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.
Everything has to start somewhere
I've had a few members of my corporation, Imperium Technologies, bugging me for the past while to start up a blog. They are well aware that I'm not a person who is adverse to sharing his thoughts, be they controversial or otherwise. To be perfectly honest, I think it's fair to say that my habit of sticking to the beliefs that extend from those thoughts, tend to bring as much trouble towards us as from some quarters, as it may actually garner us respect from others.
In Eve, I don't tend to roleplay, I try to present myself honestly as I actually am, to how I run my corporation, as well as how I interact with the challenges put before us, be it situations or people. I think the majority of the time it has been a benefit, but then there are those other times.
I try to live up to fairly high standards in how I conduct myself, and I'm not particularily slow to make stands in issues based upon simple morals and values that I hold myself too. This has ended up bringing me into conflict with people on more occasions than I can honestly recall over the past three years. I think my mindset has been referred to in turn as a relic, worthless, a holier-than-thou attitude, etc etc etc.
The short of it is, once I have thought over the issues at hand, and come to a stance, it's pretty damn hard to waver my mind unless some very good arguements to the contrary are brought to me. Man... does that ever have a habit of pissing people off. I call it sticking to my guns, others just call me a stubborn son of bitch. Oddly, it's the very rare occasion that those people will say that I won't listen to reason; perhaps it's because I try to base my own arguements on reason, and not so much on emotion, and that's where problems start. I'm not a cold asshole, but emotional arguements towards going in a direction I don't like, don't move me very far.
I've been accused of having a big ego, quite a few times come to think of it, and I don't think it's that unaccurate either. I'm very confident in my abilities, and I put a lot of effort into seeing that my plans and desires turn into a reality. Many of those plans centre around the alliance I've been proud to be a part of since it's inception, Firmus Ixion, called FIX for short. We've had more up's and down's than I think any other group of players in Eve, in the course of our existance, I think we've had a whopping turnover to the likes of 90% of our memberbase. In all honesty, that's nuts. My own corporation is a bit of a blip in the statistics, we have a solid chunk of the original guys we came into FIX with; I imagine it's the same with the other two remaining founding corporations as well. I think I'll leave my own view on the history of FIX for another blog though.
Blogs are an extension of our egos, a little bit of ourselves presented for public discussion and criticism. I claim to hold to high standards, but that doesn't mean I'm a single faceted do-gooder paladin-like schmuck. I also like playing for high stakes, and I have a definate mean streak that can occasionally service to strike out towards people I don't particularily like, I can be cutting, and I can be pretty damn accurate with the shots I take as well. My friends see me as the guy they can count on, because I believe that a word given is something to hold to even if the result can hurt your own interests. You can already guess how those who don't like me, have come to view my personality.
In the FIX forums, we have a nice little section called Battlefield Stories. I throughly enjoy the material put up there, but I'm a rare poster in that section... I am often the person who ends up in a safespot, or sitting in a station, juggling 10 conversations and overhearing the details of how battle progresses. Once in a while though, I do get to tell a story of my own, and last week, I ended up telling one that is most definately a reflection of myself.
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Mon Oct 23, 2006 11:27 am
Yesterday was a very odd day for me.
I don't even know if this belongs here, because it's not exactly your usual battlefield story. It started out pretty simply, with me logging on and doing my usual routine of checking my evemails to see what is new.
Once again, as per usual, there were a few new DED mails. I and my directors get an abundance of these as POS run low on fuel, I almost deleted them without looking... but I took a quick glance first.
Your POS in Alachene is under attack... 98% shields
Your POS in Alachene is under attack... 86% shields
Your POS in Alachene is under attack... 60% shields
Your POS in Alachene is under attack... 56% shields
Your POS in Alachene is under attack... 54% shields
urm.... HOLY CRAP!
Silinary logs in. 'Sil, check your DED mail quick!'
'Who's POS is that?' Turns out is belongs to Dark Shikari, a part of his empire operations. Sil begins to prep his carrier, other IT members start to fit up and get ready. I jump in my Helios and take off for a 30 jump trip to Alachene so I know what we're jumping into before I authorise anything... I hope that thing has Stront, looks like it's going down fast... must have dreads I think to myself.
As I've been flying up, I've gone over the mails, there are at least 4 corps involved.
I talk to one of the CEO's of the people on those mails:
[ 2006.10.23 00:22:54 ] Avernus > is our POS in reinforced yet?
[ 2006.10.23 00:23:02 ] sonicram > hi
[ 2006.10.23 00:23:17 ] sonicram > not mine
[ 2006.10.23 00:23:51 ] Avernus > I'm talking about my pos, that your corpmates, along with two other corps are shooting
[ 2006.10.23 00:24:26 ] Avernus > pull in syberbolt
[ 2006.10.23 00:24:54 ] sonicram > huh?
[ 2006.10.23 00:25:15 ] Avernus > 2006.10.22 23:33 Attacked object: Gallente Control Tower Current Shield Level: 56% Current Armor Integrity: 100% Current Hull Integrity: 100%Aggressing Pilot: Syberbolt8 Aggressing Pilot's Corporation: soni Corp Aggressing ...
[ 2006.10.23 00:25:27 ] Avernus > Syberbolt8
[ 2006.10.23 00:25:43 ] Avernus > you seem to be acting unaware of the situation, perhaps you want him in here for this
[ 2006.10.23 00:26:09 ] sonicram > enlighten me
[ 2006.10.23 00:26:28 ] sonicram > no i know what he is upto
[ 2006.10.23 00:26:29 ] Avernus > as I said, your corpmates are shooting at my POS
[ 2006.10.23 00:26:45 ] Avernus > then you are fully aware correct?
[ 2006.10.23 00:26:48 ] sonicram > yes i know
[ 2006.10.23 00:27:01 ] sonicram > what am i not aware of?
[ 2006.10.23 00:27:17 ] Avernus > good to know. shall we pull in corp rep's for the other two corps involved, it will save time.
[ 2006.10.23 00:27:35 ] sonicram > u where offered to join the unofficial allaince
[ 2006.10.23 00:27:47 ] sonicram > no responce was made
[ 2006.10.23 00:27:59 ] Avernus > no information was sent to me on any such thing
[ 2006.10.23 00:28:36 ] Avernus > at least, if it was, it got lost in my mass of mail. I can say with 100% certainty, nobody has convo'd me
[ 2006.10.23 00:28:41 ] sonicram > ok pull in erasor and testywolf
[ 2006.10.23 00:30:21 ] Avernus > erasor is in CAS?
[ 2006.10.23 00:30:30 ] sonicram > erasor spells it funny
[ 2006.10.23 00:30:47 ] Avernus > testy is in UTTF?
[ 2006.10.23 00:31:15 ] sonicram > u cuaght me in the midst of a corp meeting
[ 2006.10.23 00:31:35 ] Avernus > trust me, unless you want some serious trouble coming your and your friends way, you'll make time for this.
[ 2006.10.23 00:32:12 ] sonicram > hold 2
[ 2006.10.23 00:32:14 ] Avernus > I'm not going to waste time doing the leg work to pull you and your allies into this convo
Sil is talking to me as I'm flying up, it's fairly obvious we aren't dealing with dreads after all.
I arrive on the scene.... where the hell is the POS I wonder... it doesn't say in the damn mail! I check and see that there are a ton of moons as well. Quick scan.... everybody has Gallente POS up, same as our own in this system.. doh. Time to do it the hard way, fortunately I completely luck out and on my 3rd try I find our POS as I warp right into the shields and get uncloaked.
Right... 30 ships attacking... no dreads... POS lasers are firing, but they appear to be tanking them... even the frigates! (Turned out there were no crystals in the damn lasers) They have 1 carrier in system.
Once I get there, I find out it's actually 5 corps immediately involved.
I speak in local:
[ 2006.10.23 01:04:20 ] Avernus > get out your shield rechargers folks.
In the space of 5 minutes, I'm in a channel with their leadership. Turns out I'm dealing with an unofficial alliance based around Alachene for common defense against pirates. At least 6 corps. This is their leadership channel, they have their friendly list in the motd... over 30 corps I notice. I copy down the list.
The attackers scatter from the POS. I'm a little peeved... fucking empire noobie pukes shooting at my corps POS!! FUCK THAT!
Conversation starts off a little belligerent on both sides for the first couple of minutes... time to get this shit moving. Turns out they had some incredibly ass intel on my corp, that FIX are pirates, and a hostile entity to them. That since we're friends with BoB, we must be evil. Just before I lay into them I lay down some cards.
Bouncing between a few different conversations, a message to the gist of the below was delievered.
'Let's cut to the chase shall we?'
'This gets sorted now. I have 7 Dreads, 4 Carriers and 25 support ready to jump in 30 minutes. When they get here question and answer time is over. We will lay waste to everything in system, and then we'll get serious and start putting down war dec's. That is my corp alone, my alliance will have numberous volunteers who get their jollies from the slaughter of those who offend them.'
'I can muster over 100 experienced pvp pilots from my own alliance on short notice. I can further muster an additional 50 pilots from immediate friends that we work with closely. I can then see fit to call in some favors and increase my total force by 50% beyond that if I feel it is justified. If I went all out and called in every favor owed me, I have the ability to bring over 250 pilots down on you with a few days notice. I figure my corp alone will be sufficient for the task.'
'You have two options:''
1. You keep shooting our POS, you put it into reinforced and have your fun. You'll be meeting us real soon.''
2. You start recharging our POS shields. I may forget this incident.'
two. we'll take two.
'Option 2 then?'
yes.
Man... somebody was getting a total ass reaming on their end for screwing up.
Best part of the whole convo....
'Avernus - are you a dev?'
Oh yes... and they also asked us to join their alliance (common defense for the area).
Turns out they are alright people, just a little green. I may just go back for visits once in a while (perhaps scoop a few of the brighter stars for my corp), I ended being in chat with them all night, while we got the shields charged (I ended up helping them, along with Alain who flew up in an Osprey to join in on the fun).
Best person in their alliance....
Their diplomat... 18 yr old female from Tennessee... and oh so dirty
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Turned out I did end up grabbing at least one of their members, their diplomat will be joining my corp this weekend. Man I'm gonna get an earful from her on this as well ;) For the record, I bluffed in the above encounter. I only had 10 guys online at the time, and it was a very odd hour for us. We'd have carried out my threats the following day of course, but the situation called for something a little more sudden in order to impact things in the manner I intended. It was just one of those days.
