We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
-Benjamin Franklin
While I have spent some time getting myself ready for war, I spent last night tidying up some loose ends and looking to see if there was anything else I should package up and ship off.
I can be lazy about leaving ships and fittings and what no sitting about in various stations. But past wars have encouraged that. We have always been fighting in somebody else’s space, so there has been no worry about leaving anything laying about. It would be there when I got back.
This war is different. After four and a half years, war has come to our space. It was time to get things together. According to once EVE utility I had more than 15 billion ISK in ship and fittings and what not just sitting in stations. Better to send that back to Jita, to turn it into ISK. Better to have more liquid assets in such times.
I had already jumped my carrier into low sec after moving it out of Tribute. That left one more load of non-essentials in the region for me to retrieve, a blockade runner full of my remaining ratting loot and excess ammunition sitting in L-VXTK. I just had to get that out and to a station from which I could ship it all to Jita and I would have nothing left but combat ships in the area.
TNT’s holdings in Tribute are going down. We have managed to put together some resistance. Fleets come out from Saranen to help. But as always, there are multiple fights going on at any given time and Tribute tends to be the furthest away.
Of course, the fighting over the region almost got my blockade runner blown up. I hadn’t checked, so was caught off guard when, trying to slip past hostile space and into Venal, I found myself in the middle of a Fozzie Sov command node tug of war. There is nothing like sitting cloaked off a gate in the middle of two dozen Mercenary Coalition ships who would view my presence with the same enthusiasm a starving man might give the unexpected arrival of a Chicken Delight delivery truck.
Still, I managed to survive, holding my cloak, watching the timer count down, only to have them all warp off to a node with about 10 seconds to spare. Just another day in a war zone.
I scooted along carefully, passed into UMI-KK, our fallen capital, and then off into the wasteland of Venal.
Former home of TNT
I wasn’t surprised to find Venal empty as I passed through. It was rarely ever a busy place, but it has been more quiet since the null sec changes. Somebody should do a study on the effects of Fozzie Sov on NPC null sec regions.
And then I was into Deklein.
I hadn’t flown about Deklein much of late. I scooted off to YA0-XJ to drop off my load then checked my asset list to see what else I had stashed away in the region. I had a couple loads worth of stuff still sitting in my old home station 0P-F3K that I never quite got around to moving down to Tribute after we left Deklein. Good call in hindsight.
I also had a small pile of stuff and a few ships in QPO-WI, where we have staged now and again.
And, much to my surprise, I had a whole bunch of stuff, including half a dozen old doctrine ships, sitting in VFK-IV. I can’t even remember when a Digi-Canes stopped being a doctrine. There was also a Megathron from the Fountain War, the same one that refused to fire back Z9PP-H, which I named the San Ramon for reasons that escape me today. And, of course, another Drake from the era when MWD Drake fleets ruled the skies, unleashing torrents of scourge missiles at our foes.
So I move around, picked up the loose items in the blockade runner, the flew about in my pod to ferry ships back the the shipping station. Once there I repacked them all, created courier contracts for one of the alliance shipping services, and sent them all to Jita. Almost 100 million ISK in shipping fees, at 320 ISK per cubic meter. The shipping services are making some money this month. But there was probably a couple billion ISK worth of stuff in what sent down. (And I awoke this morning to find it all safely delivered.)
Some of it I will just sell. Some of the hulls I will buy fittings for and ship out to Saranen. Megathrons are back in style, so I can use that Quafe skin again. And I had a few interceptor hulls which, given the loss rates being sustained by that class of ship in the war, are actually worth a lot more in Jita than what I probably paid for them, shipping included.
If you are in the interceptor building business, it looks like fat city is here. Look at the spike in that last line and the prices for hulls in Jita. Industrialists rejoice.
The one thing I did not have to do during a couple hours of flying around Deklein during US prime time was dodge any hostiles. I didn’t actually see a hostile ship until I decided to YOLO back down to Saranen in a surplus Hawk, rather than waiting for my jump clone timer, and got caught in a gate camp in Fade. (A kill that doesn’t seem to have shown up yet on zkillboard or I would link it.)
Yes, I passed by a couple of systems with somebody cloaked up. There is always that guy watching the cyno beacon in YA0-XJ. But a lot of systems were blue. Intel didn’t report a single gang roaming the region while I was about. It was, frankly, more peaceful yesterday than it was during peace time.
And here we see the fiction, for now, in the name “World War Bee.”
It is alleged by our foes to be a war against Goons. They are the target. They are the ones that the Moneybadgers say they want to take down. Allies in The Imperium are just meat shields, casualties of Goon callousness.
But actions speak louder than words… or, if you prefer, inaction. If our foes really want to attack Goons, they sure are taking their time getting to it. Despite having effectively taken Fade and holding stations on the path to Deklein in both Pure Blind and Tribute, a look at the map of Deklein shows you this.
Deklein – April 6, 2016
There is exactly ONE system under attack in the entire region… and it is the ONLY one that isn’t held by GSF. Some war against Goons!
No, so far this is the war against Goon allies. Even in Pure Blind the enemy goes after the few non-GSF systems first. They are going after us because they believe their own propaganda and think we are weak and oppressed and will rise up against Goons because everybody hates Goons. They think we’ll thank them for coming after us.
They don’t even think they need to negotiate with us. Their offer is to let us keep what we currently have, which is exactly the sort of offer you present to somebody you don’t think is in a position to negotiate; the sort of offer you give to somebody you feel you can take care of later. And all the while they keep hitting us and telling us Goons did that.
We’ll see how that works out. Certainly The Imperium is suffering, with LAWN and Bastion already displaced, SMA on its way out of Fade, TNT’s remaining systems cut off on in Tribute, The Initiative driven out of Tenal, and Branch under assault. (Nosy Gamer has summaries for Fade and Tenal.)
That is World War Bee. That is the attack on Goons. I am starting to think that MOA did more damage in Deklein during any month in 2015 than the Moneybadgers have done so far during this war.
I am starting to think I should ship an Ishtar up to Deklein. As Gevlon inadvertently points out, it is clearly safe to rat up there and GSF has opened up all of its systems to allies for ratting and mining.
Probably the best summary of the mindset of the Moneybadgers I have seen is this post, where after mocking The Mittani and his GSF CEO Update, the author disdains the Goon allies in The Imperium as worthless, tells us there is no shame in treason because Goons are bad for the game, and then goes on to a daydream about how wonderful the NEXT war will be, once Goons are gone.
This is counting ones chickens before the eggs are even laid. You may have seen Jester was back for a guest post, cataloging the sins of the Goons. One of the things he used to complain about back in the day was Goons casting themselves in the role of the underdog even when they held military superiority. It was the role they made for themselves during the Great War (read the book), it is a role they find comfort and solidarity in, and the game has just put them back in that role again. Among the alliances seeing a boost in membership is GSF. The engines of war are being assembled. The undock of our staging system is almost constantly lit by cynos bringing in supplies for the fight.
Also I just wanted to use this screen shot because it looks pretty neat
So it may be a while before null sec is just happy little constellation versus constellation wars, all the while hoping PL or NCDot hasn’t decided it is your turn to provide them entertainment. What, do you think that power bloc will go away?
As for “bad for the game,” well… I am not sure I buy that. Bad for how you may want the game to be, your vision of a perfect little New Eden, sure. But if you want to promote the game, Goons have a way of doing things that make headlines and draw new players to the game in droves. (Only to be driven off by the still horrible a decade after it should have been fixed new player experience.) What else brings that kind of attention to the game? How are esports working out? Does the annual Alliance Cheating Tournament cause a subscription boost? How about Fozzie Sov? Did Fozzie Sov bring people into the game? Do you think PL showing up to tell you to feed them kill mails or lose your constellation will boost subscriptions?
What drives up the PCU count? What makes the grass grow?
PCU count tops 40K for the first time in ages
They are so bad for the game that the CCP marketing department wouldn’t know what to do without Goons.
Anyway, I’ve already said where I will be for the duration of the war. I may be something of a space tourist and not fully on board with our propaganda line, but I am not a traitor. (And hey, look, disagreeing with Dear Leader publicly doesn’t get you booted.) If we get kicked out of sov null I will follow The Mittani into the hills to carry on the struggle by guerilla tactics, though he’ll need to grow a better beard if he wants to be Fidel. It will be a new experience.
But the Moneybadgers will actually have to attack Goons first.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
“If our foes really want to attack Goons, they sure are taking their time getting to it.”
In other words, the allies aren’t winning fast enough? Sorry, just had to tweak ya, it really is a lot of fun seeing stuff flip around in such fashion, particularly when it comes to the war of rhetoric being waged.
As for Goons being good for the game, what do you think of Ripard’s part two post over on CZ? I’m less than convinced, but I feel there is a nugget of truth: Goons victory and hegemony did in fact presage a general downturn in the game’s active population. Of course, correlation is not causation, but it is enough to make you wonder.
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@Dave Andrews – Heh, the Moneybadgers seem to be winning plenty fast, just not against the people they claim they are fighting!
I don’t know that any of Jester’s three end-of-war scenarios lead to a higher PCU. The end of every war leads to a decline. That is going to be true regardless of who wins or loses.
The idea that Goons being somehow eliminated from the north will lead to a flourishing null sec in the north, west, and south seems to be willfully ignoring the fact that there hasn’t been any Goon presence in the south and west for some time now. Did that lead to a higher PCU count? Will adding the north to that list magically change that?
Also, he didn’t mention the east because everybody says huge empires are bad and then avoids making direct eye contact with Russians.
And, finally, as I noted in my post, without Goons do you suppose PL and NCDot are going to be model citizens in this happy new world, or just the new overlord?
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Also, I swear that tomorrow’s post will not be about EVE Online.
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“Also, I swear that tomorrow’s post will not be about EVE Online”
Speaking as a regular reader and non-EVE player, you can post about EVE every day of this war and I’ll be more than satisfied. I bet your page views are through the roof.
I’m a bit surprised you’re quite as committed as all that to following Mittens into his mountain stronghold, though. I was kind of wondering whether the upshot of all this might be a change of leadership. Just what kind of internal political structure does The Imperium follow anyway?
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So I keep seeing comments about the Russian bloc, but never hear of anythign actually happening with them. Are they just sort of sitting there in their space and everyone leaves them the hell alone? If so why or why not? Do they have a side int his fight? Sorry for the questions but this is pretty much the only blog I read that speaks to Eve outside of Gevlon’s but his are almost always numbers and rants @ goons not about other blocs.
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@Bhagpuss – I have a speculative draft about whether losing the war, or simply losing all of the coalition sovereignty, will lead to the downfall of the one time “King of Space.” But it is too light right now and doesn’t really go anywhere, in part because, at the moment, there is no obvious candidate for the succession that *I* can identify.
@Random Poster – The Russians are sort of a world to themselves in the game. They fight amongst themselves usually, hold the east, and are generally left alone because when they get pissed at you they come after you with everything they have. And then, every so often, they implode and disappear for a while, only to show back up and conquer the east yet again.
Some of the Russians, in the group known as Stain Wagon, have declared for The Imperium, but as to what that will actually mean, we will have to see. Maybe they will try to bowl over Provi bloc while CVA is up in the north fighting Goons.
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“That is World War Bee. That is the attack on Goons.”
The Mittani, and by some measures yourself, always derided NC. and PL. as being the ‘same old, same old’. Never innovating, never developing, never progressing.
This is deliberate, determined progress. No other war was so successful or so continued. The strategy, such as it may be, of Goonswarm was always numbers, numbers, numbers.
Don’t you see, by removing you, by removing SMA, FCON, EXE and INIT, we’re ending that strategy. Maybe some true believers will continue this ‘forever war’, but, like BOB, you will be eternally reduced, and your myths broken.
“Once upon a time, there was a man who said he could be king of the world, but the world was greater than he, and he was broken by it.”
Attacking you *is* attacking Goonswarm, because you enable Goonswarm.
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http://evf-eve.com/services/brcat/?s=3688&b=6975150&e=130&t=eaafvee
The Swarm comes to us. Why travel? Strange reasoning. You’re usually very good, but this was inelegant propaganda at best.
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“That is World War Bee. That is the attack on Goons.”
The Mittani, and by some measures yourself, always derided NC. and PL. as being the ‘same old, same old’. Never innovating, never developing, never progressing.
This is deliberate, determined progress. No other war was so successful or so continued. The strategy, such as it may be, of Goonswarm was always numbers, numbers, numbers.
Don’t you see, by removing you, by removing SMA, FCON, EXE and INIT, we’re ending that strategy. Maybe some true believers will continue this ‘forever war’, but, like BOB, you will be eternally reduced, and your myths broken.
“Once upon a time, there was a man who said he could be king of the world, but the world was greater than he, and he was broken by it.”
Attacking you *is* attacking Goonswarm, because you enable Goonswarm.
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And I keep getting a strange Google account bug when I try to post. How irritating.
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@Dude51 – So there was a fight in Fade to defend SMA territory that you were trying to take. Seems to simply confirm what I said AND dismiss the idea, also promoted on Reddit, that Goons are letting their allies fight alone. Not a very effective retort there.
@Rob Kaichin – I do not doubt, or dispute, the reason for attacking GSF allies. It is a good plan. But to then come to those same allies and say that the war is really about ethics in space warfare, or some such, just falls flat.
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Also, the Russians on your side (such as they are) are running a 20 man gate camping OP around C02 space. It’s irritating, but not really a problem.
And, linking the opinion of a blogger who’s a complete nobody as ‘The opinions of the MBC’ is rather reaching, don’t you think? It would’ve been nice to pick someone who could thread an argument together
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@Robin Woodrow – Leave my straw man alone! I felt he was summing up the point of view that often comes from Reddit, the Moneybadger stonghold. The points I took from him you can find replicated over and over there. Plus I like to share the love. I have to go put him on the EVE bloggers list over at my other blog.
Also, could you pick a name and stick with it?
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Continue the EVE posts please, Pokemon updates can wait. Also speaking of posting, Jester start up your blog again you bum!
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@SynCaine – For that, tomorrow will be Pokemon for sure!
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Well, that’s novel, now it’s logged in and out of another account I thought I’d deleted.
I want the old chrome back!
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Does it work?
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@Rob Kaichin – Go test on yesterday’s post where you can at least disguise it by saying something nice about one or both of the books.
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I think the situation in Deklein can be explained in this way:
When the allies invaded Europe in 1943-4 we landed in Normandy and Italy. That doesn’t mean Germany was not our target.
Well done securing your assets, look forward to meeting you in battle. I’d really like a TAGN corpse this time round or at minimum a killmail.
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@Stabs – But you’ve been in Austria (Pure Blind for the purpose of abusing this analogy) for weeks and still prefer kicking the shit out of anybody who doesn’t speak German. And, as noted, you’re at the Rhine, through Serbia (see what I did there?), and mucking about in Norway and Denmark, all while telling everybody how those Germans are going to get a damn good thrashing… but only after you stomp the Italians, Hungarians, and Romanians a bit more.
My point is that, as a Hungarian, I am not sure telling me about your plans for the Germans changes much for me, and telling me its the Germans that are making you stomp me isn’t impressing me at all. Also analogies suck. We used to have a rule at my last company forbidding them because people like me will take them and run with them until they have been beaten to death, reanimated through dark arts, only to be beaten to death yet again.
And speaking of corpses, there was a Wilhelm Arcturus corpse floating around in DO6H-Q just last night. I wonder if I have any value on the market? I have run into maybe a dozen people over the years in EVE who have associated my in-game character with this blog.
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“disagreeing with Dear Leader publicly doesn’t get you booted”
Well, you see, you too are counting your chickens; you too are counting that earning a reputation of consistently slightly disagreeing with the party line won’t eventually lead to concrete consequences, after the current heat dies down, or maybe even further still.
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@Wilhelm,
When the armies of Denmark, Hungary, Norway and Romania are the only soldiers the Germans are deploying, (and they don’t surrender), you’d encircle and defeat them too :P.
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@Rob Kaichin – I refer you to Dude51’s battle report. Also, did you miss my bit about analogies sucking? Because if you want me to beat this analogy to death, I will do so. I once made a guy on the sales team cry because he used a sports analogy in a meeting and I would not let it go for nearly two weeks. Also, I think a beloved family pet of his died during that time frame, but I still feel certain that it was the analogy abuse that did him in.
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I thought the artless poise in the positioning of my emoticon proved the puissant power of my prose.
(j/k)
Yeah, Asher formed a 200 man fleet that welped hard, possibly deliberately. I’d say (as I’ve said before) that I expect more of GSF :P.
But really, I’m scared of your stories. You probably beat his pet to death with analogies too, I bet it was a horse!
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I see you forget to mention the 15 stations you lost yesterday as opposed to the 11 before that, as well as the several billion isk in failed cepter fleets and unsupported supers.
Not it’s surprising, goons are doing what goons do in wars, trying to bore the shit out if their enemies by rarely showing up. Unfortunately you forgot to tell your allies.
“Best kind of friends, worst kind of enemies” seems to have taken on the meaning of goons avoiding fight, and even ratting, while their allies suffer major losses.
I suspect the bore tactics aren’t really going your way though,I mean I had several billion green kills during the Australian time zone today, so I’m a long way from bored.
Not that I imagine we will hurt the core bee coprs, most of you guys sent all assets to safe space at the beginning of the war and you seem content in having the imperium lose this war so you can rise from the ashes later.
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I am worried that you are right. I was worried on March 29 already: http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/2016/03/number-of-timers-against-condi-3-out-of.html
I believe that as Goons are a coherent, strong culture, we cannot hope its destruction. Even after total eviction, they will exist in lowsec (while SMA, TNT or BASTION will not). So I’m afraid Goons already struck a deal with PL that Moneybadgers don’t come to Deklein and in turn Goons don’t go to Perimiter where the PL moneymaking keepstar will be.
However PL don’t run Moneybadgers and after the non-Goon Sov is down, many of them will try it anyway. And after Fade and PB are down, Deklein cannot be reached by jump freighters in one jump from lowsec. I’ve just hired Gorgon Empire and ratting numbers are already down in Dek. However by moving to Dek, you are part of the problem: your ratting contributes to ADM and your PvP protects Goon assets, despite Goons didn’t protect yours. Unless you expect that you or your corp will be taken into Goonswarm, I don’t see why is that good for you.
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Following on from Gevlon’s observation about Goons being a coherent, strong culture and also bearing in mind our earlier interchange about the possible effect of this conflict on the leadership, just how irrevocably wedded to EVE are the Goons? I first heard of them when I was looking to change servers for the first time in EQ and that would have been in 2000. At that point they were already a feared force and I remember quite deliberately crossing the servers where their presence was significant from my list of possibles.
These days we largely hear about them in context of EVE but if EVE changes structurally in a way that is unhelpful to their ethos and if other alternatives appear (not saying there are any yet but there could be at any moment – its a busy industry) could the whole swarm up and leave to go break something new? Or are there now so many real-life (and real money) connections to EVE that Goons are stuck with it and it with them for the foreseeable future?
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To be honest, I don’t think we can know.
On the one hand, The Mittani has led his part of ‘the Goonswarm’ from Eve to other games: Planetside 2 most recently, H1Z1 and possibly something else before that. Similarly, individual Goons have shared interests like EU4 and CK2 from Paradox Interactive. They also interact with ‘other’ Goons from Something Awful.
On the other, Eve Goons and ‘other’ Goons are often feuding, antagonistic rivals. The Mittani leads Eve Goons to play other games, but they always return to Eve. Eve is their home, far more than Something Awful or any other station. It’s also worth noting that those excursions to other games seem, at best, to have been very unsuccessful. Eve Goons stick to Eve, as it were.
So, are Goons wedded to Eve? I think most are. There are some who’ll continue to associate with Goons no matter what, but there are also those who’re ‘J4Gs’ (Joined [SA] for Goonswam), who, when the Goons lose, will break off that association. As for Goons’ allies, I think the deliberation is far more certain. There’s no out of game location where TNT, SMA, or FCON came from. There’s no place of respite where the organising groups can go to outside of Eve.
I’d also observe that most Eve players like Eve, even if they dislike TiDi, Lag or whatever. I think that the less fanatical members of the CFC will split off and continue to play.
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Don’t worry. Once we’re done salting the earth of Tribute, we’ll go to Deklein next.
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@Gevlon – I will be interested to see if that turns out to be true. For all of The Mittani saying there are no back channels in this war, I saw him hanging out a lot with Grath Telkin and Elise Randolph and other PL leaders at EVE Vegas. There is always a back channel there. And brokering a deal with Goons, and Goons only, would cause a lot of hilarious outrage on both sides.
@Fucknuckle – Forgot? How many of those stations belonged to GSF? How many of those systems? None? Would “none” be an accurate assessment?
Because if you had bothered to read the post, you would have understood it was about how the Moneybadgers talk about attacking Goons, but only attacking Goon allies. Your numbers only prove my point.
This isn’t Reddit where you get up votes for spouting random anti-Goon opinions. Maybe you should work on your reading comprehension skills before commenting… or just actually read the post you are commenting on.
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I think the slow steady march (while beating up on allies) makes perfect sense. Move too quickly and you have the chance of spreading too thin and having supply lines cut. A slow progression, where the enemy doesn’t really defend, so you can keep supply lines nice and stable would be the way I’d do it.
That said, I’m no military strategist and playing Fozzie Sov may break the will of the attackers. Either way, I’m having a great time reading about it!
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@ Leoric
I think what Wilhelm has been saying is they actually would have an easier time reaching Goon space and are instead going further afield to hit the allies. So the worry about cut supply lines doesn’t follow.
The Anti Goon people on here are kind of funny, unless the goons send their entire fleet to an ally battle it is them “not supporting the allies” and if they do send significant numbers that gets ignored.
I get what Wilhelm keeps saying when he is pointing out that the surrender option they were offered makes 0 sense to them. The ANtiGoon people are saying you are oppressed by goons, surrender so we can oppress you, and the ProGoons are all like, ummm no we aren’t and Fuck you for attacking us and leaving the Goons alone, while saying you want the Goons.
As an outside person with no concerns in this it’s rather fascinating to watch people get worked up over this. To the point of trying to tell Wilhelm that ooooh you just wait until they see you aren’t following the party line you are going to be in soooo much trouble, nyah nyah.
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@ Random
When Goonswarm brings the 2k players we’ve seen them bring before, I’ll congratulate them.
When they bring 3/5ths of a fleet to important fights, I’ll call out their BS.
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re: your complaint about MBC not hitting Deklein. You don’t invade Japan in WW2 from San Francisco. You have to capture staging points for the invasion first in China, Burma, and the Pacific islands. Guess what: you’re living on one of those islands. Deklein’s time will come when it can be hit from two or three directions at once from secure staging points.
You know, just like how the CFC has been doing it for years.
To the larger complaint: you lie down with the dogs, you wake up with fleas.
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Oh, and with regard to your assertion that CFC losing the war is going to result in a decline, the evidence just doesn’t support you. Every time Goons have sustained a loss in EVE, PCU has gone up. Every time other major powers have fallen in EVE, PCU has gone up. Every time chaos has been injected into the game, PCU has gone up.
It’s order and stability that kills the PCU, not chaos and destruction.
People have been leaving EVE for years because of the blue doughnut perpetuated by the CFC that nobody felt they could do anything about. With no space available to conquer, what’s the point to playing EVE? Hell, at this point, a few thousand bitter-vets leaving EVE forever would be a GOOD thing. It would open the game to a new generation that to date have been quitting early because “I can never catch up.”
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@Jester – “To the larger complaint: you lie down with the dogs, you wake up with fleas.”
That is at least more honest that some of the tripe being pointed at GSF allies. Because, as noted multiple times, telling us it is only about GSF while you hit us isn’t at all convincing.
Meanwhile, the WWII metaphor is complete BS, but even if it wasn’t, the MBC is currently sitting in Okinawa and plotting to attack Formosa. Besides which, being a member of the MBC, you sound like you’re just making excuses, because here we are, another quiet day in Deklein, home of your alleged REAL foe. How would we do it? Well, a group called Reavers might at least be making trouble there. Seriously, you out number us and with Fozzie Sov you could have had entosis ships in every constellation causing chaos. This isn’t Dominion sov.
Blue donut perpetuated by the CFC? Now you’re going for revisionist history, since you seem to be forgetting your allies, PL and NCDot, along with the Russians you never seem to mention. And, as I pointed out, there has been no blue donut, no Imperium, and plenty of space to conquor in the south and west for nearly a year. Has that chaos helped the PCU?
Also, what about your allies, PL and NCDot? What does New Eden look like with them as the dominant powers?
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We’re hitting everyone, not just you. Don’t feel singled out. That’s the whole point: the whole Imperium is to be made to feel the pain. But don’t worry, the Goon turn will come.
And the WW2 analogy works really well this time because a successful assault on Deklein requires hitting it from three sides at once: Pure Blind/Fade, Branch, and Tribute. Three secure staging points, at least. Goons have to see that they can’t just cut off a single staging system to blunt the assault. We’ve seen them strike out that way before and that avenue of escape can’t be left open.
As for PL/NCdot, let’s just say they can’t be worse than the Imperium. They’re both less organized and less heavy-handed. I’ve been on the direct receiving end of three CFC invasions. So I know a little bit of what I speak.
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The more I think about this, the more I wonder: I read all those Reaver posts about how you were hitting anything you could behind enemy lines, joining every Goonfleet ping you could in whatever ship you had, multiple fleets per night, “here’s dozens of screenshots of us doing X”, etc. They were good posts. I read them. Did you?
Maybe I’m not understanding why suddenly when the chickens come home to roost, you’re suddenly bitter about being painted with the Imperium brush. You’ve been painting yourself with it often enough.
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Man, Jester’s dropping the lines I though but didn’t say :P.
I’d like to interject and point out the falsehoods “another quiet day in Deklein” thing. Yesterday, FCON lost ~130 billion ISK in Deklien. A stats breakdown on Reddit says that there have been 35 billion ISK lost in Deklein last month.
If this is quiet, what is loud?
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thought*
of the*
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@Jester – Bitter? I think you are projecting your own feelings with that one. Pointing out hypocrisy in MBC words vs. actions hardly counts as bitter compared to the two articles you wrote for CZ. If we are going to pretend we can read emotions through text, you sound very bitter about Goons.
Meanwhile, the Moneybaders did attack in Deklein. They reinforced the only non-Goon system in the region again. You guys have time for that, so saying that Deklein is for later seems silly. Calling it what it is, a campaign to split GSF from its allies, isn’t bitterness. It is the alternately holding out an olive branch and then holding us in contempt that is funny.
Like I said, if MBC wanted to go after Deklein, they could. You can base closer to Deklein than our staging and you have enough people that you could cause a panic evac if you did a mass entosis run. Instead you are waiting for another Imperium alliance to drop out.
@Rob Kaichin – Gevlon can provide you with all the stats of what MOA has been doing in Deklein for more than a year. Fights and gangs roaming Deklein are a thing even in peacetime. It is what living in null sec is like. And, as noted, not a system GSF reinforced, so no reason to feel the region is really under any sort of attack. I mean, I guess there was this. Didn’t seem all that determined. Certainly hasn’t made EN24 yet.
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Whilst I wouldn’t want to stick my neck between two blogging titans, my questions to you are:
1) Does it matter if the MBC attacks the CFC before they attack Goonswarm?
2) What, if you were the ‘leader’ of the MBC, would you do differently?
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@Rob Kaichin – I am pretty sure I said somewhere along the line here (or maybe it was over at Neville Smit’s blog) that, overall, it is a good plan. I doubt I would do anything different and I am sure it plays well on the Moneybadger side of things.
What I was saying with this post is what it looks like from my corner of the conflict, something you, Jester, and several other people seem to strenuously object to… to the point of passing the 40 comment mark… as though there could not be multiple points of view.
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::shrugs:: Cutting Imperium numbers is smart tactics. I’m not going to argue against it. I’m 100% for it. But I will say there’s respect when respect is earned, and no malice toward those who drop out of the war. I took part in a long convo just last night about how a lot of us feel bad about what’s happening to SMA, respect for how they’ve been forming up to fight, how good their numbers were a couple of weeks ago, etc. And this convo *literally* took place while we were forming up to defend CO2 space. (It turned out they didn’t need us.)
You just don’t get to say that you’re somehow separate or isolated from the Imperium, or should be treated differently. TNT generally and you personally have been joined to them at the hip. Arguing that you should somehow be immune from the consequences of that or that those consequences should somehow be mitigated is ridiculous. And arguing the MBC “isn’t winning fast enough”… I seem to have heard that one before somewhere.
As I said before, Deklein’s time will come and you don’t get to set the timetable. You just get to decide if you’re going to head there for the fighting. That’s up to you.
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@Jester – I give up. Again, you seem to be putting a lot of words in my mouth and motivations behind my writing that I do not see. You have cast my post as you wanted and are arguing against that as opposed to what I am saying.
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WIlhelm has never said it wasn’t a good tactic. Just that the tactics don’t match the words that keep being said. It’s why he gave credit when you said it the way you did on here Jester. The Rhetoric is all goon goon goon and the action is all anyone BUT goons for now.
Which as stated is a great tactic that makes sense, nobody has disputed that.
I do wonder if for some if there was a collapse if a large part of the fun in Eve for them is to try and pull something back from the brink. From other games I always took a bit of pride of pulling something from the ashes and remaking it, though not dealing with nearly a fraction of the people that Eve alliance leaders deal with. It was almost like a project for me when I became jaded with whatever game I was playing, either reform or start anew. Reinvigorated me for a good long time.
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Also, somebody has decided to tell people to comment with “World War Bee” in any non-EVE related post on my site, because that is what the Reddit mob gets you. Fortunately, people commenting for the first time are put in moderation and I can bulk delete them.
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“Also, somebody has decided to tell people to comment with “World War Bee” in any non-EVE related post on my site, because that is what the Reddit mob gets you.”
Well that’s pretty disappointing. If you have a Reddit link, you can get the admins involved.
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@Rob Kaichin – Somebody linked this post to Reddit earlier, so I expected some spam, but deciding that I needed comments in non-EVE posts seems like an annoying new twist. I’ll see how bad it gets and if I have to close comments altogether for a while. Doesn’t exactly endear me further to our foes though.
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Let’s say you’re right for a second, and the rhetoric is “kill Goons” while the reality is different from that. Perhaps you could write a blog post about the half dozen or dozen ways in which TNT has differentiated themselves from Goons.
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@Jester – Still not my point, no matter how many times you try to assign that position to me. It is your side that is both trying to differentiate yet lump us together.
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