EPTI'll start with a brief summary of the war up to this point for those who don't keep up with the current politics and goings on of the egomaniacal world of 0.0 Eve Online (probably virtually everyone who is reading this currently) . This will not explain game mechanics nor much history, so check out the OP for those. This map will make everything a lot more clear, as the regions are numerous and confusing even for someone who plays Eve regularly.
http://go-dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Aurora148/Local-Powerblocks-020310-r3.png
After BoB (hereafter IT) took back their home space (Delve and Querious) and carebeared for a while, the great Swedish leader of IT, Sir Molle, set his sights on the North. Although there is no doubt passionate hatred harbored by Molle and all of the non-pubby IT guys towards the NC, this was also really the only possible place to go for a fight without upsetting the political status quo.
As it stood before the war, there were very few unaligned entities in 0.0 with any kind of real impact. Virtually every notable alliance in 0.0 space was either a member of the Northern Coalition, the Southern Coalition, the “Proviblob” or the Droneland Russian block, with the important distinction of around five independent alliances. Since no one wants the Dronelands, the Russians tend to stick to themselves, and are basically opportunists, going where the fights are and often engaging both sides in a battle. Some (xxxDeathxxx) have had some past ties with the NC, and others (Solar) with the SC. Although Red Overlord (ROL) are a Russian alliance, they fall more under IT's wing, do not live in the Dronelands and can definintely be considered an SC alliance.
The Proviblob, based in the Providence Region (and referred to on the map as CVA which is the main alliance) was somewhat of an anomaly in 0.0 space. They are the only major coalition to operate under “NRDS,” or not red (hostile) don’t shoot. Mostly everyone else in 0.0 shoots anything that they’re not allied with. They are also the only significant, independent role playing coalition. They read a lot of fan fiction and set coalition policy based on the fictional Eve universe. As you can imagine they were not terribly competent. However, since they offered a fertile hunting ground for the AAA and Atlas blocks, they were left alone until they pissed off AAA who is now almost finished completely evicting them from the region.
The Northern Coalition is a very old, established organization within Eve. They hold valuable space, have a significant Cap fleet, and are very well dug in. The two leading alliances within it, Razor and Morsus Mihi, have shared power and developed a strong, stable symbiotic relationship. Under these two entities, there is a broad base of less-experienced and wealthy alliances. Some say these are just used as unwitting shields against outside aggression and any good member corps of the “B-Team” alliances are poached by Razor and MM if they show promise. NC leadership maintain that they want to help everyone in their coalition improve and prosper. Without spin, there would be no Eve.
Within the Southern Block, there were inter-coalition gang fights, roams etc., but agreements (POS NAPS) prevented anyone from actually attacking a coalition mate’s space, stations, outposts or any sort of infrastructure. The only way to go was North.
Sir Molle got on the horn with the leaders of the other two most powerful blocks in the Southern Coalition, Atlas and Against All Authorities, as well as with two powerful independent alliances (Cry Havoc and Evoke), who were already fighting the recently displaced Goons and their NC buddies in Cloud Ring. Solar, who had worked with the Atlas block in the last major 0.0 conflict to displace NC alliances from Geminate (and then moved in), was also going to participate in the great push North.
Molle’s plan was based on attacking on multiple fronts. In the newest expansion to Eve, battles between large fleets have gotten even laggier than they were before. In many cases, hundreds of pilots will jump into a system only to have nothing load on their screens while the enemy blasts away at them without resistance. Often, if enough pilots try to pile into one system, the server node responsible for that system will crash and everyone will be disconnected. If the numbers and the strain on the server are big enough, sometimes all of Eve will go down (this happened at least twice while I was fighting in the Geminate War). Therefore, the best way to attack the NC would be to force them to divide their forces and run their best alliances’ fleets back and forth across the north trying to defend multiple fronts.
Evoke and Cry Havoc were tasked with evicting the Goons and any NC pet alliances from Cloud Ring. IT, Initiative Mercenaries, Red Overlord and friends began to lay siege to Pure Blind. Atlas/CoW/GC and AAA were going to hit Tribute and Vale from low-sec staging points to the South. The Solar Russians were going to attack from their home in Geminate into Vale from the South-East.
In Eve, as in all kinds of warfare (virtual or real), things seldom go according to plan. It turned out to be especially difficult to motivate the tens of thousands of grunts in the Southern Coalition to move the masses of ships and material (not only is this time consuming, but extremely expensive) to the staging points in the North. Furthermore, the way game mechanics work, boring an enemy into submission can be a very viable strategy. Refusing to fight except when absolutely necessary can be extremely frustrating for the thousands of players who make up the attacking force. Deploying tens of jumps away from your home systems also cuts you off from your non-passive income sources. The inertia these factors cause in getting alliances of thousands of people to deploy for these huge wars has been evident in the current one.
IT’s hatred of the NC, as well as their effective leadership and organization has made their effort relatively successful so far. No one expects anything less than a drawn out, back and forth conflict, but they have taken over sovereignty in a couple of outlying (non-hubbed) NC systems and taken a good number of high end moons. Cry Havoc and Evoke have also been successful in the early going and have taken all of the Goons’ moons and will likely soon force them to evacuate Cloud Ring up to Deklein (their second new home in the same number of months).
The tide has not been as favorable for Molle’s scheme in the other regions.
The Solar Russians failed to show up and are fighting battles with Pandemic Legion over high-end moons in Geminate and the surrounding low-sec space at the moment. As of now, AAA is partially deployed to the North after finishing mopping up Providence. This is, however, about 2-3 weeks after the initial Atlas/CoW/GC deployment. The experience of this block has so far been the roughest of the war.
Although CoW and GC were almost fully deployed on the arranged date, Atlas still had many stragglers in Insmother and Detroid. Whereas Atlas alone (without including Cow/GC) was easily maxing out 256-man fleets during the Geminate War, they were often fielding less than 100 for CTAs in the early stages of the deployment. This was likely the result of the absence of Atlas’ Alliance’s eponymous leader, Bobby Atlas. His directors could not organize their efforts, nor pull adequate numbers to properly engage the consistently huge, motivated fleets that the NC was putting together.
After a couple of weeks of facing overwhelming disadvantages in numbers (3:1 in the NC’s favor was pretty much the norm), as well as a couple unlucky lag-related fleet losses, Atlas cancelled all CTAs to regroup and reorganize, and now are running only smaller gangs of snipers and cloakies. GC has moved the ~15 jumps to x-70 in Pure Blind, the IT/ROL and friends staging system, to lend numbers to that front while the Tribute/Vale front is stagnant and awaiting the necessary numbers from AAA and Atlas.
I do remember a guy screamin IRON TESTICLES in chat as soon as it got changed to IT ;P
