War

[Endie]

Well, the joy of being stuck loading the system is that you get to listen and read and probably have a better idea what is going on than you would otherwise.

Still not a great idea, though 

That said, I don't think that this is going like Molle planned.  Unless we're about to get counter-hot-dropped I think we're doing pretty well so far.  I got a good feeling when I saw the first seventy non-Goonswarm caps xing up inside a few minutes (ours were xing up in a different channel).  Lag is high and they have numbers advantage but we fight better in lag than them and a good number of their fleet are shitty pets.  Could go either way.

This is a non-informative, impressionistic post.  Endie, Goonfleet embedded correspondent, somewhere in the uncollapsed waveform which is H74.

Edit: ROL fucked up and I suspect that some or all of their five towers are going to die.  Unless my evemail isn't updating (mails are truncating from sheer numbers, for sure) we also interrupted Molle's petspam with moons still open so that's not worked out for him, either.

[Cippalippus]

I am surprised they tried to go at it again after I1Y, but then again this offensive just started. I am still of the opinion that they should give up in Querious and rebuild somewhere else, but this offensive just started and its outcome is still not clear.

[MahrinSkel]

So you guys weren't keeping it 50%+1?  It's 65 moons so that would be 33 idle POS, but given its unique JB potential, I'd think you'd keep a tight lock on it.  I guess with nobody hostile in PB and the focus in I1Y, I can see why you would stand down.  But I hope you have more than the minimum 6.

--Dave

[IainC]

I counted 29 hostile towers from mailspam before I logged out - which was after the big fight where the fleets from 9CG were bridged in. The server node basically fell over, I don't think my guns cycled more than 3 times in total while my ship was alive and fighting. I got primaried and killed, couldn't warp out with my pod because the client thought I was still in my BS and every time I tried to move I got 'your ship is out of control'. I read the insurance mail for my ship while apparently sitting in it and about twenty minutes later the game caught up with me and I was ejected into my pod. By that time all the bubbles had gone so I was able to warp to a friendly POS and take stock of the situation.

The battle seemed to be going very much our way and by the time I was able to get off grid there were less than a dozen or so hostiles in system. I doubt they had time to online very much so what they dropped will probably die in fairly short order.

[Endie]

So you guys weren't keeping it 50%+1?  It's 65 moons so that would be 33 idle POS, but given its unique JB potential, I'd think you'd keep a tight lock on it.  I guess with nobody hostile in PB and the focus in I1Y, I can see why you would stand down.  But I hope you have more than the minimum 6.

We had a good number of friendly larges (enough to defeat a couple of days' spam with room to spare) and had locked out a bunch more moons with smalls, also some friendlies had a couple of towers, too.  But we didn't have 51% vOv.

We're finding more unstronted hostile towers here at the moment.  Like Cippa says, this has a ways to go, but it's a good start.

Also, AJ Regard just warped to our fleet to look and didn't realise he was uncloaked.  I imagine that he will be reporting on SHC on the failure of napfleet to kill him for several seconds and his success in getting back to his clone station rapidly.

Edit: the four races of dreads are split up shooting a tower each, while we are running around Benny Hill-style in our huge BS fleet keeping unstronted towers below 50%.

Update: Now that they are all unstrontable (we have all below 25%) Kenny forgot to stront three of their five larges from their spam.  ROL didn't online theirs.  At least one tower is in a good TZ for us.  Could be more to come, but you have to assume that people like Exe aren't as incompetent as Kenny vOv

Another edit for trolling. CCP announce that their attempts to get Kenny some space have proved successful:


Edit: put that (fake) graohic in spoiler so save people on small clients (my blackberry, mainly).

[Comstar]

I'm confused, what is the new map of?

CCP's increasing the galaxy size??

[Murgos]

CCP's increasing the galaxy size??

I hope not.  Much like real life population pressure causes most of the 'good fights', increasing the galaxy that much just after adding 2500 wormhole systems could really suck the life out of Eve.

Also, 2 dead RKZ larges and 2 dead Lethal Corp Larges in H74 on the GS kill board front page already.  It's early but this is looking like a very poor start to the big offensive.

[Fordel]

That is a LOT of of fucking space 

[JustinMead]

don't worry, the map is a fake.

They managed to drop a 28, with 7-8 coming out of reinforced tomorrow that are in a good time to fight over.

Tomorrows the big fight. Today was just a warm up :P

[Pezzle]

how many of the 28 were unstronted and already destroyed?

[Sir T]

how many of the 28 were unstronted and already destroyed?

They have 16 larges left. 28 towers dropped, 4 were smalls, 8 larges died. Only larges count for Sov.

{edit} This has  our tower JPG for the next couple of days

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1090205&page=1

[JustinMead]

heres a better post from SHC

Think we managed to spam 20-25'ish towers that are still alive and have stront and not fuck up timers or died

(bob guy)

reply--

You have 19 large and 4 small which are still alive. Fucked up timers is a matter of opinion, but there's a few of those towers coming out in US prime

(ex-goon/moderator guy)

[setar]

Major problem's going to be that nearly none of the new POS is properly setup, negating any bonus defenders normally might have. Although this will likely come down to who is in control of the system anyhow.. at which point it doesn't matter.

[JustinMead]

PL's gonna be running a lot of bomber and LR hac gangs during there prime. We almost killed a rorqual, 20% structure, with about 15-20 bombers.

[Endie]

We had system control up until downtime hit, and destroyed the towers that came out in H74 and at least most that came out elsewhere in Querious  (I imagine that we have been letting some go in order to focus on H74, so cannot really believe the statement I read that all 15 or so elsewhere are dead).  we also saved four of the five towers that Kenny reinforced (the other comes out in US prime on Saturday).

When I logged in following downtime, i was pretty surprised to see that we have system control again: surprising since the weekend is already under way in Moscow and parts east.  It can only be a matter of time before we cede control for the european evening, of course, but for now we are killing more hostile towers as they come out.

Now we are just speculating on whether Kenny will reinforce failure (which, in Eve, sometimes works; you just need to want it enough for a Triumph des Willens) or will proceed to spam and reinforce other systems, using their (potential) local numbers advantage to make us prioritise what we are to defend.  whatever it is, we can be sure that AJ Regard will post ~mission accomplished~ as a result (side note: Finfleet is suffering more member loss than any other Kenny corp right now).

[Endie]

These get posted on Eve-O by mittens, and are in a thread everyone has access to on gf.com, so I suppose it's ok to share today's pos.jpg:

[Sir T]

Everything on that list is saved (ours) or dead (theirs), down to and including the C-7 towers. We are going down the list.

I suspect the real fight will be over the 5V tower at 20:00. That's 33% of Kennies r64 income and they HAVE to save it.

[Jayce]

Needs more image macro text and/or image

Holy shit that was confusing once printed.  What I'm trying to say is that it needs a snarky picture at the bottom.

[trevorreznik]

What do you think the difference was between the initial i1y assault and the initial h74 (pt2) assault?   Both were after a period of lulls, so rest doesn't seem to be a factor.  Is it as simple as the winner of the prior fight dominated the next one early?  i1y was right after the failed attacked on 49-u (I think) and of course h74pt2 right after the failed attack on i1y. 

[Murgos]

GF and brosefs participation was MUCH higher?

Seriously, there were 400+ consisting of mostly BS, 9 Titans and 100+ Caps ready to go within two hours of the start of the offensive.

[JustinMead]

Before the failure of i1y, the promise of the whole NC coming down south, surged numbers greatly.

But the whole NC didn't come down, there was only about 30 MM, 15 Iron and 10 WI that came down. The numbers came from Goons. They easily brought 300 people, razor about 100-120, and PL about 50-60. After we won over i1y, we kept riding the morale boost.

Yesterday we had about 450 pilots spread throughout Goons, RZR, MM, and PL. TCF is now down south, bringing 100 pilots, just tipping the favor into ours. It was about 550 vs 500.

Imperian got a great warpin on there BS, I literally warped to 0 on them. In this new re-inforced node lag, the guns fail to cycle, but drones and movement work almost flawlessly. I suspect everyone dropped there drones and let them go to town, thats what I did. Our dictors and hictors weren't dying, which forced AAA and Kenzoku to warp off, leaving at least 70 BS still in bubbles.

thats all I have for now 

[trevorreznik]

GF and brosefs participation was MUCH higher?

Seriously, there were 400+ consisting of mostly BS, 9 Titans and 100+ Caps ready to go within two hours of the start of the offensive.

yeah that's what I was getting at-that's probably the best participation so far in this conflict for a day 1 defensive op.

[IainC]

GF and brosefs participation was MUCH higher?

Seriously, there were 400+ consisting of mostly BS, 9 Titans and 100+ Caps ready to go within two hours of the start of the offensive.

Yeah, we had to kick BCs out to the scrub fleet because the main fleet was full, so there were at least three full strength frontline fleets operating in H74 on our side - mainfleet, capfleet and scrubfleet - plus whatever kooky stuff was being done behind he scenes and not counting fleets that may have been brought by allies that didn't join the main GF fleets.

[Endie]

I think you're right, Trevor: momentum.  We've got into a winning habit recently while Molle has, yet again, sat on his hands for a couple of weeks refusing to even harass us as we go about breaking his pets' toys.

I don't know if that inaction was because the hunger for constant engagement departed long ago from their top people who have played the game too long and been on the losing side for too many years (the few that remain); if they just needed raise the cash to fund this assault; or if they simply felt that asking for more participation would lead to the classic self-reinforcing spiral of lower and lower turnouts that affect all alliances when things begin to go really badly.

At the same time, we have had 21 posted ops marked "critical" or "important" in a row that have been flagged with the "rape" icon instead of the "welp" one afterwards.

Anyway, no chicken-counting from me.  We might lose a capfleet at any point to a huge hotdrop (maybe even in 5V tonight, if we decide to go for it).  If the hostiles log in they still outnumber us for 18 hours of the day, and they could dominate the rest of the weekend.  Who knows what the next twist will be?

[Cippalippus]

There's a lot of will to end this as soon as possible, too. The last time in I1Y we suffered the hostile "high wave" and until the end no one bothered much to defend, with Tri causing troubles in the north and AAA being free to deploy fully.

It looks like this time we're trying to stop it before it's too late, which is only good. I really didn't hope for I1Y anymore, and while I'm not overly optimistical usually, I wasn't certainly hoping/thinking that such a rout could happen.

[MahrinSkel]

Momentum and RKZ is trapped between a rock and a hard place.  If they give their people time to appreciate their situation without seeming to make progress towards their goals, the membership hemorrhage will turn into arterial spray, but each time they try and fail, participation levels drop (from both attrition and morale).  They need a win, so they're finally trying to emulate goon strategy and spread the battlefield so wide that they almost *have* to succeed somewhere.

It's not working.  Goons are flush, froggy, and feeling like winners.  Their people are broke, tired, and feeling like losers, and now they're pursuing an unfamiliar strategy they don't understand.  Stations are not the sine qua non of territorial ownership they used to be, but they don't have *anywhere* to call home right now and they're fighting in over a dozen systems, most of which they know they have no hope to take.  At some point, either the morale of the "moral leadership" (both the explicit leaders and the ones people look to for getting stuff done outside the chain of command) is going to break and the RKZ core is going to break, or the loss of peripheral corps and their members is going to turn into the "bugout boogie" to the point that RKZ simply lacks the means to present an existential threat to Goonswarm regardless of their will.

--Dave

[setar]

It's kinda fun to see BOB struggle in a similar situation that killed Tortuga. You can't engage without risking to lose everything, but outwaiting the opposition means you have fewer and fewer active folks around do get anything done in the first place. Think the plan is still to wait 'till NC departs, and this was a one-off attempt.

[Jayce]

It's kinda fun to see BOB struggle in a similar situation that killed Tortuga.

This is interesting coming from a member of BoB's (nominal) allies.

I personally am fairly surprised RKZ is still going at it.  It's almost the best of all possible worlds for Goons.  They gave us enough time to sov3/4 most of Delve and Querious before putting up serious opposition.  Yet they also didn't just keel over and die, making it somewhat interesting without us ever being in real existential danger.

A better strategy might have been to strongarm Stainwagon out of Paragon Soul/Esoteria, or simply take some space from someone (while they still had members and participation) and live next door with actual space and income and places for members to ride bikes.  They could have supported an indefinite war effort then, and might have one day even succeeded.  At this point, though, it seems like sooner or later they will fall apart.

[Endie]

Molle is telling people that Goons are logging off, and that they are killing our H74 bubbles without resistance right now, with us unable to resist.

The truth is that we have three fleets going (not all full, of course), and that we have titan-bridged out of H74 to try for 5V.  Also, while they are killing our horrendously important bubbles in H74, our ships in the same system are killing a tower there, which our skewed sense of priorities seem more important.

[Pezzle]

Sometimes I do wish I could listen in on these comms.  I find the observation, decisions and reactions fascinating.

[Sir T]

5v R64 is down. Kenny et all could not even mount a defense.

[Endie]

Molle told his 45-man dread fleet to platinum insure so he could hot drop us.

When he worked out that we had 200 caps, the hotdrop was off.  Anyone who wasn't insured but spent the third of a billion ISK he told them to might be a tad miffed.

Edit: also, we just got told that the hostile towers in ZAU have started going offline from lack of fuel.

[Pezzle]

What, no live streaming? :P

Doesn't BoB cap fleet have corp or alliance level funding?

[Sir T]

In classic sign of health in Kenneth, 3 towers in ZAU ran out of fuel and were blown up.

All but one enemy tower in H74 is dead.

In an ironic twist to what Endie said above...

Oh it seems AAA might be turning up for Big Push MCXXXVI tonight.

Of course they are.  If they were to fail to show up then Kenny's Big Push would last two hours, not two weeks.

With AAA turning up to help, Kennies big push seems to have lasted lasted 2 hours.  

[Fordel]

I'm still laughing at the idea of scrubfleet.