Greedy Goblin

Thursday, March 13, 2014

The alliances that didn't bark

Update to the WH eviction post: I wondered why many kills are missing, and turned out I had no corp API submitted. Fixed and found that the tower took bloody revenge for its reinforcing.

We know from Sherlock Holmes that a dog that didn't bark can be a valuable piece of information. Things not doing what they supposed to be doing are interesting. What is the missing barking in EVE politics? State of the Alliance messages of many alliances.

It is customary for alliance leaders to address their people in an official speech. Others have it as "alliance meetings" that are usually recorded and transcript published. Such statements are common at Goonswarm, AAA, Nulli and so on. Their purpose is to explain the narrative to the troops, to declare war or peace, to commend or discipline members. These statements are covered by EVE-news sites, blogs as important pieces of EVE info. Let's open Google:
  1. SOTA Goonswarm: 230000 hits
  2. SOTA "Against ALL Authorities": 141000 hits
  3. SOTA "TEST alliance please ignore": 131000 hits
  4. SOTA "Darkness of Despair": 55800 hits
  5. SOTA "Pandemic Legion": 29400 hits
  6. SOTA "Brave Newbies Inc": 17300 hits
  7. SOTA "Nulli Secunda": 10800 hits
Seems everyone is communicating, leading, taking part in history. Or almost:
  1. SOTA "Spacemonkey's Alliance": 858 hits
  2. SOTA "Tactical Narcotics Team": 5890 hits, but none of them are about a TNT SOTA on the front page (rather TNT mentioned in someone else's SOTA)
  3. SOTA "Li3 Federation": 29400 hits but none of them are about a Li3 SOTA on the front page (rather Li3 mentioned in someone else's SOTA)
  4. SOTA "Red versus Blue": 502 hits
Does anyone actually remember a SOTA from any of the pets? Why don't they communicate? Why aren't their people and the World addressed about their intentions? We are talking about the largest alliances in EVE and they are silent as mice! Why? For the same reason why we don't see a PBLRD or BoT SOTA. They don't have politics, deployments, doctrines, decisions, announcements. They are merely parts of an empire. Their "leaders" lead just as much as the management of a renter alliance. They get their directions from the masters and they adapt and implement it. Their theoretical SOTAs would be simple copies of the SOTA of their masters.

We know nothing of these alliances from them. All we see is them acting together with a more powerful entity. In order to look like independent actors and not simple arms of the masters, these alliances should start having politics, announcements, declarations. At least they should try to act like having a will. Sure, they might be shouted at by the masters, but they might actually gain some independence.

Finally many commenters claim that I communicated poorly and against my interests with RvB. Let me give an example why I'm sure that no amount of diplomacy with RvB would yield anything but hilarious chatlogs: Imagine that someone with both resources to offer and diplomatic skills approaches the official contacts of PBLRD and suggests them a completely reasonable and feasible plan in what they could earn more money and power in another coalition, free from Goonswarm. Do you believe in the success of that diplomatic mission? If you don't, why not?

GRR project update: seems the SOTA isn't the only thing the RvB pets missed.

33 comments:

Lucas Kell said...

Perhaps it's because... *gasp* Ours aren't called SOTA. And since ours aren't released by being published to a major news site they are unlikely to flood Google search results. But no, of course it means we are super irrelevant right? I'm off to kill myself with a claw hammer as your words sting so.

Gevlon said...

And why is it not released to news sites?

Provi Miner said...

Funny no razor, if you may recall last time razor stood up (as you suggested) a lead goon was quoted as saying burn the heritic initially this was spun as a play on words from wh40k. What was interesting is that those who actually heard him say it, have said "he was completly serious". There are several axoms that you seem to ignore religously. A: the squeeky hinge gets the oil and B: the highest Nail gets hit the hardest. In this context a squeeky hinge is an alliance within the cfc that is doing as instructed and doing it well however there are rumblings from that alliance that they want to be different. So to keep them in line and happy you give them better space more renters and so forth. However when an alliance within the cfc fails to do as instructed to a passable level and there are rumblings then out comes the hammer (sma) and all of a sudden gone is good space, a purge racks the alliance, corps that were promised safty are kicked despite meeting ever higher standards. Your logic is good, however your lack of concept in regards to power/ego/and self interest seem to be lacking when you look at cfc. You mention it but then try to apply logic to it, apply npc kill amounts. and so forth.

I think you fail to realize that being dead last in a group that considers itself "different" is actually better than being first amongst those that oppose the "different" types. An example would be sma v nulli. Sma sees themselves as superior by virtue of being in the cfc even though most consider SMA one of the worst alliances out there. You can't reason with people who are willing to suck hind tit and are happy about it. They have been broken and wear their collers with pride. You can reason with those who think of what could be, but there are none like that in the cfc.

Anonymous said...

absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. the missing data may be in a place you cannot view it, such as requiring a login or the like. not everyone wants to broadcast everything where anyone can see it.

Quixilva said...

I'm not affiliated with any of the groups in this conflict but two things seem pretty clear to me.

1) The reason why people claim that you communicated poorly with RvB is because your first post to actually address them begins by calling RvB the Goons' highsec pet. Since then, a major theme of this blog has been attempts to prove that statement.

Now, RvB have a long history of doing stuff other than engaging in POCO wars, and in fact still do so.

On the POCO front the arrangement between the Goons and RvB was well known before the Lemmings were formed, and if anything was initiated by RvB rather that the Goons.

In that context, calling RvB a pet of the Goons is rhetoric that is well at home in a SOTA, rather than a statement of fact.

2) PBLRD is the CFC renter alliance and the listed points of contacts are in GoonWaffe, so obviously they are not going to switch coalition. However the individual renter corps in such alliances tend to be open to looking for a better arrangement. Although like RvB, I doubt renters would consider themselves pets of the Goons.

You could consider RvB to have been in the same position. If someone (say Marmite) had presented offer than the Goons then perhaps they would have been in an POCO pact with them.

Ultimately, while engaging in diplomacy may not have changed things at all, the fact that you continue to to spout your "RvB = goon pet" rhetoric seems to be the main reason why RvB wants to destroy your assets.

Is it just rhetoric, or do you actually genuinely believe that RvB are just highsec pets of the Goons?

Anonymous said...

When I was in 401k we had sotas which were rarely published anywhere, yet we were in no Coalition, nor being a pet as you call it. You make too far reaching assumptions.

Louis Robichaud said...

"these alliances should start having politics, announcements, declarations."

We do. It's called the RvB forums. That is where leadership communicates with the members, that is where issues are debated. We don't "do" SOTA.

We don't get involved in the broader EVE politics - our most political move ever was our mutual defence pact with the CFC over POCOs, something you took waaaay too seriously.

Gevlon said...

@Rammstein: prybar suicide jokes are not welcomed. (Lucas joked on his own suicide, that's OK)

@Quixilva: I believe that big part of RvB directorate are Goonwaffe alts, hence the only way to change the behavior of RvB is brute force and making members leave.

@Anon: is 401k relevant?

Anonymous said...

"is 401k relevant?"

It used to be until leaving venal. Now, probably not so much.

Gevlon said...

@LR: because deploying to Sendaya against a nullsec coalition isn't newsworthy?!

OK it wasn't, considering how it went.

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon
"And why is it not released to news sites?"
Why is Marmites not? Why are hundreds of corp and alliance information not released? More importantly though, why do you think it matters? A short search would show you that we do in fact have alliance announcements, so other than making yourself look pretty silly with a pointless assumption I'm really not sure what you were trying to accomplish with this one. Have you just run out of stuff to blog about and just filling a gap?

Arrendis said...

Honestly, Gevlon, I can't answer for the vast majority of alliances out there. I can tell you that LAWN has internal, posted SOTAs, as does FA - just not broadcasted stuff. As for why it doesn't get reported? Well, as they clearly say on TMC, SotAs tend to be internally-aimed.

As for TNT? Here's what I can tell you about the culture of TNT as I've experienced it: We're here. We're chillin'.

What major upheavals have there been to address? The CFC going to war? Mittens handles that address. The CFC coming back from war? Yeah, we know, we were there, we came home.

Here is what I cannot begin to stress to you enough: with the exception of RZR, who like to do their own thing, and individual alliance deployments, the CFC has a unified command & control structure. CONDI has the infrastructural expertise, yes, but the actual people doing the job of running the Coalition are members of every alliance in it, including RZR and SMA.

Gevlon said...

@Arrendis: then how is TNT different from Wildly Inappropriate or Enlightened Industries (CFC corps).

Would ANYONE (including you) notice anything if TNT would be disbanded and the corps invited into CONDI?

Arrendis said...

And why is it not released to news sites?

Just a side note on this one: who says any of them are 'released' to news sites? (I mean, other than Mittens giving Mittens Mittens' SotG address, duh.)

Look at the alliances the staff writers at EN24 and TMDC belong to. Do they really wait for SotAs to be 'released', or do they report on this shit because they've got the story already?

Personally, I don't know. But unless you're on the TMDC staff (and unless Riverini's doing more than just aggregating your blog), you don't either.

Anonymous said...

also the SOTA of major alliances get realeased public is because they have spies anyway. Why waiting for them to make it public. So you can do it directly

Arrendis said...

Don't necessarily think I would, no. But then, doesn't that undermine the narrative of 'Goon pets', if we're treated the same as CONDI members? If we hold ourselves and one another in the same standing as we do CONDI members?

Gevlon said...

@Arrendis: I call CONDI members "Inner pets".

The master is Goonwaffe, not CONDI. The masters get membership benefits without effort, as they are not evaluated. Everyone else is evaluated for performance.

Arrendis said...

Right. Waffe's not evaluated. That's why Waffe conducted a purge as soon as we left the war.

Just because Waffe doesn't do paplinks doesn't mean they're not evaluating their members. Really, Gevlon, it's amazing to see just which 'Goon Superiority' propaganda you buy without question.

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon
"The masters get membership benefits without effort, as they are not evaluated."
Any chance you could cite a source or evidence of this? While they get to be in the group without performing, the group as a whole still needs to perform. In the same way, member alliances are tested on an alliance level, individual performance measurements for members of those alliances are not done by goons.

I honestly can't believe that you really can't comprehend the way the coalition works, especially since you've had it explained to you from all sides both in and out of the CFC, yet you still seem to post these things which fundamentally miss the mark.

Anonymous said...

@Lucas, because we can conclude he is relatively intelligent the only plausible conclusion is that he is doing a (bad) job at controlling a narrative. It suits his purposes politically to make out that goons do nothing and grow fat on the goose for nothing more than their SO membership, while all the hapless "pets" and "inner pets" (neither of which are at all Pets in the traditional eve sense of the word) do all the work and have to report on participation and the like.

If suddenly he started reporting it as it was then those he hopes to get to follow him would have to conclude that goons are actually not all that bad, and are far from the baby eating hitlers that they are being made out to be.

Louis Robichaud said...

The war with BNI *was announced* , just not with a SOTA. It didn't happen because BNI deployed to Sendaya.

Tihmor said...

>>The war with BNI *was announced* , just not with a SOTA. It didn't happen because BNI deployed to Sendaya.

The BNI "war" was a smokescreen anyway.

A way to get out of the POCO war without loosing face, aka "We are busy elsewhere.".

Anonymous said...

I find it interesting that there are multiple blogs where you bring up the diplomacy with RvB and why you didn't attempt it, you actually go out on the limb to explain why it wouldn't have worked. Considering that you NEVER actually attempted to do so, why are you so confident? Please leave out the examples of PBLRD and the other renter alliances. To date (2 months) you have yet to pose a valid argument as to why it wouldn't have worked, which to be quite honest is pretty ballsy since you didn't actually try.

Anonymous said...

How was that getting out of the poco war? If RvB was deployed to fight BNI, wouldn't that give Lemmings more chance to kill the RvB pocos, then see if Goons honored the pact?

If the claim is RvB were goon pets, and goons would not actually honor the POCO agreement, then thr BNI event would have been a good test. How can a good test case be a smoke-screen excuse to get out of the war?

Louis Robichaud said...

Yes. We moved 3000 ships for a smoke screen...

Manfred said...

For what reason did you declare war? Interesting timing... Were your Goon masters upset that they helped N3 in the hellcamp and wanted them occupied?

Lucas Kell said...

Manfred
"For what reason did you declare war? Interesting timing... Were your Goon masters upset that they helped N3 in the hellcamp and wanted them occupied?"
Dammit this comment just punches straight through the Charade. Clearly there's no alternative explanation, so LR, you may as well just give it up now. We all know RvB is made entirely of goon alts built to defend the CFC from bands of high sec players and the collective remains of old null sec corps guarded by an army of kitchen sink trainees. I mean there's a few bits of circumstantial evidence supporting that claim, and if you ignore the mountains of evidence to the contrary it clearly holds up, so you may as well just tell them the truth.

Seriously though Manfred, do you believe everything you are told so easily, or just goon stuff, because if you do, I've got a bridge to sell you.

Tihmor said...

@Anonymous
>>If the claim is RvB were goon pets, and goons would not actually honor the POCO agreement, then thr BNI event would have been a good test. How can a good test case be a smoke-screen excuse to get out of the war?

So are Goons supposed to only show up when RvB POCOs are under attack? Is that how the "mutual benefical" (LOL) pact works? I love the weird logic constructs Eve players come up with... This is even better than the thinking behind ISK doubler scams.

Goons saved a lot of ISK thanks to RvB members playing meat shields. That's pretty much it.

Would the Goons start to protect their POCOs if RvB didn't do so? Yeah, sure and if Goons and RvB would be equal partners you would have seen first and foremost Goons protecting POCOs with RvB assisting. Instead the pets do all the work. And that has been so for 3 months now.

Tihmor said...

>>Yes. We moved 3000 ships for a smoke screen...

Wohoo! That's like 8-9 freighters full of frigattes. Even more if you guys could afford BCs...

Bummer that there was no war after you did go to such "great lengths" :-(

Anonymous said...

I get a little worn out seeing the exact same 'but diplomacy!' posts, like somehow if Gevlon had mentioned to RvB he was going to be attacking Goons in highsec they'd say 'sure, whatever, we're just casuals who like to blow up politics means nothing to us'.

RvB joined the Goons against Lemmings when they were at *50 members*. Not because Gevlon gave them some great slight, but because they - a body that outwardly exists only for casual pvp - were pushed into a political position by their masters. The idea of 'gudfites' or 'avenging honor' is incredibly weak - if they wanted to fight a lot of targets, they could have fought Goons for the POCOs. They had no honor to avenge because Gevlon hadn't said anything to them yet.

This is exactly the same sort of comments I've been reading for weeks.

Louis Robichaud said...

For fun. We have gone to war with them in the past. Same as eve university.

Anonymous said...

"Manfred said...

For what reason did you declare war? Interesting timing... Were your Goon masters upset that they helped N3 in the hellcamp and wanted them occupied?"

Believe it or not, people do war dec just for the fun of it? It's not all about KBs like Marmite? Refer to Euni wars + previous BNI wars.

Anonymous said...

I've been in many different alliances and my experience is that it's just the same shit under a different name and logo. So unless the SOTA is about changing their logo I will have zero interest in what Li3 or TNT do. I forgot TNT even exist until this post to be honest.