I’ve never spoken to The Mittani online or in person and I doubt the guy has much of an idea I exit let alone who I am and what I do. That’s not to say he should, in all honesty as far as Eve goes I don’t consider myself much of a blip on the radar. I’ve analyzed different speeches from the Mittani in the past, and while I haven’t done so more recently, the latest address I found a bit more interesting. I usually get criticized by this and that goon for somehow offending fearless leader and spam my article message boxes with “where did the goons touch you” comments. Truth be told, every alliance grunt seems to do this when they think I question their mother’s virginity and in each case, I honestly don’t have a personal issue with any one of them.
For one reason or another people tend to separate “The Mittani” from “Alex Gianturco” because one is an in game persona and the other is a real person. Honestly I think that’s a load of garbage. You are who you are and you choose to act based on the results you get in whatever arena you find yourself in. I’m not saying that since someone suicide ganks people in Eve, they’re going to blow themselves up in a crowded coffee shop, because those two separate events do not have the same parameters. I believe this sort of thought process comes from the notion that there is no such thing as truth and that everything is relative when in actuality, Truth is Absolute, but it is perspective that is relative.
In any case I will refer to him as “Mittani” not because I separate one name from the other, but simply because I don’t care to become that intimate with an individual I only relate with on any concrete level via a video game. Even so this person is somewhat fascinating to me for the unique position and role he plays within Eve. I can’t imagine to really know Mittani although one can make the argument that few of us really even know ourselves.What I can do is attempt to make educated guesses based on my perspective and limits I have as an individual.
Without trying to sound too judgmental we can say that if he’s reading this, his first reaction would be one of ego. We can safely assume, that as the tyrant prince of the Goonswarm, he has a bit of an ego. To be a leader you sort of need a somewhat inflated ego in order to deal with the stress of being in charge. Even so he’s probably no worse than any of the other rulers of an 0.0 kingdom. The attitude, the arrogance, it all comes with the job. I always raise an eye brow of disbelief when people consider him any worse than anyone else in his position. How else does a space dictator act? Just like all the other ones. It’s a bit like how people always say Vlad the Impaler was such a harsh ruler for impaling his enemies. Well big whoop, other rulers would cut their enemies in four pieces, while others would bury them i dirt and have horses trample them to death. So in that sense, the Mittani isn’t anymore remarkable or unique than Vince Draken or Progod or MACTEP or any other individual that has a leadership role in a major alliance. They’re all going to be smug when they blow your things up and they’re all going to tread water and run the Damage Control when things don’t go their way.
What is remarkable and unique however is his ability to project his power. We can easily refer to the Mittani as “the most powerful individual in Eve” based upon the coalition he leads. Now truth be told he has his own team of individuals that run much of the day to day stuff from logistics to FCing to making policy. His hands on involvement, I can’t speak about only that what seems to be delegated is delegated fairly well. The CFC is by far the best well run machine in 0.0. The often criticized advantage of the CFC is that they have numbers but numbers mean nothing if you cannot organize. People that complain about wanting fair fights should play Dota or that other bad knock off I forgot the name of. Perhaps a nice hockey game would unerve the nerveful. The sooner you realize this and forget about complaining about “fair fites” the sooner you’ll evolve into something more useful in Eve.
If you haven’t read the Mittani’s latest GSF CEO Update: “Honourable Third Parties” go ahead. As a side note…don’t spell things like “honorable” or “color” as “honourable” and “colour” if you aren’t British…it just comes off as tacky…mate. I’ve analyzed previous articles by Mittani himself be they Alliance updates, or the general CFC propaganda but nothing has popped up on my radar in the last few months save for this previous article. I realize I am a few days late in doing so but hopefully the time allowed some things to digest. I’m basically writing this as I re-read the article paragraph by paragraph I’d recommend following along.
Right from the start I’m very surprised to see him address N3’s role in the Fountain War in such a way. “What they got to do to us” doesn’t seem to be so bad considering what they did was turn a completely lop sided slaughter of TEST Alliance, into a mostly entertaining war that maybe have gone either way of N3 actually committed and TEST wasn’t in political shambles. I also did not expect his consideration concerning the consequences of one’s role as a third party as being so trivial. No political consequences? Really? I’m going to chalk this up to perhaps a speedily written article because I refuse to believe “the spymaster” is that short sighted. There are plenty of political consequences. I mean I could sit here and list countless possibilities but we can just look at the consequences N3 is having to deal with ow for their role as a 3rd party. Their failure to prop TEST up in Fountain has lead to their primary enemy in controlling half of 0.0 and be pissed off at them that they want revenge.
Progod’s declaration that the N3 coalition’s entire reason to exist, to destroy the CFC was also brought up. Progod sadly gave the CFC even more motivation to hamper N3 which lead to a conversation between him and Vince that I can only imagine went something like this:
Progod: “Our whole existence is based on destroying the CFC! We all go in! Balls to the walls, all or nothing! We win or we die! Hurrah N3! VFK or bust!”
Vince: “Eh…dude can’t we just gank what we can and if our sov gets threatened, we just say we didn’t want it and that’s that?”
If anyone could provide a proper “dueling partner” for the CFC, it would be N3. Sadly, their miscoordinated leadership on the coalition level leads to Biden-esque mishaps such as this one. Again I don’t say this to rail against N3. I really do want them to become a legitimate alternative to the “CFC” sphere of influence. Conflict in Eve is good, but meaningful conflict will only happen when both entities can be an actual threat to the existence of the other. So far the relationship only seems to be going one way.
The other thing I really didn’t expect was the Mittani being surprised Solar, AAA and DD would ally together as well as with Black Legion.
“On Halloween, Solar Fleet and Black Legion made a surprising move: they allied formally with Darkness of Despair, -A-, and Stainwagon, RUS entities which they had previously been unfriendly towards.”
Really? It was surprising? It seemed like the most logical conclusion to me. Oh well, you can’t be right all the time, not even being a super spymaster. As for myself I’m going to go ahead and be a little smug in saying “I told you so.” Honestly as the leader of the CFC, if I did not see this as something that would happen itself, I would have surely taken great measures to ensure that it did. He concludes the portion with outlining how the CFC would again be the “honourable third party” and ensure N3 has no fun.
“I want nothing less than absolute cruelty and sadism on display. No honor, no fun for the foe, nothing but having their faces smashed in shit over and over and over again until they cry, beg, and plead for forgiveness for what they tried to do to us. We’re just here for fun and good fights, gentlemen; why are you upset?”
Well that escalated quickly. I really fail to see what exactly N3 did that was so taboo. I didn’t see their involvement helping TEST particularly effective. It really simply just has to go back to some hurt ego one way or another. N3 did talk a lot of smack early on when they were doing alright against the CFC.
Their standing orders right now are to base out of Curse. Hey look at that, I got another one right. I’m either calling it or they’re using my terrible articles as their play book. The CFC are simply going to “torch” the N3 fields. When not in fleet to pew pew, they’ll be in fleet to grind. I expect the price of Red Bull to go up this month. Harpies, Domies, Drones, Dreads and Bombers are likely to follow.
Just at the end he makes mention of EMP as well. Now for those of you who don’t know, EMP (Insidious Empire) had recently drop kicked Razor out of Cobalt Edge and while the CFC “didn’t want that sov anyway” Mittani makes mention of their success in harassing them using black ops. I like EMP because they’re a newer face in 0.0 politics. Their leader, Phreeze, while never exchanging any words with, I like from some of his writing. Depending on how PL/EMP deal with the Mittani, we could see some excitement in the future in that area as well.
To conclude, I’d like to say to you Mister Mittani, that even though you have a huge bloated ego, you probably assume that you’re more effective than you are, you actually play the leadership role better than 95 percent of the major 0.0 leaders out there. Most importantly, you’re entertaining from your fanfest goofs, to your misplaced frustration, coloUrful speeches and general competent leadership.
I have a short story about my one of my more memorable interactions with Goons. It has nothing to do with the article above but it may prove entertaining to some. Back in December of 2012 when I was the Diplomat/Contract Coordinator for VENGA Inc, I had set up a small contract to harass Li3 Federation in Querious. On one of our nights we noticed a Tengu ratting on a gate. Now our fleet comp consisted of a Manticore, a Purifier, a Sabre and a Falcon. Catching it wouldn’t be a problem, but holding tackle would surely prove difficult. We had no logistics and even worse, we had no webs.
One of my scouts spotted a small Goon gang roaming in the area as well. They had a Sabre and a Falcon as well, so nothing much of interest. What they also had was a Daredevil with its boosted webs. I quickly messaged the group and told them our fleet comp. They wanted to fleet up and grab the Tengu. However to me I had only known Goons from their reputation as being scammers and disreputable individuals so I declined saying only that we could work together but not in the same fleet. They agreed and the chase was on.
We managed to catch the Tengu on an outgate as the Goon gang jumped in. We spread our Sabers on either side of the gate and kept the rest of the team on the Tengu. One of our Falcons continued jamming while the two bombers kept res scripted damps to work on conjunction with the ECM. The other Falcon would stay deaggressed so that it could jump through and keep the Sabre alive long enough for us to jump in and continue the fight.
I kept my guys at a distance both from the Goon fleet and the Tengu. I imagined that the moment it would pop, we’d be targeted by the Goons. Now the Tengu was somewhat difficult to jam as are most Caldari ships so quite a few times we had to warp out and warp back in. The major concern was of course to keep the Daredevil alive. Without those webs the Tengu could just burn away easily enough. Really we needed every individual ship that was there to accomplish the kill. The Tengu’s shield tank would slowly grind down only to be quickly boosted to max with its Gist X Type X Large Shield Booster.
This happened several times and the fight seemingly lasted forever. On occasion he would deaggress and jump through waiting out the invis timer and regain some of his cap. I was certain this alliance mates would soon show up to save him. To my delight, and I’m sure his displeasure, no one ever did show up and eventually his capacitor gave out and with it his shield tank.
Looking at the killmail I notice I’m using T1 torps when I usually go Faction/T2. So for me it again gives me a sense of just how long the fight took. Now as soon as the Tengu popped I told everyone in my fleet to vanish. Yet in another strange turn of events one of the Goon pilots told me that he was leaving half of the loot in the wreck for us. Yeah right I thought. Obvious trap is obvious. Goons are all dishonest scammers. I told him that he could take it all. To my surprise I notice my wallet blinking. I open up the window and sure enough he had sent me half of the content’s value. I thanked him and split it up with my gang.
It just goes to show you that just because someone is part of a certain group or organization, that they do not necessarily always adhere to the stereo type that they are suppose to. Its things like that that keep me playing this game and continue to learn about the nature of people and what they do in this “awful game” that is Eve.
– Seraph IX Basarab
