A Fixian Mindset

So... wtf is the deal with BoB?

Due to my work in FIX as a diplomat, I'm in contact with plenty of people on the outside looking in. Ever since BoB took over the Querious region, and FIX remained in the area, the most common question I get to field is 'What is your deal with BoB?'

Sometimes it's asked politely with overtones of polite interest, that's cool. Other times, occasionally happening in the Eve-O forum, it's a variation on 'The Avernus I once knew would never have swallowed this 12 inch BoB deal'... you know, the overtones of not-so-polite interest.

It really centres around one main point of contention in most peoples minds though; folks like to think to themselves 'Why would a once proud and strong alliance with a rich history of conquest, conflict and track record for beating the odds, roll over and take it in the ass from people who used to be their enemies?'

The above sentiment has on occasion made be want to break things. There are generally three groups of people who like to ask variations of the question:
1. Ex-FIX, by far the hardest group to deal with.
2. Ex-SA or Ex-CFS... we never really cared what they've thought however.
3. Onlookers, somewhat akin to the morbidly curious thinking they are viewing a car wreak.

Each group gets a somewhat different, short on indepth detail, answer:
1. The ex-FIX answer depends on two things, where they are now, and how long they've been gone from FIX. The earlier someone parted from FIX, the more detail they are likely to get. If it happened to be someone who left on good terms, and has remained on good terms with us, they'll get the best information that I'm able to give them... barring a few things, and with my apologies that I can't share it all.
2. The ex-enemies, are normally only looking for cannon fodder to pass around and fire off on the forums when the opportunity presents itself, and they can then divulge the vast wealth of knowledge they apparently possess on the subject. The answer they normally get - It's confidential.
3. Onlookers, who have no vested interest, are normally truely interested for the sake of curiousity. They basically get told what could already be garnered if they had simply looked into the subject a bit further themselves. I have no problem with sharing the basics and it can lead to some good conversations.

There are a few common myths that keep popping up though, and deserve a bit of feedback. They aren't always easy to answer though, so this will take a bit of time... and I'll likely tackle other FIX myths later on

Myth #1 - BoB were your enemies, you guys sold out. (The biggest myth of them all)

I guess about a year ago they were our enemies in actuality. BoB were already in Fountain, pushing into Delve, and FA was dead. BoB was certainly well known, and there was already an abundance of forum topics in Eve-O in regards to them. The Eve-O forums, while being 95% full of crap, also contains very important information for people who know how to keep their eyes open. We didn't ignore the information that was available to us; like:
- BoB doesn't like whiners.
- BoB likes good fights.
- BoB will respect those that respect them.
So, when BoB came after FIX, nobody whined, nobody posted on the forums, nobody examined the 'injustice' of it all. When they showed up in our systems, we brought out everything we could find to fight with... on the occasions when we simply didn't have enough to fight with, we actually told them so in local, and gave our apologies. When we got our asses kicked, we said GF in local, and when we occasionally won a fight, we did the exact same thing.

The insidious tactics of FIX won the day, we turned enemies into friends. Hard fought, hard earned respect was found to exist between FIX and BoB; the immediate result of it was that we got a NAP out of the deal.

Stage 2 kicks in, and Sir Molle posts a topic called 'The Gift'... I think that was the title at least. The basic gist of it was that all standings from BoB towards others were reset. FIX had known that the NAP we had wasn't going to be long term, and we decided to make the best of it, we had after all gone through this before, and while we'd be shooting at each other again, none of us felt that there was any danger of BoB going to any sort of lengths to destroy us... they liked us a bit too much for measures like that.

Under these circumstances, it was during this time period that FIX tried to put up it's first Outpost. The Easter Egg Incident occured. I haven't read anything to the contrary, so I believe it's still the only Outpost platform that has ever been destroyed by anybody. The short story on that is we screwed up on our getting the filler in before downtime... if we had another 10 minutes, that sucker would have hatched. The tale is well told by this point, but FIX went on system defense for the next 24 hours straight. For many Fixians, it was the most fun they've ever had in Eve... not so much for myself.

My own corp members had helped put in a pretty fair chunk of isk, along with all that isk and work that our allies had put into it, I really didn't want to see this egg get cracked. A combined SA and Huzzah fleet came after us first, a single pilot had posted a screenshot of the uncompleted egg on the Eve-O forums, the cat was out of the bag. The FIX fleet was ready when SA/HF jumped in, I was on the wrong side of the gate at the time, flying with some old friends who had come down to reinforce us at my request (I was pulling in every favor I could that night, contacting whoever I could). We managed to pick off a few pods as they jumped back out... it been a massacre on the other side.

BoB arrived on the scene shortly after, they had been burning thrusters at full in the hopes to get a three way fight out of the situation, something that would simply be a massive highlight for their campaign. They arrived, and I got told to start doing what I could on my end to get BoB to back away. Having seen a high level BoB member (think it might have been Dianabolic) post in the Egg forum topic before it was locked, we assumed they must know all about it. Well, we knew a fight was going to happen, and sure enough, BoB crashed through the gate... it went badly for us, and we took some punishing losses, our guys started podding themselves back to 9CG to get new ships, and I started up a convo with Blacklight while BoB began to shoot at the Egg.

It's not the best known fact about Blacklight, who is known best for heroic consumption of scotch.. oh, and that whole CEO of BNC thing, but he's also accounted to be a bit of a softey. Hey... when you're short on cards in your hand, you try whatever angle you think will give you a shot. I gotta apologise to BL, but I pulled out every last guilt trip I could possibly muster that night, and I think I did a pretty decent job of it... predicting the doom and splitting of FIX over the course of our convo, I just kept groping around looking for heartstrings to tug on... friggin anything to stop them from shooting that fucking pain in the ass EGG!

Well we all know what the final answer was, I'd love to have been able to trumpet a diplomatic success, but it wasn't to be. Blacklight may have been slightly less impressed overall, the second the diplomacy was considered a deadend, our next fleet jumped in.... Blacklight was primary.

I swear that wasn't my doing. :D

Well, we went in, got shot up something fierce each time, and took a few down with us, but nowhere near enough. We had another fleet ready when the egg finally popped, we jumped that in for good measure as well. Before the Easter Egg, my corp had maintained a postive kill ratio vs BoB, after the Easter Egg... not so much.

Well, the shit hit the fan in FIX... but not because of BoB and the Egg. Four corps in FIX had worked together to get that Outpost up, and considering internal tensions in FIX at the time with some other corps, we had kept it quiet up until the very day it went up. I was already in shit with the powers that be during that time period in FIX, since FIX leadership at the time had two things against me... One was that I can be a complete pain in the ass, the other was that they were utterly convinced that I had tried to stage a coup in FIX a month prior. Yeah well... from a personal perspective, the Egg wasn't exactly another glowing remark on my resume.

Don't get me wrong, people were definately ticked about the Egg, that's 26ish billion isk of uninsurable assets that just got flushed. It's not like I was doing backflips due to the joy of losing 4 ships and a nice chunk of cash the night before. Oh wait... we were talking about why FIX doesn't hate BoB right? Ah right, well put it this way, we fucked up, not them (we being four corps who put up an Egg at a rather bad time, and screwed it up to boot). We knew we were a target, we definately knew that an Egg would be a Huge target... so who do you blame, the guy that broke your egg, or yourself for putting it in a position to get broken? FIX has a good habit of taking responsibility for it's actions. We created the scenario without any outside help ;)

How to conclude this? It's all looking a bit patchy to my eye, and I know people are still asking themselves, 'Well.. WTF is the deal with BoB?!!!!' Does it matter? It matters to BoB, it matters to FIX, but any details you read here are going to be completely without meaning if you don't know what the relationship between BoB and FIX is. I can't speak for BoB, nor will I try to, I can't even fully speak for FIX, but I can speak for myself, and my corp, and many of my friends who happen to be in FIX. When others figure it out, the deal isn't that hard to figure out either.

posted by Avernus @ 1:16 PM