Fireside Chat Transcript 22 Nov 2k20

Alright boys and girls, let me get...
We are obviously running late today because there have been events and then followed by
more events.
I couldn't say this on the Meta Show but my voice is super fucked up because we got a
new bubbler.
We're waiting for a really nice bong to come in, like a $200 bong, and we got a bubbler
instead as a short term thing because the bong delivery is taking a while.
So I got super fucked up last night to break the thing in and my voice is extra hoarse,
so...
Bear with.
Alright, I'm going to try to get my notes up from the previous...
It's not that I have baby lungs, it's that I've been smoking out of a chillum a lot recently
and that thing fucks me up really bad while we were waiting for the bong to come in.
Alright, I'm bringing up our TPS report from the loom meeting which had my fireside notes
on it, but a lot of those notes are now outdated.
Actually, can I get one of the directors to link me that in a loom please because I had
to reboot earlier for the show and so I lost my notes.
Thank you.
Horrendous and heck, I've got my covered.
Thanks guys.
Okay, first things first.
One of the things that we have gotten questions about and is an unrelated to war thing but
is an important part of things that we do.
We are going to do Secret Santa this year.
There is a thread up and we're going to be notifying people by way of the forums this
year and the thread is in the war room.
So if somebody could go ahead and link the Secret Santa thread that would be fantastic.
Thank you very much.
So again guys, we had lots of questions about this and don't worry we are going to get that
going regardless of any war related stuff that's happening.
So there you go.
Alright.
So let's grind into this.
One of the things that sort of shifted and got me distracted on the Meta show is I'm
not sure whether it's on Reddit yet but it certainly will be as Gobbins has posted a
three point announcement to Horde about what their goals in this war are, where they are,
where they stand, blah blah blah.
We have been very consistent in our position that we would love to fight on our Keepstars.
Vili on the Legacy side has been very consistent on their position that they are only interested
in dropping Keepstars at us, which they did again today, hoping that we will expend blood
and treasure on them and then that we will give up and go to Sarennit.
Now I don't want to say that the scenario that we're looking at here is all sunshine
and roses, like stuff is definitely ugly, but I want to talk about the boundaries of
that, what looks good, what looks bad, where we stand, and why I keep repeating things
like this war lasts for one day longer than the enemy's willpower.
Well I was kind of worried about coming up here and telling you guys that today, just
you know, one day longer than the other guy, but with this Gobbins post we have some interesting
proof of that.
Okay, so let's dive into that.
So what would look bad, what would look really bad is our inability to contest hostile IHUBS.
If we were in a scenario where we were unable to take hostile IHUBS back, we would be essentially
in deep shit because then the enemy could wait for 35 days, put a jammer up, and blow
up our Keepstars.
We have, since day one, said we want to fight this war, defensive timers on our Keepstars.
The enemy has said the entire time on this war, they want to avoid that.
Well Gobbins has just said that their victory conditions involve basically burning down
1DQ1, giving us the finger, and then going off and doing whatever and letting us test
their own devices.
So if PanFam has decided that they are bored of the Vili strategy and that they are actually
going to make a hit on 1DQ1, that is the fucking dream.
We have 5 Keepstars there, we have more than enough ISK to core them all as needed, not
that that's needed until January 12th or whatever it is, but that is a scenario that we would
be delighted to have.
Like, absolutely, please, let's fucking fight in 1DQ1.
I had been concerned that the Vili strategy was going to continue.
The main fear of the Vili strategy is that you guys fuck off, or you guys break, or you
guys run and stop turning up.
The Vili strategy of course being to blow up our IHUBS and then they put theirs down,
but then we are able to take them back.
They have to hold a hub for 35 days to be able to get a jammer up, and then to be able
to blow up one of our Keepstars without risk.
But what we are seeing over the course of this war is that Fozzy Sov is designed in
favor of offense, regardless of who is doing that.
So essentially what we've seen in this last week and a half or so is just relentless trading
of IHUBS back and forth.
They can't hold them, we can't hold them, it's back and forth, back and forth, back
and forth.
So that kind of interferes with the Vili strategy.
I think that their plan today was big loud noises, T5ZI, this thing about "Oh my God,
we're going to block off access to Fountain" is something that they've had to come up with
to basically make an excuse for the fact that we haven't broken and given up just because
they have a Keepstar next door.
That was I think what they were hoping for.
It did not happen.
And so now they're saying they did that to cut us off from Fountain.
T5 has full deployed to Esoteria, so saying that they're covering something or other in
Fountain is just window dressing, essentially.
Alright, so what do we got?
Going through my notes here, which are kind of interesting because a lot of them have
just been like the table's kind of been flipped over by this, which is good.
Alright, let me take some questions here while I'm going through my notes.
Basically, we have to go back to the drawing board and analyze what we're seeing here from
this Gobbin stuff.
What I think we're going to do is what we have been doing before, focus on Helm's Deep,
make sure that you are in a...I mean actually this is a complete game changer.
I told you guys we were going to do a fireside right after the metaship, and then this thing
hit here.
So what we're seeing is essentially a potential breach between the direction that Legacy wants
to go and the direction that PanFam wants to go.
And...hmm.
So here's what I'm seeing.
If this does not come to a conclusion, if legacy is giving up Esoteria and moving into
Delve at the same time that PanFam is saying that their exit is something involving faction
Fortizar's or burning 1DQ down, the only way out for Legacy and for the PanFam side is
to do the 1DQ one hit, which is something that we want very much.
We would love to be fighting on these keepstars.
We know that the iHub stuff can't be held one way or the other by either side, which
means that their jammer strategy doesn't work.
We might see a scenario here where the PanFam side is pushing more to do things their way,
which is to say, you know, actually having a fight rather than the Legacy/PASP side of
things where they try to avoid fights, they try to avoid the keepstars, and they think
they can just drop more keepstars.
Like at this point, they can't really drop more.
I thought that they were going to be done with dropping keepstars and fucking NPC Delve.
Like why is he nine?
Okay, well, they can't drop more keepstars.
Well, apparently they're like, okay, well, we'll drop one more right by 1DQ one, and
this time goons will go to Serenin.
So no, I mean, they're slightly closer to us than they were before.
They're moving next door to us.
But if they aren't hitting our keepstars, then how do you get rid of us?
And that is the situation that, I mean, maybe that's why Gobbins posted this after they
did T5ZI.
We're still here.
We're still fighting.
They're like, okay, well, it was totally to cover fountain.
We're going to do something else.
And here's our exit conditions and whatever.
But this is really quite interesting.
I mean, I don't know if my brain is broken because of the confusion of two different
coalitions trying to take out our coalition and then watching the mixed messages and trying
to go, what the fuck is going on here?
But yeah.
There are capital ships on public contracts in 1DQ one.
That is something we keep an eye on, but it's also something that the enemies will do.
So it's not something that we can necessarily control or deal with.
We do try to look out for people doing goon fucker or other bullshit things.
Thank you for bringing that up, Asinus.
So we will take a look into that.
Do we actually have a public post of the Gobbins thing?
I have a copy of it from a black hand agent, and I don't want it to be posted from what
I have because it's a potentially timestamp for that agent.
But this is something that Gobbins pinged to all of hoard.
Okay, so we're going to do this.
So yeah, guys, if I'm talking about this a lot and I'm saying that's like, oh my God,
this is like kind of a weird scenario.
I want you guys to all see the same thing that I am.
And it is Intel.
We're going to get sanitized and Jay is about to get it posted here shortly.
So bear with it.
Like I said, I'm not kidding when I'm saying like, we're kind of doing it live here because
this is why you keep fighting no matter what for as long as you fucking can.
And just one day longer than the other guy.
Because if you have that attitude and that level of commitment, either the enemy is going
to get sick of their strategy and have to change strategy, which in this case, it appears
that a one DQ one hit is thank God on the fucking table.
Please attack us on our keep stars.
The alternative, of course, is the village strategy, which is to wait until January 12th
and assume that we will be out of ISC with which to core our keep stars and they will
magically go away, which is not the case either.
Rudy, I would give that pup a 12 out of 10.
I'm a sucker for cute pups.
The cute pup is in scroll back.
There you go.
We're going to pause and wait here for a minute so you guys can see the Intel that we're talking
about and then read it rather than just having to rely on me telling you what's up.
While we are waiting for the government supposed to be sanitized, please go ahead and post
your cute popper so we can all stare at some puppies.
I'm a fan of that.
Cats are acceptable, too.
I think it's going to be kind of funny if we're just sitting here posting puppy and
cat pictures while waiting for the Gobbins post.
I couldn't find it because I have like a million different fucking servers for the fucking
things.
I found it now.
One second.
Okay, hold on.
You have a change because then I stop.
Yeah, I got it.
Okay.
I mean, I think it's the kind of thing that once you get it, just broadcast it to all,
not just to post it and let everybody see it so everybody knows what we're dealing with.
Now there's a question about what can line members do to help out in this war?
And it's a great question.
So there's several things.
The first and most important thing is defensive wars.
It's important for everybody to understand.
I've said this over and over again, so you might get sick of me saying it, but a combination
of two things.
One, defensive wars, you're always losing a defensive war until you win, right?
Because the nature of a defensive war is you're on the back foot defending until it gets to
the point where you exhaust the attackers and then you're still there and you're still
alive and then magically, hey, you've won the defensive war.
But all defensive wars are nasty, ugly things until such point that you turn it around.
So understand that this is a nasty, ugly thing.
That's also why I keep saying things like you have to hold out for one day longer than
the bad guys do.
But that's just general emotional advice.
In terms of practical things, slowing down the enemy, making them miserable is important.
So what does that mean?
That involves going on drama fleets, going on corn fleets, going on these Astro and bomber
fleets that we're doing.
Basically go on fleets if possible.
Another thing is that if you see people who are suffering, like if you see people who
are like stressed out and freaked out or whatever, be there for each other.
One of the things that we've always repeated from these hell wars, these lessons that we've
learned in the Great War is that it's not about how much stuff you have.
It's not about how much is you have.
What really keeps an organization going is people fighting for the people in the trenches
next to them, right?
It is about each other.
And that is how we are able to keep going forward day after day after day, fleeting
up, continuing to fight regardless of the odds.
And then you get breaks in that, such as this hilarious thing.
I like that.
I like it a few more times.
Okay.
Jay has linked it.
So a couple of different things that Atrium is posting here, which is also very important
as practical thing.
My brain is spinning around all this politics shit.
So we are in Helm's Deep.
What is Helm's Deep?
Why does it matter?
Helm's Deep, of course, is E3.
It is where we are staging our capital class vessels, and it is where we are defending
1DQ1 from.
So if you can read this Gobbins post that has now been linked around, you will have
an opportunity to see that they are setting up some very different victory conditions
for the PanPan side of things than for the Legacy side of things.
If you heard the clips from Vili on the Meta Show, you know that they are, instead of burning
their shifts behind them, they have essentially accepted that they are going to be losing
Esoteria to the combined forces of Stainruss, Bastion, and Initiative, and are essentially
giving up and going all in on Delve, but doing it kind of slowly and in a not really all-in
kind of way because they are still, as of Trash Talk Tuesday, you could hear clips of
Vili talking about how they are not going to be attacking our Keepstars.
Well, lo and behold, over here, here's Gobbins saying that they're going to fuck on Siege
1DQ1 and they're living right next door to us.
I would be delighted!
Please siege our shit.
That is exactly what we are looking for.
We can keep doing this slap fight stuff back and forth on the Legacy side of things, with
they blow up our IHUBS and we blow up their IHUBS, because they haven't been able to take
and hold them, so that we can keep doing indefinitely.
But I think we would all enjoy some fucking Keepstar defenses properly, and especially
hit on 1DQ1 is just the fucking dream right there.
But there's a lot of things in there.
The second rinsing of Fountain is just a bunch of excuse-making.
Initiative has started attacking Esoteria, and Esoteria is very much on fire.
Vili has essentially admitted that they are going to not be able to defend Esoteria, and
their hope is that they break us and get us to go to Sarenin and give up, such that Tess
can have a home while Esoteria burns behind them.
So that's pretty cool, and you can really kind of see which direction Gobbins is headed
in with the future plans and Helm's Deep stuff.
There are like five or six different excuses and outs just peppered through this war update,
so that's cool.
I was a little bit worried about coming up here on a fireside and telling people, "Here's
how to hold out.
Here's why we're holding out.
This is why we hold the line.
This is why we go one day longer than the other guys."
And to be fair, expect that we're going to lose IHUBS.
Expect that if you have stuff that's not in a Keepstar and not in Helm's Deep.
In Helm's Deep, things are way more secure than otherwise, but if you have stuff that's
outside of Helm's Deep that is not in a Keepstar, it is at more risk of getting blown up.
Like IHUBS are trading Citadels we cannot guarantee the defense of if they're outside
of Helm's Deep, especially if it's not a Keepstar.
The Keepstars seem like they're pretty fucking secure though.
And now you have this bunch of stuff from Gobbins into the mix, so we're in a very different
position than we were just a little bit ago.
So I mean, essentially what you're seeing here is a formal aban-- I'm kind of doing
this real time guys because my brain is kachunkachunkachunking through it-- but what you're essentially
seeing here is a formal repudiation of "the goons are toxic, we're doing this to get rid
of goons for them, we're going to try to get rid of the Metani, we're trying to get rid
of goons from the game, he has narrowed down his Kass's Valley to "we're doing it because
of the 40 faction Fortizars and we're doing it to hurt goons' economy and whatever."
So this is a very different scenario from the worst start.
So, yeah.
Let's un-anchor the faction forts in 1DQ1 and deny them the faction fort killmail.
You know what, I would prefer-- like, one of the things that we have missed out on is
just straight up big set-piece battles because the legacy coward strategy has been to throw
focus only on the IHUVs, drop Keepstars in our faces, and completely ignore things.
And their theory of case was that "today I would get up in front of you guys and wave
the white flag and that would be that because they put a Keepstar in T5ZI and that thus
magically things are different."
Well, things are magically different in the sense that I guess they can cover Fountain,
which nobody was paying attention to or really investing in at the moment.
It's not like the initiative has put new Keepstars down in Fountain.
So whatever.
All right, so let me take some questions here, but again, as you guys can see, we are busy
sort of reading the tea leaves as well as everybody else is.
I would like everybody to prepare for an attack on 1DQ1.
I think that what we're seeing here and what we have to, regardless of whether it's true
or not, we have to prepare for it, is we have to take this missive from Gobbins as an announcement
that the PanFam side of things is going to take a different strategy in this war.
Clearly taking IHUBS and putting Keepstars down in front of us and then losing your IHUBS
and not being able to maintain Jammers is not an effective strategy.
It has not worked for Vili and the Legacy side.
Esoteria is on fire.
They want to move into Delve, but we are still here.
We're not going anywhere.
And so we need to take PanFam at their word that they are going to make an attempt at
1DQ1 and that we are going to see some proper fucking defensive fights here, which I'm quite
excited about.
There's a question of what actual value does the Faction Fort have for us?
So that's a good question.
This is from Vizio.
What is the actual value of the Faction Forts in 1DQ1?
What makes a Faction Fort significant is not just that it has a different model on it and
it's affiliated with a former Conquerable Station.
The in-game mechanical significance comes from the rigs.
And those rigs are created when the Faction Fort is transformed from a Conquerable Outpost
into a Faction Fortizar, which means that if you have unanchored and handed off Faction
Fortizars, they have already lost their super special rigs that makes them cool.
So essentially, that's another reason why we have them in what we call the tribute sphere.
We just have them spread out to look cool in our trophy room.
If they had significant in-game advantages that were separate from the rigs, we would
have been deploying them.
That's another reason why we didn't yank down our Faction Fortizars in places like Aquarius
or in period bases.
We refitted them into speed bumps for the bad guys because the moment that you unanchor
a Faction Fort, by definition, your rigs go boom.
And then it's just a Fortizar with a fancy model on it, from what I understand.
There's a question here about expecting more allies coming to our side and having good
fights.
Well, if there was, I wouldn't be talking about it on live TV or on a fireside.
That is definitely a future-plansy kind of question where if there are reinforcements
on the way, for God's sake, you wouldn't tell anybody.
So what's to stop Happy from just dumping four times our numbers for timers if we need
to win this war?
That's a very good question, so let's go through that.
As I've said before, we know that I-Hubs can trade hands back and forth.
We would be in a very different scenario if we could not take our Hubs back from the bad
guys.
If we could take Hubs and they could defensively hold them against us, then we would have a
much more dark picture.
I'm not going to say that this situation is great for anyone.
It's clear that everybody is exhausted and everybody is tired because otherwise we wouldn't
be seeing this bunch of stuff from Gobbins.
We wouldn't be seeing this stuff from Vili and his talking about how they're going to
move into Delve, but they can't really defend Esoteria and blah blah blah.
So in terms of going 4-1 against us, clearly the Fozzy Sofza stuff is not easy to defend.
We can blow up their I-Hubs, they can blow up our I-Hubs.
But there's a reason why they're not attacking our Keepstars, which is they know from Fountain
that we can defend them very effectively even with just sub-caps.
In our case in Delve, we can use super-caps to defend our Keepstars, which is why all
the way through this war our theory of case has been Keepstar fights, Keepstar fights,
Keepstar fights, Keepstar fights, and the past-p theory of case has been avoid them,
avoid them, they drop more Keepstars in our faces and want us to go away instead of having
to fight on all these Keepstars.
So that is how you make up the numbers advantage because goons love Keepstar fights, and I
believe, and it could be wrong, it could be wrong, and we will find out if these guys
actually do what they say they're going to do and they fucking siege 1D Heoa, and we'll
find out.
If we say that Keepstar defense is the way to go and only 100 goons turn up, then that's
GG.
If we do Keepstar defenses and people don't turn up, then that's it.
On the other hand, I think my theory is that goons love Keepstar defenses and that they
will turn up and that the advantage, the defensive multiplier you get from a Keepstar is so significant
that it's favorable to us.
And I think that the enemy's avoidance of those speaks to it.
We know from the fountain fights that they were like, "Oh my god, I don't ever want to
do this again.
I hate Keepstars, they're so overpowered, blah, blah, blah."
And they have consistently avoided them with the exception of 49, which we were gearing
up to defend and then a tree fell on Asher's house so we missed the armor layer and that
was that.
So the Keepstar defense stuff, this is good questions.
I'm glad.
I know that people are tired.
Apparently, the enemy is tired too.
Everyone is tired.
It's a very long war.
So it's important to go through things such that I'm not just blowing smoke up your asses.
So why are Keepstars a big deal to defend?
They're a big deal because you can fight while you're tethered.
They have a doomsday weapon.
They have a PDS.
They are essentially a massive force multiplier when you are deployed defensively, which we
discovered.
We always thought we'd always been on Keepstar offense, historically speaking.
Once we realized how you can use these specialist doctrines like super trains and anti-fighter
Pharaohs and a whole bunch of like wacky, janky bullshit, we got real excited about
defending our Keepstars and then understandably realizing this, Vili and that crew have been
trying to avoid fighting us on our Keepstars as much as they possibly can.
And that's why it's the force multiplier effect.
We believe our theory of cases is that we can make up the difference in forces by fighting
on Keepstars because they're force multiplier.
Hopefully that makes a little bit more sense.
All righty.
Do I think that the announcement of Vili moving to Delve sparked this decision from Horde?
I can't speak to that one way or the other.
Like this just happened and so I don't really have, I didn't want to like delay the fireside
for me to like go like noodle on it and like smoke weed and ball like what's going on in
Goblin's head, what's going on in Vili's head, which direction is what going blah, blah,
blah, because I figured, you know, stuff looks pretty like scary outside the windows.
So I need to be like, hey guys, like we're still doing the fireside.
We're doing this.
I wanted to like talk to you guys and show you what I'm looking at.
So you understand the situation.
I didn't want to like put that off, but I do need to basically go smoke up and noodle
on what is going on, what is the meaning of this and what does it indicate about what
cards they have in their hand.
It certainly shows that they're more tired than I had anticipated because there would
be no reason for Goblins to post this thing that is full of excuses and justifications
if he didn't have a need to like acknowledge to his people that they're exhausted.
So that's pretty cool.
Can we go hit the T5 Keepstar please?
That's a good question, which is should we be attacking all of the bad guys when they
are attacking us?
And the answer is no, we should be fighting defensively.
We should be forcing them into a defensive scenario because if we try to attack Hill
both ways when they outnumber us on big form ups, we will fail.
We need to fight them defensively on ground that we choose where we have a force multiplier.
They would love us to attack their Keepstars because then we would be playing offense when
we're the ones on defense.
We have to understand we are on defense.
We have to be gritty.
We have to make hard decisions and it would be great for us to jack ourselves off and
go like, oh, we can just go take other Keepstars.
But when they put 3000 people on a Keepstar and they have a huge defensive bonus and our
theory is that when we put 1000 people on a Keepstar and we have a huge defensive bonus,
we'll be able to handle things.
I don't think that's a realistic possibility until I mean, if Horde leaves the war and
like test is living in T5ZI, then yeah, then that's on.
Like if at any moment PanFam stops babysitting test in T5, test is fucked and the entire
galaxy knows it, which is one of the questions that we have to ask about why is Goblin making
this post?
We'll have to see.
Question about how I do plans.
It's a combination of things.
There's like Ritalin mittens, which is like my daytime normal, like ADHD medication, like
I'm being sober and thinking about things.
And then I, uh, when it's weed mittens time, oftentimes I will get high and then just sort
of like sit around and let my intuition go wild.
And then the next day I'll try to like basically square the circle and like see if weed mittens
and Ritalin mittens agree and see, you know, how stuff works.
So there you go.
Do we have a single point of failure highlighted by the Keep armor timer and has it been fixed?
Yeah, we have occasionally in wars you have single points of failure, like especially
if you have a plan for a big super cap fight and that was going to be our first big Keep
star armor layer timer.
And it was contingent upon Asher leading things in a tree fell on his house on the armor timer.
When it came time for the whole timer, we had people around, but on the whole timer,
you don't have the EHP bonus because we plate the Keep stars.
So they have massive EHP on the armor layer, but you don't get the benefits from the plating
on the whole layer and on the whole layer as well.
If it goes boom, there's no more Keep star there.
So our plan for defensive fights on the Keep stars does tend to revolve around the armor
layer.
That's not the single point of failure.
The single point of failure there is a tree fell on Asher's house, but that is what we
would call an act of God.
I can't clone Asher or choose necessarily when we're going to have who on our A-Team
FC roster around to do things, but it is something we're certainly aware of and we'll hopefully
have checks in place for next time.
All right, let me see if there's anything else.
I mean, if I could clone people effectively, I would probably try to take over the world
by now.
Just saying.
All right.
So I am going to get back to work because I need to do a lot of like scheming and shit
because things have changed quite a bit in the last two hours or so.
We know a lot more about the will of our enemies, about divergences in their plans and what
have you.
So keep on keeping on.
If you are freaked out about something, feel free to talk to your Corp Directors about
things.
We understand that the world looks dark and scary.
I mean, the bad guys are banging pots and pans right next door to us because they expected
us to be so spooked that we were going to freak out and run just because they put a
keep star next door to us in T5CI.
They still have to hit our keeps.
And if we are lucky, PanPan will actually force Pappy, Pappy being like the legacy side,
I meant, PanPan might force the legacy side into actually sieging 1DQ1, which would be
like the fucking dream.
So let's prepare for that and go forward accordingly.
So thank you all for coming.
I'm going to get to work and scheming and analyzing and dude, what the fucking.
Answer my question.
It's very important.
What is your question?
I'll post it again.
Would I fuck a clone of myself?
I mean, I don't think that counts as fucking.
I think that counts as masturbation.
I mean, like if you wouldn't, then I don't know.
I guess it depends upon whether you're vain and you like your appearance, but I think
I'm pretty hot, so you know.
All right.
There's more follow up questions regarding that.
I'm going to sign out from that.
Oh, is me topping or bottoming the clone?
And the question is who is.
I mean, that's that's fucking confusing.
My natural thing would be top because that's how I'm wired, but then my clone would also
be a top.
I probably wouldn't actually do anything like that because you can't have two doms fooling
around doesn't really work.
All right.
With that tremendous distraction, we're going to call this fireside over for now.
Keep on keeping on.
Read that Gobbins post and we're going to prepare to defend one DQ one because apparently
Pan Fam has found their balls, even if legacy is still hoping that we'll just up and go
away.
Thank you for coming.