Greedy Goblin

Monday, August 11, 2014

HERO locked inside a box

June Ting, a HERO FC wrote a pretty sad piece. It's sad because it's practically a declaration of surrender. Not to a particular entity, but to an inescapable fate. She said that:
  1. "unless HERO has an ongoing campaign, its members will become less active and we will lose our main strategic advantage." so peace an PvE is not an option
  2. "If we are to punch at or above our weight, we can only attack CFC, N3PL, Spaghettico, xxDeath, or Provibloc." everyone else runs
  3. "we share a common goal as a coalition to advance the cause of newbies in nullsec" means they can't just shrink to the level of other targets
  4. Spaghettico is hard to hit and HERO don't want to alienate them
  5. "becoming a set of satellite states that one leverages to attack the other is utterly repugnant to us, and would destroy the premise of having a new independent power in nullsec. And yet, we would have no hope of taking on either CFC or N3PL without the other's assistance."
  6. "we have no desire to simply be RvB in nullsec or have more 'fast food' fights without consequence"
Finally she concludes that Proviblock is their best option. She is wrong. Proviblock isn't an option at all, it's just a diversion. Unless HERO violates #6 and turns into "HvP in nullsec", intentionally letting the other to regroup after defeats to provide a fight tomorrow, the war on Provi will end, either by failure, or by the end of Proviblock. This "end" can mean actual destruction or becoming a minion to some master who protect them from further HERO action. So HERO wins, celebrates, then what? OK, they can get another diversion by deploying against xxDeath. Then they can alienate Spaghettico. But after they finished all the diversions they will be sitting in the very same situation as today: they are too big to fight anything but N3PL and CFC, but too small to fight one of them, without kissing the ring of the other.

The problem is that HERO is still thinking inside the box. They want to do what the others have done, just alone. Which will at some point get the attention of either N3PL or CFC. HERO is fully aware that fighting these guys on their home turf is "tilting the windmills". So HERO is doomed to fail as a neutral entity in the Sov Null theater. If they avoid becoming minions or destroyed, they'll be bored to death.

The solution for HERO is thinking out of the box, trying something that no one even tried before. There are infinite options, one will work for them. But it must be a new option, not an old one. No, deploying to 5ZXX-K and becoming Mordus Angels 2 is't a new option. I'd suggest to start a brainstorming event on the forums with prizes to the most idiotic, yet technically possible ideas. The goal is that such idiotic ideas might spawn a genuinely good, outside-the-box idea that will shape New Eden.

Let me offer two examples: "using the new wormhole mechanics, become a small-ship-swarm group in WH" and "become a highsec superpower, owning all POCOs and demanding rent from POS holders".


PS: A pretty even battle between the Evil and Tri/MoA/Mortuus.
A much less even battle between MoA/Tri and the Evil.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

3 step plan

1- try and stay under the radar of CFC and N3PL.

2 - actively recruit disillusioned CFC and/or N3PL members, unite WH and unaffiliated NULL and form a third power block.

3 - pay mortgage with RMT

without step 1 they get crushed
without step 2 they get crushed
without step 3 there is not enough motivation for a rational entity (mittens shadoo etc)

Provi Miner said...

First off lets clear some misconceptions. June is a full of shit pure and simple. June has a love hate relationship with provI in specific Volt and CVA who evicted her ass. June stills has a burning desire. Till now things were cool gud fights and all that crap. But recently June has been writing crap about provi as a unified entity. I assume this is to inflame her space bros. The problem with this line of argument is that by calling Provi Provi means that instead of a specific fight with specific space nerds, she is in effect pissing all of provi off including those who actually liked sound and were sympathetic. I was once one of those. Now I want to shoot june bad. And I all can say to hero is "come at us bro".

Now lets clear up the other misconception: Durring the great catch sov drop a hero diplo cut a deal with a provi diplo it was a shit deal for prove but cause we back our own Provi held to the deal. 1: There was never no agreement about caps (so fuck the poor test cap fleet, stupid is as stupid does)
2: of course once catch was settled and Hero didn't live up to its end of the deal it was time for provI to remind them that hey fuck tards we got a deal. (so thats another cause ballei thats BS).
3: lastly and this is an importatnt one: if hero calls in friends and they will cause provi is just that much better in every way, Provi knows how to bat phone as well.

Summary Hero is setting up the oportunity for another great war only this time Provi won't be watching and laughing this time Provi will be tipping the scales. No one that I am aware of has seen all of provi mobilized in ages not even the civil war (where a good 1/2 refused to fight cause they liked sound) Nor the NC terror campaing ever saw a major effort.

June can go suck rotten eggs and come at us cause this crap is getting boring and if she thinks she has the stones to do it all I can say is "come at us bro"

Anonymous said...

That issue they face is a common issue. You can't defeat your enemis because then you'll have noone left to fight, which means you'll have no fun. It's why things like botlrd and otec exist. The CFC and N3/PL don't actually hate each other, it's all a show for the masses. Half the fights are in fact staged, set up for both sides to have a bunch of fun.

As for HERO, their problem is they aren't powerful enough. They have some numbers, but their leaderships is poor as is their strategic ability. If they did try to be a highsec superpower, RvB would annihilate them. They're basically renting right now. They didn't really fight for their space, they were given it.

And lol @ Provi miner trying to pretend provi is some kind of amazing. I've lived in provi. It's basically carebears as far as the eye can see. If you batphone people they just try to move their PvE as far away from the affected area as possible. I moved to highsec to get away from provi it was so incredibly terrible. Pretty much the only reason they exists is because their space is rubbish, it's barely even nullsec. Nobody actually wants it.

Anonymous said...

Only way to be something other than "kiss the pinky ring" subordinate of someone else is to become a major bloc player.

That means recruiting and organizing, getting massive numbers of people to doctrine ships and having a go at it.

If it were easy, more people would be doing it.

I still remember the time when Goons were a massive pile of Rifters. Everyone laughed.

That pile became a fairly well organized pile of cruisers and battlecruisers (DRAEKS BLOTTING OUT THE SUN) and the laughter turned into worry.

Fast forward a bit and Battleships & Dreads started stomping around and you know the rest...

Anonymous said...

If you think June is the instigator then you are sorely wrong, whilst obviously there is bad blood the instigation comes from brave mainly.

The agreement involved non - interference with sov which you then ignored and bat phoned cfc on our caps (they weren't just test ones it was just a test fc). Provi has also poked at our sov a few times with almost 0 retaliation till recently. If it wasn't for the above we'd barely be bothering.

With all the above and the fact that parts of catch are in provi hands currently were going to take them back and there is very little you can do without asking for help.

It didn't have to be this way but you guys have forced our hand and we're no longer happy.

Von Keigai said...

Gevlon, there's an obvious "out of box" option you did not mention. And that is waiting for CCP to change the rules. All that Hero needs to do is stay alive and ideally keep gaining members until CCP attempts to break up the blue donut. Then, depending on how it is done, they may be able to stand on their own. Indeed, if Hero cannot stand alone after the blue-donut-nerf then CCP will have botched the job.

Anonymous said...

As someone who is on the killmail of the final BoB tower, be careful in saying, "I remember when Goons were just in Rifters." They had help. Lots of help. I believe my Alliance tag said something like <-10.0>. (Still does. :0)

HERO needs to realize that just because you kiss someone's ring today, doesn't mean you have to kiss it forever. Goons kissed a lot of rings in addition to their aggressive and no-fucks-given recruitment. It wasn't until after they'd carved out their own space that they stopped kissing those rings.

Ideally, HERO needs something to motivate the direction. Molle's infamous, "There are no Goons," statement was a huge tipping point. HERO needs something similar.

The other option is another failure cascade: See, TEST. Keeping an EVE group together is a masterwork of politics, social skills, fights, motivation, and outright lying and bullying, and I'm not sure HERO's current leadership has the chops.

CFC Grunt said...

@Anonymous: this. So much this.

When you're small, you kiss the ring. If you make it an become a large, dangerous force - others will be bowing to you.

Goons didn't "spawn" like an NPC in their current form. They used to be so honorable that their ethics disallowed scamming and espionage.

What they represent today is a consequence of how community thought of them. They were mistreated in the past, so now they answer with mistreating others.

But - even now Goons have a large assembly of allies and friends - the CFC.