Thursday 13 March 2014

The Only Good Goon is a Dead Goon

I don't like goons. I don't like what they stand for, where they come from or anything about them other than the fact that they make good targets..

For a long time I've been wanting to do something to help encourage the hunting, killing, pruning of their numbers and hopefully the eventual extinction of goons. A while back I tried encouraging some goon killing fun by sponsoring a contest with billions in prizes available. That was a complete failure, nobody entered the contest so no prizes were handed out.

While my first attempt might have failed miserably I still want to see more dead goons so now I'm asking reader's for ideas. How could I (and my ISK) help encourage you, your fleet, corp, or for that matter any non-goon, to hunt and kill goons?

I'm willing to consider just about anything (feel free to think outside the box). Sponsoring wardecs, fleet reimbursement programs, contests, events, long term projects and one off events, as long as it leads to lots of dead goons (the more the better).

Give me some ideas and I'd be happy to throw some ISK at it to make something happen.

35 comments:

  1. http://greedygoblin.blogspot.de/2014/03/i-did-donation-drive-wrong.html

    Thats what Gevlon does

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    1. I know, I want to do something different. Preferably something that encourages hunting them where they live.

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    2. Gevlon rocks.

      Regarding Grr Goons after a year of fighting them in Test and other alliances I gave up. I don't think at this time anyone is able/wiling to put together an existential threat to them.

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    3. I think fleets of stealth bombers could cause them an awful lot of grief, especially if they have black ops and recon support along. I just need to figure out an effective way of encouraging goon hunting on a regular basis and turning some of my ISK into dead goons.

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    4. Goons are the end game of pvp in some sense, the equivalent of an unbeaten WoW raid boss because despite a ton of people trying, no one can topple them.

      You can absolutely kill goons pilots by the hatful, look at Gevlon's blog for DL's and Marmite's stats against them.

      You can't kill the corp though or the alliance because pvping them without a hope of beating them isn't hurting them it's providing them content.

      The wheel will turn and winds of change will blow. At some point we'll see a competitive sov game again but until then possibly your best line is to help Gevlon push them out of high sec.

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    5. "You can't kill the corp though or the alliance because pvping them without a hope of beating them isn't hurting them it's providing them content."

      I disagree with this. Kill enough of them and it will not only hurt them, it'll have a ripple effect on everything else. Of course the catch is finding a way to encourage killing "enough".

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  2. I have to ask, why do you hate goons so much? What is it specifically about the goons that you hate?

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    1. Hate really isn't the right word. I don't hate bugs either but as a property manager whenever I find any in my building I exterminate them.

      They come from the something awful forums, that alone should be enough to tell you they're a bunch of assholes.

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    2. Not really, in fact that sounds like prejudice to me. A goon is no more or less likely to be an asshole than anyone else. I guess the real question boils down to, why do you choose to attack goons over any other group?

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    3. Stop shitting up every forums I visit. Go start your own. call it "waving my cane on my porch"

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    4. I have a desire to understand the reasons why people act the way they do. If you don't like that, that's your problem. You can always simply ignore my posts, I ensure my name is on all of them.

      Bear in mind people can have viewpoints that differ from your own, that's quite natural, and discussing those viewpoints is healthy. In this instance there has been little information that explain the jump to the action being taken and I'd like to understand how that has come about and what makes goons different from any other group.

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    5. Actually the mere fact that goons come from something awful is more than enough proof they're assholes for me.

      Besides their origins, their actions and comments both in and out of game (on forums and blogs, in voice chat, etc.) only provide further proof they really are assholes.

      If it looks like a fish, feels like a fish, smells like a fish... It is a fish.. No matter how hard you try to convince yourself it isn't a fish!

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    6. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I'm sure there must be some specific thing they've done to get you riled up about them beyond the generalisation that they come from a given community.

      There must be something they do that mean other people who are also assholes (which the EVE community has MANY of) get a pass while they cause you to want to throw isk away to damage them (which by the way is unlikely. The fact that they come from a community and come to EVE and mainly socalise is their defense. Even if you took everything else away, you can;t take away their ability to socialise).

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  3. Hard to get them into nul, highsec has had nothing but spectacular failures so far. Only things I can think of is building an audience, then a way to brag about something while in that audience.

    Grrr goons worked with TEST because there was 10,000 people who would praise you for aborting a titan, and why not a single 1-man corp has ever gone after them in any way.

    Siphon contests for their moon goo (will buy all for Jita +-5%) with bonus for best haul, getting in with mildir from a larger group and run it like a mini deployment, you know 'not an invasion' where you bankroll the srp.

    Maybe even just an old TEST GG idea, morale dreads. Run a fleet, where they get to join you as you bastion up a POS or something. Though I'd be careful with that,

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    1. It is hard to get anyone to go after them in null. My first kick at that can missed anyhow.

      That's why I'm asking people what it would take to get them to hunt goons and kill them on sight.

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    2. The people you need to do the killing do not care enough to do the killing. Campaigns are not just a finical drain they are an exhausting undertaking. ISK is lovely but it has limits.

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    3. @Sugar

      Yes but what I'm trying to find out is what would it take to get people to do that killing. For example, just what would it take to get 7-2 to make their next deployment campaign into goon space to kill as many goons as they can?

      Delete
    4. @Kate On

      I thought about a siphon contest before. That wouldn't work because there's no way of knowing where any goo sold to me came from. Goons would just start using alts to dump production on me. I'd just be driving the price of goo up and that'd help them, not hurt them.

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    5. MOX, truly very little. Our strength is our weaknessm we fight for pleasure. To campaign into the heart of an organized sov null alliance would take a lot of dedication.. Goonswarm could blob us off the field in frigates without batting an eye.

      We are not mercs and out corporation culture revolves around our interpersonal ties and goals. We do not hate anyone or anything. The mercs game is their contract but that has its limits. Personal reasons are a deep motivator to deal with a situation that rapidly becomes not fun.

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    6. With the right contract conditons, especially considering time allowances, isk payout, various payout options....I think many mercs would love to stage out of some null npc station and put the spank on goon renters and cfc pets alike.

      Hell ask Black Legion what it would take for a month of service wreaking havoc across goon space.

      Right now CFC is getting poked from many fronts, death by 1000 papercuts is a real tactic that can grind down even the most resilient orginizations.

      Reach out to merc alliances and see what it would take to get them motivated and excited.

      I would think renter kills would be even more valuable right now than goon kills - because goons are still so far behind the renter market share vs. their enemies. Interrupt the ratting/mining - reinforce POSs and iHubs.

      Imagine if they had reinforce timers all over the west from Deklin to Period Basis?

      Dont let them fool you also, the renters might say they only pay CFC alliances like LAWN or whatever - but that isk is making its way into Goon wallets, no doubt.

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    7. You're bringing up some excellent points and making me reconsider a few things I'd more or less ruled out before.

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  4. There's no need to ask around, there are already many mercenary groups out there, just give them your target of choice and off they go!! In my particular case, I'm joining lemmings and pouring some billions into gevlons project.

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  5. *cough*Darwin's Lemmings*cough*

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  6. Mox,

    Why not put pressure on their passive income? As many people placing as many siphons on moons as possible... that should help with the spanner placement ;)

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  7. i hate the goons as much as u do. gevlon is attacking them in hi sec which is sort of effective. i dont know how effective it is. i think the goons yawn and go to bed at night without a worry as far as gevlons efforts are concerned. the only real time i can remember they started sweating was when black legion? started knocking out their stations during the fountain war. of course they were bought off and pizza split from them at the being bought off.
    in all the outfits that raided null sec i think pizza had the best approach. they used stealth bombers, held no sov, but they did capture moons for the goo. pizza used npc space to launch their raids out of. i dont know exactly where to go with it but i think mobility and stealth bombers are the best low cost approach to hunting goons. also i remember an alliance hanging back during a major engagement killing off goon pods as they headed back to reship after losing their ships. the goons were fighting someone else and these were 3rd party kills. i9 cant remember where it happened tho. anyways those are some ideas.

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    1. That fits my thinking, stealth bombers and no sov holdings for them to go after.

      Guerrilla warfare style attacks killing them in their own space. We'd have the initiative and mobility advantage giving us the ability to choose when, where and if we attack while they'd just be reacting with no obvious targets to retaliate against.

      It's difficult finding people to get the ball rolling though. I do have a couple ideas along those lines but I want to keep quiet about them for a bit longer and see if anyone comes up with a better idea first.

      Delete
  8. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. I dont hate Goons... but it just so happens that I hate the media/propaganda machine Mittens uses and the spin that is created to persuade. To many examples to list really.

      Some ideas to more Grr Goon would be;
      Isolate them from the CFC somehow - Condi is still a huge force in the CFC, but w/o razor and others they would be far weaker.

      Disrupt renter space and that income stream. Pay mercs to camp systems and make it hard for renters to pay monthly rents.

      Moons IMO are a waste of time for the effort needed with reinforce timers and the like.

      It has to be in Sov space. Empire disruption means can easily be avoided with neutral alts other toons in neutral corps.

      Maybe bribe a director level with isk for some internal breakdowns.

      Speak with some well known and powerful goon enemies (Nulli/NC. PL?) talk to their FCs or diplos only, have a meeting to see what it would take isk wise to make a real dent with the combination of each parties coordinated efforts.

      It not going to be easy or cheap to make a dent, but its far from impossiable.There are many anit-goon peeps in eve, maybe more so now than ever. it might be a good time to try and unite the clans (N3/PL/Hero/Rus/Mercs).

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  9. The Goons are so big and have so much resources that killing pilots won't matter. What needs to be done is to attack and disrupt their economy. Go after ratting Goons, go after the Goon renters. Disrupt things in various local pockets for a few days at a time, then move. Don't stay in one place too long - attack the morale of the renters and ratters as much as attacking their isk.

    Leave moons alone, perhaps other than using siphons - like others have said, takes too much time and it ties down what should be swift moving cavalry and makes the raiding force easier to kill.

    See if you can get some of the bigger (or smaller, or medium-sized) entities like Black Legion to help out with short campaigns (like RFing entire sections of renter space), but don't rely on them. Remember how the Goons bought off BL.

    The prize method never struck me as a good one, tbh; if someone were to go against the goons (or anyone else) it means bleeding isk while doing it. Might get better results paying them straight isk and offering limited SRP.

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    1. That's never been done before. Oh wait, yes it has, loads of times. Goons have enough isk to last being starved out considerably longer than most other groups, and if they were to require a boost, they'd just do another large scale market manipulation. To make any impact in that you'd need to be able to hold all goons space with competent groups 24/7 for months.

      Groups like BL might work for small areas, but if they became an issue they'd just get paid off as they are mercs after all.

      Realistically, the whole idea is flawed. You are trying to find a way for small groups or individual players to make massive impact. That's just not going to happen. You can make tiny bit of impact and you can even make yourself look like your doing great by the numbers (as displayed by Gevlon), but that's like hurling a blackberry at a tank. You're bound to hit and your likely to see a mess, but it won't have done anything.

      Really though, outside of null I don't understand why some people have such a desire to attack the goons. Prior to moving into null, there were plenty of high sec groups I hated, but there was no reason to go wasting my time attacking them since they lived in null, and I didn't so I never saw them. The only one I would see is the goons during an interdiction or some other market manipulation, but that was a good thing, not a bad thing. I made billions off of their large scale market manipulations since they announce in advance what is getting hit.

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  10. "What needs to be done is to attack and disrupt their economy."

    Agreed, that's more or less what I meant when I said I wanted to hit them where they live. Disrupt their normal day to day routine in their own space. Take the initiative and make them worry about defending themselves.

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  11. Pay people to fly cloaked interceptors to their renting space. The majority of their income comes from renting their space. The renters either rat or mine (usually using bots) but they won't risk it if their is a neutral or enemy in the system (because that means they can light a cyno or be destroyed easily). Eventually, after some time, the renters will get sick of it and demand a lower rent or just move to another region, thus destroying the goons income. All you really need to do is send a couple of interceptors to their most popular ratting/mining systems, cloak and afk at a safe spot.

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    1. I've been thinking more along the lines of bombers that could actually blow things up but for purely harassment purposes lone interceptors would work fine.

      The biggest problem I can see with hiring people that way is the trust issue. Especially in a game where scamming others is so common.

      If I pay them first how can I ensure they'll actually do what I paid them to do?

      And the flip side of course is if I use a bounty system or something where I only pay after the job is done (thereby ensuring I don't get scammed) then they have to trust me to pay them.

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    2. You could use Chribba as a trusted third party. He could hold the ISK in escrow until the job was completed.

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  12. One thing I've been thinking about is simply having a goon killing contest where anyone could post links to impressive goon kills here.

    Give out nice prizes for the best goon kill (or kills) of the day, week and month. Maybe even a bounty system on industrials, mining ships or whatever to go with it.

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