Fireside Chat Transcript 13 Mar 2k21

All right, boys and girls, we're going to get started here in a moment as folks pile on in.
Got some fantastic stuff going on. Got lots of shit blowing up.
Wild times.
So as usual, yes, we are bingo free.
We do these in conference at Elysium@conference.googleplay.com.
So if you are for some reason new and not used to the rhythm of doing fireside chats, you guys know the story by now.
This has been a pretty wild week.
Yeah, as Sid Lally points out here, "I heard Delve has fallen on talking stations. What do?"
I saw that too, actually. I was high as balls.
I went on like a sushi and edibles binge last night. It was really a lot of fun.
I haven't like gone to my favorite sushi joint in way too long.
And anyway, I was then high as balls browsing YouTube and I saw Matterall Smugmug pop up on a YouTube algorithm recommendation saying, "Delve has fallen. Only a few days to evacuate."
So, yeah, I was kind of surprised by that because I've got a pile of things I'm happy about to talk about today.
But apparently it's already all over and we're on the way to Saarinen and blah blah blah, whatever. These people can eat shit.
Okay, so here is where we stand.
As you guys know, last week we got together and we ended the M2 Hell Camp.
We did that for a number of reasons, which should be obvious in hindsight, but because what should be obvious often is not obvious, we're going to go through that.
We believe that it was far better to let the enemy out on our terms rather than having them fight their way out successfully.
And now I am delighted to report one of the reasons why we have been making some of the strategic decisions that we have been making in the last 30 days.
Many of you have been watching PL and crew grind through our seteos.
It is terrible, terrible news to report that I think we have 30 of the damn things still left.
I think that the enemy between Goon Swarm and our allies have blown up like 34 seteos.
If you have one Ferrari and you crash it into a tree, it's a tragedy.
If you have 60 plus or whatever stupid number of these things is, it just becomes a flex.
So as you guys may have noticed, we have been doing some old school blue balls on structures during particularly this last month.
And one of the reasons we are doing that is I am proud to finally report the 30 day Citadel Voln Shift timer shit is over for us.
We started swapping. US time zone has been on Citadel defense duty for like 4 months.
And if you were in Euro and you remember the start of this war where Euro held everything together for like 4 months, things got a little bit crispy towards the end there.
We have now shifted successfully as of today at 2130.
It is finally kicking in. Euro time zone, you guys are going to be front and center for all of these Keepstar fights that are going to be coming up.
Euro, that is where Citadel Volns are going to be.
So we are going to be putting our Euros back first and foremost in the trenches, which means that essentially, congratulations guys, the final defense of Delve is in your hands.
I want to congratulate our US time zone for holding out for 4 fucking months.
And it's not just that they have held out.
I want to point out to you guys that last night we saw our US time zone Friday night, Friday night, primetime, no hurf, no hurf to speak of, got in a fight.
We ended up outnumbering the enemy 500. We had 550. They had 500.
We blew up a bunch of Vili's hacks.
They fucked up pretty good.
And in general, we had a great day yesterday.
I'm not going to say that yesterday is always going to be peachy keen, but we made a prediction that it would take us approximately a week to get back on the wagon and generally get back to playing Eve the traditional way after we drew down the M2 camp.
And I am pleased to say that that actually happened.
It is a lot easier for me to do my job as boss guy to get up here and point to evidence of our predictions actually playing out rather than just trying to reassure you that what we predict is going to happen is probably going to happen.
So here is a link to a thing.
Hold on.
If you're wondering what we're talking about, I had a really cool write up of last night's fights in USTZ.
So what we're seeing here in general is a numbers recovery.
And part of this is not just, hey, we don't have to hold on to the pigeon and we can focus on 1DQ1 and going on fleets and stuff.
Another reason why we are having these successes is that you guys collectively have accepted the frame that we need as from a line member perspective that we need people to do more than just BF1 monkeys.
Our FCs are seeing a huge uptick in people bringing boosters, dictors, boosters, all the good shit that they have been asking for from you guys.
So the F2 project is going.
It is not finished yet.
You are going to be hearing about it forever.
And we have another few things that we're going to be doing as we bolt things onto the system to make that happen.
But what I would like you guys to do when you join a fleet and you have F2s that you can be bringing to the table.
Don't just be passive.
When the fleet forms and you turn up, ask the fleet commander what they need, especially if you're the kind of person that can fly a dictor or a booster.
Ask your fleet commanders actively.
Volunteer your F2s to the fleet, because by doing so, you're setting an example to everybody else in the fleet.
You, even though you are a line member who is developing their F2, can in this way lead from the front for your other companions and show them, "Hey, FC, I can do a booster, a booster, or a fucking just traditional dictor alt.
What do you need?"
And then this gets the positive feedback loop going.
So I've heard very good things in the Illuminati meeting that I just got out of from our fleet commanders.
They are very happy about this, but they want more of this.
And if you are looking in particular for, "Gosh, what is my fleet F2 going to be?"
The big three requests for fleet F2s right now are boosters, dictors, and boosters.
So those are the, you know, if you're looking for guidance, that's the guidance I want you guys going in the direction of.
So, as another one thing is to join GSFOE.
As you guys have noticed, we have, oh my God, Delve has fallen.
We have lost many IHUBS and 30 SOTIOs have been blown up, and there's 30 more SOTIOs to go, and gosh, it's all over, blah, blah, blah.
The net effect of this is that it's a great time to join GSFOE because we're going to be hacking our shit back, especially if you are in US time zone.
US time zone is going to be doing a lot of counter-offense because you're not going to have to worry about citadel defense in US time zone for alliance structures.
US TZ is going to have a lot of action. You guys are just going to be on the attack as opposed to on defense, and our Euros are going to handle D going forward.
So that's cool.
There's so many dick jokes I could have made there, and I feel a little bad that I didn't make a handling the D joke, but there you go.
All right, so let me go through some of these other things that we need to go through.
So I want to draw your attention towards what's happened to Legacy.
The big strategic overview of our situation is this.
If we did not have independent offensive force torching our enemies' backfield, our strategic position would be pointless.
We would be in a very dire situation if the enemy was not taking losses as we were on defense here in Delve.
However, I want to go through some of these regions and go through the updates on this such that you understand while we are focused on Delve, while our allies and our mercenaries are burning shit down in the hostile backfield,
you need to see this so you know that your sacrifices and your efforts to develop your F2 and to get back out there in a nine-month-plus long war are valuable and important.
So essentially what we have in Legacy's world is there's a lot of free real estate.
There's a lot of free real estate.
The big news today is that AOM has been asked to move to Esoteria.
TEST almost lost the DP IHUB last night.
Like, they straight up almost lost DP, which they totally don't mind because they're totally abandoning their space because they're going to totally live on top of the Imperium in Delve and it's going to be peachy fucking keen.
But they almost lost DP last night.
Anyway, so Amist is getting abandoned, the AOM chunks of Tenerife.
Tenerife is essentially a zombie region.
When I'm saying this, I want you guys to actually go to .lan and take a look at the IHUB layer on these regions.
Take a look at Tenerife. Amist is a zombie region.
They haven't lost anything there because AOM is pulling their ship down.
The fun stuff, though, Kach.
Kach has three brave IHUBs left.
They're all reinforced, including GE TAC.
Impass has started to go way faster than I expected.
I didn't think Impass would be torched at this level yet, but if you bring up a map of Impass, take a look at that.
MNC, sort of a big "heh" there.
In general, what you're seeing is if you go through each of the legacy regions,
you are seeing something that I have been saying on these fireside chats going all the way back to before this shit show kicked off,
which is when three blocks enter, two blocks leave.
The legacy strategy is purely based upon the hope that you will give up and run for cover.
Our defenses will collapse.
Goons will totally go to Sarenin because since they are having their shit burned down behind them,
they are telling their members that they are going to be colonizing Delve and colonizing Quiris,
and goons are going to leave at any moment.
This is a very awkward situation for them because since their shit is burning down behind them,
they are not going to have a home to run back to, and as we know from being us, we ain't going anywhere.
So essentially, they are discovering now, and I think yesterday has really kind of proven to them,
they are discovering that this is actually a fully operational woodchipper,
and that we might not have been running the woodchipper while we were holding them down in M2,
but now that M2 is over, we're turning the woodchipper back on, and here we go.
So essentially, this is the overall grand strategy.
Legacy is losing their shit.
They know that they can't beat us, so their only hope is that we break and run.
"Oh my god, Keepstars are getting blown up. Oh my god, Sotios are getting blown up."
They have to hope that we will break and leave before they lose all of their shit, and then we kick them out.
So that is essentially what you're seeing here in big picture.
That is why I keep highlighting all of this Legacy stuff,
because if you're not aware of what is happening with the bad guys, you might get a little worried.
So, one of the other things that's interesting about this is that in general,
since there is so much space that is opening up in the galactic southeast,
you are seeing a lot of blood in the water, you're seeing a lot of entities that maybe they'd like a slice of Tenerife,
have been noticing that Legacy is bleeding out.
So it would just be a terrible shame if we were constantly in public repeating that the entire galactic southeast is functionally open,
and it's free real estate, because gosh, I'm pretty sure that the Legacy guys don't want anybody to be having this pointed out.
It's good. I'm feeling a lot better about the proof of our strategy working out after seeing the way that you guys have behaved in the last few days.
The F2 project was a big risk. It was a huge risk.
Maybe, again, we're past the threshold, maybe people aren't so scared or weirded out about it,
but from my perspective, changing the fundamental structure of the Alliance and saying,
"Hey, we need more than just doing an F1, we need you to do an F2,"
that was, in my mind, a big ask, and I'm really proud that you guys have made your FCs proud,
and instead of getting, "Hey, people aren't helping out enough in fleets from the FCs,"
I'm getting, "Hey, would you tell the guys we need boosters and dictors and boosters in particular as your in-fleet F2s?"
As a reminder, there are two levels to F2.
It is not just F2 doing one thing or a second thing.
You need to have an F2 in-fleet, and you need to have an F2 outside of fleet.
So outside-of-fleet things are something that we haven't bolted onto the thread yet, I don't believe.
We're going to be doing a little bit of work on that.
But the main thing for now, because it's a fucking hot war, is fleet F2s, booster alts, dictor alts, booster alts,
ask your FC when you join a fleet, what can you do to make his life and the fleet's life easier.
And yes, eventually, if you get good at it, you can develop an F3 and a F4 and a F5,
and if you keep doing that, careful, because you might get rested and pissed and promoted.
So be careful.
And let me link this here for if people have missed out on it.
If you're just getting back and smelling the war, that is the link to the Cultural Revolution thread.
"Will there be a meta show?" Yes, we are having a meta show.
We took a break last week, and we are having a normal meta show after the fireside.
All right.
Let me see some other notes here.
I have a bunch of shoutouts to give, because we have done a lot of super cool things this week.
In particular, I keep getting requests to give shoutouts for GB of TNT.
Not only did he help get our asses out of M2, he has had tons of signal alts available and is a constant scouting help.
So basically, dude's a badass motherfucker and an example to the rest of us.
High fives all around.
I also have a general request for a shoutout for US Times and Numbers in the last few days.
It is kind of funny.
In general, I think that you've seen a number surge because we had part of our forces at M2,
and now we can have everything consolidated in 1 to Q1, and it's just a lot easier.
People seem to have gotten their shit together, and we are seeing more and more numbers in USTZ.
It is a delight to see.
I was not expecting to see a battle report in USTZ on a Friday night where we would be outnumbering the bad guys,
but it turns out that blowing up our abandoned SOTIOs is not nearly as exciting for Pappy as their leadership thought it would be,
and their numbers are declining as a result.
So the more you guys turn up and the less the bad guys turn up, the more fun we will have at their expense.
So keep it up. Good work.
A shoutout to the brave Mujahideen of Afghanistan. Yes.
The Irregulars thing is still happening.
We are talking about F2s in general.
When you are not in fleets, getting involved with your Irregulars groups is huge.
Please do that. If you are involved with one, you know who you are, you know what's going on there.
All right.
Let me take some questions.
So is our plan now to counterattack from within Delve, or are we still holding down the fort?
Yes.
What color shirt today on the meta show? It will be a red shirt.
Did I see Vili explain his entire strategy for taking 1DQ1 on TIS?
No, I didn't. I was probably very high at the time gorging myself on sushi.
It was something that happened yesterday.
He can eat my ass.
Generally, how am I?
I feel great.
It's spring, and it went from being covered in fucking snow here in Wisconsin to, like, "Hey, it's 60 degrees and sunny," and it's beautiful.
Spring here is gorgeous, and it's been fantastic.
Can somebody do fancy skill plans for F2 alts?
I think it kind of depends.
There's already some guidance in the Cultural Revolution thread as opposed to each of the specialties.
I think that adding skill plans for them is something that is probably a good idea.
Let me write that down. Good call. I'm glad that you asked that.
What are you looking to do with F2?
One of the things we are looking to do as well is to, like, if we can get wiki entries and have mentoring and guidance for this kind of thing.
Like, the dudes who are really good at some of the high-speed, low-drag specialist skill F2 stuff, like, you know, if you're able to probe down hostiles on your own and use your Hecate to go out and assassinate them.
Like, if you're at that level, you're not necessarily going to be a guy who's, like, going to be writing wiki entries.
But one of the things that we are looking to do is for these rules to just make it as easy as possible.
That is going to take work because we are fighting a war while we are doing this, but I've written that down.
That is a really good suggestion. Thank you.
Let us see.
Any news on RIP Pete t-shirts?
I kind of got distracted by other things, including other fish dramas.
So, actually, Cryo had done a really good job of sending me some drafts, and then some stuff happened, so I moved on from that.
Can we start using the GoonFleet.com calendar more, please?
Yes. One of the reasons why we haven't always been putting things in the opt picker is that in this last month, we have been doing some hard blue balls.
We've been trading structures for time while we waited out the 30 days to swap ops into EU for Citadel defense.
So, as we do that, when we're doing hard blue balls, we're usually not going to put something on the opt ticker.
When we are planning plays for things, we will put them in the opt ticker.
We do not want to confuse you guys.
I would expect to see that, particularly when it comes for Euro time zone key start defenses.
When that comes up, we will be utilizing that.
Do I enjoy a high-end sativa, or am I more of a chill indica dude?
Yes.
That's another yes.
Basically, one of the joys of weed is that there's a million different ways that you can appreciate it.
I've got a whip vape, a volcano, a levo 2, butter maker, six perk bong, a couple of chillums, a pax vaporizer.
There's a lot of opportunities and nuances there.
I am very much looking forward to Eve Vegas. There's a question about that.
As you guys know, when there's not a plague, I like to be a globetrotter and scamper around the world partying with my spade buddies.
I have been prevented from doing that, tragically, by this stupid plague.
I am hoping, as are most of us who are just desperate to get out and party, that we will be able to do Eve Vegas this year.
Even if it isn't an official Eve Vegas, we're going to get together and do something if we can manage it, depending upon the vaccines, the plague, blah blah blah.
Another question about the meta show. I already answered that. Yes, we are doing meta show.
All righty. Questions about me and weed and ADHD? I'm going to stop talking about weed here. I don't want to waste 1,122 people on the fireside.
Dead alliance, Delve has fallen, dead coalition. We are obviously over and done. Alas.
Oh man, they really shouldn't have started trying to declare victory. That's so dumb. Few things will rile people up quite like that.
Okay, so I'm getting a couple of questions that seem obvious enough as they are bait for everybody's favorite bingo square, which is future plans.
A lot of these I'm not going to answer on account of the big questions about our future plans.
For example, it can get very awkward, and congratulations bingo if you got it, particularly when we're waiting out a 30 day timer to change our Citadel vulnerability thing.
It's to be like, "Hey, we're doing this really important thing and we can't tell anybody about it because it would give the info away to the bad guy."
But hopefully that makes a lot of our strategy in the last month make a bit more sense.
Okay.
Game mechanic question. Is the vulnerability window change public knowledge during the one month delay or is there a chance that Pappy doesn't know it's happening?
Citadel vulnerability timers are on a 30 day timer.
And so only the owner or people that have access to altering the vulnerability timer on a given Citadel can see that.
It is on a 30 day timer. So you don't want to tell people you are doing that because if we believe we can do a better job of defending in Europe, particularly for all these keep stars, which we do,
then we don't want to tell the bad guys, "Hey guys, we're going to be shifting this in 30 days, so you have 30 days to burn everything down in the US time zone before it gets to Europe."
So yeah, we have to keep that kind of stuff very close to our chest and not even telling the coordinators until a day before it happens.
There you go.
All right.
Do we know how bad the enemy war bonds went?
It depends upon the bad guys. In some cases we do, in some cases we don't. In some cases, the level of war bondage, as it were, is something that we wouldn't want to confirm or deny having access to in public.
I can tell you that Tess war bonds left them with a like 5 trillion isk hole in their wallet.
I talked about this on a fireside several weeks ago because I think this was last month's news, but we did find out that Legacy still not reimbursed up to 20 Titans that were lost in M2 sometime in the last few weeks.
I think it was maybe even a month ago we found this out.
So we know that their war bonds did fail and that there was a 5 trillion isk liquidity shortfall that was then translated into being unable to pay back as many of their Titans as they wanted to, I guess.
Which is tragic because then the price of the Titans keeps going up as the economy goes further in the shitter.
And so if you can't reimburse your Titans right after it happens, the price of them is only going to go up and it's going to be harder to do that and they will fall further and further behind.
Okay, I think we are now at a point. Yes, also Skirmish commanders is recruiting and big shout outs to Mike flood and Dave Archer because holy shit what a tour de force last night.
Very, very proud of seeing USTZ doing its thing.
It has been extremely rough to defend for four months and the fact that USTZ is now active and people are turning up and kicking ass and taking names is an inspiration to us all.
Here's a question. Can we start making more of their stuff go poof to strain their SRP until it snaps?
Yes, we can. You can. Especially by developing your F2 and turning up in fleets and helping your FCs out.
If you get behind this and push, it will all be easier for everyone.
Develop your fleet F2s, we will result in more fleet wins and more of their stuff will go boom.
I don't think that Brave can sustain the losses that they have been taking.
They are losing all of their shit in their backfield and committing fully into Quarious at which point we will devour them.
So, cool, yeah, it's great. Develop your F2s, keep it up, keep joining fleets.
Alrighty. I'm getting lots of questions about SIGs and squads which I'm guessing is a bingo holdout.
Somebody is asking whether we can hold Catch as a stable region. I wouldn't really want it in the first place.
There's a reason why we didn't want it to begin with.
There you go.
Alright, so we're going to have a meta show in half an hour. I think that is it.
I want you to take one thing away, actually I want you to take multiple things away, but we're going to end this fireside by pointing out this.
No more F1 monkeys. Everybody does at least two things. You do two things in your fleet, you do at least two things for the alliance.
Your F2 exists both. You need a fleet F2 and you need a helping the alliance out F2.
We have some pretty cool things coming down the pipe that are not exactly ready for public consumption yet.
I hope to be able to announce them in the next week. That should be a lot of fun.
In the meantime, keep going on fleets, develop your F2.
If you need help, if you are confused, if you're going, "Shit, I want to develop an F2, but I am scared. I don't know how to run two clients at the same time."
Somebody hold my hand, ask in your corp, ask in your squads, ask your friends for help.
Ask them what their F2s are and help each other out.
The whole point of this is that we all work together. We all cooperate internally more effectively, which results in more effective military power.
Congratulations. It has been a pretty crazy couple of weeks. I feel like we've turned a corner. We're going to get back out there.
Euros, you are on deck for the final defenses of all of our keep stars going forward in Delve.
It's on the Euros.
US, you've done a fantastic job of holding the line for the last four months.
I'm delighted that you guys are turning up now in fleets in enough numbers that we're outnumbering Pappy, which is hilarious.
So keep it the fuck up. US, you guys are going to be on counteroffense.
Join GSFOE. Hack, hack, hack, hack, hack.
Euros, you guys are going to be fighting to defend our keep stars.
So, thank you for coming. Let's get to work. Let's get back out there.
I will see you next week and on the Meta Show in half an hour.