Metagaming in EVE - Page 28

OVERVIEW

If our enemies were competent, we could have been in a lot of trouble this week. That impression is reinforced when you look back at the OP of last week's update thread. In theory, the collapse of the Tenerifis front could have left us in Deep **** (tm). In practice, TCF and XIX were able to regroup without much trouble after the loss of 46DP, -A-'s fleets got doomsdayed repeatedly in Querious, and RKZ and EXE spent several critical days wibbling about their strategy regarding Period Basis. At first they wanted to cede PB without a fight and concentrate in 49, but as soon as we began dropping towers they changed their mind and wanted to fight for EXE's space. Not like it mattered; we crushed them, and as I write this ther Period Basis front is almost entirely purged.

What matters now is consistency of effort from our membership and capital fleet. We have achieved dominance in the euro timezone repeatedly this week. If we finish off the last EXE station in Period Basis and bring this level of concentration to Querious, we will be in good shape to ruin RKZ forever. If we choke and allow them breathing room, they will recover. Simple.

Now, front by front.

PERIOD BASIS:

Over the course of three days, EXE has been transformed from the proud defender of a Sov4 constellation to a greasy, contemptible stain in the road. Z-M5 has only one hostile tower left at this moment, and in a few hours it's likely that it will have nothing. G-Q was hellpurged and is neutral sov as of today. All that remains is the Sov4 capital system of PA-VE3. RAWR spammed the nonstation systems in the constellation several days ago, so they will flip to neutral or RAWR when the 7 day claim ticker is over. This may be quite possible the fastest that an actively defended Sov4 constellation has fallen in the history of the game.

RKZ no longer owns any R64s in Period Basis.

With the fall of PA-VE3, there will be no more 'Period Basis Front'. This will allow ZAF, KIA and RAWR - the primary coalition forces invested in this region - to focus entirely upon Querious.

DELVE FRONT:

1-SMEB is periodically sieged by us when we run out of other RKZ targets to shoot. It has 6 moons, 4 RKZ, 2 LWTAX. If we swing one moon we'll ensure that RKZ doesn't get Sov3 there, though at this point we've amply demonstrated how irrelevant jammers are for RKZ.

Every constellation we stole from RKZ is at Sov4 now. This is significant. The 'new' constellation we built around NOL is ticking away.
EXE still had 4 towers in M0O to our 4. This is a pretty low-priority target with EXE's collapse but it's there.

QUERIOUS FRONT:

RKZ lost the C-7 R64 yesterday to our combined forces in euro prime. RKZ now owns only 3 R64s, one in P4 and two in 49. The P4 comes out tomorrow and we hope to pick it up; even if we don't, it is very simple for us to keep a mere three towers in two systems perma-sieged, and we will do so to deny RKZ their alliance-level income.

While I was drafting this update, we invaded 49- in euro prime and took out the RKZ cynojammer while it was guarded by a Titan. We simply tanked the DD, downed the jammer, cyno'd in our caps and have prepared to hellpurge the system.

With the annihilation of RKZ's counteroffensive in H74, you can expect us to ratchet up the pressure in 49 and ignore 3BK. Hopefully we will get some good results, though we should anticipate this to be a long, unpleasant slog.

If we get pushed back from 49, which is always a possibility, the collapse of resistance in Period Basis means that we will begin hitting pet targets of opportunity, getting rid of all the wretched little towers owned by quislings like Skunk-Works and CIC in OUR REGION. There's a lot of cleaning up to do, and it's got to happen.

UPDATE

At first, I thought this was going to be a very lengthy update, but the destruction of EXE was so total during the last 30 hours or so that it has made my job easy. G-Q was hellpurged and has no hostile towers left; Z-M only has one. Many of these towers popped over the course of the day, and it was sort of a continuous process of ****.

Around 17:00 yesterday the coalition took a break from obliterating EXE to seize and capture the C-7 R64 in a series of running battles, the highlight of which was the repeated doomsdaying of Sir Molle. How's them apples? In every engagement, we wiped the floor with RKZ; by this point in the day's campaign, the conflic began to seem like more like an execution than a war.

After obliterating C-7, we went back to purging Z-M and G-Q. At downtime G-Q went neutral and was captured by KIA. After downtime, more Z-M towers were killed. The last one comes out in euro time today, and we intend to kill it if we can break away from sieging 49.

About an hour ago, we rammed our coalition fleet into 49- and downed the jammer there while it was guarded by a RKZ titan. Blowing off its doomsdays, we took out the jammer, brought our caps in, bubbled the gates and have commenced an all-day hellpurge. We have 37 hostile towers to chew through; it's time to get to work.

We had a big day yesterday, though there were some screwups. Z-M has 50 moons and with Sov4 bonuses, EXE gets a 2-day sov claim; after blowing the hell out of the system, we missed them dropping a single tower amidst all the chaos. Sadly, this means the system isn't neutral, but it doesn't matter because the KIA claim kicks in tomorrow.

After taking syscontrol of 49 early on, we proceeded to reinforce 25+ hostile towers in the system. Most notably, four of the RKZ towers were kited into US timezone. If we're on the ball, we should be able to seize control of them.

Unsurprisingly, RKZ called on ROL and -A- to bail them out, which we expect to happen every time we hit 49. They came en masse at 9:30 evetime to help Kenny rep, with a total of about 200 hostiles. That's less than I expected, but more than we could handle - especially since we seem to have burnt out our FCs last night and so no one is around to lead goons right now.

At downtime, RKZ dropped some new towers, focusing on R64s mostly. They spammed K-YI1L, ZAU and P4. Apparently this is necessary because RKZ hasn't successfully downed a jammer in weeks, so maybe they see this as a precursor to capturing these R64s. Either way, it's an indication that only having 3 constantly reinforced R64s is hurting them.

More seriously, RKZ dropped 5 towers in I1Y, an office outpost in Querious. They have 5 to our 10, now.