It’s entertaining how people who vow to destroy us somehow feel entitled to ‘content’ from us…
-The Mittani, comment on the Cold War CEO Update
The current Goonswarm Federation CEO update, which also stands in for an update for the CFC, says there will be no summer war.
But there is always a summer war, right? I am not sure why. You would think some of us would go on vacation. Instead, when school is out, wars flare up, and I don’t think it is just because of DBRB alone. (Didn’t I hear he graduate recently?) So summer tends to be a campaign season.
The thing is that wars, big wars, wars over sovereignty in null sec, tend to go badly in the end for those opposing the CFC, at least during the last two and a half years I have been in the coalition. (That is correlation, not causation.) When a sov grind is at hand, we win.
Go ask the remains of White Noise, or Raiden, or TEST how things went for them. But don’t bother looking for them on the sovereignty map.
White Noise in Branch
As for those left on the map, ask Northern Coalition why they no longer live in the north. Or ask Nulli Secunda about their time in low sec. (Though they did bounce back from that.) Or ask Pandemic Legion about what happened to a quarter of their titan fleet back in January or about the B0RTlord agreement. You can say the CFC is bad at EVE, but we seem to win a lot.
So nobody is going to come get us and try and take our space.
And we are already spread out enough that we aren’t exactly dying for some more sovereignty to hold.
So unless there are plots afoot… and for all I know, there may very well be plots afoot, since none of the few remaining players in null sec are dumb enough to telegraph their intentions in advance… the prospect for a summer war sovereignty war seems to be pretty small.
Which is, of course, an issue. The problem with The Mittani’s statement at the top is that it cuts both ways. While he was responding to somebody who wanted to know why the CFC wouldn’t play ball in such a way to ensure the elusive “good fights,” it is still incumbent upon him and the leadership of the CFC to provide content for its members. I wrote previously that the CFC is a coalition of the willing in large part because the leadership provides content… wars and conquest and victory… and perks to the membership. Owning all that space doesn’t get people into fleets. The possibility of battles does.
So what will we do this summer?
I have been lucky so far this month. Black Legion, no longer on the CFC payroll, has been reinforcing towers and running around Pure Blind from their base in X-7OMU. So, rather conveniently for me, every evening in my time zone there seems to be a fleet op under Reagalan to go defend a tower, or shoot a tower, or otherwise try to tangle with Black Legion. The rumor early on in the month was that Black Legion was itself facing some sort of crises of content, as Elo Knight can only get people to log in and be active if there are people to shoot regularly. So Black Legion keeps coming out to play on the same schedule.
I haven’t been there for any big fights… except for the trap at Daras… but have been around enough to get on a few kill mails when I haven’t been flying logistics. It has been a good time to get used to flying the Guardian, with its cap chain requirements and such. Otherwise we nibble at each other most nights, catching the sloppy or unlucky, while we warp around this system or that. Occasionally somebody makes a mistake and one side gets a clean shot at the other, but mostly it is marching and counter marching to gain some measure of advantage, almost like Wellington during parts of the peninsular campaign. Most nights there hasn’t been much to write home about, so I haven’t even put together a post about those ops yet. (Tentative title: The Same Thing We Do Every Night Pinky; Shoot Black Legion!) But they keep coming up.
How long Black Legion will provide a distraction I do not know. They do persist, and I suppose they have nowhere else to go.
Another option seems to be Providence. Much is being written about that as the place to be for content this summer. And a region is certainly a big enough place for a small war of entertainment. But if you start pulling in the three big players from imperial null sec, the ante tends to go up. “Good fights” rarely trumps “playing to win,” and those with masses of capital ships and super capitals will tend to use them if that is what needs to be done to win. N3 and PL are already deployed down there, and while there has been no official CFC-wide deployment to the region, some groups have been flying down there looking for fights. What happens if all three of the big groups deployed in the region is an open question. Does it automatically have to escalate to capitals? If the elephants jump in the pool, will we push out all the water… and the fun with it?
And that looks like about it. Nothing like last year’s war in Fountain… some of the best entertainment ever… seems to be in the offing.
What other options are out there for the imperial coalitions this summer?
The Ancient Gaming Noob 