War

[Kageru]

Most of these are southern forces (Evoke, NC.) or ex southern (Raiden). I think the Russians would quite like the geminate tech moons and more botting grounds. But unless NC collapses rapidly their lack of time zone coverage and smaller number of pilots leaves them prone to getting burnt out. Even with the stupid number of supers they have access to.

[Sir T]

yeah the Russians weakness was always their TZ coverage. That's why they needed Goons as allies to even that up. And Raidendot wont twitch without Russian support as they are all BOB players; ergo I don't see a lot happening there.

[Gets]

The Clusterfuck Shieldfleet had a fight in Fountain against a HUN Reloaded and Nulli Secunda Armorfleet, mostly Abaddons and Guardians. Both sides had roughly 110 people, but the HUN/NS fleet had more battleships and logistics, and thus won the fight by outrepping the damage.

https://killboard.goonfleet.com/battles/1953

[tgr]

We began by setting up with dictors etc on the gate, us 60km or so off the gate and logis a bit above that again. They jumped in around 45 abaddons and 25 guardians and a few other assorted ships I didn't take note of, and burned out of the bubbles as soon as they could, and warped 200-300km off. We then began a ping-pong dance going back and forth where both fleets warped to eachother at roughly the same time, until finally we were caught.

We were able to alpha their ships initially, but we quickly got below critical mass for alpha, and they just began tearing us up, especially when they were point blank. At this point I fell out of the fight.

[JWIV]

I've read too many Endie War Reports.   I can't even explain how close I just came to using the word "Chucklefucks" while explaining something to my boss.

[Gets]

Fighting between the NC and the Drone Russians in Geminate. Drone Block lost 5 titans, but what can you expect when the NC brings more supercarriers than you have battleships.

http://rawr.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=9161722

[tgr]

Ouch.

[Kitsune]

Holy shit, the estimated loss was over five hundred billion.  That's half of Molle's imaginary bankroll, gone in a night.  More of a spanking than most alliances could survive without disintegrating into angst within a week as everyone blamed each other for the colossal failure.

[tgr]

Almost estimated at 600b now (596b to be exact). God damn that has to hurt.

[Kageru]

So something along the lines of 30,000 USD$ if you tried to buy the same value using plex.

Ouch indeed.

[Slayerik]

Ok, NC are getting ridiculous.

[Kageru]

How so?

Game is entering end-game mudflation though. The Russians fielded a fleet of 50-60 super-carriers before this which is just sort of sick. Especially considering each of those is a powerful logistics platform as well as holding massive offensive power and a huge hit point pool.

[Sir T]

Holy mother of Christ.

I cant even begin to think how you would or could fight a force like that.

And yes the Russians are just as bad as NC in all this.

[Kageru]

You fight it with a bigger super-capital blob. Which is why CCP graphs of economic activity show a massive boom in supercapital construction. All the larger power blocks are pumping these things out as fast as they can. And if one side loses or becomes unwilling to field their super-cap fleet it will be really hard for them to hold Sov against the other. That number of super-caps are literally immune to any sub-capital threat.

So in truth the political map basically looks like NC versus DRF. With DC (Goons / Test and friends) lesser allies of the NC and PL would show up for the Russians if they got really pressured. If NC or DRF actually falls to the other it is very close to game over until they fragment.

[Fordel]

Clearly they need a new ship class, SUPER MEGA CAPITAL Ships! 

[JWIV]

Clearly they need a new ship class, SUPER MEGA CAPITAL Ships! 

Death Stars for everyone!

[Sir T]

Either that or an X wing frigate that can drop proton torpedoes down its exhaust funnel, as long as you use the botting program force.

[Kageru]

They could remove its logistic capacity which would probably be enough. That way you either use regular carriers or logistics ships to keep it healed, both of which are vulnerable to subcaps, or you can potentially lose one to a subcap fleet. But any nerf to supercarriers is going to cause howls of protest that grow worse the longer they wait.

And given the latest expansion dropped a new supercap blueprint and named modules for super-caps it's hard to tell if they even consider it a concern.

[Gets]

The new supercap is poop and looks exactly like poop, along with being hard to get as the Gooncursion crew has found out. My suggestion for supercapital removal is simple: Ion Cruisers in the form of T3 battlecruisers. It would turn PL into the anti-supercapital mongoose.

One of the TEST corps, ironically the one that replaced OMFG I suppose, lost a titan doing a drive-by. He did the doomsday, warped to a safespot, warped to another safespot, then warped back to the first safespot which had gotten probed down and got bubbled: http://kb.pleaseignore.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=97339

There is internal drama in Ev0ke. Something about Cloud Ring not turning out the way they anticipated, or something. More news later.

[Sparky]

It's seriously time to remove supercap ECM invulnerability.  Unless CCP actually wants supercaps online where an alliance nub has to train and grind for years to meaningfully contribute.

[Sir T]

They remove supercap ecm invulnerability and they become vulnerable to an ordinary ship with a point. That's where the inscramable ability came from in the first place, an unintended consequence.

I honestly so think CCP want's supercap online, as its the only way have 0.0 the domain of the "elite" players. I remember was back when when CCP was showing off their wonderful game system to some reporters and industry guys, and they asked a loat of people to come onto Singularity to play out a battle. Well not only could a load of people not log in, but the battle lagged to hell. And then to show of how wonderful it is, they fired off a few remote AOE Doomsdays through a CYNO and wiped out both fleets. CCP said that the people were impressed. However what was found out later from reports was that the correct word would have been "Horrified". They thought that the whole doomsday thing was stupid and would piss off hundreds of players.

[Sparky]

They remove supercap ecm invulnerability and they become vulnerable to an ordinary ship with a point.

Why is that bad though?  You'd have to use your caps with a support fleet like back in the old pre-super days.  Gave even the freshest nub something to do and generally made fleet composition much more interesting.  Pretty much any other nerf would just be tinkering at the edges.

[tgr]

There is internal drama in Ev0ke. Something about Cloud Ring not turning out the way they anticipated, or something. More news later.

Ev0ke was in cloud ring?

[Sir T]

They remove supercap ecm invulnerability and they become vulnerable to an ordinary ship with a point.

Why is that bad though?  You'd have to use your caps with a support fleet like back in the old pre-super days.  Gave even the freshest nub something to do and generally made fleet composition much more interesting.  Pretty much any other nerf would just be tinkering at the edges.

I never said it was bad at all, just the opposite. Remember I lived in the era where there was no way of holding a supercap in place because of 20KM smartbombs.

[Fordel]

It's seriously time to remove supercap ECM invulnerability.  Unless CCP actually wants supercaps online where an alliance nub has to train and grind for years to meaningfully contribute.

They do. 

[Kageru]

I suspect so. They probably see it as natural progression. But then CCP are terrible and currently distracted.

At this moment DRF and NC are having another super-cap heavy punch-up. "I count 8 Avatars, 4 Erebus, 52 Nyx, and 30 Aeons for the DRF side at this point." according to one of the more lucid posters on Kugutsumen. They were pretty much trading off blowing up titans with I think  9-10 confirmed dead before downtime hit.

[Fordel]

It used to be Battleships, then Tech 2 ships, then Dreads, then Titans, now it's Super Carriers or whatever the fuck we are on.


Once upon a time, losing a battleship was a big fucking deal too.

[Kageru]

And even now fielding a battleship fleet is an economic challenge for any nascent null-sec power. When the minimum barrier to entry is a supercap fleet and the money to replace it you can forget about that sort of thing. Leading to null-sec stagnating, especially if NC or DRF actually lose.

[Sir T]

You forget of course that you need sov in null sec space to actually build supers in the first place.

[Kageru]

I thought about saying that, but you can buy them.

Though in practical terms if you want to field a full fleet and be able to replace losses you pretty much need the resources and build capacity of secure null-sec space.

[Endie]

I suspect that this year will see CCP announce a panicked, knee-jerk over-reaction to the current spiralling escalation.  Unlike Mittens - indeed, unlike most of 0.0 - I'm entirely sanguine about this.  I just want a non-static, evolving game which can hold my interest.

[tgr]

I wouldn't mind it if the whole thing came to a 3 or 4 bloc 0.0, as long as the SOV mechanics weren't as shittastic as they are now with being able to reset a full week's progress in one night, no way of grinding down a defender so they start making timing mistakes, and even no real way to fuck up timing unless you're as competent as sons of tangra

If we also had the possibility of having multiple targets to hit, in more than 1 system at a time so that you have to choose where to attack and where to defend. The reason I say this is because as I see it, currently, if you're hit by a bigger force and they're attacking up to 6 systems at a time (I think this process can theoretically defend more systems than that, but I'm not spending too much time thinking about it), one way to defend is to pack everything you have in one system, save that and reset all the timers, the next day you move everything into the next system, defend and reset that, and so on until you round-robin back to the initial system. As long as you've got a SC majority, there's not that much attackers can do.

I'm probably wrong, but at least that's my impression of how the system can be gamed, and the more I think about it, the more the old POS system sounded better. Still not exactly fun, but at least more dynamic.

[Goumindong]

The old POS system was better. The only problem with it was that there were too many POS to kill once the fight had been decided.

[Gets]

GoonSwarm had a AHAC fleet lead by Mister Vee go look for ~good fights~ which turned into another Tech moon grab because we're insufferably stuck in our ways it seems. The Venal moon was being fought over by Wild Boars and MercilessDot with Agony Empire siding one of their side. After shooting some fleetwarping supercaps and a Rorqual to the gate and fighting some Abaddons we went to IRC space to pick a fight since "they always form up to fight people", which made us stare at an SBU for an hour and do a Drone site.

They didn't show up.

[tgr]

It sounds like the northern war is heating up nicely now. PL is apparently hired by DRF to hit Geminate and Vale, and NCDOT/Ev0ke are running around and hitting CSAAs.