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Revision as of 20:35, 26 January 2010

Indeed seven months of great plenty will come throughout all the land of Goonswarm; but after them seven months of famine will arise, and all the plenty will be forgotten in the land of Delve; and the famine will deplete the land. So the plenty will not be known in the land because of the famine following, for it will be very severe.

Prologue

June 2009 was the final month of the Second Great War. Seven months had passed since that time, and Eve saw many subtle changes. Kenzoku, previously BoB, had been purged from Delve. Kenzoku, an identity associated with the failure of an alliance, had since disbanded, and the corps involved had gone their separate ways.

Allies had involved themselves in war games, but their relations chilled. TCF lost Section XIII. Red Alliance's faltering became common knowledge, with several of their corps factionalizing while others joined with Goonswarm directly - an arrangement that virtually guaranteed our Russian timezone presence. Other Russians, who preferred more autonomy and control of space on their own terms, claimed areas of Querious. Zenith Affinity made a home in Period Basis.

Time had passed, and had healed many of the wounds that the former Kenzoku corps had suffered. They reunited under the IT Alliance banner, and attracted a heap of the same old shit they had shoveled with before. The Dominion expansion was deployed, vastly changing the sovereignty mechanics and toppling Sov 4 forever, giving IT a crack at getting a foothold in a region. They started in lowsec, building their economic base, but following a series of unfortunate events and shitty sovereignty timers later, IT took Fountain, but not before exploiting the opportunity that poor strategic planning on the part of Pandemic Legion would gain them.

Up to this point, Goonswarm's involvement in regional battles was in supporting allies, a tradition that it upheld since the grand old days in the south east. The fall of Fountain, five titans, and a demoralizing betrayal by some retarded pets compelled Pandemic Legion to pull back to the north.

With a divide between the north and the south filled in with IT Alliance, and AAA, Systematic-Chaos, Stain Empire and Atlas Alliance and fronts in Querious, NPC Delve and Sakht the stage was set; at the center, a fortified Goonswarm stood in defiance (with some chicken-littling).

From the Eastern empires came the first shot; SBU mails rocked the inboxes of Alliance that day, declaring the intent to challenge 49-U - a threat backed by high-hundreds of players. IT's warbabble followed soon behind, when they declared their involvement for January 14 2010.

For seven months, Goonswarm feasted. It was now time to fight.

The First Week

Early January

It began with SBUs in 49-U. The system has always been viewed as a strategic asset. Home to a few R64 moons, it also placed carriers and dreads in cyno range of most of Delve and Querious. The first attacks came on the heels of the Fountain catastrophe. Night after night, more SBUs were anchored, and with each attempt to take sovereignty came a consistent stream of successes for Goonswarm. Goonswarm beat the numbers by way of attrition, playing late into US prime, and early into Russian dawn.

Mid-January

SirMolle brought IT Alliance into the fight, playing out the Fountain strategy by attacking Goonswarm's R64 moons in the NPC Delve region. IT's orders were to bring ships to Sakht, an empire system located one jump from Delve and in the 1-SMEB-to-PR- and 1-SMEB-to-A-E pipe. They worked to take down high-end towers in A-E, choosing to avoid strategic targets with a focus on attacking Goonswarm's logistics system.

The skirmishes in 49- continued, with more hostile SBUs getting anchored and blown up. Sovereignty of the system remained unchanged.

A three day period of posts made it appear that morale was low, and some goons discussed evacuation. A thread posted by Scavok to encourage new cap pilots was swiftly derailed, and following that a thread by Vio Geraci describing the situation lost its track. Finally, The Mittani returned.

The Mittani posts the following war update on Goonfleet.com on January 13th:

Exactly one year prior to this, near the start of Delve II, The Mittani posted a thread with an eerily similar tone. The more things change...

Now with a clear statement of what was happening and a direction to proceed in, the train was back on track.

Repelling the Invasion

For several days, hostile SBUs were knocked into place, and while the invaders of 49- would reinforce Goonswarm's equipment in the system, like clockwork they'd be pushed back. The mechanics of Dominion enabled Goonswarm to keep the station and ihub coming out in their primetime, which worked against the clock for the eastern Europe-based attackers.

Finally, due to poor turnouts on Goonswarm's side, the hostiles managed to break through, and the hub and station were on their last legs. For the Goon team, things looked grim. On the final day, SirMolle, through one of his alts, was himself present with a cap fleet, and as the station exited reinforced, a race was on between a critical SBU and the station. Goonswarm prevailed, but as they entered warp to assault the hostile fleet, the node crashed. Also at about this time, a critical failure affected Goonswarm's Teamspeak, Jabber, forums, wiki, and other major services. Quick adapting to the situation caused the fleet to move operations to a Teamspeak Server managed by another alliance. 90 minutes later, a roll-back was applied and players involved in the battle were once again able to login.

The race to determine who would control 49- restarted. SirMolle, reluctant to summon capital ships, opted instead to fight with subcaps. Despite having been handed a second opportunity at gaining the system for the Russian front, he once again lost the race.

By the evening of January 18, with system numbers into the low 200s, 49- was now solidly in Goonswarm's hands.

Finding themselves at firmly at square one, the invading coalition attempted a second run. Four more SBUs were dropped into the system, covering all of the gates. Within a few hours they were eliminated; driving the point further was the destruction of the transport ship carrying them.

In the early hours of January 19, an experiment was conducted and for the first time since the new sovereignty mechanics were implemented, an alliance controlled the reinforcement timer by erecting its own SBUs. CCP confirmed that this was not viewed as an exploit, and so the exit timer set for late into US prime, virtually guaranteeing that there'd be a low turnout on the part of SysK and AAA.

Still, Liam Freman announced a CTA and his own intentions to employ his own creative use of game mechanics. Following a series of petitions describing the mechanics they'd use, CCP declared it an exploit. The point was mute, however; due to an alleged billing failure Liam Freman's DSL provider terminated his Internet Access.

Even out of their prime, a hostile capital fleet remained ready to jump into the system. With the combined forces of the reinforcement timers, a cyno jammer, and goonswarm's own fleet protecting it, AAA's CTA was called off until the following day. Once again, 49- slipped out of their reach.

For Liam Freman, the war had become personal.

Up to this point, sovereignty was maintained throughout the siege. Many battles were fought successfully despite 2:1 or 3:2 odds against Goonswarm, superior numbers, and metagaming mechanics that enabled the hostile forces to dominate the node following downtime. With the situations in the north and the struggles affecting Goonswarm allies, it was often said that Goonswarm might have struggled to simply maintain Delve.

Despite attacks in critical systems in both Querious and Delve, Goonswarm had shown its challengers that the fight would be a grind.

The Delve Front

On January 19, IT alliance anchored SBUs in NOL. They were destroyed, and the IT fleet guarding them routed.

On January 26, Goonfleet neglected to pay the monthly bill for their sovereignty in Delve and Querious.