Fireside Chat Transcript 20 Jun 2k20
From Goon Wiki
We had a bit of an interesting fireside on Wednesday. If you haven't had a chance to listen to that or read it, you can find the recording of last Wednesday's fireside where we announce where by last Wednesday I mean what, it was just three fucking days ago? ReaverGeist has done a fantastic job of translating that, or transcribing that I should say, such that DeafSwarm can see the situation that we're in. And so you can either listen to it or you can read it, and both of those have now been posted in Elysium. Thank you. So, big obvious stuff here. We are obviously now in J5A, and our business for the next week is going to be making sure that we can get our shit out of Cloud Ring. That is going to require big, massive fucking form-ups, and we're going to be doing lots of big, massive fucking form-ups in general because we are getting ready to get invaded. It is entirely possible that the bad guys might wibble or back off or whatever, but as far as we can tell, intel-wise, and what we've seen on the field during the Jeff campaign, is that they are in fact gearing up to invade us, and that they're going to try to do a big announcement, but I think we've kind of ruined that by me announcing their announcement weeks before they were going to announce it, so fuck you. But yeah, this is where we are, this is what we're going to do. If you're completely clueless, again, check out the Wednesday fireside and transcription. Our plan this coming week is to continue to support GSOL. The guys in recon, the guys in GSOL have just been doing a ton of work. A lot of times when we have to pull back from a region, or generally reshuffle our defenses, a tremendous amount of actual in-game work comes down to GSOL guys, recon guys, and fleet commanders running cover-ups, and everybody who is going on those cover-ups. So if you are just a random guy in a jackdaw who is helping guard a move-up, you are essentially making sure that we can do some of the most critical things that we need to do in our infrastructure and helping make that happen. So thank you for going on those, especially those ops that seem like they're kind of boring, like you're orbiting a gate in J5A and making sure that nobody interferes with our freighters. Well, that's fucking critical. So please go on those ops, and thank you for being there and doing it, because it's been really fantastic to see the organization come together and sort of kick all the ass that we've been doing in this last few days of mad scramble. This is a tremendous opportunity. Normally from a strategic perspective, you do not have advance notice that you are going to get invaded. The way it normally works is you keep all your cards hidden, and then you attack with surprise. And for some reason the bad guys fucked up with their secrecy or whatever. It just seemed like they telegraphed things too obviously that only a fool would not look at all of the other blobbing up with snuffed out to attack us and not go, "Oh, hey, I kind of see what's coming." All right. Let me go through this a bit. There are going to be more move ops. Don't worry. In fact, at the fireside there's going to be move ops, lots of move ops after the fireside. And, uh... Yeah. I need to make sure what I want to say about those move ops before I run my mouth. Do we know a test position on Fountain being invaded? We are not going to break the NIP with a test. We have a NIP with a test. If a test wants to break the NIP and invade us, there will be consequences. But as it stands right now, we have not broken the NIP with a test, and if Legacy chooses to violate that NIP, that is on them. I want everybody to know going into this, one of the rules deployed to the North with the DEF deployment in the first place was that there was a conflict between PanFam and Legacy and Cache, which is on the far galactic east, if you've never heard of Cache or never been there. And that fight was happening right around the time that we deployed JETF. The idea was TEST wanted some assistance in drawing off Horde and NC DOTS so that they could have this fight with PanFam and Cache, but it might have turned out that that was all just a ruse and that they were lying to us about the whole thing, and that what they actually wanted to do was have us go hang out at our dicks in the wind so they could all dogpile us. We will see. We will see. And if TEST violates the NIP with us, we will never make a NIP with them again, and there will be consequences. [silence] All right, so let me take a look at some of these other things. [silence] So one of the big things is resubbing faxes. In a defensive war, if you have -- if your faxes are -- we need the faxes because in a defensive war, we will, for a change, be fighting on our keepstars, shooting puppies. Normally speaking, we are on offense, blowing up puppies as they sit on their keepstars, and I'm very eager to see what we can do when we actually get to use our fucking keepstars, which we have been building up for years just for this purpose, to splatter puppies. I do expect that if it is a concerted invasion of all of EVE that we will -- you know, we're going to lose stuff, and I want people to understand right out of the gate. It's like if all of EVE comes at us, we are going to lose keepstars, we're going to lose fleets, we're going to lose titans, we are going to do this, but we are going to outlast these guys. We are going to do war of attrition, we are going to grind them into fucking paste, and I want people to go into that attitude, is that it's about time, it is about willpower, it is about ruthlessness, it is about willing to outlive, outlast, outgrind the other guy, and nobody can do that better than us, and that is something that history has proven over and over again ever since Goon Storm started playing this fucking game 15 years back. So, Syria is a war like this, this in many ways, if you played in a casino war, and you didn't get a chance to enjoy the Great War, the Fountain War, and other big ones, Halloween War, we are looking at this as an opportunity in many ways to take the lessons that we learned painfully through making various mistakes, getting our Syracat fleet trapped in 93 PI, where unfortunately it still remains, to sort of go, "Okay, here's all the stuff that we fucked up in a casino war that we should have done, and now we're gonna apply those lessons in terms of defense." So we've been waiting for this for years, and obviously we're fucking hyped about it, because the directorate's been going a mile, and there's almost a thousand of you here on channel, so war is a force that gives us meaning, and also fuck all puppies forever. Alright, so more to-dos. Sub your faxes. This next week we are going to be having major form-ups, because we have to extract Keepstars from Cloud Ring. That means that there is going to be major operations involving fucking everyone on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday of next week at 2000 Eve on Tuesday, actually a little bit before that, but in those 1200 Eve zone, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, that will be covering the extraction of 6RCQ, F7C, and B-Tech-T Keepstars from Cloud Ring. The general theory behind this whole thing is that if the bad guys are gonna come at us, we want to make sure that they have to do the work. I want them to close the- to take the leap of faith into Fountain, to jump into Delt, to jump into Fountain, to jump into Periodic Basis, such that it's not like an easy mode, "Oh, well, you know, we're gonna hit their assets in Cloud Ring, oh, we're gonna hit their assets in Aridia." Basically, bring it to where we live, or sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. So that's one of the reasons why GSAL's doing a lot of work, because we are making sure that we do not have any, like, you know, random-ass dangling citadels that we forgot about from, like, years ago, and we've already found some of those that we've started yanking down, so that's kind of hilarious. We're doing. And if the bad guys don't bring it, we will insist that they bring it, and call them out for being a bunch of fucking bitches and not bringing it until they do. So that's where we're going. So, if you were- I'm gonna go through Asherson and broadcast about this the other day, and I'm just gonna reiterate it, because he hit pretty much all the points that I want to hit about what you can do right now to make sure that you and all your friends are ready for war. So, first of all, if you are waiting to buy or build a Titan or a Super, make sure that you put them in build right now. The sooner that they are out of the oven, the better. And make sure that you have your shield implants, too, if you are using a Shield Super or a Shield Titan. The second point is to make ISK. Build your stockpiles up now, such that whatever it is that you do to make ISK, do it. If we are getting dogpiled by the rest of the galaxy, you do not know how your ISK making situation is gonna be. We don't know what it's gonna be like. So, crab like hell now. When you're doing that, we also really need minerals. We need minerals to turn them into ships and to all sorts of other fun things. Build whatever you do, if you have mineral stockpiles here, do not ship them out of Delve. Make sure that they stay in Delve. Use them locally, sell them locally. We need those minerals, especially because of the supply crunch, to utilize for Delve defense. And then, we're gonna talk about caps and dreads again. We already started out by saying reset your faxes, but you need to have your capital stockpile ready. Dreads, T2 guns, we've been talking about this for a couple weeks now. The revelation is the best. We are pushing everybody to get into T2 gun revs. We also need faxes, we're gonna need carriers, we're gonna need fucking everything. This is an opportunity. When Delve gets hit, we use everything at our disposal. This is why we built all this shit up. It's here for a reason. All the caches, all the caps, everything that we've been utilizing all these years in building up, we're gonna use it to fucking murder puppies. Okay, so let me go ahead and take a look here and take some questions. We shouldn't have no agreement. IncoSys is basically saying that TEST can't be trusted. Well, I agree, but one of the reasons why we are not gonna break the NIP until they break the NIP is that our sort of diplomacy over the last 15 years has been based upon the principle of best possible friend, worst possible enemy. If people treat us right, well, we do not break our promise, we stick to them. And if they choose to behave in a treacherous fashion, well, there's a long record of what happens to people who betray goons for them throughout the history of this game, and that record is a pretty good one. And just as I like to be the best possible friend, and if they want to backstab us, I'm perfectly happy to have them try to stick their knife in our back. It will not be the sharpest knife that has been in our back over the years. And then the reaping will begin. Alright. Do we move assets to NPC Delve? I wouldn't really worry about it. Until you see a Keepsake Trolley get lost, I don't think there's a need to have everybody panic evac to NPC Delve. We want to have these guys attack us. We want to. But the fact that we have weeks to prepare means that there's--fighting a defensive war is basically the most awful way to play an Ebonbline. If you have an option of being an officer defense, especially with civils the way they are, you would almost always prefer a gun defense. You fight on a grid with a Keepstar you control, and be able to park all your fucking Titans on that thing. So I am eager and looking forward to these guys bringing it to our Keeps instead of hoping that we'd let our supercapitals just die out in Lowsec or in fucking Cloud Ring like idiots. It is extremely rare that the puppies actually buy into their bullshit long enough, gear up, and actually attack us like this. It happens like clockwork every three to four years, depending. But it is pretty rare. Most of the time we are on offense because puppies are pussies, and they don't really want to fight. They want to gang up on us and try to take us down. Last time they did this, they had infinite isk. They literally had cheated dark money infinite isk from the casinos, which got banned after the casino war. And they don't have that advantage anymore. And we have Keepstars now. We didn't have Keepstars in the casino war. Hell, we didn't even have Citadels in the casino war. That's one of the reasons they did it. They wanted to try to attack us before we could dig in and build a fucking fortress out of Delve, which we now have done. How did they try to invade us the time before the casino war? Fuck, let's see. What was that? Great Whelp of Delve? I don't know. It was really a long-ass time ago. VFK headshot, I guess. Yeah, that's right, VFK. It was like 2012, I think. Okay, let me see some of the other questions here. "When the war happens, are we expecting heavy disruption on supply lines? Is it just possible to import stuff?" I don't expect heavy disruption on supply lines because jump freighters use jump drives. That has not been a problem before. If it is a problem, we will find a way to solve it. "How much would you encourage skirmish commanders and UFCs to try and lead small battle groups to raise hell in their home space while they're deployed?" We'll burn that bridge when we get to it. We're not going to talk about that right now, Athon, though it is a good question. One of the things that's fascinating about this, if you are an aspirational skirmish commander, is in situations like a big block war, that's really when the talent rises to the top. The people that are engaged and motivated and want to do stuff, it's your time to shine, because we are only interested in finding people who can do stuff where the rubber hits the road. So, yeah, there's never been a better time, and you will have your opportunity. "Is this still a JEF deployment, or is it turning into a coalition deployment?" We are essentially done with a JEF deployment officially because we're back in J5A, but this was never really a true JEF deployment anyway. As I've said repeatedly, this JEF deployment was different from the previous one because the entire Alliance Command and Control was involved. One of the reasons we were doing that is that there was a non-zero possibility that we would need to shake our collective dust off and sort of relearn how to get good at Eve and fight block wars and stuff, because the puppies were kind of Spidey senses tingling. Like, these guys are doing it, and we hadn't had a deployment in a while, so we went off and we learned a bunch of things and unfucked our doctrines, such that we can now pivot and deal with this shit. We believe... let me take a look here. More questions. Hang on, guys. "Any current concerns that Wrecking Crew is taking over Pravi so PandaFan can stage there?" I don't give a shit about Pravi at all. It's an interesting question because I don't actually get questions about that, if Pravi doesn't threaten us in any way. Like, who cares? "Do you have any allies in the southeast of the map, like Red Alliance, that we can count on?" We have the Imperium. That's what we trust in. That's what we're gonna go with. The thing is this. When all the puppies think that they can gang up on us and take us out, like they do every few years, it's only us. Help is not going to come. You can only depend on people who are in this coalition. And hopefully you can depend on them, as we learned in the casino wars, sometimes you can't. But I believe in this crew, I believe in this coalition, I believe in our defense, because God knows we've been working on this for years, because we knew this was gonna come someday. But get it out of your heads. When they come and we're outnumbered, get it out of your heads that we're gonna outnumber these guys. We fought in that Jeff deployment outnumbered the entire way, with all of them ganging up against us. And it's gonna be like that, but worse. I want your expectations to be as awful as possible, because, you know, it's a 40k reference, but it's also kind of true. Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment. We need to understand that at the start of this campaign, the enemy will be at their strongest, and we will be at our weakest. And until we close that gap by draining them, by fighting wars of attrition, by draining their will, by making it suck as much as possible for these guys, it's gonna be hard as fuck. There are few things as difficult in online gaming, in any game, period, than a block-level war of the scale that you have in, like, a casino war or a great war. It does not get... there's really nothing quite as intense as what happens if they really come at us. Now, of course, there's a non-zero possibility that, as we are doing all this defensive stuff over the next couple weeks, that they then look at our profile and they say, "Oh, actually, you guys overreacted." Like, their exit strategy will be to say, and so I want you guys to understand this before we get there, their exit strategy will be, "We spooked you into losing two regions, because from reading hostile channels, I've learned that, as far as some of our enemies are concerned, we owned pure blind, because some of our enemies believe, because of the Verity softmap or whatever, that French Connection, which has space in pure blind, is part of the Imperium. French Connection, like, we've worked with them on some ops and stuff, but they're not part of the Imperium. But I've seen our enemies say that when we withdrew from Cloud Ring, that we gave up two regions that were, like, Imperium core. So their exit line will be, "Oh, well, you know, we made you lose these two regions that were totally yours, and, you know, you guys all panicked and all this other sort of stuff, and, you know, you overreacted. Ha ha, juked." And, you know, if that happens, great, because then we'll have unfucked our defenses, and then we'll come out of a defensive crouch and start fucking with them again, because I know that they're planning on coming for us. What they lie about, what they say in public doesn't really matter, and I am going to respond accordingly, and we will respond accordingly. We know what they want to do, and whether they make excuses and they back off about it or whatever, we know what they have been planning, and, well, we will respond accordingly. All right. "If tests attack us and they fail, can we shoot tests?" If tests are the nip, then there is no nip, and there will be consequences for betraying us. "How will the economics changes affect a good attrition ward?" That is a very good question, and that's one of the reasons why we are working so hard on getting people to not only get their shit together, but all of the crabbing that is necessary. One of the things that we've been talking about for the last couple of weeks is period basis. Period basis is a possible invasion vector. If Legacy decides to break the nip, they could potentially come through TCAG into period basis from Paragon Soul. I think it is a less than likely invasion vector, but it is still one, and so one of the things that we're going to be doing as we're encouraging people to crab in period basis and take it seriously and turn that into an extraction region, similar to how FRT is able to do their thing up in the Daron regions and farm all day, we want to, or I should say in branch and penal, we want to be able to do the same with period basis and get some of those ADMs and the pipe systems up and generally make it into a way to solve the supply issues of minerals and isks in the modern environment. [silence] Alright, let me look at some of these other questions. [silence] Right now, I am calling this potential war the Casino War 2.0, because it drives puppies crazy. They absolutely hate us calling the Casino War the Casino War, because it reminds everybody that the only reason they were able to do it in the first place is that they had casino money that was infinite and was banned for RMT after the war was over. The moment that the heat was off, CCB stepped in and banned anyone who was involved in supplying all of our enemies with infinite isks from the Casino War. They want to call it World War B, but we drive them crazy by insisting that we call it the Casino War, and they get angrier and angrier about it every year. Whatever name that they want to come up with, and if they do a big announcement, they will try to have some sort of puppy fucking name that will drive you crazy. Just saying in advance, "Oh, it's Casino War 2.0, puppies right again," whatever, that will automatically annoy the shit out of them. I see that in all of our intel feeds. It's always hilarious. It just drives them up a fucking wall, because they're like, "You can't call it Casino War. You lost the war, and only the victors get to decide what we call it." But the truth is that since we have the largest organization in the game, the most consistent narratives and media control and everything, if we decide to call something an Apex Force, it's an Apex Force. If we decide that the name of a war is the Casino War, it's the fucking Casino War. If we decide that this one is Casino War 2.0, even if, hilariously enough, there's no casinos involved, it'll probably make them really angry. So fuck 'em. We'll try that, and if it doesn't work out, we can call it something else. But it's the same motherfuckers. It's the exact same motherfuckers that were involved in the Casino War. Doing the same thing. So fuck 'em. So that is one of the reasons why an attrition strategy is an important one for this, because they do not have an infinite source of isk like they did last time. Now, we have to be concerned about this ourselves, which is one of the reasons why you see that we have shifted to using Moshmasters, and already we saw that they trade very effectively. They're just a fantastic grinding attrition warfare chip. Goons love 'em, and they work. So I'm glad that we got those doctrines sorted out before this shit kicked off. Alright, let's take a look. Have we brought back cap training on CC? We have not. I think that there is a plan involving that, but I think right now we're just doing actual cap ops and cap fights for training. Is the attacker's relative strength greater or lesser than the Casino War? That's a very good question. And the answer is we don't know. And I'll tell you why we don't know. When we deployed to Glass Tribute last year, this was last June, and we rammed 1100 Titans to the north, we did not know that we had 1100 Titans. You never know the true strength of a coalition or a deployment until people actually undock. Because until the ships are actually undocked and the right doctrines and the right, you know, everything, right ship, right time, right place, you know, you don't know what you have. That is the only real check for your actual strength. And I hope that our strength is stronger than the puppies. And we will have to see. But we will not know until they come. All right, let me look around here at some of these other channels, make sure I'm not missing anything. Important announcements. If shit gets super real and the masses form on the horizon, am I blowing the horn of Gundor? That is a very good question, Diogenes. Also, welcome back. The answer is yes. We have already put in preparations to sound the horn of Gundor, if and when, and you already are seeing a lot of returning faces. If any of you are a Great War veteran and understand the implications of this, I want you to understand that both XTDZ and I are playing the game in the client and have been for weeks now. So when we defend Delve, we will be defending Delve with the single best Sov Warrior in the history of EVE Online, guarding our home. I don't know if Diogenes left, but he was on sub for a little bit, at least as far as I was understanding it. It's always cool to see the old faces coming back when shit gets real. And so, yes, we will be sounding the horn of Gundor when and if it happens. I believe that shit is pretty real. Also, I've just been playing the game more because I upgraded my monitor and stuff, and so the game is just way more fun when it's really pretty. And also, I've discovered that if you play EVE when you're high and you put pretty lights on and dim the lights, turn them funny colors and basically make your house into a little clubbing and play zone, then derping around in a myrmidon becomes suddenly a lot more interesting. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. Derping around in a myrmidon becomes suddenly a lot more interesting. All righty, let's take a look here. ReaverGeist has a bunch of very good questions regarding the NIP, and that's in fact an excellent question, and I have answers that I'm not going to tell you. One of the reasons why--actually, I will answer part of that. The reason we never updated the NIP to include Cloud Ring is that Cloud Ring was an extension--basically, what has happened, if you look at the history of the last several years, is that every time we deployed offensively against puppies, we would drop a Keepstar offensively, back when we had a lot less of them, and then extend it a little further. So we dropped 6RCQ, and then we extend it a little further, and the next thing you know, you drop a--fuck it, let's drop a Keepstar and KKK, and then you Glass Tribute. And then you realize that you have this chain of Keepstars going through a bunch of regions that you never intended to hold. I know that because Cloud Ring is on the border of Fountain, that Initiative and Bastion had a lot more stuff going on in Cloud Ring, but Cloud Ring has never been an official Imperium region that we would ever want to hold or defend. It's something that we faff around in for fun, for content, and it's like, "Hey, it's amusing, sure, let's do this, let's faff around." But Cloud Ring was never our space. And that's reflected in the Sov. If you look at who's actually in Cloud Ring, we had Citadels through there so we could project power and fuck with people, but it was never an official Imperium territory. In the same way, on the other hand, if you listen to our enemies, they believe firmly that we have lost two regions. They believe that Cloud Ring was Imperium Core, they believe that Pure Blind was Imperium Core, because they believe that French Connection was in the Imperium, that we had Pure Blind. I think what was happening there is that when we were attacking Snuff structures, and mostly fucking with Snuff when it came to the structure grind, our enemies who were not being hit as much didn't really know what we were going after, and we didn't really tell people, which was one of the reasons why we were experimenting with that, is we didn't say, "Hey, we're glassing Snuff, and this is the target," and blah, blah, blah. We did that, but we also muddied the waters by hitting Horde stuff and Pure Blind and stuff. So there is a possibility that their line believes that we had and considered Pure Blind and Cloud Ring as Imperium territory, but no, those were never intended to be defended by any of our shit, because if you look at the jump ranges, it's just not defensible from Delve. It would be like Fade, right? That's repeating the same mistakes as the Casino War. It's not that they don't check SovMaps, it's that whichever puppy is running the Coalition map is hostile to us, and whichever puppy is running the Coalition map that gets passed around, listed Pure Blind as being Imperium affiliates or something or other, and so a bunch of random-ass puppies think that we held Pure Blind. Future plans for Mephias, I'm not going to answer that question. Okay, so I need to go ahead and... let me check here. We are gearing up Op right now. So after this fireside, there are going to be a whole bunch of Ops involving a whole bunch of pieces of hardware that need to move from point A to point B. We are evacuating our stuff from Cloud Ring, and we need to cover that. So after the fireside, I'm going to go ahead and see if there's any last questions I want to answer. Yes, there will be a meta show today, and Asher will be a guest. What's the status of Snuff? Well, we did pretty good against Snuff at first. We made a bunch of whelps and rookie mistakes as we were shaking the dust off, but we blew up almost half a trillion isk worth of structures of theirs based upon the recon hit list that I've been looking at. And they will, of course, say that it doesn't matter because they have all these structures and ha ha ha, but we blew up almost half a trillion isk of their shit, specifically Snuff's. But what was interesting about that deployment is that we deployed against Snuff, and we were maybe going to be hitting some conifer shit in Pure Blind, and then Horde deployed against us, and then NC.deployed against us, and then FRT is turning up to every other timer. And so what rapidly started as a "Hey, we're going to shake the dust off, Jeff deployment, train up some skirmish commanders, and get into fighting shape against Snuff" turned into a preview of Casino War 2.0, where, gee, why are all of these blocks deploying to defend Snuff, and why are they turning up to every fucking timer? Gee, when have we seen this before? So there you go. All things considered, I think we did alright against Snuff. Was it the best campaign ever in terms of damage to Snuff? No, because after the first few weeks, it turned into a fucking preview block war, where all these guys put their cards on the table, and now we're gearing up to defend Delve. Alrighty. Alright. That is going to be that. We have ops, we have ops, we have ops. There are so many ops that are going on because we are scrambling like maniacs, because the idiots have given us weeks of notice of an invasion, which is something that almost never happens, and we are not going to let that opportunity go to waste. So I'm going to end the fireside now. There are going to be broadcasts for Move Up, and there are going to be broadcasts for Move Down, and there are going to be broadcasts for Move Up, and there are going to be broadcasts for Move Down, and there are going to be broadcasts for Move Up, and there are going to be broadcasts for Move Down, so I'm going to end the fireside now. There are going to be broadcasts for Move Ups. If you can help out with Move Ups, please do. Get your shit out of these fucking Keep Stars and Cloud Ring. We are not going back there. We are also needing to cover those Keep Stars and their extraction, so we need your Titans, we need your Supers, we need your Faxes, we need all of the big boy toys, because we're going to fucking war to defend our fucking home. So, let's get to work. Pings are going to go out. Thank you for coming. We will continue to have firesides every Saturday, but there might be War Update firesides where I just send a ping and get everybody together like we had to on Wednesday, because, you know, shit gets really real during a block war, and so just keep your eyes on, stay alert, help each other out. I don't want to see Petty infighting. We are all in a fucking trench together against literally the rest of fucking Eve. So, let's get to work. Thank you for coming, and I'll see you on the field.