Fireside Chat Transcript 2025 09 27

Asher Elias:'

What up friends? How y'all doing? How's everyone feeling? I just want you guys to know that I do not click the bingo cards. I don't wanna give anyone a free win or a free space. If that's a free space on the card, congratulations. This is definitely not me yelling. Locusti, I'm glad you're enjoying the sumo vods. Says, I woke up early enough for a fireside, so feeling okay. It is 3:00 PM East Coast Reglan.

All right, so let's see. Let's get down to business and defeat the huns. Next week, October 3rd, Friday, October 3rd is the first Locust Fleet since we moved. We will start mining at 1700, pings will go out at 1600. That means that there will be a lot of rocks to suck starting Friday and next week, basically a week from now. 1700 EVE. Yeah. 1600 EVE pings will go out. You see locust pings all the time. That's cool. Those you guys trying to like bait me in to getting your, you know, your bingo squares, you need to do a little more subtly.

I'll be asking like, having question and answer time in a second. You can do it after that.

Okay. You guys asked for it. You demanded it. You slammed tables. No, the ship just got super buffed. Maelstrom Fleet is here. Welcome back Alpha Fleet. It's been a long time. We shouldn't have left you. Left you without a dope beat to step to. We are gonna be doing Alpha Fleet, our long lost friends. Regalan is here, by the way. I'll tell you about my very first Regalan fleet. You guys wanna hear about it. It was an Alpha fleet. We were flying into Fade, I believe, to fight someone. This was the CFC, and this is like my very first fleet in EVE Online, not in EVE online, but in Goons and i'm sort of lost, like, I was like pretty Shoban and I don't know where we're going, so I'm like a little delayed. There's no fleet warp, like in a formation thing or whatever. Regalan warps 250 maelstroms onto a spot. And 50 bombers decloak, the entire fleet, destroyed. Like, I mean, literally it was like me in my Scythe, and one dude in a Vigil who warped in late just to see 250 wrecks and then fly back home. Very first EVE fleet, no fleet warp, no defenders, and bombs were so much better back then, too. Also, multi boxing and input broadcasting was allowed as well. So it was, bombing was so much easier. You had like, you know, Kun'mi was on our side with eight dudes, but there was like, Carbon Fury was one of the dudes , like they were, it was just one guy who would have eight or sixteen bombers that he himself controlled with input broadcasting 'cause it was legal then. Yep. Yeah. And Maelstroms were paper thin too.

Were there Pap links? Yeah. I mean, there were paps and there were pap links. You clicked them like you would put them in your fleet and give them a little name as the URL. I would always put a little joke in there and the people had to click them to get the pap. It was so much better, actually. I really like clicking on Paps. It was like tactile.

Kazanir:

Actually invented those by 2012.

Asher Elias:'

Yeah.

Kazanir:

Okay.

Asher Elias:'

Anyway, so that was my first maelstrom fleet. Hopefully your first one, if you've never done it before, will be slightly better. They have added a lot of EHP. They're actually pretty thick now, relatively, so we're bringing 'em in. You do want T2 large arty. I think a lot of people have them. A lot of you will have Minmatar battleship, but T2 large arty is probably the only thing that maybe you don't have. If you're training for like a Raven or whatever now you haven't finished that. You can finish the Raven. You don't have to get to Maelstrom, but you know, it's a cool ship and we'll be using it and it's been super buffed, so it's super good.

Apple Pear:'

I'm wondering if Regalan has trained his fleet formation skills yet?

Asher Elias:'

Yeah, time is actually, is indeed a flat circle. Alright. Literally two things to talk about. Maelstroms. Locust Fleet, that is all on my Ron Burgundy agenda. You got questions? I got answers. And then after the fireside, I'm be doing sumo because it's getting super awesome. So that's the plan. Throw your questions out now.

Leshak doctrine? Because of the Maelstrom getting so super buffed, Willow, we're probably not gonna do Leshaks. It was just they, they buffed maelstroms to the point, like there's no, there's no defending against the maelstrom volley, right? If maelstroms are viable, it changes the meta a lot because you can't tank your battleship enough to live through it. So something like a Leshak becomes, that needs to be really close to something, becomes a lot worse.

Doom blur. I'm definitely a dish towel and quad boobs for sure.

What did I have for breakfast? So I got this costco, rustic Italian bread loaf. Really good. And then I made eggs with the Kirkland Bacon bits, scrambled eggs. Toasted the rustic Italian bread loaf. Put the eggs in there. Mm.

Is ketchup a smoothie. It's not cold. No.

What the heck is an Upwell convoy? It's some something they added. I don't remember.

Kazanir:

Upwell Convoys are the thing that pop from doing the Vanguard missions in the experimental Vanguard thing this week and next, right? It's the nemesis event or whatever. There's a login business. But yeah, there's an open beta for Vanguard right now, and supposedly stuff happens when you complete Vanguard missions and these convoys pop and then people try and shoot them.

Asher Elias:'

Necromancer 1 continues his quest to get me to ban him. I will not. You're allowed to say mean things even if you're wrong. Hello, sir. Supreme leader. Can you explain to us why the enemy fleet is allowed to camp gates in our home system? Is it just due to gross incompetence from our side? The, not a leading question at all. Be the change you wanna see in the world. Become a Skirmish commander, go drive them out. It's really that simple.

Kazanir:

He is really making the dunks easy for you. These is my opinion. Are you secretly paying Necromancer 1 to make you look good with these softball hostile questions?

Asher Elias:'

I do not set them up like that. I know.

Is anyone else super concerned that Asher is really the CEO of Costco and that he uses his position as our beloved space leader to increase Costco's marketing and in-house sales? That is dastardly kind of plan that I would like to do.

How will the new 2D map affect the meta? Yeah, the 2D map looks kinda interesting. We'll see. We'll see if it's any good.

Isaac Heisenberg is saying they have a Sotiyo with a T2 research rig launching. Is that like your corp? I don't know what's going on there. Probably. Seems like it says.

Asher we lack maelstroms on contracts? This makes me sad. Please make me less sad. Takata sanjo. I don't really like industry, but also I've never done it personally. Like we'll try to get it to Maelstroms. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying we won't. I'm just saying personally I have never done them because. I've always felt it to be really distasteful when the FC supplies his own fleet. I've seen that a lot from Horde, especially like FCs getting rich off their fleet dying and buying, and I really just dislike that it, it's, people start getting driven by incentives and it just builds up a lack of trust with your people that, you know, if I make a mistake and you all die to a Regalan-esque bomb run in your Maelstroms, you should know it's because I'm incompetent and not because I wanted to get paid. All right.

Apple Pear:'

You're not Clay Hakari.

Asher Elias:'

There you go. You mean Clay Hikarpi? I remember him.

I have lost one fleet to a bombing run. One fleet, I have lost. Before, before there were ADCs on Cerberus', I was fighting Progodlegend in his stupid fucking Goku fleet, and my PC froze and I just boated our entire Cerberus fleet into like 800 bombs. Just my EVE client was locked up. I couldn't turn. I was doing like the dance of death around him when just working in the pocket and then it froze and I was like punching the wall for like a week.

Apple Pear:'

I remember being in command with you and you were so fucking pissed off. Oh my God, I have never seen you that angry before.

Asher Elias:'

I do not like losing. I do not like losing. And it's good.

Apple Pear:'

Also for people who are complaining about a member corp Sotiyo. All structures have been requested through the request system, and if they are okay, they can be dropped, so don't worry about it. If it wouldn't be allowed to be dropped, they wouldn't have had it. So don't, there's no need to comment about that.

Asher Elias:'

Are some of our major market people not around at the moment. The C-J market has been a little low on stuff lately. Alan asked this. That's a good question. We're actually trying to roll back some of the alliance level stuff. We feel like we probably got a little too far away from the average linegoon supplying the goon. It's a good way to get involved. It's a good way to make money and it's a good way for us to strengthen our industrial capacity where we're not having one or two points of failure. So we have been intentionally pulling back. Now, I don't know if that's the reason why this is the case, but it is something that we've been talking about and intentionally trying to do while there's nothing really crazy going on right now, right? Like Cache Liberation Day happened a couple days ago. And you know, those fights are fun and they're good and we wanna win them, but it's not like, it's not like we're in a war, right? So we're intentionally rolling back some of our alliance level market and contract stuff so that we're leaving positions open for people to get in there. So if you want to build a battleship and make some money and be part of the EVE online industrial process and get your toes wet, like this is a good way to do it. And so that's very much an intentional thing. You know, there's this moment in history. After World War II, the United States was the largest ship builder in the world by like an incredible amount. And we had built all these liberty ships, which were just these ultra fast, ultra cheap cargo boats that we used to supply Europe. And after World War II, the Navy just sold them all. And so for like 15 years you couldn't buy anything but a liberty ship and the United States killed its ship building industry because why would you buy a new ship when you could buy one that was made and subsidized by the US government? This is a similar story to when my grandpa bought 10,000 pounds of sort of puke green paint on surplus from the US government. So everything was puke green for 20 years. We don't want to, we prefer not to get into that situation, so we would like you guys to be supplying stuff. As much as possible. So that's sort of a long-winded answer to your question, Alan. If you're in this whole time, you're going, oh, it was just short 500 ammo. Well, that's the answer you got

Onassis made his fortune buying Liberty Ships says Wilhelm arcturis, Wilhelm arcturis. So Onassis had his own private yacht, which would, these days not really be that interesting, but it had one really interesting thing. It had bar stool seats that were made of dork leather. Do you guys know what dork is? It's whale penis. He had whale penis covered bar stool seats. Entirely whale penis. That's a fact you'll never forget for the rest of your life. Like you're gonna quit playing EVE five years from now, but 20 years from now, you'll remember, someone will bring up, what was his name? Aristotle Onassis. He'll bring up Aristotle Onassis. You'll be like, Asher told me that he had seats on his yacht covered in Dork, which is whale penis leather. Aristotle Onassis. Right. That's his, that's his name. I'm not, I'm hoping I'm not blanking on that, but the shipping magnet from Greece who married Jackie Kennedy.

Kazanir:

Correct.

Asher Elias:'

I am told it's very soft leather. Yes. You know, someone somewhere is playing the fireside through their speakers and their wife is like, honey, what the hell is going on right now?

Nine Tales is like getting us back on track. When will we invade Horde? Future plans, nine tales. Future plans. We're gonna talk about whale penis today.

Apple Pear:'

We have been invading Horde. We just finished clearing out Cache with ourself and is still have some structures to kill us. Like we're not even, we're still invading, like not as fast as before, but they're still invading.

Asher Elias:'

Cache liberation day was a few days ago.

Kazanir:

Right. We took a, we took a system in outer passage actually too, right? Do we still have that or did they take that back?

Asher Elias:'

They took it back.

Kazanir:

Oh, that makes sense. But the seal has been broken, right? They can expect to go to the bathroom about once every 70 minutes from now until the end of the party.

Asher Elias:'

Someone found a picture of the seats? Ooh, I wanna click this. I mean, it just looks like leather. It's really kind of disappointing.

John Hartley says, Asher, any comment on Horde shitting on FCs so bad he biomassed. So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, I heard the story. I've heard no confirmation. It's an interesting story and it's one that I would so like to be true and I would like to do a little victory lap about it, that I'm really eager to not bite down on it, right. Yeah. I don't, I don't like, I like, I don't want people to quit the game, first of all, even if they are in the group, we don't like, but it is evidence of the things that we've been saying, that it's a toxic workplace, that they're run really poorly. So it sort of backs those up. But man, it's also just like tailor made for me to really like it. So I'm very suspicious of it. I hope the guy didn't like, if you, by the way guys, if you decide to quit the game, don't biomass your character. Only do that if you've never, well, no, don't go that far. If EVE's like a real problem for you, like I know people who cannot play EVE responsibly, and if you get to the point where you hit rock bottom and you need to do it, please, please, please, biomass at that point. If you're just quitting because you're, you know, you think you're not gonna play again, you probably will. Don't biomass.

Apple Pear:'

Same for skill gooing, don't skill goo your characters.

Asher Elias:'

Says, I didn't quit from boat fleets back in the day. I'm not quitting now. That's, yeah.

Asher, can we send Ceema to the CSM? So we do not wanna ruin Ceema by doing that. We have got most of our ballot done. We're finalizing a couple things here and there. But the overall picture is very clear to us. We've been discussing it for the last month or two. So yeah, we're happy with the ballot. We're happy with what we're gonna be running and who we're gonna be running, but yeah, we wouldn't want Ceema to have all the hope and light taken out of his life.

Yeah. Glowing Bulb says that he will biomass if someone gets a dork skin interior for his car, and I would totally be on board with that Glowing Bulb. We'll miss you, but if you are rolling around on whale penis leather, like, why would you be here? Oh, could you imagine? Get yourself like a Herman Miller Aeron chair, but then make the butt cushion whale penis. Oh, so good. So good. See, you all wanted me to mention cat ears. But now we're talking about whale penises. That's just life at the Fireside.

When Alpha Fleet. Alpha Fleet pretty soon. It's been announced, like the post is up.

Lord Ballas, I'm not gonna read that. You need to reign in a little bit there.

Can we have an election for a better leader soon, or is this the best we've got? Necromancer, this is the best you're gonna get. I'm sorry to tell you. Just to actually tell you guys, I know I mentioned this before, but previous leaders, and I think pretty much everyone in EVE online has... essentially, there's no way to get rid of a leader. Like say you're a Horde guy, right? And you're upset with Gobbins. The only way to get rid of Gobbins is to get rid of yourself from Horde, right? You can't, there's no mechanism to remove him. I would say Goonswarm Federation is probably the only place where that is not true. When I took over, I made very sure that there is a mechanism to get rid of me. This was something I proposed and something that I made happen. Kazanir here, Kun'mi, Ranger Gama XTTZ, they've all got shares and collectively they outnumber my shares. So if I die or if I go crazy, like they can get rid of me. And that's something I put in because I think it was important for it to be an option. Elections in EVE online have been proven over and over again to be, you know, a terrible idea. I think that, I've been thinking about this a lot lately. We're gonna wax poetic and then I'm gonna do some sumo after this. So, EVE is a really interesting form of government. 'cause as you guys, any, anyone who's studied government history before or whatever knows that the most efficient form of government is the enlightened monarchy. The enlightened despot, right? That is like the, that is the best form of government. The problem is that the despot becomes unenlightened, right? The despot becomes corrupt or whatever the case is. They just start, you know, having their harem. They don't care about the country anymore, and it gets to be terrible. So EVE is full of despots, right? It's all autocrats. And then one communist furry corporation, right? But it has perfect mobility, more or less, right? If any of you guys, and this is what I said when I took over, is that if you don't like it, if your Necromancr 1 and you're unhappy with my leadership, vote with your feet. Go somewhere else. And if enough of you do it, either the leadership will be like, Hey, Asher, you're driving people away. It's ruining stuff. Would you please step down? Or Goons will be defeated, right? And we're seeing that happen right now. There are people in this channel who were in Horde like a week ago. That's not an exaggeration. I know them. I'm looking at them right now. They were in Horde a week ago. They're here now 'cause they can vote with their feet. And we, you as people have that ultimate power, like if you're unhappy with your government and you live in the United States, you live in Germany, wherever you live, it doesn't matter. You can't really switch your allegiance. Like, mobility is very hard. In EVE online, you go to Horde today. If you're really happy, go to Horde right now. Undock, pack up your shit and leave. Like it's totally doable and it won't hurt my feelings one bit. I'm trying my best to make this like the best alliance for you guys, but if you think I suck, go somewhere else, won't hurt my feelings. Won't hurt 'em at all. But so EVE's a really interesting place. It is full of, it's full of despots, full of autocrats, and all the power is in your hands. I have no power because I can't force you to do anything. I can't force you to do a single thing that you guys don't want to do. You just don't log in. You just go to another alliance. You just don't do whatever you would. So I have unlimited power to do whatever it is you want. Oh, no, I know Remaker is Necromancer's CEO. Looks like he fucked around and found out. Whoops.

Apple Pear:'

You could also.

Kazanir:

There's another member corp here who wants to fix him. A bad decision. We've seen, I've never..

Asher Elias:'

Your roboting Kazanir, but genuinely, I literally, guys, I don't care if you guys wanna say I'm doing something wrong, like, I am here to be accountable to you. And so, I have never instructed anyone, like if Remaker decides that guy's not for his corp, that's his decision to make. I have never instructed anyone, any CEO, to kick a person because they said something mean about me or anything like that. Anything in the realm of that. If they're a spy, they gotta go, right? If they're stealing, they gotta go. If they're goon fucking, they gotta go. If they got a problem with me, I'm here to be accountable to you. I have, I am not afraid of any person saying anything here that'll hurt my feelings because I know in my heart of arts that I am here to make your experience better. Does that mean I do it perfectly? Nah. No. I make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. If you don't like how I'm doing it, just go somewhere else. But you can also, if that's not what you wanna do, ask me about it. You know, confront me. I don't really care. We're here to answer your questions, to be accountable, and this is what, I bang on this drum a lot. Like, what does Gobbins sound like? Does anyone know? No one knows. No one has any idea because the man has a channel that they delete questions from that they don't answer. They take, you know, three days to answer if they do, right, with a corporate statement about, you know, what happens here? You get a corporate statement three days later, right? If you want to ask a question to me, I'm here. I'm here to answer it, and I'm here to be accountable to you guys, and we're gonna keep doing it that way. And it's working, right? You look at where we were three years ago, you could compare it to today. We're just in a way better, a totally better place. And I'm incredibly happy with what we've done. You know, if I resigned right now. I would feel like mission accomplished as far as putting us in a place where the next guy can be like, Hey, we are the biggest swinging dick around and we're running a great place.

Asher, how well do you think it would go if you put John Hartley in charge for a month? I think that's a great question, Thematic Chaos. So I think it would go really well. Here's why I think so. I think that, so when I took over, there were a lot of people in the leadership group who were sort of skeptical of me. Because when I was the, you know, Sky Marshal, Chief FC, I viewed it as my job to propose like, let's not say outlandish scenarios, but just to be a counterweight to something, to propose let's, well, we could really shoot for the moon with this one. And so I think people presumed that when I took over I would go crazy and just start doing that stuff. But when I was in the position of Sky Marshal, that was my job. When I was in the position of leader, it wasn't my job anymore. My job as the leader is to listen to those proposals and choose and use wisdom to choose the right ones. And I know John Hartley well enough to know that I think that he would take the position seriously, and that's really what you expect. So I think he would do a good job. I don't know if that was a leading question or not, but you know, I think that John sort of relishes his role because he gets to tell everyone that they're, I don't know. What do you call people, John, muffin heads or whatever. I don't know, but there you go. I think that there's a lot of people who would step up and John would be one of them.

Apple Pear:'

I think he would be much better than Vince. He would yell less.

Asher Elias:'

Yeah. Yeah. John does sort of have that Vince vibe to him, but it is different. I do respect Vince as a leader, though. I know Vince, the way he talks to people, it's certainly not my style. I don't need to be a drill sergeant. I don't think the leader should be a drill sergeant. I think that should go for people who are drill sergeants, right? I think the leader should be more approachable, but he's really passionate. He cares about his group and he likes to fight. And so those, all those things that I actually respect him a lot more than other people who I make fun of here from time to time. Vince Draken. Yeah. Also, his pings are just so much more entertaining than reading other people's.

Put GigX in charge for a week? So I guess this is like the philosophy week, but I think of Eve sort of as an organism and actually Eve is more like the planet and the alliances are like the organisms, right? And you need to evolve. And if you had tiger or a lion that got in every fight, it would soon be dead because a tiger or a lion, or any animal that gets like a cut has a high chance of an infection. If a lion breaks its ankle, it's dead. Like it's it. And so those genes will quickly be removed from the gene pool. They said the same thing, why do humans see patterns that don't exist? And there's a biological evolutionary idea that if you see a tiger in a bush that isn't there and you see it a hundred times and you avoid the bush and the hundred and first time you walk by it, it actually is there. You live and the person who is right a hundred times that there isn't a tiger and is wrong once is dead and doesn't pass on their genes, right? And so someone like GigX is is the lion who broke its foot. Like they get removed by the evolution of EVE online grinding people into a perfectly, you know, form. He was indeed the CEO of CO2. And by the way, I think the hagiography on GigX has become kind of crazy. The guy was like, really a fucking terrible FC. He was so bad, dude. Like the man didn't know how to combat probe. He would make, yeah, he was, if he was like some like ELO Knight esque savant and then also loved to fight too much, then you know, I would be of a very different opinion of him, but he wasn't good at it.

All right. Throw me any other questions you got. Otherwise, I'm gonna throw my sumo stream up. Yeah. Day 14, man. Sumo has been amazing. This is gonna be a super important day too. It's really fun hanging out and watching Sumo with you guys. I know a lot of people who've never watched Sumo, have been enjoying it.

Plans for CAD. We're leaving 'em where they're right now. I think we're in UALX, right, but, or maybe we're still over by the gap. Actually, I don't remember.

Apple Pear:'

I think they need to be moved yet, but we have had other things.

Asher Elias:'

Okay.

Apple Pear:'

We're going to move them soon, but yeah.

Asher Elias:'

Yeah., I did talk to ELO for a while after he quit. He has basically deleted his online presence, but he was in a, I don't want to, he was in a really happy place with his life and seems to be in a good place. So, he, all dogs go to heaven, I guess.

Alright, friends, it seems like the end of the questions. Thanks so much for coming to the Fireside. I will see you all next week. I'm gonna do my Sumo Stream now. I'll catch y'all later. Have a good one. Bye.