Rifter Drifter

Since I joined Against All Authorities I’ve been doing lots of solo roaming in Rifters and Thrashers. Most of what I’ve done has concentrated on finding fights and something that I’ve neglected has been to make myself bookmarks except when I’ve needed to safe up to avoid CVA defence fleets.

The way that I fight solo is to use fast ships and try and pick off the tackle from a fleet. In general what I’ve been doing is warping to gates, stations, and celestials at range and then attempting to lure their tacklers into chasing me. Without bookmarks this tactic is prone to getting me caught in bubbles or getting over-confident and getting killed. Over-confidence and boredom are probably the two main reasons that I die.

During the lulls in our campaign against CVA and the Providence Holders I have started a new project. I am going to make sure that I have a good range of bookmarks in all the systems that I regularly PvP in. For now this means mapping out Curse and Providence. Several friends think I’ve gone mad. I’m being very methodical in this process and making sure that I have a large selection of bookmarks at all of the strategic locations in each system.

This might sound like a tedious and dull activity and in some ways it is. One of the advantages, though, is that by spending time in hostile systems I find people to fight, or at least have fun not fighting. Having these bookmarks has already proven to be useful too so its definitely not time that I’ve wasted.

So while I might not have much exciting stuff to write about I have been up to something worthwhile. As well as making the bookmarks I’ve also been experimenting with Rifter fits, learning to hate rail Ranises, and failing to stay cool, calm, and collected when in charge of gangs.

This is the second part of my analysis of the Catch – Providence war. In the first part I discussed the possible motivations for CVA/LFA’s attack and looked at the tactical mistakes they made. This chapter looks at the battle for D-GTMI and its consequences.

Whatever the reasons for the initial conflict, -A-’s counter-attack was swift and brutal. Unlike the Citadelian militia, the -A- war machine is a well drilled, experienced, and well equipped military juggernaut. Sixteen titans and over a dozen super carriers were deployed to D-GTMI along with the full might of -A- and their allies in the Ushra’Khan. At each stage of the siege the defending force was summarily brushed aside with brutal efficiency. The final showdown came on the evening of the 28th January. The full might of -A-’s forces along with many allies along for the ride gathered in D-GTMI at noon and began to lock down the system.

The defenders had not prepared their position in advance and had to jump in their capital fleet once the system population was already at 800. They warped from their deep safe to a POS but because of poor communication or poor discipline not all pilots had entered the correct password and several were unable to get to safety before the hostile fleet descended and killed them. With the stragglers down the POS was bubbled and the CVA capital fleet was trapped. To add insult to injury the attackers used their knowledge of the POS password to send in ships to bump out the hostiles. This was the final straw and the CVA capital fleet jumped out of the system.

At this point they should have given up the system as lost. Poor preparation had allowed -A- to get a numbers advantage and now the system was running in a high lag state. It had already been observed that jumping fleets into heavily populated systems can have devastating effects but that did not stop the CVA leadership from jumping in their conventional fleet and then cynoing in their capital fleet to attack the SBUs. As detailed in a pair of recent dev blogs (one two), the lag meant that they did not load the system before the request timed out and they were stuck in limbo with their ship in the new system but their sensors still registering their previous location. They had no chance to load grid and the entire fleet was slaughtered.

Once the battle had died down the Providence defenders began to claim about -A- “metagaming“. As far as they were concerned -A- had won the battle for D-GTMI by “cheating”. It wasn’t just -A- who had cheated them. The defeat was also CCP’s fault. This leads us to the question of where exactly the blame for the defeat should lie.

By the time of the D-GTMI fight it had been determined that under Dominion there was more lag than before the patch was applied. Assuming all of the protagonists are in the same system then the lag is spread evenly and everyone experiences it the same. If one party choses to jump into the other, though, they experience much higher lag than the defenders (again, this is discussed in a recent dev blog) as witnessed in Geminate and Fountain. By now several incidents had highlighted this problem and already there were tactics being developed to help mitigate it. CVA’s leadership should have been armed with this information and the call to jump back into D-GTMI and fight on a bubbled gate should never have been given.

Even before they left the system CVA had already made several critical mistakes. They had the defensive advantage and squandered it in two ways. First of all they should have had every single man and ship at their disposal already in D-GTMI. They didn’t have to be at POSes or in the station, in fact deep safe spots are even better. That way they could have logged in, loaded the system, and then warped to a rendezvous point. They could even have locked down the F9E-KX gate and made it hard for -A- reinforcements to make it into the system. The main way they failed to capitalise, though, was in their use of reinforcement timers. As an entity CVA has a pretty good coverage of both the EU and US timezones. -A- has no such luxury as we are mostly a European alliance with a large contingent of Russian members. The continuous late night battles in 49-U6U took their toll on our membership and CVA should have made us do the same. By alarm clocking us they would have reduced our numbers and deteriorated our morale. Letting us attack in our prime negated a large factor of CVA’s defensive advantage. Despite these failures to attempt to work around known problems Aralis still lays the blame firmly at CCP’s feet: “And I at least am furious with CCP for their stupid Dominion patch.”

What about the accusations of metagaming and cheating? These are based upon the fact that AAA have spies within the Providence alliances and were able to listen in to CVA’s voice communications. One of the results of this was that we acquired their POS password (for the record we had this for several days, they should have changed it regularly) which allowed us to bump their ships out of the POS when we had surrounded them. This is what caused them to jump out and abandon the system. (On a side note it was pointed out by an AAA FC that one option available to them would have been to call primaries and then drop the POS shield and catch the AAA fleet off guard.) The Providence residents historically have a very fast and loose attitude to intelligence. They are in the habit of using the local channel as an intelligence tool and often leak information such as POS locations and passwords through that – take my Legion kill for an example. Infiltrating them does not take a genius.

Regardless of debates about what constitutes metagaming the key point is that CVA viewed this as cheating and its something outside their rules of engagement. Now this I find to be very odd. Spying is a key part of sovereignty warfare in Eve, just as it is in the real world. I understand that CVA are roleplaying but lets take a look at a historical example, the First Crusade. This seems to me like a good place to draw a parallel seeing as it was a church-backed attempt to drive the heathens from the Holy Land. Very similar to Project Deliverance, I’m sure you’ll agree. Anyway, the key point here is that during the Crusades the church employed vast networks of spies to undermine its enemy and achieve its goals:

In 1095, Pope Urban II called for the first Crusade, a military campaign to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Lands from Muslim and Byzantine rule. The Church massed several large armies, and employed spies to report on defences surrounding Constantinople and Jerusalem. Special intelligence agents also infiltrated prisons to free captured crusaders, or sabotage rival palaces, mosques, and military defences. The Crusades continued for nearly four centuries, draining the military and intelligence resources of most of the European monarchs.

Surely an entity such as CVA would stop at nothing to destroy the heathens and liberate space in the name of their god? At the very least they should have some form of internal inquisition to find spies within their own ranks. This “we don’t use spies and if you do its cheating” attitude is not only impractical, its terrible role play. The ranks of the heathens should be teeming with agents doing the work of god.

So we can conclude that the reason that CVA lost the battle for D-GTMI and their capital fleet was due to their insularity. They have been isolated from the combat going on around the cluster and failed to heed the warnings that the wars in Geminate and Fountain had provided. The responsibility for their loss does not lie with -A- for cheating or CCP for the acknowledged faults in the Dominion patch. No, it lies squarely with their leadership and fleet commanders for failing to prepare properly before initiating a war of this scale. The fact that Aralis says “Dominion favours the attacker very heavily. And it was always obvious AAA planned to attack us. They are napped with all their other neighbours now and it seemed likely to head that way,” shows just how out of touch he is with the realities of modern sovereignty warfare. The fact that the attackers must win four battles in order to take a system and the defenders only one to take it coupled with how much control the defenders have over when the battle takes place puts the advantage firmly with the defenders.

What of the consequences of the battle? Well, once the fight had been won and the system claimed, -A- did not make any further advances. Instead they came to CVA with a cease fire and peace proposal. The offer was very simple. Formally acknowledge the border between Providence and Catch, promise no further incursions, and -A- would hand back D-GTMI. This was a truly historical offer. After taking just one system -A- leadership were ready to return it to CVA and withdraw from Providence provided that CVA ratified the border.

More amazing that the offer on the table was the fact that CVA refused it point blank. They once again cited that accepting such a treaty was inconsistent with their role play aims. Instead of accepting the armistice, rebuilding their fleet, learning their lessons, and plotting a new, better invasion, they decided to martyr their region to the wrath of -A- and U’K. When you have suffered such a catastrophic defeat there is no dishonour in accepting terms, especially such favourable terms as those offered here. Just because you are nodding and smiling on the outside there is no reason why you can’t be sharpening your knives on the inside. There is no role play justification, beyond martyrdom, that can justify this stupidity. Again citing the examples of the Crusades, the Third Crusade ended with a treaty between Richard I and Saladin because he knew that at the time there was no way that they could retake Jerusalem. The treaty was seen as the best way holding on to the gains that had been made, especially in light of the disastrous results of the Second Crusade that led directly to the fall of Jerusalem. It also provided a footing from which the Fourth Crusade could be launched. I’m not the only one seeing the parallels here, am I? Why can CVA not take such a decision?

The hand of peace was offered to CVA with a chance to regroup and learn their lessons. The hand was summarily rejected and the war continues…

Part three of this discussion will look at the events that followed CVA’s rejection of -A-’s peace offer.

I’ve been reading around a bit and thinking about it and I think I’m now able to discuss the Providence-Catch situation in a nice balanced fashion. This is a huge topic and I’m not going to attempt to tackle it in a single post.

On 17th December, 2009, Against ALL Authorities allowed their sovereignty claims on the 9K0E-A, WD-VTV, SV5-8N, and F9E-KX systems to elapse. Under the new Dominion mechanics there is no point in paying for the maintenance of systems that aren’t actively used. These border systems are away from -A-’s heartland in central Catch and their principal purpose was as a defensive buffer for the strategically important high-sec gateway system HED-GP.

At the same time the Providence residents were beginning to eye up a way to expand their Empire. From what I can make out from Aralis’ interview with Hallan Turrek their reasons for this seem to be a little bit confused. Their initial pronouncement said that they deemed Providence to be fully “delivered” and were now looking to bring the godless region of Catch under Amarrian rule. If they are looking to expand their borders Catch makes good sense. It is the only nullsec region that borders Providence and the Holders (especially Sylph Alliance and Sev3rance) have a strong presence from the border all the way down to 2J-WJY. In fact, this region of Catch has plenty of unclaimed systems which would have opened up the way for an expansion into the sparsely populated Immensea region. Instead, CVA and LFA chose to strike into the border systems and directly threaten -A-’s empire logistics. It should be pointed out here that Providence is unusual in that is has not just one but three empire exits, including one to high security space. As soon as -A-’s logistics were threatened then a swift retaliation became inevitable. A move for some of the systems in eastern Catch would have been a far safer way of testing the water and getting experience of the new sovereignty mechanics.

Once the retaliation begins the reasons for the initial attack become confused. In his conversation with Hallan, Aralis suggests that this was a strike against -A- not because the Providence residents need more space but because “the core reason is them giving bases to UK in their space.” Okay, so now this is a “war against terror”. If that is the case why was the initial assault limited to just four unclaimed systems? If they really wanted to take the war to -A- while they were occupied in Querious, then surely they would also have set up SBUs in HED-GP and 36N-HZ not to mention claiming the other systems in that pipeline. A few lines later he says “AAA are a big alliance beating up their neighbours as they have always done. AAA were and are our enemies dedicated to our destruction.” So now the reason is self defence. -A- is out to destroy CVA and therefore CVA needs to expand “such that no one has bases within jumprange of your core systems.”

So as you can see, CVA’s reasons for the initial assault seem to be confused. Was it a strike at -A- for harbouring their enemies? Was it because Providence is now under the rule of God and the message must be spread to the next region on the map? Was it because -A- roam in Providence and threaten their very existence? On the last note it should be pointed out that when CVA lost sovereignty due to an account hack, -A- very vocally and forcefully stood forward and declared that they would defend Providence until the reason for the disband had been discovered. This is how Aralis responds to Hallan’s questions on the subject:

Hallan Turrek > Wait, during the dissolution of CVA by hackers, didn’t they help protect Providence?
Aralis > Well they certainly didn’t abuse the situation.
Aralis > An honourable gesture and respect to them for that.
Hallan Turrek > I was to understand they actually camped gates to protect your space.
Hallan Turrek > Is that not true?
Aralis > I don’t actually know it wasn’t in our space. It could have been.

He doesn’t know whether -A- put themselves between a crippled CVA and the slathering hoards! Where was he, under a rock?

Anyway, looking at what happened and some of the leaked responses from other Holders such as Paxton Federation, it seems that LFA and CVA saw some vacant systems on their border and made a grab for them. In support of this the LFA sovereignty claim began at 8:16 am on 10th January but CVA did not announce their official expansion of Operation Deliverance until a week later at 00:50 on 17th January. They do not seem to have wanted to make a direct attack on Against All Authorities and seem to have acted without the consensus of the entire region.

Itarulde has posted an excellent analysis of the tactical flaws in CVA’s assault over at Scrapheap Challenge. It is definitely worth a read.

Coming in Part 2: The Battle for D-GTMI.

I’ve just been having a nosey through the Google Analytics readouts for Rifter Drifter and I thought I’d share some of the things it has taught me. If you don’t like random numbers and statistics then you should probably stop reading here.

• 10,829 people visited the site in January (161% more than typical for this size of site, according to Google). That’s 350 a day!
• With that said, I’ve and 986 visitors today thanks to a link on Eve Online’s official Facebook page. Before that my best was 389 when I posted the nullsec politics primer.
• The average readers spends just under three and a half minutes here and looks at 1.57 pages.
• 40% of visitors are here for the first time meaning 60% of you came back for some reason.
• On that note 11% are here for their second time, 7% for their third, etc, etc, down to 1.5% of you who have been here in excess of 200 times. Please stop stalking me! (In retrospect that crazy visitor is probably me, I should tell Google my IP.)
• Most visitors are, predictably, from the USA followed by the UK. It seems I’m popular in Scandanavia too with Sweden, Finland, and Norway in the top 10. It would be interesting to compare this to CCP’s numbers from one of the CSM elections.
• I’ve had sixteen visits from Iceland (Hi CCP!) but 24 from Lithuania, 22 from Malaysia, and 19 from Argentina. I’m going to have to whore myself out to the Devs more, it seems.
• 3% of visitors are using an iPhone and most of those are on Verizon or O2 – yes, Google knows everything about you. Can I have one, please?
• There are still 168 people out there who get their Eve fix over dialup.
• 25% of visits are made directly (through RSS readers, I guess) and 27% from search engines. 7.5% of visitors went to my old site first before being redirected.
• Most people got here by Googling “Rifter Drifter” but “rifter guide” and “Hulkageddon” were both pretty popular.
• 56 people who got here were looking for Skira Ranos while only 14 searched for me by name
• Star Defender, Spectre, 00Sage00, Kane Rizzel, Mynxee, and Helicity send me a load of traffic so here are reciprocal links for them.
• The most popular page is, not surprisingly, the Rifter Guide. My null sec stories seem to be incredibly popular, especially the politics primer, and the Pirate Academies post remains a favourite, too.

I’m pretty sure that none of you care about any of this but I found it kind of interesting. That and it was far more fun than what I’m actually supposed to be doing.

Guys, I have a dark, dark secret that I need to confess. Behind Wensley there is a secret army of carebear alts that provide me with the ISK that I need to PvP. Some of them have been around for a while but they only got together recently to make a serious effort at bringing in the cash. Its starting to go well now so I can finally reveal my carebear backbone. Let me introduce you to the An’Har family:

Allii An’Har

Allii was my original alt. She was made to be Wensley’s shopping and hauling buddy when we has pirate. I’ve always suspected that she might be Wensley’s girlfriend although these days she just sits in Jita placing buy orders for the materials that we need while Wensley swans around in Catch so I’m not so sure any more.

Grr’k An’Har

Grr’k is the head of the An’Har family and CEO of An’Har Family Industries. When I first created him the plan was that he would be a more serious hauler than Allii with the ultimate aim of training up for a freighter. Because of that he can currently fly the Mastodon and Prowler, both of which are useful for supplying Wensley in Catch and doing the basic logistics that the company needs. His main focus, though, is on Gallente ship invention and he can invent and build T2 frigates and cruisers as well as being able to produce the required components from advanced materials. Grr’k also sells the finished products on the markets in Amarr and Agil.

Maelae An’Har

Maelae is the most recent member of the An’Har family. She is also trained in research and industry but doesn’t yet get involved in the T2 side of things. She makes sure that all of our BPOs are researched to a good level and makes copies for Grr’k to invent. Hopefully soon she’ll start producing T1 ships to sell on the market.

Well, that’s the family. I’ve already spoken about Grr’k and Allii in earlier posts. When I started to create multiple alts I always had in mind that they should be a family and so all of the An’Hars are members of the Vherokior tribe. I’ve always half toyed with the idea of doing a little bit of roleplay so it was fun giving the family a bit of a back story and also trying to tie them in with Wensley. Like I said, I originally imagined Wensley and Allii as being in a relationship but now I like the idea that the An’Hars took Wensley in when he escaped from slavery. He is a Brutor so obviously not a member of the family but they support him heavily so there are strong ties somewhere.

The business itself is pretty simple. We have a small research POS in the Kor Azor region that we use for basic research and T2 invention. At the moment our focus is entirely on Gallentean ships and I have no intentions of expanding into other races for the foreseeable future. As well as building ships we also do a little bit of rig production but that is a sideline at the moment and is mostly to provide Wensley with what he needs in Catch. After a few weeks getting things up and running the business is starting to make a nice profit. I use a third party freighter service called Red Frog (highly recommended) to do a weekly run from Jita with the raw materials and then ferry the finished product around the local market hubs.

I have no intention of turning this blog into carebear stories. I’m sure none of you care that last night I put up ten Nemesis invention jobs or that at current market prices there is little point in inventing T2 cruisers. The main thing is that this means that Wensley shouldn’t have to spend too much of his spare time in belts and anomalies and that means more time for PvP. I have to say, though, that learning about science and industry in Eve has definitely been interesting and I am very glad I did it.

Making the change from being a low sec pirate to part of one of the largest and most powerful alliances in New Eden was a bit of a culture shock. Add to that the fact that we almost instantly ended up fighting a war on two fronts and I had a lot to come to terms with very quickly. It was a huge change and for the first couple of weeks I tried to make a point of keeping my head down, doing my job, and asking questions outside of the main fleet channels. I wanted to learn how to fit into it all without making a fool of myself, getting yelled at, and eventually being decided that I was a bit useless.

I was a bit useless at first. I charged into engagements, maybe got some tackles, but eventually died pretty much all the time. After a couple of weeks and some fantastic help from friends I now feel that I know what I am doing and how I can be most useful to the fleet. So now I am ready to enter the next phase.

Being part of a big alliance makes it pretty easy to be anonymous. You turn up to fleets, press F1 – F8, and then go home. This isn’t what I want. I want to be part of the whole thing. I want to be a specialist who the leaders will turn to when they want someone reliable and dependable. This means that now whenever the FC, or anyone else for that matter, needs a volunteer for something I try and make sure that my ‘x’ is the first one to appear in the channel. So far its been going pretty well and I think people are getting to know me and people who I have flown under before are starting to ask me to do things for them spontaneously without having to bounce up and down like the swotty kid when the class is asked a question.

I do have plans beyond just being given responsibility within the fleet. What I’d really like to do, eventually, is start to do some support FCing and get to take part in the big operations. I’ve still got lots to learn before then and I plan on flying in all the various roles that an alliance pilot can be asked to do. When things calm down a bit and we get some time away from the front lines I hope to get involved in some smaller gangs with my corporation and get a bit of practice and experience. This is definitely a long term target for me but its always good to have goals in Eve. Whatever happens, I’m done with lurking in the sidelines.

It looks like the battle for Querious is going to be very long and very bloody. After a long weekend of fighting we were able to erect our SBUs and put both the infrastructure hub and station into their second reinforcement cycle. Unfortunately on Sunday night the Goons managed to get large numbers into system and were able to destroy our blockade units before we could destroy the infrastructure hub.

The biggest problem we’re having is that with the huge numbers that GoonFleet can provide and the size of our coalition (which now includes Stain Empire, C0ven, Systematic-Chaos, Ushra’Khan, IT Alliance, and ourselves) the server just can’t cope with it. On Friday night we had a fantastic series of rolling fights with GoonSwarm and, although the lag was bad, it was very enjoyable and we were able to achieve our objectives. I think the system peaked at somewhere above 1,100 pilots. Saturday night was very different and the server just couldn’t cope and died. I only logged on once the server came back up and we were able to get enough people together to shoot our objective before the Goons could remove any of ours. Last night it was a similar story except that once the server came back up the Goons had the numbers advantage and purged the system of our SBUs.

This isn’t the first problem that we’ve had. Last week the server died and when it came up the reinforcement timers for the SBUs and infrastructure hub had become desynchronised so the Goons were able to remove our SBUs before we were expecting them to become vulnerable. There was plenty of wailing and gnashing of teeth at the time and I’m not going to get involved in it.

So what have I taken away from my first real experience of sovereignty war? Well, I didn’t get involved before Dominion was deployed so I can’t compare things to the past but I can talk about how it is now. First off all I think the idea of multiple objectives in the system works really well. On Friday night the main fight was on the 4-07MU gate but once the Goons had fled that field a series of rolling battles occurred around the system as our opponents moved from objective to objective and we followed in hot pursuit. Only once the Goon fleet had been reduced suitably did we focus on attacking the infrastructure hub. On Saturday night we followed a different approach at focussed our own firepower on the station. Its good to see tactical options.

For me there are two main problems with the system as it stands. Firstly that the server just cannot cope. I am told that lag is much greater in Dominion than it was beforehand. Because Dominion encourages the use of sub-capital fleets the numbers in system are absolutely huge. I personally have every faith that CCP are doing their best to fix this and we’ve seen GMs in the system on multiple occasions.

My main problem is the timing on stations and infrastructure hubs. Because the variance is only two hours it easy enough for the American-based Goons to time their events to guarantee that they come out well beyond our ability to attack them. Most of our fights have started at 3 am which is almost impossible for our Russian and European members. Because we have to fight over four days to take the system and win every single strategic battle the drain is immense and it is taking its toll. For the Goons, though, they only have to win a single objective to put us back to stage one. By timing their sovereignty structures appropriately they can sap our will to live and defend their system comfortably.

The most frustrating thing about this is that for most of the day we have system dominance. From at least 0900 to 0000 server time I can log into 49-U6U and see local at least 50% blue, if not entirely so. The Goons don’t need to be there to defend their systems except for maybe one hour a day. Bearing in mind that Dominion is supposed to reward people who actually use their systems I think there needs to be some benefit for us having the occupancy. Maybe it could be that our presence in the system expands the amount of variation on the reinforcement timers. If we can lock down 49-U6U for 18 hours a day then this should be reflected by the fact that the Goons can no longer accurately predict when their system is going to come out of reinforced. If they want to keep use fighting in the middle of the night then they are going to have to come and contest the system’s occupancy.

Anyway, this is all speculation and I realise that this post is pretty fluffy and without content. I just wanted to let people know how the war is progressing. Keep an eye out this week for the second half of my politics post and also some thoughts on my progress as an interceptor pilot.

Today has been a very welcome day away from the frontlines and I’m sure that my alliance mates and our allies are all taking the time to re-equip, move ships to the front lines, and even earn some funds for their war chests. Well, that’s what I’ve been doing, anyway. Something else I want to do during this break is give all my readers a quick introduction to the politics of null sec space. To do this I will use Verite Rendition’s excellent Eve Influence Map. In this case I will use the map from 11th January, 2010.

Against ALL Authorities, Red Overlord, and the Stainwagon

The obvious place for me to start is with my own alliance. Traditionally -A- has been dominated by Russians under its leader Evil Thug. Despite the fact that Evil Thug has stepped down as leader -A- still have a very strong Russian presence and this has lead us to be friends with Red Overlord, another Russian alliance. Against All Authorities hold regions of Catch, Impass, and Tenerifis while Red Overlord live in Feythabolis.

As well as their own provinces, Against All Authorities also play host to two alliances. Ushra’Khan are our guests whilst AAA Citizens is a holding alliance for corporations that rent space from us. Since Dominion it is prohibitively expensive to claim sovereignty in three whole regions. Because of this ‘renter’ alliances have started to actually take on sovereignty of their own and appear on the Influence map.

The Stainwagon are a collection of alliances who used to live in Stain and have now moved into Esoteria and Paragon Soul since the Goons moved to Delve. The main elements of Stain Wagon are Systematic Chaos, C0ven, Stain Empire, and Stainless.

Provibloc

Moving anti-clockwise around the map the next power block to consider is the so-called Provibloc. This is made up of Curatores Veritatis Alliance and their ‘holder’ alliances Paxton Federation, Libertas Fidelitas, Sylph Alliance, Cold Steel Alliance, and Sev3rance. CVA are a role-playing alliance and they enact an NRDS (not red, don’t shoot) policy in Providence and areas of Catch. They view themselves as guardians of these territories on behalf of the Amarr Empire.

Since -A- let their claim to a handful of systems near HED-GP (the empire gate to Catch) lapse, Libertas Fidelitas have moved in and laid claim to them.

Atlas

Atlas is a relative newcomer to the influence map. They rose to promince during the invasion of Delve by Goons. With the defeat of Band of Brothers and the sudden relocation of the Goons there was a power vacuum and Atlas rose to fill this.

The Drone Regions

The Drone Regions, as they are known, are held by a pair of Russian Alliances known as Legion of xXDeathXx and Solar Fleet. Both have their own renter alliances. Here you will also find the remnants of Red Alliance in Etherium Reach as well as the relocated Intrepid Crossing in Cobalt Edge. While these alliances will fight each other for control of the drone regions their politics are very insular. They appear to have no desire to push beyond their boundaries and likewise no-one seems to be very interested in invading the drone regions where the rats drop minerals rather than having ISK bounties.

The Northern Coalition

The northern coalition is a very well established power bloc. Its principle members are Majesta Empire, Morsus Mihi, Mostly Harmless, Razor Alliance, Stella Polaris, Tau Ceti Federation, and Wildly Inappropriate. Like all other power blocs they have guest/renter alliances who live amongst them with their permission. The coalition was formed as a response to the aggressive stance of Band of Brothers. Like the Drone Regions residents they seem happy with their lot in life and are content to hold onto the space that they currently occupy.

Fountain

For a long time Fountain was held by the Sons of Tangra and Pandemic Legion. Both are essentially pirate alliances who stumbled into sovereignty warfare when they defeated Brutally Clever Empire (BRUCE). Pandemic Legion in particular are known for their innovation tactics and have won two Alliance Tournaments running as well as playing an instrumental role in the defeat of Band of Brothers.

IT Alliance has risen from the ashes of Band of Brothers. At the moment they are in the final stages of conquering Fountain and re-establishing themselves on the map as major players in the world of null sec warfare and politics. Where they will go next remains to be seen.

GoonSwarm

After a defecting director disbanded Band of Brothers the Goons moved to Delve and Querious to complete the transition. Since then they have settled in and fortified their domain so that they can enjoy the riches in the wake of their victory other the alliance who once said “there are no Goons.” Zenith Affinity live in Period Basis and regularly fight alongside the Goons. The Goons have strong ties with Pandemic Legion and Sons of Tangra as well as fighting with the Northern Coalition to destroy Band of Brothers.

NPC Regions

There are several NPC regions that are home to a wide range of corporations and alliances who have no interest in holding and contesting sovereignty in their own right. They are often aggressive with a strong focus on guerilla raids on larger entities.

I know this has been a very quick tour of the map. I hope it gives you some idea of the general politics of the regions. I will write another post soon that talks about the conflicts that are taking place around the cluster. It is more than likely that I’ve made some mistakes in this. After all, I am pretty new to all this. Please post any corrections in the comments section and I’ll adjust the main post as necessary.

From Mike in Real Life:

For all the EVE players out there on the Mac, there is not a fully functional skill queue planner and fitting tool. Fear not, my capsuleer friends, because you can run them on your Mac through Wine. (Youcan also run Steam and play a number of Steam powered games, like torchlight).

An excellent guide, check it out!

Obviously my last few posts have been talking about a lot of systems in Catch and Providence. Both of these are nullsec regions with player sovereignty. Because they’re pretty well defended the odds are that all of the system names I’ve been using are for places you’ve never visited. Hevrice sounds warm and homely (well, unti you see the Federal Freight stations there) while GE-8JV sounds far less inviting. To help you out here is a copy of Wollari’s excellent tactical map for the area:

If you haven’t come across them I highly recommend the Dotlan Eve Maps. The fact that they are full of interactive information that you can access in game makes them invaluable for me. Plus I can overlay our jump bridge network to give me an idea of the quickest way to get from A to B.