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Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:04:00 - [1] - Quote (Atleast click the links for Videos) Prologue (Clicky) The two major wars that preceded the Great EVE War were the the Great Northern War and The Southern Conflict, both of which shaped the landscape for what has now become the largest war in the history of the game. Forged out of these two conflicts were the four main 'superpowers' that ruled the game: Band of Brothers (Greater BoB Community), Lotka Volterra (Southern Coalition), Red Alliance and Dusk and Dawn (Northern Coalition). Any other alliance, including Ascendant Frontier, simply did not match the military strength of these four at their prime, and most any alliance or corporation with a presence in true 0.0 had themselves aligned with one of the big four. Between their arrogance, their outright exploitation of game mechanics and favouritism shown by certain employees at CCP (such as t20), the political landscape became distinctly polarized when it came to Band of Brothers, the undisputedly richest alliance in the game. Some factions swore they wouldn't stop until Band of Brothers was wiped off the map, and some swore the opposite, that they would join and fight on their side. At the end of the Great Northern War and The Southern Conflict, The Great EVE War began, and three consolidated mega-powers were formed: the Red Swarm Federation, the Northern Coalition/New North and the Greater BoB Community (or "The Alliance"). The Red Swarm Federation mostly consisted of a triumvirate of three alliances: Red Alliance, Tau Ceti Federation and GoonSwarm. It also included other corporations and alliances of varying sizes and strengths, including United Legion, VENOM Alliance, Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate, Black-Out and others. The Northern Coalition at its prime consisted of Dusk and Dawn, RAZOR, IRON, and a few other smaller D2 vassal alliances, most notably YouWhat. The "New North" consisted of RAZOR, Morsus Mihi and IRON (in order of strength). The Alliance, or "Greater BoB Community", used to consist of Band of Brothers, Firmus Ixion, RISE, Interstellar Starbase Syndicate, and some other small alliances. With most of its vassals or "pets" ground into dust, the few remaining at the end included STYX., Executive Outcomes and a few other smaller alliances that have next to no military projection. "Tortuga" consisted of Mercenary Coalition, KIA Alliance, Ev0ke and 0utbreak, before their destruction in April 2008.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:04:00 - [2] - Quote . September 2006 - October 2006: Titans, bees, pendulums and angry Russians "Congrats on being the first to build a Titan. What a way to secure a place in EVE history!" -kieron, EVE Online Community Manager The "beginning" of the war is pretty simple to determine. It began on September 26th, 2006, when CYVOK of ASCN unveiled 'Steve', an Avatar and the first Titan in the game. ASCN, or Ascendant Frontier, was a large, rich industrialist alliance, having many T2 compound chains, outposts, capital ships, blueprints and the like. However, they had no combat experience: their survival depended on careful politiking and providing support to their neighbors, Lotka Volterra and Band of Brothers. When Steve was finally brought out, the fragile truce between ASCN and Band of Brothers was broken, and two days later on the 28th BoB declared war on ASCN, which SirMolle referred to as the beginning of the "The Pendulum War", which would later be known just as the "BoB-ASCN War". A week after the conflict began, BoB revealed their own Titan (also an Avatar), and exploited the ship in every possible way imaginable. These were the testing grounds for BoB to develop more advanced tactics with Titans. Morale in ASCN quickly became nonexistant, and they began shedding corps en masse quite quickly. The ten-tonne weight that broke the camel's back came on December 11th, when Band of Brothers killed CYVOK's Titan while he was offline after logging out inside a POS bubble with aggression from firing a doomsday twelve or thirteen minutes before. CYVOK resigned himself as CEO of ASCN. After ASCN was destroyed, vassal alliances, who BoB themselves referred to as "pets", were installed in the regions ASCN used to control. CYVOK's dead Titan Shortly before the destruction of ASCN, the t20 scandal broke out. The backstory was fairly shady in itself: Lallente, a higher-up in Lotka Volterra (who later joined BoB when LV dissolved), hired Kugutsumen to crack GoonSwarm's forums and gain access to "Illuminati", GoonSwarm's director forum. His payment for doing so was to be a Wyvern mothership, which at the time was a very rare and expensive ship. However, upon completing his "contract", Kugutsumen got stiffed by Lallente. Kugu got pissed, and decided that he would help Lallente's enemy. Band of Brothers, the most powerful alliance in the game, had a long history of using exploitative tactics to gain the upper hand. A couple of months before, BoB 'invaded' GoonSwarm's Syndicate constellation of JQV with massive sniper fleets, attempting to drive the "cancer", as they called GoonSwarm, out of the game. As such, GoonSwarm itself was already very polarized against BoB, and so Kugu decided to crack their forums to our benefit, even though we never asked for his help. What he found was a goldmine of dirt. The head of ISD had given them access to things nobody else had on the test server, including information about events, and EVE developer T20 had been in command of their capital ship fleet, teaching them the dirty tricks they had historically used, in addition to spawning rare and valuable T2 blueprints worth billions of ISK. The name "Band of Developers" or "BoD" was placed on their head like a crown of thorns, eternally disgraced and now viciously hated by the rest of EVE. CCP attempted to cover it up by instantly deleting any reference to the scandal, and after a Threadnaught, finally admitted guilt, although with some reservations. It became apparent to the directorship that GS was late to the arms race, both in- and out-game. If they didn't have the power to fight even Dusk and Dawn, as seen in the failed XZH-4X campaign, that they would never stand a chance against Band of Brothers. Pinned between a rock and a hard place, a decision was made by Remedial and The Mittani at the beginning of the ASCN war to leave Syndicate and move to Insmother, the home of Red Alliance. From there, GoonSwarm, a brand new alliance to the true 0.0 scene, would join forces with Red Alliance and Tau Ceti Federation in the destruction of Lotka Volterra, and engage in the great war with Band of Brothers.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:05:00 - [3] - Quote . November 2006 - February 2007: Dismantling the Southern Coalition "The Goons 0.0 dream is over." - db preacher, August 8th 2006 The Dread Grinder Red Alliance had one specific enemy that they had been having troubles with for almost two years: Lotka Volterra. LV had a large capital force, and many vassals and allies which they commanded under the flag of the 'Southern Coalition.' Just months before shaking hands with GoonSwarm and Tau Ceti Federation, Red Alliance had nearly been wiped off the map, reduced to the single station of C-J, with over 5000 pilots of ASCN, Lotka Volterra and their vassals pounding down on them. They held out for as long as possible, and after the tactical failures of LV and ERA in Cache, finally succeeded in retaking Insmother and Cache. The newly formed triumvirate, the Red Swarm Federation, would wage war on Lotka Volterra's empire: Red Alliance's/TCF's superior capital ship fleet combined with GoonSwarm's massive support fleet turned out to be an excellent combination. Lotka Volterra had three primary vassals: Knights of the Southerncross (KOS), Veritas Immortalis (-V-), and the Interstellar Starbase Syndicate (ISS). Knights of the Southerncross were the first target, falling victim to The Mittani's spy network, with nearly all of their towers quickly disabled by a GIA operative. KOS quickly fell and negotiated a surrender with the Red Swarm Federation, much to the spite of LV who proceeded to set them to negative standings and declared them "traitors" after providing no support at all to their supposed "allies." KOS became bitter towards their former landlords, refusing to sulk back to empire, and began running offensive operations against the Southern Coalition - eventually they earned a place beside the RSF in the war. Veritas Immortalis in Scalding Pass became the next target. The first system to fall would be JLO, a conquerable refinery station. Veritas and a no-name alliance named OPUS had struck a deal to exchange the station into the hands of OPUS. However, none of the OPUS directors were on when Veritas began offlining towers, and as soon as GoonSwarm got wind of this the system was camped to hell and towers anchored to claim sovereignty. JLO would become the first station owned by GoonSwarm in its new home. A few weeks later in early December, TCF sieged the five-moon linchpin system of 1V- in Scalding Pass and put every tower into reinforced. Luckily enough, all of the towers had only a small amount of stront, and GoonSwarm mobilized as fast as they could to secure the system, moving over 200 people into system alongside the RA and TCF battleship fleets. Lotka Volterra understood that if 1V- fell, Veritas Immortalis would be forced out of Scalding Pass and GoonSwarm would have somewhere to live which would makes their lives all the more tough, and as such finally unveiled their Titan (also an Avatar, piloted by now-GM The Enslaver) doomsdaying the entire battleship fleet by surprise. The node crashed, and everyone attempted to log in again, fearing that without a support fleet the RA and TCF dreads would be nuked. Goons got back into system and back into ships, with Remedial warping his carrier to the gate and fending off anyone who managed to jump through while handing goons new ships. Many fleet fights would occur in that system - but in the end, 1V- was secured, and Veritas Immortalis was wiped off the map and disbanded shortly after their brief romp in the newly released drone regions. Around a month after this conflict, LV's Titan changed hands and was given to Chowdown, one of the lead directors of Shinra Corporation. In mid-December, the IAC vs. ISS conflict finally broke out after both sides decided to stop pussyfooting around and declare open hostilities on each other. ISS and IAC had never liked each other, and after a few harsh words at the diplomatic level, ISS began power-tripping, calling in every mercenary and allied force they could get in contact with to headshot IAC's capital system of F4R. The system would come to see over a hundred carriers, sixty dreadnoughts, four motherships and a Titan - a combined total of well over 1000 fighters. F4R was effectively the "Serbia of EVE." GoonSwarm attempted to get a fleet into F4R and assess the damage, however it became apparent that the situation was beyond repair, and GoonSwarm pulled out. IAC temporarily lost F4R; however, Evil Thug started giving MC and LV the evil eye, moving a fleet into position near F4R. He allegedly went onto LV's teamspeak and said, "I am here to kill the Titan" in a thick Slavic accent. Faster than you could say "oh ****", MC and LV jumped out of F4R, leaving ISS to die. After some fighting on EVE-O between ISS and MC, the RSF went after ISS and removed them from Catch with no effort at all, stripped their stations from them, and sent them back to empire in early January. ISS would go on to become a vassal of BoB a few months later, renting space in the Esoteria region. Within two and a half months of the Red Swarm Federation coming together, all that was left of the Southern Coalition was Lotka Volterra. And so in mid-January 2007, GoonSwarm, Red Alliance and Tau Ceti Federation began to move against Lotka Volterra directly, sieging the DG- system in the Detorid region. DG- quickly became a timezone war, mostly because of the gross mismanagement of the war by Dungar as he mostly ran 3/10 complexes instead of calling strategic ops. However, that would soon change.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:05:00 - [4] - Quote After two weeks of relative stalemate, Lotka Volterra fell for a well-executed trap. The 2-1 tower in DG- had been our base of operations in DG- since the beginning of the campaign. LV had sieged it one night, putting it into reinforced, and losing it would have been bad - on the forums, both GS and RA directors bluffed, saying that there was 'no chance' of saving the tower. The next morning, Lotka Volterra began sieging towers with only a token support fleet in system, and when they finally hit 2-1, RA dreads and GS carriers jumped on top of the LV capital fleet, with a massive GS support fleet right up-close against them. After an hour-long fight, the end count was fifteen dreads+one carrier killed by GS/RA, and two dreads killed by LV - and for a time, it would stand as the largest capital loss in the history of the game. Morale in Lotka Volterra plummeted, although they continued to fight and defend their control towers in the days following, and the situation in DG- and 0-W remained surprisingly unchanged. A couple of weeks after the DG- dread grinder, TCF sieged a tower in JV1V in Tenerifis, a system that at the time was deep into Lotka Volterra's territory. It was a supercapital production tower that just so happened to be constructing a brand new Avatar. The initial attempt failed, but more attempts were made to prevent its completion. BoB showed up to help LV for a week or so, bringing SirMolle (coining another ****** catchphrase, "we are here to steal your targets") in his Titan, a bunch of carriers and a massive fleet of battleships, preventing any siege of the system. However, BoB left a week later, either through boredom or arrogance. Once BoB left, LV finally forgot to time their strontium, having the tower come out 24 hours later right in the middle of GS primetime. GS, RA and TCF formed the largest fleets they could muster, and between seven node crashes and six hours, capitals finally got into system, and the POS was destroyed. Lotka Volterra ceased to function after this; while their directorate told their members that they would make DG- and 0-W their 'Alamo', they were actually moving all of their assets out of the Southeast and into NPC space. Despite the efforts of FinFleet and other smaller LV corporations to secure DG-, they were left out to dry by their leaders. Lotka Volterra proceeded to lose sovereignty in every system they had, and suddenly GoonSwarm became one of the largest station-holding alliance in the game, second only to Band of Brothers. A few months later, Lotka Volterra disbanded, and the capital ship pilots (including Chowdown, their Avatar pilot) would be assimilated into Reikoku Corporation of Band of Brothers. Around the time of JV1V, Dusk and Dawn moved their capital ship fleet to Fountain, and began targeting Xelas in an attempt to remove them from the region. However, they were stonewalled, and the offensive fell flat on its face on February 16 when WOTANKN of D2 lost his Erebus in the same way CYVOK had lost his Avatar. DigitalCommunist, using a covert ops with a smartbomb, aggressed him without him knowing before he logged off outside a POS bubble - he was probed out and destroyed. In no time at all D2 brought out another Erebus - however, this Titan would be used rarely if at all in the coming months. D2 retreated back to their home turf, hoping BoB would leave them alone. As of yet, no Titan had ever been destroyed in combat. For a more detailed look at the RSF vs. LV war, see The Taking of the South.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:06:00 - [5] - Quote . March 2007 - May 2007: The Invincible Supercapital Era This time period would generally be considered the 'dark days' of EVE. After we went head to head against BoB, it would become apparent that BoB would refuse to fight us unless they had both Titans in system or logged on ready to nuke any support fleet we could muster. It quickly turned into a war of attrition, and many goons would quit or otherwise cash out of the game when it became impossible to play. In the first half of March, YouWhat revolted against D2, probably under advice of BoB since D2 were visibly weakened from their Titan and other capital losses in Fountain. GoonSwarm moved into Cloud Ring in an attempt to take YouWhat out before BoB could make use of them, however D2 proved too weak to bring even a single dread to XZH. GoonSwarm then left XZH and returned to the south after three days, sick and tired of D2's "do it later" bullshit. After this, D2 somehow rebounded morale, and MC's capital shipyards in Period Basis were hit. Inside was an incompleted Hel, confirmed by Seleene a few days later. However, D2 would regret ******* with MC in the very near future, as MC would descend upon them like the wrath of God and dismantle their empire in under two months. Near the end of March, BoB rolled out against KOS in their home system of C3- in western Tenerifis, spamming towers with two of their Titans constantly logged in and in system. Sesfan assembled a fleet of over 230 ships in defense of C3 - however, it was impossible to engage anything without being blown away, with both Shrike and Orange Species setting off as many remote doomsdays as they could (a broken ability which has since been patched out of the game). In the end, all 230 of the people who arrived in system were wiped out from multiple doomsday blasts over the course of four hours. C3- would fall for a time, although the constant harassment and griefing by the KOS logistics team (such as warping haulers in to steal towers they had offlined, or warping haulers with towers and fuel right where a tower had just been killed and onlining a new one before anything could be done) eventually got to BoB, and a short while later BoB would pull out of KOS space entirely. Orange Species setting off his remote doomsday in the C3- conflict On March 29th, GoonSwarm, along with nearly every single power bloc in the game, gathered to strike BoB's capital shipyards in F-T, with intel that another Titan was in construction. With the combined might of over 190 dreadnoughts, 250 carriers and a Titan, the 'Coalition' proceeded to siege the F-T shipyards. It quickly became a clusterfuck, with people unable to load grid, and dreads lost by the dozens. After all the losses, the POS was destroyed; however, it became apparent that there had been a major intel problem: the wrong tower had been hit. A few days later, after the massive shitfest of lag and capital death, an Aeon popped out of the other capital shipyard, and suddenly everyone felt very dumb. This would be the last time the 'Coalition' would assemble together in such great numbers for a very long time. It would mark the decline and fall of the old Northern Coalition, and the complete stagnation of the Southern front for almost three months. The Mercenary Coalition announced a contract on "The North" in early April, with YouWhat as the paymaster - although it is believed BoB footed the cost. In the largest show of force seen by MC since F4R, they steamrolled the North in under two months, fielding hordes of dreads, carriers, and motherships while utilizing considerable support fleets provided by various alliances looking to gain space. All of D2's vassals were taken out first, and after the Pure Blind, Cloud Ring and Deklien regions fell, D2's Erebus pilot left the alliance with a couple of other corporations to form Ev0ke, a ***** "hardcore PvP alliance" that "doesn't do POS warfare." They then proceeded to take their Titan to the south and attack random RSF-friendly towers in the middle of nowhere. D2 continued to push against MC's well-equipped and well-skilled capital ship blob in Deklien, the last region before their homeland of Branch, but were raped repeatedly. D2's defense of Deklien was finally crushed when MC and their massive carrier blob killed two and a half dozen D2 dreadnoughts in a single engagement. In a last-ditch effort to restore morale, D2 brought out their Leviathan, although by then it was already too late. In May, shortly after MC began sieging D2's home system of BKG in Branch, D2 ceased to function, and disbanded. Alliances like M.Pire, Storm Armada, Terror In The System, the resurrected Sparta Alliance, and YouWhat were installed in the place of their once-mighty empire. Many of the ex-D2 corps joined smaller alliances, with some of the richer ones forming their own alliances, such as Kraftwerk who later moved to western Scalding Pass, and Mostly Harmless which had a few stations way out in the north-eastern drone regions. After failed invasions of southern Feythabolis and Querious, the RSF had lost the steam it had gained from the destruction of LV. In very late April, BoB proceeded to spam Omist and Tenerifis, relying on their large wallet to take those regions. Omist was indefensible by nature, as to properly secure it would have cost more money than any alliance in the game could reasonably afford. Tenerifis would become a relative stalemate, with 9-9/XGH controlled by BoB, and JV1V/G-D controlled by GoonSwarm. With BoB wielding three indestructible nukes, POS spam-offs became the norm, and nobody in a non-capital ship had anything to do in EVE.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:06:00 - [6] - Quote On May 15th, a massive, multi-faction dreadnought slugfest took place in 9-9, with RA, TCF, and GS dreads all jumping in on top of BoB's capital fleet as they began sieging GS towers in the system.[1] The game quickly became unplayable, with Titans setting off multiple doomsdays, and the battle raging on for almost three hours. It was forty dreads versus forty dreads with a handful of carriers for each side: the end count was 14 dreads lost for BoB, 23 dreads lost for the RSF. This engagement, despite BoB coming out on "top", tired out both sides for a time, as both realized that another engagement like that could potentially destroy them. At the same time, Remedial resigned due to real-life issues, and handed off the CEO role to The Mittani. Despite having done the work for some months, The Mittani wasn't suited for the role, as his primary job in GoonSwarm was/is orchestrating the GoonSwarm Intelligence Agency, and after a month he began to madly attack CCP on half-baked evidence, which culminated in the Memorial Day Weekend Threadnought. After a legal threat by CCP, the game became less than no fun for The Mittani. He decided to quit the game, and handed off the CEO job to Sesfan Qu'lah. The southern front was dead in the water, and Band of Brothers would not do anything except throw their Titans around, even going so far as to drop them on ten-man gangs or single, lone frigates. Goons began quitting the game en masse; only a hard core of vets and rookies were convinced that things would get better. Bane Glorious, a GoonSwarm member, wrote a 30-page manifesto on the imbalances of Titans and how they were killing the game. Despite much outcry from Band of Brothers, which at this point had four Titans flying around, CCP listened and promised that serious, heavy-handed nerfs would go into place to marginalize Titan usage: no jumping out after a doomsday for ten minutes, and an improvement to warp disruption bubbles (both interdictor and anchored types) to stop capital ships from jumping out while inside one. Despite this good news, Titans were still running around setting off as many nukes as possible, and POS Bowling people to get cheap kills. The game wasn't fun, and participation in the Red Swarm Federation had dwindled to a few roaming frigate gangs of no more than ten or twenty people. At the very end of May, the tension in GoonSwarm finally cracked, and people started letting loose: alliance mails were spammed, and the drama and trolling rose to new peaks. A lot of people felt at this point that the war was over, and that the Red Swarm Federation had lost to the invincible BoB, but it wasn't as though people considered this a bad thing. Many saw the Titans running around nuking everything, and wondered if the game wouldn't be fun again if they just returned to simpler times of suicide frigate gangs and pipe cleaning. In the arms race of EVE, BoB had surpassed everyone else. "What's the point of playing the game the way they wanted us to play it?"
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:06:00 - [7] - Quote June 2007: "Shrike's pod is primary" With the destruction of D2, the Mercenary Coalition declared their contract 'completed', and set up a forward base in Branch similar to the one they later had in Period Basis. RAZOR and Morsus Mihi, the two remaining 0.0 powers of the North, assumed control of what was left of D2's empire and began pushing Terror In The System out of Tenal and Branch. In one engagement, RAZOR killed over two hundred BoB pets, losing only a handful of ships. Sesfan, new into his position as CEO of GoonSwarm, and Suas, the drunken FC master, decided that more effort had to be put into retaking 9-9 and XGH before Rev 2 hit, while BoB were still lethargic and looking for cheap kills. XGH and 9-9 were re-spammed by GoonSwarm and allied alliances, regaining sov over those two systems. With Band of Brothers shifting their sights to JV1V, they began sieging the four towers of JV1V, with GS stront timing and shield repping winning over each strike. Morale in the RSF, however, was still shattered. Revelations II was finally released in mid-June, and the Titan nerfs were in. Two days later on June 22nd, 2007, SirMolle lost his Avatar, after jumping in and nuking a bunch of GoonSwarm frigates with his doomsday. He cloaked after firing, attempting to wait out the ten minute timer before he could jump. With a stroke of luck, Hrin, a member of Merch Industrial, was able to decloak him. Within seconds dictor bubbles were dropped on him and RA/GS capital ships jumped into system after Breaky Uzumaki lost his dictor on the gate and returned with a hotdrop cyno. After fifteen minutes of combat and an attempt by BoB carriers and motherships to keep Shrike alive, his Avatar died, dropping over 30b worth of loot that was scooped by a GoonFleet director. He was also podded. This was the first Titan kill where the pilot was logged on and actively attempting to defend himself, and is seen as the first 'legitimate' Titan kill in EVE. The Titan kill couldn't have been timed any better as far as morale in the RSF went: with the groundwork for an old-style POS system grinder already laid down, all that was needed was a reason for goons to log back in. GoonSwarm's morale was instantly restored from this kill, and there was much hooting and hollering. With the Titans finally removed from the front lines of the war, sub-capitals could actually engage in combat. Op attendance and battleship numbers rebounded dramatically and suddenly, the game was fun again, like it had been before Titans and capital ships commanded the game. With Rev II kicking off and giving non-capitals a place in combat again, the war shifted into high-gear, with 9-9 becoming another XZH-4X on the map. Another summer POS grinder was about to begin, and this one would be the largest, most bloody summer EVE had ever seen.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:07:00 - [8] - Quote July 2007: The Turning Point Events from the perspective of Suas: Operation push **** in is over. We need to figure a few things out, then the new operation will be announced. So, write up time Things were going well in GF for a while, we had steam rolled over V and LV and we had accumulated a **** tonne of space that nobody (including us) wanted. I made XGH the specops base and we were all down in K-9 having a PARTY. Then suddenly things stopped going so quite so well. BoB came to 9-9 in force, at the same time Mittani and Remedial decided to start becoming increasingly erratic and everything started looking bad. The directorate were arguing, we couldn't hold space, we couldn't get a fleet up and for some reason we were turning on CCP instead of BoB. One week before BoB started their siege of XGH and 9-9 myself, sensi and xttz erected a secret POS (well they did most of the actual erection) in OP- at a non-scannable moon while warping through system, moved a CSAA into it and started a Nyx cooking. Everything was falling apart and we had a ******* specops NYX in construction 1 jump from a system BoB had sovereignity in. The huge sense of amusement growing in us about the chance to build a mothership right under BoBs nose was way too much for me to ignore, but I needed a distraction. I needed to keep bob OUT of OP- and in XGH. We were told to abandon everything behind 77s8 by Mittani but Sesfan and I decided that we would take Specops and hold onto this system. We would throw EVERYTHING we could at XGH, live out of there and **** BoB off as much as humanly possible in order to get this Nyx out in one piece. In addition we knew that losing tenerifis would screw us, badly. The more concentrated goons were the more chance we had of bob mustering some immense force for 2 weeks comprising of all their allies and just wiping us out. I was desperate to keep our space spread out and our number concentrated. We had a couple of days of Specops mining in G-D as we knew we'd need it and off we went. We lost ship after ship in XGH as BoB defended it. About this point we were so close and things were looking pretty dire, and with Mittani gone and Sesfan unable to publicly help us after calling a fallback to 77s8 we really struggled. The supercap swarm in XGH continued taking the station back, killing our onlining POS's with huge fighter swarms but we persevered. It took almost all our assets but finally the Nyx popped out. Safely. Xttz jumped in and we set about figuring out what the hell we were going to do next. Enter Nync. This guy is a ******* awesome dude. You all know this, but maybe you have no idea to what extent. We had run out of money, fuel and towers. We were well down on POS's and we had another problem. Rodent was now 3/4 of the way through building all the components for his mothership and they were stuck in XGH. 20 freighter loads. We couldn't complete the build and by this time BoB knew about the secret POS, but we couldn't leave him there to rot. Nync agreed with the tactical assessment and was quite adament that we didn't lose XGH so I told him, quite plainly, "I have 2 guys here with me that will save XGH if you can give me towers and fuel." Nync straight away agreed. That evening Xttz was in mateber hauling POS's down to XGH ready for deployment. Nync had more POS's stashed in 77s8 than I knew existed in the game. Rodent, Arachnid and Xttz worked overtime throwing towers up left, right and centre. BoB replied with counter spam. About this time Rodent transferred the ISK to me for a new CSAA to go up near Scalding Pass for his MS and told me that I could use it to help get his **** out. Rodent and Xttz cranked up their tag-team Empire -> XGH logistics and we purchased something like 30 small POS's, two freighter loads of POS fuel and XTTZ spent the best part of a week hauling this **** relentlessly to XGH, over and over and over and over and over. You have no idea how many runs he did... nor do I, nor, probably, does he. Bob started pulling down POS's in 9-9 to supplement the spam of XGH, and that surprised us. Surely BoB would have an unlimited number of POS's because you know, they're bob, but that was not the case. We'd reached the breaking point of their logistics, and suddenly I smelt blood. POS count in XGH was something like 20-18 in their favour so I hatched a plan. One day before patch day we'd drop 10 or so larges in XGH (I cant remember exactly) then THIRTY smalls in XGH. The reason being that they would then have to ENGAGE us to be able to take them down. I started thinking, and something brilliantly evil came to my mind. I convo'd Nync and told him about the XGH POS spam, he agreed it was a great idea, and that it should work. I then said to him, "You realise the entirety of BoB is going to be in XGH and 9-9 only has 6 towers in it now". He was as surprised as I was about the fact BoB had to pull towers in 9-9 to spam XGH and he knew exactly what I was thinking. It was on. We had lots of problems with RA participation up to this point. They were having real troubles internally and they were often unable to come on ops in the numbers they used too, much like us. Nync and I however had a rapport, and with clear goals that we set out with the directorate we were both able to gently coax enough RA and GS back into the fight.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:07:00 - [9] - Quote Patch day downtime came and things went ******* nuts. We got quite a few towers up but not as much as I wanted. BoB were indeed swarming into XGH as we thought and now things get hazy. Not only was I arseholed but I was doing 100 things at once. Then bam, 5 POS limit. In XGH we were 20 or so small short. I had guys pod themselves down from the OSS, ****, Deros MADE A NEW CORP to be able to anchor a tower. Merch anchored 5 small, everything was kicking off. Special note that DS1 were around in XGH dropping THEIR towers to save the system, helping to stave off bob attacks and generally being the awesome dude GÇ£IGÇ¥ knew they were, and now you know too. Anyway, just as it was all kicking off, I cyno'd Lena into 9-9 with an RA capship fleet. I already had a tower in my cargo hold and dropped it. Bob went ******* nuts. They recalled everyone to 9-9 while RA were sitting there with their huge cap cocks hanging out and I'd anchored 5 POS's in 9-9. THEIR system. This was the perfect distraction for XGH which then allowed us to complete the take over. I was dropping POS's IN A CARRIER with Lena (fit with a cyno gen for more RA surprise) and fuelling them with Tolon and RA were warping around helping me. At one point I had Red Lantern in a crow scramble my rigged hauler and suffered a serious "oh ****" moment until Nync decloaked right next to me, jammed him allowing us both to warp of as 100 BoB descend onto our ONLINING tower. Then it was done. XGH had the potential to be secure, and 9-9 turned into the new battle ground. I put out the order on the FC forums that we would turn XGH into a wasteland. We would NOT engage in XGH and we would not allow BoB to remember that the system still existed. This was and important part of the plan. I wanted these fucks out of XGH because I had a mothership to evacuate. DS1 helped to rep up the station and pos (further confirming their awesome status), Xttz got onto hauling duty and Nync provided the POS and the POS race for 9-9 began. CONSTANT shuttling from empire by Rodent and Xttz, Arachnid and Xttz's CONSTANT monitoring of the XGH POS's and me barking orders every now and again beat both TAOSP and RKK in a POS war. The 4 of us, versus RKK and TAOSP. We won. We were on top of the moon, or at least I was. The next priority was getting goon participation back up. This was a tough one. BoB and goons were both hit by apathy at the same time (it was lucky we did not flounder too much before they did) however we needed to get goons back into the fight and back ENJOYING the game. Firstly we wanted to shift the focus of blaming CCP. I was never happy with that, Sesfan was never happy with that and now that he was in charge it was done. The specops hauler team, Nync, Sesfan and specops had pretty much achieved as much as we could achieve now and we needed GF participation, we needed the old rapetrains, we needed our cap participation back up. We needed to revive GF. What followed was some a mixture of publicity (making successes far more prominent). A huge quantity of vodka mixed with some guitar playing and people started logging in again. Slowly at first, but it began to snowball. Our 40 man ops became 80. Then 100. Last night we had 50 caps and 100-150 people. That's OLD school numbers. Operation "Push **** In" has been a huge success and you know what, even if things go terribly for a few weeks - we're back having a laugh, getting scammed by fat fucks and enjoying the game. While we've all being doing this in 9-9 we have evecuated rodents MS to a FAR safer region where it will soon start production (praises to the specops team that were running around escorting freighters while GF got fun fights). There's a lot that's been left out of this that hasn't been to do with specops. Grayton and Stampert taking the reigns in 9-9 for fuelling, Sesfan's over seeing of everything FC'ing and general owning of all previous CEO's, Stampert's logistics, Widebrant, Scavok and many others picking up the slack when I'd drop the ball... but this is the story of how a few people beat back BoB and retook XGH, and how we ended up in contention for 9-9. So if you see nync, xttz or rodent thank them. They saved XGH and 9-9 (and personally, I believe were instrumental in the saving of GS). They wouldn't have been able to without a LOT of other people's hard work but in my mind they were the ones that kicked off the take back of XGH and 9-9. shutupandshave
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:07:00 - [10] - Quote After people learned of the extraordinary events in XGH, Red Swarm Federation attendance rebounded dramatically. The combination of destruction of BoB's de-facto flagship and the tactical wins against BoB in Tenerifis emboldened goons to help overwhelm BoB in 9-9 and push them out of Tenerifis once and for all. Not even the announcement that former CEO Remedial had stolen a large part of the "Titan fund" discouraged them -- if anything, people laughed, as "Remedial is going to steal the fund and eBay it for ham" had been the a running joke since the fund had started. The drama was a sure sign that GoonFleet was alive and well. The following days involved a great deal of small POS shooting by sub-capital fleets, as BoB apparently didn't have the wherewithal to defend the towers they had spammed to maintain sovereignty. As large goonswarm POSes went up - paid for in part by Goons in yet another donation drive - sovereignty tipped back toward GoonSwarm. Over 25 towers were destroyed by GS capitals and battleships. Starting the morning of July 9th, GoonSwarm and the allies from RA, TCF, WANG and CA crowded the system, repairing POS armaments and recharging shields as they came out of reinforced mode. 5 POSes came out of reinforced. Massive, 400-people fleet fights took place on multiple grids. At one point, the giant red orb surrounding the 9-9 system on the starmap read "800 ships destroyed in the last 24 hours". Aside from the unfortunate decision to jump a large portion of the fleet into 46DP to engage BoB on the 9-9 gate, the defense of 9-9 was a resounding success, and many POS grids became the graveyards of hundreds of ships. Several more GoonSwarm towers came out of reinforced the next day, and once again, with the assistance of RA, TCF, and other coalition members, GoonSwarm was able to fend off BoB and prevent them from destroying a single GoonSwarm tower. In Querious, IAC and AAA began working together to finally remove BoB's 'buffer vassal' in Querious, Firmus Ixion. MC was immediately contracted by BoB/FIX to repel their attacks. AAA/IAC hit a FIX capital shipyard that was building a Nyx on July 15th, and according to FIX, the shipyard was owned, run, operated and put into production by a single member of their alliance - not a single one of their directorate knew about the POS or what was building in it. The person who was building the Nyx hadn't even informed them that the tower was put into reinforced until thirty minutes before it came out. AAA/IAC proceeded to finish it off and destroy the Nyx with no opposition. On July 18, 2007, Evolution Corporation of Band of Brothers was robbed at the directorate level: Evolution being a 90% communist corporation, nearly all of their assets short of the coveted T2 blueprints were swiped, for what is estimated a 300 billion ISK total, in the largest corp theft yet in the history of the game. (Eve-O Thread) 66-, late July 2007 The scale of the theft was so large that CCP banned the person before he was able to do 'maximum damage' as they suspected a hacked account, although the sheer amount of things he stole before he was banned seems to indicate that he got all of the 'good stuff' before CCP came down on him. Dreadnoughts, BPOs, towers, modules, and the like were all entirely cleaned out. The ban was later removed after the GM's investigated and found no evidence of hacking. After much fighting in Tenerifis, Band of Brothers seemingly abandoned it, and soon it was cleansed of all towers. Next, Omist had to be dealt with, before the counter-thrust into Feythabolis could take place. Band of Brothers realized that if Omist fell then GoonSwarm would have been the first alliance to successfully repel a full-scale invasion since their conception, and would at the same time be poised to take the crown jewels of the deep south: Feythabolis and Esoteria. They fortified the 66- system in Omist, the chokepoint of the region much like 9-9 was to Tenerifis. United Legion, an honourary member of the RSF, began erecting large towers, enough to gain sovereignty. BoB responded in the only way they knew how: by respamming enough towers to regain a positive sov count. As the sov ticker counted down, the system was close to falling to UNL sov, which would have erased BoB's Sov Level 3 and disabled their ability to operate a cyno jammer. Band of Brothers sieged many of the UNL towers, putting almost all of them into reinforced. A mandatory operation was called, and a fierce battle took place between the RSF, BoB and their pets, with over 650 ships being destroyed in a single night with doomsday blasts, massive fleet battles and over 300 wrecks concentrated on a single gate. After the carnage, not a single UNL POS was finished off, as BoB capitals simply refused to engage a tower at those odds. With July winding down and the war at its peak, Band of Brothers began to sweat for the first time in a long time. Could the Red Swarm Federation, a collection of misfit alliances who refused to yield to them, actually pose a threat? Had they gotten fat and lethargic through their overuse of their broken supercapitals? Could AAA/IAC in Querious do damage to their 'invulnerable' homeland of Delve?
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:08:00 - [11] - Quote August 2007: Tango in Querious AAA/IAC decided to start the month of August off with a bang. On August 1st, 2007, AAA and IAC trapped and killed an Aeon-class mothership owned by the Mercenary Coalition while it was parked at a gate with two other motherships. The other two (a Nyx and a Hel) escaped, but the Aeon was trapped and killed in relatively short order. In the Southeast, UNL proceeded to take sovereignty away from Band of Brothers in 66-, resetting the sov level and disabling their cynosural system jammer. At the same time, RA/GS dreads purged the last of BoB's POSes from XGH. Red Alliance's Erebus, jump bridging into 66- With the Russians committing everything they had to the war, Against All Authorities and Red Alliance unveiled two new Titans: a Ragnarok (AAA) and an Erebus (RA). Red Alliance's new Titan flagship was immediately put to work, jump-bridging over 500 people into 66-. BoB had planned a mandatory operation, calling in every single one of their regional pets and vassals to fight in 66-, but the numerical superiority and morale boost of the new Titan proved to be too much for the servers to handle, with over 800 people in 66- local and BoB outnumbered 5:1. UNL remained one tower away from 51% coverage and a solid hold on the system. After the destruction of a few more BoB towers in 66-, the system finally fell into UNL sov and would remain so permanently. At the same time, cleanup work in 9-9 began, with over ten BoB towers being destroyed under the safety of the cyno jammer in system. Southern Connection, a BoB vassal in southern Feythabolis, lost R97 and 0OY to Red Alliance after being unable to put up any resistance and eventually being evicted by BoB. The Red Swarm Federation continued to push forward into Feyth, attempting to force BoB to go on the defensive, seemingly unwilling to deploy capitals without a cyno jammer present in system. BoB became torn between four systems: 9-9 in Tenerifis, 66- and D2EZ in Omist, and 0OY in Feythabolis. With 9-9 and 66- seemingly given up on, BoB focused their efforts in 0OY, attempting to remove Red Alliance towers from the seven-moon system: any kind of foothold in Feyth by Red Alliance would spell disaster for them in the entire region. BoB threw everything they had at the system GÇö motherships, Titans, and an entire fleet of battleships GÇö at 0OY and permacamped the system. Between grids that needed to be hard-reset by GMs, bad stront timing by RA, and BoB's 48-hour alarm clock op, BoB proceeded to take all the moons of 0oy. With morale sinking a little bit, Suas took lead yet again in 9-9 and staged a counterattack against BoB, putting every BoB tower in the system into reinforced. BoB moved a 70 battleship-strong fleet into position and jumped into the RSF-controlled gatecamp. A massive fight occurred, with BoB losing over 50 of their battleships and killing only 20. With the massive defeat, BoB did not gather any kind of force the next day, and all 20 towers were annihilated in the following days. After four months of occupation, Tenerifis was finally rid of any and all BoB presence. After Sovereignty Level 4 had gone into effect, RISE decided to have a show of force against Pandemic Legion and the GoonSwarm Black Ops in RIT by camping the chokepoint gate (P8) with six carriers and a dreadnought. Tolon on one of his slosh ops decided to make a pass against them, and proceeded to kill all seven capitals and the entire (paltry) support fleet despite a cynosural inhibitor onlined in system. August 16th and 17th, between the drama caused by pornography of Remedial, the banning of Flipover and Billy Merc, and the massive in-game victories, saw morale rise to new heights. During this time, two GoonSwarm members also unveiled their new motherships: Rodent unveiled his Nyx, making it the second mothership in GoonSwarm. It was completed in G-D0N3, right in the very middle of the southern conflict at its peak. A third mothership was also deployed a few days later, belonging to Avalloc, bringing the total number of motherships (all Nyxes) owned by GoonSwarm members to three. In Querious, Mercenary Coalition, seemingly unphased by the loss of their Aeon, continued to do what they knew best: spam as many fighters as possible. AAA and IAC continued to grind away at 49U, FIX's home system, although very little progress was being made. AAA seemed unwilling to fully commit to the POS war, instead relying on constant griefing tactics to break the morale in FIX. The tower count remained at 16-12 (FIX-IAC) for quite some time. Evil Thug validated his cult of personality yet again on August 14th, when he killed Count TaSessine's Wyvern. Less than eight hours later on the same day, a member of Evolution and an owner of an Aeon mothership who had been mostly inactive for a number of months was kicked out of the corporation. Addicted to World of Warcraft and not really giving a **** about BoB any further, he proceeded to donate his Aeon to Tyrrax, the CEO of IAC. SirMolle, DigitalCommunist and the other propaganda artists in Evolution literally started freaking out, declaring on EVE-O that they "didn't want that mothership anyway." (Seriously.) A week and a half after this, the Mercenary Coalition unveiled their own Titan, a Ragnarok, nuking 120 IAC/AAA ships with it.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:08:00 - [12] - Quote Near the end of August, D2EZ was finally captured after Band of Brothers began an official pullback to Feyth and Querious, unanchoring enough towers for D2EZ to switch to VENOM Alliance sov. Sovereignty Level 3 was also close to hitting in 66-. Finally, the RSF began to hit the RIT triangle with the help of Pandemic Legion, the Blackops and Knights Of The Southerncross. After a few days, P8- was secure, and GHZ was spammed. Unfortunately, KOS dropped the ball hard, letting all of their towers go offline at the last minute. With this prolonging of the siege, Band of Brothers began a 36-hour poopsock op to take out all the towers and permacamp the system, bumping people out of POS shields with their Titans and motherships and exploiting their way to glory yet again. Eager not to let the failures of GoonSwarm's allies stop the offensive, RSF pulled back to 66- to siege every BoB tower in the system. In a single night over twenty towers were put into reinforced, all timed to come out the next day at almost exactly goon prime time. With Z-7 retaken by United Legion as well, Omist was finally on the way to being purged and finally secured after four months of occupation. The North, far removed from the southern front at this point, continued to fight amongst themselves. Cult of War, YouWhat and FATAL, the resident BoB/MC vassals of the north, were finally called to duty by their masters to reinforce Querious and Feyth. A few days after they were called down, Triumvirate, RAZOR and Morsus Mihi finally formed a pact of their own, declaring the regional BoB/MC pets their enemies and began an assault on their space. Massive battles were fought over the following days, with BoB's vassals losing over nine capitals and a massive support fleet in a single engagement.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:09:00 - [13] - Quote September 2007: The Capital Ship Genocide Month AAA/IAC finally began to make headway in Querious, breaking FIX sov in ED- for one day and resetting the sovereignty timer. However, MC put every AAA tower into reinforced, and the system became a clusterfuck with over seven hundred people in system. With some major battles and Evil Thug setting off multiple doomsdays, AAA lost a tower shortly before downtime, which would allow FIX to regain sov after downtime. With nearly all of the towers in 66- destroyed, the front moved from the freshly purged Omist to 0OY/R97 yet again: BoB held every moon in 0OY (under Sov 1) and sov in R97 was still neutral. Capital engagement in 2-R, Shrike in his Titan to the right The Great Mexican Standoff: On September 7th, a scrambled RSF fleet destroyed three carriers in 0OY, two owned by BoB and one owned by YouWhat; as this was only the preamble to a large POS killing op intended to contest BoB of sovereignty in the system, things looked up. A force of over 400 RSF ships including dozens of capitals converged near the R97 gate leading into 0OY with the intention of destroying several BoB POSes coming out of reinforced. BoB summoned their capital fleet, including at least one Titan, and mustered all the pets they could to defend 0OY, intending to fiercely defend the system. The fight never came, however. RSF fleet commanders gave the order to disperse, citing the inevitable lag of super large scale combat (estimated 300-400 BoB were already in 0OY) as likely suicide. The contest ended in a relative draw; BoB maintained the strategic advantage at the cost of three of their capital ships. Another strike was made against 0OY, and the Russians decided to play a good old fashioned game of Russian roulette, jumping their capital forces into 0OY despite a huge gatecamp already in place. The end was predictable: 18 RA caps destroyed. Attempting not to let the tactical failure of 0OY get in the way of the war, Red Moon Federation space was invaded and quickly neutralized: after a single week, K-9 fell to GoonSwarm sovereignty, and 2-R was on the way to being under GoonSwarm sov as well. The tactical failure in 0OY was unfortunately repeated in ZID, the dividing system of K-9 and 2-R. The order was given to engage a BoB capital gatecamp in ZID, and so the armada was jumped into the ready maw of the carriers already deployed. Despite early success with a drive by doomsday by the RA Titan, the lag was too great. The results were grim: massive losses of dreads, carriers, and the first mothership loss for Goonfleet. Despite this, GoonSwarm continued to siege 2-R, and at Planet 4 Moon 3, BoB lost six dreads, six carriers and Shrike nearly lost his Avatar yet again, trapped inside a large bubble. Unfortunately, with the amount of HAC snipers and smartbombs going off, all dictors were popped, and Shrike managed to escape. Despite this, BoB lost twelve capitals, at the cost of a single RA dread. Meanwhile, the combined push by MC/BoB in FAT against IAC was taking its toll. IAC was desperately trying to hold the system with an overload of enemy cap ships in system. Even with Russian cap support, it wasn't enough to outnumber the Alliance's cap fleet. However, on September 28th, AAA and RA sprung a trap in FAT: the target was Thulsa Doom (Seleene) of Mercenary Coalition, the pilot of the Ragnarok. The quick-fingered, max-skilled RA/AAA covops pilots managed to probe the Titan out of a 24AU safespot with the pilot still logged in, managing to get a perfect scan in that split second after coming out of warp and activating the cloak. The Titan was killed at the cost of fourteen RA/AAA dreads, however most if not all were insured, as RA and AAA knew it would have to be a suicide mission if they were going to pull it off with the pilot still logged in. At the end of September, the RSF, despite the heavy losses, was still in high spirits: dissent from all corners of The Alliance started to surface. RISE showed signs of breaking despite the temporary lapse in siege and the failure of the KOS logistics team, setting a 100% tax and ending their fleet ship reimbursement program. Tired of Pandemic Legion shutting down the entire RIT triangle with five HACs, RISE didn't want to fight and wanted to just move out and mine somewhere else. Red Moon Federation was already tired of the invasion after two short weeks, and simply wanted to return to empire and stay out of the war. The Mercenary Coalition, having just lost their Titan, began to get sick of BoB's ADD-style multi-front war which was going nowhere fast. ISS had also lost a station in Feythabolis to TCF. [edit] October 2007: The Eye of Terror, and The Mittani's **** The Mittani, having in no way returned to fill his old position as Goonfleet spymaster, began leaking forums posts and chatlogs collected by GIA spies in RISE, CORM and ISS. The presence of Pandemic Legion and Black Ops operating in RISE's core systems had taken its toll, resulting in multiple failure cascades as each corporation in the alliance was hemorrhaging members. The amount of chat **** produced, and its subsequent leaking to eve-o caused one RISE member to comment on their private alliance board: "I refuse to participate in this discussion when I know that every word will wind up on COAD." Hilarity continued when sovereignty flipped to GoonSwarm in 2-R, a RMF system. In their panic to get their assets out of the system, several RMF members decided the easiest way to eject the ships from of a now-offline Capital Ship Maintenance Array was to blow it up, inadvertently destroying 3 capital ships inside. Ultimately, they inflicted more losses on their own capital fleet than GoonSwarm had during the entire campaign. The laughs did not last long, however; on October 8th FAT finally fell to MC/BoB.
Kira Lannister Hellstorm Inc League of Infamy 711	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:09:00 - [14] - Quote Combo Breaker.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:09:00 - [15] - Quote On October 10, Sesfan made his first State of the Goonion address on Teamspeak. There were several key points: M. Pire, who were recently removed from the North, would be allying with us and moving to Fountain to fight BoB pets. The Eye of Terror, a jump bridge network spanning from 77s to RIT, had also opened. "Eye of Terror" propaganda poster After lower Feythabolis had been pacified, Goons began to attack the RIT Triangle in earnest. Within a week, the 5P- station system of RISE had been taken and every non-sov 4 tower in the triangle had been reinforced. RISE made attempts to co-operate with BoB in order to have a Titan bridge their assets out of the Triangle, but BoB never showed up. With the Triangle on the way to being purged by RA, TCF, GS, UNL and others, work began on the ZS- and DB1 systems in a small arm in northern Feyth, located not far from the Triangle. Within 24 hours, Digital Renegades forfeited their two stations, and they were on their way to getting purged as well. In all honesty, Digital Renegades were never really affected by it, as while they admitted their stations were 'neat', they weren't the bond that held their alliance together (as such with RISE). In Catch, F4R had been spammed by BoB and ISS; despite the system only having 11 moons, Tyrrax had only set up four large control towers. A few days before the five ISS towers were supposed to claim F4R and break IAC's sov 3, MC pulled out of the war, hanging BoB out to dry. In the following days two towers were killed and replaced by IAC, ensuring sov 3 would not drop. The situation in Catch suddenly didn't look as desperate: without MC's superior capital fleet, BoB seemingly refused to engage on risky odds. In the North, Triumvirate had decided YouWhat had to be killed, and quickly stripped the region of Fade from them with almost no opposition. A week after, Triumvirate began to hit XZH, YouWhat's capital system. Despite hitting heavy resistance, they continued to push forward, putting many towers into reinforced. With the last remnants of MC's northern empire shattered, RAZOR and Morsus Mihi decided to move their fleets to Catch and assist IAC/RA/AAA against Band of Brothers: now fighting a war without their mercenary allies and rapidly losing their vassals in the deep south to GoonSwarm and TCF, vassals who had screwed up and cost them strategic goals. On October 22, BoB suddenly ordered the evacuation of ISS and Executive Outcomes from Esoteria, apparently feeling that they would be unable to effectively deal with the imminent RSF invasion. The tenants recalled their forces from Catch and began pulling down the majority of their POSes, even in important station systems. The evacuation did not go smoothly however, as many unanchoring ISS towers were quickly discovered by BlackOps and stolen. Furthermore, AAA and Red Alliance successfully ambushed and destroyed the evacuation freighters of Executive Outcomes, which were filled with billions of isk in alliance assets. A video released by BoB on Eve-O called "Vaccum", and a leaked internal forum post confirmed on October 24th that BoB would abandon Esoteria, Feythabolis and Paragon Soul and allies are to do the same. While this resulted in some comedy video responses featuring Yakety Sax and Molle in a strawboat hat, Vadinho and fishblades produced a proper "response" video, reminding BoB that the conflict had always been a war they had begun, and as October came to a close, it looked like a war that would bring about their end. On October 28th, YouWhat finally surrendered to Triumvirate, shedding much of their alliance numbers and losing almost 1300 people in two weeks. October began winding down and a time of relative peace overtook the main fronts of the war, with both sides consolidating their allies and assets. With BoB on the run and thoroughly exhausted, it wouldn't be long before the fight was finally brought to their homelands.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:09:00 - [16] - Quote November 2007: Pendulums don't work in space The deep south was completely pacified, with not so much as a roaming BoB HAC gang coming through. Most of the fighting continued on in Catch and Fountain, the two hot areas, although very little if any capital ship combat was occurring: mostly smaller skirmishes in subcapitals. As Band of Brothers and their vassals continued to shed stations in Paragon Soul, Esoteria and Feythabolis, Triumvirate, RAZOR and Morsus Mihi finally purged the remaining Mercenary Coalition vassals: after nearly seven months of pro-BoB alliances holding onto space, the North was finally pacified as well. As cleanups in these three regions continued, RA/AAA/IAC continued to skirmish with Band of Brothers in Catch. Despite their "consolidation", the morale of their vassals was very low due to losing their precious Esoteria homes. ISS pulled down their towers in F4R, allowing IAC to get 100% coverage. BoB's offensive had been stalled, but not reversed. GoonSwarm would receive the AZN sov 4 constellation in Feythabolis from Band of Brothers, in addition to the JO- factory/refinery pair, and QS- in Esoteria. Red Alliance received the RIT sov 4 constellation (formerly owned by RISE), DB1/ZS- in northern Feyth, and finally gained sovereignty over 0OY, the bastard system that cost them a dozen and a half capital ships two months before. Bigger than BoB By mid-November all stations in Feythabolis, Esoteria and Paragon Soul were in friendly hands. POS cleanup continued, occasionally disrupted by Stain Empire attacks on the POS shooting fleets which usually resulted in a lot of dead GS battleships. A massive dramanuke exploded on November 13th from an unexpected direction as a leaked Firmus Ixion director post exposed their negotiations with the Mercenary Coalition to turn on BoB and attack Querious and Delve. Over the following days, more forum leaks emerged, and apparently MC had been screwed over by BoB more than once. During the Catch campaign, they had repeatedly asked for a second Titan in addition to their Ragnarok to be logged in whenever they were calling ops or sieging towers: BoB promised, and then dropped the ball each time. When their Titan was destroyed, BoB didn't care. MC repeatedly requested BoB to get a Titan up into the North to evacuate assets from the stations they held up there; BoB again promised assistance and then refused to help. These things combined with BoB's attention deficit disorder oo the Catch front (such as running to Feyth for cheap ganks despite allowing Red Moon Federation, Digital Renegades and RISE to get slaughtered, or their abortive campaign against a vassal of Curatores Veritatis Alliance, an Amarr roleplaying alliance) made MC extremely bitter towards BoB, with some of the leadership even considering "other options" such as becoming real mercenaries again. It also became apparent that Band of Brothers had been recruiting various director-level members of their vassals into a kind of spy program, so BoB could monitor drama, morale and dissent within their pets: and that some of the leaks to the CAOD forum on EVE-O, including this one, had been by BoB members themselves in an attempt to name and shame their vassals. Again twisting the knife on their vassals, BoB set ISS neutral and revoked their docking rights on November 23rd, allegedly because ISS had gotten sick of Ev0ke and 0utbreak (known by their unofficial title as "Krautbreak") ganking all of their carebears in the ****** little slice of Fountain BoB had graced them with as a 'replacement' to their primo Esoteria space, and spammed Ev0ke's Fountain outpost dropping sov to neutral. The next day, however, standings were put back into place for ISS, and BoB called it a 'misunderstanding', although this 'misunderstanding' would inevitably put any vassal with two braincells firing on notice that they were at the mercy of BoB and could very well get ****** over, should BoB decide that they didn't like them any more. Unsurprisingly, Count TaSessine decided he had enough of BoB's bureaucratic bullshit, and reset standings towards them after evacuating their assets out of BoB stations. In mid November, BoB began hitting HED, a system which AAA used to run a jump bridge network into their space, trying to disrupt their logistics chain before EVE Trinity, the latest EVE expansion, went live. BoB spammed the system, and it escalated into a minor conflict with many BoB and AAA capitals staring each other down.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:09:00 - [17] - Quote With RSF having finally consolidated its new space and moving assets closer to the front lines, GoonSwarm moved to GQ2 in Paragon Soul, and began smaller offensive operations against Darkness and Light (D-L) in Period Basis. Predictably, D-L didn't have the tactical knowhow to defend against GoonSwarm attacks, and inevitably small offensive ops turned into tower stealing ops, and tower stealing ops turned into POS sieging ops. Shortly after this, GoonSwarm began passively taking over a D-L station system, putting every large tower in their main station system of E2- into reinforced. BoB didn't respond for quite a while, and the directorate decided to try and make a go for the station, anchoring enough towers to claim sovereignty. BoB then finally responded at the very end of November, bringing in a large part of their capital fleet and dozens of battleships, reinforcing the GoonSwarm towers in the system. D-L, despite this, continued to suicide ships pointlessly and move their assets out of their stations, probably unconvinced of BoB's military prowess due to the fact that GoonSwarm had a station eleven jumps away from them when only a month ago they were three regions away. However, the assault was effectively called off, due to the wide astronomical "chasm" between Paragon Soul and Period Basis which no capital ship could jump through without going through Stain and Querious: no friendly capital deterrence in the face of multiple motherships and dozens of carriers effectively meant any meaningful play for the system would be pointless and a waste of resources. On the bright side, BoB was yet again distracted from their primary objectives, and all BoB towers in HED were popped and replaced with AAA towers. EVE: Trinity was on the way, slated for December 5th: many changes to ships, logistics, the graphics engine itself, and other mechanics would be implemented. How this would affect the war remained to be seen.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:10:00 - [18] - Quote December 2007: Karma's a *****, and boot.ini At least 7 new Titans were revealed during December with rumors of more swirling: Mercenary Coalition unveiled their new Erebus and made another Ragnarok to replace the one lost to AAA. At the same time, Morsus Mihi brought out their Ragnarok, although the only victim of its inaugural blast was a newbie corp scout in a frigate. Triumverate and AAA built Avatars though the corp that owned Tri's left with it due to drama. RA came out with a Leviathan and another Erebus. A second BoB Erebus pilot and possibly a second Erebus were revealed as well. At the beginning of December, Red Alliance/Tau Ceti Federation and The Church/Veritas Immortalis had a major skirmish in Great Wildlands, with the entire Church/-V- fleet getting slaughtered including ten of their carriers. Pandemic Legion/RAZOR had a major fleet fight as well in BoB space, butchering the entire BoB/FIX fleet of over a hundred and lost only sixteen ships. The reason Mercenary Coalition had started fighting BRUCE became clear: they had taken a contract from BoB to protect Fountain. BRUCE, a young aggressive alliance that had grown up in Syndicate, began to realize their territorial ambitions and began to take a station from RISE in Fountain. RISE had aquired this station with hopes of a 'new start' away from the 'evil goons' in the east, but after only a week of owning the station, it was on the way to being taken, and most of RISE refused to log in again. On December 4th, EVE: Trinity was released, and the order was made to move from the deep south back to 1V-, which at this point had been held by GoonSwarm for over one year. GoonSwarm would finally be rejoining RA, AAA, TCF and IAC in the removal from BoB in Catch, and the counterthrust into Querious. For the next few days, however, the game would be in a state of flux with everything from the patcher to EVEMail being broken. CCP had to go as far as ban POS warfare for two days while they deployed server-side patches to fix dreadnought rate of fire (dreads were able to unload all of their ammo in a split second) and various broken POS structure like cynosural jammers. With EVE still limping along, work began to retake catch: 5-N was counter-spammed with the help of allies, and BoB towers began going offline. No real skirmishes took place, although both sides were putting towers into reinforced, which now had shorter stront timers as of Trinity. On December 14th, BoB lost sovereignty over 5-N, although most of IAC's towers were coming out of reinforced later in the day during GoonSwarm/IAC prime time, way out of range of BoB, RA or AAA. After hours of waiting, BoB proceeded to do what they knew best: exploit the **** out of broken, exploitable game mechanics. They trapped the entire GoonSwarm/IAC capital fleets into their own POS by warping a heavy dictor and four of their Titans with the POS password into the shields and pinning down the capital ships. After trying to get the capitals out, the logoff order was made, and the GoonSwarm subcapital fleet warped in to suicide themselves as cannon fodder. Band of Brothers had, yet again, exploited and poopsocked their way to victory. Chowdongs being a ****** Despite their clever trap, BoB failed to destroy a single capital ship, although four of the six IAC towers were destroyed. Band of Brothers lost two dreadnoughts and a carrier later on to subcapital fleets, not including the dreadnought and carrier lost the day before. On December 15th, Mercenary Coalition reset standings to all of EVE, including Band of Brothers, and formed a new coalition between KIA Alliance, 0utbreak and Ev0ke, claiming Period Basis for themselves, forming a new kind of power bloc, referring to themselves as "Tortuga" (a reference to an island inhabited by pirates during the 18th century). MC went right to work, sieging the G-Q system in Period Basis and began work on stripping it from Band of Brothers. Shortly after the announcement, BoB declared that they would be withdrawing from two of the four Catch stations they held, 5-N and V2-. Bitter, heated forums fighting began occuring on SHC between BoB and MC, with BoB declaring MC "land thieves" and stating that they would push MC out of the deep south. Band of Brothers had apparently decided that Mercenary Coalition was more 'worthy' of fighting than the evil goons, and proceeded to go to Period Basis, leaving goons and IAC to take down the cyno jammer and reinforce all of the towers in FAT. On December 22nd, Mercenary Coalition got their first bloody nose from BoB, with the destruction of one of their Hel motherships in MC's home constellation in Period Basis. After the "Tortuga" announcement, vassals and pets of BoB began to realize just how ****** the GBC was: the weak fled first, and the rest simply failure cascaded out of existence when their space got stripped from them. RISE announced that with the departure of Sturmgrenadier Corporation from the alliance, that they would be closing the alliance and disbanding. Firmus Ixion declared a full retreat into empire space, and the smaller vassals of Fountain all split as soon as BRUCE came to take space from them.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:10:00 - [19] - Quote Seven of the nine towers BoB had in FAT left reinforced in BoB primetime on the 22nd, and were defended solely by carriers and a paltry subcapital fleet. The full RSF/IAC capital fleet jumped into the system and engaged carriers repping the POS. Following all the carriers getting back into the POS bubble Scavok announced the POS password on Teamspeak and had dictors go inside the bubble and bubble in their carriers while the friendly cap fleet killed the POS. Unlike when BOB first demonstrated the trick, this time 2 carriers were bubbled in, and were destroyed shortly after the POS. The engagement that day resulted in the destruction of all seven BoB towers, as well as four other carriers belonging to BoB and friends in Catch. IAC lost two carriers: one carrier was lost almost immediately, and the second was only brought down after BoB had suicided every ship they had against it. On the 24th, the final two towers in FAT were destroyed, resetting sovereignty to neutral and letting IAC finally take the station back. A few days later, IAC finally regained sovereignty over FAT. Over the Christmas holiday, BoB sieged and destroyed five towers in TPAR, while MC were busy having lives and spending time with family. At the same time, BRUCE, Pure., and Mostly Harmless took four station systems in Fountain. RAZOR, IRON and the rest of the Northern Coalition took Z-U and I1Y from FIX in Querious, and BoB was evacuating 25S in Catch. The only front they weren't losing on was the one in TPAR, and even then it was more like a stalemate. BoB was shedding stations faster than anyone could believe. At the end of December, BoB began to get pushed to the razor's edge. Tortuga/Outer Heaven were still taking Period Basis despite the fierce fighting in TPAR, Firmus Ixion had ordered an evacuation against BoB's wishes to empire space leaving RAZOR Alliance and IRON to take Querious without opposition, and 25S had finally been stripped from BoB despite a battleship-heavy support fleet they sent to defend the system, only to have the entire fleet double doomsdayed. Fountain had also been entirely taken over by BRUCE, Mostly Harmless and Pure.. Suddenly, BoB found themselves in the one position they had never thought possible: utterly defeated, on the run, with only a single region and a handful of stations left. It wasn't NOL by Christmas, but it was close enough.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:11:00 - [20] - Quote January 2008: The Sword of Damocles, and The Great Invasion Of Delve At the beginning of the new year, Band of Brothers began a new wave of forums propaganda, trying to justify all of their losses as a part of some "grand plan", and that they had planned for everyone to siege Delve because they wanted to be pushed to their limit and have every 0.0 alliance attempt to dislodge them from the region. At first, some people (mostly anti-Coalition) believed it. Other people noticed it was a bunch of horseshit. It was revealed that there had actually been some talks of a 'plan' when at the time they had mentioned it, falling in line with what they claimed. However, Mittani claimed that while they did have a 'plan', they had never followed it, and that almost all of their political and military decisions had not taken into account any of the stuff discussed in the plan. Bringing up this old 'plan' nobody in BoB actually followed was just them attempting to save face. BoB's ineptitude with revisionism was apparent: wasn't it only six months ago they wanted to control all of 0.0, and came damn near close to it? How could they have foretold the Titan nerf or Shrike dying? How could they have planned for Titan warfare before the ships were released, which The Great EVE War was arguably based on for the first half? Either way, they had gotten their wish: not a single faction now allied themselves with Band of Brothers. There was no Greater BoB Community left, only BoB itself. Firmus Ixion, having failure cascaded mostly out of the game, bitterly lashed out at BoB for how they felt used and unappreciated. BoB's last stations in Fountain, Querious and Period Basis were close to falling, and everyone had their eyes on Delve. Already, GoonSwarm had been ordered to move to Querious, a mere stone's throw away from NOL. SirMolle being a ****** Saturday Night Fever: on January 5th, Shrike, a mothership and about a dozen carriers decided to have a gay romp in 49- in Querious, a now-IAC controlled system. A medium-sized gangs of support ships from RAZOR, IRON, AAA, IAC, RA and GS were all operating in the same area. After a few engagements between BoB subcapital fleets, Shrike decided to do a drive-by doomsday just to show off: however, doomsday-tanking Heavy Interdictors were among the IAC and GS fleets. Suddenly, Shrike was tackled on the 4-0 gate in 49-, and the order was sent for all heavier ships to go to 49- and primary Shrike. The carrier support group quickly lost all of their fighters, as the BoB subcapital fleet was picked off and destroyed as they warped in. After one hour and the system becoming nearly unplayable, Shrike doomsdayed a second time, killing many allied support ships: but the Heavy Interdictors remained unscathed. As capital fleets from all faction tried to get themselves past the 'great divide' of Querious/Catch, Shrike set off yet another doomsday, but remained tackled all the same. At this point, Shrike had killed about 60 battleships: the system was completely unplayable and people couldn't load grid. Just as GoonSwarm cynoed in over 40 capital ships, the node died, and Shrike managed to escape. He was probed out a mere minutes later, but he was mysteriously bugged, and nobody could target or shoot at him. GoonSwarm directors allegedly claimed that BoB had put the order out to "kill the node" to save Shrike by jump bridging large fleets into the system. It wasn't as though they were just trying to defend the Titan, as the words "kill the node" had apparently been used. However, BoB may have not had time to assemble enough numbers for that, and the node probably just died on its own due to the fact there were 800 people in system and multiple doomsdays going off. At the end of the engagement, BoB wound up with a huge k:d ratio. The next day, two BoB carriers tried to bust themselves out of the system, and got tackled and destroyed. In the second week of January, GoonSwarm began sieging a factory station in Delve, QY6. Multiple towers were put into reinforced, some of them timed for the same time as the ones MC put into reinforced in TPAR. BoB began anchoring the maximum of five small towers per day in QY6 in an attempt to fill up the remaining moons. More moon mining towers were also destroyed, and four faction towers were stolen. However, drama began to grow rampant in GoonSwarm. People were frustrated with the lack of direction. Suas attempted to online a POS in PR- in Delve, one jump from NOL in NPC space. The POS was unfortunately put into reinforced before it could be properly stronted. BoB pulled an alarm clock op and killed the tower: the entire GS fleet was ordered into the system, right into large bubbles with carriers and motherships deployed. Many massive subcapital fleet losses would occur. Small-time hotdrops on BoB carrier fleets did net some kills, and BoB were losing a couple of carriers a day. Despite this, any time a fleet battle would go south goons would whine about the state of the war and how the war was getting nowhere. On January 18th, 0utbreak lost a Nyx to Band of Brothers. It was fitted for cap recharch and got lagged out when attempting to refit for tanking, and thus popped very quickly. More attempts to get towers into PR- were made; however, all were mostly unsuccessful, and dozens of ships were lost. On January 23rd, BoB were sieging a tower right after downtime, and the entire RA/TCF capital fleets hotdropped them in PR-. However, there were not enough interdictors, and BoB managed to yet again fight through the lag, kill the dictors and jump out. A few hours later, GoonSwarm got its very first Titan, an Erebus, piloted by evil henchman and sadomasochistic box-lifter deadtear.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:11:00 - [21] - Quote The Great Invasion of Delve. Deadtear being angry After the failed hotdrop and the unveiling of GoonSwarm's Erebus, dubbed the "GoonCannon", a massive plan was put into effect: Delve would be sieged, purged and made our own. Red Alliance, Tau Ceti Federation, Mercenary Coalition, RAZOR, IRON, United Legion, VENOM Alliance, Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate and random alliances were all invited: and all of them brought their best hardware. From January 26th onward, TPAR in Period Basis, Y-2 in Fountain, and QY6 in Delve were all hit and entirely reinforced. Many jump bridge or other strategic systems were spammed, and BoB began to feel the full onslaught of the Allied forces pounding down on their space. Movement was restricted for the average BoB member with their jump bridges offline and their Titans not online most of the time. Massive fleet battles occurred in Y-2 and QY6, and while BoB managed to win some victories, they persisted in getting their towers put into reinforced. The BoB vets began to bleat their revisionist rhetoric of "we didn't want this space anyways." db preacher himself began to spout nonsense about how BoB had already won the war because of the fights they had managed to come out on top of, and how they simply didn't want that space anyways, and had resigned themselves to losing their space. Timezone coverage was 100% around the clock. BoB had finally gotten to test their self-proclaimed "Fortress Delve", and were already showing signs of wanting to ride bikes. This would only end one way: with Sovereignty > GoonSwarm under NOL-M9. As January drew to a close the coordinated attack broke BoB's hold on two stations outside Delve they had been defending for weeks. The TPAR sov and station was taken by Mercenary Coalition on January 30th while Morsus Mihi took the now neutral Y-2ANO station at the same time. Fountain and Period Basis were now free of BoB-controlled stations and only one backwater Querious station remained of their posessions outside Delve. In the QY6 system, every single BoB tower was put into reinforced and a combined fleet of Goonswarm, IRON, RAZOR and TCF was killing them as they came out of reinforced.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:12:00 - [22] - Quote February 2008: Welcome to the Thunderdome "I bet Lallente sure wishes he had ponied up that Wyvern now." At the beginning of February, the situation in QY6 was like a nuclear bomb had gone off. BoB began sieging GS towers in the system, putting most of them into reinforced, including 6-24, GoonSwarm's faction-fitted staging tower of death that managed to kill one of their Revelations all by itself during their siege (and notorious for getting bugged and shooting blues). With the jammer up and the American internet backbone partially down, nothing could be done as half of the fleet would get randomly disconnected every five minutes. The situation looked desperate. Dreads killing the cyno jammer The following day, Suas took the 20 or so GoonSwarm capitals (including a couple of RAZOR alliance capitals) that had logged off in the system a couple of days before and warped them right into the cyno jammer POS, ordering them to primary and disable the cynosural jammer. Immediately, BoB warped interdictors, over 20 carriers and 5 motherships on top of the dread fleet. As the allied battleship-heavy support fleet warped in, so did Shrike, and he nuked the support fleet out of existence. The situation was all too familiar, and it seemed as though the entire dreadnought fleet would be destroyed. Despite dreads slowly getting eaten alive by the horde of fighters, they continued to fire on the jammer, and against all odds, the jammer was finally incapacitated after three dreads had died. After a 5-second celebration and a horde of allied capital ships jumping in to support, the order was made to primary a couple of dreadnoughts, and then immediately after, one of the Nyxes. The mothership, despite having the best gear in the game fitted, melted under the dps of two dozen dreadnoughts faster than the other BoB carriers could lock him up, and was successfully destroyed. The other BoB motherships immediately jumped out of system, disturbed so badly from the loss that they didn't even wait for their fighters to be recalled, and the tower was successfully sieged and reinforced with the other allied capital ships that joined the fray: BoB had not expected GoonSwarm to win the engagement so decisively, and as such failed to time the tower to a favourable time. At the end of the engagement, 5 allied dreadnoughts were lost, while BoB had lost the Nyx and three of dreads of their own. The jammer POS was later finished off with no opposition. The battle raged on, and GoonSwarm carriers were ordered into a spidertanking formation, moving together as a giant remote repping blob, the first time GoonSwarm had ever used such a tactic in large-scale fleet warfare. Over 300 battleships met their end in that system during the four hour engagement, and all of BoB's towers were successfully reinforced with minimal capital losses. A second BoB Nyx was almost tackled after SirMolle accidentally bumped it outside of the shields with his Titan, but the Heavy Interdictor pilot simply couldn't activate his disruptor on him due to lag before he jumped. An officer-fitted Machariel was also killed the following day while still inside its own POS shields, as it wandered outside the shields and had a volley of Citadel Torpedoes fired from an allied Phoenix follow it back inside, destroying it. Sovereignty > GoonSwarm Early in the day on February 4th, Red Alliance hotdropped a BoB capital fleet in PR- in Delve while they were sieging a tower. They did so despite being outnumbered, at a hostile POS and in a system with many hostile motherships and carriers deployed. Allied forces lost the engagement, however only 18 capital losses were suffered while BoB and their remaining allies suffered 14 capital losses. Almost immediately after the capital fight in PR-, the capital fleet moved back to QY6 while BoB was distracted by the subcapital fleets of Morsus Mihi, Pandemic Legion and Pure, and destroyed another control tower: the last tower remaining before the number of GS and BoB towers matched. Sovereignty would then be set to GoonSwarm the following downtime on the 5th. It had been done: GoonSwarm, alongside its valuable and respected allies, had finally taken their first Delve outpost from BoB, in a sovereign constellation no less. That same day, the remaining BoB towers in QY6 were destroyed, including the three they had spammed pre-downtime that were destroyed before they were onlined. Even with the unfavourable capital fight the day before, morale was at an all-time high throughout the allied forces. Tonight we dine in NOL. With the countdown timer ticking on QY6's constellation sovereignty dropping, many attempts were made to disable the J-L cynosural system jammer, the refinery station system right next door to QY6. However, after losing three large remote-rep battleship fleets to POS gunners and BoB jump bridging in support fleets, it quickly became apparent that every time we engaged, regardless of the time, would be suicide. On the fifth or so attempt, the GS directorate played a trick on BoB: they went for the NOL-M9 cyno jammer instead.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:13:00 - [23] - Quote Tonight we dine in NOL. With the countdown timer ticking on QY6's constellation sovereignty dropping, many attempts were made to disable the J-L cynosural system jammer, the refinery station system right next door to QY6. However, after losing three large remote-rep battleship fleets to POS gunners and BoB jump bridging in support fleets, it quickly became apparent that every time we engaged, regardless of the time, would be suicide. On the fifth or so attempt, the GS directorate played a trick on BoB: they went for the NOL-M9 cyno jammer instead. After a pitched fight and many battleships lost, the NOL jammer was disabled, and most of BoB's members logged off in disgust. A cyno was popped, and finally, after a year and a half of constant warfare, the allied capital fleet had made it into NOL-M9. With much cheering and celebration, five GS towers were laid down, although at the expense of one of our Rorquals. All of BoB's towers were put into reinforced, and the jammer was kept offline for days. However, it became apparent that, of course, BoB was not a pushover. Large subcapital fleet fights would occur over the following days, and BoB would almost always come out on top, somehow managing to consistently fight through the hardlocking lag each time. No attempts were made by BoB to reinforce and destroy any of the towers in NOL or QY6. On February 15th, the one-year anniversary of BoB killing D2's Erebus, Red Alliance member Oort lost his Leviathan to a BoB subcapital fleet. After a double doomsday and the destruction of a heavy dictor, the heavy dictor kept his point on Oort even after the ship had been destroyed. This allowed BoB to warp in more and destroy him. As allied support, battleships, and carriers tried to get on grid to save Oort, the lag was too great, but apparently not for Band of Brothers as they finished off the Titan before anyone else could manage to load grid. BoB's morale was at an all-time high, and RAZOR unfortunately helped them maintain that by feeding them an easy Nyx kill on February 19th, by warping it and another carrier in to save a carrier that was getting ganked at one of their towers. Participation was at an all-time low in the RSF since June 2007. BoB outnumbered the Coalition in every timezone, and every FC refused to engage BoB even if they had double the numbers. Suddenly, it looked like BoB had turned the tide of the war, as nothing was getting accomplished and every day was turning into a blueballs op. BoB then finished off the remaining towers in NOL, including the faction-fitted staging tower. Allied forces moved back to QY6. A week later, BoB sieged and destroyed 5 small placerholder towers set up by IAC in QY6, replacing them with large towers. BoB immediately sieged many of GoonSwarm's deathstars with capitals, putting them into reinforced, including the 6-24 GS Tower. GoonSwarm then reformed and gained superiority, and reinforced all of BoB's towers with capital ships. GoonSwarm maintained superiority the next day, and repped all of the towers. Welp. With SirMolle's return came an order for BoB to switch tactics - all capital pilots were directed to pilot battleships. This change was meant to discourage the RSF and other forces from using capital ships, as the support fleets would be unable to match BoB's battleship numbers. Scavok and Trevor Reznik asked Sesfan for authority to use carriers as a remote repair spidertanking blob, and dreadnoughts like battleships warped in point-blank, followed by a massive wave of dictors. The night that followed decorated the grid with massive losses, with each side reporting the destruction of over 130 battleships. Once the dust settled, BoB's entire presence in the system was purged, both in the form of their staging control towers and those of their vassals. In place of these towers, large bubbles were anchored, causing BoB's final attempt to retreat to end with 30 battleship losses as they warped in piecemeal. BoB's invasion effort had been thwarted in the time it took for the stront to last in their deathstars, one day eighteen hours. With the QY6 foothold preserved, the battle for Delve continued to escalate. Each side relentlessly continued pouring battleship after battleship onto the front. Daily capital losses were occasionally punctuated with supercapitals, including the loss of one Titan. Despite all of BoBs strategic efforts, their total yield was their high kill ratio, and the momentary preservation of NOL-M9. The stalemate continued on into the dawn of March, with no indication of how long it would hold out.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:13:00 - [24] - Quote March 2008: The Six Pack Titan Stack With BoB fuming over their recent blunder in QY6, GoonSwarm continued to kill random ships that logged back into the bubbles put in place where their staging towers used to be. Dozens of battleships, a massive amount of support and a carrier were destroyed attempting to break out of the rapecages set up by the allied forces. Seleene eventually got his Nyx tackled in C3N, but it was rescued by a massive allied battleship fleet jump bridging onto the field after Thulsa Doom, MC's Ragnarok (and himself a Seleene alt) doomsdayed the field. The Nyx was saved and light losses incurred on both sides. A2, the "L4X of Querious", was sieged and reinforced by the allied capital fleets, attempting to cut off BoB from their logistical jump bridge network to empire. The GoonCannon, after almost three weeks of inactivity, returned and was jump bridging allied subcapital fleets all over the place. "Good fights" A massive, multi-front offensive was planned with many of the Allies spamming towers in multiple station systems across Delve. Immediately, BoB logged on four of their Titans and reonlined every jammer in every remaining system they had, and threw their Titans around by using jump bridges. Nothing could be done to move the offensive forward, and all towers were destroyed. It was obvious that BoB was attempting to win the war through attrition by abusing broken mechanics, much like one year before. With CCP already having their eyes set on a potential cyno jammer nerf, the war grew cold, and many of the alliances in the allied forces simply broke off and retreated. Above all, the war was no longer fun, and BoB had gotten what they wanted: lots of cheap kills with their enemies' hands tied behind their backs. BoB Titans waiting in QY6 In two engagements between BoB and RA, both had suffered over 15 capital losses each. BoB then began a multi-front offensive, allying with Stain Empire to slowly erode the station systems of Esoteria while GoonSwarm remained in Delve with a deathgrip on QY6. RA consolidated their subcapital fleet and brought them into Delve. However, near the end of March, BoB effortlessly took two station systems in Querious. IRON had failed to put a jammer up in their Sov 3 station system, and only had three large towers anchored. The second had absolutely no defenses, and half of the towers had no strontium. BoB began to reverse the situation in the south. By waiting for GoonSwarm participation to plummet due to attrition, they finally succeeded in taking down the QY6 jammer, as nobody was online to defend it when BoB rolled in with over a hundred battleships. Tortuga, in a bizzare twist, began to work with Band of Brothers again, setting the Allied forces neutral. BoB decided to play for keeps, and rolled out eight Titans into QY6 on the last Sunday of March, ensuring that absolutely nothing could be done by the allied forces. Abandoned by their allies and now facing the same situation CCP had attempted to fix a year before, GoonSwarm was by itself, facing off against eight Titans.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:14:00 - [25] - Quote April 2008: Pyrrhic Victory The situation felt much like it had exactly one year ago during the Invincible Supercapital Era. People were calling for a removal of the doomsdays, hard nerfs to cyno jammers and Titans, nerfs to jump bridges, or even the entire removal of POS warfare all together. Neither side wanted to push an offensive, and the entire Delve conflict was driven into a stalemate. The beginning of April began with some political shuffling. Mercenary Coalition, having crawled back under BoB's skirt, got a kick to the side when SirMolle revealed that the promise of a POS NAP and peaceful co-existance had been a lie to get MC to backstab the Allied forces. Everyone saw this coming, but MC's hatred of IAC blinded them from it, and suddenly they were on their own, with nobody willing to touch them. AAA also performed a heavy-handed standings reset, resetting everyone except TCF, RA, GS and their affiliated alliances... except, in a bizarre twist, IAC was not granted positive standings. It became apparent that the long-time figurehead of IAC, Tyrrax, had been a member of the Guiding Hand Social Club for quite some time, and had scammed motherships and billions of ISK from IAC. He was ratted out by an AAA member, who informed AAA's leaders and IAC themselves, shortly after ripping Tyrrax off of one of his ill gotten motherships. Red Alliance began facing off with Stain Empire in Esoteria, attempting to remove all of Stain's towers from the entire region. Final battle in 319 With the stalemate finally underway and RSF participation whittled down to nothing, BoB took the lead with their offensive. But BoB's desperation began to show; they weren't taking any more chances. They continued to drop half a dozen Titans in every system they deployed capitals, making it literally impossible to do anything about it. After a tower purge by BoB as they holed up in the system preventing any sizable defense, sovereignty in QY6 finally switched to neutral after two months of GoonSwarm rule. GoonSwarm continued to move into 319 in NPC area of Delve. A very successful evacuation op occurred a few days after BoB took the station, with an estimated 60b+ ISK evacuated in corp and alliance assets, not to mention the assets of individual RSF pilots, and goons themselves. A long line of pods warps to and from QY6 to 319, and half of the capital swarm was broken out as well. Attempting to mimic the fleet doctrine that other mature alliances had adopted long before, new programs were put into place by the GoonSwarm directorate to encourage fleet BS participation. With the sale of 7-K to some random carebears, a T2 sniper reimbursement program was put into place. During the very first op using the new BS-heavy fleet, 40 BoB battleships squared off against 50 GS battleships; the losses were 40:10 in favour of GS. However, this would prove to be too little too late. On April 15th, a capital slugout occurred in 319: GoonSwarm had 10 dreads, 10 carriers and a mothership, and BoB had fifteen carriers, thirty dreadnoughts and five motherships. Outnumbered and outclassed, GoonSwarm lost 18 capitals while killing only 6. The fight had been almost completely lag-free, and GoonSwarm's battleships easily raped BoB's support fleet, although it did not save the capitals or the control tower. That final, anticlimactic battle in an NPC-owned system ended up being the finale in The Great EVE War. With all sides thoroughly exhausted of fighting each other, the war ended with the RSF in control of the deep south and east, RAZOR and friends, having eliminated Triumvirate in a short campaign, controlling the North, and BoB rebuilding their empire around Querious and Delve. All sides ended most territorial hostility towards each other for a long while. [edit] Epilogue The war was long and bloody, and ultimately the game imbalances of capital ships and the tediousness of sovereignty warfare had too much of a toll on all sides participating in the war. The entire map had been rewritten many times during the war, and many alliances, both mighty and weak, met their end during the bloodbath. EVE had always been a serious game up until the war. But ultimately Titan and capital proliferation in general would decide who was truly "hardcore" and who could eat enough **** to achieve their objectives. Many alliances simply couldn't take it anymore after a year and a half of solid fighting. Tortuga and Dusk And Dawn were probably the most notable and "hardcore" ones to "cash out" of 0.0 warfare. GoonSwarm rose up during this time from fledgling T1-ship alliance to a mature alliance, although growing pains were still apparent as GoonSwarm attempted to find a purpose in a post-Great War EVE. Band of Brothers had been thoroughly disgraced despite their defense of Delve. Smaller factions such as Triumvirate., YouWhat, RISE, BRUCE, Lotka Volterra, Knights of the Southerncross and Firmus Ixion all met their end when the meatgrinder of the Great War rolled into their part of space. With the Great War finished and NOL-M9 still in BoB's hands, EVE would enter a period of random proxy conflicts, including the mass production of Titans; BoB has come into possession of over a dozen, GoonSwarm of half a dozen, Morsus Mihi of eight or nine, with most alliances gaining at least four or five for logistical or military use. [edit] Six Months Later... The Second Great EVE War began, and once again, it rolled into Delve.
Logi Bro ZionTCD Legacy Rising 836	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:47:00 - [26] - Quote This is a really long f*cking story. Hope he's not still posting.
Cerebral Wolf Jr Immobile Infantry 760	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:49:00 - [27] - Quote No, that's just a little history of ONE war in EVE, what it entails and some links to awesome videos. There's a lot more where that stuff came from but it's time to start (RE?)Educating people on what they are getting involved with and to make sure they make the right friends, as early as possible.
TrueBluu 15	Posted - 2012.09.04 03:51:00 - [28] - Quote Well its time to lean back and have me a good read
Aighun Zumari Force Projection Caldari State 666	Posted - 2012.09.04 04:22:00 - [29] - Quote Ha, and I just bought a book to read the other day... guess I could have waited. For the great wall of text. Should be interesting tho...
Vrain Matari ZionTCD Legacy Rising 404	Posted - 2012.09.04 05:33:00 - [30] - Quote Cerebral Wolf Jr. You, sir, are a magnificent beast. This is a real public service to the DUST community(not to mention the EVE community), and will be a lifesaver for those Mercs wise enough to read it and start asking questions of their own. What does this have to do with us dirt-eaters? Everything. These wars are our wars. Eve is an engine of war, and we are the NOX.
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