Optimistic version: in the absence of a halfway-coherent goon threat that they can point at, first signs of splits in the southern bloc begin to show.

Pessimistic version: Goonwaffe has about the same ISK as one of Gamma’s newbies and slightly less chance of taking meaningful space.

Breaking News: Cloud Ring

Apparently all that stands between us and an invasion of Cloud Ring is cash. Our NC allies are waiting to help us. Donate today.

Support the front!

Apparently the alliance is rich as creosote so we’re invading and everyone can keep their stupid cash.

Paragon Soul

Foolishly believing the Blaster Worm line of “lol when goons are gone majestic herds of pvpers will roam the plains it will be paradise”, Stain Empire set IT neutral and ran a roam through Period Basis. Incandescent with rage and filled with righteous wrath, Molle promptly reset Stain Empire and declared that he would give them the damned thrashing of a lifetime.

Most in the south – including their allies – are busily throwing Stain under their own wagon, declaring that they never liked those faggots anyway, and that they’ve always been aligned with IT. I’m not even exaggerating. Sys-K, the elite face of Italy in Eve, broke previous Italian national records for rushing to the aid of whoever is winning at the time by promptly announced on Kugutsumen that they were going back in time to reset Stain a week before the decision to reset IT was made. This is not an exaggeration either, I promise. The mid-sized powers in Esoteria and Paragon Soul are now lining back up as the GBC pets they always were.

Anyway, IT are now invading Paragon Soul. If ROL and Coven abandon Stain then they’ll just go back to NPC space. Scratch one off the Southern Coalition.

The South are now discovering how badly they have fucked up by installing IT in Delve: AAA won’t risk their Querious systems and Sys-K and the Romanians couldn’t hold Period Basis against IT. So none can stop IT doing what they like.

Fun fact: if anyone wants to rent space from IT a good quality Querious station system will set you back 10 billion ISK a month, with a 15 billion deposit up front (5 bill returnable after one month). All upgrades to be provided by renters and handed to IT.

Triumvirate

For those who haven’t followed the hysterical flouncing of Eve’s biggest drama queens, Tri and allies had to pull out of their invasion of Pure Blind when Bobby Atlas unilaterally pulled out of the other flank in Geminate/Vale without warning them. Tri announced that their mothers had been right and that they wouldn’t take this, but did anyway.

Following on from this, Bobby approached Tri’s renters on the street and said “you don’t kick up to dem faggots no more,” declared himself the new boss and basically took over. Tri yet again announced that they didn’t have to take this and were moving back to their mother’s place, but then changed their mind and realised that Bobby wouldn’t hit them if they hadn’t been annoying him and that it was their fault again.

Again, not enough to split the Southern Coalition, but nor something that will get Tri pilots Xing up en masse to help Atlas next time.

Providence

Providence remains an adventure playpark for retards.

Ace roleplaying space-idiots Aegis Militia decided that the invasion of Providence by half of the South made this just the peachiest time possible to drop sov and form a new alliance made up of precisely the same people. This descended into a Jimmy vs Timmy slapfight with Butter Dog-CAOD-posting-vehicle Ushra Khan. While blaming CCP for the inability of either side to keep sov for more than a third of a day straight over a period of several days does have a believable ring to it, it is more likely that the shoe-size scale of the collective IQs involved is the deciding factor here. Impressively, the handover was so fucked that Aegis Militia took four systems back from themselves at one point.

Meanwhile, AAA took and handed over CVA’s capital (9UY) to Ushra Khan. AAA’s level of interest after several weeks of a campaign is about where you might imagine it is (roaming HAC gangs), but CVA’s occasional efforts to do anything about it are at best counter-productive.

The North

The NC have something planned for this week. It may or may not be related to the help they were going to give us in Cloud Ring, which set a new record for Goonfleet space invasions at 13 hours from its exciting proclamation to Darius’s regretful “Back to Syndicate” announcement that we had been defeated. Perhaps they’ll go and liberate geminate instead vOv

Edit: Looks like we are indeed to be the grateful recipients of NC Peace-keeping ops. At least from Mostly Harmless, who seem to be taking helping us out very seriously indeed.

What is there to say about Delve I? We were within days of victory. The Band of Brothers lay shattered, inactive, supine. And we failed.

At the tail end of the Southern campaign, we had attempted to take Period Basis on the bounce. That had failed, and we realised that there would be no soft underbelly, no Thessalonika or Dardanelles. Delve and Querious would have to be taken. The (then) logistically weaker northern allies would take Querious, while Goons and Red Alliance pushed into Delve.

The Taking of QY6

Two weeks into January 2008, Goonswarm launched the attack on Delve. Towers were put into place in a key system called QY6. Our capital fleets were locked out of the system by its online cyno-jammer tower, barring a small force of capitals from a smattering of alliances who had logged off there. The unpredictable force of nature which was Goonfleet FC Suas decided that this tiny force was enough. He had them log in and attack the cyno-jammer.

We had a huge force waiting to jump into the system, if only Suas could succeed. But it took time to pound through the vast shields and armour of the jammer module. Worse, BoB soon gathered their own, much larger fleet of sub-capitals, capitals and even supercapitals, and used the jump bridges in the system to bring them in under the protection of the jammer. Warping to the jammer tower, they began to attack the unprotected allied dreadnoughts.

Soon, they began to pick off the isolated capitals. But Suas knew that there was no escape now: they had to succeed or die. So they ignored their attackers and focussed fire on the jammer. Just in time, as they began to lose ships and damage potential, the jammer shut down, damaged to the point of incapacitation. Cyno-beacons lit up the system and a massive force jumped in to rescue what was left of the assault force and to sieze the sytem. Bob retreated, morale shattered, and QY6 was soon taken. He had our first system in Delve.

“Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat”

As we approached Delve, the Mercenary Coalition decided that the time had come to abandon their masters. Although nothing came of talks with Firmius Ixion (who were to die as an alliance as their space in Querious fell), they assembled a bloc of four independent, experienced alliances and declared themselves to be an [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=4NDBbt2yBII]independent mercenary bloc called Tortuga.[/url]

Unfortunately for their members – and for their allies – the MC’s leadership proved gullible, vaccillating and perfidious. We had co-ordinated our assaults on Bob with them, in Delve and Period Basis, so as to stretch the resources of the defenders and force them to choose where to defend. On the eve of our new assault, Sir Molle persuaded Seleene, the head of the MC, to return to his side with a promise of security and independence. Of course, this was a trick. Virtually nobody believed his blandishments. But Seleene did. As a result, the allied assault failed in chaos and the MC died. Bob turned on them almost immediately, humiliating them with logs of Seleene’s duplicity and foolishness. Tortuga was stillborn.

Not With a Bang, but With a Whimper

QY6 fell in February, but momentum was failing. In March, knowing that BoB were close to complete collapse, but that we were exhausted also (some literally, with Bob members calling PL fleet commander The Adj’s mobile at all hours and even his boss at work), we decided to go for an end-run: the Bob capital of NOL would be next. In a close-fought battle, we would succeed in downing the jammer, but the offensive failed when BoB, despite the shattered morale of their ordinary members and resulting pitiful fleet sizes, were capable of moving six, seven and sometimes eight titans around using jump bridges to defeat any attacks, all the time protected by jammer modules from counter-attack.

Red Alliance lost a titan in the fight for NOL (tackled by a ship that continued to keep it lcoked down despite having died some minutes previously), but this didn’t explain the absence of RA leadership, momentum and even pilots for the remainder of the campaign. It would later transpire that somebody had reported virtually their entire leadership for ebaying ISK and had succeeded in seeing most of their titan pilots, FCs and everyone with wallet access to the alliance’s resources banned. Of course, access was later returned to them once cleared (although, frankly, quite a few were guilty as hell), but by that time the war was over.

Meanwhile, their fellow Russians of Against All Authorities proved strangely reluctant to engage, instead attacking more of our weaker allies than they did BoB. Indeed, they siezed the distraction of the coalition’s fight in Delve to declare war on the far weaker Knights of the South. Already stretched, we couldn’t apply the necessary pressure to stop this cynical land-grab against a minor member of our bloc. Encouraged by our reaction, by the time Delve I wound down, AAA had decided to repeat this process against mutual allies IAC. Shamefully, we acquiesced in this, and failed to step in. AAA’s sympathy for and contacts with BoB would be revealed much later.

Weary from a year of war, we had tried to win with the momentum of our southern campaign. We had tried to win through the application of mass, and of newcomers’ quality. But too much of that mass had proved incompetent and too much of the quality had proved unreliable. By April, with Bob retaking space in Querious from the incompetence of Iron and oher second-string allies, our withdrawal was announced. One last operation – our Dunkirk – saw us evacuate immense amounts of war-matériel. Sesfan, the leader who had killed Shrike and led us from defeat to conquest, passed the leadership to Darius Johnson, and the war wound down to an end.

…but the future refused to change. Revenge, when it came, would be more perfect and more total than we dared to dream.

Postscript: 6-24 Skynet

This is a true story.

Around 23:30 on the 3rd of February, 2008, the Goonfleet tower in QY-6 at Planet 6 Moon 24 achieved sentience and went rogue, attacking friendly ships despite its programming and orders.

6-24 was already a brutal animal, known for its ruthless efficiency. Without any human intervention, it had destroyed a sieged BoB dreadnought, something which shouldn’t happen. Having tasted blood, it soon turned its guns on friendlies as well as hostiles. Nobody was safe, and CCP couldn’t stop it killing friend or foe as it wished. Goonfleet member Davor described it thus: “6-24 knows when shit gets serious to stop shooting blues. During the first (then) BoB siege of qy6 (the one that failed), skynet didn’t shoot a single blue the whole weekend. Within minutes of BoB’s retreat from the system, it was tackling & shooting allied ships, as well as goons inside its own shields.”

When we withdrew from Delve, the tower at 6-24 died. But whatever malign intelligence had possessed it remained. Bob didn’t unanchor its weapon modules: without a tower there they had no power and no processors, so why bother? They sat there in space, silent and brooding. But [i]6-24 continued to kill those who warped to the moon[/i]. 6-24 wasn’t as weak as us. They cut its head off and the body just kept on coming. Pos Invictus.

And sure enough, one day, the tower at QY6 planet 6 moon 24 would be welcomed back to the swarm as its most constant and sociopathic member, and would continue, once more, to kill hostile and unwary friend alike.

The South was the key theatre in the Great War, but as Band of Brothers concentrated more and more on that theatre, and as their facade of invincibility crumbled, other power-blocs began to feel that they could settle old scores. This post will be a short diversion from the southern theatre. Although my main character is in Goonswarm, I fought on both these fronts, one as part of an expeditionary force, the other on a spy alt on a different side.

This episode is a little longer than the others so far. But there is a lot of ground to cover.

The Wider War – The North

When their offensive against Goonswarm had begun, in the late spring of 2007, Band of Brothers had fielded a grand coalition of more than fifteen alliances, which they referred to as “pets”. Their declared intention was to control all of 0.0 space in Eve, and by the middle of the year, they were well on the way towards this goal. While they had ground through Tenerifis and Omist in the deep south, their key pet Mercenary Coalition, together with various allies and proxies, had been ordered to go north in April.

While this northern thrust initially cheered Goonswarm members, who were short of friends and saw the opening of a northern front as dragging the reluctant northern forces into the fray, it in fact proved a disaster. Goons sent reinforcements, but the D2 logisticians were incompetent (the first conquerable station Goons ever held was taken from D2 a year previously, when they had turned out to have no defences at all in place), while supercapitals were still invincible, and Goons withdrew in disgust. The MC were the spearhead for a series of rapid and successful campaigns that utterly destroyed the key northern power, D2, and rapidly brought vast tracts of space under the hegemony of Band of Brothers. Worse, it drew in new allies for the ascendant BoB powerbloc, attracted by the newly-opened frontier space they could now offer. We faced more enemies than ever.

BoB’s hope was that of Germany in 1914: rapidly destroy the enemy on one front and then concentrate their forces against the remaining enemies. They thought that, by the time they had overrun Goonswarm and were approaching Red Alliance’s holdings, their northern forces would be ready to bring into the attack. The successes of the efficient Mercenary Coalition-led attack meant that seven of the nine northern regions had fallen in succession. It actually looked as if BoB might just conquer the whole of Eve.

But as Bob poured more and more forces into the meat-grinder which was 9-9, they had less resources with which to finish off the last two northern regions of conquerable space. Their feudal subjects were more and more prone to spending time developing their new space and rebuilding exhausted wallets, and spent less time in the constant misery of the 9-9 attack. Then, as the front swept westwards, BoB abandoned their northern allies, declaring them ready to stand alone. But in the place of the sclerotic D2 were now two smaller, more vigorous powers – Razor and Morsus Mihi. Rebuilding the Northern Coalition, they began to sweep the “New North” back to empire. Band of Brothers refused to help, abandoning even the northern assets of their loyal subjects in Mercenary Coalition (whose newfound independence at the heart of the New North was not viewed kindly) and demanding they return to defend Fortress Delve.

Pets from the south had been resettled (albeit still paying huge sums in rent) in Fountain. However, as the rejuvenated Northern Coalition took advantage of BoB’s focus on the south, Fountain became more and more exposed. By the time that alliances like M.Pire and Rise were being shipped in cattle trucks to Fountain, pressure from Northern and ex-Northern alliances, alongside the new player called “Bruce”, were placing pressure upon Fountain and making it uninhabitable. Add to this the fact that BoB insisted on charging 6 billion ISK per constellation to pets who had lost their space fighting alongside them, and we saw an explosion of drama and withdrawals from the BoB pet system that lead to the Fountain front collapsing.

The Wider War – The Destruction of Army Group Centre

A month after the tide turned in the South-East, AAA and IAC were emboldened to launch an attack on Querious, a key border region for BoB that was held by Firmius Ixion. Fix held on for more than a month under a great deal of pressure due to good attendance and (usually) superb logisticians, but eventually BoB had to call on the Mercenary Coalition to end their northern contract and to bolster this key, central front. Fix and the MC were soon working closely together, which would ultimately prove disastrous for Bob and fatal for the Mercenary Coalition.

With the arrival of the MC, the Querious front stabilised in the 49- system, then began to roll back into IAC’s Catch homelands. In July, IAC and AAA had been on the offensive in hostile territory. By August, they had been stalemated. As BoB abandoned their northern pets’ holdings and recalled them south, the momentum shifted further, and the MC/Fix-led forces pushed into Catch. Goons could not yet move to help: they were busy fighting fires on their own front where their allies were repeatedly failing to secure the systems won for them in a litany of poor logistical decisions. But morale on the central front was bolstered when AAA killed the MC titan piloted by their leader.

BoB, still not grasping the seriousness of their situation, allowed themselves to be provoked into openeing yet another subsidiary front, in Providence, where they wished to secure a logistical route for their invasion of eastern Catch. While the MC started their attack on IAC’s central holdings (yet again, in a theme of allied incompetence that was becoming bewildering to Goons, badly defended by holding insufficient moons), Bob launched an attack on a system in Providence. They supposed that Paxton Federation, a minor power in the roleplaying bloc headed by Curatores Veritas Alliance, and occupying some of the worst space in the game, would be a pushover. In fact, it proved to be a short but bloody conflict which saw the Providence powers mount several initially successful defences before being forced to give ground.

But the effect of the Providence sideshow was not limited to the securing of a beacon system for supplying Bob’s Catch attacks.

The MC, tired of BoB ignoring their (frankly superior) strategic advice and of their inability to focus on a single front, suddenly announced the end of their contract and their return to their Period Basis holdings. With this single move, the central front returned to stalemate as November began: BoB could no longer, without their key allies, muster the force required to press home their offensive. They would remain in Catch for some time, but on the defensive.

Worse, and unknown to them as yet, the Mercenary Coalition had started talking to Firmius Ixion about the establishment of a new power-bloc, outside the orbit of the Band of Brothers. This never came to fruition, but the first cracks in the damn had appeared.

Vacuum

At last, BoB realised that they were beaten, and that they could no longer support their bloated empire. They therefore decided to announce a withdrawal to the Delve-Querious-Period Basis triangle: a compact and defensible triangle or regions that represented their last holdings. All across the south, pets scrambled to save what they could of their possesssions as they tumbled, abandoned by their masters, back to their last stronghold.

In a politically unwise move, BoB included the Mercenary Coalition in their announcement video where they listed the retreating and beaten powers.

Goonswarm’s response to that video summed up the reason why our advance was so persistent, and why our motivation had been so certain even when we had seemed on the verge of extinction. We had been relaxed, fun-loving players in a backwater of Eve, and now we were killing them.

The War So Far

This is a huge, horrible map which I wish I could find out how to spoiler/hide on Wordpress:

On the Eve of Delve I

If you look at this map, you’ll see the holdings of the various powers on the eve of the Delve invasion, near the end of 2007. Bear in mind that this map was created by a close friend and occasional member of Band of Brothers, and that it is designed to make their stand more impressive (it omits well over half of their allies).

The mass of red in the south-east represents the territory taken by Goons and Red Alliance from Bob and from Lokta Volterra, their erstwhile allies. Looking at the individual regions, as late as June, Band of Brothers had held Paragoin Soul, Esoteria, Feythabolis, Omist, much of Tenerifis and had even started an attack on Detorid, the second-last region held by Goons.

In the north, they had held Cloud Ring, Fade, Deklein, Branch and most of Tribute and Tenal. One could have circled two-thirds of the map and never left BoB-controlled space.

Now, only on the central front, in Catch, were BoB clinging precariously onto their gains, and then only because of the work of FiX and the MC. Fountain would soon fall to Bruce, Catch was untenable, and while their south-western fortresses remained stubbornly intact, enemies were at the gates, and they would soon be betrayed from within.

“Her syndon geferede, feorran cumene
ofer geofenes begang Goona leode;
thone yldestan oretmecgas
Sesfan nemnad.”

The Turn of the Tide

We are now a year into this story. Goonswarm stands at bay, morale cracking and leaders left, our fall eagerly awaited by a host of enemies.

In Indonesia, a Frenchman called Kugutsumen had once infiltrated Goonswarm’s IT infrastructure, at the request of their enemies. Not the sharpest tools in the shed, those enemies had then refused to pay him his fee. Further, his time spent reading the Goon forums had impressed him with how much fun they seemed to have had during their time in Eve, compared to those he had dealt with. This was the first of two Goon Cultural Victories that would shape Eve.

Kugutsumen changed sides. He broke into the Band of Brothers’ forums and discovered the extent to which CCP was supporting their pet alliance. He made this public. Although he was banned by CCP for life, the outrage created by his revelations forced CCP to distance itself from their favourites. For the first time in their history, the Band of Brothers would stand or fall by their own abilities.

Death of a Titan

The smallest ship counted...

Titans’ doomsday weapons were changed so that they had to be present in space with those they wished to attack (yeah, I know). And a new class of ship was released which was capable of preventing their escape.

Enter the idiot. Nobody in the history of the game has cost their alliances more valuable ships, money, space or, well, alliances than Sir Molle, leader of Band of Brothers. But on the morning of June 22nd, 2007, all that lay in the future. The Band of Brothers were still apparently invincible and unstoppable, the extent of their reliance on now-withrawn help not yet apparent. Sir Molle decided that he would use his titan to kill a group of Goonswarm newbies on a gate in the 46DP system. He unleashed his doomsday, killing all those who did not leave at once, then, alone on the grid, he cloaked his titan over a hundred kilometres from the gate to wait until he could jump out.

A young member of Goonswarm called Hrin, however had had the presence of mind to note the vector off the gate where Sir Molle had appeared. Returning, he burned in that direction. At last, we had a stroke of luck: one which turned the war. Successfully decloaking Molle, Hrin exposed him to attack. Within minutes, every Goon who was online was burning for 46DP, while others were being phoned and IMed, along with the Russians of RA.

Sesfan, the new CEO of Goonswarm, took charge of the fight: the leaders of the two alliances were clashing in a vital battle. Amongst the oldest of Goons, Sesfan had led us into fights since the earliest days of the Swarm: you can still read his battle reports on our forums if you look back to the second-last page of the archive.

Band of Brothers scraped together everything they could: they sent an appeal out to their entire alliance via their IRC network, and everything from assault cruisers to carriers arrived to save their de facto flagship. To no avail: Sesfan was victorious (you can hear him FCing the last phase of this fight here, in one of our movies, and this is a fun, realistic view of the battle from beyond the fourth wall). Molle’s titan character, Shrike, was dead, and his much-feared doomsday weapon was melted down to make frigates for Goon newbies.

If you listen to the very end of those youtube clips you will hear the relief of hundreds of people who have had their backs to the wall for months, and who have just destroyed the chief instrument of their suffering. You will also hear that Sesfan, out of everyone, was calm: “Check, check… we have work to do.”

The March Through the South

Goonswarm attack

Early Goonfleet Propaganda

And so the Goonswarm alliance was crushed forever, Eve cleansed, and the Band of Brothers’ position in Eve secured.

The Redswarm Federation

 
Worry not, dear readers, for our heroes are not dead after all!  Instead, they hid in fen and fastness, offered shelter by the game’s other despised outcasts, the Russians of Red Alliance.  Forgotten for a time, they regained their strength and numbers, unnoticed by their enemies.  Red Alliance had been targetted by a grand coalition of all the South’s other alliances, driven back to a single outpost, their numbers dwindling.  But they, too, had held on.  Now, with the numbers of Goonswarm as a weapon, they erupted outwards.  Think the Fremen from Dune, or the Arab conquest: in a matter of a few months Goonswarm, Red Alliance and the French of TCF had exploded across the south, taking not just outposts but whole regions, until they dominated almost a quarter of the Eve galaxy.

Reversal of Fortune

But we dug too deep!  As we neared the destruction of Lokta Volterra, the last of those who had besieged the Russians, Band of Brothers realised the threat on their Eastern borders, and decided that they had to react.  In what was to become a theme, they failed to exert the necessary effort to save their allies, but as our holdings pressed up against their borders, they decided that we needed to be taught another lesson.

This was probably the worst time in Goonswarm’s history.  The Band of Brothers controlled a vast, feudal empire and could bring over ten thousand allies into a conflict.  They had titans, which were at that time unstoppable instruments of destruction, able to wipe out entire fleets from perfect safety every 30 minutes.  They had mastered exploits which meant that even the shields of our orbital towers were not safe.  Our founder, Remedial, held that we could not survive.  He left us, but not before he stole the funds goons had been contributing to build our own titan.  And as the campaign proceeded, it was revealed that Band of Brothers were not just being given gifts and information by the game’s developers, but that they had developers amongst their members.  One of those developers, it transpired, was the consistently-successful FC of their all-conquering capital fleet.  Many things clicked.

And so we were driven further and further back, defeated time after time as stations, systems and then whole regions fell before our enemies.  We had no answer to the enemies’ numbers, to their ability to deploy titans round the clock to destroy any fleets we assembled, or to their huge capital fleets at a time when Goons were struggling to field properly fit battleships. Our replacement CEO The Mittani went, frankly, a little mad under the pressure.  We discussed retreating to a single region in the north of our holdings and attempting to hold a last redoubt.  Goons kept turning out to fight, but it was, apparently, hopeless.  Laughing at our outrage about exploits, titans, and developer misconduct, Band of Brothers’ members constantly replied with the refrain that “we’re just better than you.”

It was at this point that we were saved by an odd group of people: a scientist, a hacker, a newbie, an idiot and a general…

I will spare you the details of the previous hosts (M6.net) who turned into a hosting con trick, complete with fictional numbers and imaginary offices. Nor will I burden you with the facts behind my stealing my own domain name back.  Not for you, gentle reader, such mundane details.  Suffice to say that I had a blog, which I ignored for 18 months, and which is now active again.

Eve Online will probably be quite a focus, for now: I find it an intriguing sandbox.  I’m probably going to get trolled on goonfleet.com about this (the Goon “Hippoking Effect” of distrust of those who talk to pubbies), but in the immortal words of Popeye the Sailorman: “ego sum quid sum”.  I am what I am.  A narcissist.