Disclaimer: The Author is a Member of one of the Alliances involved but the opinions and analysis found within this article are his own and not necessarily reflective of the actual position of his Coalition, Alliance, or Corp.
After over a month of raiding the Drone lands, it appears a settlement concluding the GOTG / DRF war has been reached and the Guardians are headed back to their home space amid some speculation as to the next move. In my last article, we mentioned how the war had settled into the back-and-forth and oft-maligned “Fozziesov” rhythm, punctuated by sharp and often massive battles.
However, those fights had to be earned. One such that Fafer and I discuss at length was the destruction of a DIVE Sotiyo (a somewhat complete BR is available here) a couple of weeks ago which saw pretty much the full weight of the Guardians pitted against a DRF + Test mass form that featured each side throwing wave after wave of fighters at the other.
Speaking as one of the unwashed masses, after that fight though, it penetrated the half meter of granite surrounding our skull that several other reinforced Sotiyos on structure timers weren’t targeted. Thus tipping off those frenzied voices in our heads to wonder if something was up, seeing as both the official rationale for the war was removed and the obvious strategic goal of taking the pressure off Triumvirate Alliance had already been achieved.
Dotlan 11-15-17 Sovereignty Movements
Mainly by forcing the redeployment of DRF assets off that battlefront, seeing as TRI was no longer on the ropes, there really didn’t seem much reason to stay any longer, besides some gratuitous content at the long end of a pretty thin supply line. Others note that once FCON spectacularly flamed out and abandoned their territory in the closing act of a long war against TRI, the DRF was able to concentrate more resources on the northern theatre due to the now shortened front.
There are of course the inevitable whispers of a huge isk transfer given to clear the drone lands of the rampaging heathens. While as glorious an image it would be to imagine the Dragon polishing his scales by rolling about on the massive resulting pile of trillions of ISK paid as Danegeld. It hasn’t been proven by any source in either party.
Shortly after Sort Dragon’s ping announcing the peace deal, I reached out to Fafer, Alliance Leader of Ghost Legion. , and a renowned DRF commander who I’d been following up with for an interview for some time.
Fafer – Well, we had some delay in handing out the dreads from the cache so I had to clone jump the cyno, and the golden rule is to always try to have your own cyno. The cyno that opened off the centre of the target fleet could have been desynched maybe, but otherwise, he is a great guy and I still love him and don’t blame him. Numbers were also not adequate enough but we hoped we could kill some more faxes. As it went the way it did, we only equalled the GOTG TFI losses so it ended roughly same isk lost for both sides. Shit happens.
Yossarian – “Win or Lose, headshot or no headshot, form or no form, we can always count on the Reddisphere going toxic…. Do you feel that atmosphere is helping or hurting the community at large?
Fafer – It is a cultural issue, and also generational. As an old player, I definitely remember the CAOD on the Eve forums or Kugutsumen articles. So in a way, the banter was always present and its part of the game. Everyone likes to read good articles with jokes, or good battle report. Personally, I experienced a shift in posting culture, where many new people, I presumably younger generations, use forums as they would use text chat, with one line irrelevant comments that contribute to the clutter, however, I think I adapted to that.
Another thing is toxicity, however EVE itself is a harsh game so if you are not ready to read, you should not. EVE is a hard and intensive game, and I suppose weaker minds use it to vent out the frustration. Then there are organizations and individuals, that use Reddit as a propaganda platform. They probably think that it may help with recruitment and morale, so whenever they win they write praises to high heaven, and when they lose they are silent, and when they don’t like something their post-squad downvotes. Such things I don’t respect, and I find them foolish because it creates bad culture and dependency. I rather prefer good people that are stable and don’t need morale support like that.
Yossarian – So how do you rate the challenge of fighting Against the Guardians?
Fafer – Both sides had their advantages and disadvantages. For GOTG, it was deployment and logistics, although I presume they initially prepared some things before the attack. For the DCU/DRF, problem was to relocate forces fast enough back to the drone lands, once when it became obvious that MTO entosis was not an incident. GOTG had the advantage of having a supercap fleet, while DRF supers were located in the south. DCU had the advantage of being in its homeland with a lot of infrastructure in place. Therefore GOTG challenge was to hit the important enough targets, while DRF challenge was to counter the supers… and also to defend the sov timers. Defending the sov timers was accomplished easily, as we have many entosis-experienced people in the DCU, but also I attribute that ease to the fact that GOTG had weaker EUTZ and perhaps did not focus so much on entosis as they did against “juicy” targets like Sotiyos. So, the biggest problem was to counter the supers on important structure timers, and I believe we mostly managed to do that by using appropriate doctrines that enabled us to trade ships while staying pretty isk positive. The Abaddons we used were good and flexible enough against faction battleships, and we did few good experiments, especially with dread usage against the on-lining keepstar, and other t1 battlecruiser experiments.
I think that both sides had a good experience and learned a lot about themselves and improvements they need to do in the future. It was really challenging to manoeuvre and counter GOTG in the AUTZ, and also GOTG did good form-ups in other time zones, which was impressive.
Yossarian – So how do you think each coalitions’ membership’s perceptions of the other side have changed, after all, where I’m from, you don’t really know anyone until you’ve been in a fight…..
Featured image credit: Razorien
