(Disclaimer: The author of this piece is a former member of PFR)
In a State Of The Alliance (SOTA) held at 18:00 on Saturday the 16th of January, Walter Cohen, leader of Phoebe Freeport Republic [PFR], announced plans for PFR to abandon their home region of Scalding Pass (and holdings in nearby Wicked Creek) in order to facilitate a full move into Querious.
The SOTA got off to an exciting start with the surprise announcement that longtime CEO of DEQC (PFR’s largest and in many ways central corporation) Lograth Concerkinn would be stepping down as CEO and Lugaratz Rayl (a linemember from fellow PFR corp ‘DAWGS Corp.‘) would be taking over. Next, Walter went on to criticize the recent surge in negativity that seems to have permeated the alliance at all levels. Walter failed to point out any specific examples, however it was clear that Walter was referring in part to a recent alliance mail by Marciniusz Solo (former CEO of DEQC) that was leaked to reddit and caused a significant amount of controversy. The solution proposed was that all dissent should be limited to private channels and that ‘negativity’ in public would not be tolerated.
It was at this point that financial issues began to be addressed with the announcement that PFR, as of February the 1st, would no longer be holding moons and would instead be relying upon a tax based system to generate alliance income. The tax based system of generating alliance income has recently come under heavy fire when CFC member SMA was publicly ridiculed for it on reddit. The proposed tax based system is a combination of the SMA and CVA tax based systems. Each character in the alliance has to pay 5m per month as well as corporations being required to give between 10 and 20% of their monthly income to the alliance. In exchange for this corporations are to be given access to SRP, however details of the SRP have not yet been made public. It was later added that corporations would not be allowed to opt out of the tax. This is a very controversial move by Walter Cohen, as only 8 days ago a very popular propaganda post to /r/eve praised PFR for not taxing its corporations. It was also announced that another source of income the alliance would soon be exploiting would be POCOs, however, as anyone who has ever done alliance (or corporation) financials can tell you: POCOs are not an income stream so much as they are an income drain in the short term and barely a drop in the bucket in the long term.
The bombshell was then dropped that PFR would be immediately evacuating all previously held space and moving to Querious in order to be a part of the ‘Querious Content Coalition’ (also known as the ‘CleverGirls’ coalition). This came as a surprise to many as only 2 months ago 160 PFR members defended 4-CM8I from Advent of Fate and Triumvirate. When asked when the move would start Walter replied ‘yesterday’ (this no doubt referring to the 80b+ of ISW assets in the station) adding that the move was hoped to be completed within 2 weeks with the sov being dropped in perhaps 4 weeks or so. Walter claimed an increase in hostility by local alliances in recent months as the primary motivator behind the move citing TEST, CORD, PIXEL and MEMOM (amongst others) as entities who have caused significant amounts of pain to PFR in the recent past. An impression was given off that PFR would be unable to meet the demands of an inevitable war against such entities and so it was better to move before being potentially forcefully evicted. When asked what systems PFR would be holding in Querious, Walter pointed to the 1M4-FK station system and said there were plans in place to slowly increase PFR’s sov footprint in the area as they worked on rebuilding. PFR was recently gifted the station of 1M4-FK in Querious by Pandemic Horde as a part of their ‘4th Crusade’ campaign and for the last week or so has been the staging grounds of several of PFR’s more active PvP corporations.
Finally, the SOTA was wrapped up with a lengthy Q&A, with most of the questions revolving around PFR’s moving plans and plans for the future. A few interesting questions stood out:
Q. ‘What about the people who want to stay behind?’ – PFR linemember
A. ‘Leave the alliance and join RANE‘ – Walter Cohen
Q. ‘Can we entosis and attack RANE?’ – PFR linemember
A. ‘Yes, all agreements are useless now as we’re leaving so go ahead.’ – Walter Cohen
A writeup of the SOTA can be found in bulletpoint format here and a recording of the SOTA can be found here.
