We now sit upon the precipice of the largest war in EVE in a very long time. The galaxy has effectively polarized along a singular line striking directly through the center of the galaxy. On one half stands Legacy and The Imperium and on the other sits Panfam and the Holy Winter Army.  Of the top fifty alliances in the game by Dotlan, 46 are directly committed to this war on one side or the other, and below that there are dozens if not hundreds more.

Eve however, is full of wars that never were and battles that never materialized. I do not know if this one will be the same. A war is never a war until both sides can actually come into conflict. This one is certainly going to involve us losing some structures and space, but will it have the daily battles of the tribute war? The insane tempo movements of the catch war? The grand finale of the Halloween war? Or the wet fart ending of the Casino war?  Now that the die is cast and the last pieces are in position, we’ll soon find out.

Whichever path it takes, the war we’ve all been predicting would eventually come to our doorstep is finally on our doorstep.  As expected, with PL deciding to moving their super fleet down to our border, we would now be effectively outgunned in a massive capital fight unless we utilize some considerable force multipliers.  We only get one shot at a decisive war ending capital fight, and as you might have noticed, the 4-GB keepstar’s armor timer did not leave us with enough of those force multipliers and defensive advantages to have the fight then.  This is a product of us losing the ihub and failing to recapture it (along with the location of 4-GB), a mistake that will possibly cost us a keepstar.  It’s unfortunate, but this is the current meta, and TEST alliance plays to win wars not battles.

So with that being said, let's talk about how we’re going to win this war.  We didn’t put out an alliance update when PL moved their super fleet down because the front lines still hadn’t been fully drawn.  But with PL’s super fleet out of the north, Goons have decided to make their move, deploying their entire massive armor supercapital fleet up to Cloud Ring, where they are anchoring a keepstar tonight to stage an invasion of the North.  This makes the war rather simple.  It’s Imperium and Legacy, along with a few small allies, vs. the rest of the world.  Since this is the case, we see no reason to beat around the bush any longer, as our enemies certainly aren’t; later today Legacy will be bluing the Imperium.

There are two fronts, the Northern front and the Southern front, it’s not complicated. When you think of the war in those terms, there’s no alliance I’d rather have on the Southern front than ourselves.  We’ve been in this position before, and we’ve excelled.  Two years ago we fought an excellent war in Tribute, against an opponent that outgunned us far more than our current opponents.  We were patient, we were disciplined, we didn’t feed very often while winning timer after timer.  We waited for the right moments and then when our enemies made a mistake, we dread bombed their boson titan and killed it, then went right back to being patient and winning timers the next day.

If we can fight with the same kind of discipline and tenacity that we had in the Tribute war two years ago, we will outlast our enemies, if not we will lose.  It’s really that simple.  No alliance in the history of EVE ever died because they lost some space or some structures, instead every dead alliance ever has died because they stopped forming fleets, that’s all there is to it.  TEST alliance is a great example of this, as we kept forming even after losing everything 6 years ago.  Most of the current great alliances still alive today are an example of this as well.  We are going to lose some structures and some battles, but we will not lose anything willingly, and we will patiently wait for the right moments to deal a devastating blow, while having plenty of daily skirmishes.  Eventually there will be a decisive battle of Titans and Supers, and it’s quite possible that the final battle of this war will be fought in the North rather than the South.  When that time comes, the winner will be determined by the summation of the victories from the days before.  Every day we fight well and play smart, we give ourselves an added advantage in the world ending battle to come.

With that being said, let’s talk details about the steps you need to take to be a contributing part of this war:

Step 1: Evacuate anything you have from the 4-GB keepstar. It is timed for euro and while we will attempt to save it, my expectation is that it will die. Being that none of us are staged from there it shouldn’t be a primary problem but it is a point that needed to be addressed regardless.

Step 2: Adopt a mindset that is correct for this war. That means being ok with losing things and not taking bad fights. Discipline is a fundamental component of every effective real and virtual military force. There are a host of boxing movies where the guy takes a beating to win in the final round. Our day to day strategy will not be public but it will obviously be comparable in some
regards.

Step 3: Improve ping discipline. THIS WILL BE MOSTLY A FLASH FORM WAR. If we ping for a rage caps login, we need a rage caps login. It’s called that because you should be like a raging animal pushing forth all other things to spam that login button. Conversely if you see that type of ping that means get out of the belts and get to your battle stations. The windows we get to throw effective counter punches will not present themselves for hours, they will be minutes and when we get those opportunities we need to strike effectively.

Step 4: Don’t feed. This is a meme but its also a harsh reality. If we feed we encourage behaviour from our enemies to achieve a repeat of the event. If you feed a rorqual, the next day the same people will be back at the same time hoping for a repeat. Bombers bar is the easiest example of this but it applies to skillu/PL etc.

Step 5: Continue to get our doctrine ships properly sorted.  We have finally fixed the doctrine page on the wiki which you can see here:

https://wiki.pleaseignore.com/military:doctrines:start

The doctrine table shows you which ships you should have where, and the doctrine pages have the correct fleet compositions and the correct fits.  Please get all of your fits from those pages from now on.  We are still making a lot of improvements to the wiki, but those parts are functional again.  Once again, IT’S IMPORTANT THAT YOU GET YOUR SHIPS BEFORE THE FLEET, NOT WHILE IT’S FORMING.  THIS IS CALLED BEING PREPARED, AND IT’S CRITICAL TO OUR ABILITY TO FLASH FORM.  We know that supply has been slow at times, it’s just part of being in a war where everyone is buying a ton of ships, be patient, more stuff will be seeded every day.

Step 6: Make sure all your capitals are prepared for battle.  Your corp CEOs and leadership has been informed of this step as well at the TEST command meeting, and we need you to put in the effort as well.  Capital and Supercapital pilots will be getting continued updates and instructions on what to do as we change tactics and prepare for a large capital battle, you need to make these changes ASAP, and once again make sure that your ships are ready before the pings are sent.  You can not be an effective capital pilot for TEST alliance if your capital is not ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Step 7: If you're US TZ, wake the fuck up.  This will be the most US tz content we've gotten in years.  There will be nightly US tz content.  It's time to stop being dormant in that timezone and get into fight mode again.  That starts tonight with the Goon Keepstar.  Make sure you're there at 02:00.  We'd like to form two fleets.

And that’s it.  We have had 18 months in Esoteria roughly now. Some of you have used this time well and some corps within TEST have my utmost respect and admiration for their growth and accomplishments in that time. Some of you have failed spectacularly to utilize any of the resources we have provided you with. Regardless, the boat we now sit in doesn’t care what you did over the last year and a half, it only cares for what you will do in the coming weeks and months.  Be smart, patient, and resilient, and we will outlast our opponents.