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The Situation as it Stands:

The full might of the RMT coalition has been deployed to engage us in Fade and Pure Blind.  Every group that fled from Cloud Ring in terror at the start of the lowsec purge campaign has come back to try their luck.  Pandemic Legion, Waffle, Pandemic Horde, Northern Coalition, Spaceship Samurai and others are joining their forces to those of Tishu, Moa, Suddenly Spaceships, Chaos Theory and any other group that is low enough to accept isk from groups who are protecting their out of game money making interests.  The sudden influx of additional numbers and additional ships has meant one thing, a sudden uptick in the value of the killmails our fleets are generating.

We have fought many engagements and the lackeys of out of game profiteers have still yet to take a single piece of Fade or Pure Blind sov.  Every single time they’ve formed up to try and batter their way into Fortress Fade and every single time they have failed.  The entire campaign for the RMT coalition has been a disaster.  They have not won successes tactically, strategically or morally.  Their own members are now starting to question their commitment to the campaign.  After all, do alliances exist to serve their members or do alliances exist so that leadership can sacrifice their members in order to line their own pockets with isk that they might end up RMTing like their paymasters?

There will be more timers this week.  There will be many more fleets, there will be many more fights.  We must stand firm and crush our enemies beneath the weight of our resolve.  Their leadership has been blinded by the lure of illegal profits while their members are realizing that they’re just tools to be used up and discarded by those in charge of them.  We will let them grind themselves into nothingness on the walls of Fortress Fade.

Monkey-Business

News From the Front:

Tishu made their last somewhat solo push at Fade boundaries when the news of the PL deployment to the area was announced.  It failed utterly.  Since that time Pandemic Horde cloaky pilots have flooded our space and their combat fleets have turned up to sacrifice themselves in the name of enriching the PL leadership.  More moons continue to fall to the Imperium while our enemies fail to make any progress.  It is far more likely that we will conquer Querious before they take a single system in Fade or Pure Blind.  We have already held as many as 4 systems while our enemy has yet to come close to taking a single one.  The enemy is bringing up the NC. members in order to strengthen their battle forces but already it has been shown to be futile.

Select Battle Reports from the week:

The Final Tishu. Incursion:

http://evf-eve.com/services/brcat/?s=3694,4070&b=6907770&e=75,74&t=eve&r=1&ro=29.5

The Culture Ferox Fleet:

https://zkillboard.com/br/70237/

Traveling through X-70:

https://zkillboard.com/br/70445/

Defending E9KD from Pandemic Legion:

https://zkillboard.com/br/70531/

Our Machariels being Bombed:

https://zkillboard.com/br/70578/

Those same Machariels defending Fade:

https://zkillboard.com/br/70581/

If you have battles that you would like to see featured in next week’s observations, please mail a battle report to Soryn Kael along with a description of the action and who was FCing.  I will try to include them to keep our members updated on the action.

Coyotes

Meet the Combat Department:

Today we meet Coyote Benihime.  Coyote is the first ever Senior Fleet Commander for SMA.  He is also the long time head of Roughnecks.  He has a particular love of Black Ops and Cynabals.  Coyote is also a junior capital FC and can be found leading fleets of all types within the alliance.

1.  What’s your favorite ship?

I love the Guardian.  Flying logistics is challenging and fun in fleets.

2.  What’s your favorite doctrine?

My favorite doctrine is/was the Cynabal fleet. It was a quick striking fleet that I got to do a lot of different things with, and it also made an excellent gate camping doctrine. I definitely have the most kills in that doctrine.  I am excited about the USSR fleet.  The Scythe Fleet Issues look like they’ll take over the role the cynabals had.

3.  What do you hate fighting the most?

I certainly “hate” fighting kitey things, especially while also in a kitey doctrine. But I’ve never “hated” any particular engagement, unless I messed up and got the fleet killed.

4.  What is your favorite eve engagement?

My favorite engagement(s) were around Aug. 25th of this year. We were deployed to Providence, and it was all day stratOPS in the most “wartime-esque” deployment I’ve ever been in. I went from Winning fights in 25man Cynabal gangs, to welping larger Cynabal fleets, to winning a fight in Drakes vs Cerberuses and killing a large POS with allies. It has been the highlight as my time as an FC.

5.  What do you see yourself doing in SMA in a year?

In one year I’d like to just say that I’ve grown as a player and an FC. SMA has a history of some awesome FCs and we certainly have some great ones now. I’d like to be counted among them, even if it isn’t within the next year. Hopefully some of the impact I have on the combat dept in the next 12 months will serve to advance monkeys in more ways than just KMs. Other than that I can promise you I’ll still be making trips to Tama.

Requiem for the Band of Brothers dream:

This section of observations is a little different in tone than most.  This is a personal reflection of my time in Eve and how it relates to our foes.  I’ve spent over a decade with my Eve career being involved with these groups and this is how I see the unfolding of events.

One of the most inspirational things in Eve that I ever witnessed was a tournament match in AT 3.  It was between Band of Brothers or BOB and Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate or IAC.  In that fight, the BOB logi pilot disconnected almost certainly handing Tyrrax Thorrk and IAC the win.  DBpreacher and Kayasoni, the remaining BOB pilots managed to pull out an amazing come from behind victory and continue the streak of BOB tournament championships.  My first ever PVP loss was a Vexor, that was killed in TDE in Geminate by a roaming band of 40 BOB battleships.  I admired Band of Brothers and was a Grr Goon back when the Goons first started.

I look at Eve today and I am amazed and saddened by how things have changed.  BOB became obsessed with destroying Goons.  4 of the 6 original BOB corporations are still around.  3 are in NC. and 1 is in Pandemic Legion.  The original goons came into the game with the idea of ruining everybody else’s game, but along they way things changed.  Now the Goons and the Imperium as a whole are providing content and guidance to new players and protecting  the next generation of Eve players.  They are doing this for their own interests sure, but also because it makes the game as a whole better.  My time as a Grr Goon kept bumping into the reality that the Goons and the CFC and Imperium were the groups that were actually willing to take in smaller corporations such as mine and help them experience more of Eve while maintaining their own identity.  The BOB side wanted to assimilate everything and turn it into something else.

Pandemic Legion, NC. and the other BOB diaspora are losing their relevance.  They turned into roving gankers defined by their killboard stats.  The ultimate irony in this is that they will forever be the side that lost the greatest engagement in Eve history.  There will be no other battle to match B-R with the Phoebe changes.  That means that the only thing that PL and the rest of the RMT coalition have left in Eve is to destroy the Imperium.  Fozzie-Sov, championed by CCP Fozzie, who used to be known in game as Raivi, a member of PL, was created to try and disadvantage the Imperium.  This was done in the mistaken belief that the Imperium only won by numbers and did not have organization and talent.  What they have discovered instead is that PL etc. have no talent for taking sov, can only manage engagements in which their members are hand held by a few FCs and have no stomach for protracted conflicts against groups that have a snowball’s chance in hell of beating them.

The RMT coalition, in fleeing from the initial lowsec purge, hung Snuffbox out to dry.  Why did they do this?  Snuff was stealing PL’s thunder.  PL wants to be known as the dangerous group, the one that will kill random solo supercapitals.  Snuff was having far more success at this than PL due to positioning and frankly due to more drive in their memberbase.  So PL removed themselves from the equation, taking their feeder group, Pandemic Horde. and only showing up to “help” Snuff when it suited them or they thought they could get an easy attack on a weaker Imperium fleet.  Instead of being a great PVP force, PL has essentially turned into Lowsec Marmite.

The membership of Pandemic Legion are mostly bittervets.  They have failed to impress in other alliances and have lost the plot.  All they have left is angry attacks on everything before they inevitably quit Eve.  What the groups that make up PL and the rest of the RMT coalition have missed is that there is something about creating a home.  The Imperium has a home.  We have something to defend that has value beyond the isk it can make us.  We build things, we create, we grow together as a group and we have a real community.  Our community is built on shared experiences and the building of a brighter tomorrow.  The RMT coalition has only destruction and anger and hatred over past slights.  They failed in their opportunity to build a home for themselves and are even now sacrificing their new generation to the flames of a war they don’t understand.  BOB turned into the goons of old and the goons of old have grown into the champions of the future of Eve Online.  I am proud to be a member of the Imperium and work with my friends to keep it going and defend our home.

When I see PL and NC. and the rest of the RMT coalition, I am reminded of what they used to be.  They used to be strong pilots, building an empire in Eve and creating parts of the game.  Their desire to be the best led them down dark paths that included the T20 scandal and other forms of cheating in places like the Alliance Tournament and eventually into being the bitter barbarians at the gate in the employ of RMT crime lords.  The mighty have fallen and they have firmly and forever passed the torch.  It is the twilight time for their alliances as their new generation realizes that they are nothing more than cannon fodder in  hate filled war that has spanned nearly a decade.  When we fight, I will show them no mercy, but I will show them pity.  When they fill the space of local and reddit with their oceans of salt, I will add a little of my own, in the form of a tear for what might have been.