Disclaimer: The article below was written by Elise Randolph, Member of CSM 6,7 and Pandemic Legion. Elise Randolph has written a lot for EN24 in the past which he shares on places such as reddit aswell! Please bear in mind that statements made are his and do not represent EN24.
So, some people have asked me on the Brave subreddit for an AAR of sorts from the PL perspective. This was intentionally made to be posted on /r/BraveNewbies but the threads got deleted and I got banned from posting there. Someone is just having a bad day, I’m sure. Or maybe they knew that people in /r/Eve would find it interesting. Regardless, if some of the pronouns seem to refer to Brave, that’s why.
I love to post, as you’ve no doubt figured out, and I do love you guys. For the most part you guys like me too; I’ve only once been embraced like this from another alliance and that was with PL (back when I wasn’t in PL). That said if you are of the opinion that I’m here to ~meta game~ you or sow seeds of discontent, you really don’t want to read further. It’s going to make you upset, and I have no intentions of doing anything like that.
Unfortunately due to length I had to split things into two parts. Luckily we were here twice!
The Beginning
To start things off, I was actually not active in Eve when we were three-way’ing the fights in Provi. Making timers in the Dominion sov system is really awful, though, so it’s always the most low-effort-fun to jump in when two parties are doing all the work for you. I was very active when we made the decision, post Phoebe, to move to Curse. The reason was because the game – our brand of game – was being changed. While we weren’t working or doing anything major, we had this really neat deployment model called Rapid Deployments. Basically, any FC could come up with a budget and plan to go to a certain area and just get fights. Maybe for one week, maybe for one month. So PL would stage in Amamake and take one Carrier load of ships to the Rapid Deployment zone and see what happens. Sometimes they were fun, sometimes they were busts, but they were very fun and easy to do. Anyways, Phoebe changed that with the jump range and jump fatigue mechanic so we had to be more deliberate with our moves. We chose Curse because several people were in the area, but mostly because we knew Brave fought.
With Phoebe we also needed to stress-test some new doctrines. We had some theories at what would be strong, but just like anything with Eve you need hands on practice to see what actually works. There is no need to rehash every fight (though I must say, you guys are so much shit to bombs) but suffice to say that you were a fantastic stress test for us. We eventually settled on what worked and what didn’t. The most spectacular failure we had, though, was to put tracking-fit Nyxes in a safe spot assigning Fighters under a scan inhibitor. I was confident that this would be the most hilarious thing ever, but it never worked. We actually had an awful track-record with dropping caps in general. You guys fielded so much triage in every fight that the only thing we could do was tank and wait for the GODBOMB. I know it’s narrative destroying to suggest that you guys fielded caps, but you guys did it for every single timer and got away with it.
At the time we had no idea of this, but there was a lot of undue panic from your leadership and middle management speculating about our presence. We were just there to have fun and shoot dudes, but the leadership channels became gridlocked with doom-and-gloom drama while trying to come up with a narrative to motivate people. I think this the one areaa of the game that Brave is very weak at: managing the management.
From my perspective (obviously), these guys have a very warped view of the game. It’s like they learned how to run a coalition from Chinese whispers of how to run a coalition; “you have to manage the meta, you have to fabricate a narrative” etc. In reality you only need a narrative to motivate an otherwise unwilling coalition to go to war. And you have to be very careful in making one; it’s easy for a story to backfire and make you look like an idiot. You guys weren’t in that position at all; the narrative you came up with actually disparaged you more. So there was this very gung-ho excitement phase, followed by this abject depression a few days later when things didn’t pan out (you got bombed really hard). But it’s ok, because things turned around.
I’m not sure what happened, but you spun out of your funk and rebounded. There were some good results, and you guys came up with this really nifty plan to drop on our caps as they were grinding. Out of nowhere, 40something dreads dropped on one of our titans. Unfortunately you guys had a bit of a miscommunication and dropped on the /wrong/ Titan and it lived – but it was exciting! You guys took a swing at the giant and made him bleed. This type of action – an invention and risky decision that your military directorship was really against – inspired you guys more than anything else.
The all-time killer in Eve Online – the one thing responsible for more alliance collapses and expensive losses – is hubris. We try like the plague to avoid it, but occasionally we get caught with our pants down. This happened to PK’s Avatar. Another plan – this time executed perfectly – and you bagged your first ever Titan and Super kill. Swagger came flowing through you, and fleet participation skyrocketed. Nothing cleanses quite like the champagne bath of victory. In HED you guys successfully defended the station (using caps), and you bagged your SECOND Titan kill. That one wasn’t due to our hubris or a trap, just a questionable FC decision (yours truly) that didn’t pan out. It was actually very fun for us, and I think it goes down in Eve history as the biggest fight (in terms of ship kills) the game has seen. No narrative, no fear mongering, no bureaucratic red tape, just fun in the sun. This is where you are strongest, this is where you are a force of nature.
We were still experimenting and learning just how strong caps were in Phoebe (an aside, we learned that they’re significantly stronger now) and then got a contract offer. In November we made the decision to just get rid of our rental empire – which was the biggest in the game – to just do our own thing. As a result it meant that we had to make money another way and we defaulted to mercenary work. Although you guys were way more fun, we started to make plans to move over to the dreaded dronelands.
The Second Coming
Having played this game for so long, and having learned from some of the best guys out there, I appreciate better than most that is almost impossible to plan more than six weeks in advance. If you try to plan out your next year – or even six months – you’ll quickly find that things fall apart. So on our way out I approached your leadership about coming up with a deal so that we would leave you guys alone. We asked to buy some of the supercaps you were building for someone else in exchange for leaving your sov alone. Not bending at the knee or paying a tithe to be our pets, but just buying some ships you were building at buildcost +15%. Some of you leadership were keen on the deal – many weren’t informed all together – and others were of the opinion that it would set a bad precedent. Eventually the information leaked that we were leaving (XIX made a morale speech saying that we would be coming down to assist them), and the tone changed instantly. It seemed to me that you guys thought you had found some hidden leverage (the intel came from an /r/eve thread) and wanted to boast proudly how PL was thwarted! I personally thought the deal was fair and wasn’t a bad precedent, but of course I came up with the deal so it shouldn’t be a surprise.
Anyways we left and you guys went back do doing your thing. I was still active on the Brave subreddit, and of course there was a bit of drama because honestly it’s something you guys love. I don’t get it, but it’s undeniably part of you and a little bit isn’t a bad thing. As our contract was finishing up we were deciding what to do next. Moving our cap fleet is a pain in the butt, so again we went with the “sure thing” instead of moving to Venal or Fountain and risk having to spend a week or two moving AGAIN to find some fun. There was a bit of action in the Stain area this time, so we popped on by. Close to Brave, close to fun.
We started doing our thing again and like clockwork, the “narrative and meta” questions started coming back. You guys went with a similar approach; stating that we were here to invade and going for 3GD as our primary target. I actually touched on this in a Reddit thread that got a lot of attention (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bravenewbies/comments/2wz9hu/an_idiots_guide_to_pandemic_legion/covuvk4) and kind of warned of the dangers. But again, that’s just my opinion. You guys fully embraced the Tengu/Eagle thing, and we countered that hard. Like, mega hard. Our TFIs did work. We used to have a system in Catch, L7X, that we used for a cyno beacon and logistics. Upon moving to Stain some of our logi dudes requested a replacement system for L7X (you guys took it when we left) and we settled on F4R. We went for it with everything we had, and honestly it wasn’t easy. It’s not like we were going easy on you to farm for fights, as some of the more cynical people assumed – we legit wanted the system. There was a very funny moment when we just dropped a ball of caps on it and ended up LOSING to one of you guys getting the last hit on it and saving the system. It was honestly one of the funniest things ever.
