Metagaming in EVE - Page 54

Northern lowsec/ NPC 0.0:
A largely under the radar trend has been IT Alliance attacking low sec pos around Syndicate/Solitude/etc. I haven't exactly been following it but I imagine they have had at least a marginal success rate in actually taking moons. Their membership has been slowly ticking up but no new corporations have joined them since I last checked. This includes Destructive Influence and Finfleet who are both still doing their own thing.

The north (including, contrary to Phreeze's postings) has taken a different path to their fight against Ev0ke and is currently working to reinforce and destroy low sec pos belonging to their industrial alt corp, AMT. This is, according to Ev0ke members, a very mean thing to do so I am glad to see it happening. Oh and I missed it but Catacylsm Enterprises joined Ev0ke a month and a half or so ago which means that around five of the old D2 corporations have ended up in Ev0ke in some form. Kind of funny how far they have fallen, in my opinion.

Info came from dotlan and kugutsumen.com.

The North:
In Branch the war for control of Circle of Two's space is winding down with CO2 being the definite loser. They have lost all of their stations except for the one that is in a sov4 system and that one will be lost as soon as sov4 is. Their membership has started to once again decline as another one of their corps (WEPRO CORP) have left them. Right now CO2 is at about half of its former strength. One of their exmember corps, Quondam Souls of the Universe corporation, has actually joined Elysium., who are moving in to replace CO2. Others have joined Initiative Mercenaries and The Council. Eve Defense Force has started up their own alliance, Warped-Aggression which counts Final Conflict UK (former Etherial Dawn and Liberty. member) as its only other member.

Meanwhile the Atropos./R.A.G.E war has wound down with Atropos. (ticker: DAMN) being the loser. All of their corporations except for Marquie-X Corp have left the alliance, and all of the stations except for their sov4 one have fallen. Majesta Empire (who never liked Atropos. in the first place) has taken to actively assisting R.A.G.E in taking out what little is left of DAMN. Of the seven corporations that have left DAMN over the past week three have joined R.A.G.E and four have not joined it, so far.

Info came from dotlan, the automatic map and kugutsumen.com.


The Southwest:
The shuffling of ownership among the various new sov holders in the south is gradually solidifying who owns what. Primary. has gained control of one of the Scalding Pass systems and will likely be holding it for the foreseeable future. Goonswarm still owns their one system but are doing all they can to evacuate it and have recalled all of their pos gunners to focus on their current war in the west so they will likely be losing it soon.

Info came from the automatic map and Goonfleet.

Esoteria, Querious, Period Basis and any other area that I missed:
In Esoteria two Systemic-Chaos stations systems are under coalition (well really just Goonswarm's little group but whatever) assault. The first is A1-AUH- an important SYS-K logistics hub (which is being attacked by Goonswarm) and the second is G-YZUX, an important carebearing system (which si being attacked by Zenith Affinity.) In response ROL and other assorted southerners have started to attack various systems in Querious and have broken sov in a few systems and are close to breaking it in even more ones. Leaguiniesedea Romanga is mucking around in Period Basis and trying to screw with the sovereignty handovers taking place between KIA Alliance and ZAF. There's some important battles coming up later today as well as on Saturday and Monday.

Goonswarm is trying to spin ROL/AAA/Atlas/INIT/the rest's involvement as being good because it took pressure off of Death in the drone regions but lets not kid ourselves, Death wasn't under much pressure- if any at all and karttoon would be much happier if he didn't have to deal with all of SYS-K's allies. This return to pos warfare has meant a return of Goonswarm updates, currently being written by karttoon which makes my job a hell of a lot easier. I'll post his one for today below mine so you can read it and laugh at how this whole thing seems to be going poorly for him.

Info came from Goonfleet.com.

New Kids on the Block:
Instead of doing my same old boring stuff with the Roundup I've instead decided to do a different feature every update, Roundups will probably still occasionally happen (when I can't think of anything better) but for now enjoy my personal opinion on some of the game's newest alliances...

Gentlemen's Club:
Founded: April 09
Location: Scalding Pass
Prominent Corps: DAB, Sturmgrenadier Inc, The Hull Miners Union, modro
Description: Gentlemen's CLub was cobbled together from the shitty castoffs of terrible dead alliances. You know, the ones... Scorched Earth, BLACK, Controlled Chaos, etc. all the usual suspects
Likely future: Falling apart in six months due to internal strife/invasion.

GOON VIETNAM


"Who's the commanding officer here?"
"Ain't you?"

Welcome to the Esoteria campaign war update/standing orders dump thread. Wars have to be sold. We seem to have forgotten to sell this one.

CAMPAIGN OVERVIEW/WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE DOING HERE:

Why you are probably confused: Dominion is coming, with it completely new sov mechanics. So why are we invading Esoteria and fighting Sys-K - and why now, before the patch? "War is fun" is a shitty reason when everyone knows that POS war is manifestly not fun. The usual rationale of 'dying for director's moon goo' doesn't even work, because there's no moon goo in the cards - and moon goo is getting nerfed to fuck in one month, anyway.

The actual goal of the war: Induce a failure cascade in Sys-K in order to remove Stainwagon as a threat to us post-Dominion.

Why the hell do we care about Sys-K: Immediately after Dominion, we expect to be invaded, by either IT, -A-, or both, along with Stainwagon support.

Stainwagon is a powerbloc of its own right comprising Coven, Stain Empire and Systematic Chaos. -A- is, itself, large enough to count as a bloc. IT has yet to succeed in anything well enough to deserve the term 'bloc', but with Stainwagon and -A- support, they pose a much greater threat.

Note the size of Coven and Stain Empire compared to SysK. Coven is a bunch of irrelevant Polish types. The bulk of what makes Stainwagon into a bloc is the numbers of Sys-K, which provide support and fodder for the extremely nasty and top-notch Stain Empire cap fleet. If Sys-K is shattered, 'Stainwagon' becomes nothing more than a nasty cap fleet.

Sys-K's numbers are a threat to us. In Delve II, even at the end, Sys-K regularly sent 40+ people to help in KenZoku's fleets. Sys-K often had the single largest turnout of any hostile alliance in the mishmash of 21+ alliances we fought, at the end. We can expect a similar turnout from them in the post-Dominion invasion we expect.

The good news is that Sys-K is the weak link in Stainwagon, as they are mostly a renter/farmer alliance of idiots and terrible caod posters. They're not militarily a threat unless propping up a more serious attack of their allies. They have also bloated up considerably over the last few months, which means that their alliance identity is fairly weak. Best of all, they have not faced serious personal adversity or attrition until now; their main war has been attempting to mess with the much smaller Brick Squad in Stain NPC space, rather than having to defend their homes.

Why now, rather than after Dominion? Waiting for the enemy to come to our doorstep passively is idiotic. If we expect to face Stainwagon, IT and -A-, we should try to even the odds by kneecapping Stainwagon before the post-Dominion invasion of Delve begins. We'd prefer to have a proactive rather than reactive stance, and generally our wars work out best when we're being unpredictable and nasty.

Can we accomplish this in one month? We don't have to. If Sys-K and all of our enemies are mired in an ugly war in Esoteria, they're going to have a hard time invading Delve. We'd rather shit on their porch than have them shitting on ours.

GRAND STRATEGY/OK GREAT HOW DO WE KILL SYSK:

Dickstars: We are adopting a spam strategy based on our favorite weapon, the dickstar. The goal of the war is to break Sys-K, first and foremost, not territorial conquest. Our initial pos deployment predominately was deathstars, but this has shifted as of today to a "let them shoot dickstars" strategy.

Wearing out Sys-K's Allies: Sys-K is propped by by -A-, ROL, Stainwagon, and possibly Atlas. All are coming to the party, but they don't want to 'do Sys-K's job for them', which is exactly what they will have to do to keep Sys-K alive and out of cascade. You can expect to see a lot of ancillary assaults by Sys-K's allies, including the Querious hits that ROL performed the other day. As soon as Sys-K's allies tire of doing 110% to keep Sys-K up and running, Sys-K will cascade.

Griefing: Sys-K appear to be an older breed of e-honor pubbie. Their posts on CAOD harken back to the 2005 era; they write a lot of words and seem to treat things very seriously. I don't think griefing has much been emphasized in the war so far, but Sys-K are the type of mark that a griefer fantasizes about. We need to get to scamming, shitting, and ruining their gameplay. They are the kind of people who will quit EVE entirely rather than be faced with a vicious, ravening horde of goons, so let's get vicious.

STANDING ORDERS:

1. Stockpile war supplies in TPAR.
2. SMOKE WEED
3. Do not try to run the pipe from TPAR -> A1 alone. It's camped.
4. Prepare for and expect intervention in the war by Atlas/ROL/etc.
5. Volunteer for GSOL duty; we're onlining a lot of dickstar mods.
6. Begin griefing Sys-K in whatever way you can. Be creative and cruel.
7. Join the GIA. We still need more recruits. Email giabootcamp@goonswarm.net and get in on the action from the other side.

Esoteria:
Goonfleet lost a cap fleet and a few pos all at the same time. They killed several (about half as many as they lost) enemy caps and tried to play that off as a win due to their caps being on the cusp of having their insurance expire. Nice try but I'm not buying it. Not that the cap losses really matter, what actually does are the pos loses, especially the ones on the ZAF front as that system is already has total moon coverage.

Often welp days like this result in an uptick in Goonswarm participation but more often than that they result in even more welps. Either way at least we can now start proving my "AAA and all of their friends are stronger than Goonswarm without the North is" theory to be correct. I can't help but wonder if Razor Alliance, Pandemic Legion or someone else will come down to give the goons a hand, they certain look like they are going to need it.

Info came from Goonfleet.com.

Querious:
Goonswarm lost a titan while trying to save a cadmium moon with no support fleet in a disadvantageous timezone. Good going, fellas. For those who care (I assume none of you) the titan was piloted by a member of one of the pubbie corporations, Igneous Auctorica, and was successful in saving the idiot who had first jumped his titan in and got tackled. Oh and the cadmium moon was "saved" and by saved I mean a new Goonwarm tower was put up in place of the original one which ROL had destroyed. Also it was ROL who got the titan kill. Also fuck ROL.

Info came from Goonfleet.com.

The Rest of the Universe:
The other former BoB corps have moved down to Syndicate to help conquer midend moons with their IT Alliance buddies. Aeturnus. also occasionally shows up to help but since they are so terrible there is no reason to expect IT to let them in when the time comes. Enjoy your abusive master/pet relationship former AXE members! Atropos. has only one system left in 0.0 and its their unattackable sov4. PL lost an R64 in Pure Blind a few days ago and I didn't bother telling anyone because who the hell cares about R64s? Not me, that for sure.

Info came scrapheapchallenge and the automatic map.

Kugutsumen:
Kugutsumen has been sick for like six weeks with chronic triple sinusitis and is expected to be out for at least two more. Vinata has been moving into a new house for the past month or so. I'm worthless. Vinata and John Smith don't really do much. Everyone else is like totally absent. That is why the site sucks so much now but you can help by posting more! Go on, even if it is dumb, boring, possibly stupid or incorrect, an old rehash or anything else just post it as the site needs more content for our userbase to be content.

Incidentally we don't know who winds up in control of the website if kugu dies, I mean obviously it would pass on to his family but at the same time I doubt they give a shit about any of this. Hopefully I end up with it (something I dream about every night.) Yes, die kugu, die and may clomsaver.com rise from the ashes!

Originally Posted by The Mittani
THE FALL OF ESOTERIA

STANDING ORDERS:

1. Withdraw to TPAR.
2. Prepare to defend PA-V in Period Basis against Romulans

WHAT THE FUCK:

Vietnam is a poor gimmick for this war, because since we're opting to cut our losses it has instead become something of a Bay of Pigs. We could bog down in A1 after losing a host of towers in the face of 700 hostiles last night in our primetime, or we could say "Here's what went wrong" and sever.

WHAT WENT WRONG:

First, the attack should have focused on stations, not logistics hubs, with GS at the tip of the spear and not ZAF. Instead, ZAF was given a station to take, and GS was assaulting a bridge system. Should GS have succeeded, the enemy would have been impacted somewhat, but not as grievously as if we had been grinding on a station. ZAF was distracted by their loss of sov in PA-V and the Romulan invasion of that system, and so couldn't really concentrate against their Esoteria station target; moreover, they don't have much experience in the vanguard assault position. That station was not taken and the hostile bloc could concentrate against us in A1.

While losing a capfleet is no big deal to us, combined with the IGNE titan loss, our enemies saw weakness and surged over the weekend to bring 700 people against our 100 in our primetime. Pubbies don't understand that we think the IGNE thing is funny, they just smell blood in the water and swarm. Our timers and pos-fittings haven't had a chance to recover in A1 and our foothold on that system never fully established.

This invasion was planned by someone who does not usually do our war planning. It was a 'final exam' of sorts, and that exam was failed. However, you can legitimately blame the directorate for entrusting such an important plan to someone who screwed it up.

For example, allies were going to be making some distracting assaults on the blocs involved to draw attention away such that Atlas couldn't gangpile in along with Stainwagon, ROL and -A-. Those assaults did not happen because the person who was planning the war never confirmed these plans with our allies, nor followed up with them.

Logistics was also a disaster with GSOL essentially being unprepared for the invasion and left scrambling to pick up the pieces while understaffed.

In sum, the directorate fucked up by delegating the invasion to the wrong person and not making sure these critical issues were being handled competently.

WHAT NOW:

Expect an energized foe to strike us. Romulans moved six Jump Freighters into PA-V, in Period Basis, a former ZAF station system. In the near term we will be retreating to TPAR and preparing to help defend PA-V.

Meanwhile, ROL has been running distraction attacks on us in Querious, so we need to trim out a few small staging towers they dropped on us, and possibly make some reprisal attacks on their moons in Khanid.