The Captains Log 25/11
System: TPAR-G; Peroid Basis
Ship: Rokh Class Battleship
For those of you who have being regularly following my blog you will know that GoonSwarm tried to invade Esoteria not to long agao, which failed miserably. Well over the last week or so the StainWagon Coalition has returned the favour and launched a invasion TPAR-G, a GoonSwarm held system in Period Basis.
The Captains Log 26/10
Well since my last post the war between GoonSwarm and Systematic Chaos has come to an end. Goon directors have informed their members to pull out of Esoteria and regroup in Zenith Affinity space to defend against Leguinae Romania (Sys-k allies) who were applying pressure on Zenith Affinity’s home space during the short war. Goons blame this loss on a bad FC, Zenith Affinity not performing to the task on hand, their allies in the east not putting pressure on AAA or Atlas and finally failed logistics. I personally think they severely underestimated the amount of help that the rest of the Southern Coalition would offer to us which prevented GoonSwarm from gaining the foothold they were trying to achieve in Esoteria.
So this leads to the question of what happens next. There is really two course of action that can be taken 1) Invade Periods basis and remove Zenith Affinity from that region or 2) Consolidate Esoteria. I personally argue for option two as the alliance has to get ready for Dominion. We need to start hoarding the ISK acquired from the moon goo and invest it into infrastructure in our own region. Once that is done and our space is secure we should start thinking about making moves into Period Basis.
Well since my last post the war between GoonSwarm and Systematic Chaos has come to an end. Goon directors have informed their members to pull out of Esoteria and regroup in Zenith Affinity space to defend against Leguinae Romania (Sys-k allies) who were applying pressure on Zenith Affinity’s home space during the short war. Goons blame this loss on a bad FC, Zenith Affinity not performing to the task on hand, their allies in the east not putting pressure on AAA or Atlas and finally failed logistics. I personally think they severely underestimated the amount of help that the rest of the Southern Coalition would offer to us which prevented GoonSwarm from gaining the foothold they were trying to achieve in Esoteria.
So this leads to the question of what happens next. There is really two course of action that can be taken 1) Invade Periods basis and remove Zenith Affinity from that region or 2) Consolidate Esoteria. I personally argue for option two as the alliance has to get ready for Dominion. We need to start hoarding the ISK acquired from the moon goo and invest it into infrastructure in our own region. Once that is done and our space is secure we should start thinking about making moves into Period Basis.
Releated Posts
Manasi’s Post
The Captains Log 26/10
The last week has seen the steady grind of POS warfare on both sides of the fight. Goonswarm would put our POS’s into reinforced, we would then rep them and then put some Goon POS’s into reinforced only for Goons to rep them. So far this has only taken place in two systems, A1-AUH the chokepoint for Esoteria as it divides the region into four parts (North, East, West and South) and G-YZUX, which is one of the station systems allowing for SOV 4 to exist. There is little actual fighting going on between us due the time zone differences between the alliance (Goons US and Sys-k Euro), despite this there have being a few battles when the play time of both the alliances overlap, with Goonswarm putting Stealth Bomber fleets to good use when attack the Sys-k battleship fleets.
The start of the war also saw the start of a new propaganda war with the Mittani releasing chat logs of a Simmering Rebellion taking place in Systematic-Chaos, in which the CEO and a Director of I.M.M and a i.NET director were talking with Zapawork about siding with Goonswarm in the coming war. Liam Freeman (the Sys-k leader) passed this off as a joke of which he was fully aware of. The fact that these chat logs have being released to me indicates that any deal that may have been made has fallen through otherwise the Goons would not be releasing this information and giving away their hand. Furthermore, as a member if I.M.M I can say that there is a lot of anti-goon feelings in the rank and file and that any pro-Goon decision made by the leadership would not sit well with them and probably lead to a insurrection in the corp ranks.
The biggest battle to take place so far occurred on the weekend when 16 Goonswarm POS where coming out of reinforced, which lead to a 500+ strong allied fleet turning up for the fight giving them the numerical advantage. The battle resulted in a large number of Goonswarm capitals being destroyed along with the majority of the POS’s that were coming out of reinforced. Goons claim the capitals lost were a suicide fleet as their insurance was about to expire.
While this loss may have not bothered the Goons much the loss of their Titan in a separate battle with Red Overlord probably did. Apparently a Goon mining POS placed in ROL space came under attack so Goons jumped in a Titan without support which was promptly tackled and engaged. So Goons launched a rescue mission with another Titan, which successfully allowed the original Titan to escape only for the second one to be caught and destroyed.
So the big question is why is Goonswarm invading Systematic-Chaos space? Well the first and the simplest answer is to give their members something to do. As a PvP alliance they have to keep their members active otherwise they may just disappear forever. However, the possible strategic reasons for the invasion offers further insights, which can be seen in the Goon post here. Basically the objective of this war is not about territorial conquest but to induce a failure cascade in Sys-k as they are the alliance the fields a lot the sub-capital support in the Stainwagon coalition. Be removing Sys-k from the equation the Stainwagon coalition will have a large cap fleet but limited sub-capital support, thus removing the whole coalitions as threat for awhile. Furthermore there had being rumours going through the alliance that Sys-k would soon be invading the space formally occupied by KIA and now Zenith Affinity. Invading Esoteria therefore is a pro-active from of defence.
So how long is this war going to go for? Well providing that Sys-k doesn’t failcascade I don’t foresee this war going on past Dominion (depending on how Sov is going to work) as with the release of the new Sov system all the major alliances are going to have to pull back and consolidate what they currently hold. Also from what CCP has released so far it does not seem that interregional wars are going to be the norm now, instead there is going to be more intraregional wars. Even if Goons mange to obtain the space occupied by Sys-k they will most likely not be able to hold it very easily post Dominion (again depending on how Sov works) thereby allowing Sys-k, or whatever it is afterwards, to reclaim it. So all Sys-k has to do win is hold the fort for one month. If we can do that we have won the war.
The Captains Log 21/10
A few days ago a Sys-k fleet headed into the old KIA alliance space and proceeded to capture a station that had being left undefended. Naturally GoonSwarm didn’t like this and decided to bring out their capital fleet and hot drop the Sys-k fleet (they also had the threat of Titans behind them). Some good FCing on our part though, got our fleet out of KIA space without any heavy losses. Of course we did not expect to be able to hold station, but it was a bit of fun.
GoonSwarm though has decided to escalate things and has proceeded to invade our space along with Zenith Affinity. So the time for war has come. Many people thought that no major battles would be fought until after dominion but this action as turned that assumption on its head. So things are going to be heating up in Esoteria with GoonSwarm no doubt calling in their allies while Sys-k is definitely going to be bring in theirs, some of which have already arrived.
Personally, I like the idea of war. If only it didn’t clash with real life; at the moment I’m coming into the exam period at uni. Additionally, the ship I am currently flying is a ratting Raven and I have a Goon fleet between me and my PvP ships, so I am going to have get my Raven out and then get my Pod to my PvP ships somehow. Now if only I had the ISK I needed to fit my Phoenix, which will be needed soon.
The Captains Log 4/8
Deciding the Future
So the last 5 days has been full of discussions with our respective corporations and the alliance in general about what we are going to do with ourselves now that we have lost our space down in Esoteria.
We have now twice tried to build an alliance and hold our own space, but this has failed us twice now, so there was a general feeling that we shouldn’t travel down this road again. So the first thought was to combine all the current corps into one megacorp and then join an existing alliance. It was thought that this would provide us with the experience, which we lacked in our alliance. The biggest requirement we had was for us all to stick together move as a team. Most of our members had all been recruited at around the same time in the same corpertation, had helped to build our first alliance and then to revolt in it when found the rules in it to restrictive and not letting use develp our characters. We had history together and wanted this to stay with us.
Offer 1
To this end we began putting out feelers to other alliances to see if anyone was interested in us joining with them. During this period two other corps contacted us about future. The first one was Pyrrhus Sicari, a capital based corporation from the former IRC alliance. Joining them would effectively give us a large capital fleet along with the numbers from our corporation we could also field a support fleet. With this we would have a good chance of joining another alliance. This was already in the works with some interest been shown from Razor, Wildly Inappropriate and Shadow of xxDeathxx.
Offer 2
Another corporation also contacted us about joining with them called I.M.M who are already part of Systematic-Chaos. Systematic-Chaos was one or the alliances that lived with us in Esoteria and spearheaded the attack on us when Stain Empire declared war on us.
Decisions Decisions
Essentially both of these offers were the same. By joining Py we would be able to pick a alliance we wanted to join and fight with them. The biggest motivation here was the change in scenery this offered us, as a lot of members where sick of living in Esoteria/Stain and having to deal with Stain Empire. I was one of these members and campaigning for a move into a new space. Alternatively, the I.M.M offer would allow us to stay in space we already knew, join a alliance we knew and had fought with on occasion. Essentially, the difference between the two offers boiled down to a certain future with everything made for us, or a uncertain future in which could control our destiny (or as one member put Romantic Idealism).
And the Winner is…
After much discussion, yelling and general political campaigning the Systematic-Chaos offer won the corporate vote (after it swung quite a number of times). So we are staying where we are. Unfortunately, for me this means bring all my ships back down from empire after I took them up there. Sigh. Of course now comes the political wrangling in our new corp for dominance, as it is the corp of the original members, but we are going to bring a lot of new members into the corp, who will eventually out number the old guard.
On interesting thing about I.M.M is that Mars Volta is part of it. I remember him from my days in SMASH-Kill as one of the lead FC’s in the powerblock.
Well we went through some dark times the future is now brighter then ever.
The Captains Log 4/8
Well I have all my assets out of Stain region now. The first lot, my mining alts in their pods and a badger full of modules, went out through a wormhole, which lead into Syndicate region. This was still null sec but was only 7 jumps and not 30. The trip was fairly easy, just had to make sure I scouted properly and to cloak at the appropriate times. Unfortunately, it died before I could bring more stuff through.
The Hardest Part
So next I decided to be a man and fly my ships through hostile space. The first trip in my onyx went smoothly. Nothing shot me or even attempted to stop me. So I flew back to Stain in a cheap frigate, picked up my Dominix and begin the trip back to empire. Three jumps in, just as I warp off a gate, a Hurricane appears. As I hit the next gate and jump the Hurricane reappears and jumps as well. As soon as my ships systems come back on line I initiate my cloak. The Hurricane though got a good look at me and managed to get close enough to me to offline my cloak. Damn. Time to fight, unfortunately I was fitted for ratting. After trading a few volleys I realise this is a fight I cannot win so I turn off my lasers and recall my drones and head back to the gate. The Hurricane tries to bump me off the gate but fails to do so. My armour is nearing the end of its life as get in range of the gate and began to initiate jump. The gate though has other plans – You can jump due to recent acts of aggression. Fuck. My armour fails, my structure starts taking a beating, and then finally the gate lets me jump. On the other side I fly to a planet and then cloak, just as down time begins.
After downtime I log my scout into the system and see that the Hurricane pilot is not in system so I bring the Dominix through and just as I do so the Hurricane logs on and warps to the gate. I warp to within 50 of a planet. I quickly warped off to a planet and cloaked, only for the hurricane to follow me. He then aligns to the gate and is getting closer to me. No matter what I do I cannot get away and he will uncloak me and finish of what he started. So I hit CTRL+Q. I watch in my buzzard as he shoots me only for me to get away.
After he leaves the system I continue on my way to the next Hurdle, HED-GP. Once there I see a blue gate camp so that is no problem, until a neutral Raptor appears at the gate. No one else is shooting him and the Raptor starts shooting me. No problem Dominix vs Raptor is easy. My drones take him down to ¾ structure before he wraps off and yells in local that there is a neural Dominix on the gate. Ah well you can’t it help when friends of friends are not friends. So I got my Dominix in to empire.
The last move
The next step involved getting the rest of my ships into empire, which was done through carrier jumps. During this period I was a cyno bitch, though I have got some nice pictures. My Kestrel is tiny (its next to the cyno)
Once that was over I brought my last two characters up to empire. Everything is now safe or for sale down Stain.
The Captains Log 31/7
Just to show people what happanes when your allaince leader pisses off everyone around you, resulting in being blobed and then the alliacne leader just disbanding the whole alliacne.
Ahh well. We are now reforming and moving on. I have been moving all my assets up into Stain NPC space so I can sell it all there. This has worked out quite well as all I have lost is a Merlin (our killboard is dead so no link). I even managed to move my orca (that was scary it warps so slow).
Related Posts
The Captains Log 31/7
Well it is amazing how things can change in a matter of hours. How the mood of an alliance can change from one of euphoria to utter despair. So after our first few skirmishes with the forces of Stain Wagon they sent down their battle fleet making short work of our cyno jammer and then proceeded to jump in 20 capitals (along with the other couple hundred people in system). Our home was under attack and completely controlled by Stain Wagon. We could do nothing but watch it all burn.
So I did something I have never done before. Something that had to be done as none of the other leadership was doing it. I opened up diplomatic conversation with Stain Empire.
The Cause of this Debacle
The first stage of the diplomacy consisted of setting up a meeting to negotiate terms with them. This was done shortly, though at an early time for me. Additionally, they wanted the CEO of the Corps to be present, which could be hard due to different time zones. During this time I also learned why they were attacking us. Our alliance leader Stra Tegist had tried to negotiate lower rent with Stain Empire but had done so in a way that pissed them off so they came down and attacked us.
The next morning I started the second round of diplomacy, which took two hours to complete. Basically it boiled down to four options
9119 > in first option you can contine rent this const
9119 > 2nd: you leave peacfully and pay us reparation
9119 > 3d: you dont pay us – fight is continue
9119 > 4th: you join Stainless and rent space
In this case reparation consisted of 7 bill in isk or assets while joining stainless was exactly the same as continueing what we were doing before. Well after a little discussion in alliance chat I decided it was best to move on and find greener pastures. So we payed two billion isk upfront and got blue standings with Stain Wagon. We now had three days of blue standings to get our stuff out.
Then end of Cartel Syndicate
After this I went away and came back a little later only to find out that our alliance was dead. One of our corporations Obsidian Operations had left the alliance along with our alliance leader. On the way out Stra Tegist decided to make life hard for us. He had disbanded the alliance taking all the assets he had in the executive corp (not that there was much), he messed around with the stations settings resulting in refining having a tax of 100% and a docking fee of 25 mill. Well this was the end of Cartel Syndicate, an alliance I had helped to create and put a lot of work into. Ah well such is eve. The worst part of this was that the standings I had negotiated for were now gone.
However there is good news. Our CEO, Nan Shoku, had been offline for over two months due to technical difficulties, but now he is back. This has provided some much needed direction to the corporation. He reopened negotiations with Stain and got some of the standings redone and convinced them to let us join Stainless for a few days so we can move our assets out. Unfortunately, Systematic-Chaos was still hostile towards us and began attacking us again. But some quick work by DefiantFury fixed that up (and at the right time as well as they were planning on bring down a cap fleet to give a new FC some practice).
The future
So now we have to find a new future for us. Currently this is in discussion, but the future still looks bright for us. We are still sticking together and that is what matters for our members.
The Captains Log 29/7
So I Iog on today do some missions while I am stuck in empire and go into voice comms only to hear this
“Morning Prom, got some bad news for you. Stain Empire has gotten Stainwagen to drop standings with us, we are now at war with them.”
We do not know the exact reason for this yet, but apparently it is due to us not paying rent (which we have been doing and the next batch was not due for a few days). Well this means we get some good PvP nice and close to home : ) The up side of this is that our alliance has had a surge in participation, vent is full and moral is good.
So I clone jump (naked clone no implants) back down to 4GQ and fly my pod down 0-0 and get my Taranis all fitted up and ready to fight. We have Stainless contacts further up in the pipe in a Armageddon and a Raven. The fleet move up to the systems to and quickly takes them both out. As they didn’t try to get away from us I presume that Stainless hasn’t reset their standings yet. Ah well we didn’t start this.
The future may look a little dark but this is what we live for. Free rent and lots of PvP.
prometheus09