My name is Ransu Asanari. I am the CEO of the Powder and Ball Alchemists Union [PBAU], and a USTZ Diplomat for The Unthinkables [INK]. Also, as of a few weeks ago, I am the Executive Officer in charge of The Unthinkables, second only to our Alliance Leader Master Kent.
“Irrelevant. Always Disbanding. Useless Pets. Coward Renters. Homeless Peasants”
“The Unthinkables are a worthless renter alliance with more kills then you” – Exit Strategy, 2012 (https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1873745#post1873745)
We heard this a lot and we loved it. We thrived on being underestimated and staying under the radar. You won’t find any of our alliance meetings leaked on Soundcloud or data dumps of our forums anywhere online. Proof of “security through obscurity” in action.
We had a very ironic sense of humor, and we owned these kinds of comments with pride, or came up with them ourselves. We even briefly named a station after it: O5-YNW VIII – INK Disbanding Since 2011 (http://evemaps.dotlan.net/system/O5-YNW/events).
Obviously many events are glossed over and timelines are compressed to make understanding easier. Special thanks to Washi Meisei as the INK Historian for helping with this section, as much of it was before my time in the alliance.
INK was founded in Spring 2011 by Space Chutney, Master Kent, RAPOPOV, and time 3290; establishing themselves in the Great Wildlands. With 80 members, basing out of M-MD3B, we started out by chasing alliances such as True Reign, Republic Alliance, and other smaller groups from the area.
A brief timeline:
“Fuck these wankers, we’re out of here” – Space Chutney (Video)
“This war was sparked by SOLAR’s incursion to treat Unthinkables (INK, Neo Curse Coalition member) like shit, trying to invade them, but the making of this war started back well before that with SOLAR’s handling of Gypsy.” – TMC Article
“For the record, today I told INK to fuck off out of Fountain since they’re hitting my people’s sov. Space Chutney kept his pride, gave me the finger and mocked us. Good on him! I made a threat and now it’s on us to back it up. Can we pull it off?” -The Mittani, January 2014 (Kugustumen)
After the Halloween War ended in early 2014 INK settled back into Wicked Creek and Detorid to retake our space from SOLAR, who had captured a lot of it while we had been gone. Eventually, we staged from Immensea in ZJA-6U along with other N3 alliances. We enjoyed lots of skirmishing and roaming fleets into Providence and Catch to fight Proviblock and HERO Coalition.
We did a few short deployments to Esoteria and Omist to capture moons, and built a Jump Beacon network to reach it all, spanning from Insmother all the way down to Esoteria and Paragon Soul. Most of the corporations were able to get very wealthy from our moon empire, and we successfully defended many attacks against them from Gorgon Empire, DRF, and other groups.
In June/July 2014, We made a few pushes into Proviblock Sov in Catch to create content for our members, and one attempt into BRAVE sov in WD-VTV. In truth, if we had taken the system we would have used it for our Jump Beacon network to make it easier to bridge fleets around, but mistakes were made (warping Foxcats to zero on a TCU after already spending 8 hours in fleet). Overall, it turned out to be a good first lesson for BRAVE on how to manage sovereignty.
Eventually we began creating a good relationship with HERO, and while keeping them neutral, would show up for major fights to side with them during the recent Proviblock war.
By this time, we had been deployed to ZJA-6U in Immensea for almost 6 months, and were having activity issues. A few of our active FCs such as Stepro had moved on, and Space Chutney was mostly inactive due to real life obligations. Varc Grayback had joined us with his corporation Guardians of Eden and had mostly been handling the relationship with HERO, but he was struggling with real life obligations as well. Roams and gatecamps weren’t as fulfilling and participation started to drop.
In September 2014 we deployed for a third time to Hophib to harass Fountain and Delve, after being requested by the other N3 alliances to help out. The agreement was to run our own fleets under our own FCs and help support the other alliances when needed.
This deployment turned out fairly horrible as there was politics and drama between our FCs and DARKNESS/Kadeshi, who wanted us to merge into their fleets to bolster their numbers. We had FCs being kicked out of command channels, intel being withheld and general shit talking of our participation, despite bringing more members to fleet than alliances twice our size. Many of the FCs got fed up with constantly having to sooth diplomatic tensions. Compounding this most of the fleets were structure grinds, resulting either in being blueballed or standing down. Both Varc and Space Chutney were almost completely AFK and only a few of our FCs were actively taking out roams, so the number of members logging in and participation suffered even more.
By the time the Phoebe patch was looming, we were having long discussions at a leadership level on whether to stay in our own space, or move out of Detorid. We discussed building up the industry group to be more self sufficient to supply ourselves, but our frequent use of T2 and T3 doctrines would make this very difficult. We concluded that it would be logistically impossible to maintain supply lines, as it would require station access in Immensea and Catch to reach lowsec, or very dangerous transport routes through Curse.
About a week before the patch, Space Chutney briefly logged in and arranged the acquisition of two constellations in The Kalavala Expanse, using LEM-I1 as a staging system. We had been told by the coalition that S2N would be moving up to Perrigen Falls, and when the CFC decided to drop their holdings in the Southwest, it seemed like a reasonable plan to hold the Northeast with them, while The Kadeshi, DARKNESS, and NCDot held the Southwest. When it was announced that S2N would be keeping their holdings in the South, and living in Curse we were quite surprised, but we were already committed.
The plan was to move up to Kalavala where we would maintain ratting space for our members, “find non-shit targets” and “brawl outrageous”. Space Chutney had said in an alliance meeting before the move that he would be back after the Phoebe patch to lead fleets.
We spent the last few days before the patch pulling up all our holdings in Detorid and the south, and organizing move ops from Hophib to The Kalevala Expanse. This exhausted our members even more, and there were almost no PvP fleets going out as everyone was busy with logistics and getting everything moved around before the jump changes.
The day after Phoebe launched, Varc Grayback posted on our forums that his corporation would be leaving INK due to RL issues preventing him from committing the time to lead fleets, and ensuring his corporation had content. He did it to save his corporation and make sure they had content even if he wasn’t around. We found out a few days later that they had joined Black Legion, but there was no bad blood.
On top of this, we also had a number of corporations leave to regroup in Highsec or Lowsec. Some announced it as we were evacuating Detorid, and some never joined us in Kalevala and remained staged in Lowsec, despite assurances.
A few days later, Space Chutney announced to leadership that he was not coming back to the game. This left us without any mainline EUTZ FCs which was a huge concern, as he was responsible for running most of the major fights.
We had an alliance meeting to announce this and clear the air, and discussed a plan to go forward, but it depended on having the time to organize, recruit new FCs, train up existing ones, and secure our space and alliance income.
In the midst of this, European Goonion had deployed nearby and started dropping SBUs in our northern pocket in Kalavala. This was excellent timing on their part, as I’m sure the news had spread, and we were in a vulnerable position. I don’t blame them at all for doing it, as it’s what I would have done – and it removed a threat off their border before we could get established or have time to fix our issues.
Due to sov transfers in progress, some of the IHubs were offline or mistimed, so some bad timers were generated. We had two fights against EG for timers in O5-YNW, which was the core station system in that constellation: Fight 1 and Fight 2
I will credit The Struiksniper for stepping up and running these fleets, but we lost both quite handily due to lack of numbers and strong counter doctrines on the part of EG. Our allies in the area such as XIX remained neutral and refused to help, although we had some limited support from the Geminate groups.
At this point, it was clear that with our current numbers and lack of capable FCs, we weren’t able to hold our own space, and we began to evacuate.
With the leadership burned out trying to manage all the sov transfers, dealing with real life issues, and some upcoming absences from the game due to vacations and work, Master Kent made the decision to pull the plug. He informed the corporation CEOs directly that we would be disbanding once we had evacuated our space. Arrangements were made to pay out all SRP claims, keep the lights on in the sov space as long as possible to allow extraction, and deal with the remainder of the alliance wallet without scandal.
The main problems INK had as an alliance was due to lack of an organizational structure, lack of trusted FCs, and depending completely on a few key people to manage the alliance.
On top of being the major alliance FC, Space Chutney held very tight control over the alliance direction, and managed a lot of the intel, strategic contacts, and IT infrastructure. His “ascerbic attitude” pissed off a lot of people in the alliance who didn’t learn to grow a thick skin. Most of the large scale content was dependent on him as well. When he went AFK and eventually announced he was leaving the game, it left a very big void from an FC and leadership level, and the other FCs leaving or being inactive quickly exacerbated the situation.
FCs in INK had a hard time, as there was no official mentorship or training program for them. There was no distinction between Junior and Senior FCs – anyone was allowed to take out a fleet. The SRP program was very clear that roams and non CTA fleets would cover Interdictors and Logistics ships, but everything else would be on the members to replace. Only fleets FC’d by Space Chutney would be guaranteed full SRP.
The problem with lack of organization is that every FC would get to a point where they would form for a timer, or take out an expensive T2 doctrine fleet thinking it would be covered under SRP, and then whelp the fleet (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Y77ocqh3U). Every time this happened, SRP would be denied, and the members who joined the fleet thinking their ships would get replaced would get screwed. That FC would get reamed out for taking on a fight they shouldn’t have, and typically would sulk by not taking out any major fleets for months, or by leaving.
Confusing this is the fact that casual fleets under Space Chutney, Stepro, or Varc would get covered sometimes under SRP, so line members really had no clear way of knowing the policy – this generated a lot of discussion on our forums. Many of them would ignore pings and not join fleets unless pinged by Space Chutney, which hurt general participation. Refusing to fight unless they were covered under SRP was sort of ridiculous considering the amount of income some of the corporations were pulling in from moons, as well as being able to make ISK in the space we held.
A lot of the other coordination was done very ad-hoc. Having scouts and cynos placed strategically wasn’t organized anywhere outside of a general Jabber channel, and there was no easy way to get useful intel up the chain. If for example a strategic POS needed to be set up, it would be asked for in channel, but not really assigned unless someone stepped up and volunteered, and there was no tracking done on who was responsible. There were only a few corporations who consistently took ownership to get things done.
At a top leadership level, only a few things were delegated, and it was easy to burn out the people who did step up. RAPOPOV and Master Kent ran a lot of the day to day things in the alliance for many years, and I have a lot of respect for them for managing as many things as they did, for as long as they did. By the time I was brought in to help out, and we tried to create a proper leadership structure and some organization for Reconnaissance, FC teams, and other leadership positions, it was too late.
For all its problems, INK was an amazing alliance to be in. At our best, our activity numbers were outstanding for an alliance of our size. We would frequently pull more numbers in fleet than alliances double our size. We were very good at punching above our weight and we typically took on fights when outnumbered 2 to 1 or more. One of my favorite fights was our Talwar fleets in Fountain – fighting 40 against 100. Our T3 Cruiser and Alpha fleet doctrines were incredibly effective and ahead of their time, and we switched doctrines regularly to keep up with the meta.
We were also very good at managing our intel. We had an amazing IT infrastructure custom built that ran off a few API keys per person. It would pull POS data, allow additions for targets and timers, and show a lot of metrics for activity. It also automatically updated our Forums, Jabber and Teamspeak rights, and had a lot of functions not a lot of members knew about.
On top of this, we pulled intel out of anything we could come across (never send API keys over EVE Mail) and stored it in a central database, with an easy to read frontend. EVE Skunk would be jealous. You may remember in April when the BRAVE API Keys were leaked that INK was mentioned. This wasn’t because we were involved in the leak, but because our server was fed all of the leaked keys, and was busy hoovering up all of the intel it could gather so the server IP address showed up on many records.
Our SRP program was one of the best I have ever seen. All submissions were done through our tools page, and full turnaround was within 24-48 hours. We had a dedicated logistics team working together to coordinate SRP approval, purchasing, contracting, and transport. The people involved here deserve a lot of credit for the amount of work they did – Devaroni, Nicolai Leovic, Tempest Borne, Clavaan, Maurice Bourdon, and Nirvanah Joringer, to name a few.
We were good at keeping our movements quiet. When the Pre-Phoebe Nullsec Alliance Movements were announced, everyone still thought we were in Hophib or Detorid until we claimed the first sov in LEM-I1. Typically the actual location of a deployment was kept secret until the alliance meeting, or we would give a false location to misdirect. As soon as the meeting ended, the move fleet would go up, the destination would be announced, and cynos would be lit.
We also didn’t take ourselves very seriously outside of fleets. There were a lot of fun chats in alliance before formups with a lot of joking and singing on comms (mostly Stepro), and we had a lot of in-jokes – like Air causing us to disband, and of course the infamous sound board. Watching the Alliance Tournament with 80 of your Alliance mates in Teamspeak was an amazing experience.
We also had a fun policy of making anyone who committed a major screwup make a drawing in MS Paint to explain what happened. Our Alliance MOTD was “Days Since Last Retarding: 0” in celebration of this.
There were some other fun ops, like baiting TEST with a Carrier and stealing unanchoring POS
INK is responsible for a lot more content in the last few years than we get credit for. We caused alliances to disband, and fostered others to grow. Entire alliances would ping and form up when we undocked (yes we have spies too, and have read all your pings) and major wars wouldn’t have happened without us.
We were never liked, not even by our allies. We were either hated or respected, and we were proud of that. For an alliance that ran as long as we did, even eventually as part of a coalition, we ran independently for most of that time.
To give credit where credit is due, our relationships with the Russian groups in EVE is long and very complicated. I have great respect for groups such as SOLAR and Gorgon Empire. I may never have enjoyed fighting you (especially over QQ3-YI Hafnium Moons), but you were worthy adversaries. Lorianna Lee, I always enjoyed “talking” to you, even if only indirectly via POS names 🙂, http://i.imgur.com/z8H6JxH.png and http://i.imgur.com/ND6AZ2b.png
If there is anything to take away from all of this, it’s the following: Don’t let all of the organization and content generation in your alliance fall on just a few people. Otherwise when they leave, everything in that house of cards falls apart. The alliance structure needs to be created to allow FCs and leadership to grow and work together. Build outwards as well as upwards, include a lot of redundancy in important positions, and share the workload.
Corporations also need to be responsible for creating content, and not be allowed to get lazy and rely on the alliance to do it for them. Everyone needs to be accountable for contributing in an alliance – from the line members, to the corporate directors and CEOs. Making sure every corporation has properly trained scouts, intel gatherers, cyno alts, and logistics members is key.
As said above, I’m getting on a plane in a few hours so I’ll tip my hat, and try to respond to comments when I have time. I’ll miss you INK.
