Over the next week KenZoku and allies started winning back key moons in Querious, Delve with Executive Outcomes holding the front line in Period Basis pretty comfortably.
This prompted Goons spymaster Mittani to post the following 'morale' post on Goons forums:
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Low-intensity strategic warfare is a bitch. The objectives tend to focus on assets which are critical yet incomprehensible to the average goon.
What do moons outside of stations have to do with the alliance? What does 'r64' even mean? Can I shoot dysprosium? Do we care about Querious? What about Period Basis? What's going on? Ooh, a wormhole!
This confusion is mostly the fault of the senior leadership. Darius, myself, Karttoon et al have been swamped with various real life issues - this is not an excuse, but an explanation. In the past week, Dabigredboat, Jaroslav, Brennah and many others have picked up the slack while your fearless leaders have been picking their noses. So, belatedly, here is an update to let you know precisely what the fuck is going on.
tl;dr: The war in Querious is a slow quagmire which we are presently losing, though every day of delay in Querious brings us closer to Sov4 in Delve. However, unless we turn our shit around in a serious way, all of our efforts will be for naught.
QUERIOUS FRONT:
Two weeks ago we had a pair of serious welps. After our stronting fuckup decisively lost us 49-, we suffered another station-level welp in 3BK where offline RKZ towers had been left undestroyed. They were fueled, turned on, and an additional pile of Red.Overlord, -A- and other shitty pet towers blocked out the rest of the moons in that system.
Both of these losses can be blamed on organizational-level burnout, as they took place at a time where virtually every system and station in Delve and all of our R64s swapped to Sov3 at once, which meant that a host of jammer towers and an entire bridge network was being thrown up in a herculean, sleepless effort by our logistics team. Shit got missed.
Since that time, we've managed to mostly secure our R64s. R64s provide our alliance-level income. The first step when attacking an alliance (unless you have total military superiority) is to cut their R64s off. Initially we lost four of them before they swapped to Sov3, largely due to stront timing issues - we had a stupid setting for default stront, and most of our R64s had been thrown up in a rush, as we took 25+ R64s over the space of 4 days. After yet another massive push, GSOL put jammers and bridges at all of our R64s, significantly impacting RKZ's ability to attack them.
Then we killed Kenny's capital fleet.
Without their capital fleet, RKZ's allies have been reluctant to do serious siegework on RKZ's behalf; the conflict has shifted from a station contest in 49- to tussles over R64s, most recently in Q2-. Unfortunately for us, many goons do not understand the significance of R64s or why they should care about something that isn't a station, so our participation has been crap. That, or it's the fact that no one has been providing a high-level overview of the war, so there's a feeling of confusion and a lack of clarity; take your pick. Or blame taxes.
The big problem is that, while the pace of our losses has slowed dramatically since killing the RKZ capital fleet, we're still losing; We lost our R64s in Q2- even though that system was jammed. While we initially lost 49- due to a stronting fuckup (ie, our timer got whacked), we proceeded to lose an additional ~10 towers in timezones where usually we don't worry about tower losses. Because goons are not showing up, we're taking hits where we normally would have uncontested system control; our counterattacks are faltering because we can't summon massive goon turnout in our primetime to do a hellpurge.
PERIOD BASIS FRONT:
http://evemaps.dotlan.net/map/Period_Basis
Slow progress here. KIA, ZAF and Morsus Mihi have been chewing on EXE and RKZ soverignty. RKZ has a number of R64s in this region, almost all of them owned by DICE, which is presently the most functional corp in RKZ - as they have cash. All of them had been guarded by Sov3 and jammers, but as the map demonstrates, KIA/ZAF have spammed those systems and snapped the Sov3s on a number of them.
EXE at one point had a substantial bridge network in Period Basis that led to Delve but that has recently snapped with the loss of HIX4 (and, earlier, 1-2JP4 and 0-NTIS). That bridge (from the EXE stations) took them to the doorstep of TN25, a Frontal Impact station 1 jump from HIX4 where Morsus Mihi has been engaged in a spam war with FI.
In sum, while Period Basis is a vastly lower priority than R64s in Delve and stations in Querious, it's moving in a positive direction.
DELVE FRONT:
On 4/21, we get Sov4 in the W-4 constellation, where the bulk of our stations are. Over the next few weeks, the rest of Delve flips to Sov4, including the NOL constellation where we built two new outposts. Essentially all of Delve is Sov3, jammed, and connected by jump bridges. We have a working empire bridge network from NOL -> A2-V27 -> Empire.
This is paradise. However, it's going to be on fire if we don't turn things around in Querious.
Already we have lost an R64 in Delve itself, in A-E which is NPC sov and unjammable. RKZ has spammed 1-SMEB and EXE has spammed M0O as possible bridge/cynobeacon routes.
THE FORCES AGAINST US:
Our primary enemy in this fight is not RKZ, which has begun to have serious systemic issues, but -A-, ROL, and their associated pets. Their numbers and timezone coverage have allowed RKZ to stumble forward, zombielike, and staunch their losses:
http://evemaps.dotlan.net/alliance/KenZoku
As you can see, RKZ has stabilized at around 2660 members, where before they had been steadily losing. This is a natural consequence of them having retaken 2 stations from us.
-A- has been pingponged somewhat between the 49- front and 9-98, 46DP, and eastern Tenerifis where XIX has been making inroads. That front is being distracted by ED/IRC's invasion of RA, who had been helping XIX vs -A-. In general, however, -A- turnout has decreased markedly over the past few weeks. If we can get goon participation back to normal levels, we should be able to overpower them. However, until -A- is pried away from supporting RKZ, we're not going to see a RKZ failure cascade, which is our end goal.
OUR STRATEGIC GOALS:
* RETAKE OUR LOST R64S: A-E, Q2-, ZAU, 5V-, 49-, C-7
* RETAKE 49- AND 3BK STATIONS
* DEFEND DELVE UNTIL IT HITS SOV4 (4/21 ONWARDS)
* BREAK RKZ FOREVER AND HARVEST THEIR TEARS
WHAT YOU CAN DO
1. Show up on ops.
2. Show up on ops.
3. Show up on ops.
4. Show up on ops.
5. Show up on ops.
6. Join the GIA.
7. Why the fuck are you still in NPC Delve? No one should be in 319. 0-H is for formups.
8. Help GSOL with push butan duty.
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Somewhat predictably this was leaked to KenZoku/BoB who then used Mittani's comments about the war in Querious being a 'quagmire' in their own internal propoganda to boost the morale of their own members and associated allies.
Unfortunately for them Mittani's call to arms seems to have provoked a response and Goons have gone back on the offensive. Rather than wait for BoB spies to do it Mittani has subsequently been posting updates on the war in Delve/Querious/Period Basis on CAOD (Corporation and Alliance Discussions) and I have to say they make a very interesting read. Obviously Mittani is making a political point - the war is after all going well for Goons at the moment - however they do give an insight into the conflict which is I have to admit more eloquent than my own!
You can view the relevant updates here:
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1054371
While obviously biased to present the Goons and allies in the best light (and as such they tend to gloss over Goon & allied losses (the Pandemic Legion Titan loss being the most significant), they do provide an interesting overview of how the war is going.
Elsewhere
Fountain:
Most EVE wars end not because an alliance has been defeated in space but because of internal drama, usually resulting from differing egos, goals and objectives within alliance. Defeat on the battlefield and enemy infiltrators can help bring such differences to the surface but to be exploited the flaws need to exist.
A good example of an alliance 'failcascading' is Puppetmasters who recently launched an invasion of Fountain - threatening Pandemic Legion and Sons of Tangra assets and 'pet' alliances.
When resistance toughened and Puppetmaster stopped making progress internal divisions leapt to the forefront in the alliance resulting in this insightful post by Arimathea Anthelas.
Drone Regions/Insmother:
Intrepid Crossing (IRC) and Ethereal Dawn (ED) have continued their war against Red Alliance despite being set upon by various Northern Coalition sub-alliances (Wildly Inappropriate/Majesta etc)
With Goonswarm and the main Northern Coalition alliances focused on finally finshing off the war vs BoB/KenZoku in Delve/Period Basis/Querious and with the other local powers (xXDeathXx & United Legion) focused on hitting Against All Authorities (-A-) and Atlas in Tenerifis in order to divide their forces and prevent them helping BoB/KenZoku, it seems that IRC and ED have avoided being steamrollered and continue to take offensive actions against Red Alliance and their other enemies.
However pressure must be mounting on IRC ED and this is surely indicated by desperate sounding posts like this one. I bet IRC/ED diplomats and propogandists winced when they read that one!
Despite this IRC/ED are continuing to put up a fight as this thread indicates.
Tenerifis
As mentioned above the former Goon region of Tenerifis is now being fought over by Atlas and -A- on one side and United Legion, the xXDeathXx alliances and other assorted groups. Tenerifis was one of several regions which Goons abandoned when they moved wholescale to Delve in the aftermath of the BoB disbandment and was one of the regions siezed by -A- and other BoB/Kenzoku allies.
With -A- now being the main obstacle in the path of final victory over BoB/KenZoku it is clear that the Goon coalition is trying to distract their attention away from Querious by attacking assets at the opposite end of their empire.
As with the Drone Region/Insmother war, the war in Tenerifis seems to be generating significant cap battles. In this one an Atlas Mothership (supercap) is killed whilst an xXDeathXx Titan escapes by the skin of his teeth.
Curse
Danish capital killing specialists x13 (formerly BoB/KenZoku allies) have just joined the Krautbreak alliance that is based in Curse. Krautbreak is a conglomeration of renowned German cap-heavy corp Evoke and Outbreak (who were once regarded by many as the best PvP alliance in EVE). While x13 is not a huge corporation it is extremely capable and cap heavy. Its addition to Krautbreak substantially strengthens that alliances' capabilities. Are they going to focus on securing Curse and continue doing their own thing - or is the addition of x13 a sign that they are about to reengage in the 'Great War' and possibly take a hand in the fight in neighbouring Wicked Creek?
Wicked Creek
It seems that things are also starting to heat up in Wicked Creek where Aggression Alliance (who seem to be aligned with the KenZoku/-A- bloc) has launched an attack on Goon allies Scorched Earth and Tau Ceti Federation, with the backing of Atlas and -A-.
It seems fairly early days in this conflict but those who are interested can follow happenings in this Scrapheap thread.
That's about it from me for now!
Nice round up.
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