Editor’s Note: Written by GSF Leader The Mittani, the CEO update provide a good insight of things to come, if you are a member of the Deklein Coalition. We’ll publish a submitted analysis in a moment.
GoonSwarm Federation – CEO Update: Victory in Branch (issued by The Mittani to GSF)
We’ve had a busy winter – the newbie drive, the December CSM summit, and one of the most crushing and one-sided rapid conquests of a region in EVE’s history. The influx of ~600 newbies and returning vets, poncing off to Iceland, returning to slam those ~600 newbies into Branch, watching White Noise collapse in a quivering heap of excuse-laden incompetence, being marooned in Alaska for 18 days… I’ve returned to my proper timezone and have stabilized in Madison. It’s been some time since I wrote a CEO Update; the SOTG – as always – was more of a device to mobilize 1600+ humans and point them at our enemies than a method of communicating information.
Our Winter War
War is a test of one’s power and capability as an alliance – not only what you and your people can put on the field directly, but to see how functional you have been in your diplomacy. Have you treated your friends with fairness? Have you ensured that there is a delicate balance of fear? When the chips are down, how much raw force can you project to defend your home?
There are times when, as CEO, I have a moment of dislocation – a feeling that the entity we have forged together is much, much more vicious than I had planned. When I last had a SOTG for 6VDT and 1270 people showed up, I was stunned. For Branch we mustered numbers north of 1600, and then put them all in fleets. It’s true, the NC and the DRF would put large numbers of trash in fleets and fling them at one another with no concern for order and doctrine; we have managed to not only marshal shocking participation, but maintained the kind of tight doctrinal conformity that would give the most jaded Brownshirt an erection.
So: White Noise died, and we can expect them to cascade in due time. Raidendot has begun putting on a brave face and making the usual BoBish ‘defend NOL to the last man’ noises, complete with overwrought Alamo metaphors. Raidendot has completely evacuated Tenal, and I think that both Raidendot and we agree that they’re in a much better position, strategically, on the other side of Tribute from us.
The Next War
We are now consolidating our position in Branch. Even the most politically blind badposter can tell that we will be invading Tenal at some point in the future; because of this, Raidendot has brought Ev0ke up north and has commenced attempting to harry our tech holdings in Pure Blind and lowsec. This is excellent news, as we’re not actually ready to invade Tenal in practice (and I do loathe doing the thing everyone predicts – see the post-Crucible expectations of a GSF Tribute hit vs. our holding fast until the DRF war kicked off) and I’d prefer to fight the Nazis and our Ancient Foe on our terms near VFK rather than amidst an invasion.
What does this mean?
It means we’re going to chop their dicks off, and Mister Vee and our eurotime FCs will be doing the chopping. Basing out of VFK, we are going to commence Clusterfuck-wide reactive ops using Alphafleets and Welpfleets. These will not be structure shots, so tight composition is key, particularly emphasizing Scimitars and Maels. In US time, we will be reinforcing Raidendot tech moons in Branch (three remain) and Venal. In Euro time, we will be engaging Raidendot over their techs when they come out and actively dropping on any hostile Ev0ke or Raidendot fleet dumb enough to fuck with our holdings in Pure Blind. Once we have massacred them and humiliated them we will make our next move.
Reactive ops mean fights. Reactive ops mean – hopefully – killing our foe’s supercapital fleet. Reactive ops mean doing what Mister Vee tells you. Reactive ops means we get to scratch the itch for murder and chaos that we did not find release for with White Noise.
Shoutouts, Branch Edition
There can be no doubt: without Rydis and Dabigredboat, Branch would not have happened. But behind those obvious two superstars are a host of directors, fcs, and allies who helped Make This Shit Happen. The GIA had White Noise infiltrated six ways from Sunday, GSOL nearly had heart attacks when we began winning so fast that 9+ IHUBs and 10+ towers had to be deployed on a nightly basis, yet they got the job done. Recon and our Scouts had eyes and cynos on the foe and their moons nonstop. Allied FCs such as Inter from RZR and Tradik and Lake from GENTS led more fleets than I can count. Mynas Atoch did such a good job as a caps FC that he ended up promoted to Illuminati. Corps Diplo have put in sterling service on the sticky problems of coalition wrangling, particularly in dividing up our spoils in as equitable a way as possible. I can name more of the usual names – Laz, Vee, Vily, Kismeteer, Spookydonut, Joe Richter, Arkhamina, etc – but at some point you have to stop thanking and start offending people by cutting the list short. Yet most of all, what made Branch happen was the line members of GSF and the Clusterfuck who showed up to op after op in the right ships at the right time. (No, guy who always shows up to ops in a Myrmidon, you didn’t help.) My only regret about Branch is that it produced little in the way of agonies from our enemies, who rolled over and admitted defeat almost before we began. And we had such lovely new knives, too.
Adventures in CCPland
Vile Rat and I headed to Iceland in December for Yet Another CSM Summit. The good news is that this one wasn’t awful, like the atrocity of the Emergency Summit. The fruits of our efforts in seizing the CSM last March have been made obvious by Crucible; Time Dilation was successfully used on Tranquility just the other day, and I expect it to be turned on permanently soon. That alone will utterly change the nature of warfare in EVE, increasing the emphasis on subcapitals and the effectiveness of Logistics ships.
There are perhaps three pubbies left on eve-o who are still chanting the old ‘CSM is Useless’ mantra; the rest have actually gotten it through their mong-brains that the CSM matters (in the right hands) and can produce results (in the right hands) – and so have shifted their wailing and ranting to the more pleasing refrain that the CSM has too much power and is a danger to the game, and that (the horror!) goons are on the CSM.
Heavens!
The parentheticals demonstrate the rule – the CSM can wield a frightening level of influence if someone of sound mind and a knack for political manipulation is in charge. The experience of the previous CSM demonstrated to everyone in nullsec the galaxy-destroying risk of locking random ignoramuses in a conference room with CCP Greyscale.
So: we are approaching Election Season once more. Last year we – along with other like-minded members of nullsec – swept the election and helped remake EVE into a spaceship game. There will be many more votes this time around, as CSM6 raised the stakes for the entire game. I will once again be running for the Chairmanship, and we will be fully mobilizing to ensure that the voice of ~the people~ (ie, our people, and everyone of like mind to us) is heard. This will be a high-stakes election, not merely because of the power we have created within the CSM, but because after blowing up thousands of miserable Empire barges, I suspect the pubbies don’t like us much!
GIA and Blackops Recruitment
The GIA and Blackops have both had a renaissance during the Branch campaign. Our penetration of White Noise was breathtaking; every single op they formed up for, we knew of in advance. That’s only possible due to dedicated spies, and we need more – we always need more. Our spy agency is one of the things that truly differentiates GSF from other, more morally-bound alliances; contact Endie, Hratli Smirks, or Tamir Lenk to join them.
Blackops has active leadership and is no longer wandering in the wilderness of strategic irrelevance. During Branch they massacred White Noise’s many stragglers and kept HB7 a place of sorrow for weeks after the capital had fallen. As it happens, they also have a recruitment thread up!
POCOs and PI
Gentlegoons, Planetary Interaction may be awful and hideous and boring, this is true. I find it a loathsome feature and curse the name of Tyrannis with almost the same level of bitterness as I do Incarna. Yet it cannot be denied: we have one of the single most ideal setups for PI in the entire galaxy, with six plasma planets across two systems, and the new POCOs CCP introduced in Crucible absolutely shit out isk.
My Finance team tells me that we have a unique setup here in Deklein that nowhere else in the galaxy can be matched. If you have not already read this guide in Home Economics, you should do so, and proceed to crap out Enriched Uranium. Despite my bitter loathing of PI, even I was able to copy the setup in this guide with only a middling amount of frustration. The best thing about POCOs, besides making good income that we convert into Maelstroms for you, is the fact that they make hisec pubbies howl in rage. PI is now one of those things best done in sov-held space, so go forth and get rich only doing minimal effort while laughing at the idiots in Empire who rolled 16 PI
accounts and are now bankrupt. Membercorps, New and Old
Our old friends Pulsar Inc are joining Swarm. They were a TCF splinter corp that formed part of the Cursed Alliance faction of French; they lived with us for a while at the end of Delve before we fucked up and didn’t pay our sov bills. While GSF pretty much never recruits – and indeed, I’m often looking for an excuse to kick out a misbehaving membercorp – we are always a home for friends from TCF. Great War debts are sacred. Meanwhile, we’re pausing amidst the smoking ruins to analyze statistics of member corp participation during the invasion, much like we have analyzed allied participation. This will take some time, but it’s already apparent that Merch Industrial and Thunderwaffe have gone from being moribund to being effective organizations once more, and have thus earned their Illuminati stakeholder status back. I can only imagine that OldPueblo is going to create a victory youtube involving fart noises to celebrate.
A Victory Lap in Empire
We have not gotten nearly enough suffering from the conquest of Branch. We must have our screams; they’ll just have to come from Empire. During the war, freelance Dread Pirates have continued to sow terror across Empire; the whispered implication of another Interdiction has kept the price of oxytopes at double their pre-Interdiction levels. We are not done with hisec, and our Finance Team (wizards of capital extraction, and clever as only sociopaths can be) have invented something that makes the Ice Interdiction look like amateur hour.
The Interdiction made the game shudder in horror. Our Victory Lap will make the Jita Riots look like a blip. It will involve Tornadoes – lots of fucking Tornadoes – and I implore you to have a Tornado character around in the next few weeks. Other high-dps BCs will work in a pinch, too. While having positive sec status is handy, as always the Dread Pirates have found ways to dodge the popo; your -10 Tornado jocks will work in a pinch, too.
EVE will learn that when Goonswarm wins a war, the celebration will be the suffering of absolutely everyone else.
- The Mittani
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