FCON to war

The Phoenix goes to War
Unread postby Tarkinius » Wed 28 Dec, 2016 8:00 pm

At 20:00 eve time today our coalition, alongside Gemico, Vanguard, TestCo2, the Drone Walkers, and the Catch resistance alliances have stated our intentions to Stain to go to war with them beginning on the 1st of the coming year. This timeline complies with the requirements of the NIP agreement we have with Stain.

Why go to war? And why with Stain? For a multitude of reasons. (I'd like to point out to the reddit users who will read this when it eventually gets leaked that yes, this is a biased accounting of things. Of course it is. I'm looking at it from my perspective, and you know the saying: You judge others by their actions and yourself by your intentions. I can only state what I've seen.)

Firstly, Stain has abused the terms of our NIP far past the breaking point at every opportunity. They openly attack structures inside our sov and place their own to stage from. They flaunt the rules by allowing neutral alts to camp, and hire groups to harass our ADM levels. They have worked with their allies to build up a large military force inside Catch over the last few months, with (until the last 2 weeks) our coalition being the only obvious target of those assets. They have spent the last several months attempting to create drama and divisions within our coalition, while at the same time running a PR campaign using twisted truths and lies to give the impression that the Phoenix Federation cannot be trusted. This is a classic eve strategy used pre-invasion to undermine the morale and support for a targeted group. This history of hostility is obviously rooted in the outcome of our last war and, and despite the time that has past since then, it has only grown worse.

The second point builds on the first. Removing an actively hostile group from our border (which has a much larger group supporting them) allows us to go on and do bigger and better things ourselves without having to constantly stress about home defenses of sov. We can go have some real fun as a coalition, creating new friends (and enemies) while looking for opportunities that benefit us in the long run, rather than babysit the western border of our space.

Third: Eve nullsec is about war. If you are not a renter, your purpose in nullsec is tied to fighting for sov. Whether you mine, build, research, rat, fight, or lead your goal is to fight over sov space. We won't always own the sov we have now, sooner or later someone bigger and badder than us will come take it from us. But then we go fight for some other nullsec sov. That's how it works. Today we're on the offensive, tomorrow it may be the defensive.

Why help Test and CO2 invade? Why not take the sov ourselves?

This is a very complicated question with many answers. The basic one is simple: We want to win this war (mainly for the first reason listed above). If we struck out to invade Stain solely for our own benefit, even with the might of Gemico and Vanguard supporting us (as they all hate Stain and would love to see them wiped off the map), Stain could have offered TEST/CO2 our space in return for helping them beat us. As there would be no incentive for them fighting with us, they would be against us. Then we would face Stain, their allies in the west, TEST, and CO2 at the same time with us on the front lines of a defensive war. That would be falling on a sword.

As for CO2 (and FCON's history with them) I completely understand that many people will be upset us working alongside them. I myself do not and will not trust Gigx again. That is why I am working through Vily from TEST, he is an upstanding individual who keeps his word once given. I have faith in him to honor any agreements (and the intent of the agreements). As for the rest of CO2, I would never blame the members of an organization for staying loyal to their group and their friends. CO2 as a whole isn't a bad group, and I would much prefer a good group of people with a leader I mistrust as a neighbor than one that is actively hostile to us and plans to wipe us off the map at the first opportunity.

What do we get out of this war?

Well, beyond the removal of our biggest hostile neighbor, we are working on several other benefits. The first will be a much better NIP with whomever our new western neighbors are. Next, we will have the freedom to act on our own to capture income sources elsewhere (tied back in to freeing up our pvp strength.) Third, to the victor go the spoils, but proportionately: If we want to have any say in the outcome of spoils from the war we need to have a direct and massive impact on the outcome. Get butts into fleets, we have a lot to prove as an organization. There are a couple of other things in the works but they are too tentative and early to discuss, but I am aiming at benefits for kicking ass for everyone who is there on the front line.

As for the post war situation, we do not know what it will be yet but some things are certain. We do not plan to create a blue donut, that's for sure. We will get neighbor NIPs in place to cover the standard issues (camping, structures, sov, renters, etc) but expect standings to reset after the war is done.

Testing Ourselves

When the coalition first stood up, I stated that it was always going to be a place for organizations that may have struggled elsewhere to have a chance to grow and prove themselves in nullsec. This will remain true as long as I run the coalition. But there also needs to be a test of viability, to make sure no one is freeloading off the rest of the group. Early on in the Phoenix Federation's life I asked the combined alliance CEOs to come up with a standard upon which we will measure whether an alliance is worthy of staying in the coalition. The standard was not set at a high level, we wanted to give growing groups a chance to pass a reasonable barrier of entry. We require this from each member to remain: During wartime, every sov holding alliance in the coalition is expected to participate at the rate of at least 1:1 fleet participation to character each month. Thus, an alliance of 1,000 characters must have people show up for fleets 1,000 times each month (IE 200 characters showing up 5 times each would satisfy this.) This may be a change for some organizations that do not push fleets hard, but this is wartime. None of us survive if any of us fail.


I look forward to seeing everyone on the battlefield. I know there will be plenty of questions regarding why and what, so feel free to put your questions below. Any uncivil comments will be ignored, this isn't the place to create drama.

Service Guarantees Citizenship. Win this war with your fleets, or lose it by staying home. You are the coalition.