Fireside Chat Transcript 12 Dec 2k20

Alright boys and girls, we're gonna get started here in a couple minutes.
I'm gonna go refill my coffee and then we can get going as we wait for the numbers to
stabilize.
It's been an interesting day in terms of war stuff because the bad guys have had meetings
and we've been processing the intel and generally reading tea leaves.
Things are looking pretty fucking good but there's a lot more work to be done.
Alright so I'm gonna go get some coffee and then we'll get started in a couple minutes.
Alright boys and girls, we're gonna go ahead and get started.
This is interesting.
Okay.
So here's what I want us to do.
I expected that we would at some point this week see an attack on 1DQ1 again.
The last time that they did an attack on 1DQ1 it was sort of an ad hoc thing.
It wasn't really telegraphed in any way, they just sort of up and did it.
And it worked about as well as you would expect for something that the bad guys did in an
impromptu way which is we kicked their asses, kicked them out of 1DQ1, high fives all around.
We are in a very interesting position here where there are indications, indications that
the enemy is running out of steam, that they are turning on each other, that there is a
degree of infighting, particularly within Legacy.
And I want people to be on the same page about where we are and what the chessboard looks
like before we get into any sort of details.
I'm gonna back up a little bit.
There have been a lot of events this week and people might not be aware of everything
that has gone on.
So the single most significant development has been the fact that the initiative along
with various other organizations which shall remain nameless, but mainly the work this
week from Init, out of fucking nowhere, has scythed into the enemy backfield and done
a tremendous amount of damage already in catch.
Basically Init, fully charged up, massive fleets have been torching jump bridges, snapped
the head GP, IUB, catch in general is on fire.
This has resulted in a degree of understandable, I wouldn't call it panic, I would actually
call it more of a reasonable recognition of the danger of their situation from Brave Newbies.
Brave Newbies has been one of the most involved parts of this war from a Legacy perspective
and they had their staging system reinforced so they sort of loudly headed home to defend
their homeland.
And the response to that has been, as we're finding out from the Legacy leadership, has
been to continue to try to push Legacy members to settle and colonize in Delve, Quiris, and
the rest of the Empire.
This is a period basis because goons are almost dead, the Imperium is almost over, and ProGodLegend
has been telling people that we are on the cusp of giving up and going away.
Which is nonsense, of course.
But if you are in Brave and you are seeing your shit get set on fire, their defenses
are collapsing, and the response from the Legacy leadership is "Guys, goons are almost
dead and you should totally move into Delve and period basis in Quiris" is probably not
going to be inspiring confidence amongst the Brave line members.
Because essentially they are starting to realize what's been true the entire time, is that
they're a bunch of fucking cannon fodder that Tess has been using and ProGodLegend really
doesn't give a flying fuck about what happens to Brave.
So that's interesting.
Now I don't know.
I don't know how these people are going to react.
I don't know if they're going to react by saying "You know what, fuck ProGodLegend and
fuck all this nonsense" or if they're going to dutifully fall back in line and go back
to being Entosa slaves or whatever.
But the counteroffensive is working.
It's working really well.
We're very happy about that and we want that to continue.
All right, so let me take a look at some of these questions here and check my notes.
So one of the challenges of starting to win a defensive war is if people think that "Oh
my god, this is over" or that it's anywhere close to over or that we are anywhere near
out of the danger zone, that we will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
This is the longest, hottest, most intense war in a video game since the internet has
existed.
This thing has now, in terms of active campaigning, has outlasted the Great War in terms of the
number of people involved, in terms of the number of days of active form-ups.
The Great War lasted three years, but usually we didn't go for more than three months at
a go.
So the fact that we are still here, that we are still fighting, that we still have all
of our shit, well we don't have all of our shit, but you know what I mean, we're in 1DQ1,
we have not been swept out of the game, everything is not on fire or whatever, is pretty fucking
awesome.
We are headed into a scenario here where the enemy has Cyberpunk, the enemy has Cyberpunk
2, but we're more invested because we live here.
The enemy has Cyberpunk coming up, the enemy has Legacy starting to be Legacy, I don't
know whether they're going to turn on each other or otherwise get disorganized and wander
off and do Legacy things.
The situation is really quite good.
However, the situation is only really quite good for us if we continue to do the work.
As the enemy is starting to show signs of faltering, of flagging, the only thing for
us to do is do more, is to dig in, is to work harder, is to go on more fleets, is to grit
our teeth.
I know, I mean actually our people are less tired than the bad guys because I've been
seeing all the complaints there and we're getting PPP constantly right next door, so
we're doing pretty good.
But this is, if there's going to be a couple weeks where you burn the candle at both ends,
you really dig deep, this is going to be that period.
Especially when the enemy is not hitting 1DQ1 or doing something like this, we have a lot
of opportunities in the coming weeks because the enemy, we have deployment ops, we've got
Legacy is doing a move op tomorrow to do a jump clone deployment back to catch to defend
it and it's just a jump clone deployment and they're not going to take caps, but maybe
they will and maybe they'll do unions or this.
It's very hard to predict because it's very disorganized, but they are making moves that
is going to present a lot of opportunities for us and the more people that we have turn
up for fleets, the more opportunities that we will have to exploit the disarray of the
foe.
So yeah, we are definitely getting into the knife twisting phase and I'm delighted that
we've finally gotten to that point.
There is a lot of credit to go around for this.
The initiative is out there and is making some really big baller plays.
We have had a number of counteroffensives in this war.
We started this war from day one with counteroffensives.
I think this is probably our 10th or 11th counteroffensive in one form or another.
This is also part of how defensive wars work.
Like I've said before, defensive wars, you lose them until you win.
Counteroffensives fail until the enemy is so exhausted that suddenly you're burning
down all their shit and they're in disarray.
So essentially the work that we have collectively put into this thing, not only staying alive,
staying together, but killing the bad guys, is really bearing fruit now.
Not just for this particular counteroffensive, but all of the work that we have put into
to outlast and burn out the bad guys.
And it is really fucking gratifying to see that.
There is not just light at the end of the tunnel, but the light at the end of the tunnel
is growing brighter.
This is the part where if we just go "Oh hey, they're turning on each other" and whatever,
and we don't take it seriously, don't log on more, we will be in deep shit.
So let's not do that.
Alright, so there are a bunch of details to go into on that.
And I don't want to point and laugh at the bad guys too much because it smells too much
like counting our chickens before they egg's vatched, but let's talk about this.
So one of the first things I want to talk about is the importance of headhunting.
We have had great success with the bounty system.
Goons love the bounty system.
If somebody could relink the headhunting thread in Elysium I would appreciate it.
And one of the things I want people to realize is that as the enemy is watching their forces
falter, they are much more likely to take desperate swings.
It's possible that Legacy will be Legacy and continue on the path that they are right now.
It is also possible that they will turn around and try to make some sort of wild attack on
1DQ1 or on Helm's Deep in E3.
So effective immediately we are going to be doubling all of the bounties for 1DQ1 specifically.
So if you catch an enemy Sino, you'll get a double bounty in 1DQ1.
If you blow up enemy Hackers in 1DQ1, you'll get a double bounty for that.
I really want people to dig deep here in the next couple weeks.
This is the time when it looks like there isn't necessarily an imminent attack, when
it looks like the enemy is faltering, this is the time to just grit your teeth and work
twice as hard as before.
Because it's going to matter so much more because this is the pivot point on the war
where the enemy is hesitating, the enemy is faltering, the enemy is...
I mean, I think that they genuinely fucked up by...
This just happened.
I think that they really fucked up by trying to push the Legacy guys into colonizing where
we live when we're still active.
Because the people that are dumb enough in Legacy to actually come try to live in Quarious,
to come try to live in Delve, are finding out the hard way that we're still here, we're
still alive and we're killing them.
And then they're screaming home to mommy and going, "Oh my god, this is terrible."
And they're realizing that they're getting used as a fucking meat shield.
So it is kind of people of Rizey, but at this point it's people of Brave.
All right.
Now I do expect, and we are starting to see indications of this, I do expect some sort
of big swing attempt.
I think we need to prepare for that.
I think that there is going to be some day here soon.
Who knows, maybe it'll be over the Christmas holiday.
But if there isn't some sort of big internal drama that results in things flying apart
from the bad guys, when they realize that they're losing momentum and realize that their
entire project is at risk, that does increase the chances of some sort of big desperate
swing at us increasing.
So we need to have everyone on deck, we need to have everyone aware the next time that
they try to come into 1DQ1, it's just fucking get every fucking body.
And I think that if we see them off a second time, that's GG.
And I think if we just keep on keeping on, it'll be GG.
But this war is ours to lose.
If we don't turn up, if we fuck it up, we will lose.
But right now things are looking pretty good as long as you guys keep kicking ass and keep
turning up like you have been.
All right, so here's what we got.
One of the things that's been happening recently is we have been adjusting our jump bridges
a lot, and I would imply, not imply, I would encourage you to update your GTS, make sure
that you are checking that regularly.
We're not always going to be announcing when we change jump bridges because that would
be dumb.
So make sure that you are updating GTS.
Another thing, we are sort of revamping our command structure when it comes to defending
small citadels.
In the way that this sort of massive battle space has progressed, we want to basically
use the Goon Fleet Expeditionary Force, the JEF system, to allow skirmish commanders to
take out smaller groups of people to defend this citadel or that citadel.
So let me see what I've got here.
If you are interested in that as a skirmish commander, you can join the SIG for JEF, and
Applebear has a link there for that.
If you are a skirmish commander already and are at the sort of level where you would like
to be able to pay for yourself to take 30 guys to defend citadels, that is for you.
We have a shoutout here for a pretty substantial donation here.
Two cousins from ASCII donated about 50 billion isk.
Riley and Heinrich are going to get a shoutout there.
That is on the edge of...
Let's see, I have notes here.
In case you want to do a shoutout for these guys, if it takes a while to name stuff...
This is very unclear instructions.
You can't give this to me when I'm this high.
Or actually I'm not this high, I'm exhausted from yesterday, my bad.
It's like, do a shoutout for these guys.
I'm delighted that they donated that and I would encourage more people to do that.
Science has a whole system.
Kaznir, are you here to explain this?
Are we...
Yeah, sorry.
We're going to rename something, I don't know what yet.
So we renamed the faction forts for the larger donors today after I worked out some IT issues.
So we're going to figure out something else on the 1DQ grid.
We have a couple people that are in that situation that weren't at...
We had pigged it at 100 billion for one of those forts, but I think that we're just going
to rename some other stuff there to credit those people also.
We have memorials up for Edenthar and Lux Libertas as well as for Iced, who supplied
a ton of minerals and stuff that have already been turned into capital components.
So yay!
Or battleships, I forget.
But yeah, so that's pretty much it.
Sweet.
All right.
Let me look at Elysium and maybe take some questions.
This has been an interesting one because I expected today that we would all be together
and in ops defending 1DQ1 because the last 48 hours were the critical time for them to
be hitting 1DQ1 and tomorrow they're doing a legacy move op or some shit.
I don't even fucking know.
All right.
Questions about naming, about auctioning the naming of the Imperial Palace.
That would actually be hilarious.
We'll do whatever finance says is necessary.
We've talked about setting a 5 trillion-esque stadium naming rights for the Imperial Palace,
but we weren't sure whether we wanted to pull the trigger on that.
All right.
Here are questions.
Passpe doing move op.
So here's the basic situation that they're in.
They have a real problem, which is Initiative was the first Imperium organization to really
bear the brunt of this war at the early days of this war.
Fountain, as we all know, was hit first by the bad guys.
And I think that they forgot about it.
I think that the enemy was so desperate to convince themselves that they had glassed
Fountain and killed the Initiative that they forgot about Dre, basically.
If you want to make a macro-level analogy about how organizations functionally have
like hit points, we're a bunch of big fatties here in the Imperium and we have a lot of
fucking hit points as an org.
And essentially what happened here is that Init has charged back up fully and is just
scything through the backfield of Test to the point that, not of Test, of Brave, but
Brave is the sort of open nerve that we're stabbing here.
So it's really quite ideal all the way around.
So we don't quite know what Legacy is going to do about this because now that their backfield
is getting hit hard, Test has to prove to their coalition that they are proper coalition
leaders.
And we know that they're not because they're fucking Test.
But essentially, Brave and these other guys are going to find out the hard way that Test
is not actually going to defend their shit.
When Esoterio started coming under trouble from our earlier counter-offenses, Test was
like "Oh, well, you know, we're going to move into Delve and Esoterio, you might lose stuff."
But now that Brave's shit is getting hit really hard, they are still pushing the line of "Just
move into Delve and everything will be fine."
So I think that Legacy is discovering that the largest member of their coalition is not
actually going to be helping them with their shit and is sort of continuing forward in
a desperate attack on us.
So we'll see where it goes.
Do we have any word of an actual retreat of Legacy?
No, the enemy is not going to talk about how they're retreating.
They're always going to be attacking in the other direction.
And in this case, they are attacking in the direction of Kach, which is where we are attacking,
where the Anit counter-offensive has really sort of gotten stuck in.
And they're not going to say "Oh, well, we're doing this."
They're going to say that they're either taking a break or that the real fighting is in Kach
or that they're going to be back or whatever.
You're not going to see a formal acknowledgment of the enemy retreating.
Now, if we set all their shit on fire and we have a surge in participation, then it'll
be a different matter.
Did Vili quit playing Eve?
I haven't seen him since Shadowlands dropped.
I don't know.
I would assume no.
Can we get an opinion on CCB changing the military and index upkeep requirements at
this point mid-war?
Well, this war has been lasting longer than I think certainly longer than our enemies
expected.
They thought that we would be over and done a long time ago.
It's not realistic to expect CCP to not change the video game for half a year or more.
We have been, if you count the time that we deployed Jeff, functionally speaking, Gunswarm
has been at war since fuck like May, mid-May maybe we deployed Jeff, maybe a little bit
earlier than that.
And then we figured out that the bad guys were planning this whole thing and we went
into war prep mode long before July 5th.
So we have been at this for a very, very long time.
And so I'm not like, I'm not shocked or writing in Jita about the fact that CCP is changing
the game while we're doing this thing.
How would a win here compared to the win in the Great War?
I think it would be, that's a good question.
I think that this is something that people really need to think about is that this is
at this point now bigger than the Great War by a large amount in terms of the amount of
man hours invested on all sides, about the amount of time that has been invested in order
to do this.
We think of things in terms of legacy and in terms of PanFam and like Horde's doing
all the work on the PanFam side and you know, test is a fucking joke on the legacy side.
But we haven't like stepped back in a while and said, remember, we are fighting the rest
of fucking EVE Online at once.
Basically everybody who is anybody in NullSec that is not on our side is trying to kill
us and we are still here more than six and a half months later of constant war.
The enemy is faltering.
This is a tremendous accomplishment.
It is an absolutely tremendous accomplishment.
But it will only be a tremendous accomplishment if we keep it up.
You know, if we fail, if we falter, it will all be forgotten.
It will be all for naught.
But if we keep doing what we're doing and if we pull this fucking thing off, this is
going to be the greatest victory against the worst possible odds in the history of online
gaming.
And that is something that will be written about in history books.
And I want you guys to keep that in mind.
Like look at what happened in Empires of EVE Volume 2.
So as we go into these next couple of weeks, think about how you want to be remembered
as we get to this, the most vital phase of this war.
And I for one would like to have Empires of EVE Volume 3 begin with, oh, hey, there's
this casino war thing.
We lost our shit.
And then, oh, hey, the enemy didn't have their casinos anymore and they threw everything
they had at us and we still won.
That's how I want the next volume of that book to end, is with the good guys winning
again.
So let's make that happen.
All right, I'm going to take another couple of questions here and then I'm going to get
going.
I have not played Cyberpunk yet.
I am going to be waiting until after the war is over, at which point I'm going to reward
myself by buying a long overdue new rig rather than trying to make Cyberpunk work right now.
My hope is also that by waiting until the war is over, by that point, the bugs will
be fixed and then I'll be a smoother experience.
Questions about the length of this war?
That's a very good question, Missy.
And I hope it is a bingo square.
This war lasts for one op longer, one hour longer, and one day longer than the enemies
will.
That is how it has always been.
All we must do whenever there's ever a moment where you're wondering how long it's going
to take, one hour longer, one op longer, one day longer than what the bad guys are willing
to put in.
Bingo!
Congratulations, guys.
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