Metagaming in EVE - Page 32

She wanted a baby and I wanted a space empire. I took on an 19 year commitment because my eyes were on the prize and I expected that I had built a foundation which was unassailable. Oh boy was I wrong.

OVERVIEW:

The 'massive RKZ offensive' which was going to put us lil goonie nubs in our place was preceded by a tsunami of fake intel-glurge. On the eve of the I1Y invasion, 'concerned contacts' - random NPC alts and blind emails - came out of the woodwork to offer us 'intel' designed to make us shake in our boots.

Originally by: Carnicx, EXE Director, Wednesday


Obviously, ~patience~ needs help in the form of nerd testosterone.

RKZ's strategy quickly became apparent. They hoped to steamroll I1Y and roll on to ED and continue to grow momentum. While doing this, they had sicced their pets to spam our bridge systems in hopes of overloading our logistics - by the by, join GSOL and help them pres butan, or this might happen.

The first day (5/14) of the prophecied offensive, RKZ and -A- steamed into I1Y, locked down the system, and reinforced everything. Molle bragged to his troops that he would 'show us what a hellpurge really is', yet another amusing case of our enemies adopting our own nomenclature while railing against us. Come US time, we summoned a massive coalition fleet and repped our towers, then sieged everything RKZ had dropped.

Day two, 5/15. A combination of bloodlust from PL and GS capital jocks and Xttz's stroke of brilliance hands RKZ an old-fashioned capital welp. While attempting to down our jammer in early eurotime with dreads they had logged in-system, we kill 10 for no losses, then whack another three carriers in post-hotdrop engagements. We achieve system control early and don't let up, which is good because we have 31 towers to rep. An all-night vigil ensues, and all our **** gets repped. We lose syscontrol at downtime, which brings us to today: the RKZ offensive has run into a brick wall, and we find ourselves needing to sustain our defense.

BRIDGE SPAM FRONT:

Tormentum has spammed A-B with 5 towers (5/15). EXE has spammed MKD with 5, and Frontal Impact has spammed ZXJ with 5 (5/14). As of today, RKK has spammed 6 towers in 4-2UXV (5/16). Southern Connection has spammed KIA's system in M1BZ and KIA has counterspammed.

As I write this, GSOL has responded to these spams simply by counterspamming as these are all high-moon systems. As best as I can tell, there was supposed to be much, much more spam from KenGoku, but they outsourced the task to pets who aren't as swift as they would like.

R64 SPAM FRONT:

Before their big push on Thursday, RKZ had spammed a bunch of R64 systems to break sov, because they are incapable of downing jammers without -A- there. ZAU and P4 have flipped to RKZ sov, we successfully defended Q2. Note that merely because they have system sov does not mean that RKZ has these R64s; RKZ only owns 3 R64s, one in P4 and two in 49.

Later than usual, because it's been a busy couple of days!

Shortly after I penned my last update, RKZ made a play for our jammer in I1Y. They put 10 of their dreads who were logged in system at the jammer; we lined up a present for them. Moments before it would have been incapped, Xttz offlined our own jammer and a PL/GS capfleet hotdropped the RKZ group. They died - 10 dreads worth, to no losses on our side. Xttz scooped the offline jammer into his carrier's hold, docked in station, repaired it to 100% for free, warped back to the jammer pos and re-onlined it. We then twisted the knife, racking up three more RKZ carrier kills in quick succession.

After this stunning reversal we retained control of I1Y from early eurotime until downtime. This was a good thing, because all 30 of our towers came out of reinforced, and if we didn't rep them all, we could lose the system to Molle's latest steamroller/pendulum/whatever gimmick. But we held and we repped and many laughs were had.

Until downtime, when everything went to hell! It was a short downtime, only 20 minutes, and when the server came back up our 250-man fleet realized that they had no FCs. None, not a one, from any coalition alliance; everyone had burned out from staying up all night, too excited after the capital ****. Welp! Hostiles got syscontrol and repped their towers. They brought about 600 to the system; after their last tower was repped at 22:00, they logged off en masse. We took over and began sieging, starting the cycle of attrition warfare again.

New hostile spam today was 5 RKK towers before downtime in 4-2 in Querious, 1 RKK tower after. This is in the fakedelve section of Querious, and has no readily apparent strategic purpose. Maybe they want to drop three outposts in quick succession for us there? That would be a good present.

Since the last update, we stayed up late repping our towers in I1Y. We succeeded, though in the process we managed to lose a rorqual. Oops! We also kited one RKZ and one -A- tower into late euro/early US prime.

At downtime, hostiles went to ED- and began to siege it with impunity. Daveydweeb ran there to time it on two alts, only to discover that stront roles had been yanked from both! Scavok eventually got in there and saved the day, but we almost suffered a complete welp. Why did this madness happen?

[12:15:05 PM] the_mittani: i found out what happened
[12:15:05 PM] the_mittani: ugh
[12:15:35 PM] the_mittani: there was a 'why do we have 100 people with starbase roles when most of them aren't listed in the illum thread we keep track of these things in' freakout last night while i slept
[12:16:02 PM] the_mittani: so bosstess yanked all the roles from anyone not listed in the roles thread in illum

Oh well, whatever. As I write this, TRI and the NC are having a 100+ caps on each side slugfest in Venal, so here's hoping our guys win and send TRI packing. The NC has lost 6+ R64s to TRI so it has become a serious incursion up there, and hopefully it'll be decided after today. Apparently IRON and MH brought 180 caps themselves or something ridiculous. Why didn't we invite these guys to Delve? Yikes.

As for us, we need to get our **** together in eurotime and prevent RKZ from doing whatever it is they're up to, then save our towers tonight.

When we last left our heroes, they were still dealing with the hangover from the 5/16 'roles freakout'. Due to the nature of pos warfare, a ****up doesn't just hurt you, it sticks around for a few days as a friendly reminder of 'hey, you screwed up! hth'.

In the last update I hadn't explained what occurred in detail, because it wasn't entirely clear to me at the time. Since then we've restored most of the lost starbase roles, which is why we're able to actually time towers once more. Here's what went wrong.

In Illuminati, there is a thread where we keep track of who has what roles. Bureaucracy always is ditched in the name of expediency, and in emergency role-granting situations no one thinks about 'hey, we're supposed to post who we gave starbase to in this thread'. Over time, there was a natural accretion of unrecorded starbase roles - in fact, I suspect that most of the directors forgot this thread existed entirely.

In the early evening of 5/16 US time, Gramtar was running caps and noticed that a tower which he had timed had its timer radically changed by the time it was reinforced. Concerned, as he should have been, he emailed Vio and I, sounding the Spy Alarm. The Spy Alarm was false - Xttz had simply changed the timing on the towers in question but not bothered telling Gramtar, who is just a capital leader who happened to notice something fishy. Spy Alarm defused! Or not - the 'oh ****' PM was forwarded along to several other directors, lurking like little bombs full of panic and incorrect information. While I slept, the 'late night' director crew - bereft of Xttz or me (and we were unaware of the extra forwards of the email) discovered the warning of a starbase-level spy and yanked the roles of every character not properly listed in the aforementioned, oft-forgotten Illuminati record thread. While Daveydweeb apparently took this as a personal affront, he was one of some 39 characters to lose starbase.

Our timing ability was promptly and utterly ****ed. This is why you're having to deal with a 2-day+ strategic hangover, why towers are coming out at 8:00 evetime and we're scrambling to prevent incursions into ED. What could have been done differently? Procedure could have been remembered and followed - every role re-granted has now been added into the 'roles thread'. But that's an ambitious thing; when in the midst of 'oh **** surprise attack, get a timer' crises, it is only natural that the thread was forgotten. The 'Spy Alarm' had been thought defused, but lurking forwarded PMs had it resurface later in the evening. ****ty, ****ty luck, in other words. In the future we'll try to keep the starbase thread up to date, and I'll beg for more 'around downtime' timers to volunteer for Daitengu's GFFL group.

This is a long update because I've been out of pocket; I took a little break to watch STAR TREK like a big nerd.

Since the last update: TRI lost horribly to the NC in that gigantic cap fight. This is good news, as it was a brutal, crushing loss; this will likely free up our allies to make some new moves in the near future.

We repped an absolute ****ton of towers yesterday. We did not have control in early euro, but seized it by 23:00. Several small skirmishes in us time in I1Y saw a RKZ BS group nuked, then they gave up and reformed at 8:00. We ran around repping our stuff; GSOL valiantly continued to counterspam pet towering attempts against our jump bridge network. Where our stront timers may falter, our fuelers and tower-butaners have been relentless - hopefully more relentless than Reikoku turned out to be.

The 8:00 fight saw incredible turnout. We had 170 people in our allied fleet; while GS leadership may be ****ing up here and there, our member-level goons have been showing up even at incredibly crappy times. A huge fight ensued; unfortunately, we lost it after several running engagements. Five small towers were destroyed in I1Y and replaced with hostile larges. Whoops. A similar ugly spectre faces us tonight at 8:00, but with five large towers at risk rather than smalls. The hangover from the Roles Scare? Yeah, this is it.

Today ROL and SE showed up to help out -A- and RKZ. They sieged in I1Y but by now we actually had timers. There was a fight in ED- for two towers which came out at 22:00; much to my surprise, after the hostiles were able to take out the first, they dropped only a small there; they punted on the second tower. We assumed control and commenced repping.

In other Bad News, a poor timer saw the OGY R64, under RZR control, fall to RKZ today; this brings their R64 number to 4. Several of our R64s come out of reinforced in an hour or so; we must rep them or we're in deeper trouble.

Overall the situation in Querious is on a knife-edge. Due to the Spy Scare and our subsequent untimed towers, we lost 5 towers in I1Y last night and stand to lose five more in a few hours at 8:00. Now, more than ever, we need every goon in the heaviest ship possible in fleet with us.

Hanging out in GFGBS today it was pointed out to me that the average goon doesn't understand why Querious matters, much like it was a R64; I'm going to prepare a 'why this **** matters' thread and begin linking it in the OP of these war update with the other links so people know why the directorate keeps sperging about this region. Short version? It keeps our logistics running into delve, keeps our bridges to empire open, and is our buffer zone into Delve. Without Querious being under our control, Delve gets sieged. Individual systems have particular significance - for example, I1Y is a key empire logistics route, 3 jumps from hisec thereabouts, which is why it's important for us to keep it and to deny it to RKZ. More on this tomorrow

On May 19 2009 15:20 BeJe77 wrote:
It's more interesting to see what Triumvirate is doing then the big blob fest atm :D...So far this is one of their better reincarnations ...

Brick Squad: Has tons of former Road Kill remnants, even then they shot everything in sight minus a few allies they had like Atlas/Smash...not surprised they still doing the same ...They are based out of Stain if I recall correctly.

Goons: Well recently they haven't really had their shit together much could be because of various reasons and they have had their allies pull a lot of weight. Not surprised Mittani is bitching about it due to the fact their allies complain of their lack of participation ... If Darius does come back they may get their shit in order. The sooner the better tbh, can't have Kenzoku/-A- gain too much steam..

KIA: Surprised they are getting Period Basis tbh, but I guess goons want a "bit stronger" allies next to em to cover their asses...so i guess good deal for KIA/Goons either way...

The interesting thing other then the blob fest is that a lot of the NC pets have been joining up and grabbing land, they have done quite a bit..

With MH getting Cloud Ring for free via merger, WI getting Germinate from KIA, IRC/ED might lose their space soon as well to NC Pets..

There is also some action going on in United Legions space down south as well with Atlas dropping a couple towers in their space.

Basically, wherever you look on the map now in 0.0, there is shit going on :D....Fun times indeed.

On May 21 2009 22:19 BeJe77 wrote:
@Kazokun, I will assume that you are in MH from this point of the conversation.

MH, Iron, WI, Majesta etc... all are NC pet's saying anything otherwise is trying to be ignorant. All their space that they have has been given to them by the NC nothing more nothing less.

The same way we call Executive Outcomes a BoB pet we will call Mostly Harmless an NC pet. why? Because both had space because they were given it by the bigger entities and they kept that space as long as those bigger entities want them to keep it.

They are their meatshield when an opposing alliance attacks, by meatshield I mean an alliance that takes the brunt of the attack while they have time to "mount up" and defend their space.

Welcome to EvE politics by the way. Hope I didn't burst your cherry.

On May 22 2009 11:48 kazokun wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +

As far as EvE politics goes, you sound like a silly pubbie who's corp was just allowed to rent in CVA space or something. You wanna know who's the pets? IRON are the pets, Circle-Of-Two are the pets, KIA are the pets. Do you think Avarice and Dara Cothrom melded into Mostly harmless because Razor and Morsus Mihi ALLOWED them to join? Poor you, when MH brings the second largest amount of caps out of all the Alliances involved into the fleet that crushed the Triumvirate insurrection in the north, you should be noticing how balanced the power structure in the NC is.

Quit acting so arrogant, EvE politics goes way beyond your capacities to understand.