(Editor's Note: CEO Updates from any alliance are intended for an internal audience and are manifestly not objective news. If you actually need this disclaimer, your intelligence deserves to be insulted.)

CEO UPDATE: NOT WINNING FAST ENOUGH

War never changes, they say. That’s bullshit; every campaign has different enemies, different circumstances, and different challenges. What doesn’t change - at least in internet spaceships - are the rationalizations used to excuse a loss. “Freed from the chains of sov warfare”, “Didn’t want that space anyway”, “Our ~wulfpax~ will make you regret ever taking our space (which we didn’t want)”, etc.

After the Great War, we began to encounter a new rationalization from our enemies: “You’re not winning fast enough.” This got quite a few laughs out of us when we first heard it, since the hoary old Great War vets think of grinding trench warfare with endless attrition - campaigns that last for years - as the default method of winning wars in Eve.

Yet something happened in the years since the Great War ended; our enemies have begun to collapse as soon as we get our trenches dug, or bunker roofs reinforced, and our tea services set up. Where once relentless meatgrinders were the nature of war, there has now been an entire generation of young goons who think that a war ends in a matter of weeks. White Noise, Raiden, the Southern Coalition and IT Alliance can all be blamed for this, though one could reasonably argue that Dominion as a game system is such a pile of shit that the blame should be laid at the feet of its designers. The VFK invasion was intense and vicious, but lasted for only a weekend; for many of our people - and hell, most of the game - Dominion means mopping up structures in the aftermath of a cascaded foe rather than actual warfare.

So now “Not Winning Fast Enough” is now the de facto standard of success our enemies are using to measure themselves against us. Our enemies typically envision themselves as Spartans, or Lions, or some other outnumbered-hero-dying-tragically, and if you just hold out long enough the loser actually wins through the retarded alchemy of pubbie thought. The problem, however, is that these easy victories erode our core skills as an alliance; they lead to using outdated doctrines, atrophied timezones, and a sloppy, entitled way of thinking. War keeps us strong, and it has been too long since we faced a real war.

ELO KNIGHT, SUPERSTAR

So we should thank our lucky stars for Elo Knight of Black Legion. Nominally, of course, we are fighting against NCdot for Venal, Tribute and Vale -  but increasingly it is obvious that we fight against one exceptionally dedicated and skilled FC. In almost every situation where NCdot has done well against us, it is Elo Knight leading them; the actual NCdot fcs - Supertwinkey, Soho and their ilk - seem to be kept around primarily to feed us Titan and Dread kills when they’re allowed out of daycare.

There’s an oft-quoted axiom ascribed to Alexander the Great that goes something like this: “I’m more afraid of a hundred sheep led by a lion than a hundred lions led by a sheep”; it’s past time we began giving credit where credit is due and acknowledging that this war - our first real war in years - is mostly Elo’s doing. We should not be speaking of how NCdot is keeping us to a slow and steady advance instead of a steamroll, but Elo. Of course, NCdot has been loudly taking credit for their ‘defense’ on Kugutsumen - chestbeating mercilessly about blowing up some of our SBUs the other day, ignoring the fact that we took another pair of stations in Tribute and own all but four techs in the region - but beyond their delusions of grandeur, in reality they are holding Elo Knight’s cape.

Yes, it’s true - Elo is madly in e-love with Wicked Princess of NCdot and that’s a bit creepy, but he’s motivated, shows up in almost every timezone, and aggressively fights against incredible odds. It is because of him that we have had to adapt our obsolete doctrines and fix our Sky Team, and it because of him that our newbies are at last learning what a real war is like. It's rather annoying when you see all the NCdot line members proudly taking credit for the work that he’s done, as if they were somehow responsible for it.

THE AU TZ PROJECT

That’s not entirely fair to NCdot, though. In one timezone, NCdot is capable and effective - Australian time. We have never had a war in AU TZ; the last situation we found ourselves dealing with a bunch of downtime timers was in a war against Ev0ke, who specialized in just-before-dt sieges; the OTEC treaty meant that we have never had to develop an independent and functional ANZAC presence, until now.

NCdot has a couple of very solid AU TZ corps: Van Diemen’s Demise and Invictus Australis. After losing every tech moon in Venal, all but four in Tribute, and half the region itself, NCdot caught a clue and began timing their structures to AU TZ, who are somehow independent and functional without Elo Knight doing everything. These guys are regularly dropping SBUs and attacking our SBUs; if it wasn’t for these two Aussie corps, all of Tribute would be a smoking wasteland, instead of just its western half.

We are interested in finally developing our own AU TZ, which is a difficult project. We have ANZACs aplenty, but they are a divided group, split up across not only GSF but other CFC alliances. Convicted and Razor both have significant ANZAC presences, but these disparate line members have not effectively been forged into a unified fighting force. We intend to change that.

However, we need advice from our Aussies and Kiwis. We have several plans and ideas - a combined and resurrected ANZAC squad (this time, one that doesn’t just smoke pot and mine in Omist, like the last time the squad was functional in 2008) or perhaps an ANZAC corp/alliance with more explicit direction; we’re also looking into ANZAC-specific doctrines to deal with the challenges of that timeslot. So please sound off ITT about what you, as an ANZAC, would like to see or think would help.

SO HOW IS THE WAR GOING, ANYWAY?

When your enemies have a massive back-slapping victory celebration over the mere fact that on one day when you didn’t have your usual FCs around they managed to kill some of your SBUs and reinforce some structures, you know that they doth protest too much.

Like every war, we plan for a meatgrinder, as no one does meatgrinders better than us.

The usual meatgrinder plan follows these steps - call it Sov War 101:

Take all the tech moons first
Spam SBUs to force the enemy to grind structures
“Siege and Punt” stations and iHubs
Blueball when you can’t win
Crush the enemy embarrassingly when you can win
This is hardly rocket science. In the past few years the enemy has broken before we even finish taking their tech moons, but due to Elo we’re in a slow process of spamming SBU’s and sieging/punting sov timers. We are making steady progress, though that has slowed down after the enemy began relying on their AU TZ for defense.

We have learned a number of things during this war. First, we’ve learned that we needed to update our doctrines, which we did. Then we learned that we needed to restructure our Sky Team, which is now running quite smoothly under Rydis and her assistants. Now we’re learning that we need to develop a more effective AU TZ presence. Meatgrinders force you to tighten up your game, and we’ve needed that; more importantly we’ve needed to teach our newbies what a real sov-war looks like.

At the macro-level the war is going quite smoothly. Nulli Secunda, which had been helping NCdot, has accidentally invaded Detorid, cascaded the aptly-named Cascade Imminent, and as a result has taken themselves off the NCdot side in the long term. Gypsy Band likewise has left, complaining about a lack of euro-time 'gudfites'.  Solar Fleet is making steady assaults on NCdot moons in Geminate, Ev0ke fired its two best FCs over some inscrutable internal dispute and is mostly engaged in a fight against Solar anyway, and despite Elo Knight being a superstar not many Black Legion line members have been showing up to help NCdot. We own half of Tribute, all but four of Tribute's tech moons, all of the NCdot techs that once were in Venal, and have managed to get even richer through all of this by keeping the Tech market artificially inflated due to to conflict.

OF BOOTS, ROKHS AND LOKIS

With the upcoming changes to Heavy Missiles and the evolution of our fleet tactics, it’s necessary for us to emphasize training for the following ships:

Rokhs with T2 Railguns will eventually be replacing Maelstroms
Command Ships should become Boosting Lokis - we need more, badly.
Aim for a Dasboot Carrier - Archon or Thanatos with T2 Sentries