The Goonswarm Beehive Crumbles!

Is Delve cursed? One would certainly think so!

As of this morning, it seems the map of Eve will once again change drastically! Just as it did back when Band of Brothers (BoB) were betrayed and disbanded by one of their own directors. However, unlike BoB, the sudden loss of sovereignty came from an entirely different mechanic failure. The CAOD forums are on fire as IT, my own alliance, and other friends are dancing in utter excitement while the Goonies cry foul.

Basically, Goon leadership failed to pay the sovereignty bills and thus lost their control over a large swath of territory. Since the sudden loss, many of their enemies have swarmed their beehive, taking systems left and right including key strategical systems. With these losses, it could easily mean the end of yet another Delve empire.

Do I think it's fair? Honestly, I think its a lot more fair in comparison to how BoB was disbanded. A company, even in the real world, can lose their assets if a bill isn't paid. If you know your bills are coming due, which they should have given the spam of evemails you get, it would be in your best interest to make sure enough funds are in the necessary wallet to cover the expense. From what I personally gather, too many of the folks who control this said wallet were "on vacation". True or not, doesn't matter. In the case of BoB, they were disbanded by simple click by one person. In both cases, it sucks that what could seem to be a trivial thing could become the downfall for such massive entities. However, is this yet another case of the butterfly effect?

Let us not overlook as well the loss of sovereignty by Wildly Inappropriate. and Legion of xXDeathXx due to the same failure. Personally, I'm not sure Wildly Inappropriate failed. It could very likely have been intentional since they had pretty much already lost their space to invaders anyways. And whatever they still held, was likely to fall soon enough given their loss of morale. As for Legion's sovereign space, it's the drone regions...thus as far as most of the nullsec alliances are concerned, they can keep it.

Either way, this is certainly another day that will go down in the history books of Eve politics!

3 Strikes But Not Out

So as if it isn’t obvious, it’s been quite some time since I sat down and wrote anything. Not for lack of logging pod time but just from a lack of motivation to write. Frankly, there’s been lots to write about, but I’ve just been lazy.

Let’s start with the fact that I’ve been in 0.0 for….what? 4 months now? Maybe 5? Up until this past month, things had been going great. I had yet to even experience the loss of a clone. This past month of December changed all that drastically. In a single month, I’ve been pod killed 3 times. In fact, they probably all happened within a 2 week time period.

The first took place while in a class 5 wormhole I’d found in our home system earlier that day. I had just finished scanning the system for other entrances/exits and decided I was a tad hungry. So I cloaked up (or so I thought) and stepped away from the controls for perhaps no more than 5 minutes. Next I know, my roommate comes walking from the back hallway and mentions he thinks something’s wrong with my computer, that a bunch of beeps and warning sounds are coming from my room. Immediately, I ran back to the room but of course it was too late. By the time I’d gotten back, I found myself already sitting in a station.

So that was loss number one.

The second loss came from what I admit to being a rather dumb move on my part. We’ve had a serious of attacks on our home systems by a group called DarkSide. It’s not hard to notice just how badly they’re beating on us by all the red on our killboards. To they’re credit, they’re very skilled, using great tactics and frankly, when you’re throwing a home defense fleet together fast, you just don’t have the time to organize a well laid out fleet to counter they’re tactics.

In this particular attack, they had moved into one of our choke points and we’re holding their ground. Unfortunately, most of our alliance was a number of jumps away partaking in what was a really great cruiser competition. Lots of good fights from all the participants. I had visited and watched the event from my Arazu recon ship when I heard the news of the attackers. Figuring I’d at least go and get some eyes on them, I made my way over to the adjoining system. When I reached the gate I knew them to be sitting on the other side of, I found a single lone Dramiel floating around the gate. Watching the intel channels, I took note of people claiming our allies, Stain Empire, was engaging the enemy fleet. For a moment, I contemplated what to do and then made the decision that sealed my fate. Figuring their fleet to be busy on the other side and being engaged would not be able to come through any time too soon, I moved to within my optimal range from the Dramiel. I recall there being a few other alliance mates present at the gate but obviously they bailed. Either way, I quickly decloaked and locked my targeting system onto the ship. I’d fired off no more than one salvo when the gate lit up like a Christmas tree. Apparently the intel had been either too delayed or just wrong period given the number of ships that swarmed me. I’d almost had the Dramiel finished off before their logistics repped him back up. After that, it was just a matter of moments before I saw my second death in 0.0 space.

The first and second deaths sucked, but I was at least able to accept with heavy spirit. The third death I will not accept however. As usual, the pathetic empire wankers, Privateers or some crap like that, have a war dec out on us. This is pretty much an ongoing thing. They really are nothing more than a bunch of pathetic Jita 4-4 station campers that continuously war dec nullsec corporations and get their thrills from killing any of the pilots going to pick up or sell goods in the Jita hub. All the while talking smack on CAOD as if they’re some big time nullsec corp when in reality, they’re the only corporation that pretty much all of nullsec alliances laugh at in unison.

Anyways, I’m making it sound like I’m mad at them for what happened but in truth I’m not at all. I come out of warp at the station. I’m a bit farther from the station than I’d hoped but I wasn’t too concerned and immediately put the engines at full and burned towards the station in my cheap little Atron frig. I already expected to lose the ship and wasn’t at all concerned about that. Sure enough the ship takes like two hits and poof. So now I’m in my pod. The genius at the docking control then sends me the notification that my docking request has been accepted and that I am to be towed into station. At this point, I should be immune to the buzzard pukes and though it lags a bit changing screens, I finally am able to breathe a sigh of relief as the image of space clears and the station sounds fill my ears.

“Wait a minute….something’s not right. This isn’t a Caldari hanger,” I think in exclamation. Sure enough, looking up at the station ID I see the big familiar symbol of my corporation, Silver Snake Enterprise! I’m in such disbelief at this point that I could only sit there for a moment in complete shock. Finally senses come back to me and I quickly check my combat logs. Sure enough, the I see the log files for the hits on my ship, and then the Docking request accepted and then…nothing. So I check my loss mails. Yep. There’s the Atron loss but no mail for the pod loss! This just will not do!

So yeah. I sent a petition to CCP about it. First time that I can recall ever submitting a petition. I’ll be curious to know how quick a response time they have. As I said in my petition, I understand and accept the loss of the ship. But not the loss of the pod given I’d received the docking request accepted long before my pod went pop. Long being like 5 seconds but hey, 5 seconds in a pod…in combat…is a REALLY long time. Hopefully they agree with my cry of foul. If I hadn’t received that docking acceptance, than I would be accepting of the pod loss too. (and the somewhat expensive implants I lost in the process)

In retrospect, yes, it wasn’t a very good idea to go to a station where war targets are sure to be at. Honestly, I didn’t even think about just using my alt, something I banged my head a few times over for afterwards. But that still don’t change my stance on the events.

Either way, I seriously have a lot of making up to do for all these stupid losses….and it seems I’ll soon be getting my chance. Actually, a lot of chances. More to come on that later though. J

No Swiss Cheese Please!

"No matter how brilliantly an idea is stated, we will not really be moved unless we have already half-thought of it ourselves." ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

So the costs and more details of the new Sovereignty mechanics has been released and let me say, I’m not at all impressed. I actually did have high hopes for D-day but those hopes were quickly snuffed out.

First of all, I’m in agreement with what many others have been saying about the costs. I was fully expecting a tiered expense. Meaning, the more systems you own, the higher the bill gets. Not statically as in ‘this system costs 2 mil. That system costs 2 mil. Oh, and that system costs 2 mil. You want all three? Okay, that’ll be 6 mil then.” Simple, sure, but this is certainly not what I had in mind. CCP’s mindset seems to be if they make it expensive enough and make the upgrades even more expensive, that will control the number of systems people own. I seriously beg to differ.

Now when it comes to talking numbers and values and all that other jazz, I’d be like the kid in gym class who gets picked last every time. I can barely manage my own finances let alone the idea of watching market values and fluctuations and actually comprehending what I’m reading. What I do know is that if it takes farming complexes on a daily basis just to help pay for our systems, then I have to wonder, where is the time to go shoot someone else. Add to that the fact of not having a reason to take their space because that would just mean even more systems to pay for without any real value of actually having them, and it ruins the whole beauty of 0.0 and the epic battles for space superiority. I said not too long ago we’ll fight because we can and because we have guns. But epic fights come from having goals and objects, trophies to be won other than just another notch on the killboard.

I said it before and I’ll say it again, the revamp of 0.0 is not at all going to be like people seem to think. It’s not going to consolidate the current alliances into smaller blocks in space. Based on the new prices posted by CCP, I can actually agree with a comment made on the CAOD forums by a Goon member, Nobani, when he said the following:

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Originally by: Darriele
And those are basic expenses, but when upgrades are implemented the cost can double or even triple. Ofc no ally will try to keep up sov. in so many systems,they will try to compact their "sphere of influence" around a single spot.

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Originally by: Nobani
It's more likely we'll get swiss-cheese sov. Station, cap ship construction, jump bridge, key moon mining and key PvE systems will have sov claimed. Transit systems with four belts and no R64s will not have sov, but the local alliance will still drop a hammer on anyone who tries to set up shop there.

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Frankly, here’s what I was sort of hoping for:

You start off with choosing your home system. This would be like your capitol system that you would spider web out from. For that capitol system, you pay a measly amount. Let’s say 1 million. You’re able to upgrade it, put in an outpost, build whatever. From that system, you can then claim any of the systems around yours. The systems next to your claimed capitol system will each cost the number of jumps from your capitol system multiplied by itself.. This would exclude the first jump which would automatically be double whatever the base amount is. In this example, it would be 2 million. From there on out, a system 2 jumps away would be 4 million. Based on 2 x 2. Three jumps out would be 9 million based on 3 x 3. Four jumps out, 16 million based on 4 x 4. Five jumps out, 25 million based on 5 x 5. I’ll assume you get the picture by now. As a side note, the prices shown here are for EACH system. Like systems four jumps out cost 16 mil a piece. So if you want say all 6 systems that are 4 jumps out from your capitol system, you would owe 96mil (16x6) a month for those systems plus whatever other systems you owe closer to your capitol.

Of course these numbers could be adjusted based on the findings of people who know more about the isk flow. However, I have no doubt this system would be more effective towards alliances making serious considerations towards the size of the space they own. I would also propose an alliance can only have one capitol system thus preventing the swiss cheese effect.

Now yes, this would create the issue of people just creating alt alliances to mitigate the effects of the tiered costs. However, how many alt alliances do you really think they’d make? Imagine the complications that having numerous alt alliances would create by way of logistics. Imagine the chances of those alt alliances being more easily torn apart through internal conflicts. On top of that, the more alliances you have, the more isk you gotta sink to create em.

I’m sure others could come up with other loop holes, or just outright disagree. But frankly, at least in my own opinion and I think many others, it would be a MUCH better system than what CCP is proposing to implement and is the design I think most had in their heads already.

Either way though, no matter what happens, people will adapt….. Or die in trying…