Fireside Chat Transcript 24 Jun 2k23

Hello, friends, how are you?
Gollums.
Mike, are you out from the wilderness?
Are they letting you post again?
You want me to explain Gollums?
Gollums.
All right, thanks for coming.
Thanks for being here.
So been a pretty exciting, pretty interesting week going on here.
We've had a major change with the TTC.
We announced we were pulling out of it and then pretty swiftly we destroyed it.
A lot of you were there, obviously a lot of you saw what happened.
We, in the armor timer, Gollums from Pandemic Horde pinged out that he had
a superior knowledge of high tech mechanics than us.
And then used that superior knowledge to watch us all shoot the Keepstar while
his CTA Max Red Pen, Gold Pen just literally sat there and did nothing.
It was pretty funny that, and when you're a master of high tech mechanics,
that's the kind of moves you can make.
And we appreciate that we don't know as much, but we try our best still.
And we still got it done, so that's what matters.
And then for the last one, they also said they were going to shoot us and
then went to Poshvin instead.
So, and just did nothing.
They did finally casually try attending.
They don't do anything casually, unfortunately.
Yep, anyway, so that's one up.
So what we have, so the thing is, everyone's excited about that.
People are, you know, people wanted us to leave the TTC.
People wanted to blow that up.
But that means that we do need to, you know, we have committed ourselves
for the time being to policing that area of high tech.
So, you know, Horde has already dropped down multiple, you know, new,
quote, new TTCs.
And those will have to be dealt with at some point.
So we need you guys to be as enthusiastic for blowing those up as you were
for blowing the Keepstar up, because otherwise it doesn't make sense, right?
Otherwise, you know, we just, you know, it's pointless.
So be aware, be around for those timers.
We're going to make some things easier as far as, like, getting there.
We're going to change some things, but that'll be in the near future.
Oracles, please, cannot be bothered to cycle guns.
Yeah, oracles won't really fight very well, unfortunately.
I mean, if they're not going to defend it, yeah, oracles are great.
But at that point, I would probably just go with the Trigship.
Okay, this is like a bookkeeping thing, really, but I wanted to link you guys this.
Let me drop this in Elysium.
Okay, so I was talking to someone about the forums, and they were like, oh, yeah,
you know, I don't really ever check the capital thread because, you know, I don't --
it's always XOR.
Whenever it says there's a new post, it's always XOR,
and I don't ever see any of the other posts because it, you know --
so I'm going to share this link with you.
This is my link to the forums.
If you click this, it should show only new posts, and it shows it from every category.
So if you click that link and you make that your forums link, whenever you arrive,
you'll just get new posts.
Yes, goons still cannot XOR.
Well done.
Even in the most basic situations, goons cannot XOR.
Anyway, so if you take that link for the thread, you can make that your link,
and you don't have to click through threads.
It'll just show you new content.
Filter by only good posts, go to a different forum.
I'm on a botany forum.
There's much better posts there.
All right, so if -- one thing we're pushing, we've been telling you guys,
get Zernitras, get Phoenix Davies, get Phoenixes.
We're still pushing that.
If you guys -- this is something Apple has been bothering me about for a week,
so I'm going to ask.
We would definitely like to have two dreads, one to leave home
and one to deploy with, like we have now.
So if you are in the place where you can get a second dread,
we want to do that where we have one dread at home for dropping in home defense
and one dread to deploy.
If you're working on a levy Conrad, you're already doing a good thing.
Don't worry about it.
The armor shield doesn't matter for dreads.
Just get the ones we tell you.
That's what really matters, to be honest.
All right, so we have a new -- what about our things in DO6?
They're staying there for the moment.
It's going to change, but for now they are staying there.
The enemy is currently there, so we're going to stay there.
But, yeah, get a Phoenix and a Zern.
That's really good to get.
Guys, stop asking questions before I get there.
We're going to get there.
Don't worry about it, Dochi.
Okay, we've got a new doctrine.
It is coming out.
Someone drop the link in it.
We are officially making rogues an all-around doctrine.
Everyone likes the rogue.
You can't stop the rogue.
So we are bringing out rogues as a new doctrine.
They have gotten buffed.
They're very strong, very, very strong.
And here is the thread.
Thank you for dropping it.
The Super Train is back.
If you want to ride the Super Train, please go ahead.
If you read the thread, there are some interesting things in there.
Okay.
So this is something that Ratnay wanted me to ask you guys to talk about.
He said, you know, he wanted me to remind you about 2FA.
That you should have two-factor authentication on your account.
That you're really vulnerable without it.
And also, probably common sense, but we've been having people getting these kind of attacks.
Don't download anything off Discord.
If someone asks you to, you know, test their new game or whatever, and gives you a link,
please don't click it and download it.
Like, I know it's common sense, but it's been an issue.
So don't download things off Discord.
Training priority rogue over typhoon.
Typhoon is not really an official doctrine right now, so I would say rogue.
The free Bitcoin link wasn't legit?
No, it was not legit.
All right.
So I want to shout out our AT team.
They actually beat Snuffed Out and have advanced on to the main tournament.
Congrats to them.
That is very impressive.
Good job, guys.
Well done.
I know I've run the team before, and I know how hard it is to get wins in that.
And so any win is impressive, but, you know, that's really strong.
Okay.
So this is a fun thing that's happening.
We are going to auction off for the first month.
Can I get this thread link?
We're auctioning off the rights to paint the Imperial Palace.
We're giving this a test run for a month.
So whoever wins the auction, which will close 24 hours from now,
whoever wins the auction will be able to paint the Imperial Palace,
whatever colors you want that are available from CCP Engine.
So if you want -- yes, it seems like lots of people want to paint Imperial Palace.
If that's what you want, you have but to bid for it.
We are going to try it one month.
Some people were saying we should do this for a year.
I said no.
Let's do a one-month auction, and let's see how it goes.
And then we can auction it again, or we can revert it, or we can whatever.
We'll decide how we feel after a month.
So you can put a bid in there, the winner.
So it's basically the auction will close in 24 hours from now,
and there's a five-minute anti-snipe mechanism.
So don't try to snipe it.
Just put your bid in.
Yes, we do need a B color for the Palace, black and yellow.
If someone does that, they can do that.
But if they want a hot pink, they can do a hot pink.
We can have the Hello Kitty Keepstar.
We may regret this.
We'll see.
Give it your best shot.
All right.
That looks like I covered most of the stuff on my agenda.
If you guys have questions, go ahead and ask them.
Can you say happy birthday to Jack two days ago?
Happy birthday, Jack.
Paladin Keepstar Progress?
Two days ago.
Yeah, two days ago.
Paladin Keepstar Progress, same as before.
Nothing new since then.
Boris, did you do the forum thing?
Can we rename Rokes to Techno Train?
No, it's Super Train.
Someone please find the Super Train video.
It's excellent.
Yeah, we were at 52% last I checked it.
So another thing which Asher forgot about,
we purged the Recruitment Center forum.
Oh, yeah.
There was lots of old things in there that kept getting bumped.
It was hard to find SIGs that were actually active.
So everything in there is hidden and needs a new thread.
If you run a SIG and you want something out of an old post,
ask a director.
They can get it for you.
But yeah, if you do a SIG, go make an active thread from this decade,
preferably.
Yeah, so there was a lot of old posts in there.
So we've removed all the recruitment posts.
And we're going to just put up new ones so that they're a bit fresher
than they were before, because there were ones from 2014 in there.
What is the process of training a new Beehive FC?
Who do I talk to?
I'm interested in helping lead Beehive.
Talk to Zintage.
Yeah, you need to add Lancers to your overview, the new dreads.
And they are of a different category.
And someone asked, what dread should I build?
What T2 dread should I build?
Don't build the Bane.
Don't build the Amar one.
Probably the best ones are the Kaldari one and maybe the Mimitar one.
I'm not 100% sure on that.
But certainly don't build the Bane.
And honestly, none of them are that great.
Some people are adopting them.
I don't think -- I'm not convinced that they're there yet.
But if you want to have one for yourself, just build anything but the Bane.
The Hoobreeze is probably the best one.
You're right.
I should have said that.
It is the Hoobreeze.
I can't stop you from building a Bane.
Right.
You're correct.
I cannot physically stop you.
You can do it if you want.
You're just going to be in a bad ship.
What's wrong with it?
It shoots EM as a lance, which is worthless against other dreads.
You're like, it's already not a ton of damage.
And you're going to have like a quarter of the damage of any other lance.
It's just beyond bad.
You're going to have a lance that hits and do like 100K damage to other dreads.
This is going to be terrible.
Are prices of dreads going to drop after PI changes?
Is it good to wait or to buy or buy now?
So the prices of dreads are dropping, like the actual build price.
So buying now is not a bad time to buy.
Once again, we recommend you get the Zunitra or the Phoenix or the Phoenix Navy issue.
Faction dreads like the Navy issues have dropped a lot in price.
I strongly recommend you get those over a T1 dread.
The price difference is pretty minimal now.
We also have a trade-in if someone wants to link it.
The Moros Navy issue is fine.
But yeah, if you're going to get a dread, get a Navy dread.
Unless maybe it's like your first dread, you don't have a lot of money, that kind of thing.
Then a T1 is just fine.
But as a second dread, a T1 is fine.
But I would definitely recommend getting a Navy issue or a Zunitra.
I'd recommend the Zunitra over the Navy issues, personally.
The Zunitra is really strong.
And you're going to be really happy with the results if you get one.
Also, it's easy to train.
Yeah, there's no Navy fit for nags because the Navy nags are awful.
I'm probably not going to click a YouTube link during the question time.
"Is Beehive recruitment up?" I don't know the answer to that.
It's Supertrains. What about Supertrains?
Oh, you have the Supertrains video? Oh, everyone clicked that.
Oh, yeah, good man.
Listen, if you aren't happy that the dread you like the best is bad, just wait five years, and it'll probably be good again.
That's kind of how it works.
If you wait five years, you have a lot of patience, your dread will become useful.
I don't know the video that you asked me about, Terrell.
I'll try that, Alvin. Good call.
It's not like a Marge dreads are bad.
It's just that they are overused, so people tank specifically against them.
They're actually, in a lot of ways, considered the best dread.
It's just they're a victim of their own success.
"Have a Phoenix. Want to upgrade to a Phoenix Navy. Who to contact? Kudmi has a trade-in program."
There is a post on the Threats forum.
"When are we going to get a new good war target that's fun to shoot?"
It takes two to tango, Wizzy.
I expect there should be some fights in high sec over some of these new structures.
That will probably be our next set of fights.
We've got some stuff in the-- some irons in the fire long term, but that's going to be our short term.
The war in the north could start heating up again, but I'm not expecting that in the next couple weeks.
Anything could obviously happen, but I don't think anything will happen in the next few weeks there.
"As your sublet is asking, have you mentioned about the Citadel Engineering Complex policy that was updated?"
I don't know enough about it to speak on it, so someone still needs to--
Oh, yeah, go for it.
We just did a pass to update the Citadel Engineering Policy.
It's updated now with the new tax rates and everything.
If you own structures with manufacturing or anything else, make sure you read the post and update your structure policies.
Cool. There you go.
Guy Games asked a great question. "Asher, what's going to happen with our XL structures and domain?
Is it not hypocritical to leave them up after glassing the TTT?"
Guy, I feel like if this is a question from you, you've gone for the propaganda line here from our enemies.
Why did we glass the TTC? Because of the taxes, right?
That's why we did it, right?
It's because the taxes are below the NPC price, and it led to this really stupid situation where we are essentially allied with our enemies,
and people are making choices based off keeping this gravy train of free money alive rather than fighting against enemies,
and I thought that was really dumb.
So whoever said, "Hey, we're opposed to XL structures in HiSec," and why would we be?
There's nothing inherently wrong about an XL structure.
What's inherently wrong is setting up your -- everything is aligning so that you don't want to fight your enemies,
that you don't want to shake things up too much. It's bad for the health of the game.
And that was strictly based on the tax system.
So as soon as we left the TTC, we set the tax in our HiSec structure to zero, or matched it to the NPC, I should say.
So we're not making any money off of it.
Set it to zero.
Yeah, set it to zero. There you go.
We're not making any money off of it, and that was the problem with the TTC,
is that it put in this really terrible game theory where -- think about what it would be when they were literally one jump from one DQ,
and we were still getting money from the TTC because they were afraid of upending the real order of things.
That should give you an idea.
They're in this all-out war to destroy us, but everyone's still sharing the money.
And people at the time were like, "This is dumb."
And they were right. It was dumb, but we couldn't do anything about it, right?
Now at least we can make a change and try to stop it from happening after this change CCP made.
So you had a war of annihilation, but you're sharing money.
It was really stupid.
It went against the reasons for this game.
As far as I'm concerned, the number one reason that we're here in this game is to fight.
I like to stuff and do all that. That's all good, but that's to service the war, to service the fighting, right?
That is why I think many of you are here.
So the reason that we left the TTC, the reason we blew it up, was to get rid of that perverse incentive that made all these groups want to work together.
So we have no problem with XL Structures and HiSec because there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
There's nothing that makes it the game, that ruins the game.
What ruined the game was the tax structure.
There you go.
Yeah, also I didn't like that TES got an equal share with other people when they had three members.
That was really stupid.
So yeah, if you see enemies saying, "Well, goons bought an XL Structure and HiSec,"
you know, that makes them hypocrites.
Why? We never said anything about XL Structures and HiSec.
All right.
Yeah, it is projection.
"How are our relations with the initiative? We're still blue, obviously, but it's the way we should be going through last.
Or is their movement towards them eventually going to neutral to us?"
Nope, we still have a good relationship with them.
We are blue to them, and we intend to stay that way.
"Shines and I talk very frequently."
All right.
All right, you guys have any other questions? Throw them out there.
"Will I give you money?" No, I will not.
"Any up-and-coming enemies, threats on the horizon?"
So, the threats are...
Because of the nature of EVE, the threats stay pretty static.
It takes a lot to become...
Like, I mean, think about how long it's taken Frat to become a major power.
It's taken them four or five years, right?
And they had the benefit of being in, essentially, their own time zone.
So it's not something where, like, "Oh, wow, there's this new alliance that's living in Teterid.
We better keep an eye on them. They're going to be a threat to us."
Because that's just not really how EVE works.
Now, they can ally with a threat to us. That's sort of the bigger concern, right?
But EVE is based on human nature, and it's human nature to conglomerate.
That's why when anyone says, "Hey, we should break up the game into smaller groups,"
it just won't work, unless you mechanically make it impossible to do so.
And I don't believe that there is a way to make it impossible to do so
and still make the game playable.
So, yeah, it's not like worried about, like, "Oh, hey, this group and these new groups are going to be a concern."
It's about maintaining good relationships with new people.
If we want to fight them, that's fine. If they want to fight us, that's fine.
But, you know, when someone comes up, we want to help them become a better alliance.
A thriving NullSec is good for us, which is why we keep our footprint small.
We don't sprawl out. We don't rent all the space around us, that kind of thing,
which is what you should do if you want to have a thriving NullSec in EVE Online.
I don't know about running missions in NPC Fountain, Teriel, so I can't give you an update.
That's still allowed. An NPC is fine, but not in--
And you can run escalations that come from Delve into Fountain.
You can run those also, but you can just not do normal in itself.
Alexander, we haven't discussed that. We'll discuss it with Corp leadership
at the next meeting with Kremlin.
Can we shoot the Sotoyos that are unanchoring? Yeah, we'll probably go shoot those.
In fact, I think most of them have been reffed and probably will be reffed.
We wanted to focus on getting the actual TTC down first before we got anything else.
That was sort of the biggest thing for us.
We killed one yesterday, thanks to Horde forming for it.
Yeah, we appreciate that one, Horde.
How is the situation in the Southeast area between Imperium and Panvam?
There's groups going in there, Nikolai.
It's pretty-- A lot of changes are happening quickly.
People are trying to make alliances. It's good.
It's nice to see action happening. I think that when you open up space,
it's useful. And obviously, we'd like to see more space open up.
We'd like to see other groups adopt our standard of living,
which is to live in a compact area, especially considering our size.
When you look at groups like NCDOT, where they have just each member--
Sorry, each system can support 30 members,
whereas we stick 400 members per system.
It's just hugely different.
It's something that we would like to see other groups adopt
and not sprawl as much.
Unfortunately, there's no way to necessarily get them on board with that,
but we'll try to do what we think is best for the game
and let them do their own thing.
And that's all we can do.
Exactly, Ragnar. Lead by example.
Please don't ask questions in Mumble. Use Elysium on Jabber.
Let's see.
Rhythmic or arithmetic. I often think, like, you hear these rumors.
And, like, so-- I've heard rumors all the time.
There was, like, a famous one in Goons that--
This is a while ago, where it would actually be a threat.
"Pandemic Legion is about to invade us."
We heard this every month, dude.
And I know the idea of Pandemic Legion invading is hilarious to newer players.
Like, why would that be a threat?
But trust me, at one point, that was a very threatening thing.
Obviously, now we're not worried about 30 people in Jackdaws
coming into our space.
But before, a long time ago, they were threatening.
And we would hear every month, "Dude, the rumors, they're going to invade.
I have solid intel."
And it's just an EVE thing, where people say things that either they heard,
and it's through good intentions, or somewhere along the line,
someone put out something with bad intentions.
So I think you should trust more what you see, rather than what you hear.
Yeah. Well, it's good to be curious.
And, like, that is something where, like, the crowdsourced intel in EVE,
it has a real double-edged sword, because there are a lot of sort of
chicken littles who are very worried about things,
and they were telling you about it.
So, yeah, I constantly think back to PLOs invading.
That said, that you can get very valuable intel from places you don't expect it.
It's just sometimes hard to filter that out from the fake stuff.
And that's the job of analysis, you know?
And that is why we have people who analyze this stuff.
I heard Graf is going to join AMOC. Isn't he already in there?
Like, I mean, he's not playing, but he's been in there for, like, a few years.
Okay.
Riddentik, if you'd like that kind of information, et cetera,
and getting that information, you should contact me
and join Blackhand and become a Blackhand agent.
Yep. Blackhand is our spy org, and our spy org is the best in the game.
I'm very confident saying that.
I have some idea of what other groups have as far as spies,
and their spies exist, but not to the level of the Blackhand.
Blackhand are, by far, in a way, the best spy org in the game.
And it wasn't always like that.
We had some pretty bad coverage at some points.
This was a long time ago, but I remember when Andy was running it,
like, we didn't have a test spy when he left.
I remember that. I remember, like, we didn't have someone in test.
Like, really? Not in test?
So, there have been times that have been pretty threadbare,
but it's been, you know, it's in a really good place now,
and has been for a long time.
Yeah, we had no less than zero test spies.
That was ApplePay arithmetic.
Yeah, now we have, honestly, I don't know if we have a test spy.
I really don't.
Like, it's not a, we probably do, but it's not something I would, like,
keep track of and look at the relay, because, like, what do I care?
Why would I care what test is doing?
There is a situation, like, it is pretty funny.
Like, we have had fleets where we've been, like, wait, we're, like,
our spies are, like, 10% of all the people on this fleet.
Like, we're, like, we're actually helping them out more than we probably
are helping ourselves with how many spies we have in this fleet.
That's a pretty, it's a pretty funny scenario from a leadership perspective.
You know, there's a lot of unfun stuff you have to deal with being a leader,
but sometimes this job is very fun when you get to see, like,
the hilarious behind-the-scenes stuff.
I've been trying to write down some of the funny stories so that, you know,
like, 10 years later, if anyone actually cares, we can talk about them
and all remember them, because there are some really hilarious stories
that you get, but you can just never talk about.
And, but, you know, when eventually they become,
they become able to speak on them.
Asher's anecdotes, yeah.
Tell us one, just one.
I mean, I just told you one about there being no test spies,
but, like, there's, like, really good stories.
Some of them, like, they leak out from time to time,
like the actual real start of the Casino War is a classic
that I definitely cannot tell on the fire side,
but I've heard people tell it before, and it's pretty, it's pretty,
like, it's a wild story. It's very wild.
Alrighty, well, this has been fun hanging out with you guys,
and I will see you all next week.
Remember, we have a lot of stuff to shoot in high sec.
Please show up for fleets.
We expect to get more fights out of them, so thank you for coming,
and I'll see you all next week.