Fireside Chat Transcript 29 Jul 2k23

Thanks, Kaz. Now I have black and yellow stuck in my head.
Alright.
Okay, get here.
Hello everyone, how y'all doing?
A minute since we talked.
All right, so we've got a new paint scheme on the Imperial Palace.
If you guys wanna undock and look at it, the auction is over.
We're discussing what we don't wanna do next month.
We're just having fun and doing different stuff each month.
Next month we're probably gonna try something different, but
this is the paint scheme for this month.
You pink supporters are gonna be very unhappy and
some of you guys that load to pink will be quite happy.
Or you just potato your graphics and don't care, but hey.
Even the potato graphics, the pink was pretty bright, I liked it.
All right.
So we have a lot going on today.
It's gonna be a pretty juicy fire side.
I'll get to the thing I talked about first that we mentioned.
There's been rumors now for a while out in August Offensive.
We've been hearing that Frat and Horde and
the rest of Pappy are getting geared up for it.
And it looks like that's pretty much confirmed at this point,
that they are going to be attacking into B2 space.
That means it'll be more important than ever to make sure that your
chump clone is available, ready to go up in DO6H.
It is not an optional thing that we need to have everyone available for.
They're gonna have to attack.
Now, does that mean that they're gonna anchor structures in Chinese time zone?
Probably, but it does mean that to make progress,
they will have to fight outside of that time zone.
So I want us to be ready for that.
I want all of you to make sure your jump clones are there.
If you have somehow lost your jump clone in DO6H, if you have moved it,
if something happened, please take a shuttle on dock, put DO6H in,
it takes, in a shuttle, it's not very long to get up there, it's like ten minutes.
So that's sort of the most interesting space news that's happening right now.
It could be in the next week or so we'll have some big fights.
But if you are ready for a big fight right now,
a horde has upgraded their pings to a gold pen.
So of course, as is tradition, we will be initiating a gold crayon.
For the TTC tomorrow at 1200, we have reinforced the Sotoyo,
and it comes out tomorrow at 1200.
So that's when we're forming, we're forming at 1200.
That is, it's pretty early for a US time zone, but for
Euros on a Sunday, it is not too bad of a time zone.
Like I said, Horde has done a gold pen, it pulled the gold pen out, so
we are going and making this a gold crayon.
Which means you treat it the exact same way you would do anything else, and
it's 1200 EVE time tomorrow.
We wanna get top numbers for that.
This is the Sotoyo, this is the legacy Sotoyo.
Today, or a couple days ago, I should say, that they are going to raise taxes in
a move that shocked no one, so that they can start making money off of it.
And this is the armor timer.
So if we can get it on the weekend, and then put it into Hull,
it's gonna be pretty much, pretty easy to get it into,
to be blown up when you do it tomorrow, 1200 tomorrow.
All right, I wanna talk about Stormbringer ratting.
I think we've talked about this a little before.
If someone can link Mr. Ranger's thread, we've had more and
more people taking this up.
If you are a multi-boxer, this is a really nice way to get a lot of ISK coming in.
And it's good to use outside of the umbrella.
If the umbrella's not up or outside of it, you can go into Quirius or
Period Basis, and you can make a lot of ISK doing this.
Especially in the US time zone, Quirius is basically unused, and
Period Basis is less used.
And those are really nice.
And you get to use in an OM that no one else uses, so
all those things make it a very attractive option.
All right, we're asking guys, yeah, I don't know.
I guess no one got the link.
Maybe I'll try and find it myself while I'm talking.
Can someone grab this?
I can, just a second.
Thanks.
There is a guide for it, we'll get it pasted.
There we go.
You can tell because HL equals Stormbringer, highlight equals Stormbringer,
that Kazimir searched the word Stormbringer on the forums, and
that's how he found it.
I have to clarify, I got this out of my links in my browser,
which means I searched it at a prior date.
Yeah, yeah.
Thank you.
Okay, so at some point, but not right now, you had saved it as Stormbringer.
Understood.
And it should be an obnoxious yellow highlight if I remember how that happens
on the forums.
Our FC team has been asking for me to talk to you guys about getting a Dread 1DQ.
As you may remember, our Dreads are up in DO6H.
We would like you to have a second Dread for home defense.
Phoenix and Zernicha are still preferred.
Another Dread is useful, but those are by far the most useful.
So please work towards having multiple Dreads, and
having one in 1DQ while we deploy one away is a fairly strong option.
My understanding is that some enemy alliances have moved more Dreads into
NPC Delve, so there is the option that they will be dropped, and
we would like to counter drop them.
No, you are not correct, Bex.
Active Dreads over passive is not correct.
We want a regular Dread.
Passive Dreads are what we always want, and active these days are not very good.
How many Banes should we have in 1DQ?
I know you're just trying to annoy me, Orendas, but the answer is zero.
I think Orendas is just a Bane of your existence.
[LAUGH]
Apple, that's a pretty good joke for you right there.
Like, you know, that's good.
He stole my good joke ticket for the week.
That's a confused fruit on point on that one.
Yeah, there you go.
Zintage is here to talk about Guard Bees recruitment.
They're opening that.
So Zintage, if you want to give us 30 seconds on Guard Bees, go ahead.
Yeah, so as people know, when Beehive's up, we're pretty safe,
but people have lives.
So we're looking to do some Bee recruitment.
I will link the thread.
I will in a second because I accidentally copied something else.
But- Is it gonna be highlight Guard Bees when
you link it?
I hope so.
Basically, currently, guys, we're looking for
people that have at least six months in GSF.
We're only looking for GSF right now in this first wave.
Allies will probably be looking at you in our next wave of recruitment.
But requirements are in the thread and
fill out our app form and we'll get back to you.
All right, cool.
And then we have actually another recruitment open.
Sniper, do you wanna talk about Coord for a little bit as well?
Yep, so our coordination team is looking for new people.
One sec.
Hey, there it is.
Sorry, I was taking a drink.
Cool, thanks, Jack.
Yeah, so if you're interested in helping plan and organize and
coordinate, haha, our strategic operations, please go ahead and apply for that.
Similar to Guard Bees, six months in GSF proper required.
That is contiguous, by the way, so not I've added up all the time I've been in
goons over the years, you need to have been in GSF for the last six months.
And yeah, so there's no real experience required.
The application just asks you to kind of think of some scenarios and
look at the organization overall and give us your thoughts on some things.
And for that one, we'll be doing the recruitment drive.
It'll close next Sunday.
And then while I have you, Sniper, you were doing a Pochvin intro and Q&A?
Yeah, so after the fireside at 19.30, we're gonna do a fleet leaving from 1DQ.
That's just gonna be kind of a casual, like intro to Pochvin,
kind of gooniversity style.
So I've got fits people can use, we'll get you your initial standings that you
need to be able to join the totality squad, and it'll just be a chill fleet.
We'll talk about how stuff works.
We'll talk about how different filaments work, how things work in the region,
what you can do.
We're not gonna be doing any like payout sites edible.
We'll just be doing, we'll do like some torpids and
whatnot to get people some dual positive standings.
Yeah, so for Pochvin, you do have to have at least two accounts to join the SIG and
do the fleets with the SIG.
All of the fleets, it's very important to have whatever your main ship is, and
then support alts and things like interdictors and booshers and things like that.
There's a lot of cool things about Pochvin.
One of the things that it benefits the entire org is it encourages you to
be able to multi box in a fairly low risk environment.
Isn't accurate, but like low investment.
Yeah, so it'll get you more comfortable being able to run multiple accounts so
that you can do the same on main fleet.
All right, thanks for that, man.
No problem.
All right, so I wanted to take the opportunity, I have been thinking about it
as of I think yesterday is actually the official Azure took over a day a year ago.
So it's been one year since I took over.
And I've been thinking about what we've done, what we've accomplished.
So I was during our early meeting, I was talking with the guys,
like what are some of the things that we've done in the last year?
And I wanted to go over what we've done and what we can look forward to.
So the first thing I want to talk about was actual growth.
And that means people we've added.
And before I took over, we had lost, I'm trying to remember the exact number,
I believe 600 real people.
We had lost about 600 real people over the last six months.
And since then, we have added over 1000 real people to GSF.
That's GSF alone, that's not entire Imperium.
The entire Imperium I've seen a lot of growth too,
but I only have the real people number access for GSF.
Someone says how many spies?
We'll get to that later.
That is something we're going to talk about.
So that's like a was a really good thing to see.
And I know there's some new names here, some people have joined recently.
There is a thread on the forums called Hello there.
And that is a place where new people can post.
And if you want to see how many people we actually have join,
I know Karma Fleet puts it in their welcome email that you should post there.
So you see more Karma Fleet than anyone else.
But you'll see a lot of people join us every day.
Like we have a lot of new people.
So if you're ever wondering like how many people are there, there's a lot.
Go look at that thread.
Everyone should click on the link that I put in there.
Ash requested that we do an applause for him.
Oh, yeah.
State of the Union.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I expect them to stand up and applaud every time there's
the slightest of breaks, just like a State of the Union.
So please don't clap.
All right.
So growth was the first thing I want to talk about.
Another thing I want to hit was beekeepers.
So we installed beekeepers a year ago to hand.
Thank you, Andrew.
I appreciate this.
It's 9% that ping.
I am not my fault.
I didn't do it.
So we put in beekeepers a year ago to try and address what was set up
as a big problem, that there was a really toxic environment in goons,
that people were being bullied or insulted and a lot of stuff like that.
And beekeepers is an independent org.
They are not a you know, they don't come and tell us reports
and that kind of thing.
And what we've seen since then is we've seen not a lot of uptake
and we have seen we have seen some issues being reported.
Generally, they're pretty mild and they're handled without any sort of
discipline, just like, hey, an apology is needed or, you know,
there are some ruffled feathers.
But what we haven't seen is we have not seen a lot of toxicity,
which I take as a really, really good and important thing
is that we we don't have a toxic environment
and we do have the things in place to address it if that is a problem.
So I want to thank the beekeepers for the work they've done.
And I'm happy that they are not being actually asked to do a ton of work.
That means that there's not a baseline level of, you know,
of anger and toxicity that we're having to deal with.
And that was something we weren't sure of.
We thought, hey, maybe maybe what the people on Reddit are saying is true.
Maybe we are a very toxic place. We just don't know about it.
It turns out that was not accurate.
But it is good to have the institution there to help if that becomes a problem.
All right, so please stop clapping.
It's just making me laugh whenever I look at Elysium.
So never.
I want to minimize it for the moment, I got to minimize
Elysium, let's just keep laughing.
I'm trying to help with questions.
Yeah, thank you.
So, all right, time to get serious, time to get serious.
So one of the things that I wanted to do when I took over was,
you know, put us on a positive war footing,
go out and fight in a way that is enjoyable for us
and we can have concrete goals and deliver on those.
And we have done that.
We deployed up north.
Many of you were here.
We deployed and we said we're going to kill these four Keepstars.
And we did just that.
And we killed them under strong defense.
So that is something that a lot of people said is not, you know, not possible,
hard to do, almost impossible.
Obviously, you've heard a lot of excuses about why Jammers need to be erected.
And we specifically did that under an enemy Jammer.
We gated in supers.
We did a lot of things that the enemy had for a long time
been saying was impossible to do.
And I know a lot of us took like a lot of a lot of pride in that.
So give yourselves a round of applause.
Please clap for that.
After we killed those four Keepstars, we were not done killing Keepstars.
I looked at it again.
We were not done killing Keepstars.
We went on and we went and we declared war on the TTC
and the Keepstar that was now a legacy Keepstar in Perimeter.
And we destroyed that.
As you may recall, they did not show up to
the first timer because there was
a really great play by the leadership over there
where it made it so that they couldn't defend it.
And then they did not show up because they were defending
their Fortizar in Potchvin, the Precious.
And as we all know,
the Precious Fortizar is an impregnable Potchvin Fortizar.
And after we killed the TTC Keepstar,
we went into Potchvin and we destroyed the Precious.
We killed Horde staging Fortizar.
I have some numbers here.
I do not believe we have revealed these yet.
For the Fortizar, we killed over 600 billion of dropped loot.
And in Imperium alone,
we looted 2.3 trillion isk worth of loot.
So between that Fortizar was worth
just to us between killmails and loot,
about 3 trillion isk.
And we did not get all the loot.
Though some of you were there, you saw there were other people looting too.
So there was well over 3 trillion
of total isk destroyed and or looted.
Please clap.
After we blew that up,
we started moving into Potchvin ourselves.
We like we talked about the Q&A that's going on.
It is not our Precious, but it is something we wanted to get involved in.
Under previous leadership, we had sort of a hands off attitude.
We didn't like it that much.
We have changed that around.
And so we are involved and we want you to get involved.
That's what the Q&A is about.
And that's something that we're doing just fine.
I'd say it's not it's not super important,
but it's something that is nice for us to be doing.
We had war bonds when it took over.
We still do, but we have paid off almost all of the original war bonds.
And some of the people are just still holding them based on inertia
or they're not very active.
If you still have an original war bond, please come to us.
We can pay you off.
So we're not super fussed if you hold on to it for a while longer,
but eventually we will force everyone who has a war bond to accept our money.
But right now you can come and get paid.
And that's sort of a thing that this is not a very sexy thing to talk about.
Blowing up and getting three trillion isk is that that's
that's that's a sexy thing to talk about.
Being fiscally responsible is really not the most sexual
but not the most sexy thing to talk about.
Yeah.
Please clap, please, please clap for a sexual financial responsibility.
Do I detect a Freudian slip there, Asher, maybe?
Well, I was going to say the most sexy thing to talk about,
but I said that I said sexual thing to talk about.
So, you know, whatever I think about a positive cash flow,
it really gets me going.
That's right.
But there you go, Kaz.
It's not Asher.
But I know, I know.
But so previously, you know, we spent a lot of money.
We made a lot of money, but we spent a lot of money.
And I wanted to bring fiscal responsibility to us.
And I think that we've done that.
And I'm certainly not taking all or most of the credit.
Our finance team has been amazing.
But that's something that I am proud of that they've done.
We have really improved our financial situation.
And we're in a we're in a good place.
Before the start of World War B, what was that in like July 2020?
We had been making money hand over fist, but we did not really have a lot saved.
And now we are in a better place than we were at that time,
even though the game itself and us generated a lot more money back then.
So I'm really happy with where we are and what we're doing.
So we talked about killing and deploying to kill the four keep stars up there.
And obviously, you know, working with B2 was a huge and important part of that.
And a year ago, B2 really wasn't a thing.
And I would say now that they've become like a serious alliance
that is, you know, big on the EU stage.
And we've helped them do that.
And I think that's something that we can be proud of that, you know,
I think more blood in this game and more counterbalances are good.
And so that is something that a lot of you guys can be proud of being able
to stabilize them, because certainly
the powers that be in this game, the rental empires want them gone.
They want that space.
They need that is wherever it goes in the end.
We won't speculate, but they need that is for whatever purposes they need it for.
So that's something that we've been a big part of.
In the last year, we've added the triple lessons,
we've added three new alliances to the Imperium, we've added Stribog,
we've added Sigma and we've added Shadow Ultimatum.
And we're happy with all three of them as Imperium members.
I want to give a special shout out to Sigma, who have become a real power.
Like when they put their mind to it, they form like big fleets
that are very useful and they have good leadership.
And then Shadow Ultimatum are more showbond.
They are newer guys, but working with them is always a pleasure.
I talk to their leadership a lot.
Those guys have a great attitude, they're very new to the game,
but they're the kind of allies that you want to have.
They're good friends, they want to be involved,
and they're learning, but they learn very fast.
So we like to help them out, we like to have them as members of the Imperium.
So adding the three S's has been something that I'm really proud of,
and I think probably will be one of the things that we look back on this year
as sort of the most important things that we did.
Another fun moment that we had was, some of you were there,
do any of you remember when we were doing a Titan move up
and we called a Titan with a goon tag on it primary?
That was obviously a Horde spy.
I was worried at the time that they were going to try and do the whole like,
"Oh no, the goons, I'm a faithful goon and they shot me."
But they, at least on that, they weren't,
they didn't like stoop to that level, the guy just left and joined Horde the next day.
So, but you know, you guys obviously saw the spy,
but you didn't see what went behind it, and that is that we wiped out
Horde's entire relay network for us.
So hundreds of spies were killed that day.
We obviously do not just, when we catch a spy, we let them sit,
sometimes for a long time, because it's better to do that.
But that resulted in hundreds of spies, and we know from behind the scenes stuff,
that Horde did not have goon pings at all after that wipe out.
Now, obviously, they've been working to reestablish it.
You can't keep a line member spy out.
There's always going to be like one or two that will get in.
But it's important to us to go for those higher value ones.
And, you know, next time we decide we have another wave coming.
But that was a huge thing, getting hundreds of spies and wiped them out at once.
Was a very satisfying thing.
And it's one of those things where working up here is fun.
Clap if you're a PH line member spy. Everyone clap.
All right.
So that was the things I was thinking about as far as the year in review.
Stuff that I thought was notable that happened over the last year.
I'm excited for the next year.
We've got some pretty exciting stuff coming up, even in the next few weeks.
There's some stuff that obviously has been announced that I'm really excited for.
So we'll be talking about that soon.
If you guys it's been a pretty long fireside, but if you guys have questions,
especially if you want to talk about direction or what's been going on the last year,
I'll take a few of those down.
So go ahead and throw them in there.
On a scale of one to five, how do you think your performance has been?
I don't think that's something you can rate effectively.
How many spies had double seven in their email?
More than one.
BP, I'm sure the answer to that number is pi because it's always pi.
Are we still in the TFI's up north?
We still have TFI's to put up north. Yeah.
Clap 007 doctrine is a good name for a doctrine.
No one will remember why it's named that after a few months, but it's a good name.
What did I eat for breakfast? I have not eaten anything today.
We moved a bunch of dreads in theater,
they moved a bunch of dreads in theater, dread fight went.
It's definitely a possibility.
Tranquility is something that we want everyone to be available for.
And please be aware that if you have your dreaded one DQ,
there's not going to be time to get your dread up there like that.
That won't work.
So please don't be the person who's like, man,
I really wanted to get into that dread fight.
But my dread was in one DQ.
You need to put the time in before to get them up there.
Does she feel like I'm sorry,
T2 guns on a TFI's are mandatory and the fit is already updated on the forums.
There you go.
Does she feel like you needed to do a year review
after reading CCP Brittani's game director letter?
I haven't read that letter.
So if someone wants to link to me, I will.
Have you guys have to have fives and six, the guns and ammo
are sitting on the market.
If you can highlight one thing that meant the most to you in the first year,
what would that be? That's a good question.
I would say this is like a challenging job, and there's a lot of like
it takes a lot of time, people ask a lot of you.
But there's like an incredible amount of people who are very kind
with their time and step up and are helpful.
And a lot of them do that just to have just to help out their friends,
like just to make the life easier for the person who cannot do that.
One of the things I like about evil is that, you know,
there's some of you who will fit this, you know, you're oh, I was a gamer.
When I was a younger guy, you know, like that was my identity.
I was a gamer.
And then, you know, you have a family, you have a job,
you have responsibilities, you still want to be involved in that.
And you don't have the time or frankly, maybe the reaction skills
or whatever to put into that game, even something you can be involved in
and have a lot of fun and gamers still.
And we make that happen.
And we let people, you know, keep their identity.
I think that's important.
Playing for the long future, I have it's planning for more than the next few months.
And Eve is.
It's a fool's errand, but it's very hard to do things change too fast.
You sketch out your long future in general, broad strokes,
and we certainly have that sketched, but like anyone who says they have
like a really detailed plan for 16 months from now, it's just making it up.
Will be a high be expending to PB?
No, it will not.
You can just jump your dread from roar to do six each.
We still need a new logo for the Imperium.
We are very close on that.
Moab I didn't want to mention it on the fire side, but it's OK.
We're close on that.
To the higher ups and goons have all to come on the little guys,
yeah, that does happen.
Are we leaving the B?
We're talking about the Imperium logo, not the goon logo.
The goon logo will always be the fat B.
What's the hardest decision of the take in games
and taking a leadership role?
I don't think any in-game decisions are that hard.
That's something I'm very good at.
The hardest decisions are out of game.
You know, there's always people who,
you know, there's people.
So we have a worldwide group, right?
We have people from all over the world
and there are people from many different cultures, and they feel very strongly
about their cultural values.
And so I get a lot of the decisions I have to make are, you know,
this is this is the right this is what the person says.
You know, whatever my belief is, is the correct belief.
And anyone who doesn't believe that is wrong and or maybe up to evil. Right.
So that's sort of the hardest decisions I have to make,
because I know those beliefs are valid and the person feels really strongly.
And maybe I agree with them.
Like, so the hardest decisions involve having sometimes to tamp down on that,
because we cannot be a worldwide cultural group
and expect the entire world to agree with us.
And so sometimes you have to say, hey, like, let's that's that.
This is why there's the no politics in Elysium rule,
because there is no universal belief on essentially just about anything.
And if you get into the weeds, it gets even worse.
So my hardest decisions always almost always have to come down to that,
where people are acting in their best faith and in what they strongly believe in
and would feel betrayed if they aren't backed up. But
and I want to avoid that and I want to avoid hurting their feelings
and making them feel that way.
But I also want to I have a strong belief.
This is my personal belief.
The best way to
if you think that there is an issue and it's to show that your side is better
and just blocking off and knocking people out of a group
because they don't agree with your one opinion is not the way to do it.
And I feel really strongly that exposure is the best way to deal
with these kind of things.
So that's an issue that I have to deal with pretty frequently.
And it is made because everyone is righteously
sure that they are correct and both sides are.
So that's why we try to avoid some of that.
And those are the ones that I spend the most time agonizing over and thinking about.
What is my spirit animal and why is it not a bee?
Why would it not be a bee? Bees are bros.
I like how I spent this whole time talking about agonizing decisions
and the next question is, is a hot dog a sandwich?
A hot dog is a sandwich. Why the logo change?
There was a lot of people who felt the old Imperium logo.
I just got a bit dated feeling.
And so we're just going to come up with a new one for Imperium.
Once again, we are not changing the UNESCO.
Cereal sup.
It is cereal is not a soup.
Soup should be warm.
The next girl for the Imperial Palace, if you want to see it, I'm not going to look at it.
Is the new Imperium logo, will it be a pineapple pizza
with a hot dog sandwich on it, maybe?
So this is why we can't do this,
like we're going to just be ripped apart talking about it, cold soup.
Or warm milk and cereal.
Oh, man, that's gross. Gross.
All right. I think this has been a good conversation.
I want to thank you guys for my good first year.
It has been a pleasure being your leader.
Thank you for showing up. And before we go, please clap.
Thank you all for coming. You have a good day.
For those of you all still here, Asher legitimately has been dying,
laughing in our other channels with the collapse today, guys.
It's pretty. It entertains me so much.