Metagaming in EVE

CDRdude

United States5625 Posts

February 19 2009 07:53 GMT

As most of us are gamers, I think that we’re generally interested in other games, even if not quite as much as our beloved starcraft. EVE online is a space based MMO. Internet spaceships if you will. Probably a week ago at this point, I saw a story on reddit, about how one of the most powerful alliances in eve was disbanded by a doublecrosser. Intrigued, I read on, and found quite an interesting story. Recently, I found a link to a guy in a forum who is doing an excellent job of describing the action, and generally being a war correspondent for a game that he doesn't play. The following is pasted from different sources, the vast majority of it copy-pasted from user Human_Being of the City of Heroes forums (apparently a different MMO). I would have asked his permission, but it seems that you need to be registered with the MMO City of Heroes to register for their forums, and it isn’t free. I will periodically insert my own clarifactions and/or content into his recorded posts in red. I encourage you to read all of this, because it’s really quite interesting.

(sourced from here, and written by Human_Being)
The WAR So Far...

Okay, I've been trying to follow this conflict since the thread started. However, it is obscured in a very real "fog of war" with both sides trying to spin defeats into non-events (or even victories) and victories into conquests. There's nowhere you can go and look for yourself to simply see what's happened. It's not easy to figure out who's where, doing what, why, and to whom.

I've tried to bring disparate pieces together into an image of how things are going, but any of it might be off. So, I bring it here for your interest and entertainment. If anyone knows a different story from what I have below or can add anything, please fill in the missing pieces.

The Set up:
The Band of Brothers Alliance (BoB for short) has been in EVE basically since the beginning. They've been the dominating PVP force in the player-run, non-NPC areas of space for most of the game and hold the richest territory. They were the group involved in the "T20" scandal where a game Dev that belonged to BoB was secretly giving them ultra-rare items that granted an edge for the alliance. They are characterized by their detractors as arrogant and condescending elitists.

The GoonSwarm has been in EVE since early in 2006 and made their presence known the whole time (Note: the Goonswarm is SomethingAwful’s presence in eve). They style themselves "the worst PVPers in EVE", yet have ultimately been quite successful against larger opponents that were deliberately trying to wipe them out. Having fewer resources and less discipline than other alliances, they take cheap but functional ships and hurl themselves at their opponents like a barbarian horde; safe in the knowledge that they can replace their losses more easily than what they inflict on the enemy (One of their propoganda posters shows this fairly well). The leadership of GoonSwarm by contrast is highly organized and very bright (typified by the most feared espionage organization in the game). They are characterized by their detractors as a bunch of vicious, adolescent griefers.

Note: Eve is organized into corporations, which can join alliances. To the best of my knowledge, corporations have CEO’s, Directors, and regular people as their different ranks.

This will actually be the third time BoB and GoonSwarm have clashed. The first time the Goons held up against a coalition of BoB and another Alliance that neighbored on Goon-territory, by simply being impossible to wipe out. BoB could blow Goons up all day, but the Goons focused on territorial goals rather than tonnage-of-ships lost and the neighboring enemy eventually backed off. The Goons actually expanded their territory and BoB returned across the map to their own holdings.

The second conflict was sometime last year when GoonSwarm lead a broad coalition of other Alliances in a deliberate attempt to seize BoB's entire territory (wiping them out as a player in larger politics). The war lasted for several weeks, and while BoB did pull back into more defensible areas, they proved too hard to evict from that ground. The other members of the coalition eventually grew bored of making great effort for little headway and stopped showing up for fleet actions. The Goons were the last to withdraw and their leadership swore that it was only technical limitations of the game-rules that stopped them; that they'd be back to take BoB's home some day.

The Strategic Puzzle
The reason it was so hard to fight BoB on their home territory has to do with the game-concept of Sovereignty. Sovereignty is granted to any Alliance that holds the majority of control in an area for a week or more and is ranked in four levels. Gaining Sovereignty levels grants cumulative benefits to the Holders that make it easier to make money off of the territory and defend it. In particular are "Capital Ship Assembly Arrays", "Jump Bridges", and "Cyno-Jammers". In order to get to any particular star cluster, you have to either use an existing "Jump Gate" to get to it, or you have to have another ship there to create a "Cynosurial Field" which acts as a beacon for the largest ships in the game to teleport to with their own Jump Engines. The Titan-class ships can only move through these ad hoc jumps because they don't fit within the regular Jump Gates. With Cyno-Jammers, no one but members of the controlling alliance can use these ad hoc Cynosurial Fields; denying opponents maneuver, stripping them of their strongest assets, and protecting their rear. "Jump Bridges" are player-created Jump Gates that Sovereignty Holders can use to move about their territory quickly. Finally, the Capital Ship Assembly Arrays allow construction of the largest and most powerful ships in the game right in player-held territory.

So if you have Sovereignty level 4 in a group of systems, you have predictable routes that an enemy will attack on, can rapidly reinforce in response to an assault, may have an overwhelming advantage in firepower because you have Titans "guarding the gates" while the opposition can bring none of their own, and can make good even the largest losses in a prolonged siege. With BoB's advantage in "old money" and ship complements, no one was ever going to make more than laboriously-chipped progress in an attack against them....

....until the day GoonSwarm took their Sovereignty away.

The Nuke
A BoB Alliance Director from the Black Nova Corporation was playing on an Alt when a member of one of the GoonSwarm corporations attempted to recruit him. The Director ("Haargoth Agamar") decided this was an excellent opportunity to get a "spy" into GoonSwarm. He accepted, pretending to be a newbie mining character. A couple of days later, the recruiter turned up evidence that the Alt character had been associated with a previous enemy corporation of theirs during a background check (yes I said background check). The recruiter went back to him and told him he'd have to be kicked out. But Agamar revealed his identity and told him that he really didn't want to go because in the last two days he'd found that he really really liked playing and associating with the Goons. (The Goon head of intelligence, "The Mittani" aka "Mittens", later characterized this as a Cultural Victory.) Agamar was immediately handed off to Goon Intelligence and rather than using him as a long term operative and chancing his discovery, they started figuring out what they could steal through him. They scoured the BoB leadership forums for information, prepared to have Agamar rob Black Nova Corporation of every asset they had (amounting to hundreds of ships, including fifteen Dreadnaughts which are the second largest class in the game and take over two weeks of Real Time to construct), and prepared to alter the friend/foe alignment of all Black Nova assets which they couldn’t' outright steal. During these discussions, it was discovered that in addition to being a Corporate Director of one of the BoB members, he had long ago been erroneously granted Directorship in the Holding Company that served to keep BoB officially together in game-law. The holding company owned no assets itself, but with the way the rules were set up any Director could evict any member of the Alliance at will and have it take effect instantly. Apparently this had never come up as an issue in the game before.

When all the BoB officers who could have done anything about it were asleep (most of them are European), the Goon intelligence agency pulled the trigger and the entire BoB Alliance and all that depended on that status vanished. In the space of a few hours all the BoB Jump Gates, Cyno-Jammers, and Capital Ship Assembly Arrays ceased to function. All the local production facilities dropped down to their base efficiency level. Every BoB member who had logged off at a Black Nova facility was identified as "hostile" when they exited "their" stations and instantly fired on by the automated defenses. Every non-BoB-member who operated in the territory started to panic. And GoonSwarm now permanently owned the rights to the corporate name "BoB".

Intermission, where I add a link a bunch of first-person information. Link to an audio description of events with goon head of intelligence, ‘The Mittani’. Link to an eve radio interview with ‘Dianbolic’, BoB’s spokesman/public relations guy at the time. Link to an eve radio interview with Mittani. There was also a dual interview with Mittani and Dianbolic on eve radio (“You sound a little bitter”), but I it’s in the middle of a two-hour long eve radio broadcast, that I haven’t found excerpted again (I swear I found it excerpted once, I just can’t find it again). Anyway, it’s here, and the dual interview starts at about 1:00:00. Also, here is the thread in which the original recruiter (Tamir Lenk) explains it from his point of view + Show Spoiler [Bob’s fall - Scam/Recuit/Win] +

So here is the story:

So here is how it began.

Step One - Scam Failure

So I was cruising recruitment channel this weekend with my neutral alt looking for tasty morsels. I see a guy looking for a high/low sec mining corp. I convo him and ask if 0.0 mining would be attractive. (if only I had these chat logs but v0v).

The mark is very interested.

The mark has 4 million skillpoints and flies a retriever. Good, good. Can I get that API key because, you know, spiez. Sure. Sadness. The API key shows that the kid has no real ISK. He has been very straightforward so far and pretty cool in chat. I am now agonizing over which way to go with this. I ask for the 100 million.

He considers. It is taking awhile, but he is being pretty chill about it. Not indignant about the security deposit but instead tries work it out with me. I decide to switch to recruit mode.

Before I can make that switch in chat, the guy puts in an application and sends me 50 mil, explaining that he is willing to come up with the rest by mining.

I am impressed with his initiative. This guy could be pretty cool in corp. The scam is going nowhere. I refund the 50 million (no scamming blues) and accept his application. I congratulate him on his demeanor, admit that I was scamming him but had a change of heart. He thanks me and asks why I let him in. I call it karma.

Step Two - Clumsy Recruitment

RL keeps me from EVE for a day. While I am away, my new recruit comes down to our space, receives a new mining barge from the corp and a quick tour of where we mine. He is eager but not starry-eyed, and people seem to like him.

On Tuesday, I log in and get two convos within 30 seconds. First, an IGNE director asks me about the new guy. Turns out he had some red in his history, not straight hostile but he was in a corp that red but left before the corp went red. Something like that. The director has removed his roles (basic hangar, nothing special) and wants my input on kicking him before GIA get all over our backs for stupidly recruiting reds. lol IGNE, etc.

Step Three - Win EVE

At this point, the situation is embarrassing but NBD. That would be the end of it except for that other convo. It's from the newbie recruit.

Chat **** in next reply
(His next reply)
Chat ****

Quote:

[01:30:29] Tamir Lenk > what's up
[01:30:46] Harkani > uhh
[01:30:47] Harkani > m
[01:31:03] Harkani > how happy would you be if I could provide intel about bob?
[01:31:46] Tamir Lenk > depends
[01:31:55] Tamir Lenk > how do you have intel on BoB
[01:32:46] Harkani > ok I am going to be completly honest with you
[01:32:52] Tamir Lenk > uh oh . . .
[01:33:10] Harkani > my main character is in bob, director, full access to forums and irc and I am sick of the **** there
[01:33:19] Harkani > so Im willing to be a spy for you guys
[01:33:35] Tamir Lenk >

Seriously, I am sweating bullets now. One convo is grilling me about some minor red history about a guy who just outed himself as a BoB director.

I recruited a f***ing BoB director.

What the hell will I do when Goons kick me? I start looking at other MMOs . . .

Quote:

[01:35:05] Harkani > Im pretty much sick of everyone thinking bob is awesome when really the average member is ******ed now and the leadership is all emo and cant even stick to a f***ing plan
[01:35:33] Tamir Lenk > how the hell did I change my mind about scamming you and you now tell me you are a BoB director
[01:35:46] Harkani > I have no idea
[01:36:00] Harkani > but I can provide really good intel
[01:36:03] Tamir Lenk > who is this main of yours?
[01:36:06] Harkani > and I like it here so far :s
[01:36:24] Tamir Lenk > because my paranoia meter is off the charts
[01:36:29] Harkani > well Id rather no one knows besides you and me
[01:36:40] Harkani > but i can log him in and invite him here if you want
[01:37:17] Tamir Lenk > don't do that quite yet . . . not trying to be in a chat with BoB directorate
[01:37:26] Tamir Lenk > give me a second to digest

OK, how the hell is this not a #$^#%@ set up. He says he is ready to spy, but WTF do I know about spying? Even if he gave me piles of intel, I am too stupid to know what to do with it. Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap.

Anyway, I don't want to be the guy that recruited a BoB director, and I am waaay skeptical about this "prize." Seriously, good things do not happen to me. OTOH, I don't want to be the moron that passed on a potential brass ring of intel. So I take a stab at damage control.

Quote:

[01:40:58] Tamir Lenk > well, first of all, you know I cannot give you roles or hangar access at all now, right
[01:41:11] Harkani > yeah thats fine
[01:41:31] Harkani > take away my roles its no big deal
[01:41:46] Harkani > well and kick me if you want, but that will be your loss

[01:42:19] Tamir Lenk > you're killing me on that front
[01:42:29] Harkani > how so?
[01:42:34] Tamir Lenk > you tempt my tummy with delicious intel
[01:42:41] Harkani >
[01:42:53] Tamir Lenk > but the timing of all this screams DANGER DANGER

Time to get some back up. More to follow
(Next reply)
So I pull in IGNE management on IM.

Quote:

(8:56:13 PM) Aaron Static: oh s***
(8:56:15 PM) Aaron Static: lol
(8:57:23 PM) tamir_lenk: this s*** hits me like 10 seconds after I log in
(8:57:29 PM) Aaron Static: um ok
(8:57:36 PM) Aaron Static: gimme an hour
(8:57:47 PM) Aaron Static: im gonna have to involve GIA
(8:58:21 PM) tamir_lenk: purge him to end of the eart, I got nothing in this guy
(8:58:24 PM) tamir_lenk: earth [edit: sorry to doubt you, Harkani ]
(8:59:14 PM) Aaron Static: in discussion with mittens
(9:00:00 PM) tamir_lenk: bring him in, he will know whether there is anything to do here
(9:00:08 PM) tamir_lenk: I got no ideas
(9:00:20 PM) Aaron Static: what corp
(9:00:27 PM) Aaron Static: is the guys main in
(9:02:56 PM) tamir_lenk: dunno, he did not give up the main, I can get him to invite that char to the chat
(9:03:17 PM) Aaron Static: please
(9:03:17 PM) tamir_lenk: but I was staying away cuz DANGER DANGER and all
(9:03:19 PM) tamir_lenk: will do

Now benefiting from some direction, I go back to the recruit.

Quote:

[02:10:28] Tamir Lenk > so why serve all this up to me? I am sexy and all, but you didn't know that
[02:11:36] Haargoth Agamar > because Ive been thinking about leaving bob but I really had nowhere to go, I like the guys in your corp so far and wanted to stay
[02:12:01] Haargoth Agamar > and I just got sick of bob members being arrogant f***ing ******s
[02:12:08] Haargoth Agamar > and the leadership always being idiots
[02:12:16] Haargoth Agamar > I just want to be a grunt and shoot s***
[02:12:21] Haargoth Agamar > without OMG WE ARE BETTER THEN YOU
[02:12:28] Haargoth Agamar > and I still want to be in 0.0
[02:12:36] Haargoth Agamar > and its either bob or the coalition
[02:12:39] Haargoth Agamar > so yea
[02:12:59] Tamir Lenk > hurm
[02:13:45] Haargoth Agamar > I know that even if this works Ill never get trusted with anything leadership related but thats fine with me
[02:14:30] Haargoth Agamar > when I joined bnc nobody cared that a new guy was there
[02:14:34] Haargoth Agamar > and pretty much ignored me
[02:14:38] Haargoth Agamar > when Harkani joined igne
[02:14:48] Haargoth Agamar > everyone is trying to help me out and generally being nice and friendly
[02:14:54] Haargoth Agamar > its a pretty nice change
[02:16:40] Tamir Lenk > yeah, well we hate BoB for a reason

This all sounds good, but still too good. We are so far above my pay-grade. Let's see if he is a director.

Quote:

[02:18:01] Tamir Lenk > quick verification test
[02:18:32] Tamir Lenk > What is the name of the BoB Alliance Director Forum?
[02:18:52] Haargoth Agamar > <br>La Barra De Los Jefes
[02:19:04] Haargoth Agamar > with 1 person viewing atm
[02:19:14] Haargoth Agamar > <br>Moving forward in the south<br>by Dianabolic<br>Today 18:03 Go to last post
[02:19:17] Haargoth Agamar > latest post

Sonofa*****, the guy is legit. I look for more guidance in IM:

Quote:

(9:14:01 PM) tamir_lenk: If there is anything to do here, this guy needs a handler
(9:14:07 PM) Aaron Static: handler?
(9:14:23 PM) tamir_lenk: Someone smarter than me to receive and process intel
(9:14:27 PM) tamir_lenk: spy handler
(9:14:31 PM) tamir_lenk: ala Mittens
(9:14:50 PM) Aaron Static: its cool
(9:14:51 PM) tamir_lenk: I don't know what the hell to do with this s***

More to come
(Next reply)
Scrambling to get this guy into the right hands (definitely not mine) and further verify his status.

Quote:

[02:19:55] Haargoth Agamar > oh and atlas is moving to querious
[02:20:20] Haargoth Agamar > this weekend
[02:21:22] Tamir Lenk > Now that I made it to station, I can focus a little more. how would you give access to this intel?
[02:21:42] Tamir Lenk > forums and IRC etc.?
[02:22:13] Haargoth Agamar > well Id give intel to you, you can give it to whatever intel guys you have
[02:23:00] Haargoth Agamar > I dont really want anyone to know who my main is besides you and very few others
[02:23:30] Haargoth Agamar > Im sure you can understand why
[02:23:37] Tamir Lenk > if this is going to work, we all need to keep that under wraps
[02:24:05] Haargoth Agamar > and it could work really really well if we do it right
[02:24:40] Tamir Lenk > but I am not a power-Goon, so intel in my hands is kind of useless
[02:25:16] Tamir Lenk > I can deliver intel to the right people, and can be the go-between to keep a lid on things
[02:25:35] Harkani > that would be good
[02:25:36] Tamir Lenk > that will keep the players under wraps
[02:26:01] Harkani > the only real issue I see, is if I get busted,I would want to join igne with all my chars
[02:26:17] Tamir Lenk > downside is that it puts added time and degrees of separation between the intel and those who use it
[02:26:33] Harkani > hmm that is true
[02:27:08] Tamir Lenk > I wish we had teamspeak for this, give me second

By now some real Goons are involved. The wise and ancient Mittani arrives. He and our new recruit make sweet sweet love. They have a beautiful love child, one truly touched by the gods.

You may have read about it.

Finally, an IRC chat transcript posted on SomethingAwful (you’ll see SA’s wordfilter for nonregistered users in action here, filtering “fuck”--> “gently caress”, “fucked”--> “hosed”, “shit”--> “poo poo”, “shitting”--> “making GBS threads” among other amusing filters). For reference, I’m pretty sure that ‘Dian’ is Dianbolic.+ Show Spoiler [IRC at ground zero] +

<@LadyScarlet> noooooo
<@LadyScarlet> dice
<@LadyScarlet> is not in the allince
<@LadyScarlet> wtf
<@arcantos> nor is finfl
<@LadyScarlet> omg
<@arcantos> 2009.02.05 01:31
<@arcantos> The war between FinFleet and Abbach Alliance is coming to an end. FinFleet has surrendered to Abbach Alliance. The war will be declared as being over after approximately 24 hours.
<@arcantos> someone did a bubu ..
<@tricky> um
<@Luciender> Um...
<@LadyScarlet> the allince
<Argentina> that's going to be interesting
<@LadyScarlet> dotn exisit anymore ?
<@arcantos> no
<@arcantos> bob is closed
<Argentina> looks like bob closed
<@tricky> gently caress
<Argentina> hahahaha
<@arcantos> Band of Brothers (Closed) from 2007.08.10 to 2009.02.05
<Argentina> someone didn't pay the bill
<@tricky> sov4s are going to die
<@LadyScarlet> call molle !
<@Luciender> .............
<Argentina> it doesn't matter who you call
<Argentina> don't bother waking anyone up
<@tricky> wtf
<@Luciender> ...............
<Argentina> it isn't just sov4, it should be all sov dropping
<@Spathi> all sov will drop now
<@Spathi> petition that.
<@Spathi> like, now
<@LadyScarlet> we need it delt with now
<Argentina> directors, go
<Argentina> or ceos
<@tricky> Standings are going to be hosed up
<Argentina> but if it's an unpaid bill, will they care?
<@tricky> ping your corps
<@tricky> or we will lose poo poo
<@Luciender> Sort your standings out to every bob corp
<@LadyScarlet> can i pay it from hat ?
<@LadyScarlet> do we know ?
<Argentina> lady, it needs to be recreated
<Argentina> via petition (preferable) or in game (we lose sov and so on)
<@Spathi> just get it petitioned.
-stratics.frws.com:@#bobsecure- ChanServ invited Blocko into channel #bobsecure.
* Blocko (Me@CPE0013f7fb0f08-CM0013f7fb0f04.cp...ble.rogers.com) has joined #bobsecure
* ChanServ sets mode: +o Blocko
<@Blocko> What needs to happen to sort this?
<@LadyScarlet> im yelling at coranor now
<Argentina> wake your brother up ;p
<@LadyScarlet> or get dian ya
<@Luciender> get dian on
<@Luciender> wake him up
<@LadyScarlet> blocko he had to pettion and pay the bill now
<@Blocko> to do what?
<@Blocko> on lousia?
<@LadyScarlet> recreat bob allince
<@LadyScarlet> its gone
<@Spathi> dont recreate, just petition it.. either way we're screwed if the gms dont help
<@Blocko> someones ringing him
<@Blocko> lol
<Argentina> the bob alliance is closed. we don't know why. we need a petition begging for it to be recreated so we don't lose all sov
<@Coranor> petition it
<@Malindah> has anyone petitioned it?
<@Malindah> if nto I will
<Argentina> who needs to petiton? ceos? one ceo?
<@Blocko> hes up
<@Spathi> just everyone do it lol
<@Luciender> i woke him up.
<@Coranor> i see no payable bill on record on one of my director alts
<@Coranor> just someone loving petition it it doesn't have to be me
<Argentina> who does it have to be? any director
<Argentina> ?
<Argentina> any ceo?
<Argentina> surely not just any member
<@LadyScarlet> well i can pettion it but i though it had to be a ceo
<@Coranor> mal go petition it please
<@LadyScarlet> if mal isnt i will then
<@Malindah> i am working on it
<@LadyScarlet> but im not sure how all that allince poo poo works
<@Luciender> Guys
<@Luciender> set your standings to each corp please
<@Malindah> but we have freighters that justgot bounced.
<@LadyScarlet> ya
<@Malindah> trying to get them safe.
<@arcantos> luci it's not only standings
<@LadyScarlet> fken hell its already on coad
<@arcantos> now we need to share pwds for poses
<@Blocko> Dian is up
<@Coranor> it doesn't matter just loving sort out standings so people don't get nailed by pos guns
<@Spathi> Check the titans in h-a
<@Spathi> Cos any online...
<@tricky> rkk standings should be sorted
<@Mako> still going to get bounced
<@Coranor> now make sure titans are logged off
<@cflux> get a message out that no titans logs in, they will all be bounced to gently caress
<@Dian> *yawns*
<@Luciender> lol
<@Luciender> HAI DIAN
<@Coranor> all of you in all your corps go set standings and make sure titans stay logged off
<@Dian> can somenoe just paste me what I need to put in this petition
<@wizzard66> strange, all our standings seems correct for evol
<@Dian> my brain isn't working
<@wizzard66> hi dian
<@Ciryath> !orders DONT LOG IN CAPITALS TO ANY BOB TOWER | Thursday h-ad, mixed fleet regroup 17:30 and 21:30. Those that logged of close to 3-l, we try to arrange bridge from 3-l before ops
<@cflux> when was the last bill paid?
<Argentina> [04Feb09 20:38|Argentina> the bob alliance is closed. we don't know why. we need a petition begging for it to be recreated so we don't lose all sov
<Argentina> that's what we need, dian
<@cflux> when was the last bill paid?
<@Dian> it was paid
<@Dian> I'd bet money it was paid
<@Dian> gently caress knows how I find out though
<Argentina> could someone have closed it on purpose. who has the ability to do that?
<@Dian> and, it wouldn't have reset
<@Dian> until dt anyway
<@Dian> afaik
<@LadyScarlet> i sent corp mail n o titians or caps to log in w/o fc orders first
<@LadyScarlet> everyone prob should do the same
<@Blocko> I blame Thol!
<@LadyScarlet> hey i was scared thol removed us lol
<@Dian> Argentina, I think only the executor
<@Coranor> qd put that on the irc channels or forums not corp mail
<@Dian> of the holding corp
<@cflux> Ok. Who has a loving director in tin foil, actual director not these bullshit gave access poo poo, go to bills tab and check if the poo poo was paid or not.
<@Dian> I do
<@Dian> gently caress sake
<@Coranor> chill lads
<@Blocko> cflux,,,, ssshshshshshhhhh
<@LadyScarlet> i have a director in tin foil
<@Coranor> we've done what we can about it so let the petitions go in and just chill
<@cflux> I just need an answer was it paid or not, if it was paid, for sure, someone gurantees his mother that it was loving paid, I call the batman hothline.
<Argentina> change !orders. it reads like it was done on purpose
<Argentina> no sense adding to the confusion
<@Mako> who is arkannen
<@cflux> and thats heavy duty batman hotmail. but i aint loving ringing if it was our screwup
<@LadyScarlet> a gm ?
<@Coranor> dian said he was sure it was paid
<@Dian> I am almost certain it was paid
<@Dian> and cflux, there's no record of ANY alliance reg fee
<@cflux> Mako: arkannen? arkanon? hes the internal security guy
<@Dian> ever being paid
<@Dian> in the wakket
<@Dian> and the last one
<@Dian> is listed as the 8th of jan
<@Dian> so no, this should not be happening
<@Dian> and the one before that
<@Dian> is december
<@Dian> exactly a month before
<@Dian> so yeh, no loving way
<@Mako> who is arkannen
<@Sivona> so it should go down on 8th feb?
* Theo|dinner is now known as Theo
<@LadyScarlet> <cflux> Mako: arkannen? arkanon? hes the internal security guy
<@Dian> who is gonna sit online
<@Dian> that I can direct a gm to?
<@LadyScarlet> i can be online
<@LadyScarlet> all night
<@Spathi> I can too
<@Malindah> i can be online as well
<@LadyScarlet> till 11 or so
<@DeadAgain> Same for Evol
<@Mako> some with that name took al the wallet from hat
<@DeadAgain> *all night
<@wizzard66> wtf?
<@Mako> and left reson
<@LadyScarlet> huh
<@Mako> the mittani says hi
<@cflux> first one who gets contact of a GM, tell him we need our constellation sovs returned
<@LadyScarlet> omg
<@LadyScarlet> you have got to be making GBS threads
<@wizzard66> Arkannen - Haargoth Agamar
<@Mako> not 20 min
<@Luciender> remove
<@Dian> rut roh
<@Luciender> =/
<@LadyScarlet> but harrgoth is in here
<@Dian> hahaha
<@Dian> and what roles did he have?
<@cflux> Mako: repeat again
<Argentina> we just got played? hats off (not pun intended)
<@Blocko> Secure is comprisimied - Mittani shags goats
<@Dian> cflux
<@Dian> hat.. wallet
<@Mako> look at journal of hat wallet
<@Dian> arkannen took 500m
<@Dian> or so
<@Dian> at 0130
<@Dian> "mittani says hi"
<@cflux> get coranor online, control hat assests now
<@cflux> lockdown the loving corp, remove all roles from everyone
<@cflux> BNC, lockdown your corps, hes your guys
<@cflux> It looks like we are being hosed royally
<@Blocko> - Mittani shags goats
<@Dian> Luciender
<@Dian> what roles did he have?
<@Dian> Coranor, audit that char plz
<@Dian> see what roles it had
<@Luciender> i dont have access for that mate
<@Luciender> just a fueler alt
<@Ztrain> I'm off work in 8 munutes
<@Coranor> that characters roles are now gone
<@Ztrain> I'll be home have a director character in Hat
<@Ztrain> or at least had.
<@Luciender> Id say remove everyone's mate
<@Dian> ok that char
<@Dian> would not have had roles
<@LadyScarlet> dotn remove miss dixies
<@Dian> it has bnc.e director title
<@LadyScarlet> its me ;P
<@LadyScarlet> took me 2 months to get them back
<@Malindah> I cannot remove roles
<@Ztrain> lol
<@Malindah> trying to get Okuden now
<@Dian> roles gone on that char
<@Spathi> haarg is nova, not eclipse.
<@Spathi> he has 1 char in eclipse and it was pos gunner only
<@LadyScarlet> do we ban him from here yes or no ?
<@LadyScarlet> he sitting in this channel
* You were kicked by Spathi (Bye )
* Attempting to rejoin channel #bobsecure
* Unable to join channel (invite only)

Also found on SomethingAwful, were conversations between the defector, and others. Tamir Lenk is the person who recruited Haargoth Agamar into goonfleet.+ Show Spoiler +

[02:11:36] Haargoth Agamar > because Ive been thinking about leaving bob but I really had nowhere to go, I like the guys in your corp so far and wanted to stay
[02:12:01] Haargoth Agamar > and I just got sick of bob members being arrogant loving retards
[02:12:08] Haargoth Agamar > and the leadership always being idiots
[02:12:16] Haargoth Agamar > I just want to be a grunt and shoot poo poo
[02:12:21] Haargoth Agamar > without OMG WE ARE BETTER THEN YOU
[02:12:28] Haargoth Agamar > and I still want to be in 0.0
[02:12:36] Haargoth Agamar > and its either bob or the coalition
[02:12:39] Haargoth Agamar > so yea

quote:
[02:56:31] Tamir Lenk > not yet, I am working on the asylum part of this for you and alt characters
[02:57:08] Haargoth Agamar > rgr
[02:59:30] Haargoth Agamar > thanks for trying for me
[02:59:45] Haargoth Agamar > I wasnt sure if you would just try to instant boot me

[03:01:57] Tamir Lenk > don't want to kill a golden goose . . .
[03:02:22] Tamir Lenk > but all this cloak and dagger stuff is not my usual diet
[03:02:28] Haargoth Agamar > I meant if you didnt believe me
[03:03:21] Tamir Lenk > that's why the login info is useful, shows you're not a disinformation play
[03:05:02] Haargoth Agamar > Ill give you my bob login as well as soon as I get it fixed if you need it
[03:05:32] Tamir Lenk > that would be excellent
[03:06:07] Tamir Lenk > what are your thoughts on defection (might as well stick with Cold War labels)
[03:07:58] Haargoth Agamar > well I feel like its needed for me atm to be able to stay in 0.0 if I am sick of being gbc aligned
[03:08:28] Haargoth Agamar > I could try to start my own allliance but with ties to bob I doubt anyone would blue except for bob and Id basically be some lovely gbc alliance
[03:08:38] Haargoth Agamar > or if we went out on our own wed just get curbstomped
[03:09:43] Haargoth Agamar > I just honestly cant stand being in bob anymore
[03:09:50] Haargoth Agamar > I barely logged in lately because of that
[03:09:51] Tamir Lenk > I hear ya, what I meant was if I can secure asylum here (which is looking promising) how long could you provide intel, operate for us before defecting
[03:10:03] Haargoth Agamar > oh
[03:10:12] Haargoth Agamar > probably atleast a couple months
[03:10:36] Tamir Lenk > cuz there are a couple of ways to play this
[03:10:53] Haargoth Agamar > Idl like to get caught by being a warpto for titans to dd your fleet and have hics warp to me at the same time for multiple titan kills or something
[03:10:54] Tamir Lenk > short and severe or slow burn
[03:10:58] Haargoth Agamar > would be such a morale killer
[03:12:12] Haargoth Agamar > it also depends on what you guys want more
[03:12:22] Tamir Lenk > I suspect we could be even more creative/devious
[03:13:19] Haargoth Agamar > I could probably get pos roles for bnc.e as well easily
[03:13:30] Haargoth Agamar > what are you ideas ?
[03:13:48] Tamir Lenk > now you are talking
[03:14:06] Haargoth Agamar > heh
[03:15:13] Haargoth Agamar > also
[03:15:23] Haargoth Agamar > Im going to have the largest amount of time in eve until feb 25
[03:15:29] Haargoth Agamar > then abit less time

quote:
(9:16:50 PM) tamir_lenk: [02:12:59] Tamir Lenk > hurm
[02:13:45] Haargoth Agamar > I know that even if this works Ill never get trusted with anything leadership related but thats fine with me
[02:14:30] Haargoth Agamar > when I joined bnc nobody cared that a new guy was there
[02:14:34] Haargoth Agamar > and pretty much ignored me
[02:14:38] Haargoth Agamar > when Harkani joined igne
[02:14:48] Haargoth Agamar > everyone is trying to help me out and generally being nice and friendly
[02:14:54] Haargoth Agamar > its a pretty nice change
[02:16:40] Tamir Lenk > yeah, well we hate BoB for a reason

quote:
(9:37:59 PM) Aaron Static: tamir_lenk:
(9:39:16 PM) Aaron Static: enough shoe-horning
(9:39:29 PM) Aaron Static: if he wants to defect, he'll do what we ask
(9:41:09 PM) tamir_lenk: popped the question
(9:41:27 PM) Aaron Static: :smug:
(9:41:29 PM) tamir_lenk: [02:40:44] Tamir Lenk > to help me confirm this deal, would you give me forum login info?

quote:
[02:47:04] Haargoth Agamar > ok, just trying to remeber password and password recovery is disabled
[02:47:08] Haargoth Agamar > so it will be a sec
(9:47:27 PM) tamir_lenk: fap fap fap fap
(9:47:49 PM) Aaron Static: lmbo
(9:48:04 PM) Aaron Static: mittens mood improving

quote:
[03:43:29] The Mittani > oh also
[03:43:34] The Mittani > we're terrible at this game at every level
[03:43:40] The Mittani > we joke about it but we're not kidding
[03:43:44] Haargoth Agamar > atleast you dont pretend to be good
[03:43:56] The Mittani > so uh, hope you like dying stupidly over and over again and laughing about it
[03:44:07] The Mittani > yeah we don't really have pretensions about our identity
[03:44:11] Haargoth Agamar > Id rather that then OMG WE ARE THE BEST
[03:44:14] Haargoth Agamar > /emote loses 50 caps
[03:44:26] The Mittani > yeah heh. WE ARE THE BEST *mass hires goodfellas*
[03:44:44] The Mittani > Also, the personality cult around a swedish hvac manager. I mean... what? just... what?

Let’s go to the map (note: non-colored areas are actually NPC-space, not unclaimed territory.)

The BoB territory (now labeled "KenZoku") is in the lower left in blue. They are in a mutual coalition with Executive Outcomes to their south along with Against ALL Authorities and Red Alliance (a Russian group) to their east (I received a PM from a user that says that Red Alliance is a former ally of Goonswarm. Red Overlord was a splinter group that is fighting Goonswarm.). In addition to the huge list of corporations that made up "BoB" proper, there were also hangers-on dubbed the "Greater BoB Coalition" (GBC) within the BoB territory who used BoB for protection. These lesser corporations and alliances (Skunk-Works, EXE, Frontal Impact, Goodfellas, Atlas Alliance, FinFleet, and more that I've probably never heard of) were referred to as "BoB's Pets". They were given permission to use BoB territory so long as they paid a "rent" to BoB and pledged support and subordination to their control in the event of a conflict, but they had no territorial rights of their own. Together, the GBC was the largest and strongest group in the game. Furthermore, there were many independent players that came to BoB's territory and also paid "rent" because it was not only a relatively safe area, but it was also the richest territory in the game (there have been past accusations that the mineral wealth of the area had been increased by corrupt Devs after BoB claimed it).

Note: I’ll work on including some older maps that I’ve found, to go along with Human_Being’s explanation.
Initial map
Updated map
The text along the side is a table of where soverignty was lost/gained. It’s quite noticeable on the second map. Also, a helpful zoomed-in .gif of the region: + Show Spoiler +

GoonSwarm controlled (past tense) two very large areas in the south and southeast. They are associated on friendly terms with the broad "Northern Coalition" consisting of the Tau Ceti Federation (a francophone group), RAZOR Alliance, Morsus Mihi, KIA Alliance, and the Pandemic Legion. The Pandemic Legion is very tightly aligned with the Goons and although they appear to actually be the smallest among these province-holding groups, everyone also seems to be afraid of their pilots. The bit of "Fountain" area that is home to PL was actually a wealthy BoB territory taken and held during the last war.

The first twenty four hours were utter chaos. Every independent or small-time operator who had depended on BoB's perennial protection grabbed their resources in a panic and tried to flee the area. Every group that had long wanted a piece of the rich pie that BoB was sitting on formed up and headed to Querious and The Delve. And virtually everyone else who didn't live under BoB's roof jumped in wherever they could to cause mayhem. The word coming out to EVE-Radio internet station was to "trust no one!" in The Delve and that anyone might suddenly turn on you. Someone called into the station begging for money because a friend of his had actually been captured while trying to flee and was being held for ransom (he later called back and said that when the bandits heard this on the radio they executed the captive

). Groups of Northern Coalition ships flew through Delve broadcasting: "BoB promised you would be safe, but these were lies! Corporations of Delve, do not cling to the False Comfort of Old Allegiances!" The Pandemic Legion instantly formed an attack force and seized control of a Delve moon designated "LMO" (aka 'The Alamo') four hours after a BoB spokesman announced on EVE Radio that it was their Alliance's impregnable bastion in case of invasion. The only "organized" response by the not-BoB-anymore corporations was to form a huge, roving, Titan-centered fleet that swept up friendly ships like a snowball as it went. Most of the Goons that reacted gathered in what they self described as either a "Waaaugh!" (a Warhammer-game Orc reference) or a "rapetrain with no brakes" and drove into the heart of their enemy's territory. A smaller, more organized group of Goons tried to gather on the points of entry to Delve and limit unfriendly entrance or exit from the war zone.

Quote from whom I think is the CEO of Goonfleet, taken from SomethingAwful.+ Show Spoiler +

Darius JOHNSON posted:
I need to make this fairly brief as I have work to do but I'll give a high level overview of what's gone down and what we're planning. I don't want to give too much detail at this time as I don't want to give away any more surprises.

Yesterday we drove a loving pickup truck packed with confetti explosives into BoB's rear end. There is nothing they can do to recover from this gracefully. The spy was turned honestly and CCP will not save them. This morning I wardecced every major corp in the former BoB alliance to choke their retreat and keep them locked out of a new alliance. So now my Goons, the time has come to claim our birthright.

As of this moment every single member of Goonswarm is ordered to 319 in Delve. I want this done FAST. I want as good a market set up as we can, but we won't be too far from empire. Actually the logistics should be simpler than reinforcing our own current space.

Beginning immediately we are going to finish reinforcing the CSAAs, then tower the gently caress out of EVERYTHING. We are going to onquer their stations and hold their region.

For 3 years now we have all secretly prepared for the time to conquer Delve. That time is now and it will become our home. NOL will be our capital and from there we will create a new Goontopia with hilariously broken NPC space where Everygoon may have a free meal.

Work your best to secure your assets. Look back on our former homeland in the south with fondness but without regret. We will do our best to transition our assets in a reasonable manner but know now that the end result is a new home in Delve, and the cessation of all claims in our current southern regions.

We have sewn the seeds of chaos and now it is time to claim what we have all worked so hard to earn. Everything else be damned. The South is now Old Syndicate, with Syndicate becoming Old Old Syndicate. Delve is New Syndicate, and the loving goonwagon, filled with simpering retards rolls on its rims into 319.

Shock and awe and buttes. Delve is ours for the taking.

Details will be found in your op postings. Work with your fellow goon to help him as he needs with jumproutes and logistical aid. I believe in you as I always have. Goonspeed.

The Fallout
But the BoB leadership pulled a bureaucratic end-run on their no-win situation. Through some loophole (which I've never completely figured out), one of the smaller constituent corporations of the old BoB alliance had been associated with most of the Player Owned Stations that designate control for Sovereignty. This small corporation was officially able to claim control of the majority of the now-unowned territory. All of the ex-BoB corporations joined in an Alliance under this smaller corp "KenZoku". Since that corporate claim was now officially part of an in-game Alliance again, KenZoku was granted immediate Sovereignty to the area, starting over at level 1, just over twenty-four hours after those players "lost" it. "KenZoku" is a Japanese word for 'family' or roughly 'tribe', i.e. a 'band of brothers'.

About the loophole, apparently taken from the news at the login screen.
+ Show Spoiler [Quote] +

J-LPX7, Delve - Corporations formerly registered under the umbrella of the Band of Brothers identity have reformed inside KenZoku, a previously unknown alliance that existed to house certain Reikoku industrial assets.

The KenZuko alliance currently houses 19 corporations, including several previously registered under the Band of Brothers identity: Evolution, Reikoku, Black Nova Corp, FinFleet, Tin Foil and Destructive Influence.

Knuck, a Reikoku Director, explained to the Interstellar Correspondents where KenZuko alliance - previously almost completely unknown to the capsuleer population - came from.

"KenZoku as an entity already existed to house some industrial assets of RKK and a few affiliates... I don't believe the alliance was intended for this particular contingency, but it suits the purpose just fine. All the member corps are here, that's the important thing, and that is largely what defines us as an alliance."

As the corporations from Band of Brothers joined KenZuko, their control towers, still claiming sovereignty for their alliance, transferred into KenZuko too, and so did their claims. At 12:00 on 06.02.111, territorial maps changed as drastically as they had the day before, showing KenZuko holding a basic claim of ownership over much of Delve and Querious.

This basic claim is enough to render their outposts safe from attack until such a time as KenZuko's sovereignty over the solar systems in which the outposts reside is broken, but KenZuko must continue to hold the space for a considerable time before their former jump bridge arrays and cyno jammers can be reactivated, and it could be months before their capital ship assembly arrays can once again begin producing titans and motherships.

The "Sov" map snapped back to nearly the way it had been a day earlier and everyone who had previously panicked, freaked. They only had Sovereignty 1, and thus no Jump Gates or Cyno-Jammers, but "BoB" still existed and there was a flag to rally around. Every hooligan who had gone to the Delve region to run amok turned around and raced out just as fast. GoonSwarm and Pandemic Legion didn't.

The official response from KenZoku was that they were still here, still in control, and still had all their vast wealth. Yes, they'd been indolent and bored of late; there'd been much internal friction in the leadership and dissatisfied grumbling from the Pets. But now the unfair and cowardly attack on all that they and their friends possessed, along with the theft of their Name, had really, truly, finally *Censored*...Them...Off. They declared their intention to gather all the military force at their disposal and wipe out the Goons and company once and for all. Furthermore, since The Mittani had promised to post excerpts from the BoB leadership forums, they were opening them to the public so they could not be quoted out of context.

The un-official response from the Goons was "Oh My God! We Killed 'Kenny'! We're Bastards!" The "Pets" were subsequently dubbed "Barbie". It was also variously observed that "Anime is really just Cartoons". Officially, GoonSwarm declared that not only were they not backing down, they were going to claim their birthright "holy land" once and for all: they were pulling up stakes and abandoning their holdings in the South and Southeast. The Goon's home would be in Delve. Period. Furthermore, the Mittani thanked the KenZoku leadership for opening their secret forums since he had actually lied about having it all archived with intention to post embarrassing snippets. (Which claim is true or false, *shrug* who knows. That uncertainty seems to be the way he operates.)

Several months later, the Mittani mentioned this in his column for tentonhammer.com.
+ Show Spoiler [Excerpt from the column] +

EVE Online: Wars Are Lost By the Loser
Before the war began, two critical errors occured on the losing side. First, the much-discussed Haargoth defection and disbanding; this was an error of basic corporate security writ large, where a player who had been absent from the game for four months was allowed to maintain roles in the executor corporation of that now-dead alliance. Had BoB not made this error, I wouldn't be writing a weekly column here, and Goonswarm wouldn't own Delve. But enough ink has been spilled on that topic already.

The second failure was made when the KenZoku leadership published the entirety of the BoB secure director forums for the EVE-playing public to rummage through. Two days prior to this, when Haargoth Agamar flipped sides and joined Goonswarm, the Goonswarm Intelligence Agency had set about using his forums access to begin archiving the BoB director forums with an automated system. In order to avoid detection, the entire process would take nine or more hours, but midway through the archiving we judged it more worthwhile to pull the plug, disband BoB, and potentially sacrifice our archiving project for the greater good. As soon as BoB was disbanded and their directorate caught on to what had occurred, Haargoth's BoB forum account was banned, though the archiver kept running - except that now, each page it pulled had a delightful 'you have been banned' notice. While we had successfully acquired about 40% of their director forums, the rest of the archive was a series of useless and identical 'banned' pages.

In the spy game, when the technology is lacking, outright lying can sometimes close the gap. When we announced BoB's disbanding, I asserted the 'fact' that not only did we have an archive of the BoB director forums, but that we would publish this archive for anyone to see. On February 5th, while being interviewed on EVE Radio I was paired against Dianabolic (a director of KenZoku); I began to read snippets from the 40% of the archive we possessed while live on the air and promised the imminent release of the rest. Yet we delayed; by the morning of the 6th, KenZoku had decided to release the entire forums to the public. They had checked their server records and detected the archiver had 'pulled' every link in their forums, but they evidently did not realize that the bulk of these calls had returned garbage. In order to preempt another public relations disaster, KenZoku's leader, Sir Molle, elected to throw open the doors and let everyone see the BoB forums - in this way, they could at least ensure that Goonswarm wouldn't release a 'doctored' copy of the archive, with altered and incriminating posts fabricated to create a scandal. Not that we would ever do such a dishonorable thing.

Oops. Naturally, the first thing we did was archive the whole thing, in case Sir Molle got cold feet and took it down. As a hilarious addendum, it seems that this was the juncture where KenZoku decided that I was a liar - it was my partial archive which didn't exist, I actually had the full archive, and I was making all this nonsense about the bluff up.

So, the archives remained open for all to see. Suddenly, all the slanderous and denigrating commentary about their allies from the BoB directorate was available for the entire EVE community to dissect and analyze. Most of the entities being slandered weren't allies in the traditional sense of equals working towards a common cause, but rather serfs and vassals who had been paying rent to BoB for years and fighting in something like a colonial militia on their behalf, earning the nickname 'pets'. According to BoB, they were the 'Greater BoB Community'. The revelation of the insulting commentary from BoB caused a storm of controversy on the forums of the 'pets', and many of these pilots privately vowed not to show up to the defense of their disrespectful lord. Even before the war for Delve began in earnest, the support for KenZoku's coalition had been massively undercut.

The full article can be found here.

The Psychological Front
The Psychological war started off with Goon quotes from the BoB forums where various members of the leadership had spoken with contempt or disgust about a particular Pet or even about all Pets in general. "Why should you show loyalty to ex-BoB when they see you as tools, treat you as tools, and are a bunch of Tools?" the Goons ask. KenZoku publicly replied that yes they'd spoken harshly about various Pets, but that was months ago. Those coalition-mates had vastly improved their performance since such words were spoken. They were all united by what the Goons had done now and the Pets had their respect.

In counter attack, KenZoku declared that with this latest underhanded play the Goons were held in contempt, even hatred by the majority of the game. KenZoku/BoB themselves would be bringing every last erg of power and cent of cash in their greater-coalition to bear on them. KenZoku asked "How on earth do you plan to survive against, not only the crushing force we can bring to bear, but everyone who's ever had a grudge against you?" GoonSwarm publicly replied: "lolz wut?"

Neither side has made much headway in the battle of words. The Goodfellas alliance *may* have gone neutral, as their members are now making posts mocking both sides of the conflict and Goodfellas ships aren't showing up on the killboards anymore. Some of the BoB-forum quotes certainly singled out the Goodfellas as among the worst groups in the game, but I'm not entirely certain where the Goodfellas allegiance lay to begin with.

The only other result of both campaigns was the CEO of Against ALL Authorities making a post with a quote from the now-public BoB forums which read: "I don't care, just get AAA here! I will *censored* sing the Russian national anthem in teamspeak if it will get them here!" He declared that effective immediately, all AAA assistance to KenZoku would cease until this became a reality. Several KenZoku members helpfully provided links to websites with phonetic lyrics to several versions of the song

.

Continued...
Separate post at this point
The Eastern Front
When I first looked at the Sovereignty Map, the GoonSwarm territory had convex borders and was separated by a very narrow strip of space. Every day it has shrunk a bit more, with the areas of Tenerifis and Detorid seeing wholesale losses. The KenZoku coalition is making much of this, but it appears that the Goons literally are not defending their space. When their leader declared that they were moving to Delve, they meant it. They are taking everything they have and using a scorched earth policy behind them.

This is actually a brilliant move for several reasons. Firstly, the previous campaign faltered because the rank-and-file lost interest in the fight. The general Goon mentality toward the game seems to be that of a band of marauders (or perhaps college frat-boys on a Friday night

) and while they are enthusiastic it's hard to keep them focused. Like Cortez, the Goon leadership has "burned their ships" and given their pilots a reason to focus on the campaign; if they lose they will have nowhere to go home to. Secondly, it means GoonSwarm doesn't have to fight a two front war with long supply lines; attacking the strongest coalition in the game while defending their own territory against neighboring enemies. Thirdly, it keeps the Goons' allies motivated because they don't want the Goons trying to "move in" with them in the case of defeat

. Finally, it has limited the forces arrayed against them because enemies that otherwise would have happily attacked GoonSwarm are occupied in actively taking over the abandoned territory. Of United Legion, Red Alliance, and Against ALL Authorities, only the last has shown up in the Kill Boards for activity in Delve; and them only weakly.

(Recall that Human_Being was misinformed or mistaken about the loyalties of Red Alliance, they are not an enemy of Goonswarm)

The reason this is a delaying tactic is the way territorial seizure works. Sovereignty is calculated based on who has the most space station facilities in an area and is only granted if that balance has not tilted in another direction for the duration of one week. You must emplace your own stations and destroy those of your opponent. Player Owned Stations however have huge numbers of hit points. They require large fleets to assail at all and the Dreadnought class (second only to the Titans in size) is specifically designed to provide firepower for this purpose. Even then, a Large sized station might take hours of pounding to bring down.

The task of destroying a station is further complicated by "reinforcement mode". Stations can be given a particular type of fuel (Strontium Clathrates) that will allow them to enter an invulnerable state when they reach 25% hit points and remain there for several hours, depending on how much of this fuel they have. The intention is to provide a game mechanic where a corporation's facilities can not be swept away while the players are asleep or at work. During the "reinforcement mode", the owning corporation has time to try and kick the attackers off of their station and re-fuel the station. If they can, the attackers are back where they started yesterday.

Even if there are no defenders, destroying the stations is a time and personnel intensive undertaking. The Goons may not have left anything to loot, but it will still take weeks for their neighboring enemies to claim the territory for themselves.

The Sovereignty mechanics also mean that the map tends to lag the reality on the ground by about seven days. The Goon territory map is actually *worse* than it appears.

The Delve Theater
The majority of the fighting has taken place in KenZoku's space and is much harder to get a good look at. The Sovereignty map remains largely unchanged since the re-naming and re-institution of base-level Sovereignty in the region. Most of the information coming out of the area is from forum posts by one side or the other and Alliance Kill Board reports. Both of these are highly biased to say the least =/.

All sides in the conflict essentially lie on their Killboards to one degree or another. (The linked website is perhaps the most informatively-formatted one of those involved.) Killed ships on one board often do not show up on their owner's board as losses. If one were to go solely on these lists, it would appear that all participants in the conflict are sweeping their enemies before them simultaneously. Furthermore, the boards tend to either lag with real time or not list the location that a fight took place until some time has passed (and the fight can't be reinforced by enemies reading the killboard).

You can still get useful information from them though. When many ships show up as defeated in a particular location, you know where the fighting is centered for that moment. If a series of battleships show up as defeated, a major engagement has taken place. If a station/tower or a Dreadnought/Carrier/Mothership shows up on the board, someone suffered a major material loss. Most of the time there are individual smaller ships listed, often reconnaissance ships (lots and lots and lots of dead reconnaissance ships ).

If you click on individual entries, you can see a list of ships that were involved in the kill. (Wow, those Apocalypse battleships and Zealot cruisers are *really* popular.) Smaller lists of medium sized ships are likely defensive pickets or strike groups. Larger lists are obviously organized fleets.

Nearly two years (and two eve expansions) after this was posted, I received a PM here explaining why these ships were popular:

On December 28 2010 19:01 Nikerym wrote:
the reason Apoc, Amgageddons and zealots are so prevalent at the time, was due to the use of lasers, and instant hit.

all other races required Amunition, which had to be refilled. cirtain races guns also required flight time, (missles, Hybrids) which ment that in a 1 on 1 fight, assuming same fire rate, the Amarr ships could get off 1 extra volley, sometimes resulting in a double KO. (you kill them, but then the flight time catches up and kills you)

but the biggest point was amunition, sometimes those fleet battles would go for 2-3 hours straight, a Megathron (i used to fly these) could be out of ammo within the first 30 mins, requireing warp out to rearm. but in these battles you have massive warp statius fields all over the place making warping VERY difficult if not impossible, so if you were out of ammo, you were pretty much a sitting duck untill the fight was over or you were killed. Amarr ships on the other hand, could just keep firing, being able to hold about 5 days straight worth of crystals in thier hold if they needed to.

From all of this you can get a rough picture of both sides heavily engaged in keeping tabs on where the enemy is dispersed and what they are up to. Roving bands of dps gunboats and crowd-control ships are actively "submarine hunting" for the other side's scouts. Individual or small groups of fast-frigates, mostly on the GoonSwarm side, are hunting outside Delve for enemy cargo haulers (for good reason). Targets of opportunity sometimes appear with ad hoc fleets pouncing on high value targets like Motherships that are separated from the majority or trying to enter the area. Occasionally unlucky recon ships get too close to an entire fleet and are swatted out of existence or come through a star gate into a waiting trap. And at least once a night there are huge fleet actions where billions in currency of ships are destroyed for both sides.

The Time Line
That gives an idea of how things are taking place, but not where or why. For that part of the picture you have to go by Forum posts and brags. Lesser actions appear to be taking place in the Period Basis southern region of KenZoku territory where KIA Alliance may be trying to carve out territory of their own, but are losing many ships for little headway. Querious region in the Northeast is seeing significant Northern Coalition (minus Pandemic Legion) attention and fairing a bit better, partially due to KenZoku's main attention being focused elsewhere. The scene of the majority of the heavy fighting has been in the "W-4" constellation in the Western-most corner of Delve (I can't find any good maps of the area with place-names marked; had to piece together where things were =p). This is where the Goons, PL, and some of their allies made their assault.

The first of the major, organized fleet actions took place on Friday the 7th in the W-4 constellation’s J-LPX7 system. There were several hundred ships on each side and server lag became a serious issue. The "J-L" fight was a crushing victory for KenZoku. The Goon Fleet showed up with the wrong ships/equipment for what they found themselves facing. The Pandemic Legion Battleship fleet ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time and fought a losing engagement at five-to-one odds. And the worst event was Pandemic Legion bringing three Titans and having them not affect the fight at all...

Each Titan can mount one "Doomsday Device" that can be fired once an hour and disables the ship for ten minutes. The Doomsday weapon is an AoE with a 50 Km diameter area and does enough damage to obliterate support ships in the blast and seriously damage Battleships if not outright destroying them. The PL Titans intended to decapitate the enemy fleet and fired three of them at the same time....for a total of zero damage. The official explanation was: lag made the attacks not register even though the effects went off.

From the performance and the damage it looked like GoonSwarm really had made a mortal blunder: They had roused the most powerful enemy in the game to moral-rage, were fighting them on their own turf, and had nowhere to retreat to. People began taking odds on whether KenZoku would destroy GoonSwarm or decide to take Fountain back from Pandemic Legion first. For their part the Goons restated their self-description as the "worst Alliance playing EVE" and claimed they weren't deterred in the least.

A description from SomethingAwful:

Imagine one of those massive industrial washing machines that textile companies use.

Now imagine it operating while full of raccoons.

The second night of major fleet actions consisted mostly of Battleships. The Goon Fleet came back as they promised and clashed with both KenZoku and all the Pets that mustered (the Greater BoB Coalition re-dubbed "KFC", the Kenny and Friends Coalition, by the Goons). When the fight was over KenZoku smugly pointed to their killboard for another heavily lopsided ratio of battleships. GoonSwarm countered that the picture only looked that way for KenZoku proper. If the Coalition Pets were taken into account then it was clear the balance of ships killed was a hundred battleships in the other direction. A poster on the EVE forums uninvolved in the direct conflict said that the battle had resulted in a debris field well over 400 km in length (and that he was having a fire sale on salvaged drones if anyone was interested).

From SA:

And besides the story, the effects on the game are astounding. All of Kenny's space is up for grabs. All of Goonspace is being evacuated. At least a quarter of conquerable space can be (and most likely will be) changing hands in the next month or two. Empire markets are in major flux. Speculation is driving high-end resource prices insane. MASSIVE amounts (even by Eve standards) of materiel are constantly being bought, sold, and moved all around the galaxy -- a noticeable amount of it getting blown up in the process. Some people are losing their "life savings". Others are making fortunes. There are fights to be had everywhere. Just yesterday, we had an ongoing fight in one system that lasted over six hours, involved well over a dozen alliances, resulting in nearly 1000 ships lost. That will most likely be repeated many times over the next week or two.

Sunday night and Monday saw further Battleship engagements with similar results to the second night. GoonSwarm continued to hammer on the psychological front, claiming that KenZoku was using the Pets as a "meat shield" even though they couldn't afford to absorb financial losses the way their leader could. Of greater significance, Station Towers belonging to KenZoku began appearing in Goon and Northern Coalition killboards.

Apparently BoB had never bothered to add Strontium fuel to any of their Stations. Certainly not deep in their own territory away from the borders; who would ever make it that far so that it would be needed? Furthermore, it appeared that they had little of the resource available to them on hand. When the Goons started firing on a station, they could take it down in one attempt because it never became invulnerable. On February 9th, Pandemic Legion destroyed eight towers in one night. KenZoku began trying to haul Strontium in from outside their region and Goon frigates started trying to blockade them.

Tuesday continued the lopsided losses for KenZoku's coalition, with pages full of battleships and smaller support listed on their enemies' killboards. The majority of the losses belonged to the Pets, even though KenZoku suffered heavy battleship losses. It was suggested that the Pet corporations were beginning to agree with GoonSwarm that they were being "pushed out in front" and sacrificed by KenZoku.

Between Sunday and Tuesday, Dreadnoughts and other Capital Ships began appearing on the killboards. However, they appeared mostly on the Goon coalition boards. A few KenZoku ships showed up as defeats in areas adjacent to the main fighting, with no other defeats reported in those areas. The GoonSwarm Capital Ships appeared in their dozens listed as contributing victors in various fights. The Goons had managed to get their Capital Ships into the area and were bringing them to bear in large groups. Their KenZoku counterparts were not committed to the field.

Wednesday during the day (prime time hours for European-based KenZoku), GoonSwarm attacked and destroyed a KenZoku tower with an attached construction facility. A KenZoku spokesman immediately posted a congratulatory note on the EVE forums, and stated that a Mothership class Capital Ship had been "aborted" inside the destroyed facility. GoonSwarm members posted in reply with quotes lifted from the (formerly) private BoB forums suggesting that the vessel under construction was actually a Titan. They further stated that since they had such a convenient list of what was where, all the other baby Titans under construction were going to "get the coat hanger" too.

The terminology here is hilarious. I read somewhere, that a goon operation that was supposed to go around blowing up spaceship construction facilities was dubbed “Operation coathanger”.

Wednesday night saw KenZoku step to the front and finally deploy their Capital Ships in an attempt to harry the Goons off of their stations in W-4. However, they refused to "enter siege mode", increasing their toughness and firepower but rendering the Capital ships immobile. They warped around the system, trying to keep from being trapped and surrounded by smaller ships. A Pandemic Legion battleship group formed up a chase party and "suicided" into the KenZoku fleet. They took massive losses but managed to destroy two capital ships in return.

KenZoku declared that they had delivered another strong defeat to GoonSwarm. Further, they stated the Goon's tactics against their towers were ultimately futile since it was obvious who had more resources in a war of attrition. They asked how the Goons could continue in their disastrous situation. The Goons replied that in trading many Battleships for two Capitals, they had come out ahead in the exchange. (A battleship can be constructed in five hours of real time, a Dreadnought takes more than two weeks and requires a station in a High Sovereignty Rated area to build.) They also retorted that while there was no way GoonSwarm could outspend KenZoku in the long run, that was not true of GoonSwarm plus all of the Northern Coalition. And even more, they claimed that KenZoku ships had performed so poorly against the Goon Fleet in the last week that the Goons now owned virtually all of the W-4 constellation; having free run of the area and the majority of Station Towers in most systems. It would take a week for the Sovereignty map to catch up with the status, but they had already accomplished the first goal in their conquest of Delve...

On SA, a poster was asking about attrition. This was the response:

No one (with the possible exception of RISE I guess, I dunno) ever lost a war in Eve because of money. Wars are lost because people lose heart and stop logging in and coming to ops.

Eve is a game, and no one wants to play a game just to get brutally massacred over and over. So alliances eventually reach a point known as "failure cascade," when lost battles lead to hopelessness which leads to fewer people fighting which leads to more lost battles, and so on.

A failure cascade is usually the last event in an alliance's history: it's very difficult to recover. Goonswarm did it once, but it took a titan nerf and the subsequent death of Shrike's titan (read: massive surge in morale.)

BoB is not there yet, but there are already early signs.

And that's where things stand as best I can tell.

It seems likely that GoonSwarm does have the W-4 constellation in hand. It seems unlikely that KenZoku will be able to hold off the Goon Fleet in W-4, bring enough of their own Stations into the area, and tilt the balance to reset the one week timer. It's still an open question what Delve will look like by the time United Legion, Against ALL Authorities, and Red Alliance finish gobbling up the former Goon territory and are free to enter the fight. Also unknown is how much of KenZoku's claims to un-ending resources to spend on the conflict is real and how much is propaganda. It is quite clear that despite BoB/KenZoku's reputation for PVP in the past, they are losing badly in every engagement against the Goons unless the Goons themselves make an error. That could change in either direction if the allies of one side lose interest in the fight.

For a boring game to play, it really does make a fascinating spectator sport.

*waves a small "Go Goons!" pennant*
Another separate post
OMG

And now for your Daily Irony:

KenZoku committed themselves to (what was intended to be) an extended counterattack with their heaviest elements tonight. A mixed fleet of Capital Ships from both KenZoku and various Pet factions. In the engagement, KenZoku lost nine Capitals of their own, including a Mothership, for no equivalent kills on the other side.

There is a post about this on SA:+ Show Spoiler +

“Storytime.

They cynoed in ~60 caps to J-L, but they had a hosed up cyno (half of them landed on the wrong side of pos guns) so they had to cyno out again. (Note: cap refers to a capital ship, and pos means player-owned-station, which are more often called towers.)

So capswarm stood down for a bit.

One of the FC's (FC=Fleet Commander, I’m pretty sure) thought that they might have gone to QY6. When he lands on the gate, a hostile mothership lands on the gate - instead of cynoing out, he must have misclicked in space and gone to the gate.

We got bubbles on him (interdiction bubbles, preventing someone inside them from warping/jumping away, whatever the mechanic is called), they send in a handful of carriers and support to help him but they're still really hosed up from the fleet fight from earlier so they had bugger all.

So we drop triple figure caps on the gate and gently caress them up.

Of course this doesn't matter, because

Waagaa Ktlehr > We're winning this one, you just don't know it yet.
(this is the Aeon we killed)

and of course they've already said that he hated flying it and he didn't want that mothership anyway.”

KenZoku retreated and the Goon Fleet returned to their task of destroying a Large sized Tower. While they were so-occupied and just over two hours after the destruction of the Capital Ships, KenZoku surprise-teleported another fleet of Capitals into the midst of the Goons. This time the fleet contained a Titan.

But the fleet didn't include any other support ships to keep them from getting swarmed...

The Goon Fleet has destroyed a KenZoku Titan.

But wait, there's more...

Amongst EVE's hundreds of thousands of players, there aren't a lot of them with Skills that will permit them to pilot a Titan (just as there are a limited number of the ships themselves). The Titan was piloted by a player named Shrike. Shrike has now had a total of no less than four Titans shot out from under him; more than any other Titan pilot.

Further...

After losing the first one, he named his second ship Darwin's Contraption. He named both his third and now his fourth Titan Darwin's Revenge.

And today...is Darwin's Birthday!

New post

Keep in mind I'm trying to tell the players without a program. In the above write-up I list FinFleet (a Finnish group, naturally) as one of the "BoB Pets". Now I'm uncertain if they are a Pet or one of the constituent Corporations of BoB itself (along with Black Nova Corporation, Reikoku, and a bunch of other suitably-pretentious names).

I'm still hoping someone who has played the game can explain why the Apocalypse, Armageddon, and Zealot appear to be so popular.

For those still keeping score: half an hour after downing the Titan, the Goons sank another six KenZoku Carrier ships that either showed up late to the party or didn't have sense enough to leave earlier. That's 15 in one day, each representing over two weeks of Real Time investment; it matches the loss that Haargoth Agamar inflicted on Black Nova when he handed their corporate Capital fleet to the Goons. (I wonder how many of those ships were flying in the Goon fleet tonight?)

I had some information about this received via PM:

On December 28 2010 19:01 Nikerym wrote:
interesting injection on a question you asked

"(I wonder how many of those ships were flying in the Goon fleet tonight?)" regarding the hargoth capitals on the titan kill

Answer: None. Those capitals were all still over in Curse, we hadn't had time to get enough pilots over there to get them, we'd only just moved our own fleets. after almost a month and still not getting them, with minimal losses to our own fleets and KFC's almost completely decimated (or to scared to bring it out) we told hargoth he can just keep them and sell them for his own profit.

Along with the Destroyed Titan, the fifteen capital ships, and a *second* possibly-Titan-containing Capital Ship Assembly Array that was destroyed with tonight's demolished KenZoku Large Station Tower, players are asking if this represents the most expensive 24hr string of losses in EVE history.

I admit that things like this really make me curious about the game.

I'm a build tweaker. I spend hours staring at Mids and tuning another 0.5% performance out of my Brute. But I certainly can't do any build tweaking here these days now can I? *jingles a bag of Reward Merits*

EVE has build tweaking in spades. Enough so that I'd have to go back and relearn how to calculate in Radians in order to figure precise Chances To Hit. And just casually looking at the ships they have, I can see all kinds of off the wall design possibilities. Possibilities that could be put to the test in situations like are happening now in this War.

What stops me is the knowledge that, no matter what I did, even if I had the in-game money to buy some of those ships, the skills to be permitted to pilot them accumulate in Real Time like our Veteran Rewards. It would be many weeks, if not several months, of paying for an account before I could even get my hands on them and try them out. Add in that any "newbie mistakes" in point allocation would mean loss of Real Life time that couldn't just be respeced. And finally there's the difficulty in getting into a group that would be doing exciting things like the above (see the previously posted 3 months of activity on Something Awful before one might even be considered for membership). The appeal starts to wear off.

This is where I remember that he’s posting on a City of Heroes forum, because he’s talking about strange game mechanics. Human_Being goes on to mention this:

Oh but I haven't yet mentioned Waagaa Ktlehr, the pilot of the downed KenZoku Mothership who is utterly delighted that Shrike's infamy will cause his own from tonight to be forgotten.
New post

I've found some more information about what went on in the last nine days. However, it may just be a matter for the history books now. It's still too early to know for sure, and it's possible the holiday is just interfering (though time zones put it a day earlier for Europe), and I suppose it's conceivable that it's a deliberate strategy; but at the moment BoB/KenZoku appears to be....

...well...

...Broken.

No engagement on the scale of the previous week has happened in the last 48 hrs. There was a small battleship skirmish, in which Shrike was defeated, again, in an absurdly fit Apocalypse Battleship (Apocalyspes get bonuses to Laser range, making them effective snipers at 100 km; they get no bonuses to Smartbombs which are 5 km PBAoEs. Comments are at the bottom of the page). Saturday night FinFleet attempted to put up five Large stations in the 1-A constellation (rather than the w-4 one where most action has occured), but three were destroyed before activation, one was destroyed before fueling, and the fifth was immediately put into "reinforcement mode". The largest number of ships KenZoku has had in any area appears to be 300 and they didn't attempt anything significant.

They just seem unwilling to engage. Unopposed, there are now some 40 KenZoku stations in "reinforcement mode" and on a timer to being destroyed. This is out of approximately 137 as of Thursday; most of these in the "J-L" system with 108 moons. On Thursday afternoon there were a claimed 117 GoonSwarm stations. If this continues, GoonSwarm could clear the constellation of KenZoku Sovereignty in another two days, with those systems already flipped appearing in the Sovereignty map in the middle of next week.

Things have quietened down enough that, on two occasions, fleets of small Frigates and Cruisers from Alliances unrelated to the conflict (PuPPet Masters, Force of Evil, and Minor Threat) flew through Delve in what appears to be a joy ride. Unoccupied with anything else, the three Pandemic Legion Titans in the area obliterated them both en mass with their Doomsday weapons. The second time they did this, the PL fast attack squadrons complained that their fun was being stolen, but were countered with "even if they outnumber you they won't engage anyway". A single ship from the first frigate fleet managed to dodge all three Doomsdays, evade the GoonSwarm/Pandemic Legion support flotillas, and make it back to NPC space. Pandemic Legion invited him to put in an application

.

Furthermore, there's been a call through the Greater Coalition allied with KenZoku to focus on moving logistics from a particular system of non-PVP NPC space to a staging area in The Delve. It's been suggested that this is actually a cover to hide KenZoku evacuating resources going the other direction. A super-freighter was destroyed in the Delve end of this corridor that contained five Amarr Command Ships packaged for shipment. There's evidence that they belonged to Shrike.

Maybe events will explode tomorrow, but at the moment it looks like KenZoku morale has been shattered. And given extra details that I've learned, that's an entirely reasonable response...

The battle that culminated in the Titan kill actually raged over more than nineteen hours. Over the previous two days, the GoonSwarm side of the conflict had attempted to maintain a continuous presence in the region, 24 hrs a day, rather than having "peak" hours of a few timezones when people logged in. KenZoku, for their part, had put out a public call to all Pet Alliances and Coalition mates (including Against ALL Authorities finally) to make a priority of putting aside RL concerns and getting into the game for a major push. This was referred to as a "Red Pen operation". (I have no idea what the words signify, but it meant something to the board posters.) The tactical focus seemed to be several Capital Ship Assembly Arrays that were coming out of "reinforcement mode" through the mid and late day (North America time) Thursday. With the focus on them, it was speculated that again they contained Titans under construction.

It is later mentioned that a Red Pen operation is, quote: “As I understand it, a red pen op is one in which attendance is taken, and anyone who doesn't show up gets a red mark, kind of like being in the 3rd grade all over again. Anyone who gets a red mark gets a call to their parents...excuse me, kicked out of the alliance. This originated with Lotka Volterra, an alliance which GoonSwarm and allies destroyed several years ago before goons took on Band of Brothers.”

The battle began with the Tau Ceti Federation in France's early morning. Hundreds of battleships were involved, with often 1,000 or more ships in a given system. The numbers on each side shifted throughout the day but remained essentially even. Participants said every time it looked like one side was going to overwhelm the other, reinforcements arrived for the opposition. There were lulls in the fighting, but neither coalition was left in control of the field throughout the day. A pilot jettisons in an escape pod when his ship is destroyed, and the pod itself must be targeted afterward to "kill" them. By noon, records showed that 760 pilots had died in the last 24 hrs in the J-L system alone, with 360 of them occurring in the last sixty minutes.

In the afternoon, GoonSwarm succeeded in preventing the repair of the first CSAA tower to come out of reinforcement and destroyed it. This was during prime time hours in Europe, when KenZoku should have been at their strongest. KenZoku, for its part, managed to repair several stations (without CSAAs) in the QY6 system. Titans' "Jump Engine's" were used to shuttle reinforcements in from staging areas, but didn't approach the battles themselves.

The effort to keep constant numbers eventually turned the balance in GoonSwarm's favor, with the battlefield stretching over 1000 km. The three major Alliances on the GoonSwarm side (Goon Fleet, Pandemic Legion, and Tau Ceti Federation) all had separate commanders and separate communications. the Pandemic Legion commander decided on a whim to withdraw from the battle line and set up an ambush on the QY6 stargate. His group moved under warp speed to the gate and dropped "Interdiction Bubbles", anchored effects tens of kilometers across that prevent warp travel and thus an enemy's escape. As soon as they had arranged themselves for the ambush, Waagaa Ktlehr and a group of KenZoku Carriers and Battleships warped directly into the Interdiction field.

Waagaa Ktlehr piloted an Aeon class Mothership, the second largest class in the game and requiring over a month of Real Time to construct. Once a pilot enters a Mothership, they cannot leave until and unless the ship is destroyed. Waagaa's Aeon was one of the first three constructed after their introduction to the game. He had been piloting it for two years. In his own words "that ship survived more Hot Drops than a cat has lives" (From here). Why he brought his Capital Ship group to the stargate is unknown because Capitals are too large to use stargates, they can form their own Cynosurial fields, and stargates are commonly the sites of exactly this kind of ambush.

Later, I heard that it was likely the result of a misclick:

On December 28 2010 19:01 Nikerym wrote:
"Why he brought his Capital Ship group to the stargate is unknown because Capitals are too large to use stargates"

Answer: Bad Luck. he was on the station with about 20 other capitals getting refueld to jump out when we spotted him, we jumped our dread fleet on top of him, an order was given by thier FC to just get out, unfortunatly he warped to the stargate instead of to a safe spot due to a misclick, he landed in the bubble, our dread fleet then warped to him, and the remainder jumped in from 319- (i was also on this kill http://killboard.goonfleet.com/km/304558)

GoonSwarm Cynosurial fields opened from neighboring systems and in minutes they had over a hundred Dreadnoughts firing on the Mothership with support ships engaging the Carriers and Battleships. The Mothership and other Capitals were destroyed, giving an unambiguous victory to GoonSwarm.

A Goon posted a haiku on the EVE forums commemorating the event:

The red pen descends
pet fleet vastly outnumbered
Aeon: dead on gate

GoonSwarm was in control of the field and everyone thought that Waagaa's defeat had capped the day. The Goon Fleet settled down to mop up stragglers and finish off the remaining two CSAA Towers. Two and a half hours after the Mothership was destroyed, CovertOPs recon ships reported a Cynosurial field opening near the CSAA station. Interdictors were ordered to warp directly to it and try to snare whatever was coming through. Shrike Jumped into the 8WA-Z6 system with another fleet of Capital Ships. One of the Interdictors arrived and threw up an anti-warp bubble and shot the Titan to officially "aggro" it. (This is suicidal for Interdictors, but that's apparently the mentality that "Dictor" pilots have.) Seeing the trap, Shrike took a time-honored route to protecting one's ship: he logged off. But in doing so, he also committed a laughable "noob mistake". If a ship has been aggroed, it remains on the field for fifteen minutes even if the pilot logs off. Goon and Northern Coalition pilots jumped into the system from all over Delve. Some tried to make it in from as far away as Querious to get their name on the "killmail" list. There was no fight, no Doomsday, Shrike's Titan simply died. A fourth time.

But it turns out the humiliation goes even deeper than that. Shrike is actually an alt character of Sir Molle. Molle is the CEO of BoB/KenZoku! He's the head honcho, el Jefe, man-in-charge, he who calls the shots, The BOSS.

Apparently, a post by the person who spotted the Titan (apparently also called Avatars):

I'm da hictor ITP (in this post).

It was laggy as gently caress and I had like 5fps and was trying to warp to someone, it didn't seem to work.

The next thing I know an avatar is suddenly 5km under me.

Freaked me the gently caress out. Had to double check I wasn't back in 319 or some poo poo.

Stuck a WDFG on him and pew pewed him with ma missiles.

So KenZoku brought all the force it could muster, managed a draw at best throughout the day Thursday, failed to stop the destruction of their Capital Ship Assembly Arrays with whatever they contained, lost a legendary ship, lost a Titan, had their leader become (more of) a laughing stock, and the KenZoku coalition suffered the greatest losses for a single day in EVEs history amounting to hundreds of billions in currency. Said leader then further humiliated himself the next day. The Greater BoB Coalition of Alliances was based, not on mutual interest of territorial powers, but on subordination of many lesser powers who's interest was in being associated with "the best" Alliance in the game. "KenZoku" is a different name without the weight of success that "BoB" carried and stands as a reminder for the theft of that name.

Beyond that, territorial Sovereignty is being lost to what is being called the most prolific "Tower Spam" in EVE's history. The primary Fleet Commander for Pandemic Legion praised GoonSwarm Logistics for being able to have a Station emplaced, anchored, activated, and begin fueling "within seconds" of a KenZoku tower being destroyed. Goon Logistics was also efficient enough to have their Dreadnought forces martialed and moved to Delve within four days of hostilities being opened and during a mass migration. This is to say nothing of being able to keep supply of ammunition and tower fuel available around the clock. It's possible that even if KenZoku has more money, they might not be able to utilize it as efficiently as GoonSwarm.

It may be that KenZoku has had their morale broken and simply given up. If that's so, then here is your Daily Irony dating back a year to the first Delve Invasion.

EDIT: RAZOR Alliance propaganda flier.

At this point, he answers another poster’s question about what reinforcement mode is

I mentioned it in a previous post. EVE doesn't have separate servers or instances, so all players around the world are working over the same territory. Naturally you get associations of players focused in a given time-zone. To make it so that another group can't simply come in and destroy a Corporation's Space Stations during off-hours when the players from a given time-zone would be asleep or at work, the Devs instituted "reinforcement mode".

Stations (or "Towers") have millions of HP and take sizable fleets to attack at all. But when you get a Station down to 25% HP, it will enter "reinforcement mode" if it has Strontium Clathrate fuel in it. The Station shuts down and ceases to provide any services, but becomes invulnerable to harm. It will remain this way so long as it has Strontium Clathrate fuel. You can fill a station with enough fuel to last 36 hours while reinforced. At the end of this time, if you have kicked the attackers out of your territory you can repair the station, refuel it, and your enemies are back where they started. If not, then the attackers get to take down the remaining 25% HP and destroy the Station.
New post here.
So to fully destroy a station, you have to bring enough ships to really, really mean it, and then come back at a predetermined time of the defender's choosing to finish it off. Basically the attackers mark where the next fight's going to be by pushing a station into reinforcement mode, but if the defenders have added in their Strontium Clathrate fuel carefully, they can choose when the fight happens. Currently across Delve there are several dozen stations in reinforcement, meaning there would be a lot of ground to cover if KenZoku was going to save them.

KenZoku still refuses to engage in large numbers. Moderate sized fights took place in the 4K-TRB and 5BTK-M systems. In the 4K-TRB fight, KenZoku managed to inflict 31 to 3 Battleship losses on GoonSwarm. That minor victory is overshadowed by multiple Battleships lost in 5BTK-M, two KenZoku Stations destroyed, and another Carrier caught in a GoonSwarm interdiction bubble alone and sunk.

There’s a story (or propoganda) about this on SA:

The first and second battles of 5BTK-M had just ended. Losses were about even (they lost about as many Battleships as we did Frigates), though we did kill a enemy carrier when it warped on top of a Jump Freighter that had got bounced of the shield. Then our official FC left and we had no one to guild us.

The pilot who ended up leading us AFIAK is very much a noobie FC. He had no communication channels beyond getting yanked up to command chat on teamspeak, no clue on what we were supposed to be doing and the fleet ended up seconds from disaster:

Type K L
Battlecruiser 1 3
Battleship 3 31
Capsule 3 29
Cruiser 0 5
Destroyer 0 1
Electronic Attack Ship 1 0
Frigate 0 8
Heavy Assault Ship 1 2
Interceptor 2 7
Interdictor 1 0
Total 9 57

But it still lead to a victory of sorts.

I *think* it was the Mittani who came on teamspeak with orders to save the MERHCI POS's- but we had no official FC with us, and someone had to say "I'll do it". Our Noob FC then got us out of the system with very small losses (I think were lost 3 ships?) despite the fact that 2/3's of the fleet had already left and were 2 to 3 jumps away when the tail enders got ambushed at the jump gate. He then leads us to the MERCHI system without problems and we scare away the hostiles who are trying to kill some new towers that MERCHI set up without telling anyone and the screamed for help when Ken noticed what they were doing.

We then have to go BACK to save the Razor towers a 2nd time, but we stop off at 319, rearm, drop people off, gain some more and then get Gooncannoned via Titan Bridge right on top of the enemy who runs off with minor causalities and sulks in their few remaining towers.

At this point our Capawarm is starting it's operation to destroy Ken's towers. We are 12 jumps away, there is a hostile battlefleet between us and them, they outnumber us two to one and we must prevent them from reaching the system. A somewhat tall order.

Which we did. The enemy fleet ran AWAY from us for several jumps, luring us closer to them....eventually they had us in the right position and struck. We killed their first wave of interdictors and covert-ops but then 6 of them came in at once and overwhelmed our anti-support cruisers and destroyers ships firing at them. Our fleet was out of position, with most of our Fleet Battleship snipers not in a sniper position and the hostiles right on our doorstep. Our FC's were some of the first to go. The resulting massacre lead to most of us being in pods bouncing around safe spots in a desperate attempt to stay alive.

Our noob FC now in a pod, then continues to lead the now shipless pilots in their pods for another 15 minutes while Kenny tries to trap them at planets and moons. During this time, the towers burn. Eventually Kenny remembers he's supposed to be saving the towers in a station system and heads out. The FC then shepherds everyone to a staging point to repair the surviving ships and then goes another 10 jumps through hostile space to make it home without loss. Despite our capfleet not having a support fleet to cover them any more, they jump out without trouble long before Kenny's victorious fleet makes an appearance.

The towers were dead at that point, and despite our pilot deaths and losses, Kenny lost every single tower in a Station system. They did have a tactical victory. 31 Battleships is a sizable loss. However, the costs in ISK is still far less than what Kenny lost in the towers. And sov in another system goes to Goonswarm. We are still 2 weeks and 3 days from Kenny regaining constellation sovereignty.

EVERY (FC) SHIP COUNTS.

The Psychological Front is going just as badly for KenZoku. Their failures on the field have undercut their "we will crush you" meme and GoonSwarm has switched tactics from division to ridicule. Since GoonSwarm owns the corporate name "Band of Brothers", two individuals are now posting under that corporate affiliation with the names "Sir Molley" and "SirTrolle". They are satirizing recent events and damage control spin from KenZoku, pretending to post from KenZoku's point of view.

However, while I can't pin down details, it does appear that the GoonSwarm Coalition has suffered a significant loss in the last few days. A member of the Pandemic Legion named WarGod "rage quit" and said that he was tired of leaving and then being brought back only to get sick of it again. Thus he needed to "burn his bridges" so that he would never be asked back again. He stole 34 million in game-money and 14 Dreadnoughts from a Pandemic Legion constituent corporation.

After this event, Tyrrax Thorrk posted on the EVE forums that he himself was in fact WarGod. Tyrrax Thorrk is the leader of the Guiding Hand Social Club, the organization that pulled off the ten-month corporate infiltration and theft that made gaming headlines in 2005. There is of course no way to be sure, but if this is true then the mercenary GHSC has ironically inflicted more damage on the Pandemic Legion than KenKoku has managed in the last week.

There's no word on where the Dreadnoughts are now, but GHSC's normal mode of operation is to sell such items on the open market (having no use for them themselves). A Pandemic Legion spokesperson later claimed that through some "social engineering", he had recovered "most of" the lost assets.

Earlier in the week, Tyrrax congratulated The Mittani on the dissolution of "BoB" and lamented that he didn't know how he was going to top the exploit. I'm sure he's still thinking on it.

Beyond that sideshow things very much seem to be going GoonSwarm's way. Goon control is beginning to appear in the Sovereignty map (yellow dots in the lower part of Delve; not the westernmost as I'd previously said. Told you it was hard to figure out placenames .)

During an interview immediately following the dissolution of their Alliance, a Band of Brother's spokesman tried to dismiss the importance of the name. He stated that originally they had been "Cookies Cream Cake and Pie (the CCCP)", but that CCP (the Devs of the game) objected to the name and forced them to take another. "We didn't want that name anyway" the spokesman said. During the same radio broadcast, The Mittani said the best thing to hear from an opponent when you take something form them was that they "didn't want it" to begin with.

This has become a running joke amongst the Goons. After a new event, someone will post "They didn't want that "<system/fleet/tower/sovereignty/Mothership/Titan>" anyway!" Each iteration of the joke becomes a larger loss.

Speculation among third parties has switched from "who will win in Delve?" to "when/what will Against ALL Authorities do?" They are an extremely large Alliance that is nominally aligned with KenZoku. Yet they have made little participation in the Delve fighting. They showed up during Thursday's Red Pen operation, but were not there for the heaviest fighting. Instead, they are fighting major fleet engagements against United Legion over the abandoned Goon-space. If Against ALL Authorities committed themselves to the campaign, they might be able to bring C0ven and Stain Empire with them. Coven has a great deal of enmity for the Goons and the Stain Empire has a Pandemic Legion-like reputation for "small but fierce". After the failed Delve Invasion in 2008, GoonSwarm attacked Stain Empire and were thrown back with painful losses; thereafter leaving them alone.

If I may armchair-quarterback for a moment, this is the worst strategic move in the entire war. It is true that AAA is a Russian based group with the timezone that that implies, but their focus should still be the Delve campaign. Even if other Alliances are taking open-territory that they want, those systems aren't going anywhere. The Goons on the other hand are in the middle of a Hail-Mary assault. AAA could have struck a bargain with KenZoku that they would commit themselves to assisting with conquest of any neighboring systems AAA wished in return for full effort in wiping out the Goons while they were vulnerable. Any of the battles in the last week might have gone the other way with more numbers on KenZoku's side; which Against All Authorities have. Broader coverage would also have made it harder for the Goon Coalition to destroy or emplace Towers.

Instead, an end to KenZoku (if that is what is happening) will mean that many of the larger Alliances will have to find a new enemy to fight. They might turn on each other without BoB/KenZoku to pressure solidarity, but that seems a little rash. Better to find an opponent outside the current alignments. If Delve falls, Against ALL Authorities will have the largest territory of any Alliance by default and will remain the last threat from the old "BoB" balance of power. Furthermore, they will be immediate neighbors for the Northern Coalition on their North (TCF's Wicked Creek), South (TCF's Omist), and West (NC controlled Querious).

With AAA support, KenZoku might win. If Delve falls, Against ALL Authorities will be the next target.
New post
Small note: I figured out my confusion over whether the goodfellas Pet corporation had turned neutral or not. No, they haven't.

"Goodfellas" is a forum trolling alliance that mocks any and all players in EVE.

"G00dfellas" is a KenZoku Pet that was singled out by their leaders as the worst among the lot.

Second small note; take this as your daily dose of Irony tomorrow: Several of the KenZoku Pets were required during the Red Pen operation to expend their ships defending systems they were forbidden by BoB from even entering before the war.

This next bit was posted/quoted in several places. Some goons were uncomfortable about it’s language, because it’s the sort of thing they mock Kenny for, but accepted it as forum roleplaying (it was posted on the official eve forums here)

Message posted from GoonSwarm CEO Darius Johnson to KenZoku and Friends:

I believe it's pretty clear to you by now that we are pretty systemically destroying you. Within a very short period of time Delve will belong to Goonswarm and camped into stations or not, there is nothing at all you can do about it. Were I Remedial this would be about the time I'd offer you terms of surrender. I am not Remedial however. I do not want nor care for your surrender. I want every single second of this to hurt. I want it to be as painful for you as possible and I have the people behind me to make this happen.

PL, the NC, UNL, ZAF, ALL of those you have been so ****y with in your "supremacy" of the game, while hilariously losing to them repeatedly, they are all here and they are all in your house destroying your work. No amount of spin or damage control you do here can save your stations. No amount of bull**** can save your alliance. You are finished. You have no clothes anymore and are found wanting. Nobody is fooled any longer and we are destroying you while you hide and look for hacks that can save you. There is no bat phone. There is no savior. There is only me and my friends.

So Kenny, look back with fondness on your days as a "force" in eve. Remember kindly your "contributions" and your "place in Eve history". I own all of that now and I will remove every last piece of it. You are splayed on the table before me and my allies and I will give you no quarter. No more convos from your pets asking for standings. No more convos from your corps asking for standings. Save it. This will be painful. You will not like it and I will be there the entire time twisting the knife every inch of the way. I don't want this to end easily for you or yours. I do not want a safe evacuation for anyone.

You are finished and this pleases me.

Send a few more sms's to people's phones if you want release. Call a few more people's RL jobs or intrude more on people's RL lives. Squirm and squiggle and try as you may to escape the noose. You cannot. I and mine own you now and it is right and delicious. Die slowly please. Me and mine are savoring this.

Your time is over. This is as it should be.

New post; Human_Being responds to a few other posters asking questions.

As for why AAA doesn't tip the balance, they're the ones who are most aware of their assets onhand. The amount of their resources they feel they need to commit to maintain their holdings subtracted from their total leaves the amount of force they can commit (duh). Their intel or the situation in the trenches may be too sketchy and fluid for them to feel they'd be doing more than throwing ships away. Either their intel is too poor to make a decision, or it's too good, and they know more about the real state of morale in Kenzoku than others, and they're unwilling to throw in their lot.

Your point about AAA possibly expecting KenZoku to lose and not wanting to be too tightly associated with them when the smoke clears is very well taken. After reading it I began to consider it an equal possibility with my own speculation.

But no, upon finding more details, Against ALL Authorities really...really should have thrown every bolt, bullet, and blowtorch behind KenZoku's defense.

Following Darius Johnson's post declaring no-quarter, there followed several pages of Goons posting "MY CEO!" (God, you thought their morale might be high before...) In this thread, an officer of AAA posted a comment and Darius replied directly:

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