The Defias Blog

¶ It’s generally not my intention to talk about things I’m not directly involved in. However, this last week has been uneventful for DFIAS other than that we lost a Hurricane, Jaguar and two Thoraxes to Beyond Divinity Inc, a two-bit ‘pirate’ corporation that bases out of Oddelulf in Molden Heath. Not much to tell there, they had a Curse, Zealot and Hyperion, the Curse neuted our Jag to slow it down and the drones ate it, then both Thoraxes proved too slow to catch and web the Curse and having seen Zealots fly just as fast as the 3km/sec that the Curse was pulling, I decided to try to pop the Hyperion - go down swinging, as it were. Didn’t work.
¶ Anyway, not much news about DFIAS, no exciting personal exploits, but the North is on fire right now! So much going on there that I can’t not address it in this chronicle. It all started with a CAOD address by SirMolle…

The Pendulum

¶ In this CAOD Address, titled “The Pendulum”, BoB’s infamous pink hat wearing leader recapped the last two years of near-constant war that they had waged, referencing momentous events by way of linking to the threads that accompanied them in chronological order. He painted one hell of a picture and no matter what side of the GBC-RSF conflict you’re on (if you’re on a side at all), you can’t help but respect what BoB has accomplished and what they’ve survived.
¶ Molle ended his address with the cryptic comment: “Next, we will introduce you all.. to Max.” Of course, it didn’t take long for people to ask “Who/what is Max?” and, again of course, BoB was keeping their mouths shut about it. This tight-lipped stance led to much speculation, but the general consensus was that it was Band of Brothers’ way of announcing that they had built yet another titan. Then, out of nowhere, a gem of information fell into CAOD: SirMolle had been interviewed by the New York Times and a tidbit of information from BoB’s annual barbecue was aired openly for the first time:

At the barbecue Mr. Molen unveiled a new strategy called Max, for Maximum Damage. While most Eve campaigns center on taking and controlling regions of space, BOB’s new Maximum Damage doctrine focuses on simply pillaging and destroying the territories of others.

¶ Molle went on to explain:

“Our goal is to control all of Eve,” Mr. Molen said in an interview over an Internet voice chat program. “It’s totally impossible to claim all of Eve physically. But it’s possible to control the people. It’s possible to control the alliances, be it by economic means or fighting means or political means. That was the goal and that is the goal.”

¶ Now everyone knew exactly what Max was, but the secret of when, where and how it would begin remained an excellently guarded secret.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in New Eden…

¶ …while Band of Brothers prepared for battle, another conflict was raging far from BoB’s home in Delve. Insurgency had gotten themselves into a war with the entirety of the North except for Triumvirate who ended up teaming up with INSRG to try to help them hold onto their own space and hopefully remove the alliances of the so-called “Northern Coalition” from theirs.
¶ Ultimately this did not work out and both INSRG and TRI were destroyed. In an unrelated series of mistakes, the alliance known as Mercenary Coalition had also collapsed. From the ashes of these three broken alliances formed The Requiem. RQM tried its hand in Curse, Stain and finally in Fountain but found that flying with each other under a NAP in a mutually beneficial war was one thing but flying together as an alliance was an entirely different thing, and so the corporations that had come into RQM from the remains of Triumvirate went back and re-formed TRI. There is a hell of a lot more to it than that, but this isn’t really about Triumvirate (and it sure ain’t about The Requiem or how they lost a Ragnarok-class titan to Tau Ceti Federation) so I’m sort of giving a Cliff’s Notes version - I hope you don’t mind.
¶ So, here’s TRI v2.0, all dressed up with no place to go, hanging out on Venal and plotting their return to the world of 0.0 sov-holding alliance politics.

The Maximum Damage Campaign Begins

¶ At 20:23 on July 9th, 2008, Band of Brothers’ official MAX spokesman announced the mobilization of a massive capital fleet, made up of BoB and their allies. A photo was included, in which 2 titans can be clearly seen. All of New Eden watched that thread for updates of where it was headed, but due to Goons shitting it up no such updates were to be found there. For weeks leading up to this day, pilots all over the cluster had been in an increased state of alert. Tau Ceti Federation had even onlined cynojammers in its Free Trade Zone areas, which was previously unheard of. It wasn’t long, though, until MAX’s first target was revealed - EC-P8R, a 0.0 entry point held by Red Alliance.
¶ Everybody expected the MAX capital fleet to strike eastward, staying in the south to extract a pricey revenge on GoonSwarm, who had been the driving force behind all of the hardship BoB had survived in the last 12 months or more, but instead they thrust northward to tear numerous high-value moons away from their Russian enemy. The battle reports were daily and exciting. The chest beating was constant and thunderous. Forces from the Northern Coalition came to help RA, but it was too little, too late and in just a few short weeks, there wasn’t a single tower left in orbit that bore the <RED> ticker.
¶ RED had proven themselves time and time again as an alliance that was never to be counted out, even having been expelled from nullsec space altogether more than once. But despite their invincibility during the last couple of years, RED appeared to have overextended themselves. With nearly every potential threat set to positive standings out of fear, the Russians had towers on moons all over the cluster, hoarding the most valuable of the precious moon metals to feed their own coffers and fund their own capital and supercapital production lines.

¶ None of the people whose moons they were holding would do anything about it for fear of the entire RSF falling upon them with a fleet they could not hope to match nor defeat. And so it went. If you were a space-holding alliance and Red Alliance approached you for positive standings, you knew that you were either going to lose your dysprosium and promethium moons but keep your space, or you were going to lose your space AND your moons when you said ‘no.’
¶ Such is the nature of EVE.

¶ With the bulk of Red Alliance’s power being centralized in the east, it took too long for them to mount an effective defense in the west, especially against the sort of fleet Band of Brothers had deployed. It would’ve been another matter entirely had it been nothing more than some rabble thrown together by one of the NC alliances - RED wasn’t prepared for MAX at all. But Molle’s stated objective wasn’t to merely take space from old enemy Red Alliance; his stated objective was to cause as much damage as possible, to everyone.
¶ Some men just want to watch the world burn.

Knock, Knock…

¶ Without missing a beat, the Maximum Damage offensive continued rolling north, from Pure Blind through Fade and into Deklein. Fires were sparked from EC-P8R to CCP-US where it seemed the BoB war machine might be halted, Imperial Republic of the North (IRON) and friends camping the system only two jumps away from their outpost in VFK-IV with Tech 2 Large bubbles and carriers supporting their massive defensive blob. But BoB’s FCs were more than experienced with carriers, gate camps and blob warfare. After all, they had stood up to the combined weight of EVE in NOL-M9.
¶ They had fought and survived against a who’s who of EVE’s powerful alliances, not only holding onto their last stronghold but repelling the invaders and reclaiming a noteworthy piece of their former empire. Band of Brothers knows better than anybody what can and can’t be achieved by an invasion force and what can and can’t be withstood by a defending force. So as BoB’s sub-capital fleet seemingly suicided itself into the waiting camp in CCP-US over and over the north rejoiced and congratulated themselves on CAOD but BoB merely waited, the entirety of the GBC reappearing in minutes with new battleships and heavy assault cruisers, fully Tech 2 fitted despite being so far from their traditional homes in Delve, Querious and Period Basis. They knew that the north would falter. They would experience a lull in supplies, their rank and file would get tired of camping the gates, their POS gunners would take a day off and the CCP-US cyno jammer would fall.
¶ It didn’t take long.
¶ With CCP-US fallen MAX had its foot in Deklein’s door and VFK-IV was next. The GBC taunted the north, trying to bait them out of their citadel, but the NC wouldn’t budge. They had no less than three titans in VFK protecting that cyno jammer, one belonging to IRON, one belonging to Morsus Mihi and (I think) one belonging to RAZOR. With a cyno jammer and 23/7 titan support, VFK was considered impenetrable and the north knew how foolish it would be to leave the safety of their fortress to fight the battle on BoB’s terms. And so it went, for weeks it seemed, the MAX fleet had run into a wall.
¶ They proceeded to lay siege to control towers all over the region, conducting a scorched earth campaign in the skies, destroying everything that the Northern Coalition would not come out to defend until there was nothing left but the siege of VFK. Two, three, four times daily the Greater BoB Community would send fleets into VFK-IV, fighting past the permanently camped gates to assault the cynosural field jammer. They kept steady pressure on the defensive fleet, knowing that a mistake was inevitable, believing whole-heartedly their mantra of “We are better than you.”
¶ The NC, on the other hand, cautioned its people to be patient and continue defending the same way they had been - while it might not be the most exciting way to fight a war, BoB and their cohorts couldn’t take down the cyno jammer with the constant titan presence.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

¶ A few cyno jumps away, in Venal, the Triumvirate leadership was watching. The Northern Coalition had been responsible for their fall the first time and they had a hell of an axe to grind. However, they were not on any better terms with Band of Brothers. TRI are the sort of fighters who can’t stand the idea of being perceived as somebody’s pet, so they’re naturally not the type to throw themselves under the GBC umbrella. As such, though they might want nothing more than to participate in the destruction of the entire NC, they dared not throw themselves right in front of the power of MAX.
¶ So they turned their eyes away from the front line in Deklein (their former home) and looked for a weakness they could exploit. They found that weakness in Vale of the Silent in the form of EVE’s laughingstock HYDRA.
¶ HYDRA was the alliance responsible for a 3rd-party application called BACON, which monitored the logserver.exe output to warn a person if someone entered their solar system and if the newcomer was held in neutral or negative standings - it watched the Local channel for you to warn you of potential danger so that you didn’t need to be vigilant yourself. Before they released this application, HYRDA was known as being the worst combat force of all the NC alliances. During the reign of BACON, HYDRA’s efficiency improved in that they took much fewer losses. When BACON was disabled by CCP, their combat stats went right back into the gutter. Whenever a mercenary corporation needed to pad their stats, they went to HYDRA space for easy kills.
¶ It took Triumvirate less than a week to remove HYDRA from their TVN-FM outpost in Vale of the Silent. When HYDRA cried out for help, much of EVE thought their calls would go unanswered with their Northern Coalition occupied in Deklein - especially TRI. But they were wrong. The NC’s Fleet Commanders were so sure of their defensive strategy at VFK-IV that they decided to divert a large capital fleet to the Vale to make short work of Triumvirate’s power grab. Triumvirate isn’t the massive powerhouse that once held Deklein Pure Blind and Fade. Boasting less than 1000 pilots now, TRI is just a shadow of its former self. It is unclear if they expected to really hold TVN or not, but if they wanted a fight they certainly got it. The North fell on them like an anvil, expecting BoB to continue with the siege of VFK as they’re neutral to TRI and have no obvious motive to come help the rebuilt PvP alliance.
¶ The North was thinking in terms of a conventional war for territory, however. And SirMolle had stated that MAX’s objective wasn’t conquest, but destrution. As soon as the reports came in that the North was fielding their capital fleet at TVN to remove TRI’s control towers, the GBC’s Fleet Commanders shifted their cyno pilots and sent their sub-capital support burning at full speed across Tribute and Lonetrek to get in position to support the MAX fleet when it jumped into TVN. They arrived before the battle was over, catching three NC motherships (two Nyxes and an Aeon) and numerous dreads and assorted carriers. This picture, taken by a Triumvirate pilot, shows the MAX fleet (neutral) facing off against the NC’s assembled forces (red):

¶ The NC’s Fleet Commanders had made a terrible miscalculation. As one BoB pilot remarked afterward, “you wouldn’t come to us so we decided to visit you.” This mistake cost Morsus Mihi three mothership-class vessels - nearly adding up to a titan in ISK value!
¶ And it wasn’t over.

Back in VFK-IV…

¶ When the smoke cleared and BoB had looted the field, they returned to their staging points in Pure Blind and Deklein, not pausing for a moment in their siege of the IRON citadel system. Their battleship and HAC fleets maintaining near round-the-clock efforts against the VFK cyno jammer. At some point during the fighting, a GBC covert ops pilot had cracked the deep safe of IRON Avatar pilot lord 2evil of the Macabre Votum corporation and had several Heavy Interdictors waiting to lock the Amarr titan down as soon as lord 2evil appeared on grid.
¶ This had a two-fold purpose. The primary goal was to lock down the titan and draw the NC’s forces away from defending the cyno jammer in order to save the titan, thus allowing the MAX sub-capital fleet to destroy the jammer. The secondary goal, dependant upon the cyno jammer’s destruction, was to remove the Avatar from the field permanently if possible. But even with this creative plan set in motion, it would be difficult. It was just as likely that the Northern Coalition would manage to free their titan while the POS gunners at the cyno jammer and the remaining defenders managed to successfully defend it from what would by necessity be only a fraction of the MAX sub-capital fleet.
¶ I mentioned before that Band of Brothers knows better than anybody else what it takes to defend a cyno jammer and that it’s only a matter of time before someone makes a mistake.
¶ RAZOR titan pilot Intensity Green of Cutting Edge Incorporated was shifting his Erebus-class titan in and out of the POS shields as a preventative measure, careful not to get far enough away from the POS that he could be tackled if the cyno jammer did fall. It was Intensity Green who made the first mistake in the defense of VFK-IV. At approximately 07:55, on August 22nd, Intensity Green activated his doomsday device, but he was not entirely outside of the POS shield. His Aurora Ominae destroyed the POS gunners, removing a major part of the conventional defense from play. If not for this mistake on the part of the RZR titan pilot, Band of Brothers may not have been able to issue this battle report, celebrating the destruction of lord 2evil’s Avatar.
¶ In less than 24 hours, the Maximum Damage campaign claimed three motherships and a titan from the Northern Coalition.

Is Red Alliance Finished?

¶ A short time later, they released a presentation detailing the departure of Red Alliance’s most powerful corporation, Reunion (and with them their holding corporation), which left to join Against ALL Authorities. Apparently, they left RED displeased with the way the defense of Pure Blind had been handled - and they’re not the only corporation who left Red alliance to seek a new home, either. This, however, is a matter which hasn’t been openly discussed in anything resembling detail, and much of the information available is nothing more than cheap propaganda and unfounded conjecture, so I won’t bother trying to pick through all of that. I think it’s enough to say that MAX seems to have, for all intents and purposes, destroyed Red Alliance. Sure, some corporations will maintain the <RED> banner, but it doesn’t seem that they’ll ever be the same “RA” that got pushed back into a single system and fought their way into dominance of most of New Eden again.

-Havo out.

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