Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Defeating RvB on the field

RvB can only be defeated by diplomacy and game mechanics tricks. Defeating them on the field, by fighting them in ships is theoretically impossible, as they joined RvB to PvP endlessly, every new war target is just "adding content".

Or rather, that's what they wish to think about themselves. But there is a problem: just because you honestly believe that you can flap your arms and fly and all your friends agree, you still can't. Instead of caring for their self-definition, let's look at the numbers. First the Zkillboard history page. While it's not without errors, it's approximately good. So I added the red and blue data. For comparison, let me remind you to the data I collected about Goons and pets:

The interesting field here is the blue one, ship value. Goons, their pets and their enemies alike lose ships that cost 60-90M on average. RvB on the other hand loses much cheaper ships. In 2013 and 14, the average ship value was mere 16 million ISK. This is the unique selling point of RvB: constant PvP with very low costs. Remember that everyone and his mother are "PvP-er" in EVE. You need no corp or structure to go out and attack some random guy. Why join RvB then? Because they have rules that make PvP cheap.

In most of 2014 February, RvB was at war with both The Marmite Collective and Darwins Lemmings. So I collected detailed data for this period, 8481 Red and Blue losses were processed. I calculated the losses to fellow RvB members and losses to other pilots:

The Red against Blue or free for all fights result in 14M kills on average. When an external war target kills them, that's a twice bigger loss. But there is more in the grey field. It represents losses on Feb 15-16, the weekend when RvB dropped the war. Not only the loss % to external enemies halved, but their ship values decreased too. Why? Because when not facing real enemies, RvB can even more focus on their very cheap frig PvP.

What does this mean? That RvB isn't invulnerable on the field at all. The members are in RvB because they want to do PvP without paying ISK for it. They are playing spaceship WoW battlegrounds. The presence of real enemies forces them to ship up and do exactly what they wanted to get away from: losing expensive ships. This is why I wasn't "diplomatic" (read: beg for mercy after they attacked us when we had 50 members). I am certain that we can simply defeat them in spaceship combat.

Their leaders know that. After they saw that the 50 turned into 150 during the first 2-weeks period, (allies are auto-dropped after 2 weeks, must rejoin manually) they announced that they'll leave the war that they "only joined for fun". After we reinforced Goon POCOs, they were ordered back to the war by their masters. This Friday, when the war was dropped again, they left it dropped for 2 days, and re-joined exactly in the hour when the first Goon POCO left reinforce. They spent as much time having fun as they could before Mynnna again commanded them into service. Their leaders know that they can't sustain real wars for long. This is why I'm showered with "don't make it personal, be diplomatic" mails and comments. To give them a way out. I won't. We will keep reinforcing Goon POCOs. If Mynnna becomes soft (or rather recognizes that a dead pet is useless) and allows them to leave, we declare on them and start taking their POCOs. We simply cannot let an open Goon pet rest and regain strength just to attack us again. There is only one way for RvB to leave this war: to accept my terms coming tomorrow. You'll be surprised, my terms are very nice.

Why are they not broken yet? Simple: in this February only 17% of their ISK losses came from Lemmings and Marmites. Most of their members are unaffected. They are 8000, we are 600. We can't defeat them yet. But let me remind you to our growth graph:

However there is a fun fact: we are already causing them more damage than their income from their POCOs.

37 comments:

Professor Clio said...

There's a *small* problem with your math (as usual). The 15-16th was our "frigatus" theme weekend where we limit our guys to only flying frigs. Of course the isk losses are less that weekend... Do some basic fact checking befor... oh who I am kidding I keep forgetting who I'm talking to.

Anonymous said...

First of all, you clearly don't understand RvB (not like you understand Goons either, but not the argument I am making). RvBers have fights against each other in cheaper ships because it's faster to reship, and you can have multiple fights per day in T1 hulls instead of losing one expensive hull.

RvBers lose more expensive ships to 3rd parties because of the likes of Ganked, and our Wars (the real ones like EUni and BNI).

As for the weekend of the 15th-16 in particular, it was Frigatus weekend, but you would have known that if you read anything other than your blog. unfortunately, like others have pointed out here, you only see what you want to see, and make your arguments accordingly.

Looking at what Lemmings, and Marmite kill against RvB, it's basically ALL Pods and Frigates. EVERY other category in the war report in game, and war reports on killboards show that RvBers kill more dessies, cruisers, BCs, and BS. So good job on recruiting the most risk averse pilots in Eve, who like to sit on trade hubs and hit F1. I'm sure they will be of great help when you need to actually fight (not like Lemmings or Marmite ever will given their history).

Also, please permadec RvB! You have no idea how many people would actually be happy about that. You've already started spending isk on one useless endeavour, might as well start another.

I don't think your experiment has done anything but create Marmite lite in high sec, for those pilots/corps who can't make it into Marmite because they would ruin Marmite's KB stats. You have also probably made Tora very happy by footing the bills.

One more thing, perhaps antagonizing the one group, RvB, that Marmite has less than a 90% efficiency with (Marmite prides itself on having 90% efficiency against all alliances) is not the way to achieve your goals. Too bad you didn't think of that.

Anyone can reinforce a POCO. Showing up for the timer is a different matter. I think the only person benefiting from this whole debacle that you've concocted is Tora, who is probably very happy to make his guys show up once every two weeks to reinforce some POCOs between the time that the RvB ally offer drops and is reinstated, while you foot the bills.

Arrendis said...

There is a difference between 'being diplomatic' and 'begging for mercy'. It's called tact. Just showing a modicum of civility. You tend not to, Gevlon. You might strongly want to consider that you might actually be able to get things you want if you demonstrate a willingness to not treat everyone not actively supporting you like they're puppy-raping scum.

Gevlon said...

@Professor Clio: which themed weekend you COULD have because I foolishly let you leave the war. I should have kept it up and trash your party, forcing you to rep Goon POCOs instead. My bad.

@Arrendis: You can and should be civil to neutrals. You won't find screenshot of me talking down business partners or even random guys asking for advice. In worst case they get a polite rejection.

But why should I show any civility to enemies, especially those who I never meant to harm. Before RvB jumped into our 50 v 12000 war to make it 50 v 20000, I didn't even think of them.

Anonymous said...

There are so many errors and head palming moments in this blog entry that I'm not entirely sure how to begin. But I'm not just going to call you a moron and walk away. Anyone can claim someone else is stupid, it doesn't make it so. So I'm going to take the time to deconstruct this post, and SHOW YOU your logical errors.

Before I start, I'll point out that a frequent patter you have demonstrated is that you come up with say, six facts, 3 of them true, one quite insightful, and 2 completely wrong. You then combine them into an overall conclusion that's completely off the wall, and then wonder why it is that no one thinks your prosciutto and mothball pizza isn't well received.

So let's start!

1: " This is the unique selling point of RvB: constant PvP with very low costs."

This is wrong for 2 main reasons. Firs the *individual* cost of ships is cheap. The *cumulative* cost can be quite expensive. It's not uncommon for RvB to lose hundreds, even thousands of ships. Granted, you can do nothing but frigate with cheap fittings and no rigs if you want, but many players will t2-fit their ships, fly cruisers or assault frigates etc. Not so expensive for a single cruiser, but it adds up. The second thing is that RvB is much more than cheap PvP. The community is very good, newbies are welcomed, veterans are respected, we have fun events etc etc. I know you are asocial and don't care about these things, but let me assure you that to most, they matter.

2: "It represents losses on Feb 15-16, the weekend when RvB dropped the war. Not only the loss % to external enemies halved, but their ship values decreased too. Why? Because when not facing real enemies, RvB can even more focus on their very cheap frig PvP.`

This is a good example where you take some true facts, but reach the wrong conclusion because of missing information. The reason the ship value went down is because we had a weekend-long theme called frigatus. This event was planned long before the war dropped, it was just a coincidence that it did. So of course the the value of the ships dropped, we were fighting mostly in frigates that weekend.

3: "The members are in RvB because they want to do PvP without paying ISK for it. They are playing spaceship WoW battlegrounds."

Rebuffed above. And stop using WoW metaphores will you? Some of us haven't even played WoW.

4: "The presence of real enemies forces them to ship up and do exactly what they wanted to get away from: losing expensive ships."

You should see how freaking thrilled some of our members get when we form a purple wartarget hunting fleet. We get to fly flashier ships and explode lemmings and marmites! Sure we lose a few... but this is RvB, ALL OUR SHIPS WILL EXPLODE.

5: "I am certain that we can simply defeat them in spaceship combat."

... based on what exactly?

6: "This is why I wasn't "diplomatic" (read: beg for mercy after they attacked us when we had 50 members)."

This comment I'm highlighting because how illustrative it is of how your thinking often seems very binary. Things are black or they are white. They are good or they are bad. Diplomacy is "kiss my posterior" or "beg for mercy". A more rational person would have used a more "business" approach to RvB. Something like "Guys, I don't think helping the Goons is a good deal for you, and you're in my way". Your approach has been very antagonistic, making things personal, and motivating RvB to stay in the war. To most, this would appears irrational, but since you seem to think in a binary way, it probably makes sense to to you.

(part 1/2) LR

Anonymous said...

(part 2/2)

7 " After they saw that the 50 turned into 150 during the first 2-weeks period, (allies are auto-dropped after 2 weeks, must rejoin manually) they announced that they'll leave the war that they "only joined for fun". After we reinforced Goon POCOs, they were ordered back to the war by their masters. " (it goes on)

Again, your understanding of events is superficially right, but fundamentally wrong. We have a mutual defence pact with the goons. When the war auto-drops, there is no reason for us to automatically rejoin... but when you reinforce the POCOs, there is. Your bad diplomacy is certainly increasing the chances we respect the pact.

8: "To give them a way out. I won't."

This is irrational. You've claimed before that we were your primary obstacle to victory.

9: "We will keep reinforcing Goon POCOs. "

You are aware that in less than a week, the Goons will start winding down from their war standing and will be looking for things to do hmmm? They may not need our help at all soon.

10: "If Mynnna becomes soft (or rather recognizes that a dead pet is useless) and allows them to leave, we declare on them and start taking their POCOs. "

Are you saying that you want to take RvB POCOs now? See point 8. Focus on your goal Gevlon.

11: "There is only one way for RvB to leave this war: to accept my terms coming tomorrow. You'll be surprised, my terms are very nice."

Wait, are you leaving us a way out, or not? This is bad writing for the sake of a cliff-hanger. No reason to wait for tomorrow.

12: Why are they not broken yet? Simple: in this February only 17% of their ISK losses came from Lemmings and Marmites.

So instead of losing ships to ourselves, we lost ships to Marmites/lemmings... see point 4: ALL OUR SHIPS WILL EXPLODE. Sheesh.

LR

Anonymous said...

"But why should I show any civility to enemies, especially those who I never meant to harm."

Accidental enemies are *especially* deserving of civility. That's where making amends and conflict resolution have the most chance of success!

"I didn't even think of them."

The fact that RvB and the goons had formed the RvBee pact was widely known. You didn't do your research, and were too embarrassed to deal with your error rationally.

LR

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous/LR: You actually made one factual point, that cumulative losses can be high. But the data is right front of your eyes. From the first table, RvB total losses in 2013 is 3.03T. Dotlan said that RvB was constantly around 2*4000 pilots, so one pilot had 379M ISK damage in a year.

In the next table you can see that in a year, Goonwaffe members lost 484M, inner pets lost 809M, Razor lost 986M, so RvB is indeed for cheap PvP.

Arrendis said...

Gevlon:

But why should I show any civility to enemies, especially those who I never meant to harm.

Because there is a difference between opponents and enemies.

An example:

Pandemic Legion was our opponent in the Halloween War - when beaten, we allowed them an honorable retreat and treated them civilly and with respect, as we have long done so. Thus, we are able to rely on them to keep their word on larger matters such at B0TLRD.

N3 is our enemy. It's quite likely that we will never trust them, never treat them with respect, and never show them even a single iota of mercy. Why? Because they have shown themselves in the past to be people who break their word, and who disrespect us. You'll notice that Nulli is suffering a significantly different fate than PL did.

The professional wardec groups don't make anything personal. They're mercs, and they behave like it. By being grossly antagonistic, you are not engendering opponents, you are making enemies. The kind you cannot shed in the long-term.

Be smarter than that.

Gevlon said...

@Arrendis: Diplomacy happens with LEADERS of the group.

This war doesn't serve the interest of the RvB line members, NO ONE EVEN TRIED TO CLAIM THAT. The RvB leaders made a deal with Goons and they use their power over RvB to deliver.

It doesn't matter what I offer to *RvB* because the leaders don't care about RvB. They care about their own agenda, whatever it may be (RMT money, ISK for their personal account, a titan for their alt, whatever).

The politics of Saddam Hussein wasn't good for his people at any point. No one could convince him, since he was corrupted to the root. He saw his people as expendable tools.

The only way to deal with such regimes is force. The corrupted leader only backs off if his empire is about to collapse (or not even then).

Arrendis said...

Gevlon:
This war doesn't serve the interest of the RvB line members, NO ONE EVEN TRIED TO CLAIM THAT. The RvB leaders made a deal with Goons and they use their power over RvB to deliver.

First off, the interests of the RvB line members, so far as any of them I've ever talked to are: blow things up. Even if it's themselves.

To that end, your war serves their interest perfectly.

As for the comparison w/real world regimes, you're forgetting something: there is no compulsive service in video games.

Seriously, you can't make someone do what they don't want to, no matter what your title is. All you can make them do is walk away - and when they decide to do that? They do it because they want to walk away more than they want what had kept them there.

This means that if the leadership of RvB wasn't serving up what the membership is looking for, the membership has no shortage of available places to go in order to find it.

And with the availability of alts, and the churn inherent in any internet game player group (guild, corp, whatever you want to call it), today's line grunt might be tomorrow's CEO, so saying 'diplomacy happens with the leaders of the group' is short-sighted and foolish.

Diplomacy happens, first and foremost, because the other guy has a reason to believe that your words carry any weight at all, that you are willing to deal fairly with them. You publicly make disparaging comments about RvB's line members and accuse their leadership of corruption and betraying their membership. You openly and scornfully make demands that can only charitably be called an insult. You are engaging in exactly the kind of 'indecent' behavior that you resent so much when it is directed toward you.

You are only making them more willing to fight you, more willing to go to exceptional lengths simply to spite you. You live in highsec. You don't face any risk of a hellcamp like the one Nulli is suffering right now. But you are very, very much putting yourself to have exactly the same standing with your... let's be nice and for now call them opponents... as Progodlegend.

You don't have to be that guy, of course, but you're also perfectly free to go ahead and be him. Just don't try to claim some moral high ground while you openly treat other people like crap.

Anonymous said...

@ Gevlon

So your argument boils down to "we can beat RvB" due to our superior economic advantage?

While you've tried to give a snapshot of how much ISK value an RvB member fields/loses, how does this connect to beating them?

I'd be curious to see your research on the assumed income/savings base of RvB/members vs. the impact you think you are having.

Gevlon said...

@Arrendis: fully agree. This is what the post is about. The RvB leaders cannot force RvB members to keep on doing work for Goons instead of RvB things. So all we need is keeping up the war and RvB will lose enough members to scare the leaders. Or, if they can't care less about RvB and press on being Goon pets, we can fully destroy it.

Also, I'm very civil with RvB. They attacked us with 8000 men when we were 50 and already were fighting 12000!!! "Pets" is the most charitable term for that. Assuming that it's only business. If you accept what they claim "we did it for fun", then they are so horribly shitty people that makes Goons look saints!

I mean, after this, do you seriously expect me to be civil and nice when we not only survived their gank attempt, but beating them left and right?

Shall I say "oh, your 20000 vs 50 attack didn't work, but hey, good fight, see ya buddies"?


PS: I'm not like Progodlegend. I'll win.

Dvorak said...

@Arendis

http://purple.rvbeve.com/

Fun fact: the campaigns against Lemmings are titled "Gevlon Goblin is a twat". So much for tact. One could think, rvb is run by 12 year olds.

Anonymous said...

@ Gevlon:

I think that what you might be overlooking, is that any PVP brought on by any war-dec from you or others is welcomed by RvB. Speaking for myself as an "average RvB line member" I care about blowing up ships, not the politics that set up the conflict that allowed the fight to happen. It doesn't matter do me if it is another RvB member or a war target. If helping Goons gives me more targets, that's great! More explosions, more content, it is all good for us.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: do you know the difference between numbers and Anonymous commenters?

One of them doesn't lie.

Anonymous said...

I still get a kick out RvB a mutual defense pact? where do I see goons rushing to aid RvB? NO do I see Goons rushing to defend their own stuff? a bit but not nearly as much as RvB.

Face it RvB is being used like a douche by Goons I can assure you mittens is laughing his ass off at every RvB loss.

Just so you know Goons will never show up consistantly to meet their obligations its not that important to them.

Bottom line RvB got nothing while giving away the farm.

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon
"The RvB leaders cannot force RvB members to keep on doing work for Goons instead of RvB things. So all we need is keeping up the war and RvB will lose enough members to scare the leaders"
Did you even read the post you were responding to? That's like the whole point. they AREN'T losing members. Not even remotely.

"do you know the difference between numbers and Anonymous commenters?

One of them doesn't lie."
While numbers in the strictest sense don't lie, you can (and do) misrepresent numbers very easily. Even just from this post and the comments. You are taking global RvB losses and making an assumption that it automatically means RvB line members are hating it, regardless of what those line members themselves are saying. Statistics are also showing RvB numbers increasing gradually as normal. So the numbers are saying you are wrong.

@Anon
"Face it RvB is being used like a douche by Goons I can assure you mittens is laughing his ass off at every RvB loss."
What you are basically saying here is that you think RvB is incapable of making their own decisions with all of the information presented to them, while you, with only outsider information provided know better? RvB know what they are doing. They are fully capable of making their own decisions about what works for them. I really don't think they give a shit if some random poster on a blog with a stick up his ass about goons thinks they are being used.

Gevlon said...

@Lucas: are you trolling or are you in denial? RvB is clearly about PvP-ing cheap, the numbers are clear about that. They lose much smaller ships than Goons or Razor or absolutely everyone else.

They are also clearly losing the Lemmings war.

Of course they won't comment: "damn, you caught us, we are going down", the keep commenting "oh, we are having fun" and "didn't want that 1B pod anyway."

On the other hand I don't doubt that many RvB member claims the above honestly. Because "friglolling scrub" is a shitty identity and "we take every fight as a content" is much better. But it doesn't make it true. If they COULD take larger losses, they would.

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon
"are you trolling or are you in denial"
Uh, neither. It's called having a scrap of common sense. RvB lose a lot of ships. They get into them fully aware they are going to explode, since that's what they do. How do you leap from "We killed some RvB" to "RvB are going DOWN!". It's makes absolutely no sense. Their membership numbers are up, their losses are down from last Jan, and their efficiency up. Go ahead, check. I'll wait. Got it? Good. There is not a single piece of information that supports your claim that they are in any way being damaged. It's your wishful thinking, and this is exactly what we've been trying to explain to you from the moment you started this campaign. It's not good enough to simply say "we're killing you, yay". You actually need to have an impact.

You guys are so eager to claim victory that you don;t take the time to actually achieve it. As with all of your projects, you want a quick turn around to success and you want to put in zero effort. That's just not realistic.

Gevlon said...

@Lucas: have you read the end of the post?

"Why are they not broken yet? Simple: in this February only 17% of their ISK losses came from Lemmings and Marmites. Most of their members are unaffected. They are 8000, we are 600. We can't defeat them yet. But let me remind you to our growth graph: [rapid growth]"

Of course we haven't won the war yet. I've said we are clearly winning. If everything goes as it goes now, RvB WILL BE defeated.

Anonymous said...

It still comes down to whether economic impact is enough to drive a group player (Goons/RvB) out.

Which still remains to be seen if that works.

ISK flows fairly easily in this game, making this more of a "I don't want to play this game any more because its not fun" decision.

NOT because "My ships keep blowing up and I have no more ISK to spend, therefore I will quit".

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon
"If everything goes as it goes now, RvB WILL BE defeated."
How?
How will they be defeated. You keep stating that their members will leave or they will stop the war. There is ZERO evidence of this. You have made up an impact that there is no sign of. You are basing this on if you yourself were an RvB members flying in frigates, which you hate, losing a lot of them, which you hate, you would quit. They are not you. You can't show a shred of evidence that supports your claims that they will be defeated, you can only repeat the claim over and over. That will never make it fact.

And as for rapid growth, of course, you are new. A new business can easy double or more it's revenue in the first few months. That will not last forever.

Honestly, I think you're pretty insane if you actually think that you can get enough random alts together to stand even a remote chance against RvB. Badly drawn conclusions aside, its an unrealistic goal.

Anonymous said...

Funny, but, http://evewho.com/alli/Darwins+Lemmings as of shows your member count at 294, a -6.5% difference from your boasted number of 312.

Anonymous said...

Um... Given that RvB is an open corp, accepting all and letting people leave at any point to make isk, how can costing them isk lead to their defeat? People will come and go, they have for 4+ years.

The only way to kill RvB would be to cost them members. The only way to do that is provide a similar service that offers low cost, fun PvP with near instant action and then out draw people away from RvB. Nothing you have suggested accomplishes this. So long as people want what RvB provides, RvB will exist. 3rd party wars will not change that now or ever.

Faction warfare does not provide the same, nul does not, even your lemmings and marmite do not provide the same experience. So really, given that for the past 4 years, RvB line members have been self-funded, dealing with 3rd party wars, and are still killing each other, how can costing them more isk change this when the average member can drop corp or use hi sec alts to make isk then go back to RvB for their PvP fun?

Gevlon said...

@Lucas:
Fact 1: RvB, if left alone fights in 14M ships
Assumption 1: RvB prefers fighting in cheap crap

Fact 2: RvB, when facing war enemies is fighting in 30M ships
Assumption 2: RvB is forced to fight non-cheap crap.

Conclusion: RvB is forced to do something they don't prefer. Which is the definition of "not having fun".


Fact 3: They are already losing 17% of their ships to Marmites and Lemmings
Assumption 3: this 17% wasn't doing what they preferred, so they were harmed.

Fact 4: Lemmings are growing fast
Conclusion: RvB will lose more than 17% of their ships to Marmites and Lemmings.

Final conclusion: more and more RvB will be forced to suffer something they don't prefer

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: evewho must be lagging. http://evemaps.dotlan.net/alliance/Darwins_Lemmings 365

Arrendis said...

Dvorak:

One could, certainly. But look at the differing goals. Gevlon has an actual goal to modify the behavior of others. RvB has a goal of 'blow stuff up'.

One of them is achieving their goal. The other is actively pushing people into a posture where it doesn't matter what he wants, they'll oppose it because it's him. This works directly against his goal. To the extent that he's influencing behavior, he's only encouraging people to act in exactly the way he objects - because he objects to it.

Gevlon said...

@Arrendis: the problem in your logic is that you assume that people can only be convinced to change their behavior.

For example take this Doctor Per guy. He was mad at Marmite because they didn't take his corp in. He swore revenge. He wardecced Lemmings too. When I wrote him diplomatic mails, he gave the tough guy attitude and said he won't stop killing Lemmings.

He still did https://zkillboard.com/detail/36917949/

Arrendis said...

Gevlon:
"This is what the post is about. The RvB leaders cannot force RvB members to keep on doing work for Goons instead of RvB things."

Blowing stuff up - regardless of what or why - is an RvB thing. You are not keeping them from doing what they want to do, you are facilitating it.


"So all we need is keeping up the war and RvB will lose enough members to scare the leaders. Or, if they can't care less about RvB and press on being Goon pets, we can fully destroy it."

Because the line members are going to leave... why? You are giving them what they are after. You are helping RvB provide 'things blowing up' to their members. Why do you think this is a disincentive?


"Also, I'm very civil with RvB."

Except for the whole thing where in this blog you've been insulting and scornful of them. You have, in fact, openly dismissed the idea of civility. To be blunt: I call bullshit. I won't call you a liar, mind you, because I think you really are suffering from some kind of cognitive dissonance about your behavior vs how you think you're behaving.


"They attacked us with 8000 men when we were 50 and already were fighting 12000!!! "Pets" is the most charitable term for that."

Since when does 'pets' have anything to do with the numbers in an engagement? You're asserting that they're being given marching orders by goons. There's a significant difference between someone telling you what to do, and you choosing to keep your word and live up to the commitments you chose to make.

"If you accept what they claim "we did it for fun", then they are so horribly shitty people that makes Goons look saints!"

What, blowing up space pixels makes you a horrible person? This is Eve. Don't undock it unless you're willing to lose it. You had some minor traction on the high ground when you were claiming that treating other people like crap is a behavior not to be encouraged, but you lost it - indeed, you muddied it up, mixed in some pig shit, and then rolled around in the mess when you started treating people just like you claim the Goons do.

Congratulations, Gevlon, you haven't made it so there's "no goons". By your definition, you've made yourself into the very same thing.

Which, of course, you don't believe because you're incapable of actually objectively evaluating your own actions. (Most people, to be fair, are.)

Arrendis said...

Gevlon:

And what prevents him from fitting out another proteus and going right back to it? You have no evidence that you've stopped him, only killed him once.

That's the problem with trying to compare Eve with real conflict: you cannot actually win a war of attrition if your enemy's goal is only to fight.

He has to be convinced to change his behavior, to stop opposing your goals.

You need to have some other thing they want to do, that you are preventing. The only way to win a war of attrition is to demoralize the enemy, and you aren't doing that. Not even close. What you are spinning up against you is the equivalent of when the CFC starts to grind sov: we start off laughing and stupid and not giving a crap and then hit a snag...

... and then we start logging in out of spite, and the most masochistic bunch of will-to-win autistic space-nerds in the game get to work.

Really, what makes you think RvB will react any differently? You're feeding them fights, and talking shit about them. You will only make them hate you, and want to fight you more.

Anonymous said...

Another fundamental error in your calculation: your 17% value is added lemmings and marmites. You seem to believe this is meaningful... but we've been at war with Marmite, several times! The "extra losses" from Marmite has not impeded us in the past in any way.

You therefore have to look at lemmings only losses... I bet the number isn't very impressive, is it?

LR

Gevlon said...

@Arrendis: " you cannot actually win a war of attrition if your enemy's goal is only to fight." is your fundamental error.

There isn't a single person in EVE whose goal is to fight. Not a single one.

Those who claim so are either doing it because it's a norm, the "PvP-er" ethos, or because it's a good way to not accept being defeated. I mean you just got your ship exploded, but no, you are a winner, since you just wanted to fight.

"I just wanted a fight" is just as true as "we didn't want that region anyway". Every. Single. PvP-er wants to win. He wants the opponent explode, he wants to come out victorious with a killmail to show off.

No one is looking for fights, everyone is looking for kills.

RvB is claiming that they don't care about losses, and they are there for constant PvP, yet their losses are one of the smallest in EVE. Even Goonwaffe members have more losses. 379M ISK / !!!YEAR!!! / pilot. And RvB isn't in nullsec to need ratter, miner or cyno alts. They are all real, PvP-er pilots. Hell, miners have more ships exploding than them.

RvB is the most risk averse bunch in EVE. Some of them are genuine newbie who has no choice, the rest are just punks.

Anonymous said...

Didn't the RvB leaders claim that they made their defense pact with goons because POCO's weren't worth losing a battleship fleet over?

Assuming that the RvB leaders were being honest then that puts a fairly low cap on RvB's acceptable losses from defending POCOs period, let alone POCOs that aren't theirs.

Of course it's much more likely that RvB leadership was being less than honest. And if RvB leadership aren't being honest (they're fairly obviously trolling) then there's no point in diplomacy with them.

I think it would be amusing for Gevlon to, say, start up a POCO holding corp in Brave Newbies and if he does manage to take Goon/RvB pocos drop his own as part of Brave. Use some of the POCO proceeds to pay for SRP for Brave (helping newbies, how generous) and force RvB and Goons to wardec Brave to get them back.

Anonymous said...

Your math is wrong.

I'm not very active, and I've lost over 2 billions in ships in less than a year(and not it's not because I suck, my damage is over 45 billions). How come my numbers are soo much higher?

You have *no idea* what's going on. There is no point in creating charts and graphs when your basic grasp of the situation is fundamentally wrong.

But let's say your math is right. Maybe I'm an idiot and you are right. But what does that mean? Well let's think about it... The loss per member per month is about 30 millions, and with 17% your glorious alliance has inflicted FIVE MILLION ISK damage to the average RvB member. That's pathetic! You can't scare us with that...

Back to the drawing board for you...

LR

Anonymous said...

@ Gevlon

"There isn't a single person in EVE whose goal is to fight. Not a single one.

Those who claim so are either doing it because it's a norm, the "PvP-er" ethos, or because it's a good way to not accept being defeated. I mean you just got your ship exploded, but no, you are a winner, since you just wanted to fight."

I'll raise my hand on this one. I generate ISK to purchase ships to go out and fight. This, and the lure of maximizing my ISK ventures are the two main reasons I play EVE. I would weigh those two factors as about equal.

Yes, I want to win. Yes, I will stop PvPing for the day when I exceed my ship loss limit. No clue if that is "the norm", I don't care about "PVP ethos", and I can't be defeated if we are using your definition of defeat(I think you are defining defeat as no longer playing EVE or venturing out to do what you want to do?)

Here's a simple ISK/PvP formula I use. Daily income divided by number of ship losses I can stomach in a day equals the amount of ISK I will place into a ship hull and fittings. Thus, the quality of my ships go up as I make more ISK from cumulative trading, etc, and the loss of those ships do not impede me from going out for fights. Regardless of win or loss.

Arrendis said...

Gevlon:

No, they're not 'risk averse', they're having fun. If you're having fun w/minimal investment, and you're at the point of diminishing returns, why would you degrade the return on your investment by spending more?

You say nobody's only goal in Eve is fighting - I say you're not getting it. When they don't want to fight, when they want to do something else, they log onto other alts, and you don't see them at all. They can do all their other stuff without any interference from you. So the alts you're seeing only login when they want to fight.

You're not slowing them down in their other activities at all.