Fireside Chat Transcript 17 Jun 2k20

So it's always a challenge to talk about the way that the galactic chessboard is going because you
don't want to reveal how much you know and the difficulty is always that the maneuvers you make
only think about how I want to describe this. I want to ask you guys let me just get some
feedback here on Elysium because I want to get a vibe check because I'm getting I'm getting
certain vibes from what I just saw from the puppies what I've been seeing from the puppies
during our deployment against snuff is I mean it feels a little it feels a little 2015-2016
I'm getting a little a little sort of a it's like a wafting of the the stink of the same
assholes who are involved in the the casino war and the fact that they're all balled together
like this I mean it's just kind of my spidey senses are kind of kind of tingling there and
I want to see what you guys are thinking before I dive into this.
So here's the thing last time there was a really big war in NullSec not the ones where we were
rampaging northward and blowing up all the bad guys keep stars and shit but during the casino
war we got our asses kicked in the initial part of it and then we ran around slitting
throats for revenge and that's been keeping us busy for a couple years but the reality was that
I made a bunch of really bad mistakes in that war and one of the first strategic mistakes that I
made was not adapting to the reality of FuzzySaw right like the ground changed all the puppies
came to attack us and instead of DominionSaw we had FuzzySaw and instead of going wow like the
Galactic Northwest is not a very good defensible place we stood and we fought because pride and
fuck you I'm not going to do what you tell me to and whatever and then afterwards once we moved to
Delve it was like oh okay well I should have just had us leave immediately because Delve was way
better during a FuzzySaw like the geography of Delve is obviously better it's more defensible
all these other good things. So one of the things that we have tried to adapt to is realizing when
we're getting overextended and when it's easy for the puppies to do exactly what they just did
which is we deployed against Snuff and then a little while later suddenly Horde starts showing
up a little while later suddenly NC.deploys against us a little while later you end up FRT
there and then there you start seeing test bomber fleets and shit coming over which is really
interesting because one of the reasons why we came up here in the first place there's several
reasons for it which I'll be going into in a moment but one of the reasons why we did this
is that we thought it would help test by test and legacy by drawing off Horde and NC. from the
conflict between PL and between PanFam and Legacy and Cache like that conflict in the far galactic
east. I want to make sure that you guys are understanding things when I'm laying this out
this is much more instead of like a fireside chat is more like metagame macro scale strategic
chessboard bullshit which we don't normally reveal but it's important to go into here so you guys
know what is coming what could be coming and what to expect from our many many enemies.
Okay cool so here's the deal we came up here and you guys might have noticed that Horde lost a
keepstar in KQK they blew up their own keepstar in KQK the other day that was obviously us trying to
pull back KQK and we realized that we could not do just yank down a keepstar and you know that was
a keepstar that we put down because we had gone all the way north to glass tribute last year and
then we forgot about it and we were like looking at our borders and going we need to pull back we
need to we're way overextended we need to like you know make sure that we are fighting on defensible
ground. So that didn't work and made it very clear that if you want to redraw your borders you need
to have fucking everybody there and I had kind of a sense that the bad guys were going to be doing
what it looks like they're doing like it's not like they've declared a casino war it's not like
oh my god all the puppies are definitely going to be coming for us but after that op it's kind of
hard to not get the vibe. So where is this going? We're not going back to Delve we are going to keep
fighting because fuck you that's why however we're not going to be fighting on a flood plain that was
the bigger lesson of the casino war the early part of the casino war we drained our forces and our
manpower and our willpower by fighting in Fade right for the for like a month and a half before
the casino war even kicked off we were trying to defend bad ground in Fade and Fade and Cloud Ring
really give me a lot of similar vibes and so looking at everything we have decided and the
Autocrats the Imperium fuck Cloud Ring we're leaving and in order to leave Cloud Ring we're
going to pull back to J5A we are going to spend this next week pulling down all of our shit in
Cloud Ring and getting the fuck out because if all these bitches want to ball out with like 200
carriers on a Fortizar and have all the blocks together against us I am delighted to have them
storm the gates of Fortress Fountain and Fortress Delve but I'm not going to have us fight him
fight them on their doorstep on ground that is to their advantage in like tie-dye bullshit low sec
so we're going to go back to J5A there's going to be move-ops about this we are going to guard
the recovery of our Keepstars over this next week because we have three Keepstars that we're going
to be yanking and pulling out that's why the entire alliance is here we tried to do this in
KKK using stealth and in the modern environment you cannot just stealth on anchor a Keepstar
so we have jammers we have the entire fucking Imperium and in starting next week on Tuesday
Wednesday Thursday we are hell-forming everyone we are going to camp on these Keepstars we're
going to yank them down we are going to pull them back to J5A and then we are going to go back to
blowing up Puppy's stuff because Recon is going to get us a new hit list and there are still things
we can do by hopping from J5A into B-Tech D and going for targets of opportunity but if these
motherfuckers want to come at us and if Legacy wants to get involved and they want to fucking
break the nip and come at us in fucking J5A hell yeah bring it I want us to be the ones fighting
on our Keepstars we have spent so much time and effort building Fortizards building Keepstars
reinforcing everything creating a really fucking nasty castle I want to fight from our castle walls
with our boiling oil and please fucking bring it so that's what we're going to be doing that is the
the big thing and there's no more like we're still doing like Jeff is going to be the the system that
we're doing this in but it was pretty obvious to you guys if you're paying attention that this was
not like the last Jeff deployment the previous Jeff deployment was much more oriented about like
good fights and letting skirmish commanders make mistakes with typhoons and shit like that and we
are still learning and training a lot but there's always been a higher degree of alliance level
command and control on this deployment and now you see why it is to cover our extraction from
cluttering with all of our assets and basically say okay if you guys want to all gang up on us and
you know whatever when we try to go after snuffed out bring it we'll be here in J5A and in Delph
waiting for them. People asking about autocrats that's the leadership of the Imperium.
[silence]
All right so
why did we go after snuff anyway? Same thing that I told you guys before.
So here's the thing I had thought that the bad guys were up to something. I had
a intuition. It wasn't like hard until confirmed and if it was I would lie about it anyway because
it's an open fireside here but it's one thing to go like okay well we're going to deploy for content
and we're going to take out snuff because eventually in a future casino war we would
expect snuff to come after us so there was value in that and then as it became obvious when NC.deployed
when hordes started showing up more when legacy started showing up I'm like okay okay I know how
this fucking game works you bitches I know how this goes and so then we started making plans
accordingly. We have spent years developing defenses in Delph and in Fountain and if the
worst thing that happens is the puppies then say "hahaha made you undeploy from cloud ring" we were
obviously like pulling back towards fortress Delph anyway when we unanchor KKK so you know whatevs.
And yeah if they do try to invade us in NPC Delph that is one of the vectors we will hell
camp the shit out of it just like we did PR-TAC back in the day.
I think Fountain is quite defensible and especially the B-TAC-D to J5-A gap is something I
am eager to see the puppies attempt to breach.
Why J5-A rather than B-TAC-D? It's better geography.
And thought clattering.
So basically practical things instead of just talking about what we're doing and why.
We have learned a lot during this deployment. We have updated our doctrines. We have gotten a
shitload of training for our fleet commanders. As you guys have seen we have basically been
updating our processes across the board and the reason why we've been doing that is that
I expected that the puppies might be up to something. And again we don't have proof 100%
that they're going to be forming another money badger collision and also they don't have money
they don't have infinite isk like they did last time. But every time that it looks like they might
make a run on Delve they don't do it at the last minute. Or it doesn't happen or they say that
they're juking us and whatever I'm cool with it but we're not going to fight them out here in
bullshit land that's not defensible. If they want to fight us they know where to find us
and when we're in J5-A we will continue to hit targets of opportunity.
And yeah John linked a very useful map to explain to you why the difference between
J5-A and B-D. It's the capital geography and I want people to understand this right because
here's the thing during the casino war one of the biggest reasons why we lost is because I
was personally unwilling to say the ground has changed why fight in a floodplain and we have
designed our footprint in Delve and in Fountain and Quarious to have floodplain regions so like
cloud ring is fun and all for like small scale content and something like that but there is no
reason why we should be at a block level attempting to defend this bullshit region
if the rest of EVE is going to ball up and come at us.
All right let's see.
All right about standing fleets in Delve and stuff like that. So things that are happening
in Delve are not going to be our main concern right now. Our main concern for the next week
is to extract our assets from cloud ring. There will be move ops and announcements regarding that
but for the meantime you're going to notice that we have keep stars and we need to be around here
such that we can defend them and take them down. And the main thing is that I want people to get
in the mindset of defensive war. There is no organization in the history of EVE that does
defensive war better than us. It is our specialty and that is one of the reasons why the pubbies so
rarely come at us unless they believe that they have a cheat code like if they think that they
have infinite isk like during the casino war we have dug deep into Delve, Period Basis, and Fountain
and we will continue to dig even deeper. So yeah.
Period Basis is something that as you guys know from the last fireside we are opening it up to
full-scale exploitation. It is a region that we want to turn into sort of like what Fraternity
has been doing with their space in the drone regions. We are going to work on making that
more effective. We've never really done a kind of thing like red light green light before but we're
looking at all the options because as far as I'm concerned especially like I mean I'm sorry
that op today was a whole trap for our caps and when the bad guys are like "hey we have this and
we have all of these blocks together and please like throw your caps into a wood chipper for a
like 8 billion isk Fortizar and Pina Caster like I just don't give a shit like okay the writing's
on the fucking wall we're gonna take our ball and we're gonna take our ball up to our castle walls
and we're gonna coat our ball in boiling oil and then we'll throw it at them if they come."
So yeah we basically uh we're looking to turn Period Basis into a uh into an FRT style farm
zone. I don't know exactly what that's going to look like because I obviously not very good at
PVE because I just told you guys a story about me losing a Myrmidon because I was too damn high to
even finish 1.5 anomalies. But uh you guys in Theta and crew know what you're doing and we will adapt
our policies to turn Period Basis into our version of a FRT stylus printer. Now again like I don't
want people to get too hyped up about a Casino War 2.0 because there is a non-zero possibility
after we pull out of Cloud Ring that these guys are just going to turn around and say "hahaha
made you undeploy" which is fine like we should not be here this is indefensible and it's pretty
obvious that it's indefensible because of what you all just saw in the field when we tried to
go after the Conicasto Fort. So the bad guys basically just proved my argument for the
fireside so that's pretty cool I don't really have to like convince you guys of what we're facing
because we all just saw it firsthand. And uh if they do uh try to talk about like Casino War stuff
it does always drive them crazy when you call it the Casino War so that's always fun. There's no
such thing as World War B there is only the Casino War. And I'm going to make a super nerdy reference
and I'm going to mangle the pronunciation but if any of you have ever watched Legend of Galactic
Heroes my vision for Fortress Delve is essentially turning all of our core regions into an Easter
long fortress. I didn't actually end up watching like all 200 episodes of it or whatever I got
like five episodes in and it was like a big fortress and I imagine like all Death Stars
and animes or whatever it ends up getting blown up but uh yeah you can make a Hot Gates reference
uh except that I don't like 300 Spartans or whatever. The important thing is it's just a
big ball of go fuck yourself that is the vision of Fortress Delve and I am delighted to have these
guys slam into our Key Stars slam into our Fortress Stars we have spent all this time and all
this effort building this thing up and the defenses of Fortress Delve only increased after what we did
in uh as a response to the Drifter invasion where we networked all of our uh citadels in a way that
were not there before so at every opportunity over the last couple of years we have had these
upgrades to our defenses where we've gotten more serious and gotten more ready and the puppies have
just been you know faffing around out there doing whatever but one of the things I want you guys to
understand the reason why we are a space empire and the reason why empires exist in the first
place because I've been into some empire theory stuff myself recently like real world empire
theory uh is because there are a horde of barbarians that periodically come after us every
few years so on the one hand fuck puppies on the other hand we wouldn't really be able to do the
whole space empire thing if it weren't for the fact that these fucking people going back 15 plus
years going back to July of 2006 the start of the great war they have nothing else in their minds in
their worlds in anything except for periodically the motherfuckers all ball up in a big group of
just puppy shit lords and come after us because well we're not them at a fundamental level that's
all it is and uh Alan Merchant asked a question uh about the uh political situation that's a
little bit more nuanced and the answer is that uh should our enemies cross into J5A that is a trip
wire politically and diplomatically because that would be a violation of our uh NIP so
that's another reason why I would be fighting in J5A not B-Tag-D is because I want to see
I want to see how bad they want it
and I want it pretty bad at this point I really want it I hope a motherfucker tries
all right so that's basically how this is going to go uh conveniently another thing about the
casino war is uh for me that's kind of like a regret that I'm hoping to get an opportunity to
address I know that regret is a waste of time so it's not really a regret it's more of a
next time we'll try x y and z and this is next time I'm treating it like next time that's why
we're withdrawing from areas that we are overextended uh and building that super dense
ball of fuck you uh and one of those things uh that I'm really curious about is that you know
it's a pandemic I don't have any girl drama I'm not trying to like build a company I have literally
nothing better to do than sit around and like play fucking eve and like lose my Madonna's like a
fucking idiot uh and I was not as able to be focused during the casino war for a variety of
reasons so uh yeah I hunger for this I hunger for it okay so practical matter you may see ops going
out for ADM raising because there is going to be some areas that we want to raise the ADMs uh
while we cover our retreat uh g-saul uh hug your g-saul people hug your recon people because g-saul
and recon both are usually you know doing a ton of work during times like this uh we do have a
bunch of shit in cloud ring and they have already been working on pulling it all down and getting us
to j5a there's gonna be a lot of cover ops uh maybe the puppies try to stop us maybe they go
for the lazy mode which I'm perfectly happy with if the puppies want to say ha ha ha made you move
out of cloud ring plus one region I'm cool with it because if they just fuck off and then we post up
in j5a the reason why we're not going back to delve and we're going to j5a is that uh if they
do not come if they get scared off by us taking us taking it seriously and doing the right strategic
move uh we will just continue purging because it's very easy for us to hop into b-tac d and hit stuff
from there uh and you know whatever there are still targets and things for us to do in j5a
even if the puppies uh fuck off and don't deliver what they're promising
so yeah are we going to keep them from taking a slob on cloud ring they can do
whatever the fuck they want with cloud ring fuck cloud ring this is a mic drop baby
we are dropping the mic on cloud ring and leaving the fucking thing I don't give a shit
it's a good question I'm glad you asked I'm not light at you for asking that question but it's a
reasonable question is like kind of like what we did with veil of the silent and tribute when we
were done glassing nc dot into the drone regions we just dropped the mic and fucking left and that's
exactly what we're doing with cloud ring uh frenzic and action are going to do their own thing
we've already been in touch with them i'm not going to be telling you what we're doing with
our supers or titans or anything like that on a fucking fireside if you want to know the answer
to that you should be on the appropriate channels and you will look for orders there
also frankly like I have really enjoyed running around and playing eve on since this jeff
deployment started I've loved the hell out of eve 2020 but fuck low sec grids fuck low set
servers fuck low sec jesus christ what the fuck what a shithole why do people live there my god
I mean that fucking crime watch shit that we just went through there like
do we have a total count of structures of glass to make them ship hands and ball up um
it's a good question we have actually been keeping track of all the things that we've
been destroying but like one of the things to keep in mind guys if you've never been through
a rest of eve versus imperium or uh is that what the puppies think doesn't matter they're going to
lie they're going to be hypocritical they're going to do whatever they can uh we need to make sure
that we have our shit correct and we know what we're doing and why which is why I'm explaining
the background as to why and I want you guys to understand like you know you do need to withdraw
from a floodplain region to fight an undefended region uh are we giving up a region uh technically
yeah I mean we don't we weren't really like using cloud ring we weren't like ratting or mining and
clattering uh it was like a content zone for us uh to go out into low sec and was useful for
logistics but it's not necessary uh but I want you guys to understand why it's now not viable
uh does that mean that in the future if this blows over that we might expand back into cloud ring and
fuck around again absolutely the the whole thing about floodplain regions is basically
you have castles and you have floodplains delva is a great example of a castle region
querious and well querious unless there's actually it's a lot easier to defend querious than it is
like cloud ring uh but there are these regions that are functionally just designed to be like
okay an enemy army is here we get back behind our castle walls we get all ready to go and we
fight them on our ground on our terms and not on their terms will there be more subcap doctrine
changes I'm pretty happy with our subcaps right now one of the reasons why this jeff deployment
was so interesting and why we're taking such a big top level command and control
uh thing rather than just letting people like slam into walls is that the jeff deployment has
been a cover uh it wasn't intended I don't mean it was a cover as in like we had a secret plan
but the jeff deployment had a number of purposes one of which was to shake the dust off because
my spidey senses was tingling about the fucking puppies and uh fix our doctrines get people back
in shape get people understanding what we're doing uh and just get back into war mode because
it seemed pretty obvious that like a war was coming and it is now obvious that a war was at
least planned I don't know whether they're going to go through with it if we're in j5a but you know
again I hope a motherfucker tries uh so uh I'm pretty happy with the subcap doctrines like the
cattle cruisers weren't working out but pharoxes and fucking mosh masters are baller sacrileges
oh my god I love sacrilege fleets uh and we've gotten a lot of training with our combat carriers
in general I think our doctrines are in a pretty good place I don't anticipate uh any changes but
again you guys need to be ready if there is you know something out and crazy happens we might
change a doctrine but right now I'm pretty happy with our our setup and yes t2 revs t2 revs t2
revs t2 revs t2 revs t2 revs t2 revs uh it is one thing to uh train dreadnaughts and drop them on
the bad bad guys it is another thing entirely to be able to drop the dreadnaughts on the bad guys
when you are in a defensive position and we will be the ones who actually get to have citadel grids
ourselves uh and uh sick fighters on people and black with dreads and do a whole bunch of other
nonsense do we have a it's actually a very good question apoc do we have a doctrine that is
mass-producible uh yes absolutely uh and that's one of the reasons why we have uh both classic
if you're an old school returning player uh we have goon fleets official ak-47 is uh back in
the armory that is the whelp cane the whelp cane is now rebranded as mosh masters because of a
hilarious asher story that owns uh but you will all be very familiar if you're an under player
and remember us dive bombing whelp canes uh on mr v fleet into like raiden titans and [ __ ] like
yeah that [ __ ] back so one of the reasons why we did change cattle cruisers to pharoxes and
to hurricanes was it's pretty obvious that you can if you look back and see the moves we're making
you can see why we were making the moves we were making right like hurricanes and pharoxes are
fantastic grinding attrition warships right like that's and so we have them now and that's why
[silence]
and yeah this is kind of interesting because like in the past uh when we do state of the
goonians and we just immediately go to war i'm like hey it's the state of the union and we're
going on a thing this is like one of the more traditional old school like we're actually
talking about our tactical and strategic situation uh as far as uh the [ __ ] pub trash goes
[silence]
i have to actually make sure when i'm insulting the puppies that so many of my insults for puppies
during like great wars and stuff like that are from the bad old days so if i sound a little
bit hesitant that's because i'm like can i say that in 2020? all right so
[silence]
John Hartley is mad about somebody being dumb and losing their freighter like an idiot
yeah we do need uh some non-rev dreadnoughts like if you are a
zealot about using nags we need some non-rev dreads we want the majority of the dreads to
be t2 revs though and the ones that are not going to be t2 revs will be shooting into the
uh the holes of the enemy tanks
and uh Jay i don't know if you're around and can link that uh really cool uh how to
extract and then inject into a t2 rev uh spreadsheet that you made
but as we said on the fireside last week it's actually pretty easy to do and relatively affordable
[silence]
all right so uh just in general order of operations so uh tuesday next week
2000 eve tuesday wednesday thursday euro time between like 1900-2000 eve are gonna be full
alliance and coalition form ups like everybody everybody everybody clear your schedules tuesday
wednesday thursday because we are covering our extract from cloud ring that means all of the
toys we are full imperium form up parking as we extract these key stars from cloud ring
tuesday wednesday thursday next week you're a prime
[silence]
all right let me see if we got a couple other questions
[silence]
yeah and there are going to be move-ups and a whole bunch of other [ __ ] about this the big
thing is that we need to announce to you guys what we're doing because otherwise what would happen is
you would undock take a look at f7c and go why am i staging in an unanchoring keepstar
well the answer is because we're getting the [ __ ] out as of next week
and all through this weekend and everything
[silence]
uh those of you that are battleship fans there is discussion of a defensive battleship doctrine
uh we are not going to deploy that until the bad guys actually storm our gates because there's no
reason to do that but if and when it is something that we have been discussing
and some exciting things that asher and crew have come up with
[silence]
but obviously the puppies actually have to jump from b-tag t into j5a and first we have to get
to j5a and get all posted up on our castle walls there's going to be a lot of other org changes
because regardless of what the puppies do i am going to use this opportunity over the next couple
weeks for us to basically prepare as if we are going to be attacked uh and so again that might
mean more uh changes for what we're doing in period basis it might mean uh slamming down a bunch of
uh citadels in various areas that we wouldn't bother with before like [ __ ] gonna change
we're gonna take it seriously even if the puppies go ah you know we we we you know we we baited you
into doing this i'm cool with it because there's a lot of reforms that we need to make into our
org to make sure that we are better able to deal with the pub trash and so we're going to make
those changes regardless of what they do
[silence]
um questions about sov status and fountain um no like the there i don't really anticipate
any changes to sov and fountain i don't know why we do that
as usual okay so here's the thing like sov matters in the sense of people trying to break ihubs which
interfere with jammers and stuff like that but most of the real warfare in the year of our lord 2020
as you guys have seen uh is around fighting over citadels and exhausting people and then sov is in
many cases like an afterthought to that and that's why we have a zillion [ __ ] keepstars in our
space because that's what it's all about
[silence]
all right let me see if there's any other questions because i think we've about covered it
um the main thing is is that for if you have friends who are coming on later and are confused
about what's going on make sure that people understand the good word i want us in a fortress
mentality we are building a space fortress we are potentially getting attacked by the rest of eve
if it's analogy which jintan was making about like the three kingdoms period in ancient china
and we don't want to be the over extended empire that gets dogpiled by the other blocks right like
we're saying okay guys if you want to come at us you can find us here in fortress delve we'll be
waiting for you at the gates of fountain you know all right but uh we're not going to make it easy
and i want people in that mindset of preparing for defensive war and if that does not come we
will simply pivot into full offense because you know why the [ __ ] not
purge burn kill questions about locust fleet locust fleet is a dependent upon
where we are what we're doing and it's a call of the fc's at the time sometimes we might do
locust fleets probably we're just going to stick with cricket fleets i want to make the cricket
fleets more efficient the last time we did a cricket fleet did not have an adequate convoy
guard to get them there we're going to make some mistakes in period basis we're going to figure
things out so basically sometimes it'll be locust fleets sometimes it'll be cricket fleet that
depends upon what is possible on the ground cricket fleet is when we downship from locust
fleets and just use barges and we go old school all right and no test has not broken the net yet
yet
we stick to our agreements that's our whole thing but if they want to break it and come
cross that uh we'll uh we'll see what they have going on
all right guys well i think that's going to be it uh most of the questions have already
been answered you guys know what the deal is so prepare for war prepare for war we are withdrawing
from cloud ring we're going to be spending this next week covering our withdrawal which means
tuesday wednesday thursday euro prime we need everyone so mark it on your [ __ ] calendars
from about 1800 onward you need to be ready to rock on tuesday wednesday thursday next week
so thank you for coming guys and there will be more information and pings about
like move ops and what we're doing and there's probably some adm raising fleets and [ __ ]
is going to be crazy because we're preparing for [ __ ] war so let's get to it let's get stuck in
and let's get ready to meet these [ __ ] on our castle walls out of j5a thank you for coming let's