Today, The Mittani, CEO of the CFC/GSF, posted his “Goonswarm CEO Update.” Shortly before(leak), or right as it was posted on TMC, a thread was started in the TEST forums to discuss the level of accuracy, from TEST’s perspective. TEST capital ship builder Aerallo added his responses inline with The Mittani’s own words. Below are his responses, in red & bold line by line. (I tried to just use bold, but it looked off with the normal headings of the update itself.)

This is posted with permission of Aerallo. I have edited a tiny bit for grammar and removed all the pictures the new doctrines, as they can be view on the original story if so desired.

[Disclosure: I, StupidGenius, have a small isk investment in Kaesong Kapitals, owned by Aerallo]

CEO Update: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

An alliance without a leader in a time of war is adrift; a leader going ‘on vacation’ during a war is a classic sign of late-stage failure cascade. So it was with teeth-grit trepidation and an anxious feeling in my stomach that I set out to Los Angeles for E3 for the last week; while our media empire had received accreditation and the trip was a must, our space empire had just launched an invasion of Fountain, initiating our most exciting war in years. During the day I obsessively checked my phone and jabber, fearing the worst upon my return: our coalition pushed back into Cloud Ring or worse, directors in hysteria, line members in panic.

What I found upon my return was something altogether different. Despite my absence, we had taken the northern section of Fountain sov, captured 21+ TEST R64s Most of which are currently reinforced or retaken, and did this in the face of an increasingly large hostile dogpile This is an interesting word as this is what Elo said, when the CFC was the one dogpiling TEST it was supposedly okay? as NCdot, PL, and N3 NC. join us for fights and have not moved from Sakht, PL are merely here on a rapid deployment to fight them as well all vowed to come gangbang us, with Black Legion and 401K doing as much damage as they could in our backfield They have been doing this for months, they merely stepped up their game because they are all dying down in Fountain. Our logistics directors were strained, not because our shit was on fire, but because we had been conquering too quickly; the directorate and FCs, fearing the worst, had slammed on the gas pedal so fast that we were running out of IHUBs to drop in Fountain – this for a “Moons only first, no sov” invasion plan. This last part is so fucking bad I will literally stay up night after night for months to destroy the empire they built up. GSF logistics team are not strained, they are scrambling to recover from the ass pounding we’re able to put out now, while their FCs cower in pos shields or zip around in coward tengus. This invasion was not stopped because of his logistics, it was halted because we started to fight back and CFC FCs were told to stop engaging us. At this point in time, our timerboard shows 95% CFC timers coming out over the next few days. Within a week, all of their progress in Fountain will start to reverse.

Some perspective for our newbies: The CFC at war is a grinding, lumbering machine of attrition and sadism. We grind slowly and relentlessly with Wolf fleets, Caracal fleets and Tengu fleets, they’re too afraid to use anything bigger; our foremost goal is always the denial of the enjoyment of the enemy We enjoy this game no matter how much they try: no fun allowed for our enemies. The first ten days of our last sov war – the contest for Tribute – we had captured perhaps eight NCdot moons in Venal and not even begun chewing on sov besides harassment SBUing and other forms of fuckery. The first ten days of Fountain we’d taken so many moons that were retaken and dropped so many IHUBs Roughly 4-6 it’s a small miracle that our logi directors are not twitching in a corner muttering about green boxes crawling under their skin.

This is a complex war with multiple fronts. While Endie’s excellent War Updates have kept us apprised, I’m going to lay out the macro-level strategic picture for you. The biggest insult is that they directly lie to their membership. Words dripped into giant vats of bullshit and served on a golden platter.

The War So Far: An Overview

Let us peer back through the mists of the last month and recall that the galaxy is now in this political situation because TEST The galaxy is in this political situation because we said to anyone that would listen; want to kill goons? And many people said yes – who has screeched for any ally who will adopt their banner in this conflict This is literally hypocrisy online, pot calling kettle black? The CFC, not only 1-3 days ago, sent Diplomats to beg, scream or get as many allies as they can – left the HBC and spat in our outstretched hand of friendship because they wanted to play EVE on their own and be independent from bloc wars and politics, all the while adopting a ‘Rebel Alliance’ gimmick. Again, developing the Rebel gimmick had nothing to do with the CFC, it was with Sort Dragon. TEST/TRIBE/Raiden. left the CFC because of him, and no outstretched hand of friendship came from the CFC, instead metagaming, black ops warfare and economic warfare. Yet they have called in TRIBE, PL, NCdot, N3, and reached out to basically anyone else to manage their coalition warfare for them. We’re managing this war ourselves with support from our allies, there is no coalition formed. TEST+Tribe have not joined N3 and nothing new has formed. It is essentially the same situation TEST has always been in, but now they are ~rebels~: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Honestly eat shit this isn’t 1872 When I left for E3, it was TEST, Tribe, and NCdot; now PL and the whole train of random Nulli-affiliated alliances has joined in against us. Yet despite that we have made rapid – too rapid, in my mind – progress. No progress has been made in recent days, and in fact in the next few days the progress will be reversed. Moons are being retaken. Stations and ihubs are entering shield and armour reinforce, and soon will die.

The intervention of N3 has changed the landscape of the Fountain conflict; N3 has brought massive numbers of chaff From what I have seen, N3 have been in constant war since its inception. To call them chaff when the CFC has grown bloated, fat and incompetent from months of doing nothing. Our allies in the N3 are competent, happy to be here with us and are in here for the long haul, and in doing so soured Black Legion in aiding TEST Elo suddenly wanting to play Help the Damsel in Distress is amusing, but we’ll see how long it lasts – which has turned into a shuffling blob of hypocrisy. We have now engaged Black Legion in a contract to fight against TEST and NCdot and to help counter N3/PL; considering that the most damage the CFC has suffered during this war has come at Black Legion hands – the loss of GENTS CSAAs and an entire Techfleet – I expect that there will be some bitterness among our membership about this difficult choice. It is not often that one employs a sworn enemy, but war makes for strange bedfellows. In the past we have always avoided any kind of relations with Black Legion, given that Pandemic Legion abhors BL and that BL has been killing the shit out of us for more than a year, but between the PL fleet in Fountain giving confidence to bandwagoners like ‘The Kadeshi’ (who?) we must make some ugly calls. There will be no standings with Black Legion, or combined fleets; they are here to punish TEST for their bandwagoning, not to spoon with us, set us blue, or join the CFC. This is a hilarious attempt at trying to drive a wedge between PL and BL and BL and the rest of us. The Kadeshi I know and to call them incompetent, yet sleep with people like Li3, FCON and SMA? This man baffles me.

It is important to emphasize that Black Legion will still be shooting and brawling against us during this conflict, though at a strategic level they will be focusing on mutual foes. In fact, we would prefer that our skirmish pilots enjoy ~gudfights~ against Black Legion than give TEST and their bandwagon fun: if you’re of a mind to toss away a Caracal fleet for practice, scrap with Black Legion. I could swear no less than, 1 paragraph ago, this person was declaring that BL would be fighting against us with the rest of the CFC. Suddenly they’re going to attack everyone? It sounds to me like Elo kept his options open, and he didn’t like it enough to spin 2 roads out of one.

This war is so complex that it is best broken down into zones of conflict.

The ‘Backfields’: the North, Fountain Backwaters and Delve

In any major bloc war, small forces strike behind the front lines to seize moons and wreak havoc. In the North, the CFC has been relentlessly harassed by Black Legion Figures on how many specific moons are taken in the north are sketchy, but unlike the writer of this article I won’t pull shit out of my ass. We’ll just say, “alot” of moons up north were taken, with some help from 401K; In the South, PIZZA has been seizing TEST moons in Delve (currently estimated at 11 R64s and ~30 lesser moons) this is more fabricated numbers, it’s something around 6 or less, and the “Fountain NPC” forces have snapped up an estimated 9 TEST R64s in that region This is another fabrication, as they have by all accounts had them for awhile. The CFC moon losses have primarily been in Venal, so our core income across the coalition has not been seriously damaged; by contrast, TEST has been losing moons in its two home regions. The CFC moon losses will primarily be in Fountain if you do another count today and tomorrow. This is more shit stirring of an invisible pot.

The discourse about these actions from TEST and from the CFC is always murky, because the extent of moon losses are often kept hidden or are simply unknown. Each side points to the other’s rearguard losses as source of hope – but we are still paying our reimbursements promptly. So are we.

Fountain – the Front Line

Fountain has ~64 moons of value. More than half of them have fallen to either invading forces or Fountain core forces. This is another fabrication as they are all ours & will return to our hands if we lost them recently currently have ~12 sov systems in Fountain including five stations 4 Stations of which are in reinforce. The sov is changing hands regularly, but the ability for the hostiles to use jump bridges in Northern Fountain has almost entirely been removed Initially, before the 2 nyx welp, the CFC were happy to run around in capitals to incap our jb network. We’re slowly rebuilding it all (infact, 90% of it is still up). In a normal campaign, snapping bridges would be very significant, but for reasons which are not immediately obvious TEST chose to defend Fountain from a lowsec system in Aridia, Karan. From what I can tell, TEST command was convinced that we would attempt a hellcamp on day one of our invasion Which is exactly what they attempted to do when Booda did his emergency State of the Alliance, 500+ hostiles piled into 6VDT-H, but whenever this is brought up on Kugu, a wild splurry of sperg to cover it up is enacted. Even here, he does not even discuss it because he knew we did the smart thing, even though such a move is the height of foolishness at the beginning of a war. Staging in Karan is not unlike basing the defense of France from Venice: they must bridge to a midpoint in 6VDT to bridge into us. This is irrelevant when we are capable of forming and jumping quickly. The alternative is another situation that is seen daily in B-D, staging in Low sec gives us quick access to Fountain, and easy to get down to Delve if we should need it.

Delve – Land of Pizza

Nothing is happening much in Delve besides Pizza Fed taking undefended TEST moons hand over fist: some jerks seem to have given Pizza a full set of moon scans in that region. 11 R64s lost an allegedly (we have only confirmed the R64s) ’30ish’ non-R64 moons taken. The moons lost were corporation moons taken by a single Pizza Corporation. They’re also in the NPC space.

As an aside, now that we’ve covered both Fountain and Delve: Given TEST’s lack of fiscal management or a finance team What you see here is a baseless assault on Dear packetninja who handles our finances very well– TEST finance, like GSF finance in the dark ages when we welped our sov bills, is handled by one man – the rapid shedding of both Delve and Fountain There is nothing rapid nor are there a huge loss in moons moons presents a major problem for that alliance. This is where he would respond “I happen to know more than you~” aka he is pulling shit out of his ass, again. However, TEST line members are mostly unaware of this situation and focused on the shell game of sov in Fountain, because that shows up on Dotlan. TEST Line members are, it seems, enjoying cloaksquads ganking in B-D, flying on Kurators 15 hour ops, blapping caracals, playing TF2 and reading the sperg from rejects on Kugu Moon fights are ugly things hidden in the shadows, and don’t make for clever image macros, gifs or copypasta. Yesterday the fight in KCT didn’t seem all that hidden when we welped 2 capitals but took back two of his precious money moons, killed loads of caracals, scimitars and tengus.

Period Basis and the Southeast

TRIBE used to live in Period Basis and pushed into Paragon Soul, but they moved to Karan to join TEST. <3 Tribe Bros There is an ongoing moon conflict between the ex-HBC Dinner Squadron coalition and TRIBE, but we’re not entirely sure about the losses This Dinner Squadron he is so intent on hoping will open a 2nd front on our front? Their time is limited due to the fact Darkness and Despair is resurging and they live with daily strife that is tearing them a part. If you recall from his opening speech (where he said NC. were going to fight us in Delve, TDS were going to take Period Basis etc.) he is rapidly moving his goal posts. – there’s no question that TRIBE is wide open and unable to defend any of their stuff from Karan. Meanwhile, the Dinner Squadron – whose most well-known member alliance is The Initiative – is being steadily attacked in Esoteria by Darkness of Despair, a group of angry Russians based in Stain. Why does this matter? Should something happen to the Dinner Squadron, a resurgent Darkness of Despair is likely to put pressure on N3. There are also many who accuse DD of being a -A- respawn, so they have a lot of eyes on their ascent.

Russians in the Mists: the Northeast

When Solar Fleet fell, MACTEP withdrew to lowsec to bide his time. Nulli, NCdot and PL set up a rental empire to prepare for Odyssey called Brothers of Tangra, a mirror of the old Solar Citizen and Shadow of xDeathx. Take a glance at Solar Fleet’s membership curve on Dotlan; it does not look like an alliance which lost a war. MACTEP has been in the Drone Regions, Insmother and Cache since 2004 and he appears to be pushing through Cache and Insmother once more. The point is not something asinine like “Russians will intervene in this war’, but when you deploy a coalition far outside its territory it creates a power vacuum, and N3 is now very far away indeed. I literally have no words on what to say but [hands over eyes emote]



In sum: EVE is pretty complicated!

How the CFC Grinds For Newbies

The CFC goes to war on a simple, tested strategy: grind the moons down, and only later bother grinding sov Funny how that changes to suit this deployment?. Hostiles should be either massacred or blueballed to ensure their playing experience is ruined. Relentless metagaming should take place such that the conflict is as demoralizing and unfair as possible. To us, sov is essentially meaningless once jump bridges have been snapped; what matters is that our foe does not want to log into the game. We have taken out superior forces by ruining their gameplay Complaining enough to CCP so they make Titans essentially useless? I’m fine if they want to take credit with that. to the point that they do not bother logging on Raiden. left in the past because their signature tactic was removed due to Bee Tears, and NC. left because well, he worm tongued Elo (notice a pattern?); this was how we dealt with the massive Raiden pre-nerf Titan blobs in the Tenal campaign. You can kill a hostile spaceship by blowing up, or by ensuring it never logs in in the first place. Shall we also mentioned that they only killed IT and White Noise because they crumbled from the inside? Oh, they’ll take credit for that as well.

Now that such a huge and ridiculous band of hangers-on This term perfectly describes FCON, SMA, Li3, GENTS, FA, TNT, LAWN, CO2 and XiX very well. Notice how I left EXE? They decided to join the CFC over us. have joined the ‘independent’ TEST to fight their war for them They fight with us as allies, it is important that the CFC remembers how we fight: it has been months since Tribute, our last grinding hellwar, and we have many newbies. The last SA newbie drive was actually very fucking awful At every turn you should consider how to ruin the fun of the foe, while still enjoying yourself. We care nothing for ~honor~, ‘gudfites’, or any of the pubbie views of how warfare ‘should’ be. We have massacred, griefed and blueballed our way across the galaxy since Red Alliance first taught us how to win sov wars in late 2006, and there is no reason why we will change our methods now. Expecting the CFC to do anything new is hilarious, same shit every year.

A Dinner of Ashes: Stabbing the Weak Spot

In this war we are fighting some very strong alliances: NCdot and PL are both powerful foes we are right to be wary of. That would explain why they keep welping Suas carriers and Dreadnoughts in Syndicate and surrounding areas. N3, not so much. The one coalition in the game that has had continuous warfare since its inception? His continued attempts to brush them off as irrelevant speaks volumes of how little he actually knows. Yet we are at war with TEST. It is TEST who loses moons It is TEST and allies helping TEST retake them, TEST who cannot afford to sustain their reimbursements It is TEST who reimburses everyone within Days, TEST who must stront and restront towers It is TEST who is reinforcing GSF moons and structures, TEST who must repair their sov structures It is CFC allies who had to repair B-D services, JB and beacon when we helicopter dicked their staging, TEST who must shoot endless SBUS It is CFC caracals and artillery wolfs (assault frigs, yeah) killing our offensive and defensive SBUs. Our strategy here is similar to the war against White Noise, where an alliance with very poor middle management/leadership was propped up by strong allies TEST has fucked up a few times (J5A, E-4) but our management is strong and effective, and our leadership is on the ball. They’re willing to risk whatever to get shit done. (in that case, NCdot and Raiden) until the failings of the supported alliance so grated on their allies that they eventually left them to their fate. Many of the best pilots left TEST for greener pastures (Fweddit, PL and GSF, mostly) a long time ago, so their core infrastructure has been run ragged. We are here to help that along. This is where evidence of this person reading zulu irc becomes relatively prevalent. My feelings on what former NORK and Zulu members did for TEST are no secret; I believe they contributed a lot. But since they have left, many people have stepped into the fold, and they have settled in and started leading us forward better than before. Amok. poaching members from TEST in the long distant past is well known, in fact they poach from many coalition members. Fweddit? I don’t need to say anything, and in PL they’re presently shooting CFC with us.

Tablets from On High: Adapting Doctrines to the Meta

The bandwagon around ‘independent’ TEST The independant gimmick was bounded around when we left the HBC but I haven’t seen it lately has adapted to the doctrines we launched this invasion with, and good for them. The badhacs episode is thankfully behind us We went into this invasion with the doctrines which worked well for us in the brawls before the invasion, but did not anticipate quite so many joiners Blaming the endless caracal/celestis/tfi welps on joiners is hilarious. The TFI’s were lost to Boat in saving 2 GENTS CSAAs (woops they weren’t saved) from BL+401k, Tengus continuously die to our Foxcats as well as Caracals. Celestis are ineffective against Triage Carriers.. We are now rolling out our counter-doctrines for this, and in the next few days you’ll see several new setups experimented with. In a massive brawl of battleships we cannot throw away faction battleships willy-nilly, but it is an ideal place for us to use a combination of our previously planned Loki doctrine – which many of you are now ready to fly – and a Megathron-based brawler/sniper doctrine.

This is but a Tribute

It’s also a worthy note that they’ve lost 4 times Fountains worth in isk/assets since this war started? How far will it go?

Some of you might be wondering why we’re basically not bothering to defend Tribute. The Finance Team comes through with a handy graph! With Black Legion moving away from the North to assault TEST, NCdot and N3 we will still face some harassment from 401k, but we only give so many fucks. Seems like they really do care about it, since they used all the fuel + effort of sending 2 caracal fleets and an entire 140man slowcat fleet.