Fireside Chat Transcript 2025 08 30
Asher Elias:
All right. There we go. Hello, friends. I believe I am set up correctly now.
Ranger Gama:
Guys, Asher's having a little bit of trouble. He'll be here in just a second.
Asher Elias:
Yeah, shut up Ranger. We will keep this one shorter and sweeter. College football has started. It is college football Saturday. I will be distracted for the next three months on Saturdays. Dude, Arch Manning is ass, dude is cooked. Blade Wielder, dude. If they want to invade on a Saturday, they are welcome to man. We would be fine with that scenario. When do we move? We are not moving. So I'm gonna try to make this one quicker than usual. I will still have answer questions. I have not got my flu and COVID shots as if it's a flu and COVID season, Internet Knight. I am doing well though. Thank you for asking. All right, good, PSA learned something new.
All right, lemme start out. I just want to throw this out there. Hate to start on a downer note, but this is important. Tomorrow, Sunday at 1400, there will be a cyno vigil for Interceptor Venture, who has sadly passed away. I will drop the thread in here. If you are around at 1400 tomorrow, please attend. That is the unfortunate fact of life in EVE, that people we know do pass away and, in a group this big we have to talk about it a lot, which is doubly unfortunate. But we do wanna remember those that we've lost.
https://goonfleet.com/index.php/calendar/event/10748-cyno-vigil-interceptor-venture/
Actually, something I needed to talk about. I don't know if we've dropped the Memorial Fortizar again, I haven't looked lately, but I don't think it's there yet. I'll put that on my agenda for next week. All right, so 1400 tomorrow.
Little policy stuff, if you have a capital in Irmalin, you can now sell that capital. So you're welcome to sell a capital in Irmalin to anyone you want. If you have a super capital, you, cannot sell that yet. What we're gonna say is contact Kazanir, go ahead and contact Kazanir and we will try to figure out something for you. We have a plan for that. So, capital's in Irmalin, good to sell. Supercapitals, send a DM to Kazanir or talk to the finance team. Either one is fine. Kaz is like, don't everyone message me.
And let's go next, Sky Mules is recruiting. Sky Mules gets all the delicious goo and feeds the Empire. And as a bonus, as a perk to, being a Sky Mule, you get beacon access. So, if you want beacon access for your Titan, Sky Mules is a good way to get it. And it, they are recruiting. I applied before, do I reapply? I would say, yeah. I'm not the one hiring, but, no reason not to reapply.
https://goonfleet.com/index.php/topic/363184-sig-skymules/
Kazanirr:
Wait a second Smasher Elias. Didn't we give all Titan Swarm pilots beacon access on their Titan pilots?
Asher Elias:
Did we? Okay. Well, maybe that's not a perk anymore. Maybe you, well, wait, don't Sky Mules get it even if they're not in a Titan, though. I thought that was correct.
Kazanirr:
Right, right. Yes, that's exactly right.
Asher Elias:
Okay. We just.
Kazanirr:
We have to pimp both benefits.
Apple Pear:
Also, only Goon titans get access to the beacons.
Asher Elias:
Yeah. There you go. Okay. Oh yeah. So if you guys have not read it yet, Shingly put out a very good Corps Diplomatic update. If someone wants to drop the link in here, that'd be great. But, it was very funny, very useful, and, explanatory post if you missed it. He posted it almost a week ago, but it's, it's still fresh, and quite good, and there was a banger line in there. So, go ahead and, check out the updates. If someone can drop that and link it in the channel, it'd be good.
And, this is not really an update, just a reminder. We do have a ESS bounty. If you kill someone in ESS, we pay you 50 million. Also, if someone is using a key to rob it and you save it on your own initiative, rather than like a strat op being, put out there. So that is, they're using a key, they're robbing one of our banks, not just the regular ESS. You get half of that, the money that they took. So half goes to us and half you get to keep. So it's an incentive to, defend against people robbing it. And that applies to sort of any non stratop doing it.
And, all right, next up we've got, two teams going in the AT. We have one coming up in a little under two hours. That'll be the Ninetails team, which is mostly Russian Goons. And they're fighting under the name Space Violence. And then we have the, Goonswarm Federation team, fighting tomorrow, I believe at an hour from current time tomorrow. So we've got two teams. We will be sending out pings, but in about, two hours go and support our Space Violence team.
Here's another update, about PI, but, not quite the do PI update, the sell PI update. We are buying P4s in staging. There are giant buy orders up, so if you make P4s, you do not have to ship them into Jita anymore to make money. You can literally just sell them in staging and get paid, and you will make more money than if you paid to ship them to Jita.
Yeah, we're gonna root for all the Imperium teams, obviously. And I don't mind us broadcasting any of them if we see them playing.
And then, lastly on my news and updates, triple Incursion spawn. So this is gonna be a thing for a while, I think where they're gonna kind of bounce back and forth across the galaxy. But we have three incursion spawns right now. You know, the new Shield Doctrine makes 200 million an hour. It makes a lot of money and there are a ton of Incursions to farm. I believe they're going, you know, they're going right as we speak.
And that is the end of my updates. I will ask some, or answer some questions quickly.
Sumo, when? The basho starts in about 15 days, roughly 15 days.
Apple Pear:
You forgot to tell them that the sexy ships they're going to fly in the shield doctrine is a Nightmare.
Asher Elias:
Oh yeah, you get to fly a Nightmare.
All right, Necromancer1. Always throwing out, negative questions.
Sir. Supreme leader. Why are we so afraid of dropping capitals on the field when our enemies drops theirs? I have literally never seen us being afraid to drop capitals on the field. Just go into EFM, right? And watch our guys drop. I think we do it too much, to be honest. Because, I'd rather challenge our guys. But we, that's certain, like my opinion and certainly not a policy and I don't know,
Apple Pear:
I dropped, I dropped supers this week in Euro timezone.
Asher Elias:
I'm gonna treat this question as though it's in good faith and Necromancer is just not familiar. So, there's a regional gate, right? And across the regional gate it is a giant amount of distance. So when we go through EFM and they drop on us in GQ, there is no way to counter drop that, right? So there's no, there's nothing like a policy or a fear. It's a matter of geography, right? And the same versus us. So. Perhaps that's what you're getting at, and in that case it is not possible.
All right, let's go on. What about PI? I am not gonna get set up Ryo, we'd always want PI.
Kazanirr:
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. The alliance. So the Alliance actually has gigantic new buy orders up for P4s. So finally my sour cranky black heart was persuaded that we should support the market. So if you look at P4s and you're gonna sell them, you should always be able to get a better deal in C-J than you can get shipping the crap to Jita and selling it there.
Asher Elias:
I literally said this like four minutes ago Kaz.
Kazanirr:
I apologize. I must have reading something else.
Asher Elias:
It's okay. So, let's see what else we got. I'm going to add something interesting in here. Oh, yeah. Ishtar fitting. So, I've been talk, I've been pimping my Ishtar thread, fit number three, and I keep getting reports from people who fought off someone or got a kill. It's making a noticeable difference on the hunters that like some of them are complaining. So, go to the tanky Ishtar. Have fun and get your kills. Very good.
Yeah, we used the shield typhoons. They were pretty awesome. Are they a permanent doctrine? And it's something we're trying, they're not permanent, but, we, we had fun with them and they're pretty awesome, so.
Has Horde come up with any creative new doctrines recently? Yes. Gobbins announced that they had invented the Raven Navy Issue doctrine, and they had also invented a Flycatcher doctrine. Along with that, those were their new doctrines. So they...
Kazanirr:
They were the first Nullsec Alliance to use the Raven Navy in a PVP scenario, is that right?
Asher Elias:
That according to Gobbins.
Kazanirr:
That's what I heard, correct.
Asher Elias:
Yeah. I am gonna give you some context into what I think he's thinking and that's that their BFL group, before we adopted it as an alliance doctrine, their BFL group did use them twice. I had run them, as a fleet in a box before that. So, and I am certain I'm not the first person to run a Raven Navy doctrine, but even just comparing the two of us, we did that first. So, he is wrong in multiple ways, but just copying our doctrine and then saying you invented it two years later is even funnier.
Kazanirr:
I think Shiloh has us both beat by saying an alliance that hasn't existed in literally 20 years.
Asher Elias:
Right. There you go. Exactly. But honestly, I don't wanna shit on this too much because, they, yeah, that's the other thing is what Sniper said is that maybe he was just being ironic, right? It might've been a joke. You know, I don't, I actually don't wanna shit on it too much because those guys have been running like fucking maelstroms and just the most dumb things you can imagine. So them actually copying us is a positive step. So, I don't want to hubris this too much, right, they're arming themselves with better stuff and it doesn't matter if they directly copy us, they now are better equipped to fight us. So, let's enjoy the little parts, but let's not, meet hubris and get, too crazy about it. All right.
Do they have a fireside equivalent? That's a good question. The answer is no, not at all. The joke that we were talking about last week is that Gobbins is being Weekend at Bernie's because no one had heard him speak for a matter of almost a year it feels like. No, the communication levels is vastly different between Horde and us. And, you know, when people join from Horde, which has been happening more often lately, that's one of the main things that I hear is that from them, is that the communication and the feeling of being integrated into the alliance because you know, what's happening and why things are happening is one of the biggest differences between here and there. Like a lot of stuff we do is similar, right? And that's by, that's evolution. Like I think of EVE in terms of evolution a lot, right. Everything eventually evolves into a crab on earth and also in EVE. And that's just, you know, convergent evolution, and alliances will do that. And, you know, Horde basically just became Goons the copy and evolved after us. But it made sense because Goons were doing so many things, you know, intelligently. But that is one of the major differences, is communication.
Okay. Glowing Bulb says confirming this Gobbins doesn't have a voice. I didn't hear in the ages I was in PH, NC. So does the occasional discord ping from a voiceless leader. Yeah. That, that tracks with everything we've heard from many people, Glowing Bulb, and I appreciate you piping in and confirming. But you know, that is a major difference between us and them. It's transparency, openness. And I'll tell you guys real quickly, this is like a story time, part of where that comes from and let's, let's credit Mitanni. He was the one I believe who came up with the fireside, certainly at least popularized the idea. You know, we've carried on that tradition. But for me personally, when I was coming up, one of my favorite things was being in Lazarus Telraven Fleets, at the end of the fleet, after a bunch of stuff had happened, he would explain why we were doing this. Like, oh, we had some intel that these people were here and this is why we made this maneuver once it was over and you can kind of share that stuff. And I always appreciated that 'cause it made me understand the overall like, oh, this is why the fleet did something. This is why we were involved in being involved in the story. And sometimes, especially on a fleet where not much happened, that was, feeling like you were part of the story was important. So I always tried to, use that myself. And, I encourage our FCs to do the same. So, that's a big part of like our communication policy is that we want you guys to be involved, feel part and understand, feel like a part of the story and understand why things are going on. And, EVE is so opaque and byzantine that sometimes, only the most, plugged in people get why something's going on. It's better just to explain it.
Story time about the two supers of last night asked Chase. So, my understanding Chase is that they were, defecting from Horde to Goons and just crossed through that gate without a lot of setup and, the results were obvious. So we are just encouraging people if they know of people who are leaving. Then, talk to a director first and let like a fleet command director and get it figured out, right? So, 'cause we can get supers across from Horde, but just gating through, they have commissars who are watching those gates to execute anyone who leaves the Horde. So just be aware of that.
Rimmer says, Asher, are you worried about letting too many Horde guys into Goons? Yeah, so that's a good question. I actually think that's a great question. Spies, et cetera, so I'm not worried about spies. Spies can get into any organization. What you do with spies is you try to keep them out of the important stuff, right? And, you try to minimize the damage that they can do. I think the more important thing is, and what you've followed up with is culture. Most EVE players are just regular dudes, right? Some of them are more toxic. I mean, you can see in this very chat, there are some people who are more toxic than others and you just mostly ignore them, right? But if you get too many toxic people in one place, then it starts ruining the vibes. One thing I've always hated about a job is a job where everyone hates the job and just, and just shits on it all the time. I hate working in an environment like that. I am vibe based. I like a place where people are happy and are working towards a goal. So that's something I try to inculcate here and wherever I go. So when you bring over a line member, no, I'm not really worried. I'm not worried at all. They can learn the culture. People will pick it up from, you know, just what's going on. Obviously we ban anyone who doesn't clap when the fireside starts. It's a big deal to us. Most important thing, is that I get praised. So, no, I'm not worried about that. Leadership is more of a concern, right? Like the guys who are making their culture what it is. I would be more concerned about that. But line members know I'm not concerned about bringing them over.
Dungar says, well said Ashler. Truly a great leader. Thank you. You have been promoted, sir. You're being sent Royal Duckets right now.
If we were worried about spies, we would be worried about Asher being a Black Legion spy. Indeed. And that's a true story. For those of you that don't know, I originally, like when I was first coming up, our Sky Marshal at the time did not want to promote me, from a skirmish commander to give me keys. 'cause he, they were extremely concerned that I was a Black Legion spy 'cause I was too competent. Like, they were like, this guy can't be real. He's gotta be a Black Legion spy. And like, that was a real level of concern for that kept me from being promoted for a little bit.
Asher, what was it like working with Elo? Elo is a real EVE savant, very enjoyable to work with. I've told this story before, but one of the, one of my favorite times was, when, during the, not casino war, during World War Bee , when they were, you know, gonna start dropping their Keepstars into Querious and then into Delve, I had this plan and then many of you saw it where we ended up bombing the Keepstars, but, that had never been done before, and the way we did it was essentially unstoppable. And if you now know Horde FCs have come over and joined us, and their leadership has joined us. And, at the time they tried to make it out to that, it was no big deal, but actually they had no solution to it. And so before we did that, we really didn't have a plan to stop the Keepstars other than just throw stuff at it. And then, I, I'm going around to various directors and FCs and being like, Hey, I have an idea for how to run this Keepstar fight. Do you have a... but I like to, do you have one so that I don't cloud their thoughts with my idea first, it's better to let someone spin something. So I, I go to a bunch of people and everyone's like, well, not really, or we can put a bunch of dreads, sort of basic stuff. Is there something going on Alterari? Yeah. Yeah, you can go ahead.
Kazanirr:
Truffle pig time.
Asher Elias:
Yeah, yeah. I'll finish the story and then make sure there's not any important questions. Wrap it up. But you guys can hop over there, if you need to go. Anyway, so I'm going around asking people and there really was no good suggestions. Everyone's like, yeah, I guess we can just throw a bunch of, Fer oxes at it or whatever. And, and so I have this plan and I'm like, I have a plan that's unstoppable. They can't, if it's done correctly, can't be stopped. No one had it. I go to Elo and he goes, is it bombing the Keepstar? I'm like. Yeah. Yeah. So he was the only one, and he immediately, he's like, yeah, I thought of that a couple years ago too. So it, I was very much sort of a kindred spirits kind of thing where we were both in the, in that mind space. So he is a very, very good, person to talk about. And he was, he was very fun to hang out with. He is totally done with EVE as far as I know. So, good for him. And, I do miss him as a guy to work with and against.
Italians says bombing that with stealth bombers. How did that work? So, yeah, I'll explain it real quick if you weren't there, it was pretty, pretty good idea. So, what you would do is you would make a bunch of bookmarks around the Keepstar, like 150 or 200. You wouldn't put them in an ACL that a spy could delete. That would be a good start. And then you would make another bunch of bookmarks, 500 kilometers out. And you would warp in the bomber cloaked. And you would point towards you would point through the Keepstar at a bookmark that's like 500 kilometers away. The Keepstar points you when you damage it. So what you do is you decloak, you press the bomb button and then you immediately warp to the bookmark 500 kilometers away. Because it's 500 kilometers, bubbles won't stop you. And you, you're already warping. By the time the bomb hits and explodes, you are a 500 kilometers away. And then you get the Keepstar point, and at that point you are, there's no ships around you. You are stuck there for 20 seconds, but you're in, you're on a bookmark that no one's near. And so you then you just cloak up and you wait out your bomb timer and you do it again. And you repeat this, and there's just a baseline of DPS that is unstoppable on the Keepstar.
Gala says, I might use your name Asher in my novel. I'm trying to get time to write. That'd be cool. I've had, as, as far as I know, five, there are five baby Ashers that, are named after me. So, having a novel character would be, I'll call it a sixth. Appreciate it.
But, yeah, the Keepstar bombing so to, to take a little bit away from the patting myself on the back, if you also were not there. The first time we did it, we were gonna do it in Querious and I spent, I spent like, I don't know, like eight hours bookmark, making the bookmarks around the Keepstar. But because I know jack shit about ACLs, I made them all in a folder and I did not do the permissions correctly. And the folder was wide open. So when we gave it out, some Pan Fam spy realized this, and about 20 minutes before the op just deleted the folder 'cause I'd done the permissions incorrectly. And, we, they just got the Keepstar down. They, I was really bummed out. Credit to Merkelchen, who pinged out to tell people Hey, Asher does a lot for this alliance. Let him know how valuable he is. A bunch of you guys sent me dms, which meant a lot because I was real bummed. Yeah, I also deleted someone else's folder when they let me borrow it. It's pretty bad. Oh my goodness. Texas dude.
Kazanirr:
Yeah. I thought I had problems with like crab beacons and shit.
Asher Elias:
Yeah.. Says, so what I hear is that to get to a line CEO, we need to delete some folders. That does, there does seem to be a positive correlation between the two.
Ranger Gama:
So far, maybe you missed the point of maybe we don't have Asher teach ACL 101.
Asher Elias:
I mean, Asher is a real name, it's not a name I made up. So, it was one of the 12 tribes of Israel. And I mean, yeah, it's, it's a pretty, it, it's the number, 20 boys name now. When I adopted it as an alias or, and Asher Elias, it was not that. But, it, it is gotten very, very popular in the last few years.
All right. I'm gonna watch the end of this, Texas Ohio State game. I will see you guys next week. Thank you so much for showing up. Go on these fleets if you can. I will catch you all later. Bye.
