Metagaming in EVE - Page 24

Yesterday, RKZ had their big 13:00 formup. They got 70 capitals together, jumped them into 5V, then dithered around and jumped them out for fear of us destroying their capfleet a second time. Then they dithered around. There was a lot of time spent with our scouts just watching their fleet do nothing. At last, they spammed 5 towers in our H74 station system in Querious, but they didn't take the jammer down. It has been a few days now since RKZ has actually reinforced a POS - the P4 R64 - and that was with -A- help. The last time RKZ solo-reinforced a tower successfully? It's happened, but it's been a while. I'd have to look it up.

One could interpret the H74 action and their dithering as part of a grand plan of delay to keep us occupied while they get Sov3 in 49-, which is approaching soon. While they delay, our allies had a welp day in Tenerifis, with TCF losing a Titan to a classic -A-/ROL 'oops you jumped solo to a tower' ambush. The most positive spin you could put on RKZ's efforts is that they are distracting us, hoping for A/ROL to come back once 49 hits sov3 and the second front is gone. Thankfully, we have intel assets to tell us that the indecision was genuine, though the de facto impact may be the same as the 'grand plan' concern.

For our part, we sieged all nine of the hostile towers in H74 (4 were there previously and never destroyed), captured the JZL R64 from RKZ for KIA (RKZ now only owns 5 R64s, all are in RF), and sieged M0O. PL ninja-sieged the Tukhanas EXE R64 and it comes out in late pacific time, which has consistently resulted in dead hostile moon miners.

Today eurotime will mainly focus around RKZ repping. They have a ****load of towers to rep in H74 as well as some of their remaining R64s. With the situation being ugly in Tenerifis we must refocus our attentions on 49. Where previously it was a better idea to let the second front buy us time to remove the RKZ R64 network, now we're presented with a strategic choice of H74 or 49. 49 is the obvious choice.

OVERVIEW:

At this moment, the course of the war hangs in the balance. We are at the utmost risk and our complacency threatens to doom us all. The situation in Tenerifis is extremely unstable, and the TCF/XIX front which is occupying -A- could collapse at any moment, bringing about the prospect of 1200 hostiles in a jammed 49-.

For more than 14 days we have ****d our way across Querious and Period Basis, and after Sunday is it apparent that - even in the face of a concerted counterattack by RKZ, SE, Coven and AAA - goons think that things are on the up and up, and that it is safe to rest or slack off. We have done well, this is true. We have not lost a capital fleet, we have captured a nexus of stations in Period Basis and we have ripped the RKZ R64 list down to five from sixteen. But due to events beyond our control, in the next few days it is all the more critical that we accelerate the **** schedule.

War can turn on a dime, and in Tenerifis that dime is turning. It's far enough away that it is difficult to achieve clarity about the TCF/XIX/ATLAS/AAA war, but it is possible that tomorrow 46DP will be lost. It is also possible that 46DP will be defended and Sov3 for XIX secured. By this point in the overview, the average goon is probably wondering "How can this be, when things have been overall so rosy in our war updates until now?" Easy: In the past two days, since TCF lost their titan, our allies have had their towers sieged and hostile participation has surged. All it takes is one slip.

For the next few days, until the situation stabilizes noticeably, we need everyone who can fly a BS in a BS. We need everyone who can fly a capital in a capital, and we need you in the fleet whenever possible.

Now, front by front.

DELVE FRONT:

This isn't much of a front. 8RQ flipped to Sov4, joining J-L. In the next week or so, much of the rest of OUR REGION will flip to constellation sov and have capitals. This is p. chill.

Two points of hostile interest in Delve remain: 1-SMEB for RKZ and MO0 for EXE. Both are logistics points but lack R64s, so these are sieged on an ad hoc basis.

There is some random alliance of farmers called 'Drunk and Stoned' with 2 nonstation systems in Delve; we've ignored them for the whole time and will continue to ignore them until more important targets are dead and gone.


PERIOD BASIS FRONT:

In the past two weeks, the bulk of our efforts and our rewards have involved this region. Beach Boys and Frontal Impact have been purged. All but one R64 (RJ3H) of nine have been captured for our allies.

Executive Outcomes and their three stations are all that remain; their jump bridge network has been cut down to a stub. Their cynogen network to Empire was snipped more than a week ago, such that they have great difficulty getting anything bigger than a carrier in and out of the region. In Aridia today, EXE lost their only R64 to Pandemic Legion.

Responding to these ugly realities, EXE Corp 'Dark Rising Shadow' was scouted today tearing down their towers. Perhaps others will be following, soon.

QUERIOUS FRONT:

Querious has gotten more interesting with the first deployment of new RKZ towers in a while. In non-station news, we have cut down RKZ's R64s to only four in this region: 2x in 49, C-7, and P4.

H74:

Beginning on Saturday, RKZ has deployed 5 towers in H74 each day since, to a present total of 19. Four of those towers were in the system and online, and had never been cleaned up before the front became active again. We have responded by counterspamming with 5 each day ourselves, and today we said '**** it' and our allies spammed smalls on the remaining open moons, blocking out RKZ from further attempts to even up the odds. At present there are 26 GS friendly large towers, 19 RKZ large towers, and 11 small friendly moon-blockers, and 3 allied larges.

One of the interesting aspects of H74 is that it has exposed RKZ's inability to take down a cynojammer. During the weekend offensive, it has been Stain Empire taking down jammers, not RKZ.

49:

Before Tenerifis turned ugly, we didn't care at the strategic level if this system was jammed. About two days after we and our allies agreed that concentrating on RKZ R64s and Period Basis was more important, the Tenerifis front soured and now we see 49 as a problem.
Around May 2nd or 3rd, this system will go to RKZ Sov3. Whether we are able to get into 49- and hellpurge it depends almost entirely upon the willigness of our capital pilots to show up in numbers and shoot towers in an intensive hellpurge.

In the last war update I congratulated our capitals for their turnout; they seem to have taken this to mean that things are safe and that they can ride bikes. On Sunday we had nine capitals in a us tz fleet. Nine.

Show up and shoot the towers or it gets jammed, and soon. Simple.

3BK:

We don't really care. Lowest priority. It was lost weeks ago and it has no strategic value besides draining RKZ's fuel coffers.

TENERIFIS FRONT:

This is a cluster****. Right now it isn't going our way, because of the TCF titan loss and Atlas blobbing XIX in the us timezone. It could go on for weeks or it could utterly collapse inside of a day - thus the urgency in Querious. Right now the fighting is centered around 46DP.

NEAR-TERM STRATEGIC GOALS:

*Wake up our capitals, force them to log on, shoot them up with modafinil.
*Begin nightly Delve-style capital hellpurges of 49 and H74.
*Take the five remaining R64s from RKZ; keep them in rf until nuked.
*Keep Delve secure while Sov4 happens.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP:

1. Show up on ops. Capswarm, we need you now more than ever.
2. Stay on Jabber for impromptu op announcements.
3. Subcaps: fly Fleet BS and Interdictors on ops.
4. If you can't fly these ships yet, train for them.


4/27/09 UPDATE

The last update was Sunday morning at 8am EST; I wandered off to go to my sailing lesson, and came back to find that everything had gone to hell while simultaneously being on fire and covered in ants. Capswarm jabber was full of moaning, whining, and the tearing out of hair. It seems that our enemies actually did something, and we're so unused to this that we decided to put on diapers and BAWWWWWWWWW our way into uselessness.

What actually happened: Stain Empire showed up and accomplished feats which most 0.0 alliances can manage, but RKZ hasn't been able to pull off for weeks. Stain took down the jammer in ZXJ and reinforced the bridge towers there with a BS fleet, then did the same in H74. We short-timed those towers to come out in US time. We also short-timed the towers with were hit in H74. All were repped without incident. RKZ dropped five more towers in H74.

In the US timezone, it seems that Capswarm self-flaggelation reached a fever-pitch, because only nine capitals showed up in US time. To those of you who were not gay babbys and repped our towers, thank you. Subcapital goons blew off steam in ******* gangs.

Meanwhile, our allies accomplished **** while we were busy putting on eyeliner, donning a keffiyah, slipping into women's jeans and running around on single-gear bikes. RAWR sieged 1-SMEB and hit everything there into reinforced. One of the towers was kited and we got a nice us tz timer out of it. Pandemic Legion blew up the EXE Tukhanas R64, denying that alliance its only source of R64 income.

So that was Sunday and it was a ****ing embarassment. Time was we'd have jammer pingpong and spam wars without people running for the hills and being shocked that war has an ebb and flow. I know that RKZ are an incompetent shadow of their former selves who can't down a jammer, but for ****'s sake stop being surprised that other alliances such as Stain can pull it off.

~~~by contrast~~~, Monday has been full of delicious ****.

Shortly after downtime, Imperian noticed DRISE, a corp in EXE, yanking down their tower mods in preparation for evacuation.

Without Stain Empire to take jammers down for them and wipe their asses after going ****oo, babby RKZ couldn't manage to down the H74 jammer - they sort of flirted with it, gave up, ran away, and opted for their daily spam via a jump freighter through a realspace gate handing out towers to haulers. This caused the coalition to get all kinds of and we engaged their fleet and reamed them. The fight was at around 20:00, and by 21:00 the allied capital fleet was sieging H74. Meanwhile, we spammed the remaining moons in the system with GS towers and allied placeholders; 15 new friendly towers went up today.

In 'ha ha you suck' news, x10z2 lost his Crow to a Vigil. In 'oh god my fingers hurt' news, I think I've mashed out about 3500 spaceship words today, between my column and this thread. Jesus christ.

Morale management is something which is often confusing for alliance leaders. Some people try the RED PEN CTA stuff and it almost never works. In general, it seems wise to avoid negative reinforcement. But sometimes, you snap and call your entire alliance a bunch of gay babby emo ***gots, and suddenly your turnout spikes massively and you 0wn. This is what happened yesterday.

Yesterdays update covered until around 21:00 and then some, so it's relatively short for me today - just what happened in US TZ and downtime to now. Our cap group sieged H74 until it took a break around midnight evetime, while I was penning this thread. When I came out of my induced haze I discovered caps on break and no sieging.

After mashing the broadcast button a few times, we got **** together and capswarm decided to pop Val Streth's cap op cherry. From 1:00 eve until 8:00 EVE, Val and the fleet had huge turnout (120+, bigged in about a week and a half) and hellpurged H74, leaving only one hostile tower unreinforced. They destroyed the RKZ tower which came out at 7:30.

At downtime the coalition had its act together and we raced a bunch of allies into H74 along with Titans and proceeded to nuke a downtime-timed RKZ pos. We're on track to kill 4+ more H74 RKZ towers and purge 1-SMEB while we're at it if we maintain eurotime control.

On the Tenerifis front, by contrast, things are ugly. As best as I can tell, it looks like XIX is losing towers to -A-, which means that 46DP will be lost. This only increases the urgency we face on this side of the galaxy.

An excellent day. By forming up smartly immediately after downtime, the coalition blobbed H74 and fended off RKZ's feeble attempts to break into the system and defend their towers. We destroyed all nine of the H74 towers that came out of reinforced, passing on the 1-SMEB towers which came out at the same time (1-SMEB has no real strategic value).

We commenced sieging 49- around 22:00. I was at yoga being a metrosexual so I missed this block of events, but when I returned from twisting my body into various pretzellike configurations, 6 towers had been bashed into RF in 49, including one of the two R64s and the -A- and ROL staging towers.

US TZ turnout was very strong with 150+ goons around. We killed and replaced a 1-SMEB tower which had been kited and then reinforced a few more 1-S towers while we waited for the tower we anchored to online safely. Then we hit R64s in RJ3H, P4 and C-7 before apparently calling it a night. These R64s all come out of reinforced at the same time as the 49- towers, so if we get blobbed in 49 we have the opportunity to take out some of the last R64s on the list.

Downtime, KIA dropped 5 towers in z-m5a1, EXE's refinery outpost, before and after downtime. EXE has stripped down a number of towers in their sov4 constellation since we had last scouted it, something like 17 towers 'lighter' across the board; z-m5a1 only had 9 EXE towers, and now those are contrasted with 10 KIA friendlies. Imperian of RAWR spammed three nonstation systems in the constellation to snap constellation sov.

46DP was lost yesterday. That front is in a lot of trouble, which means that -A- could be back in Querious today, or they could press north into Detorid in reprisal against XIX. Either situation is bad, but we'd prefer to have -A- back in 49 rather than invading Death's home territory. Our thoughts and prayers to Space Jesus (a la FIX) are with our brosefs, and we will be affixing a yellow ribbon to our pickup truck in support.

Yesterday, like the day previous, was a smashing success. Specifically, we smashed 12 RKZ towers in H74, bringing the hostile tower count in H74 to zero and ending their offensive entirely. We killed one EXE tower in M0O, replacing it, and sending this intended bridge system to neutral sov as of downtime. We destroyed a RKZ tower in NU4, removing their only Sov within bridge range of 49. We then headed to Period Basis, downed the jammer on Z-M5 (EXE's refinery outpost) and proceeded to purge the system, getting several poorly-timed towers which will be exiting RF in late eurotime.

-A- tried to assist RKZ in H74 yesterday and suffered what may be the highest loss in a titan attack in EVE - we counted 135 ships killed by our allies four titans, not counting pods. I'd be really interested in seeing a 'doomsday ranking' if someone is in the mood to do the legwork on the research.

As a practical matter we are highly unlikely to prevent 49 from hitting Sov3. We hit 49 and reinforced 6 towers the other day, and this has successfully drawn -A- off TCF and XIX after the collapse in 46DP. They had a CTA for this morning after downtime and are holding Kenny's hand as they rep towers. Hopefully this will buy our allies some time to recover.

As I write this, we have just succeeded in killing the last RKZ R64 in Period Basis, in RJ3H. Having expected the hostiles to blob 49 to rep their towers, we had RF'd several R64s which were timed for the same moment. Because of the situation in Tenerifis and the quagmire in 49, over the past few days we greatly increased our pressure on the Period Basis front. The strategic idea is to clear the region out entirely, allowing us to bring Morsus Mihi, ZAF and KIA entirely to bear on Querious without being distracted by rabble like EXE. This has worked out very well for us so far, in large part because of RKZ's utter lack of concern for the health or defense of their pets.

Now is a good time to discuss the implications of 49 hitting Sov3 on or around May 2nd.

Shadoo in particular is very angry that goons seem to put so much credence in jammers one way or another, and he really wants to ram home the point that this doesn't matter much (what with PL being jammer-takedown fetishists). However, he has difficulty communicating without his text coming out as BNUNNLERs, so it falls to me.

The greatest fear this inspires in the common goon is that we will not be able to fuel our towers. This is not true for two reasons. One, we can take down the jammer ourselves in US time; unlike RKZ, we are a jammer-capable alliance. Two, our logistics ninjas have trained covert cynos and blackops bs purely for shooting cloaking blockade runners full of fuel/stront into jammed systems. Militarily, we should be able to handle the jammer in our primetime easily enough, though in eurotime we will face the sort of 'titan lol' situations which obliterated -A- and RKZ in H74 yesterday.

I would expect an uptick in RKZ morale as they try to convince themselves that Sov3 in 49 will end the war/turn the war, despite their crushing loss of 21 towers in H74 and the imminent loss of Period Basis. They have only four R64s left; we must maintain pressure.

So after our success yesterday taking out the RJ3H R64, as mentioned in the previous update, we proceeded assume a reactive stance, ready to deal with whatever RKZ/A threw at us. Our enemies didn't accomplish a damn thing; they had a big blob in 49- and just sat around repping their towers. They had a spike in turnout in late euro/early US tz because of the May Day holidays in Europeland, meaning that these guys have a long weekend to sit around and play spaceship games on. They attempted to kite a tower of ours in 49-, but we chased them off and repped it.

Come US TZ, things are getting started kind of slowly. I come back later in the evening to find no headway made in sieging and Xttz's titan being bubbled in a ****star by a Kenny fleet. Yay. After mashing broadcast butan we kill the Kenny fleet, get Xttz safe, and begin sieging. DBRB has 160 goons, we're in good shape - then DBRB loses his connection. All of our normal leaders at this hour have been drinking heavily. We toss Val Streth a badge and tell him to fight crime - hit the four RKZ R64s, purge 49.

We proceed to lose a dread in 49 while sieging a tower and murdering Yaay's fleet, but apparently the guy didn't broadcast or announce he was in trouble until he popped. We hit the two 49 R64s, then C-7, but we didn't get the P4- RKZ R64.

Here are some views of the op from people who were actually there:

[11:00:06 AM] the_mittani: ok goons, I am about to write a very angry war update about how we really failed to do much last night
[11:00:12 AM] the_mittani: please tell me why i am wrong
[11:01:59 AM] jaroslav: reinforced 3 or 4 towers in 49- and the c-7 and p4 highends afaik
[11:02:08 AM] jaroslav: bob had like 100 doods
[11:02:11 AM] jaroslav: in us prime
[11:02:16 AM] the_mittani: i dont' see p4 on the list
[11:02:23 AM] jaroslav: maybe they didnt do that one then
[11:10:09 AM] mister_vee: i had to go to bed after 49- because it was 7 am my time, but 'the big thing' was basically sieging 6-1 and 6-2 in 49- as a **** you to the kenny fleet
[11:10:23 AM] mister_vee: lots of people logged off after that, val took people to siege one more moon and that was it
[11:11:01 AM] theadj: yea **** got started real late
[11:11:16 AM] theadj: i had to bail after we got 6-1 and 6-2 done, and that took forever
[11:16:45 AM] theadj: it was a cluster****, I probably should have just jumped over and took fleet
[11:20:06 AM] the_mittani: i hate when these things line up with my yoga days
[11:20:16 AM] the_mittani: because then i feel like if i'm not around to hold hands **** goes wrong
[11:21:38 AM] theadj: i was kinda surprised they had so many
[11:22:13 AM] theadj: it was all show though, they weren't interested in a fight
[11:28:37 AM] mister_vee: i think we did ok theadj
[11:28:51 AM] mister_vee: val, karttoon and me kinda ran it with help from you ? i guess
[11:28:58 AM] mister_vee: problem was people didnt stay around after 49-
[11:29:07 AM] theadj: That **** took forever
[11:29:16 AM] theadj: and we lost a dread to yaay, that's unacceptable
[11:29:22 AM] theadj: we killed 60% of his fleet but still
[11:29:37 AM] mister_vee: that dude never said a word he was primaried or something
[11:35:39 AM] theadj: Yea I don't really blame anyone
[11:35:50 AM] theadj: the participation from kenny was shocking and we were kinda holding our ****s beforehand
[11:36:08 AM] theadj: with no real op posted we got a pretty good sized gang together, we just had some communication issues
[11:36:40 AM] mister_vee: i dont think you should be all too negative, we jumped our fleet from 30 to 160 after the broadcast, got goons a lot of kills and they had fun
[11:46:32 AM] theadj: it was pretty fun actually, we didn't get as much accomplished as we needed to but got to shoot ***gots
[11:46:36 AM] theadj: and thats just as important sometimes

Karttoon's view:

[11:20:44 AM] karttoon: Last night wasn't Goons fault completely
[11:21:26 AM] karttoon: We started off with bad participation, when Kenny was kiting a ****star below shields, we rounded up the troops to fight them off - including dding about 30 of them
[11:23:23 AM] karttoon: Then we had like 5 caps around so we really couldn't siege
[11:23:46 AM] karttoon: xttz was semi tackled, so we broadcasted and got 150 goons on to kill kenny again
[11:25:17 AM] karttoon: PL was around, so we got our caps in as well - something like 50 total combined caps
[11:25:44 AM] karttoon: DBRB disconnected (and I havn't seen him since), so I scrambled Val and we FCed together to hit the high ends there, and 1 other **** star
[11:25:52 AM] karttoon: I wanted to do more, but Shamis said PL had to sleep
[11:26:09 AM] karttoon: After that we ninjaed another high end but it was 2AM, so we called it after that
[11:26:23 AM] karttoon: It wasn't an ideal evening, but yelling at goons would be pretty dumb
[11:27:11 AM] karttoon: Especially when we didn't have op threads posted for anything
[11:27:12 AM] grayton: I blame karttoon's meebo name
[11:27:16 AM] grayton: it caused all the issues last night
[11:27:18 AM] karttoon: Well that's half the problem
[11:31:23 AM] karttoon: The point I'm trying to make is that we actually accomplished a lot
[11:31:30 AM] karttoon: Kenny slowed us down with a 160 man US TZ fleet
[11:31:59 AM] karttoon: 5 towers into reinforced, including 3 high ends wasn't a bad night - Only one isn't reinforced right now
[11:32:17 AM] karttoon: + saving a tower and getting some decent fights

At right after downtime, a GS 49- tower which wasn't timed comes out of RF and is nuked by ****ty pets. Whoops! We have no one in command after downtime. It goes down without a contest.

RKZ forms up a big blob and moves to Z-M5A1, where they have been sieging KIA towers in that EXE refinery system. We're still at 10 KIA to 7 EXE towers, but RKZ has been emboldened by their holiday and our lack of effort last night to actually put caps on the table.

So, while I'm a little unhappy that we didn't do as well as we could have last night (ideally we'd have hit P4 and more 49 towers), it seems like it was a combination of bad luck at the leadership level (DBRB losing connection, me being gone) combined with an unexpected level of RKZ resistance in our primetime, rather than anything that I should get all Shadoo about.