our towers in their midpoints again last night then I don't think that they can stop themselves losing sov, so long as we max-stront ours, as it is less than two days and seven hours now.  If they didn't try again at every single opportunity then that is a good indicator that they have given up at the strategic level (although the mass evacs they did a good ten days ago and the instructions just to leave a few combat ships in PB might be a better guide, there!)

Edit: Exe tried to save one of their JB systems (0-N) with an alarm-clock at 0500 today.  If the Morsus Mihi gang hadn't scared them off then the large goonfleet one that got blueballed would have done so, instead.  Their JB network is, as far as I understand, now unsavable.

[Endie]

Oh, Kengoku-san, never change.

Despite the best efforts of McAAA to help them, Kenny didn't give enough of a crap about their own towers to rep their mods, or even to online hardeners after restronting.  Nor could they be bothered to get off their arses and stop DBRB taking advantage of this to kite a tower of theirs in 49- through the day and getting a US prime-time timer on it as a reward.

We also have sov 2 in 49-, as of yesterday, and almost every Kenny tower there is in reinforced, which has to be a grind if you're already failing to rep your pos mods, let alone to simply pres butan to online hardeners.

[Fordel]

I suppose this is related to the war thread... maybe.


Is there a way/place to see how the factional warfare is progressing?

[Sparky]

Despite the best efforts of McAAA to help them, Kenny didn't give enough of a crap about their own towers to rep their mods, or even to online hardeners after restronting. 

Classic, AAA & friends pull out all the stops but Kenny can't even be bothered to do basic shit.  I'm getting horrible flashbacks to all the pubbie alliances GS would have to bail out after they failed at POS management.

[Arthur_Parker]

From my limited understanding of the situation, if Kenny don't pull their act together in the next couple of days they are going to lose all their newly placed towers.  If their first major operation after being camped for a month fails, I think they are done.

[Sparky]

I wouldn't expect miracles, GS historically do poorly on weekends then make up for it during the working days (because they are all jobless losers amirite!? ).  It's going to be a slog whatever happens.

[Endie]

From my limited understanding of the situation, if Kenny don't pull their act together in the next couple of days they are going to lose all their newly placed towers.  If their first major operation after being camped for a month fails, I think they are done.

I dunno about that: they have a lot of McAAA, and a huge army of pets on their side, and can still dominate Euro and Russian TZs if they really want to.  Plus, as Sparky says, Goon participation traditionally suffers at a weekend while Kenny & co seem a lot happier to play Eve solidly from Friday-Sunday.  Add to that a completely vulnerable GF tower coming out in their prime tonight and we'll no doubt see a huge push, with perhaps even a resetting of sov for a while.  I don't think it's sustainable for them - here is a list of successfuly-carried-out AAA pos-warfare campaigns:... -  but they should be able to pull it off for a while, surely.

If they don't, and if Kenny's consistent laziness/disinterest causes them not to take the system despite such a gift of a free tower timing, then I'd not be surprised to see the Russians take over the towering effort with ROL's RMT trillions as backing.

[Thrawn]

Local in 49- is over 1,000 again and I heard a rumor that the long missing Kenny cap fleet has actaully been deployed in system.

[eldaec]

As far as I could tell you heard wrong.

Crazy Russians as far as the eye can see.

[Phildo]

Kenny's cap fleet may, indeed, be logged out in 49-.

[Sir T]

They had over 900 in system and EVERYONE was there, even Minmatar roleplaying alliance Uhshra'khan was dragged away from their wooden swards and was pushed into making an appearance by their masters. we had about 300 and as we found out a few days ago cbridging in oour foces would have been suicidal.

-A- spent the day Kiting poses and incapping guns. They tried a few bait maneuvers but lost largely more than they killed (killing 2 HACs for the price of a frig ftw) and after a while stopped it. So yeah they got the Pos but if we kill BOBs perfectly times poss tonight and save all our towers we keep sov.

Amazingly after kiting our poses all day they got timers... in deep goon prime tonight. Who knew?

[MahrinSkel]

They had nearly 900 in system and EVERYONE was there. even Minmatar roleplaying alliance Uhshra'khan was dragged away from their wooden swards and was pushed into making an appearance by their masters. we had about 300 and as we found out a few days ago cbridging in oour foces would have been suicidal.

-A- spent the day Kiting poses and incapping guns. They tried a few bait maneuvers but lost largely more than they killed (killing 2 HACs for the price of a frig ftw) and after a while stopped it. So yeah they got the Pos but if we kill BOBs perfectly times poss tonight and save all our towers we keep sov.

Amazingly after kiting our poses all day they got timers... in deep goon prime tonight. Who knew?

That was mean.  But predictability is always a flaw.

--Dave

[Endie]

Well, I would call this a good day for the good guys, and a downright horrible one for the Mercenary Coalition.

It started off shakily: as mentioned we had a tower coming out at 20:00, right in Euro and Russian primes, and there was very little we could do to save it short of a Horn Of Goondor, which was not called.  That tower was, therefore, lost, and we were staring at sov going neutral for a few days, so close is the system.

The reason that we didn't call an all-out op was that DaBigRedBoat, our FC and the best of all red boats, had kited a hostile tower through the day before, and it was due to come out in US time.  If we could kill that then we would keep sov.

The situation was made yet more complex by the fact that McAAA/SE/ROL/Kenny/Barbie had spent endless hours and summoned everyone they could in order to kite a few more of our towers.  Unfortunately for them, their tedious hours of work gave them a bunch of timers in late US time that same night.  All that time, black ops were sitting in Catch ganking their reinforcements.

The short version of what happened is this: the 20:00 tower died.  We then killed the Kenny tower that came out at 0200 to regain the advantage.  This left the hostiles with a few of our towers coming out in very late US/early Russian/very early euro which they had to kill in order to save something from their massive efforts, and they therefore called an alarm-clock op.  This would be a big test of their commitment.

Sadly for them, however, what actually happened was that we camped them into their bubbled, incapped POSes while we repped our towers, and killed the time by using the passwords to their towers (we had them for every hostile alliance except perhaps one... the Mittanni sends his regards) to bump out their ships and steal their unanchored pos mods.

Now, all of this completely wasted effort would make this a pretty bad day for the Mercenary Coalition in any case, but there was one final detail that made it just perfect.  While this was going on, AAA had sent their pets, AAA Citizens, to siege a goonfleet tower in 46-DP, back in our old territory that we left out east.

Imagine their surprise when their little dread fleet gets hot-dropped by the Good Russians of Legion of xXDEATHXx, who then join forces with Red Alliance to reinforce every AAA tower in the system.  This leaves Evil Thug with some... ahem... interesting choices to make.

[Endie]

In other news, Exe turned up to try one last desperate try to kill a Goonfleet tower that came out of reinforced this morning in 0-NTIS.  A mixed bag of Anzac goons, P-L and MM had equal numbers with them, and Exe were unable to get the tower below 99% armour by downtime.  Sov is now reset, and since we also took 1-2J already, Exe have no sov systems left between HIX4-H in southern Period Basis and W-II in central Querious, which adds twenty-one extra gate jumps to their subcap routes, for instance, most of it through Goon space.