Fireside Chat Transcript 2025 06 07

Asher Elias:

Hello. What's up guys? It's been a pretty exciting week. It is I, the fireside guy.

All right. First off, I wanted to ask you guys, we've had a crazy week. I'd like you to put in Elysium, what has been your favorite moment so far this week? 'cause there's been a lot and there's been so much over the past week that I've forgotten some of them. So what's been your favorite so far? Zirn Ball. A lot of Hubrises. Running a crab beacon in front of PH Zirns. Miro saving the fort. Dread kill with the flycatcher. That was a great moment. Horde changing doctrines because they can't get the guns. The Fort anchor. Pancake cat. Mining in X2. Having a Dave Archer fleet in a faction ship, Dave's gonna hunt you down there, zombie slayer. Nyx getting us DD'd. That was very funny. Horde running from shuttles. Crabbing. Yeah. A lot of beacons. Hubris. Yeah. Okay. Stupid Horde cope on Reddit. Yeah. I will say some of our dumber posters have really gotten active. Thank you. Dumb posters. You're like just throwing out everything and seeing what sticks, I like you. Getting to spend time with all my friends says Dexter Tripod. That's a sweet one. Everyone go, aww. Logi numbers. Yeah. Nice. Five hour fleet last night that wrecked my sleep schedule. Sapphire Bloodstone. Yeah, that fleet was, I think from start to finish, I was on that one for about seven or eight hours.

All right. I got some stuff to tell you guys about. Then we'll talk about, what's going on so far and then I will, open up for questions. But it's been a hell of a week. You guys slept? Exactly, Celine. All right. I know some of you're listening in right now. You are on a fleet right now. Let's talk about, BDSM. You guys have been waiting. Let's talk about it. That's the Brave Derangement Syndrome Management that we are doing. Enemy has been focusing on their BDS, which is the Brave Derangement Syndrome, and we are managing it like crazy right now. I understand that our fleets have forced them to dock up and they have, or they're running a crab beacon right now in front of them. I like that. We are, yeah. Sons of Bane is also being attacked, but it doesn't work out to a funny acronym. A couple of you guys got really excited right there. We're not talking about that. Horde is definitely focusing an insane amount on Brave and it's really, emblematic of what they care about, that they're so focused on this and not focused on trying to apparently win a war here.

These guys are, I think that if we were in the midst of a conflict and I was Hey, everyone let's go over to Branch and shoot whoever lives in Branch. I don't even know. That's how unimportant it is. But if I was like that, you guys would be what? That's what the, tactical genuises over there in Horde are doing. So we're engaging in a little BDSM, we're managing the Brave Derangement Syndrome, and, right now it's going on, really well. We wanna keep that up. Obviously that is their whole, tactical maneuver is to put a feint there, and try to drag our attention away. It hasn't worked at all. We are rolling. You guys have seen the results. You know, keep it up, keep on, jump cloning, keep on burning over there. It's been, really good and let's keep that up. I'm encouraging, Goons to participate in BDSM.

Shout out to Asshole Squad. They caught a Jump Freighter, with a drag bubble in EFM. They're putting in the work camping during, AU time zone. So if someone's got that kill mail, just throw it in Elysium so people can see it, but they got a nice jump freighter kill.

https://zkillboard.com/kill/127701082/

I also wanna shout out Dragon Fleet. They have been, they just started going to work. I am excited to see what they do.

To let you guys know. Yeah. So Dictator asked, what about Frat who hit Horde? Yeah. Frat has actually been attacking Horde on the other side and hitting some of that stuff, so that's an interesting development.

If you guys want to shoot stuff, medium structures are free fire. I know a lot of you guys are out there. You are excited about just doing something on your own or with your buds or with your corp. Any medium structure, can I please go out there? We're talking about Raitarus, Athanors, Astrahus. That is a medium structure, is not a sky hook. So, but Raitarus, Athanors, Astrahus, you know, go out there, hit whichever one you like. Do not hit SOV, do not hit, Sky Hooks. Metanoxes do count. Yeah, you can hit Metanoxes.

Alright. Let's talk about last week. We have rolled through very fast. Our timeline is quite accelerated from what we had put down on paper. You know, in our spreadsheets, our actually moments, we have put off a lot of checks that we're way ahead of where we were. We've got two Keepstars in hull, both EFM and, HB-, those are vital Keepstars for the region and they will come out this Monday. I'm not gonna call for all alarm clocks and all kinds of stuff for people like that. We had people who alarm clocked, even though I said not to. Thank you guys for showing up, our numbers were insane for the armor timers. If you were on those fleets, we were reffing multiple structures. We were dropping things, we were anchoring things we were taking SOV, and we were going into their staging and shooting their Keepstar and watching as they watched, one of their, dreads, a Rev Navy die. They were formed. They were rage formed, and they just sat on their undock and watched it die as it was pecked to death by our flycatcher fleet over a period of like 15 minutes, it felt like to me. So that spoke volumes to me.

Tariel, I've seen you ping me with this five times. I'm not gonna read it. Please stop.

Okay. We have those two important objectives, have SOV coming up tomorrow. We have SOV the next day and SOV the day after that. We will keep attacking. We're not stopping. They have signaled pretty clearly, I don't know if you saw, there was a Gobbins ping where he, you know, he basically, he did not admit that they were retreating, but he explained the reasoning behind a retreat. So it was essentially, an admission. So what that means is they're gonna start, in my opinion, they will probably start looking to be opportunistic. If we make mistakes, if we overexpose ourself, if we don't form up good, they will, rage ping and try to go after us. I think that's sort of the plan. That's why I'm not calling for alarm clocks on the Keepstar hulls. If they do start pre pinging, I will let you guys know. We will obviously match that, but as of right now, if you can be there, if you wanna be there for the Keepstar kill, we'll try.

The one that is important is HB-, EFM. We did break the SovHub. It means they cannot be jammed. So, we will go for HB- that is the link for their supers. We'll cut that one off. And then if we can get EFM, at the same time, the timer's basically rolled at the same time, so it's a little awkward. If we can get EFM, we'll go for it. If we can't, we will just re-ref it and do it again. There is no jamer there anymore. So, that system went from basically impossible to siege if they defended it to, absolutely possible for us. So that is the basic plan for next week.

Is there a name for this war yet? Yeah, we're calling it the War of the Ruses. After that Ruse cyno got our fort online, I believe that was a Spike McFire name and I love it. So, we're gonna call it The War of the Ruses is after that excellent ruse. I think the Keeptar war is fine, but, I don't like that one as much as it was just one event. Okay. Yeah, you can call it the Ruse Cruise if you want. I like War of the Ruses better just 'cause I like the historical aspect to it.

Kazanir:

Yeah. The Keeptar was one of the first of the ruses, but only the first.

Asher Elias:

Yeah, yeah, there's been like four ruses so far and they've all been pretty good and memorable.

There you go. The biggest ruse of all, Horde's military strength. I would like to talk about that. After, you know, Gobbins have been pinging that we are the number one EU time zone group now, and that may be accurate, but, their timers are US time zone, and after that big loss they took in HB- they fought us in US time zone in EFM when we tried to hold that gate while we, reffed a bunch of sov, and Zintage dropped about 20 Zirnitras. We were killing Rokhs. We had a great battle report where we killed a bunch of stuff, but more importantly, we held the gate, which was our goal and if you look at that br, and you compare Goonswarm Federation and Horde, Goonswarm had 20 more people. Now remember we were on a morale high and they were on a morale low, and we also had twenty Zirnitras on that br so on a morale high and them on a morale low, we were even numbered, Goonswarm and Horde. I just want to keep that in mind that, we are definitely in the no hubris stage right now. So if you're friends with hubris, if you've been hanging out with him the last few days, you need to remove from your contacts. No hubris, we have not done anything yet. We haven't taken our goals. Right now we are pushing forward, we are focusing, I need to be very clear about. This is not a victory speech 'cause we haven't won anything yet. Don't start celebrating. There's nothing to celebrate yet.

Some of you are mentioning my ship yesterday. I don't know what it was named, but, do as I say, not as I do.

What is the win condition of this war asks zone necro? Excellent question. Wonderful question. When I said the SOTG, it is to drive Horde out of Insmother. And if you look at the sov map, Horde has not been driven out of Ins mother. This war is certainly not anywhere near a victory condition.

Alright, having said all that, covered everything I wanna cover as far as letting you guys know, what's going on. I am now open for questions. Go ahead and throw 'em out there.

Zoe says, I wanna drop my Hubris. No.

Any updates on cat ears. Our CSM members have been mentioning it every day.

Dragon Zero says, saw something from AHACs on, yeah. Saw something about AHACs from Gobbins on Reddit. Is that true? Yeah. So they had a bunch of Zealots saved up already and, they basically were running into ship problems. So they are calling for Zealots, to be used. They haven't used them yet, and we'll see if they actually do.

I've gotta change my headset battery, so give me like 30 seconds. If someone else wants to answer a question or two, I'll be right back. That's when, you know, you've been doing a lot of EVE when your headset batteries are not fully charged, but we have to swap out the previous one. They start getting lower and lower. That's the situation I'm in right now. All right.

Apple Pear:

So I just linked the ping that Gobbins sent about his, about the AHAC doctrine and they're going to pick the battles so if you're interested in fresh black hand leaks. And if you also read it on Reddit. Yes. It's the same picture I made it and somebody shared it there. That's fine.

https://i.imgur.com/e7JFpO1.png

Asher Elias:

Nice. Ductanium says, Asher, do you know what Gobbins consumed to make such a bad doctrine? First of, I don't think Gobbins really is super involved in their doctrines, although I don't know that, but we haven't fought it yet. So maybe it's a excellent ship. We don't know.

Someone said, I like wired headphones. I'm a walk and talker. When I'm thinking I have to walk. So.

Nicola Damer says, how does they run outta ships or market screw with guns? Don't they have their own industry? So I think that that's been a little overblown. They had a, issue with it. But, I definitely feel like they, maybe that's been a little too much hay made outta that one. I'm gonna, they brought out Zealots, so their leaders can sell their stockpiles from back in the day. I mean, you know, had a stockpile as those that they did buy back. So that, that seems like a reasonable conclusion.

Pastalero says, are you trying POE next Friday? I do not have enough time to try another video game right now.

Ian Young says, when do we get a use our supers? So, Ian Young supers are usually used against something that, you know, is actively fighting back and they have not shown a lot of that, that's been going on.

Some people are talking about Gobbins and, he's been very reasonable and, almost downright humble lately. And, you know, that's been a big change. I kind of miss the old Gobbins pinging about Jabronis, but when they had a Chinese time zone to time their, you know, stuff to, if we actually attacked him, now that it looks like, you know, he could get smacked. He's become a lot more humble and it's been a lot more boring, unfortunately, but is what it is.

Will we be able to fire DDs once at least. So, Elizabeth, we definitely have done, like one time we reffed a Keep in, in Tribute with lance's. We almost lost a Levi. Keeps, sorry. Titans are so expensive now that even using them like in a fun way like that is actually probably not a great idea because they're just super hard to replace as far as expense. So, I don't expect us to be like running them around with 'em, but if we see a moment, we'll give it a shot.

Ceema, I'm not taking your troll.

Can we try to recruit DeRavenheart? Yeah, I definitely love that dude.

Learned says, can we drop now, drop the moniker, Lord Asher, or we still bending the knee when talking on Mumble, last night came to mind. No, I insist that you speak to me only with titles. Of course. I am very imperious.

Cash space. That's a future plans thing. What you got for me Ranger?

Ranger Gama:

I said no. Guys, remember, you must end and begin all sentences with Sir.

Asher Elias:

Sir.

Says, do we have friends that want the space after Insmother is cleared for Horde? I believe you mean from Horde. So, yeah, we will definitely be installing Jump Bridges in here. There are potentially, we could put friends in here, there are people in the region who want the space. There's all kind of options for that. But, we, we certainly want to have some jump bridges and some structures here, that we can get to and quickly approach Droneland space.

Tariel says, do you remember when Init said, we won't farm Brave Asher. So, I do. And I think a couple people got really upset that Init just came and got in a fight. That, that's fine. I wasn't upset at all. I saw some of you guys were screaming some terrible stuff at Shines in local and I was just what's going on here? They just came to shoot people. They're not blue to us. So, I wasn't flipping out about that. Some of our guys were probably took that one a little too much to heart. That wasn't a declaration of war or anything.

What's Frat up to? So, yeah, that's a good question, Zuri. Frat has been hitting Horde space. They've been hitting their jump bridges. They've been actually blowing up some jump bridges, so, I don't know what their end game is. I know I'm not familiar with that, but I do know, that they're actually attacking Horde, and that they're causing some problems. So that's been a pretty interesting development. It does seem like Horde had a lot of friends and they don't anymore. I think the issue there is I have seen. Like other leaders have leaked me what Gobbins has said to them and what other Horde people have approached them. And it's always very much do this or else, and that works when you have the biggest stick. But as soon as it looks like you don't, people really dislike that kind of way of approaching people. And you know, in the past we have done that and we have gone away from just approaching people with the, or else, you know, we are much more carrot than we are stick and I think that Horde has been mostly stick and it's coming back, it will come back to bite them. 'cause once you don't have the biggest stick anymore, then it becomes, less impressive.

CJ Allen says, when the Imperial armada is on war footing on your door, it is hard to be bossy. Exactly.

Barbaroga doctrine in the works? I would love to run that, but, there's not one in the works.

What's the end game with PH? Excellent question, Lerand. I told you guys we are going to keep pushing, and fighting them. That is the end game. You know, the end game is shooting PH. Those are our enemies. I told you we were pushing to get a fight. We have got several, but it seems like they have now fallen back again. That's fine. That is not unexpected. We are gonna accomplish the goals that we set up in the SOTG, and then we'll look to see what we do next. It's really that simple.

Noah says, I want to burn NC. Yeah, sure. I'm, almost feel bad for old Vince. It just feels like, you know, I'm not privy to his head, but you know, I've been around long enough to watch the guy operate and I just can't imagine that the way Gobbins and crew operate this sort of, their sort of blue ball or hell dunk, run backwards kind of thing sits well with him. So, I know I fought against the guy for a long time, but this, these past few weeks, I've felt pretty bad for him. I know he can't be happy over there.

A lot of fuck NCs. I totally agree. It's not like we're gonna not shoot 'em and just, you can feel bad for someone on a personal level, I think we've all been in the case where our boss is someone that we don't really agree with or get along with, and it can be rough.

Leshak fleets again when? I am on board with that, I think I'll probably have to thumb wrestle Zintage to make it happen, but, it, it's a possibility but not a strong one.

Bhaaltechs are probably not in the meta, unfortunately, Lerraine.

Tech fleet is a possibility. I would say it's low-ish, but Tech Fleet is possible.

Yacht fleet is not possible, not after they made those changes.

Snipereagle1:

I do have great memories of Shield Tempest from like 2011.

Asher Elias:

Bro, I would love to run a Maelstrom fleet. I mean, that would just make me so happy. It's garbage. It's such a bad fleet comp, but yeah, Alpha Fleet. Oh man, I would love it.

Apple Pear:

Just like I love a good ANI Fleet.

Asher Elias:

Exactly. Mach fleet. That's yacht fleet, Nikolai. And it's not possible. Not after the changes. We couldn't do Machariels unfortunately. They got nerfed too hard and they never got a buff.

Add Scorps to Ravens. Possible. Very possible. Not probable, but something we've looked at before.

You can lose, use Leshak pods with the new Trig ship. Yeah, I mean, I don't think we're gonna do a Barbaroga doctrine ever, but a Leshak doctrine is definitely possible.

Railgus do not scale really well to our size. It's, the Tengu is kind of a fat ship for a cruiser. It's actually really fat for a cruiser, sig wise. So some of the cruiser advantages that you expect it to have, it's actually closer to a battle cruiser and that ruins some of like afterburner applications at large fleet size. Like, remember, there are doctrines that are good for a hundred people that aren't good for 250 or 500. And I think that's, the tengu is good for a hundred people, but probably not good for 500. The Tengu is indeed goon size. It's larger than you expect.

Arti lokis are once again, that's a similar thing. Same thing as the Tengu where it's a good medium sized doctrine but doesn't scale well.

Need more rust. I mean...

Snipereagle1:

Do you guys not remember those Init Lokis that we had to bail out of horrible situations so many times. Alterari in shambles.

Asher Elias:

Yeah. Yeah. Slippery Peets are just barely doable these days.

Need more rust fleets. You know, I would like to do a Muninn fleet with the missile Muninn. I've been talking to our guys about it. They're, they're not as, enthused as I am, but, I, I think the missile Muninn is actually a doctrine that people have not paid attention to. And is actually a pretty good doctrine. Hyperions are not really a battleship doctrine for alliances.

CJ Allen says because they're bad. That's just your opinion, man.

Rupture fleet is probably coming. Dude Ruptures are good. They've got a nice buff. So Ruptures as a skirmish doctrine is almost always, almost certainly coming.

Ishtars are pretty strong now, I would say. Maybe some of the same scale issues, but, they're definitely more usable than they were before.

Offensive SIF deployment. That would be fun.

So, yeah, so let's like focus up, I know we got a, there's a lot of like, here, let's run this doctrine. We're, we're definitely in the laboratory thinking about what we can run, but for the next few weeks, it's gonna be pushing SOV, pushing forwards, blowing up stuff, taking whatever fights we can. And then we will, you know, we will pivot at that point. So we have probably two weeks of work ahead of us, and then we'll say, see where we are. We can evaluate how far we've come, and then we can, you know, have a victory parade or see what is need to be done. Or maybe we have like got too much hubris and they've beat the crap out of us. So it's gonna be up to us what we choose. And that's gonna be, pretty, pretty important.

I promised us something exciting each week, Tariel. Yeah, I did. And this exciting this week is that we're blowing up two Keepstars on Monday. You're welcome.

As a complete idiot, what is the end game, you imagine? Several similar questions being asked. Tupper says it's me, I am the idiot. The end game is basically what I said is that we will be much closer to Horde, we'll have jump bridges there. We'll have a chain of Keepstars that we can go across so that it is very easy to get to their space whenever we so desire. And, that is gonna be the end game that we see is that we told you we're gonna keep pushing, we're going to make it so that we can keep pushing. That's the end game.

Alright friends. I think I got one correction here. I think I said mediums are, free fire immediately and I believe that is they're free fire after we blow up these Keeps. Is that correct?

Toaster Jane:

We'll make an announcement after the Keeps are blown up.

Asher Elias:

Perfect. Okay. My bad. Well, you go, I am very much the Ron Burgundy of whatever is written.

Okay friends, that is all. I will see you in fleets. Please be showing up. No hubris. Do not be friends with Hugh Breeze. We have timers tomorrow and we have Keeps the day after. See you all later.