Tag Archives: Imperium

Two TTC Sotiyos Destroyed in Perimeter Brawl

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There has been a low level conflict going on in null sec, with Imperium and The Initiative facing off against Pandemic Horde and Fraternity for a while now.  Neither side has been stoked for a full scale invasion… in part because CCP has said they will be making changes to null sec, something that makes everybody nervous… so there have been clashes in the southeast, where Pandemic Horde had already been in violation of the now lapsed agreement.  They and Fraternity have pushed into Catch, where the latter dropped a Keepstar then did a whole lot of nothing.

The Imperium, in a counter move, dropped a Fortizar on the grid with their Keepstar in F4R2-Q, which literally caused PH to evac a bunch of ships back to their previous forward base.  Both structures have been reinforced multiple times but neither side has managed to blow up the other’s citadel.

The stalemate in F4R2-Q

I do not have much first hand information about this conflict because it has primarily been taking place immediately after downtime, which is the only time zone PH can get Fraternity support, so is the only time zone they will engage in.   Since downtime is at 4am local time for me, I have been giving the whole thing a miss.  You can tell the conflict is mostly posturing because the propaganda on Reddit has been horrible all around. There really hasn’t been anything worth alarm clocking over.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday I woke up and logged into various apps and noticed reports of a fight going on in Perimeter, a busy high sec system one jump from Jita and one time home of the Tranquility Trading Tower, the one time high sec Keepstar trading hub, the wreck of which still haunts the system.

Remember the TTT – Once it was anchored here

Even the official EVE Online Twitter account took a moment away from promoting Vanguard to make mention of the fight.  I knew that the Tranquility Trading Consortium’s structures in that high sec system had been one of the fronts that we had been pushing back against.  But now I saw there were something around 5K pilots in Perimeter and that the pair of Sotiyos the TTC still had anchored there were under attack.

Their two Sotiyos on the old Keepstar grid

For those needing to come up to speed, the TTC broke up when the Imperium pulled out of the agreement, which was supposed to lead to its dissolution according to TTC leader Vily.  That led to the destruction of their high sec Keepstar, but Vily wanted some more ISK so reneged on his statements that the whole thing would fold up shop.   That was all hot news last summer and I have a series of posts about it for those wanting a recap with links out to other stories.

I was immediately looking for a character close by in a clean… thus expendable… clone that I could jump into the system.  As it turned out, my main had a clean clone in Jita.  I was able to get into Jita 4-4, pic up an Ares travel-ceptor I had sitting there, undock, and slip past the PH camp on the station and the Fraternity camp at the Perimeter gate, and jump into the system where the fight was going down.

That didn’t work out so well.

Things not going well

In EVE Online when you get disconnected you don’t disappear from the game.

I went to log back in and spent about 40 minutes waiting for that to happen, at which point I found that my ship had been blown up.  Oh well.  That put me on the battle report, a win of sorts I guess.

Proof I was there

They did not pod me.  That is fairly common in big tidi fights because it delays your ability to get a fresh ship and get back into the fight.  Even if you self-destruct, that two minute timer runs at 10% tidi, so it becomes a 20 minute timer.   Tidi does funny things.  I got a double notification of my destruction when I was back in the game.

I did not get two payouts, too bad

Having my pod still in tidi was fine with me.  I had no ambitions when it came to the fight, save for seeing a bit of it go down.  I had put on a couple of civilian weapons on my Ares in case there was an opportunity, but that was not longer in the cards.

My first move was to warp to a nearby neutral Astrahus at which I could tether.

Landing on the Astrahus

That was just the first place I could find to warp to.  There were still ~4,200 people in system and the overview was too long to find things since the whole thing was happening on the same grid as the Perimeter gate.  On the Astrahus I loaded up a structures only overview and found our Fortizar on the overview and warped to that.  That was on grid with the fight, so I could sit there and watch.

By that point PH had decided to take their remaining Paladins and leave, with a couple of those unlucky enough to be tackled getting worked over.

That one didn’t get away

By that point the first Sotiyo was already dead, it just didn’t know it yet.  As happened when we blew up the TTC Keepstar, the tidi and the need to process the kill and the asset safety moves meant that the Sotiyo just sat there for a while with zero hit points on the counter, untargetable, but claiming it was repairing.

When a Sotiyo doesn’t know it is dead yet

Eventually there was a wreck on the field where the first Sotiyo had been.

The other Sotiyo was now the focus of the attacking fleets, including a mass of Praxis battleships that were spread out on the field.

The Praxis fleet in the sky

At that point I decided to dock up.  While tidi was at 10% still, the player count was dropping and it seemed I might be able to dock up, get in a ship, then get in a couple of cheap shots just to get on the kill mail.

It took a while to dock, but it finally happened.  Once in the Fortizar I was disappointed to find that there were no ships available on contract.  What kind of a staging Fort was this?  In the end, I had to hit the “board my corvette” button and undock in an Ibis, the least imposing of all the in-game ships that can carry a weapon.

You go to war with the ship you have, not the ship you want I guess.  So I warped over to the remaining Sotiyo and got in there with the many Praxis battleships, set myself to orbit at 500m, turned on my civilian afterburner, and let loose with my civilian gatling railgun.

I’m in there somewhere… maybe…

“Pop! Pop! Pop!” went my gun as I circled the structure… or would have probably, if I had sound turned on.  EVE may have sounds, but I couldn’t testify in court to that.  After a bit of that, I decided to warp back to the Fortizar and watch things play out.  I did succeed on getting on the kill mail.  Way down the list of the 1,907 attackers you will find me and my Ibis.

I got in .0001% of the kill!

Things were still lightening up in system.  The defenders had all fled by that point.  Certainly nobody bothered with by little corvette.

Meanwhile, the battleships finished off the second Sotiyo.  Like the first, it paused for a bit, as if in contemplation of its end, as the results were processed, the changed over to a wreck.  Maybe there was an explosion, but if there was I missed it.  I looked over and just saw the remains.

The Sotiyo wreck

Since you can no longer anchor Sotiyos (or Keepstars) in high security space, there will be no replacement of thes losses.

The battle report showed 4,126 pilots counted as involved, with 1,020 kills.

Battle Report Header

The attackers, Team B, lost more ships, but the defenders lost both the objective and the ISK war.  That isn’t the best battle report.  There are a lot of third parties on it.  But that is the best you generally get in a busy high sec system.

There was a bit of chest thumping on /r/eve from PH about their Paladins taking out a lot of Imperium Rokhs.  And they did take out 131 Rokh battleships, which totaled up to 63.6 billion ISK in losses.  But they left out that they ended up losing 62 Paladins, worth 131 billion ISK.  Trading 2:1 against an opponent when your ship value is 4:1 against the foe isn’t the best trade in my book.

On a side note, Stargrace over at Nomadic Gamer, who has been playing EVE Online recently, stumbled into this fight and reported on what she saw.

I saw her mention the tidi lag on Mastodon and replied with the traditional meme for such occasions.

Time dilation is around our necks in every fight in null sec

MMORPG.com also has a post about the clash yesterday.

So it goes.  The conflict will continue I am sure.  The only question is where the next battlefield will be.  Maybe PH and Frat will attack that Fortizar in their Keepstar’s front yard.

The Scope Covers the Jay Amazingness heist and the Pirate Faction Structure Attacks

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Alton Haveri is back with another report for The Scope in New Eden, this time covering the betrayal of the  Imperium by Jay Amazingness and his defection to Pandemic Legion with the ISK and items he stole.

There is, of course, speculation as to why Jay betrayed his long time comrades and moved to rival alliance Pandemic Legion and questions as to whether he acted on his own initiative or if his friends in PL planted the idea and supported its execution in order to strike out at the Imperium.

Pandemic Legion and Goons have a long and complicated history, and were at one point strong allies in the war against Band of Brothers and its successor, the IT Alliance.  That started to fall apart after the disaster at Y-2ANO when IT Alliance destroyed PL’s capital fleet and displaced them from the Fountain Region.

Since then PL has become more and more of a foe of Goons and, later, the Imperium and there is always the persistent story that PL still wants revenge for the savage losses it faced at the hands of Goons and the Russians at the battle of B-R5RB over a decade back where PL lost 25% of its titans.

While PL has been overshadowed in recent years by its fellow PanFam alliance Pandemic Horde, it apparently still has… the coolest station environment?

Jay in the Pandemic Legion lounge

I can already tell this will lead to another round of requests for the return of the captain’s quarters.  EVE Vanguard will get you walking on planets, isn’t that enough?

The video also covers the results of the attacks on the player owned Upwell structures that were anchored “too close” to the ancient Jovian stargates that now bring capsuleers to Zarzakh.

A Guristas Gila aligned out as explosions rock the Fort

I previously covered the initial attacks on the Fortizar in Alsavoinon that was owned by The Initiative. It turned out that INIT was not actually unanchoring the Fortizar, the just renamed it, appending “[UNANCHORING]” to the name, in an attempt to fool the pirates.

Meanwhile, somebody over on Reddit has transcribed all the items that scrolled by on the chyron during the video, which I have copied below.

  • Republic Fleet Confirms Vard Prototype Stellar Transmuter was Scouted by Angels but No Attempt to Capture Facility Made by Pirates
  • CONCORD Assembly System Security Subcommittee Fast Tracks Applications for Status Changes by Repubic and Federation
  • Mordu’s Legion Increases Recruiting Efforts as Demand for Security and Military Contract Services Increases due to Insurgencies
  • Looters and Black Marketeers Reportedly Rounded Up and Shot by RSS on Several Planets in Hed Constellation
  • Empress Catiz I Authorizes Creation of Several Dozen New Fiefs in Ardishapur Demesne as Lord Arim Ardishapur Seeks to Ennoble Ammatar Loyalists
  • Aftermath of Imperium Cloning Sabotage Reverberates Through Markets as Volatility in Cloning Sector Markets Due to Investor Panic
  • Khumatar Allek Berialsh Appointed as Republic System Governor of Hek by Order of Sanmatar Maleatu Shakor with Mandate to Secure System
  • Guristas Insurgents Preparing New Assault on Asakai System Following Raids Across Aokinen and Kurala Constellations
  • Kor-Azor Police Guards Intercept Cargo of Proscribed Luxury Goods Escorted by Royal Uhlan Frigates Through Kor-Azor Region
  • Minmatar Republic Command Reports Vital Facilities on Vard Planets Remained Secure Despite Angel Cartel Commando Landings
  • Refugees from Militia Warzones Hit by Insurgencies and Border Warfare by Empires Straining Resettlement Capacity Warns CONCORD Assembly
  • Angel Cartel Insurgents Operating Out of Bosboger Terrorize Alakgur IV Following Raids on Dammalin Industrial Colonies
  • President Celes Aguard Authorizes Further Emergency Appropriations to Increase System Defenses and Garrisons in Federal Branch Capitals
  • Underworld Rumors of Arkombine Warclone Organization Breaking with ORE and Mordu’s Legion Spread on GalNet Conspiracy GroupNets
  • CONCORD and EDENCOM Officials Holding Discussions on Further Planetary Fortification and Structure Defenses with Upwell Consortium
  • Wiyrkomi Corporation Denies Excessive Reponse and Harsh Reprisals by Peace Corps Troops in Uchomida Industrial Colonies
  • Imperial Navy Resupplies Garrisons in Remaining Fortified Bases Across Eugidi as Militia Warfare Rages in Constellation
  • Sporadic Unrest on Intaki Prime as Nationalist and Religious Militants Opposed to Federation Military Presence Clash with Federal Marines
  • Genolution and Cromeaux Inc. Call for Cloning Industry Security Summit as Upwell Consortium Joins Efforts to Allay Investor Fears
  • Private Military Companies See Surge in Demand for Low Security and Border Colony Defense Contracts as Pirate Raids Expand
  • Director Lars en Ramon of Upwell Consortium’s Department of Friendship and Mutual Assistance Refuses to Comment on Arkombine Rumors
  • Caldari State Peacekeepers to Investigate Allegations of Massacre at Wiyrkomi-Seituoda Heavy Industries Colony on Uchomida III

I have said this before I am sure, but I will say it again; The Scope is one of my favorite aspects of the EVE Online ecosystem in that it often takes player actions and fits them into the overall lore of the game in a way that just doesn’t happen in many other titles.

Getting Home From the North

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The map in the north is settling down since the announcement that B2 Coalition was done fighting up there.

Those groups formerly in the B2 Coalition have mostly moved south or made their peace with the new overlord in the north.  The new Phoenix Coalition, made up of Synergy of Steel, Banderlogs Alliance, Razor Alliance, and Game Theory, will remain in the northeast, having signed an agreement with PandaFam declaring they will not assist the Imperium in any way, including allowing the Imperium access to their structures.  A version of the treaty with suggested edits was posted to Reddit if you want the details.

The Initiative has pushed its border up out of Fountain and into the bottom of Cloud Ring to give itself some buffer and to better be able to sortie into the north for fun.  The coalition map shows where things are currently.

Null Sec Coalitions – Nov 27, 2023

The new members of the Imperium have abandoned their sovereignty and remaining assets up there.  The last remaining bit of space in Pure Blind are being taken.  Move ops have continued south, but no doubt some stuff was left behind as we retreated back down to the southwest of null sec.

The first structure to go in the wake of our departure was the Brave Keepstar that we had been staging out of in DO6H-Q up in Fade, which was blown up mid-month.  The first move ops were to get us from there to the Imperium Keepstar at 6RCQ-V in Cloud Ring.

The staging Keepstar in DO6H-Q

In one of my classic “not paying attention because I was in a hurry” moves I managed to get my ships out, but left my Tech Fleet pod with Amulets sitting in the clone bay in that Keepstar.  I was logged in when we got the warning that the clone bay would be offline shortly due to the structure being reinforced and thought to myself, “Sure glad I got everything of MINE out of there!”

Then I checked, just to be sure and saw my second most expensive pod still parked there.  Doh!

I quickly clone jumped into the pod and, seeing that things were mostly quiet, took an Ibis out of the station and a couple of jumps to an Astrahus that had yet to be reinforced.  I let it sit there until late in the evening, then slipped into an NPC station in Pure Blind.  From there I had an alt on a second account fly up in a shuttle then scout my pod back to 1DQ1-A, where it got home well ahead of my ships.

Why yes, I do have SKINs for shuttles and I use them

Luck was with me too, because it managed to survive the Wrath of Jay when he pulled the clone bay module before downtime before fleeing the Imperium for Pandemic Legion.  That clone would have been home by then no matter which route it had taken, so at least I didn’t rush it into harms way I suppose.

And I forgot to check on an alt, so when the Keepstar did get blown up some items went to asset safety all the same.

Stuff was left behind

I am sure there will be some people camping that low sec station when the timer runs down and the asset safety items are delivered.  Fortunately, judging by the character this was on, it is probably a couple of tech I logi cruisers I left behind.  Nothing expensive.

From 6RCQ-V the next round of moves in Cloud Ring were a single jump to F7C-H0 and the next Keepstar in the chain.  This one had been transferred over to The Initiative who, as noted above, have expanded their frontier into Cloud Ring.

We lingered there for several days while waiting for as many as possible to make the move.  Then the first move op back to Delve was announced.  However, the first step of that move op was to go back to 6RCQ-V to cover the Keepstar there, which was being unanchored.  Capitals and sub caps gathered around to cover the operation.

Sitting on the Keepstar, waiting for the moment

There is no external timer for an unanchor, so we sat around watching the structure… or more likely, were tabbed out of the game and doing something else… until the time came and the structure went away, folded up in a nice little box… or, at least a box much smaller than the structure.

Bubbles up on the spot

There is a whole process for taking down a big structure, and the end includes having a freighter on hand to haul off the smaller than it was, but still sizable box that a Keepstar comes in.

Pandemic Horde had some bombers in the system as well as some interdictors and they swooped in to disrupt the proceedings.  I was looking away when a big explosion lit up the capital ships.

They killed Kenny!

They managed to blow up the freighter… and the Keepstar did not drop from the wreck.

The freighter kill

That is probably the fastest way to kill a Keepstar, though you don’t get a nice kill mail for the structure.

The quantum core dropped, but those have a 100% chance of dropping and we were able to recover that.  But to add insult to injury, while a bunch of PH ships were bubbled up and less than 100km away, well within the engagement range of the Tempest Fleet Issue fit we were using, all attempts to target them were thwarted with a message about them being the 172km reach of our guns.

The fickle nature of “server weather” was rolling against us.

After that was cleared up, we sat around for a while, then moved back towards home, taking the well trod path through Fountain home to Delve.  I’ve been up and down this route many times in the last dozen years.

From our staging to home

It was a slow drive down because we had to cover the capitals and super capitals, but it isn’t that many jumps all the same.

Down in the south the new alliances in the Imperium are taking up new homes.  Brave is moving into Querious, IGC into Period Basis, and so on.  There is a lot of space in the southeast.

Will it remain quiet?  PandaFam has shown a willingness to try to put itself up on our frontiers, dropping structures as they did at W-4NUU a week back.  They have said they want to come get us, either through Cloud Ring in the north or via Catch in the south.  There is rarely anything like peace for long, even if there isn’t a big war going on.

Collapse in the North: B2 Joins the Imperium after 18 Months Under Attack

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But once again, there were four major powers in the game.  We had PanFam. We had Winter Coalition, we had Imperium, and we had B2. After that, PanFam and Frat decided to try to force B2 to bend the knee to them, and then began what would be a year and a half long campaign against them.

-Asher Elias, Imperium Fireside Nov. 4, 2023

Saturday saw announcements in multiple corp and alliance meetings that B2 coalition was no longer able to keep resisting the now 18 month attack by Fraternity and its PanFam allies and would effectively be dissolving.

While I do not know the disposition of all groups within B2, many of them will be joining the Imperium, which acted as an ally during the struggle against Fraternity and PanFam.

B2, which was the youngest of the large null sec coalitions, was supported by the Imperium in an attempt to keep null sec from becoming a strictly bipolar proposition yet again.  This desire for a more diverse set of alignments in null sec was also the stated reason for The Initiative leaving the the Imperium back in June.

Asher Elias, leader of the Imperium, said on Saturday’s fireside that he had felt is was important to try to help B2 establish itself, but it had barely had time to settle after the end of World War Bee/Beeitnam in 2021 before Fraternity set upon it.

While the war in the north did see some epic fights… the peak for me was when we destroyed Fraternity’s Keepstar in X47, which required the attackers to win the armor timer through the downtime outage, even if they did just anchor a new one… much of the war was prosecuted by the attackers in what Asher described as “the most boring way possible.”

I know this was meant as a dig at Fraternity and PanFam, pointing out that they were not interested in fun or good fights. And there is the whole time zone effect of Frat being heavily in Chinese time while much of the Imperium and B2 live in EU and US time zones.

For me though it is really more of an indictment of CCP’s Aegis sovereignty system, which has historically been so tedious that the way to win wars is to be able to endure things like six hour see-saw ihub fights ,chasing nodes back and forth across a constellation hoping to simply outlast your opponent.  Maybe they’ll finally get tired and go to bed and we’ll win… says both sides as they work on hacking the next node.  If you want to win a sov war, you have to weaponize the tedium.  We’ve done it, they’ve done it, and we’ll all likely do it again.

B2 hung on and managed to defend its space for well over a year without losing one of those grinding ihub fights.  But every tank has its limits and the last couple of weeks saw Fraternity and PanFam start to make headway against B2 in Deklein.  Things were starting to come apart for B2.

It wasn’t what The Mittani used to like to call a “failure cascade” yet, but the writing was on the wall.  B2 was tired of the war and Fraternity, sensing the inevitability of their victory, would only offer extremely bad terms for peace.  Fraternity was reported to be demanding that B2 pay reparations, give up territory, and forswear any cooperation with the Imperium, in return for which Fraternity said they would stop the war for now without even the most superficial guarantees on their own future behavior, such as a non-invasion pact.  It was an offer to become Fraternity’s pet in the most degrading fashion.  They would be required to respect and obey Frat, but not be an actual ally so they would be open to being farmed for content by Frat and PanFam whenever either was bored.

B2 chose to leave their space, and much of the coalition will fold into the Imperium.

Brave, Severance, We Form Blob, Scumlords, and Fanatic Legion will be joining the Imperium as alliances, or as corporations to be part of the Goonswarm Federation.

Having destroyed their former PAPI ally FI.RE in the south earlier this year, some of which joined B2, Fraternity and PanFam have now secured a bipolar null sec once more, where all the major powers stand on one side or the other.  There are, of course, the usual complaints about null sec devolving into a dual opposing coalition situation once more, with the recent round summed up nicely in this cartoon posted to Reddit.

Posted to /r/eve by AMD_Best_D

Looking at the sov map, the only truly unaligned space in null sec right now is in the the southeast, in FI.RE’s former territory, which was left open by an agreement between the major null sec powers in order to be a place where new alliances could try their hand at null sec… oh, and Providence, where CVA and Provibloc have once again established themselves.  Good for them.

Null Sec Sov – Nov 4, 2023

Now the evacuation begins.

For those of us in the Imperium the matter is fairly straightforward.  We have been stages in a Brave Keepstar in DO6H-Q in Fade for quite a while now.  We need to collect up our belongings and bring them back to Delve.  After a quiet time we had ramped up our participation up north, bringing capital ships into play again, so there is a lot to move.

Dreads undocking for the first jump from DO6

Getting back to Cloud Ring and the front line of Imperium space is the first step.  As always seems to happen, a couple weeks after I decided to commit some more ships up north it is now time to bring them back home.

A move op fleet landing at our front line Keepstar in Cloud Ring

For the B2 coalition members, the effort will be much greater.  They have to pack up their lives and move them out of the space that is being abandoned.  Structures will end up being lost and there will be piles of stuff moving to asset safety as stuff gets left behind.  People taking a break from the game will find their stuff in a low sec station at some future date.  While better than having it all locked in a station deep in null sec, the way it used to be, having to reclaim a mountain of goods from asset safety can be demoralizing in its own way.

Though, who knows, maybe Fraternity will pull The Initiative’s play and let the fuel run out on some of them to create loot pinatas… though Frat would at least not be doing that to their allies.

There is a lot of work to be done, both by the attackers and those leaving the war zone.  That will keep everybody busy for some time.  But the new front lines have been drawn.

After things have settled, after our old and new friends have gotten themselves set up in the coalition (Brave might have a choice of old stomping grounds to choose from for a home in Imperium space) the friction between to the two major blocs will begin again.

Maybe conflict will resume in the north where the two blocs are face to face.  Maybe the unaligned space in the southeast will become the next battleground.  Or maybe we’ll go back to trying to take down what is now the PanFam trading tower consortium in the systems around Jita.

People often proclaim in times like this that null sec is dead, that war is over, that hegemony has set in.  (There are half a dozen new posts on r/eve right now with that theme.)  Bad historical analogies are trotted out.  EVE Online is declared, once more, to be dying.

First known occurrence of “EVE is Dying”

But no situation remains static forever.  We have been forced into these situations before.  At the end of the Halloween war, after the collapse of the Russians, it was the Imperium and PanFam/NCDot rental empire.  The Moneybadger Coalition unified much of null sec during the Casino War, only to turn and eat its own.  Back in 2018 Fraternity pushed Legacy Coalition to ally with the Imperium, creating another bipolar null sec which eventually changed up.  And that change up was when almost the whole of null sec blued up as PAPI to make a costly and eventually unsuccessful run at driving the Imperium out of null sec.

All of these situations passed.  War always finds a way.

One thing is different though.  In years past I would have linked out to a few blogs and a couple of EVE Online focused news sites for other perspectives.  Amusingly, I saw in the Down the Rabbit Hole documentary (which I posted about on Friday) a quote complaining that consolidated New Eden news sites like what is now Imperium News killed EVE blogging.  A bad take even when it was made (if nothing else, such sites pre-dated TheMittani.com), it would be nice if we actually had posts from Imperium News, New Eden Post, and EN24 to compare and contrast.

These days, a few threads on Reddit is all one can count on.  That is where the news and the propaganda war collide for New Eden these days.  The real worry, for me, is that the player infrastructure around EVE Online, is wasting away.  That, more than any momentary situation in null sec, is a far more dire sign in my book.

Addendum: No doubt that B2 and the Imperium starting to move out of the north contributed to Sunday, Nov 5, being the peak concurrent day for players in 2023 so far.

Related:

A Brief Timeline of the Imperium

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What is the Imperium?  The Imperium is a long standing coalition in EVE Online.

What is a coalition in EVE Online?  Well, let me build up to that by going up the line of player organizations, starting with the corporation.

The corporation is at the core of player organizations within New Eden.  Everybody belongs to a corporation.  Many stay in the NPC corporation they get assigned to when they join the game, others join player run corporations.

Corporations are essentially the guild equivalent in EVE Online.

Forming a corporation is not difficult… by the standards of EVE Online at least… though actually managing one can involve considerably more complexity than your average MMO guild.

Then there are alliances, which are groups of corporations that have banded together in a meta organization that allows them to do some activities.  Many people never end up in an alliance, but if you’re in null sec you are most likely to be in one because, for a start, only alliances can hold or attack sovereignty in null sec.

CCP has a bit of a bias towards alliances.  Their annual esport event, (which wraps up this weekend incidentally) is literally called The Alliance Tournament.

Alliances can also craft their own logos, rather than using the mix-and-match logo creator to which corporations limited.

Alliance names tend to come and go, and even those that persist tend to carry on despite radical changes in the corporations that make them up.  You can find corporations with grand lists of past alliances memberships.  And some famous alliances have had their identities stolen due to internal betrayal.  Both Band of Brothers and the original Goonswarm alliance are still in game, but held by people who orchestrated their theft.  But alliances are the names you see on the sovereignty maps that gets generated daily.

And then there are coalitions.

There is no in-game mechanism for coalitions, other than access lists and standings.  Coalitions, which are formed by alliances grouping together, can be much more transitory. (And there is always some confusion because some alliances, such as Northern Coalition, have names that were used in the past for actual coalitions.)

Coalitions of mutual interest or need or convenience can appear then disappear rapidly.  Alliances change partners, come and go, or drop out of null sec altogether.  There can also be coalitions of coalitions, which tend to get their own name if they last for a bit.  Right now the Imperium, B2, and The Initiative are together, two coalitions and an alliance that was until recently part of the Imperium, are allied against what I suppose we still might (again) call PandaFam, the grouping of the Winter Co and PanFam coalitions, of which Fraternity and Pandemic Horde are the major members respectively.

Coalitions often come and go and leave little or no mark in game, existing as they do as constructs that players have created themselves.  Names like Legacy, RedSwarm, Imperial Legacy, FI.RE, N3, Honey Badger, Drone Russians, Provi Bloc, Money Badger, and PAPI have all come and gone, and that barely scratches the surface of the coalitions that have been a thing.

Probably the two most recognizable long term coalitions are PanFam and the Imperium.

PanFam, once made up of Pandemic Legion, Waffles, and Pandemic Horde has, over the years, been part of many larger coalitions, but has always maintained its identity.  And, as a coalition, PanFam has sided with or against most everybody in null sec at some point.  They were GoonSwarm allies in the Great War against Band of Brothers, but PanFam now includes Northern Coalition in its ranks, home to many corporations that were in Band of Brothers back in the day.

And then there is the Imperium.  Wasn’t this supposed to be a brief history of the Imperium?  Well, compared to all the details, this is pretty brief.

The Imperium was announced on April 14, 2015.

The Imperium Logo

This was a rebranding of the old Clusterfuck Coalition, usually abbreviated as the CFC, done in part because having the word “fuck” in your name makes people feel awkward writing about you.  In one of those twists, the anti-Goon New Eden press refused to use the CFC name, calling the coalition DekCo because it was centered on the Deklein region, but once the name was changed to the Imperium, they couldn’t stop using the CFC name.

The CFC, as I will call it, was created after the betrayal of Karttoon in early 2010, when he either deliberately or negligently did not pay the sovereignty bill in Delve and GoonSwarm lost all its space.  And then Karttoon kicked everybody out of the alliance and it had to be recreated… twice.

But I covered quite a bit of that in my Brief History of Goonswarm Leadership post.

Up in Deklein the remnants of Goonswarm reformed, being offered some space to use by the then Tau Ceti Federation alliance.  A coalition, first of convenience, was formed.  It included the new on the scene Test Alliance Please Ignore alliance (TEST), Fatal Ascension (who seemed to be in constant conflict with TEST), and a few other alliances.

Goonswarm Federation (GSF) became the dominant partner in the coalition and the early coalition made it through several attacks and wars which molded it into a more serious organization.  I showed up into this mix in later 2011, between the VFK Headshot, an attempt to bring down GSF with an attack on their capital system and the Winter War, which saw White Noise and Raiden and started a series of conflicts that saw the CFC take over all of the north of null sec, taking Tenal, Tribute, and Vale of the Silent, and carry on down the western side through Fountain and into Delve.

By summer of 2012 TEST had decided to go its own way, which led to them being part of the Honey Badger Coalition, which was them, PanFam, and N3 coalition and eventually the Fountain War or 2013, which I covered in summary last month.

Things carried on and, as Dominion sovereignty was coming to a close in null sec, the Imperium was declared.

This was, in part, because The Mittani was a big Warhammer 40K nerd and in part to role play a bit of Amarr in game lore.  The space pope, Maximilian Singularity VI, was involved and it was a bit of fun.

2015 was a year of great changes and small events that would blow up into a null sec spanning war.  From this point I am going to lay out the time line as bullet points.  The essential Imperium points are taken from the GoonWiki, while I have add entries and expanded details for context and color.

  • Apr 14, 2015 – The Imperium is formed from the Clusterfuck Coalition, basically a rebranding.
  • Summer 2015 – Aegis Sov (or Fozzie Sov) brings new sovereignty mechanics to null sec over the course of several updates.  Entosis modules are now a things.
  • Summer of 2015 – The Imperium gives up territory to try and consolidate down to defensible space in light of the new mechanics.  This makes some coalition members unhappy, especially Circle-of-Two (CO2), which has to give up some of Tribute to TNT.
  • Aug 2015 – The Imperium does a practice invasion to learn the new mechanics, attacking Providence.  ProviBloc, which lives there, faces an unprovoked attack which pisses a lot of people off.
  • Autumn 2015 – The Imperium announces the Viceroy program, a plan to collect tribute from people living in nearby low sec systems, which pisses a lot of people off.
  • Nov 2015 – A sexual encounter goes bad and ends up with Imperium member SpaceMonkeys Alliance (SMA) absconding with casino money, leading to a vendetta against SMA.  Some very specific people with a lot of ISK are pissed off.
  • Early 2016 – The I Want ISK casino owners hire mercenaries to lock down SMA space in Fade.  The Imperium attempts to defend their coalition member, but prickly SMA both wants the help and doesn’t want allies in its space.
  • Feb 2016 – The Nosy Gamer refers to this brewing conflict, which is now getting more attention and drawing in more groups, “The Casino War.”
  • Mar 2016 – The momentum of the war, which sees everybody with a grudge against Goons joining in, makes the Imperium move its wartime staging to Saranen, a low sec system in Lonetrek.  The Imperium announces they will no longer defend distant regions.  Allies in those regions are unhappy and slow to move to consolidate.
  • Mar 29, 2016 – During a pitched battle to defend CO2 sov in M-OEE8, CO2 betrays the Imperium, defects to the attackers, and joins in the war against the Imperium, in return for CO2 holdings being spared from the war.
  • Apr 10, 2016 – Space Monkey’s Alliance leaves the Imperium.
  • Apr 13, 2016 – Fidelas Constans leaves the Imperium.
  • May 2016 – The Imperium loses the last of its null sec sov in the north
  • Jun 11, 2016 – RAZOR Alliance leaves the Imperium.
  • Jul 18, 2016 – The Mittani announces defeat, the Imperium will find a new home.
  • Aug 10, 2016 – Executive Outcomes leaves the Imperium.
  • Sep 2016 – Delve is conquered (again, because time is a flat circle or something) in the face of light opposition.  This will be the new home for the Imperium.
  • Sep 10, 2016 – Brothers in Arms joins the Imperium.
  • Sep 2, 2017 – Snuffed Out joins the Imperium.
  • Sep 2017 – The Imperium engineers a betrayal, gutting CO2 in revenge for its Casino War treason.  CO2 leader GigX is banned from the game for threatening physical violence.  CO2 is effectively destroyed.
  • Mar 30, 2018 – Brothers in Arms leaves the Imperium.
  • Oct 26, 2018 – Snuffed Out leaves the Imperium.
  • Jun, 2020 – The Imperium announces that they have intel indicating that Legacy, PanFam, and Winter coalitions are planning to unite to attack.  The Imperium begins taking down structures in Cloud Ring that it has used to mark its rout to attack the north.  The invaders deny this, but publicly state that they will honor the non-invasion pact until July 5th.
  • Jun 24, 2020 – Dracarys., Iron Crown, and Ranger Regiment join the Imperium as full members.
  • Jul 5, 2020 – PAPI coalition, led by Vily of TEST, invades the Imperium in what is declared a “war of extermination.”
  • Aug 3, 2020 – French ConneXion joins the Imperium as trial member largely due to being treated as an Imperium member by PAPI.  FrenchConneXion traces its roots back to the Tau Ceti Federation alliance who helped out GSF after the betrayal of Karttoon.
  • Nov 7, 2020 – French ConneXion. becomes full member.
  • Feb 6 2021 – Siberian Squads leaves FI.RE/PAPI to change sides mid-war to join the Imperium as trial member.
  • Mar 2021 – Vily declares “Victory in Delve” as the Imperium has been reduced down to the 7 systems in the O-EIMK constellation.  The siege of 1DQ1-A, the Imperium capital, begins.
  • Aug 15, 2021 – Invidia Gloria Comes joins the Imperium as a trial member.
  • Aug 2021 – After five months of failing to break into the Imperium capital, PAPI begins a withdrawal from Imperium space that becomes a route, leaving the ISK war for the conflict close to a draw according to CCP.  All Imperium space is restored. TEST and its Legacy Coalition allies lose all of their space.
  • Dec 2021 – French ConneXion folds into The Initiative.
  • Jan 9, 2022 – Ranger Regiment leaves the Imperium after an attempt to unite with The Army of Mango Alliance.
  • Apr 17, 2022 – The Bastion alliance shuts down.
  • Jun 2022 – The Mittani is forced out as leader of the Imperium.  Asher Elias takes up the leadership role.
  • Nov 19, 2022 – Stribog Clade joins the Imperium as a trial member.
  • Nov 26, 2022 – Shadow Ultimatum joins the Imperium as a trial member.
  • Dec 3, 2022 – Sigma Grindset joins the Imperium as a trial member.
  • Dec 11, 2022 – Siberian Squads leaves the Imperium and joins Winter Co.
  • June 4, 2023 – The Initiative leaves the Imperium.

That is my list out.  At almost 2K words, perhaps not as “brief” as all that.  Then again, given the amount of history there is in the game, only a fraction of it recorded on this blog by myself, it is a pretty brief accounting.

The Tranquility Trading Consortium is Closing Up Shop

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@everyone with the TTC treaty coming to an end i have begun unanchors on all TTT structures. Multiple entities will likely come kill them long before the unanchors complete however. No service modules will be turned off. Thank you all for your patience and your trust over these years and i hope our services have helped you through your time in eve.

also be noted, ill be closing this server in 7 days or when the TTC structures die. Not that there is much value here

-Vily, TTC Discord server

The Tranquility Trading Consortium clearly saw the writing on the wall.

The TTC Logo on their structures

The above message went out on the TTC Discord server a little before 16:30 UTC.  All of the northern structure run by the TTC, including the Keepstar, the Tatara, and the two Sotiyos in Perimeter are currently unanchoring.

The tower is currently unanchoring

Traders had already begun moving their product from the TTT Keepstar to Jita 4-4 as soon as the news of the Imperium leaving the TTC broke yesterday.  No doubt that pace will quicken now that things are clearly winding down.

As noted, it is expected that somebody will try to show up and blow up some of the TTC structures before they are brought down, so if you have something there, best remove it sooner rather than later unless you want it to go to asset safety.

There was some wishcasting about letting the TTT run out of fuel so it could be turned into a giant loot pinata, with all the contents spilling out into space rather than being moved to asset safety, but that level of fuckery was never seriously on the table.

And there is some question about what happens to the southern TTC structures, including a Keepstar in Domain that the Imperium holds.  Gobbins is upset about that.  We’ll see if that leads to any action. [The Imperium retorts]

All in all, the TTC era was an oddity in the game, bringing together some strange bedfellows who stuck together on this one issue even when those involved were on different sides in a null sec spanning war.  Gevlon predicted this sort of trading scheme would come to pass, but he never predicted how it would end.  He would scoff at the idea of giving up ISK like this.

Last look at the Tranquility Trading Tower

The TTC Discord has some interesting chat in the General channel, including a visit from Aryth, who talked over some old times around CCP and Goons.  Take a look if you have a chance.  I scraped some of it, but Pastebin’s content filter prevents it from being shared, so it will be lost once the server is disbanded.

Related (updating this as new items show up):

Space Drama – The Imperium Withdraws from the Tranquility Trading Consortium

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Well, that didn’t take long.  The day started off with patch notes stating that no new XL Upwell structures, Keepstars and Sotiyos, would be allowed to anchor in high security space.

Those XL structures already anchored in high sec would be allowed to remain, but the cannot be replaced if taken down or destroyed.  And the most famous of those structures is the Tranquility Trading Tower in Perimeter, run by the Tranquility Trading Consortium, a group of null sec alliances that decided that splitting a cut of the fees was better than fighting over a lucrative trade hub constantly.

The TTT Keepstar being deployed back in 2018

Not long after my post about the patch notes went up, a ping went out from Asher Elias to the Imperium stating that we had given notice that we were withdrawing from the TTC as the next disbursement, which occurs on June 15th.  Notice was given in the TTC chat by Asher.

Ladies and gentlemen, please consider this as formal notice that the Imperium will be withdrawing from the TTC agreement. As you know I proposed changes to bring the TTC into the modern era in January but was vetoed. According to the agreement we may leave after the next disbursement which is tomorrow. June 15th will be our final payment then we will consider our part in the agreement ended.

A while later Asher posted a longer statement to r/eve about the Imperium’s intention to leave the TTC.

I always hated this arrangement, but the mechanics of the game meant that if we left, I would have been tying myself and every other person in the Imperium to a perpetual existence in highsec doing mind-numbing keepstar shoots. A Sisyphean effort like that wasn’t what I wanted to spend my 20 dollars doing. I did attempt to make improvements to make the TTC more equitable and reflective of the realities of the game. Before the recent northern war, I proposed that B2 be added to the TTC agreement, and Test Alliance be removed. I found it insane that the current form of Test and its 20 active members was getting the same amount of money as Fraternity, but meanwhile a group as large as B2 was getting nothing. I was vetoed and stonewalled by the other signatories, who were happy with the status quo.

Thankfully CCP has made changes that allow us to practically implement what my desire was from the start. I’m aware that we will have to police highsec for a time to keep other TTTs from popping up but I anticipate we will draw more allies than enemies in that. Thank you for your time.

The implication of the statement is not only that we are pulling out of the TTC, but that we will be launching an attack on the Keepstar at some point.

Imperium pings to all members suggesting that characters that have bad security status might want to do some ratting so that flying in high sec would be an issue more than confirmed the intent.

Meme time

Meanwhile, the thread on r/eve is full of fun and interesting tidbits, including pastebin dumps of TTC discussions including Asher’s announcement and behind the scenes discussions about what to do about goons.

A few people in the thread are salty about the Imperium leaving, calling it a betrayal or attempting to frame this as the Imperium going back on its word, but the TTC has rules for withdrawing from it, and the Imperium is following them.  Even Vily, no friend of the Imperium, allowed that we had no requirement to stay in the treaty forever.

A couple of people tried spinning a conspiracy theory out of the whole thing, declaring that Asher wouldn’t slay the goose that laid the golden eggs without some darker motive.

But most of the thread knows which way the wind is blowing and is cheering on the potential destruction of the edifice to ISK anchored in Perimeter.

The TTC Discord was fairly subdued.  Vily posted a notice that everybody should be aware of the Imperium’s withdrawal and there were a few snotty words about goons, but no action.

So it goes.  It looks like there might be action in Perimeter before the month is out.

Addendum: It looks like the Imperium announcement is getting traders to move their PLEX sell orders to Jita.  The traders know which way the wind is blowing.

Related:

The Initiative Leaves the Imperium Compact

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It was announced on Saturday’s Imperium fireside that long time Imperium member The Initiative would be leaving the coalition as of downtime on June 4th, and would thus no long be a part of the Imperium or subject to any or its rules or agreements.

The Initiative logo in spaceships

Darkshines has not gone full Vily on us or anything.  The Initiative won’t be launching an attack on Delve anytime soon.  In fact, they will remain with friendly standings and they will retain access to dock in Imperium space and use our jump bridge network and Imperium members will retain the same access in their space.  If PAPI reformed again and attacked The Initiative in Fountain, we would go to their aid, and they would likewise do so if PAPI came to Delve.

The main change will be economic.  Neither side will be allowed to rat, mine, frack, PI, drop structures, or otherwise use or exploit the other’s space for gain.  Aside from that the impact on line members should be minimal.  They won’t be shooting us and we won’t be shooting them.

Darkshines has said that the current coalition system has led to stagnation in null sec and is putting his money where his mouth is by removing The Initiative from the Imperium, for whatever value that has.  I suspect that PanFam and Fraternity will call it a distinction without a difference.

That The Initiative is leaving isn’t the biggest surprise in New Eden.  They have always been very independent within the Imperium and the idea that The Initiative is leaving the Imperium has been common enough in the past to have achieved meme status, with it being regularly predicted during World War Bee.

Having The Initiative with us has enhanced the Imperium experience.  They have helped wedge us into wars by jumping in and getting the other side to escalate.  They have also invited us along for some adventures, like the Fort Knocks Keepstar kill in J115404.

Of course, it hasn’t been all a bowl of cherries.  Some will remember last year when their leadership let a Fortizar run out of fuel and quietly blew it up in off hours so they could loot all the possessions of former members of The Bastion.

Apparently, as part of this amicable divorce, the Imperium ended up with custody of Brisc Rubal, who decided to go with KarmaFleet as his home, no doubt to stay with his Rampage Inc. buddies, Merkelchen and Innominate.

So it goes.  Time will tell as to whether or not this change has any meaning, whether being a de facto member of the Imperium will have any impact different from them being an actual member of the Imperium.

Asher, in the fireside, described it as them leaving the Imperium compact, which shaped the title of this post, meaning they were no longer a party of or subject to any diplomatic agreements of the Imperium.  That could mean a number of things… or nothing at all.

The Initiative was a founding member of the Imperium, back in April 2015, when the great re-branding from the old Clusterfuck Coalition happened.  They stuck through the Casino War even as other, larger alliances abandoned (or, in the case of Circle of Two, betrayed) the coalition.  I noted when Executive Outcomes left after the migration to Delve that The Initiative had almost 2,200 members.  As an alliance it has grown quite a bit since then.

With the departure of The Initiative and its 12,367 members, Imperium membership, as of this moment, is made up of the following alliances:

That is a total of 51,910 characters.

The Initiative is only the most recent alliance to leave the Imperium.  Siberian Squads left back in December, The Bastion shut down in April of last year, and Ranger Regiment left as part of the Army of Mango debacle in January of 2022.

Related:

The Imperium Dials Back Operations in Pure Blind

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I made it to the weekly coalition fireside talk on Saturday, and it was a good thing I did.  I haven’t done much since I alarm clocked for that last Keepstar kill.  The word passed down was that we were pulling back in our commitment to the war.

We are not done up in the north, but rather than having capitals and a half a dozen or more doctrines to hand and everybody’s death clone set in the DO6H-Q Keepstar, the whole thing was going to be reset to be a jump clone effort with two doctrines left behind and everything else being hauled home.

And move ops home were to commence after the fireside, once a cyno vigil to a fallen member of the coalition was concluded.  That gave me enough time to get back to the Keepstar and get packed, because I had parked my main and my alt out Venal at 92D-OI and WLF-D3, a good dozen gates away from our staging, in anticipation of there being another set of Keepstar fights.

But Fraternity has been getting its act together, working to get gate and grid control going in advance, making it unlikely for us to succeed.

Warp bubbles deployed in WLF to hinder attacker movement

That and the whole time zone difference… you can only get your coalition to alarm clock so many times before it becomes a real drag… were big parts of why we were dialing things back.

I got both my characters back to the Keepstar safely, the route home being fairly empty.  I was even back in time to fly around the cyno vigil for a bit.

When the ping for fleets went up there were three, which filled up pretty quickly.  I had to leave one to get both characters in the same fleet.  We were told to have at least 60K of isotopes, the fuel that capital ships expend for jump travel, to be sure we could make it home.  I had 100K on each of my capitals, because I had TWO capital ships up in Pure Blind, an Apostle and a Ninazu.

The Apostle had been in Pure Blind for a Reavers deployment that never really came together.  It turns out that if your SIG leader is also the coalition leader, then your SIG doesn’t end up doing much… though we are always around for special tasks.

The Ninazu, meanwhile, is what I flew up to this deployment, a fleet hangar full of sub caps, most of which I never undocked.  So it goes.

The move op home was… well… exceptionally smooth.  It is almost like we’ve learned something since the trail of tears and the doomed convoy op at KVN-36 back in the day.

The classic Trail of Tears move op, an obligatory reminder for every cap move op

Once in the fleet there was already a cyno target in the MOTD.  We were told to undock and jump right away.

That put us at another Keepstar where we waited a bit for red timers to count down, then it was time to undock and jump again.

Jumping from the undock

We had to stop along the way at a couple of Fortizars, which meant that the supercarriers and titans had to sit out on tether while the rest of us docked up.

Landing on a Fortizar

Fortunately, the capital ship bumping mechanics have changed over the years.  I remember back in Delve in 2012 witnessing two titans bumping at a POS and that causing one of the titans to be flung more than a hundred of kilometers out of the safety of the forcefield.

Sent way down town

Now, while there is still bumping and you can get pushed off of tether quite easily, bumps are not that crazy.

Supers around a Fortizar in Cloud Ring

The whole thing was very low key, though I was sitting in the No Chatter channel which meant I only heard orders from the fleet commander, Apple Pear, about when to dock, undock, and jump.

I spent the intervals while we waited for jump timers to run down playing Civ II.  ManicTime says I spent a lot more time playing that than in EVE Online during the move op, which is a good sign for a move op in my opinion.

Apple Pear was encouraging people to get at least as far as J5A-IX in Fountain on the move, because that would put them back in friendly space.  Also, there was a surprise for us once we gated from Cloud Ring into that system in Fountain.

We got through and were bubbled on the gate, which is usually a serious faux pas on a capital move op.  Cap pilots get very anxious when unexplained bubbled pop up.  And then we were told to lock up a titan with the pilot Voltran and shoot him.  He wasn’t broadcast in our fleet and I couldn’t find him, get him locked up, and drop some drones because he was dead before I cold get my act together.

Voltran destroyed

Apparently Voltran was one of Pandemic Horde’s big spies in our super capital group and we were using this moment to purge him.  The bubbles were up to keep him from getting away.  It all happened so fast I didn’t even get a screen shot of the explosion, just the greasy smudge of smoke in space where his Avatar had been.

What remains of Voltran is a dissipating cloud of black smoke

If you go find his character in game you will see that he did, indeed, end up in Pandemic Horde once he was purged.  I would link his EVE Who profile, but the API end points are still disabled, so nothing is getting updated.

Other spies were reported purged as well, but none so dramatically.

Then it was to the Keepstar to wait for another jump timer.  We had two more jumps until we ended up in Delve on a Keepstar one jump from 1DQ1-A.  We were left there, but that was fine.  I had a long jump timer at that point and there is a safe cyno on the 1DQ Keepstar most days.  I came back later that evening and jumped myself home.

I ended up using about 47K isotopes, oxygen for the Ninazu and helium for the Apostle, because each NPC empire powers their jump drives with their own special fuel.  I am sure that makes logistics lots of fun.

Now we are back at home.  I have a couple of ships and two jump clones still up in Pure Blind should something happen, but most of my assets are now back down in Delve.

Friday Bullet Points about EVE Online before Tax Weekend

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Here we are on the weekend before US Federal and most US State income taxes are due.  April 15th is the tax day, but this year it falls on a Saturday, so that means we have until Tuesday to get our taxes in.

Unless you live in a county where a Federal disaster was declared.  I live in such a county.  The power was out for 7 days over the course of the last month at my house due to storm conditions related to a “cyclonic bomb” or something.  As such, I don’t have to file my taxes until October.  But I am filing them this weekend because we’re getting a small refund this year.  Somehow I mistakenly managed to pay almost exactly the right amount of taxes in 2022.

All of which has NOTHING to do with EVE Online, which are what my bullet points are about today.

  • New Launcher Beta

If you asked me what EVE Online needed, a new launcher wouldn’t have made the cut.  Then again, after having just patched up LOTRO after a 7 month hiatus, the importance of an up to date launcher was once again driven home.

Anyway, CCP has a new launcher in the wings that you can read about here.

Part of EVE Evolved

One of the new features of the launcher is the ability to set up launch groups to get multiple accounts up and running on one action, which is such an EVE Online feature.  Is there another MMO launcher that handles your logins at an account level rather than at a character level, that supports multiple accounts active in the same launcher?  I cannot think of one at the moment.

  • Monument Reminder

I mentioned this in a post a couple of weeks back, but I though I would throw in a reminder because… well, this post was feeling a bit thin without it.  CCP is redoing the names on the monument and if you were not previously on it and want to be, you need to have and active Omega account on 6 May 2023.

The EVE Online monument

That date is rapidly approaching.   And yes, I know that CCP is playing the Fear of Missing Out card here in a very direct and obvious way… and it will probably work.  The PCU probably won’t move much, but Hilmar will get to report to Pearl Abyss that Omega accounts went up and something about MAUs.  But if you’re on the ball you can get away with the $5 three day visitors pass on the 5th to get yourself covered.

I just hope the are engraving the names into material that will last longer than 10 years this time.

  • EVE Online Player Steals In-game Assets… Again

This is just a regular thing in New Eden, though I will admit that this person went through a slightly different path, leveraging the arcane, under utilized, and often little understood corporation mechanics in EVE Online.

Corporations are to EVE Online what guilds are to most other MMOs, but EVE takes that a step further and has the ability to have shares and voting rights and things like that.  This allowed somebody to infiltrate a corp, vote themselves into power because the corp leaders were not paying attention, kick all the other directors, and then loot about 130 billion ISK in cash and 2 trillion ISK in assets.

This has been, of course, made into a headline declaring the loss to be valued at $22,309, which I am sure gave some crypto bro a surge of adrenaline.  This is the game they want to tax.  The irony is that this theft pretty much models the way the “code is law” has been exploited in the blockchain world in order to steal assets… except it isn’t stealing if if is allowed, now is it?  The code is law!

Anyway, I have seen two detailed reports on the story, which you can find linked below:

EVE players will get up to trouble.

  • The Next Fraternity Keepstars

After the month long battle for the Fraternity Keepstar in X47, which culminated in its destruction earlier this week, the question has been what will happen next.  Fraternity and its allies have fallen back to Tribute and do not seem ready to go on the offensive.  B2 Coalition and the Imperium however have found another flank, going after two Fraternity Keepstars located in 92D-OI and WLF-D3, which stand on the approaches in Venal, the heavily farmed Guristas held NPC null sec region.

Fortizars have already been anchored in anticipation of assaults on these structures.  However, Fraternity isn’t keep to lose them and, on the first set of armor timers, actually got on early, established control of the entry gates into the system, causing B2 and the Imperium to stand down.  But the usual calculus applies: The attackers only have to win once, the defenders have to win every time.

  • Monthly Economic Report

The MER for March 2023 has been released by CCP and I am not going to do a blog post about it.  I have written monthly posts about the MER for more than six years now and they are kind of a lot of work.  They are also boring, if the blog stats are any indication.  Few read those posts, almost nobody ever has a comment, CCP already makes a bunch of nice charts if you are interested enough, and honestly you can find better analysis from Angry Mustache over at r/eve or from Arrendis in the official forum thread, which is why I link to those two locations every month.

I might write something about destruction.  That is a bit more interesting, especially with a war on.  But I’ll leave off the MER for now, so here are the usual links if you want to delve into it on your own:

And so it goes.  I am going to go file my taxes this evening so I can claim my $212 refund.  Maybe I’ll activate another account and get a new name on the monument with my windfall.