Fireside Chat Transcript 30 Jan 2k22

Alrighty boys and girls, we're gonna get started here in a couple minutes.
How is the microdosing working out?
That's a good question.
We're gonna start off here with a few random Q&As while we wait for people to arrive.
I actually got to a point where I stopped doing it after a month because I think it's
important to try to return to baseline after a certain point.
So like after a month of what he's referencing is like microdosing of mushrooms, taking it
tiny tiny little bit, and it is cool and good.
It's something that I'm gonna like turn on and off at various phases of my life because
sometimes you don't actually want to be like, "I'm going to be having amazing creative growth
experiences all the time."
Sometimes you just want to chill out and play fucking video games.
My hangover is doing excellent thanks to PartySmart.
Alright, so I have sort of a gaggle of administrative things to talk about today.
Some of them are exciting, some of them are not particularly exciting.
We're gonna do a lot of Q&A.
We haven't actually had a big time Q&A thing in a bit because for the last several weeks
there's usually been a big blurf to hurf about.
There are things happening and oftentimes the way that it works is like it's kind of
awkward on the weeks where sometimes in the big picture not much is happening.
There's tons of things to talk about on the far side, but there's also times when big
picture things are happening and you can't say a fucking thing about them because future
plans.
So as we've learned over the years, if we say what we're doing or we hint at what we're
doing on a fireside or on a meta show or something, it's like handing an engraved invitation to
our enemies.
So there is lots of stuff happening, only so much I can actually talk about on fireside.
So I'm going to apologize to you guys in advance if you are expecting a whole bunch of stuff,
but we're going to do some Q&As, we're going to hit on some important shit.
And broadly speaking, EVE is heating up, right?
It's not like nothing is going on and EVE is quieting down, right?
Like the PCU is stabilizing and actually increasing.
We are seeing conflict and hatred and new blood being spilled and political realignments
throughout the galaxy, which is excellent and it's really exciting and it will probably
have some knock-on effects in the relatively near future.
It's just that in front of absolutely everyone, this is what we got.
31K online, that is fantastic.
Thank you, Jara.
So what we're seeing here is just sort of a return to business.
I think that a lot of people's war fatigues are beginning to wear off across the galaxy
and there is light at the end of the tunnel with the pandemic thing.
And so we are having a lot more sort of freewheeling EVE Online fun times.
I've been having a blast recently.
Can't say about why or what, but it's been good times.
It's been good times.
A shout out, of course, in case you caught the Rampage Incorporated stream and you want
to feel old from Friday, it was the 8th anniversary, 8th year anniversary of BR5, which is what
used to be the previous big super capital battle that rearranged the galactic balance
of power for years to come until M2 and M2 part 2.
So that's cool.
Kind of frightening, but it is what it is.
So one of the things that I saw a question come up in Elysium the other day was somebody
was asking if we were still doing Stupid Idiot Fleet because they themselves hadn't seen
too many pings for it.
One of the things I want, I'm going to remind people about Stupid Idiot Fleet.
If we can get a link to the Stupid Idiot Fleet doctrine added into Elysium, I am too
incompetent to go and find that and click it.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
Really quick on that.
Very quick.
So we are still doing it and we love this and it's a reactive doctrine, right?
So when the bad guys come in, there's an opportunity to drop a whole bunch of black ops battleships
on them.
We are doing that.
We will continue to do that.
Please make sure that you are getting in and enjoying your sins.
That is not going to change.
So just because we don't happen to be hurfing about a doctrine on the far side, when I see
people say, hey, I haven't seen this, this doctrine get pinged in a bit, it actually
had, you know, it goes up multiple times a week.
But when I saw one person say they hadn't seen it, I figured I should make a comment
about it just to remind people that this is a real thing.
It is not going away.
It has been already a very successful gimmick.
And from sort of an orky Warhammer 40k perspective, it's kind of like no matter what happens,
we win because if we win with stupid idiot fleet, it's awesome and it's hilarious because
who doesn't love dropping a whole bunch of fucking black ops battleships on anything
that moves.
And in the situations where we lose one and when we lose a marshal or somebody fucks up
and loses a sin, we also win because then we can point and laugh at ourselves and it's
just funny and cool because nobody in the game has the balls to do something like this
at the scale at which we are doing it.
Stupid idiot fleet is one of the things I'm very proud of that we have achieved as an
organization that we have gotten to the point that we can do this kind of damn silly things
in these damn silly ways and then laugh about it when it goes wrong.
So big fan, absolutely, we are still doing stupid idiot fleet and keep it up.
It is something that very few fleet commanders do have the keys for because it's essentially
a capital fleet, right?
And it's technically speaking less expensive than a modern capital fleet.
But if you looked at the isk investment of a stupid idiot fleet, it's functionally the
same as a pre scarcity carrier dread fleet, which of course has gone 10 X now because
CCP and scarcity, but that's where we are.
Okay.
I have been instructed by Kunming to tell everybody that there is a new G E Z.
These are the gun fleet economic zones.
We have done a whole lot of amazing industrial shit that I barely understand there.
That is not my territory.
It is very much the Kunming zone and he has worked his magic yet again.
And I'm happy to report that the G E Z in 39 P is online and a Casador is doing a fantastic
job of hitting the links to more information on this.
I really appreciate that dude.
So yeah, click that link if you want to learn more about the G E Zs and sticks has just
sent that perfect.
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
Again, this is not my territory.
This is not the language that I speak, but I know many of you understand and are very
interested in all of the industrial spreadsheet in space kind of thing.
It is important to me because as for those of you that aren't into this kind of thing,
I want you to understand all of the things that we are doing here are designed to increase
our strategic economic output, which directly flows into our military power and our ability
to slam down citadels and recreate Fortress Delve as Mother Delve continues to heal and
upgrade our systems and basically find new and better ways to reach out and fuck the
puppies.
So it's important that goons and our allies get rich, that they get assets, that they
do it in an increasingly efficient way, because in my world that is directly related to our
ability to reach out and deliver all kinds of delicious hell to our foes.
Okay.
So for people who have questions about stuff like that, feel free to ask them.
I might have to tag in somebody who knows better than me about the nuances of industry.
I have some really big shout outs here to ScopeHone and John Monty and Kathy Iron and
the crew of people that have been working on creating the Webway app.
You might not have heard me talk about this before because it's only just now being released,
but for almost six years ago, which is kind of frightening, we started working on having
a GoonStorm and Imperium specific improved wormhole app.
And they have done a shitload of work on that.
And in general, ScopeHone and John Monty have both done just astounding work for us in the
IT department over the years, like the work on the Recon app, the work on the Core dashboard,
and they have brought this heroism to building a Webway for us.
So in the aftermath of the fireside, you might have already seen the ping, there's going
to be a how the fuck does this thing work app.
It is new, it's going to might require a little getting used to, but believe me, it is going
to be awesome.
And I'm very, very happy to have this.
It is a I mean, it just fucking rules.
So you'll get to find out about that on the fireside after the fireside, if you're interested,
there's gonna be a ping that's going to go out, Kathy's going to teach you all how to
do it.
And many, many, many, many, many thanks to ScopeHone and John Monty, who have done a
lot of things, not just this.
They really deserve all the love and gold stars possible.
Speaking of the Weeboy, oh my god.
Wepla.
The fucking Weeboy.
Oh, God.
All right.
Okay, so it might be the Weeboy.
All right, I've got one order of business here to go through as well.
So Cajanas is also part of our IT system.
And Cajanas is the hero who makes sure that every fireside is recorded.
And he brings order to chaos.
We have and he devised a very useful discord bot.
And this discord bot allows us to actually has a whole bunch of features that if I try
to articulate them here, it will just get them wrong.
But the point is, is this.
Many of you are part of various discords that are parts of your SIGs, your squads, your
corps, your whatever's and you already have this bot on there and you know what it does
and what I'm talking about.
But if you don't, if you have a if you have like a SIG or a squad or a click discord that
isn't plugged into the state, please do reach out to Cajanas.
There's a lot of useful features that this thing will enable and will also help with
security such that you don't end up with a bunch of hostile ass puppies on there scamming
the shit out of you or siphoning Intel to our foes.
So yeah, I think we've freed Wibla again.
I freed him before and then he got kicked out of the channel because of security measures
that I automated security measures and then I think he got freed again and sent back to
skirmish bot.
So rip.
What is going to happen with peri-basis politics when this new alliance is taking over its
territories?
That's a good question because I don't think many people know this and I want to brag about
them in public.
So during the middle of the hotter parts of the Vietnam War, I think this was around this
is when Faith Abolish first came under attack.
I think this was around like March or April.
I'd have to figure out we were we were getting ready to be in full woodchipper mode.
It was post in two and a Alliance in Faith Abolish named Nvidia Gloria Comas.
I can't actually pronounce it right because it's a Latin guild name, but these guys decided
that they they wanted to stand up and fight and they wanted to fight for us and they made
an extremely risky choice.
They decided to join the Imperium.
There's a lot of German players over there really cool dudes and you know, they came
on we're like we're going to take a risk on these guys.
It's a smaller Alliance.
They were trial members in the Imperium for a bit and after five months, we've been super
super happy with what we've seen and so I'm delighted to have made IGC full members of
the Imperium and they now have two constellations in period basis around the TCAG area and the
constellation south of it.
They've earned it.
They're awesome dudes high fives all around there.
So if you're looking at that map and you're going what it why are there these IGC TCUs
there?
That's what's going on with that.
It doesn't mean like there's some sort of big shift in terms of things.
They're full Imperium members.
They are your your brothers and sisters in arms just like everybody else who's a member
of the Imperium.
So high fives all around great dudes.
Yeah, Aiden Warden.
I really like him.
He's the leader of IGC.
All right, let's see what we got.
Is Brisk still alive?
I believe so.
He seemed like he was doing all right yesterday.
I think I ended up being the one that was more ragged because it was around the last
10 minutes of the meta show where my delayed action hangover finally kicked in and you
know, that's where we got.
All right, let me get some more questions here.
Again, like so we have some announcements to make next week not like the big announcement
but there is a project that I'm excited about that a bunch of people are excited about that
it's not the appropriate time to talk about today, but it will be for next week.
So that's going to be cool.
There's some other things that are happening that are cool, but I can't talk about here.
So I want you guys to understand that sometimes there are firesides where it's like, hey,
we're doing Q&A's and we're doing whatever and it's because things are relatively quiet.
In this case, things are not quiet.
There's all sorts of cool stuff happening.
It's just that please do bear with us.
We'll be revealing more next week because I have occasionally learned over the years.
I have a tendency to want to give everybody good news and then jump the fucking gun and
launch something before it's actually ready to be launched and then people experience
more of a frustrating experience grappling with it.
So we're going to try to be mature adults and hold off on that until next fireside.
So what happened with Stupid Idiot Fleet?
I missed the first part of the fireside.
The Stupid Idiot Fleet still exists.
It still rules.
And if anybody thinks that we are not doing that, they are wrong and should get sentenced.
Some of the things that have been happening on the chessboard have been very interesting.
If you're sort of paying attention to the big picture shit, we have this involvement
in Esoteria because initiative has put down a keepstar in D-TAC-P and then there's all
sorts of political power vacuum kind of chaos there in the Galactic East because we kind
of thought that NC would maybe deploy to try to fuck with Init, but instead they went to
VENAL.
So there's this shit happening in VENAL.
There's this shit happening in the Galactic East.
There is chaos under heaven and the situation is excellent.
Again we're still on this whole awakened empire into becoming the crisis kick and as a result
there's lots of irons in the fire.
It's good.
It's good.
So join SIGs and squads.
Thank you for reminding me guys.
This is the world's most obvious bingo square, but join SIGs and squads.
Join SIGs and squads.
Join SIGs and squads.
If there is a situation where there is an escalating level of warfare, you guys might
remember this from before the Vietnam War, we would do this little song and dance routine
where I would say "Nudge nudge wink wink if you want to get involved in some PvP outside
of Delve, join SIGs and squads."
And then that's sort of like the very slow, subtle drumbeats.
Very subtle.
Very subtle drumbeats before things escalate to a Jeff deployment and then we see where
things go from there.
So we are at the "Join SIGs and squads.
Look for PvP opportunities.
It's good to develop your F2s, Territory."
If you're new and you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm glad I said this.
If you're new and you just heard me say something like "It's time to develop your F2s" if you're
wondering what the fuck that is, during the war we made it very clear that it's not enough
to just be an F1 monkey in this alliance.
That you need to get involved and you need to learn how to develop skills in addition
to just turning up in fleets and collecting a pap, right?
So that's what we talk about when we say "Finding your F2."
There's a whole sticky in the war room about the third cultural revolution, which is that.
So in these times of "peace," I hope you all hear the scare quotes there.
There's never been a better time for you to both develop your own economic engine at home
because every goon, and hopefully all of our allies, we still have things in a situation
where everybody's looking for one shield and one armor Titan in their hangar.
Now we're not really pushing for Titans right now because our 350 billion is to actually
make them and CCBs fucked up the economy and stuff like that.
But for people who are wondering what we do in times of "peace," usually it is massively
gearing up our military and our personal and organizational economic bases to be able to
bring justice to a galaxy of chaos.
So for example, like it was before the Vietnam War, it's one of the reasons why we were able
to win, is it's like, "Well, gosh, again, don't do this with roll calls because roll
calls are not like the thing anymore, whatever.
Do not listen to this advice.
Specifically take the general strategic message home."
That's the punchline.
The punchline is you're like, "Hey, I can run four barges.
Maybe you could be running 10.
You have one or two capital ships.
Maybe you could have double that."
We always know that the puppies will always get together and come at us after a number
of years.
It's only a matter of time.
Sometimes it's three years, sometimes it's five years.
Maybe they'll jump the gun early and come after us sometime this year.
Maybe they'll want to reassemble Pappy.
And we want to make sure that everyone is actively preparing.
Don't just be sitting on your ass going like, "Well, it's peacetime, and so I'll just do
nothing."
Gear up always for wealth and war.
And if you're satisfied with your level, help your friends that need help with it.
If you have people in your corporations, in your SIGs, your squads, that are looking around
at you and there you are sailing around with your whole fucking multi-boxing fleet just
doing your thing, and they're like, "Well, fuck, I'm space poor.
I don't know what..."
Make sure that you are working actively to uplift those who are in the Imperium that
are not as well off as you are.
Rising tide lifts all boats.
When we all have more war material, when we all have more ISK, it is far easier for us
to destroy all the puppies.
Good question.
"If Pappy were to reassemble today, would we be recovered enough from their last failure
to repeat success?"
That is a good question.
It's partially in the future plan zone, but I'm going to answer this anyway.
I believe that there is a tremendous opportunity when our enemies make mistakes by engaging
us too aggressively before they are actually ready.
If there's a scenario where our enemies are overconfident and they believe that they can
Pappy reassemble and come at us early, I will take that fight happily.
And I want you guys to be ready to take that fight happily too.
Because I believe that if they do a premature Pappy, that gives us even more opportunities
to put our boots on their throat.
And so that's exactly what I want you guys to prepare for.
We can't guarantee it.
We don't know what's going to happen.
But in a scenario where the enemy reassembles too early and comes at us when they themselves
haven't finished recovering from their wounds, if we have been spending all this time preparing
and getting ready, that is an excellent strategic opportunity for us to rat fuck them back into
the fucking Stone Age.
So that's where we're going for this.
I know it's "peace," but if you kind of hear the excitement in my voice, this is not a
time to rest easy.
This is a time to prepare for war.
This is a time to fill your wallets.
This is a time to get assets that can get kinetic.
Not specifically kinetic in terms of, you know what I mean, not in terms of like the
actual like real guns.
I mean kinetic activity at the tactical and strategic level.
Killing fucking puppies.
Punishing them when they think that they have us at their mercy and showing them that actually
it's the other way around.
The fun stuff.
Why we play evil.
All right.
That metaphor did in fact get away from me.
Now we're talking about Drakeflames and Leviathans.
What have I done?
Somebody's asking questions about news on Jump Freighter changes.
I have no news about Jump Freighter changes.
I know that some, yeah, like Rattati said something on some podcast about how he didn't
like Jump Freighters and spooked a whole bunch of people because he really shouldn't be allowed
to speak in public about stuff like that.
But off he is.
Off he goes.
I haven't seen anything coming down the pipe that actually looks like that.
If there was, I would be screaming from the rooftops about it.
The main reason why it came up, it was an example to highlight the sort of level of,
oh gosh, is that guy really thinking about doing that or really thinking about talking
about that in a public place?
Gosh, that's a bad look.
If you're old school, you know that this is not the first time that's happened.
Back in the day you had CCB Grayscale who was famously wanting everybody in NullSec
to be doing like freighter ops the old school way because he had decided that that was fun
even though the game had changed and things were no longer like whatever his nostalgic
memories were.
So this is not the first time we've had CCB devs say stupid shit about core aspects of
the galactic supply chain that they have no understanding of.
Any updates on upcoming meetups?
There is a couple to begin with.
We have, obviously there's going to be FanFest.
I'm hoping that the plague is going to be out of the way there and that I'm intending
to be attending FanFest.
I want to get across the pond.
It's been way too long since I've been to anywhere near Europe.
And speaking of that, there is Goon Berlin, which is July 9th and 10th.
That is a goon swarm and imperium event that is not a public official one, but for us and
our people, Goon Berlin.
And of course, when I say Goon Berlin, that everyone in the imperium is invited.
It's for all of us.
But that's a goon meet.
That's in Berlin.
I want to make that one, if at all possible, I think it would be really cool to go to the
Berlin one.
All right.
I don't know anything about the Dallas or Des Moines, unfortunately, Eric.
That was a very specific question he was asking about.
Plano or Dallas or Des Moines, I do not know anything about those ones.
Doesn't mean they're not happening.
It's just it's not at my level of awareness.
Check out SpaceGBS.
That is where there is more information about goomps.
Alrighty.
Fish update.
There's a Wurbanz question.
I'm not qualified to answer that because I'm not a finance guy.
But if Kaznir is here, he could handle it.
OK, cool.
Kaznir, you can answer that guy's question.
A question about fish.
The fish are doing well.
I don't really have much fish updates.
They're sort of happily plateaued.
The big fat goby we have and the golden grommy we have have become like besties.
And it's really cute.
Like they hang out together, which is a really strange thing because they're like one's a
top-dwelling fish and the other is a fucking purple spotted fat Australian goby.
He's really fucking cute.
OK, Kaznir is answering the question.
You can expect that principal repurchases will continue throughout the year.
We've begun them in small amounts.
And that is true.
I know that it like as part of like the corporate taxation.
So there's there's some complicated finance shit that's happening here.
But like we the state has actively been repurchasing them and paying things off.
And there's a system.
How much does my only fish?
OK, train update.
Wow.
So the train update is how do I want to answer this question?
We have like three new Metcalf kits to do, and I have to decide whether I want to try
to have like a traditional like British layout or they do like a branch line terminus and
stuff.
I need to settle on the track plan I want, because right now I'm literally just sort
of like playing around with Kato Unitrack on my porch on the floor, which is really
bad for trains.
You're not supposed to be running like three hundred fifty dollar like computer trains
around a track where there's like dust and pet hair and shit.
But that's just sort of where we are right now.
And once I actually have like a track plan settled and stuff, I can post some pictures.
We also have like a signal tower to do a coaling station.
There's just some some real real anorak.
Is that what they call them?
The British have like a word for train autists like myself, and I think they call them anoraks.
So, you know, terribly, terribly nerdy stuff, which is exactly on brand for a space emperor
in a game like EVE Online.
I've actually always had model trains in one form or another.
Like I grew up at a four by eight HO scale layout when I was young, and then I had an
N scale one in college that never really got finished because wiring back in the day was
more complicated.
And then I started chasing tail instead and discovered clubbing and then fast forward
many years and I've got like a DCC set up here on OO gauge British trains.
OK, how's the nerd furniture business going?
OK, this is the last question I'm going to take is this is all like Mittens personal
stuff and I don't want to waste you guys time too much.
Madfern.com check it out.
We have been a lot of people been interested in like bookshelves and I think bookshelves
and tables in particularly in particular, because I think lots of people are using them
for like wargaming and like craft stuff and things.
So check it out.
Madfern.com I don't like to pitch that on a fireside, but you ask.
All right, boys and girls, thank you so much for coming.
We're going to do this again next week and I'll have a few more announcements for you.
In the meantime, get rich and prepare for war because we're a piece where quote quote
peace unquote, right?
You know, like it is.
Thanks for coming.
See you next week.