War

[Simond]

M. Pire looks like they're going to have an interesing future...they've just been given the lion's share of ex-D2 space, according to rumour.

[dwindlehop]

I believe the M. Pire rumor to be true, for at least some part of ex-D2 space. I don't think M. Pire is large enough to hold all of ex-D2 space.

[Der Helm]

Could someone enlighten me on which side of the conflict Knights of the Southerncross are standing ? For or against BoB ?

[Drogo]

I believe they are with the Southern Coalition fighting against BoB.

[Der Helm]

I believe they are with the Southern Coalition fighting against BoB.

Lucky me.

:-D

[Ratadm]

Soooo Xelas got evicted? http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=536521

Any comments, especially interested in the BoB side, I know Xelas isn't widely regarded as competent but curious if there is anything else I might have missed.

[Endie]

This isn't a troll: with the meganerf to complexes that has been announced, was there just no point to Xelas any more: they'd been incompetent at defending space, ratting income was down, and now the one task they'd been given (run the complex, every day, pay up) was gone.

Like I said: this is not a troll.

[Simond]

Xelas suck worse than a singularity have room for improvement in most respects, and never paid BoB rent apparently (as part of their tenancy agreement).

Speculation: Losing control of their complexes and mass-recruiting macro-miners was probably the final straw for BoB, who'd probably much rather have a halfway-competant entity in that space, especially one that would presumably pay rent.

...

And that's assuming that BoB just doesn't take it over for themselves, natch.

[JoeTF]

Also, plexes aren't going to be nerfed - they will spawn randomly in all qualifying regions.
It's just 10/10 constellations that are getting the shaft.

[Endie]

Also, plexes aren't going to be nerfed - they will spawn randomly in all qualifying regions.
It's just 10/10 constellations that are getting the shaft.

Don't be obtuse: removing the 10/10s for now is a huge, if impermanent nerf.  And making them require discovery by exploration, rather than be runnable like clockwork on schedule every day is another, longer-term nerf.  Nerf != "removal".

[Simond]

In case anyone missed it in the Rev 2 thread, patch goes live early next week.
The Xelas thing makes a little more sense now.

[JoeTF]

Plexes stay the same they were, loot and difficulty wise. It's the russk...plex farming that's getting the shaft.:P
Plex !=plex farming. 

Simond - when you run out of beer in the fridge, is it also a BOB conspiracy?

[Simond]

Aha! He admits it! BoB covops have been raiding my fridge!!!

[stark]

Razor is pretty much off the map now and MC has finished its contract for the North. I wonder what their next major op will be.

Here is Seleene's recap of the campain.

[Simond]

And the last battle of the Age of Invulnerable Supercapitals ends in a stalemate, pretty much.

BoB had a plan to POS-spam their way to victory in XGH just prior to downtime (so that sovereignty would flip during the patch process/hotfix patches/inveitable downtime), and bought everyone and their dog to the fight. Goons invited along some of our friends (y hello thar Evil Thug, what a nice titan you have) and the next few hours shifted between POS standoffs, running battles, and tower spam.

(There were some interesting killmails on both side in that battle, as well - Goons flying newbie ships fitted as tacklers, and BoB using (shock! horror!) T1-fitted ships. :))

...meanwhile, Goon specops were heading down to 9-9 with cargo holds full of towers & fuel. When BoB started getting the alliance-mails showing Goon towers going up in 9-9, they began to counterspam back down there, which slowed their offensive in XGH.

End result: Goonswarm (just) held sovereignty in XGH, BoB held sovereignty in 9-9.

And now the rules change. :D

[LC]

(There were some interesting killmails on both side in that battle, as well - Goons flying newbie ships fitted as tacklers, and BoB using (shock! horror!) T1-fitted ships. :))

Those T1 ships are usually replacements stored on the titans or carriers for people who lose their ship. I had a goon incursus attacking me for about 3 minutes in one fight. I finally got tired of his 2.1 damage messages popping up and launched my drones.

[Simond]

The tackling Ibises (Ibices?) were similar - XGH was completely out of Minmatar & either Caldari or Gallente frigates after a couple of hours of combat, so people started throwing scramblers/webbers/etc onto newbie ships.

Plus you'll be surprised how many people don't actually have 'newbie ship' on their overviews...the first time, anyway. ;)

[LC]

The tackling Ibises (Ibices?) were similar - XGH was completely out of Minmatar & either Caldari or Gallente frigates after a couple of hours of combat, so people started throwing scramblers/webbers/etc onto newbie ships.

Plus you'll be surprised how many people don't actually have 'newbie ship' on their overviews...the first time, anyway. ;)

The incursus never scrambled me. He just orbited me with his guns firing. Maybe he was scrambling someone nearby, but it did seem strange.

[Endie]

The tackling Ibises (Ibices?) were similar - XGH was completely out of Minmatar & either Caldari or Gallente frigates after a couple of hours of combat, so people started throwing scramblers/webbers/etc onto newbie ships.

Plus you'll be surprised how many people don't actually have 'newbie ship' on their overviews...the first time, anyway. ;)

The incursus never scrambled me. He just orbited me with his guns firing. Maybe he was scrambling someone nearby, but it did seem strange.

Did you check his history and join date?  That might be his primary ship :)

Alternatively, he was almost certainly just having fun and wondering if he could annoy/distract you enough to get you to react.  Things were going well and fun was being had.

[Endie]

Net result of the XGH thing so far, so far as publicly announced (ie no opsec): GF has sovereignty; seven BoB POSs put into reinforced; four with badly-timed stront have come out and been destroyed.  Without their titans, which seem strangely reluctant to engage for some reason, Bob have been rather less than stellar in the hours before and after the patch.  Now that Bob's MC minions hired servants have finished up north, presumably they'll come down and help their masters avoid too much of this sort of thing, but let's hope that Bob enjoy setting those alarm clocks for the foreseeable future.  They didn't want those jobs, anyway?

[Simond]

It is going to be interesting to see what MC do next - I wonder if their northern campaign was their "One free op per year" rent to BoB or not?

They've also said that they're holding on to some systems up north, which might even tie them up for a short while (depending on what they're planning to do with them long term).

[JoeTF]

didn't you guys lose 10 capitals to BoB's 2?
Also, I heard ET weren't that keen on using DD either:P

[Endie]

Well, Goons lost 2 to your 2, I think.  Our Russian comrades lost a bunch (8?) when they got rather carried away with how easy it seemed to be getting, but that's probably something I imaine that they'll make up for reaaal soon.

But you're confusing tactics with strategy (bob's killboards in particular kinda encourage that).  The strategic goal was exacting a heavy price for XGH, and the successful sieging of seven and destruction of four towers is a lot more success than most of us expected.  I didn't think for a second that we'd own XGH by the time RevII went in, because we everyone knew that Bob would make a big push for it.  The 9-9 counter in particular was genius. I don't expect it to last, of course, but there is at least the hope, with Rev 2, that the Russian winter has set in.

Re Evil Thug, who cares?  You're thinking tactically again, not strategically.  Him not using his one is a fair trade-off for you not using your several...   I imagine a fair few of Bob hated the era of the invulnerable titans almost as much as we did, anyway.

[Simond]

Actually, the prevailing BoB theme re: Titans seems to be "Yeah, they were horrifically broken and really did need all the fixes. Fun while it lasted, though".
Well, on SHC at least. God only knows what line BoB are feeding the unkempt masses on EVE-O. :)

Edit: War update - BoB broke our fitting shop in the XGH station, so we broke their cloning vats in 9-9. :D

[neep]

First 200+ man fight, ever, where lag was only mentioned as being absent. The 'need for speed' changes seem to become noticeable in rev2.

[Yoru]

Shrike just lost his titan to Goonfleet/RA. Like, 3 minutes ago. I'll link the killmail when it's up.

Edit: "Omnipotence itself".

[LC]

Shrike just lost his titan to Goonfleet/RA. Like, 3 minutes ago. I'll link the killmail when it's up.

Edit: "Omnipotence itself".

I was there. All I managed to do was stare at empty space. After 10 minutes nothing had loaded at all.


Here's a working killmail link: http://www.killboard.net/details/169202/

[Fordel]

That didn't take them long at all, did it?  :-D

[Endie]

FOFOFOFO

It only took just over six minutes from capitals jumping in until Shrike popped.  Not that I was there: wrong timezone for me on a working day  :-(

It's funny: everyone thought that (nightshift?) Orange Species would be the first to lose his titan.  In any case, the first piloted titan kill of the game goes to GF/RA.

By the way, does anyone know why some of his fittings were so average?  In particular, why does a titan carry drones but bother to take Valkyrie I, warrior I, vespa I, hammerhead I etc?  I can appreciate that he launched everything good that he could on dictors before he went down, but why he even bother carrying tier 1s?

Edit:  Did any devs come into local to praise Goonswarm (or GS Federation were the French there?) for getting the kill, and tell them to go out and do it again, a la Admiral Chandrawandragandra?

[Fordel]

So he doesn't blow T2 drones on his own smart bomb(s).

That or he just didn't have T2 drone skills? I'm sure there are lots of things to train on a Titan that are more important then T2 drones :)

[Simond]

...and the rest of the odd modules are probably due to, up to a few days ago, the absolute optimum fitting for a titan was key modules (DDD, etc), a cloak, smartbombs, and then as many cap rechargers are you could possibly fit.

Having to change things to fit an actual tank might have meant "Grab whatever modules we could get hold of" rather than "top-end officer gear all the way"

[Endie]

That makes sense.  I rather suspect that fitting DD tanks might not be needed in the 46DP/77s/9-9 triangle for a few days while proper fittings are acquired :)

I like that the three draclira's modified cap rechargers are all amongst the stuff that survived: 10 bil each = one outpost.  I can't wait to see what that would be called.

[neep]

Nice kill but a bit of a silly way to lose a titan.

this post by a goonie on caod seems to be a good summary of the kill:

The lag was fairly terrible, and I think everyone desynced at one point or another. There were only 190 in local throughout the whole fight, so I can't figure out why it was that bad.

On the other hand, I managed to bump the titan out of alignment 4 or 5 times, realize my client was desynced, log off, log back on, wait 6 minutes for login to complete and the grid to load, lock the titan again and continue bumping. That's not even close to a "lag kill" in this game.

Whoever was piloting Shrike made a mistake, plain and simple. He shouldn't have blown his DD on a 20 man gang on a gate, he shouldn't have cloaked once he realized his mistake, and he shouldn't even have been in local without overwhelming support available to bail him out. The era of cowboy titan antics is over, and good riddance.

[Endie]

If anyone is interested, here is some edited, non-OPSEC TS recording of what happened:

http://jenovaswitnesses.org/titandead.mp3

I'll mirror that myself to save his bandwidth soon, and will change the link then.

[Simond]

Whoever was piloting Shrike...

SirMolle, apparently.