Greedy Goblin

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Full July CFC killboard analysis

I pay for the monthly CFC losses, like the July one. This month, mistakes were made and the CFC kill data was also downloaded. It's a huge database because of the duplications between CFC alliances (same kill appears at every alliance that had pilot in the fleet), so I wouldn't pay for it. But as it was downloaded by accident, I got it for free and didn't let it go waste. At first, I've updated the coalition lists using the Marlona Sky map and the Dingo Coalition data. The changes are small, the only worth mentioning is the EICO - Gentleman's.Club change.

First, let's see the kills and losses from the CFC perspective. The data is - as always - dewhored, so if someone made 1% damage of a 100M ship, he got 1M kill booked instead of 100M. All kills and losses are billion ISK:
The two renter corps did horrible, but I doubt if anyone is surprised. The fact that most CFC alliances also did bad is more surprising, especially for RAZOR who are soooooo confident in their eliteness, despite being just as bad as SMA. Goonwaffe has 2682 members, while the inner pets have 8835. So an average GoonWaffe Goon had 60M kills in July while an average Inner Pet had 56M. Now I'm surprised, expecting much less from the Masters. Maybe they are reforming after all, kicking large group of slackers in April. Please note that participating in fun PvP isn't equal to participating in bombless bomber fleets, which is mandatory to minions but not to Goonwaffe members. So the GRR war goes on!

Now let's look at the enemy coalitions with their Apex Forces and 35000 friends and half the universe under their control and whatever the propagandists use to say. Please note that only their de-whored kills against CFC and losses from CFC are listed, as only this can be seen from the CFC kill and loss data. They are sorted by their activity (kills+losses):
Whoa! Some old, elite PvP alliances like SOUND, XPLCT and TEST shine out, but most of the coalition members could barely break even against CFC or not even that. I'm not talking about the renters who were farmed, but Nulli and DARKNESS being worse than BRAVE. If you look at the color of this chart, you can easily tell that these guys will never beat CFC, because their ethos and self-image is a big lie: they see themselves as "elite PvP" and they are just average.

Now, this is the color I want to see. This table shows non-coalition alliances and non-alliance corps (except NPC corps). They were sorted by total activity (kills+losses), so I didn't cherry-pick. On the top of the chart, with 97%!!! ISK efficiency stands The Marmite Collective, the highsec wardeccer I pay to kill CFC. Yes, I'm smug about the out-of-the-box idea to attack a nullsec Sov-holder in highsec. Black Legion was very active, but wasn't very good, unlike Pasta, MoA and Mortus. I doubt if you need more proof that the hope of defeating the Evil in New Eden lies in roaming pirates and not in supercap blobs.

So, enemy coalitions fail to defeat CFC in non-sov warfare, while pirate groups definitely can do it:

Finally, the famous fleet size distribution: every bar represents about 10% of the July CFC PvP activity (kills+losses). You can see that CFC is worst in small-gang PvP and excels in the largest brackets. So if you want to defeat them, form with 2-20 and if they come with larger group, or escalate a fight, just run away and deny them kills. If you stand and fight against a CFC blob, you lose:


PS: carrier ratting went seriously wrong.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

PL, and NCdot have never called themselvse elitepvp. This is a title Mittani himself has called them to make CFC look more noobie friendly. It's Mittani that stuck. The fact that you bought Mittani's propaganda in this particular case and point out every other spin is somewhat funny. Next you'll say PGL actually said that N3's sole reason to exsist is to destroy the CFC...... News flash PGL didn't actually say that, and it's just Mittani propaganda that somehow stuck, and everyone for some known reason bought.

CFC Grunt said...

Gevlon, I think I know what you should do. You should just pick up a ship, join a coalition that opposes the CFC and get into the fight.

Why am I saying that? Because your understanding of how the war works is miniscule. You seem to over-value kill efficiency, a metric that doomed alliances before and is skewed in favor of groups like Marmite if you include them (since they hunt in safe hisec, safe from getting third-partied, with neutral logistics and ability to dock in every system - often in multiple stations. In addition, they mostly pick off stray ships and don't have to worry about retaliation.) and in your brilliant analysis, you somehow concluded that an alliance that's getting shot to bits each time it crawls out of its hole in Syndicate is... somehow very efficient in fighting us.

Gevlon said...

@CFC Grunt: This is the Goon propaganda. One should join the large coalitions who are either incompetent or diplomatically pacified. The whole "Apex Force" nonsense is about this, to make people believe that there is no other option than CFC or N3PL.

The truth is that CFC can be defeated by burning its PvE to the ground. Killing ratters and haulers.

Anonymous said...

Except pve has no impact on alliance income. And if alliance income can't keep pilots in ships the full force of the cfc would be brought to bear against those that hunt their ratters - the pirates would be obliterated.

No, the only way to defeat the cfc is to take their sov and then wage a bloody war to force them to spend their considerable reserves. The only way you do that is by taking a bigger or better blob up to them and grind

Gevlon said...

Pirates cannot be obliterated because they have no space assets that could force a fight. You can't take "their" NPC station. You can't take their income as it's not tied to any assets either and mostly made on alts or from PLEX.

The only thing you can do is destroying their ships and frustrating them until they find an easier prey, but the chart says it's not happening.

Anonymous said...

You can't take their income as it's not tied to any assets either and mostly made on alts or from PLEX.
So why do you think only pirates can do that? I mean if you were able to get a big enough force to stop ALL ratting in null (which there's no way pirates could ever do), surely null players would also just make isk on alts, yet still have all the passive income from sov.

The only thing you can do is destroying their ships and frustrating them until they...
Quit. Which is the usual end of a small group that gets killed by a larger one. Their members want to have fun, not get repeatedly camped and ganked, so groups like the CFC can make a small groups life boring. They've done it before.

The best way to deal with null groups is to simply ignore them. They can sit around sov null doing their thing, who really cares what they do or say?

daniel said...

what i do not understand, why pay and use privatly bought data when zkill is for free?

also, how do you process that data?


anyway, the whole imperial overstrechment thing, large amounts of "small roaming gangs" that slowly brought rome down, not the no1 apex force competitor.
gevlons idea of asymetric warfare isn't wrong at all.


though if i may quote that old english warmonger:
“I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself”

calintor said...

Lots of theories as to why (western) Rome fell, from Lead in Pipes to reduced farm production to internal descent, and including barbarians. Its an interesting topic if you're into that but I don't think it tells us much about CFC or other Eve Alliances. FWIW, if you really want to get rid of them from Eve (with the consequent loss of paying accounts and CCP revenue) I think you're best shot is to bore them to death. (Or launch another really good space-and-trolling MMO)

Anonymous said...

The only thing you can do is destroying their ships and frustrating them until they find an easier prey, but the chart says it's not happening.

Not entirely true - there are many ways to obliterate your enemies. Whatever you might like to say about the CFC they have one of the most effective spy networks in the game and have brought down their fair share of corporations from the inside.

Then there is their propaganda machine - on multiple occasions they have caused a fail cascade by spreading half truths and rumour.

Then there is their diplomatic channel, which they have used on many an occasion to turn allies against each other.

Remember, the real currency of eve is enjoyment - deprive a group of enjoyment and no matter how much is they have they will soon stop logging in. Winning wars in eve is all about trying to stop your enemies from logging in whilst keeping your own pilots logging in

And you are right, your charts do not show that this is happening. I would hypothesis that the reason they don't is because the CFC is not taking serious action against pirating activity because it isn't hurting them nearly enough. Another thing your chart doesn't show is that your anti-goon rhetoric is having any sort of impact on the CFC's ability to wage war. That would be a great bit of information to get out. You'd need.. well 5 years or so of data, with prices normalised against inflation and some kind of way of normalising relative fleet meta costs but you could actually establish base line pirate activity and prove whether or not your actions are having any statistically significant impact on goons.

My theory is that you are not having a statistical impact because if you were goons would be going after the pirates in a very deliberate, very public way. They aren't so I suggest it's really just situation normal.

Gevlon said...

No, spying doesn't work, because that can only dissolve a GROUP. This is deadly for a Sov-holder since it means losing their hard-earned structures and huge stockpiles. For an NPC living alliance, this is annoyance at best. The pilots will keep doing under a new name. Just remember Pizza joining BL and then reforming as Pasta.

If CFC spies would dissolve Marmite and MoA, in a week or two the pilots would be in another highsec wardeccer/nullsec NPC dweller without losing anything but tickers.

Anonymous said...

Tickers. Isk reserves. Ships. Spies do lots of damage to non sov holders. And please address the issue. Show how your actions are objectively making an impact on the cdc war machine. Please include a significant enough body of historic data to back up notions that you are making a difference and can destroy them (cover all the way back to the first Great War if you can). Otherwise your graphs and charts just show status quo. Whilst interesting in dispelling some propaganda it shows no capacity that your tilting at this particular windmill is having and impact.

Anonymous said...

Part of Gevlon's posts are idealogical. He claims (correctly) that the largest body of damage is done by individuals and small groups. He points out (correctly) that if all the goon-haters out there got into ships or started paying people to get into ships, the CFC would lose its ability to wage war, due to its large dependency on ratting income.

He also points out (correctly) that he is not able to do this alone and needs other pilots and groups to keep shooting at Goons. He is definitely making an impact, but he can't do it alone.

Anonymous said...

Part of Gevlon's posts are idealogical. He claims (correctly) that the largest body of damage is done by individuals and small groups.

No doubt


He points out (correctly) that if all the goon-haters out there got into ships or started paying people to get into ships, the CFC would lose its ability to wage war, due to its large dependency on ratting income.


On this point I disagree. the CFC itself has no dependency on ratting income at all. The Mittani would love this to be the case but the fact of the matter is that due to the currently broken Sov model, isk is made "top down" not "bottom up". 100% of the CFCs war chest is funded through moons and rentals, and not through individual CFC members being taxed a portion of their ratting income.

To be clear, what I'm saying is you could stop 100% of the CFC ratting activity right now and it would have no tangible impact on their ability to wage war. People would still log in. If they want personal isk they would make it on alts (as many already do).

If you want to actually harm their ability to make income you go after their renters. This is a strategy that the Goons themselves have used time and time and time again. Having said that, they have sufficient reserves (in terms of ships and liquid isk) to sustain a rather protracted war so you would need a sufficiently funded war machine with the will power to stay the course in order to cause a lasting disruption to Goon activities.

Remember, the Goons in all their guises in this game have been in an almost constant state of war since they joined this game and yet they stay the course.


He also points out (correctly) that he is not able to do this alone and needs other pilots and groups to keep shooting at Goons. He is definitely making an impact, but he can't do it alone.


And this is what I personally want to see evidence of. You say he's definitely making an impact. He claims (both directly and indirectly) that he is making an impact but to date none of his data analysis has shown this to be the case.

People have always shot Goons and it isn't unreasonable to assume that the amount of Goon shooting going on is not significantly higher with his 'investment' than it was prior to him deciding to wage a one man war against a group that he so desperately wants to be a part of.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: You believe the propaganda that the ability of CFC to wage war is unconnected to the well being of the individual members. This isn't the case. People don't log in the game to be the drones of The Mittani. Ratting space is an important bonus that members receive. This is why most of the CFC controlled land is *not* rented out. If this bonus is destroyed, many members will reconsider their membership.

In highsec wars against CFC members did about 370B damage in 2013: http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/2014/01/you-just-pay-marmite-for-doing-what.html

In the first half of 2014, it's 1.2T. Looks significant.

@CFC Grunt: if the damage is too small, it doesn't mean that my plan is wrong, it just means that it needs more pirates than currently available.

CFC Grunt said...

"You believe the propaganda that the ability of CFC to wage war is unconnected to the well being of the individual members."

It doesn't need propaganda to be believable. Pirates have always been doing damage, and it never impacted the CFC ability to wage war.

It's also wrong that they log in to rat - no, they log in to murder the opposing team. It's fun to the goons and the CFC - denying the others enjoyment.

Gevlon said...

@CFC Grunt: they log in to rat, otherwise they wouldn't rat. Maybe they rat to be able to do other things, but they still rat.

Pirates always did damage, and it always decreased the power of CFC. Let's see what happens if piracy grows largely.

CFC Grunt said...

So, wait, you're essentially telling me - a member of the CFC - that I log in to rat?

I log in to fight. I don't actually even rat for my ISK. At all.

I don't know, maybe you fly in the CFC fleets and talk with people more than I do but the general consensus, is "log in to fight, rat to be able to fight".

(Ratting optional, industry, PI, moon refining, scamming are also ways to earn money)

Piracy won't grow beyond what it is right now. Pretty much every region has its group that tries its best to kill some shiny stuff.

If you throw more pirates into the mix, they'll simply overfish an area and become content-starved. Then move away in search for fights.