Update: the data is changed a bit since an error was found on Zkillboard!
Unless you live under a rock, you know that the statistical pages of third party EVE killboards are worthless. The reason is that when a ship is destroyed, one loss is booked to the looser, but multiple kills are booked, one for every killer. Therefore there are much more kills recorded than losses, despite they obviously should be equal. This fault is probably intentional, to make people use the killboards. They are much more likely to do so if it tells that they are awesome with 10:1 K/D than if it told them the truth.
After seeing how RvB is doing all the work for Goons in defending their highsec POCOs, I got suspicious that maybe it's the case in nullsec too. To verify it, I needed detailed and truthful kill data. In this data, if 54% damage is done by a Goon to a target and 46% came from other sources (like other CFC), then 0.54 kill and 0.54*ship_value ISK damage booked to Goons instead of 1 and ship_value. I received such data from multiple sources, for free, because people hate Goons. For a billion I also got the Razor killboard data for comparison purposes. This is the 99.8% complete collection of 2013 kills. The 0.2% error comes from weird kill reports like this one, where no one is booked any damage (despite the target died of something). I compared the different versions and found them the same. I also compared them to randomly checked manual kills and monthly statistics. You can download the data for checking. I loaded it into Excel and determined the real kills and damage of Goonswarm Federation and Goonwaffe corporation.
Update: I assumed that the loss statistics of Zkillboard is usable, since monthly losses are simple sum of the losses of the month. But no. After downloading the individual kills, neither the numbers of kills, nor their value matched the monthly statistics. It's very easy to prove that the statistics page is wrong and not we messed up something: the Goonwaffe statistics page says 110.1B losses for January 2013. But in January was Asakai, and the two lost titans are 160B already! So I used the downloaded individual losses to recalculate the loss fields of Goons. Below you can see an error table. As the errors aren't that big, since I have no accurate loss data for Razor, I use the Zkillboard statistics.
For my surprise GSF wasn't that bad, I mean their true ISK ratio is still over 50% and they aren't overly whoring (true damage / Zkillboard damage = 0.58). But then I compared Goonwaffe corp with the rest of GSF (the inner pets) and the data of Razor (one of the outer pets) using the zkillboard loss statistics (that's accurate):
Let's start with the green fields that can be labeled "activity". You can see that compared to their member size, both inner and outer Goon pets do much more in every fields than pure blood Goons: damage, kills, losses, deaths. Look at the most important field, a pet member does more than twice as much ISK damage as a pure blood Goon! I also know that fleet battles can't be compared to miner ganking but maybe 0.478B/year/pilot is a bit low. Anyway, these fields have nothing to do with PvP skill, so the usual Goon excuse "we are bad at EVE" doesn't fly. They show that the masters can't be bothered to fleet up.
Let's move on to the blue field, ship quality. The pets are both flying (losing) and killing more expensive ships than their masters. How is that possible? Simple: pets fly the battleships, Goons tag along in Rifters, Celestises, Caracals, Talwars and such. This can't be explained with the other Goon excuse, "we slack kicking inactives lol", as the data is per kill or loss. An inactive doesn't kill or lose anything, has no effect on this field.
Now let's see the purple, "skill" field. Pets have significantly better damage/loss ratio than their masters. Probably because decent doctrine flying has better results than tagging along in crap. Or maybe because they (are forced to) have standards.
The above data is from API verified kills. But 4% of the data I received has a minus sign before the kill code, meaning not verified. Like this one. There is little reason to not upload your API if you care about killboard at all. But if you care to upload a kill, you care, right?! So one thing remains: faking kills. So I went and compared the manual and the verified kills:
Now look at that! Not only pure blood Goons have much more kills and damage on manually uploaded kills, but their inner pets have much less! So the pesky little Goons not only fake kills to make themselves look better, but also to make their pets look worse! Razor manual kills are also much worse than their API verified, so they don't fake kills to look better. Who fakes Razor kills then? Half of the fake Razor kills are also Goon kills, so you don't need two guesses to find out.
Update: with the fixed data, the graph here no longer was useful.
Now let's just ask the most important question: how much power does this PvP ineffective, friglolling, inactive, kill-faking corp holds within the CFC? Hm? All of it. Their tag lies on all the GSF Sov, they distribute the resources, they get the renter income, their leaders are calling the shots in CFC. Anyone still doubts that Goons are the masters, - without merit - and the rest are just slaves, pets, minions?!
I suggest every alliance and corp leadership to get the "real kill" statistics for their group and compare it with their allies. Demand power within the alliance/coalition proportional to their effort. Stop being pets! Goons are holding their power because of the myth that they are strong and everyone else is just tagging along and should be grateful for the opportunity. The truth is the opposite: their effort and PvP power is trivial compared to their size. Stop falling for their propaganda and get hard numbers! It's you who claimed the regions for the CFC, you should be reaping the rewards, you should be calling the shots, not that bunch of forum trolls!
Special thanks go to Ishka Tekitsu and Hanura H'arasch who got the whole database independently. If you want database for your own corp/alliance, ask them and they might be able to help.
Unless you live under a rock, you know that the statistical pages of third party EVE killboards are worthless. The reason is that when a ship is destroyed, one loss is booked to the looser, but multiple kills are booked, one for every killer. Therefore there are much more kills recorded than losses, despite they obviously should be equal. This fault is probably intentional, to make people use the killboards. They are much more likely to do so if it tells that they are awesome with 10:1 K/D than if it told them the truth.
After seeing how RvB is doing all the work for Goons in defending their highsec POCOs, I got suspicious that maybe it's the case in nullsec too. To verify it, I needed detailed and truthful kill data. In this data, if 54% damage is done by a Goon to a target and 46% came from other sources (like other CFC), then 0.54 kill and 0.54*ship_value ISK damage booked to Goons instead of 1 and ship_value. I received such data from multiple sources, for free, because people hate Goons. For a billion I also got the Razor killboard data for comparison purposes. This is the 99.8% complete collection of 2013 kills. The 0.2% error comes from weird kill reports like this one, where no one is booked any damage (despite the target died of something). I compared the different versions and found them the same. I also compared them to randomly checked manual kills and monthly statistics. You can download the data for checking. I loaded it into Excel and determined the real kills and damage of Goonswarm Federation and Goonwaffe corporation.
Update: I assumed that the loss statistics of Zkillboard is usable, since monthly losses are simple sum of the losses of the month. But no. After downloading the individual kills, neither the numbers of kills, nor their value matched the monthly statistics. It's very easy to prove that the statistics page is wrong and not we messed up something: the Goonwaffe statistics page says 110.1B losses for January 2013. But in January was Asakai, and the two lost titans are 160B already! So I used the downloaded individual losses to recalculate the loss fields of Goons. Below you can see an error table. As the errors aren't that big, since I have no accurate loss data for Razor, I use the Zkillboard statistics.
For my surprise GSF wasn't that bad, I mean their true ISK ratio is still over 50% and they aren't overly whoring (true damage / Zkillboard damage = 0.58). But then I compared Goonwaffe corp with the rest of GSF (the inner pets) and the data of Razor (one of the outer pets) using the zkillboard loss statistics (that's accurate):
Let's start with the green fields that can be labeled "activity". You can see that compared to their member size, both inner and outer Goon pets do much more in every fields than pure blood Goons: damage, kills, losses, deaths. Look at the most important field, a pet member does more than twice as much ISK damage as a pure blood Goon! I also know that fleet battles can't be compared to miner ganking but maybe 0.478B/year/pilot is a bit low. Anyway, these fields have nothing to do with PvP skill, so the usual Goon excuse "we are bad at EVE" doesn't fly. They show that the masters can't be bothered to fleet up.
Let's move on to the blue field, ship quality. The pets are both flying (losing) and killing more expensive ships than their masters. How is that possible? Simple: pets fly the battleships, Goons tag along in Rifters, Celestises, Caracals, Talwars and such. This can't be explained with the other Goon excuse, "we slack kicking inactives lol", as the data is per kill or loss. An inactive doesn't kill or lose anything, has no effect on this field.
Now let's see the purple, "skill" field. Pets have significantly better damage/loss ratio than their masters. Probably because decent doctrine flying has better results than tagging along in crap. Or maybe because they (are forced to) have standards.
The above data is from API verified kills. But 4% of the data I received has a minus sign before the kill code, meaning not verified. Like this one. There is little reason to not upload your API if you care about killboard at all. But if you care to upload a kill, you care, right?! So one thing remains: faking kills. So I went and compared the manual and the verified kills:
Now look at that! Not only pure blood Goons have much more kills and damage on manually uploaded kills, but their inner pets have much less! So the pesky little Goons not only fake kills to make themselves look better, but also to make their pets look worse! Razor manual kills are also much worse than their API verified, so they don't fake kills to look better. Who fakes Razor kills then? Half of the fake Razor kills are also Goon kills, so you don't need two guesses to find out.
Update: with the fixed data, the graph here no longer was useful.
Now let's just ask the most important question: how much power does this PvP ineffective, friglolling, inactive, kill-faking corp holds within the CFC? Hm? All of it. Their tag lies on all the GSF Sov, they distribute the resources, they get the renter income, their leaders are calling the shots in CFC. Anyone still doubts that Goons are the masters, - without merit - and the rest are just slaves, pets, minions?!
I suggest every alliance and corp leadership to get the "real kill" statistics for their group and compare it with their allies. Demand power within the alliance/coalition proportional to their effort. Stop being pets! Goons are holding their power because of the myth that they are strong and everyone else is just tagging along and should be grateful for the opportunity. The truth is the opposite: their effort and PvP power is trivial compared to their size. Stop falling for their propaganda and get hard numbers! It's you who claimed the regions for the CFC, you should be reaping the rewards, you should be calling the shots, not that bunch of forum trolls!
Special thanks go to Ishka Tekitsu and Hanura H'arasch who got the whole database independently. If you want database for your own corp/alliance, ask them and they might be able to help.
29 comments:
While not totally on topic I have to admit I do like the change in advertising lemmings. The RVB stuff is funny as hek, what power do the goons hold over RVB to get them to go against their directors wish's? I don't know but it would be interesting to find out. I not a real fan of charts and data like you most people you could directly effect are touchy feely types so make is simple: True Goons lie about kills and just tag along and whoe. I know what your tyring to do (drive a well intentioned wedge) between the goons and cfc members. Good luck
It's common knowledge that Goons mass recruit noobs, and your stats simply collaborate that. And while Goons do not provide as high quality pilots, they provide most of the command infrastructure. Without mittens, goon diplos, and goon FCs there would be no CFC. You know all of this yourself, and your post, for once, looks like a lame attempt to sow discord in cfc ranks (ie to troll some goons).
So, your argument is that the guys on the front line are the ones actually running the war, and outside of wars, the factory workers are the ones who decide the direction that is taken?
It is certainly an interesting theory.
Oh my god?!?! Really?
This is an outrage. *begins infighting*.
Seriously, is this your big announcement? I'll list out the names of all the CFC players who care:
When are you going to get that nobody cares about killboard stats? In all honesty, nobody cares about who participates more either. As long as we all continue to reap the rewards and people like you continue to have fits of rage, it's OP success.
@Grumpymouse: I don't question the performance of diplos and FCs. But why does it give a free pass to the line member Goonwaffe#3154 and not to Wildly Inappropriate#421. I mean they are equally F1 pushing grunts. But one has to perform and other don't.
@Lucas: Let me refresh your memory: http://themittani.com/news/slopes-slope-throne-sma-purge
@Gevlon:
"Let me refresh your memory: http://themittani.com/news/slopes-slope-throne-sma-purge"
And this proves what? Honestly mate, what is it you think this means?
We had a whole bunch of people who basically never turned up to anything. People who would log off rather than join a CTA when they were called. So the rest of us in SMA were having to prop them up. Since the way participation is managed is based on size, our participation:size ratio was low, so a bunch of asshats got purged. It happens and SMA is stronger because of it.
Lets face the truth though. We can see what you are trying to do here, you are trying to drive a wedge between CFC alliances to try to get us to fight against each other. The problem is you are completely unwilling to even consider how we really work so you are basing your "psychological plan of attack" off of the propoganda you have previously spouted. You would need to be considerably smarter than you are to even stand a chance of splitting a coalition as big and tightly woven as the CFC. It's certainly not going to happen when your only ammunitions is some KB stats.
What you dont see on killboards, gevlon, is what makes the CFC hold together.
You were in TEST. You saw how inept the leadership could be. Most of the people in the CFC had been there for longer than TEST, and now have been there 2 more years. How much leadership do you think there is left? How capable do you think they are to work alone, without the logistic, both in-game and IRL, provided by goonswarm?
Not to mention probably all of these alliances leaderships are, by now, full of GSF spies. How come "leadership crisis" and failed "coups" happend so often amongst minor CFC alliances?
Sorry, but you are incredibly off on this one, Gevlon.
Goon power does not come from their efficiency as frontline troops. It never did.
They rule by political clout (metagame, connections), strategic and tactical level leadership (FCs, directors) and diplomacy (snake-tongued diplos and spies). They are the glue that keeps the construct going and winning. Their shit performance in actual fighting means little - they have their pet/allies/grunts/whatever-you-want-to-call-them to do the heavy lifting.
It's hardly surprising that the larger antecedent has a lower ratio.
@anonymouses: let me quote myself "I don't question the performance of diplos and FCs. But why does it give a free pass to the line member Goonwaffe#3154 and not to Wildly Inappropriate#421. I mean they are equally F1 pushing grunts. But one has to perform and other don't."
With other words: the undeniably great performance of the CFC directorate shouldn't save random non-performing Goon from being kicked. Why couldn't the SAME leaders run CFC if Goonwaffe would only have 1000 members, after the rest are purged.
@Lucas: it proves that
And this proves what? Honestly mate, what is it you think this means?
GOONWAFFE has a whole bunch of people who basically never turned up to anything. People who would log off rather than join a CTA when they were called. So the rest of us in GOONWAFFE were having to prop them up. Since the way participation is managed is based on size, GOONWAFFE participation:size ratio was low, so a bunch of asshats SHOULD BE purged. IF it happens Goonwaffe WOULD Be stronger because of it.
Lies, lies!!
All Goons are equal, but some Goons are more equal than the others.
"some Goons are more equal than the others."
to paraphrase: rifters good. titans bad.
"if Goonwaffe would only have 1000 members, after the rest are purged."
except the goons rely on the $10 something awful subscriptions to pay their leadership
@Gevlon
"GOONWAFFE has a whole bunch of people who basically never turned up to anything. People who would log off rather than join a CTA when they were called. So the rest of us in GOONWAFFE were having to prop them up. Since the way participation is managed is based on size, GOONWAFFE participation:size ratio was low, so a bunch of asshats SHOULD BE purged. IF it happens Goonwaffe WOULD Be stronger because of it."
See here your making assumptions. You are assuming that goons don;t attend, which clearly is not the case. If the SMA members that got purged were even willing to tun up in tackle frigates, that would be fine. People have different characters with different skillsets and some aren't suited to mainstream combat, and that's fine. But when your coalition needs you on board, you turn up in whatever you can. We specifically have doctrines to be as all inclusive as possible, and goons have a good program for bringing newbies into the coalition and getting them trained up.
At the end of the day though, it's all beside the point. Nothing is going to be changed by you spouting out figures like we're supposed to give a damn. Clearly our coalition works, and a large part of that is due to the goons direction and structure. If you think a random blogger with no idea of how coalitions work is going to flip a coalition upside down with a couple of graphs about killboard stats, you will be disappointed. To defeat an enemy, you need to understand them, and you never will since you actively refuse to learn.
@Lucas: check that table again. The average pet loses MORE ships (even if just by 10%) than Goonwaffe members. So the "Goons are showing up in Rifters in large numbers because they are adorable newbies" isn't true.
The true statement: "Goons show up in smaller number AND in Rifters."
> "some Goons are more equal than the others."
>> to paraphrase: rifters good. titans bad.
It is a quote from George Orwell's novell Animal Farm. Don't you kids learn anything in school anymore?
The animals chase away the farmer and run the farm themselves, only to have it degenerate into a tyranny of its own.
"Don't you kids learn anything"
you mean like the meaning of paraphrase?
considering I was paraphrasing George orwell's "four legs good. two legs bad" I'm not sure you got my meaning.
I think it ironic that by the end of animal farm, when squealer and the other pigs had started to walk on two legs like the humans they had overthrown they changed their motto to "four legs good. two legs better"
perhaps now that the goons have become the pet overlords BOB used to be they might change their ethos to "rifters good. titans better"
@Gevlon:
"check that table again. The average pet loses MORE ships (even if just by 10%) than Goonwaffe members. So the "Goons are showing up in Rifters in large numbers because they are adorable newbies" isn't true.
The true statement: "Goons show up in smaller number AND in Rifters.""
And still more assumptions. I mean your biggest mistake there is assuming that losses = participation. It doesn't. A pilot isn't always lost, and doesn't always appear on kills. Logistics pilots, fuel truck, scouts, titan pilots, and a host of other support functions will not appear on killboards unless is very exceptions circumstances. Even some combat fleets will never engage, since their role is to prevent the enemy attacking a given area rather than create a fight. When repping or destroying a structure for example, you'll have standby fleets staged just in case.
You also make the assumption that all engagements are cfc engagements, which they are not. All of the alliances have their own activities which don't involve some or all of the other alliances in the coalition.
You are trying to pull together some half-assed participation stats from unreliable sources to try to turn the coalition on itself. The thing is, we have ACTUAL participation stats as well as actual workign knowledge of our battles.
Why do you say Goons get a free pass? They show up, in shitty ships, but in numbers. And raw numbers is the traditional measure by which CFC alliances have always been compared. Do not forget that alliances within CFC are different. RAZOR, for instance, is one of the elitist alliances of the old NC, no doubt they will bring better ships and players.
>considering I was paraphrasing George orwell's "four legs good. two legs bad" I'm not sure you got my meaning.
No, I didn't. My apologies to you.
@grumpymouse: Goons do NOT show up in numbers. If they came in zillions of Rifters, they'd lose zillions of Rifters. But they have less ship deaths/member than Razor! And they fly shitty ships.
@Gevlon
"If they came in zillions of Rifters, they'd lose zillions of Rifters."
This would only be true if we had a 100% loss rate. I've never known a major fleet to primary tacklers unless they were evaccing (by which time they are normally bubbled and screwed anyway), so small ships are unlikely to show up on killboards in large numbers unless we whelped. Like I stated before, you are taking KB stats and assuming they directly relate to participation, when there are several reasons for now showing up on KB stats.
CFC isn't anymore a Goon-led coalition. It's led by The Mittani and a handful of people.
It's not anymore like USSR that has inner republics (Ukraine, Kazakhstan) and outer satellites (Hungary, Romania, Cuba), that are held by place being threatened by USSR invasion or a economical collapse. It's more like European Union - each of us is weaker than the rest (of course some are stronger and others are 2nd class citizens), but the threat is that we jump on the one that steps outside, and by careful directing it's prevented that there is no conspiration inside the coalition.
Our (the CFC's) participation statistics are nearly completely public and essentially show the same thing - that GoonWaffe as a corp doesn't pull it's weight by numbers, and neither will it ever. Every time we do a purge we lose 15-20% of our numbers, and that's just the people who haven't logged on in 60 days, those just playing skill-queue online but not turning up for anything/playing the game at all are still counted.
This is because we don't recruit established eve players, we recruit newbees. Even though we have a much better retention rate than pubs, we still lose a hell of a lot. Our figures are indicative of having a dead-weight of people who only have a casual interest in the game.
We're never going to stop letting these people in because they're part of our outside community, and everyone knows it.
You're quite right in your metrics, but as per usual you really have no idea what the cause is and you're just throwing mud at a wall and hoping some sticks.
It won't, because these literal self-same arguments were first used by BoB, and then every other entity after that who we steamrollered whilst they told us their killboard stats are better than ours. It doesn't matter.
It's not really surprising that other alliances have more kills/deaths, as most alliances in CFC have their own deployments and roams. GSF does not, as this is left to the various SIGs. These SIGs are also open to allies, so you'll actually have more opportunities to fleet up if you are in another alliance than GSF in CFC.
Also, you're only looking at killboards. What about other functions that are crucial to CFC's success. GSOL for example: They towered up all of TESTs how system before the massive fight, as well as many other important functions. Most of them are GSF because of roles. And what Eve 101 classes that are held, mentor programs and so on? Do you know which alliances run those?
My point is that this is an awful lot of work you've done, and all you've proven is that some alliances might be more active than GSF when it comes to killboards. But this isn't a very interesting metric.
Your zealous attack on Goons, even though you try to justify it, is no different than the worst M&S who spam on the Eve forums or on Reddit. Are you sure this is how you want people to view you?
Interesting stats, Gevlon. I have to say though that diplomacy and politicking count for a hell of a lot on the alliance level. It can make up for a lot of downfalls, and we all know that the CFC leadership excels at diplomacy and politics, if nothing else. It's not really that surprising to me that they're able to command much more than they contribute (ship-wise), because good leadership contributes disproportionately to the war effort.
"Do not forget that alliances within CFC are different. RAZOR, for instance, is one of the elitist alliances of the old NC, no doubt they will bring better ships and players."
If you believe RZR are elite, I have a bridge to sell you.
Hello,
I am a high ranking member of the GSF coalition, CEO of one of the so called partners (but in truth, obviously a "pet") and a long time reader of your blog.
I have read your latest entry with much interest and not only because it has confirmed what I have long suspected. The way you have put the data together and explained it all really solidifies the issue that myself and several other CEO's have privately discussed a few times.
Now I realize that this just an anonymous comment and doesn't mean much but I want you to know this:
You have made a huge difference. There are currently discussions in progress between myself and high ranking CEOs of GSF "pets" - and at all times we are referencing this article.
I can't promise anything but there is a revolution coming. You might not be part of this revolution, you might not benefit but I want you to know that when we, the oppressed raise up against LE MARTINI, your hard work will have had a small part in getting our rag tag group of rebels grow in power enough to RAISE UP.
We will not politely and meekly ask for redress, we will not softly ask the goons for change.
We will take what is ours by force of arms, subterfuge of betrayal and blood of the bees.
Thank you and keep up the good work.
you cannot discuss turning on the goons. each new conspirator is added risk. you talk to one wrong person and your leadership will all be purged.
goons have just to declare your leadership traitors, reset your alliance and offer your line members amnesty. your line pilots already fly regularly with other goons. they are likely already registered for combined services. they would easily transition over.
what can you offer any loyal members who stay with the traitorous leadership? a move to lowsec? SOV null with poor FCs and annoyed dangerous enemies?
good job with the numbers gevlon. this is one of your better posts in a long time. good luck with your war against the goons.
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