Just a quick post to link a Gevlon post that's worth reading and some commentary on the subject. In it he talks about doing virtually the same thing I've been working on myself
Good for Gevlon, it's about time he started thinking about hitting goons where it hurts them the most. In their wallets and in their own space. That should be far more effective than paying hi sec gankers to do what they'd do anyhow (ganking in hi sec).
Gevlon calls it "Burn Deklein", while my own working name has been "Burn Mittanigrad" but it's basically the same thing (Mittanigrad being the goon capital VFK-IV which is in Deklein). Get fleets (preferably covert fleets) roaming goon space, killing goons, camping, afk cloaking and doing everything possible to disrupt their day to day operations and especially their income stream.
Disrupting goon's personal income streams by killing them while they're ratting, mining and hauling should be particularly effective because of the effect it's likely to have on moral... Especially if goon leadership proves as ineffective at countering such covert fleets as I expect they will.
It doesn't have to be in VFK-IV but the closer to their capital and core production systems the better.
I'm willing and able to spend many billions towards this end every month.
I have approached a few ... groups lately about the possibility of sponsoring them to do so. While there seems to be plenty of interest in slaughtering goons nobody has stepped up to the plate and taken me up on it yet.
I'm still negotiating with one such group. If those negotiations don't work out I have one more group in mind to talk to but I'm also willing to consider offers from other groups (scammers don't even bother trying, I'm not stupid, I won't be handing ISK out to just anyone).
I shall play Devil's step-daughter.
ReplyDeleteUltimately, the plan won't work because Goons have two advantages. One is a sense of self-identity borne out of their heritage as social group from an internet comedy forum; ie. "We are Goons, and we stick together because everybody hates us." Which is a stronger motivation than "While I don't like the other folks in my movement, I'm willing to set aside my differences because of Grr Goons."
The other motivation is that the Goons have leaders savvy enough to create an inclusive narrative, compelling enough to motivate even the lowest of their supporters. Goonswarm Leadership never publically detested the "F1 Monkeys" (and it's an open question if they privately did or not - my bet is on the latter), because they knew that those "F1 monkeys" were crucial to success. Gevlon can't provide that - his elitism against "morons & slackers" alone is enough reason to headshot him on the brink of victory, just because.
All that said, there may be a way of fighting Goons hidden in Gevlon's numbers (assuming they are correct). It's not one of "Grr Goons" frontal assault war to the death, but one of "Goons.. who?" guerrilla indifference. By treating them as background noise like the four other Empire factions, to be farmed as needed, but otherwise classified as "cost of business"
In other words: Let the Goons control all of Null-Sec! It's the fastest way for them to become irrelevant!
… and I have the hopeful feeling that they know that.
"Internet comedy forum"?
DeleteInternet center for assholes maybe though even that fails to fully describe what a despicable place those forums are.
I was playing devil's step daughter, after all, to try and get into the Goon mindset.
DeleteOtherwise I would have used the sarcasm marks around that term.
When I read Gevlons post about treating goons with play they tell others to htfu against, I smiled and thought: you sneaky little goblin.
ReplyDeleteI do have some covert toons I would like to help with, but I'm mostly a highsec dweller nowadays and noy in any 'organization'
So you are going to feed noobs and small gangs to goons to try to reduce a single income stream in a single region. Good luck with that one. Pretty much all that will do is give them a smaller area to roam when looking for fights.
ReplyDeleteDo you honestly think that showing up and shooting some ratters is really going to have any effect? The absolute worst case scenario for them is that they have to rat in a different region. Even if enough people managed to get on board and stop 100% of ratting (which would never happen) it still wouldn't put a noticeable dent in most people's income. You can plex accounts off of PI alone, and then there's moon income, trading and industry income, etc. Then on top of that, if they hop in a combat ship and get some bros together to go after the people attacking, they profit from the PvP too, since they now get double SRP if you manage to kill them.
The problem with Gevlon is that he's an idiot, and honestly I didn't think I'd see you subscribing to his lunacy this much. He can't see things from a larger perspective, he can't see past his own propaganda, and he has no idea what "strategy" means. "Do exactly what everyone else has done since forever" is not a new idea. It's not the first time someone's come up with the genius idea of trying to float about in VFK to attack the goons and I doubt it will be the last. Most people will get bored of the logistics of replacing ships in hostile space way before goons get bored of getting paid to lose doctrine ships.
What ever gave you the idea it'd be limited to a single region? It wouldn't be though naturally Deklein would be a main target.
DeleteDon't jump to conclusions. It wouldn't be just a bunch of noobs and they wouldn't just be going after ratters either (as the OP made quite clear). Just because non combat ships like ratters, miners and haulers would be high priority targets doesn't mean they wouldn't kill combat ships when they can too.
Of course a covert ops fleet isn't going to take on a giant blob of cap ships, that be just plain stupid. But a lone dread or carrier might be another story. And if there are 10 such fleets operating in goon space on different schedules that's when things get really interesting.
You seem to be confused, I'm not following Gevlon in this. It's my own idea I've been working towards for a long time. Far longer than he has. In fact the seeds of the idea for Gevlon's latest plan may very well have been planted by a couple comments I made on his blog.
I do welcome the fact that Gevlon has bought into the same idea because the more fleets operating against goons and the more funding sources the better!
I never said it would be limited to ratters, that would just be the main target, since you won't really affect people morale by blowing up their combat ships and getting them paid double SRP for it. If carriers and dreads just hung around alone and vulnerable, they'd already be targeted by the exiting hotdroppers, so I doubt those will be a target. So basically you'll be looking for traveling combat ships, ratters, miners and haulers, all existing targets of 99% of our enemies.
DeleteAnd you're not following Gevlon, yet you post an idea which is almost a direct rip of his right after he posts his? Now there is a coincidence. Admittedly it's a reasonable coincidence, since the "grr goons" mentality normally attracts people who struggle to rub two braincells together (like Dinsdale and Harry Forever) so coming up with a strategy beyond "Everyone lets fly to goon space and shoot goons" is often problematic.
But again, good luck! I always enjoy people handing the CFC content on a plate, especially when it's in the form of miscellaneous pirates as likely to shoot each other as they are us. I'm not too worried about our income streams being affected, even if Gevlon can make graphs about goons ratting decreasing during a deployment being his doing.
Honestly though, I expected more from someone of your calibre. This is just a poor echo of a bad idea at best.
Maybe you should read some of my older posts to get a clue of just how long I've been bouncing this particular idea around.
DeleteMy my, resorting to name calling already? No surprise there, considering it's coming from a card carrying member of the so very appropriately named something awful forums.
No doubt the real reason you've gotten so wound up about it is you realize just how effective such a campaign could be. Especially if more rich players jump on the bandwagon and start sponsoring fleets of their own.
I may not be as vocal about it as Gevlon but I don't like goons (or that awful gathering place for douchebags and assholes they come from) any more than he does.
Name calling? Where's that? Pointing out that certain members of the community are not at all bright is not name calling, it's a mere statement of fact.
DeleteAnd then onto the "he responded thus he is wound up and must care! MUAHAHAHA VICTORY!". Come on now... The thing is, you're going to pay people who hate goons and thus already attack goons to come in and attack goons. Why would that even remotely matter? Even if by some miracle they all managed to form into competent enough groups, and avoid killing each other, and managed to avoid drawing enough attention to get a decisive response, and you managed to maintain 100% coverage at all times, the absolute best you could hope for is that our active money making activities move to highsec so we actively make on par with you guys and still make billions of isk through passive generation.
But lets face it, the reality is this short lived, if it lives at all, and will only provide us with more content thus more of a reason to log in. So thanks for that I guess.
Lol, you don't know why you hate goons. Like everyone else you can't explain irrational hatred so you screech on about SA forums and throw around ad hominems as if that explains it. It's only a game mate, calm down.
I don't hate goons. I don't hate cockroaches either but that doesn't mean I want them around or that I won't do my part to exterminate them.
DeleteI have to say I'm with Lucas on this. This idea is pretty silly considering just how many revenue sources CFC has. All it will achieve is make is create more content for the goons. You should really drop by scc one of those days and ask Corestwo (aka Mynna) about CFC finances.
ReplyDeleteI don't care what the goon propaganda machine says about how it won't work, it'll just be creating content for them, if it creates more dead goons then it'll be working just fine for me.
DeleteThe problem of course is finding someone competent actually willing to try it.
The goon propaganda machine is really good at convincing people not to do the things that would hurt them most by pretending they actually want them to do it.
Things like multiple smaller covert fleets constantly operating in their space carrying out a campaign of destruction and harassment.
While you may not care, you should probably take a moment to think it thought realistically. The reason "goon propaganda" is so good is that most of it is just stating facts knowing full well that people will simply not believe it and call it propaganda. Take for example Mittani's recent column on TMC. He's not saying anything particularly new and he's saying things that other have said before and people have agreed with them. But because Mittani is saying it, it must be lies and thus the exact opposite should be done.
DeletePersonally, I like finding things which are clearly doomed to fail, sending randoms into goon space (something done every single day for years) expecting them to simply fold, rather than a) ignore them or b) move operations. I like to find these things then explain exactly why they won't work and the flaws and oversights in their planning. I like to do this because when they inevitably ignore it, respond as you have then proceed with the idea and then that idea fails, it's like they've doubled down on stupid.
Looks like in this case though we are unlikely to see it even develop beyond the idea. Shame.
Target the Goon moon mining facilities. The moons makes up a good chunk of their revenue, which is why they were willing to bother to go to war to seize them.
ReplyDeleteBut, your best bet is to fund several "infiltrators" for a few months to learn how the Goon industry infrastructure is set up and run. The Goon industrialists are well-organized, coordinated, and plan ahead - they don't just make things up every day when they log in. Once you know how they do things, and how they move stuff around, you'll be in a better position to identify weak spots and exploit them.
If you just want to do harassment, then try sending waves of cyno ceptors into Goon space every day. No actual hot drops - just light the cynos and let the ceptors get burned down. After a few months of "cry wolf", even the Goons will get sloppy and then you can arrange a couple of hot drops to add to the harassment.
Keep in mind, however, that Mittens and the rest of the Goon leaders would probably welcome you to support a guerrilla war against them. The Goon leadership spends most of their time trying to find stuff to keep the junior Goons busy anyways, esp. since the leadership doesn't want to invest in all-out war in null sec. Heck, they might even be willing to fund your "war" against them... lol.
Since I'm still not having any luck finding someone willing to take billions of ISK to kill goons I might start up a DGotW / DGotM type contest.
ReplyDeleteDead Goon of the Week / Month that is.
Reward players for the best kill reports on goons killed in their own space. Say 1 billion for DGotW and 5 billion for DGotM or something like that.
You might be setting the bar to high. Take this kill: https://zkillboard.com/kill/41162129/
DeleteThe Goon pilot was annoying by its constant presence in what considers their home, so they took matters into their own hands and suicided him at loss, paid out of their own wallets. But since this wasn't a kill in "Goon's homeland" (or whatever other condition he imposed), Gevlon refused to pay bounty (they asked).
Public rewards for KotM's are good for PR, no doubt; but maybe more could be achieved by a quiet, consistent SRP for all legitimate Goon kills anywhere.
I still don't think that you can defeat Goons that way, but it would surely make for interesting gameplay.
The problem is an SRP or bounty program would be a huge administrative burden and costs might easily run out of control too.
DeleteTrue, and true. And that's why have my doubts about Grr Goons projects: they are lacking the people who are willing to handle the long-term logistics burden. Who are willing to be mere comptrollers and managers in it for the ride, while others hog the limelight of news articles and public rewards.
DeleteThe Mordus Angel's board may be successful, because (as far as I can tell) MA reserves the right to use the funds as they see fit. So, yes, it's an interesting development to watch. MA might have the management infrastructure to make such a campaign come to fruition.
Last year's EVE Vegas featured a presentation by the head of Goonswarm Offensive Logistics - the folks you hardly ever see on any killmail. It was quite interesting.