“We’re Phoenix Federation, and contrary to all the crap on Reddit, we do care about our allies in the coalition,” says Ryac Sampaio, CEO of FCON‘s Gladiators of Rage. His comments temper jeering reports following news yesterday that Phoenix Federation Skyteam and FCON will pull back to 4-GB14 on its way to “friendly” space in Etherium Reach.
Phoenix’s position has become increasingly “untenable,” according to Sampaio, who explains that recent battles with TRI, timezone challenges from FRT, and the presence of Pandemic Legion have all strained FCON’s ability to field effective responses. Northern Coalition.‘s addition of a 200-man dreadnought fleet to the field didn’t help either. Sampaio says, “Our allies are all engaged elsewhere, so if we stayed in Immensea (our) Keepstar would pretty much be our Alamo. So we’re withdrawing.”
The withdrawal “does not mean that the war is over or lost,” says Alex Turdean of FCON’s The Dysfunctionals, referring to an ongoing two-front conflict with GOTG and TRI. Turdean says that their forces wouldn’t be able to hold ground “without taking serious damage” which would endanger the entire coalition. FCON’s loss of space comes with a price but it also opens doors to a fresh start for a coalition that has struggled for some time, according to some observers, with absentee leadership and a lack of direction.
New leadership will have to reflect less diplomacy, less democracy and a more “militaristic” stance, according to Sampaio, and that’s something CODIE CEO tiberiusric believes is needed. The longstanding PVP corp left FCON earlier this month and its departure was largely due to a difference in “culture and mindset,” according to tiberiusric, who also points to failures in leadership. “FCON could and should be a great powerhouse,” he says, but “if you keep burying your head in the sand someone is going to eventually come and fuck you in the arse and that’s what happened.”
tiberiusric believes that “bad decision after bad decision, and not being willing to change or listen” results in a “big headache after you’ve hit your head against the proverbial brick wall.” He added that in his corp’s case these problems resulted in lower fleet participation due to “bad FCs and leadership decisions.” CODIE didn’t abandon FCON, tiberiusric says. “We fought our long war. We didn’t leave because ‘FCON is shit’. We left because you can only lead a horse to water” but getting it to drink is another story.
These and other problems will be addressed by a tighter and more direct management style. Sampaio says “I’ve been informed that this has been agreed to; that there’ll be much more of a top-down military-style chain of command in place.” Beyond that, he says “I can’t elaborate any further.”
Diplomatic relations and their blues won’t be changed, according to Sampaio, and FCON will need to rethink its approach to not only PVP but industrial activity as well. He believes that the meta changes brought about by the Lifeblood patch “is an excellent opportunity to rebuild things from the ground up … rather than try to change an already existing industrial infrastructure.” He says he’s very interested to see how other alliances and entities react to this change.
