We’re going to go live in interesting times.
-Asher Elias, State of the Goonion
If you are one of those people who hate it when r/eve gets taken over by null sec bloc propaganda wars, I have some bad news for you; war were declared.
This is no surprise to those who were paying attention, and even some who were not. As I noted last week, the Imperium had not been coy about what Saturday’s State of the Goonion was generally about, telling members to be ready for move ops immediately following the address, listing out doctrines that will be used, and generally ramping everybody up to be ready for war.
Asher, sounding somewhat subdued to getting over a cold, gave the traditional short address that has become the format of choice over the years. His words were broadcast both on Mumble and over the Imperium News Twitch channel.
Waiting for Asher to speak
We are headed north to link up with B2 Coalition, which has been defending itself from Fraternity for many months now, to push back on WinterCo and PanFam. Pretty much what I guessed last week, it being the obvious choice. The war is being framed, once again, as a battle against the landlord alliances represented by WinterCo and PanFam. Not a new spin, but a solid one. The Imperium and B2 Coalition both stand against rental empires… we’ll ignore the former FI.RE alliances now in B2 that were landlords up until fairly recently… so that is the dividing line between the two factions.
The only detail left was where we would be staging. For the answer to that it was time for a move op.
Move op fleets were put up shortly after the SotG ended, with three capital move fleets being announced. Those quickly filled up… I managed to get in one… and two more were announced in order to find space for those headed north.
Unlike a lot of past move ops, where I have just gone out in a single sub cap, the advance notice of doctrines and such allowed me to get ready. I had my Ninazu packed and fueled up, the fleet bay packed with sub cap hulls… this was so much easier due to changes that allow refit modules to be in the cargo of ships being carried… and I was in a move fleet and ready to go.
But these things take time. We were pushing close to 1,500 ships through the pipe that leads from Delve up to Fade. While that is only 18 jumps with Ansiblex connections… something you could do in about 20 minutes in an interceptor… getting all of us through in ships from shuttles and frigates all the way up to titans was going to take more time.
We waited for our fleets to be called so we could move by groups, making each hop and gate jump along the way in our turn. As it so happened, the fleet I chose was the last of the group to be told to undock, but we were all ready when the word finally came.
Capitals undocking from the Keepstar
Then it was on to the well trod route between Delve and Fade, one I have taken many times in the last dozen years, such that I know the system names and can remember events that occurred in most of them. The first jump was to the boarder between Delve and Fountain, and the through the regional gate.
Pushing through the regional gate to Fountain while sub caps cover
Then there are the traditional four systems in Fountain, Y-2ANO, KVN-36, C-N4OD, and J5A-IX. In a sub cap that is quick set of systems. With capital fleets it can been fairly rapid, because they can take the Ansiblex jump gates, so don’t have to worry about jump timers and such. But when you have supers and titans, too large for the Ansiblex system, there is a jump and then a wait, and then another jump.
But the waits were not too long, the timers ran down quickly enough, and we were soon at the far end of Fountain, pushing through into Cloud Ring, the nebula for which it was named being obvious in the sky around us.
Last exit from Fountain
In Cloud Ring things get a little more difficult. While the region is now held by an Imperium Alliance, Shadow Ultimatum, it is also an easy region to slip into and there are a couple of groups who love to camp the Ansiblex route, looking for easy prey.
My Ninazu making a warp seemingly alone
And, of course, the jump timers started getting longer and longer with every jump. We had enough fleet mass to push through.
So many caps to draw that the Fortizar took a minute to appear
By then we were pretty close, though the last jump timer was about 30 minutes for many of us. It wasn’t much longer until we were in Fade and landing at our destination, the last system in Face, on the boarder with both Pure Blind and Deklein, where an Imperium Keepstar was ready for us. That puts us within easy reach of those two regions and Tribute as well.
The operational tempo has yet to really kick off, though I did jump into a fleet that reinforced a Fraternity Fortizar that was close by. First shots fired and all of that.
Structure Shoots are our bread and butter
I did go along with a later move op to get an alt on a second account up north. I activated a second account for the war and have my main combat alt up there now who can fly most of ships I brought up. I just brought him up in a bomber in the sub cap fleet that was covering the next surge of capitals northward.
Once again at the sun
This became important because our staging system is within jump range of where Reavers had staged a few months back. Not much came of that deployment, but I had moved ships up to that in an Apostle, so I wanted to get it and all of my ships there jumped to the new location and then have my alt to hand because I now had two capitals deployed and will eventually need him to fly one of them home.
So now I have two faxes and 20 sub caps deployed, and I don’t want to have to bring them all home.
So we are off and running. We are settling in at the front and now two pairs of blocs, the major powers in null sec, are squared off in a somewhat more even match up when compared to World War Bee, where it was the Imperium versus just about everybody.
I am not sure what the war is going to be called, but we all seem to be ready for it.
There is a video of some of the first move op, with music and some of Asher’s address overlayed, that gives a sense of what a move op can be like.
Now to see how this plays out. EVE had 31,329 on at prime time during the move op, the highest point since the launch of Uprising. A good war could bring more life to the game… and destruction always stimulates the economy.
Related:
The Ancient Gaming Noob 