The Man Who Wasn't There

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away...
     - Hughes Mearns

CVA has a talent for getting its friends to piss in their own Corn Flakes. 


A few weeks ago rumors began circulating in various forums of a vast capital and super-capital fleet was assembling in Misaba, poised to take Providence from the New Providence Holders installed there by Against All Authorities (AAA) after the Great Eviction.  Sometimes the fleet was Northern Coalition. Sometimes it was Pandemic Legion. A second rumor, that Atlas Alliance was joining the Northern Coalition and would open a second front against the NPH from its systems in northern Providence, began to circulate soon after.

CVA partisans were gleeful, assuming AAA's vassal alliances would soon be driven from the region. They weighed in with the odd "Ammar Victor" and waited expectantly to  for deliverance from AAA. 


Now, sensible folk would take such rumors with a grain of salt. The absence of any uptick in Misaba of NC or PL traffic or other activity might be taken by some as a sign that the rumors of a five hundred ship capital fleet in that system were, in fact, rumors. 

Sensible, it appears, is not in Opticon Alliance's vocabulary.  

Opticon Alliance was one of the New Providence Holder alliances. Several of its larger corporations were formerly of Aegis Militia, which had held space in Providence from CVA prior to the Great Eviction. Rather than follow CVA into exile, Aegis' corporations merged with Enforcers of Serenity (EOS) to form Opticon Alliance, and were granted a constellation in Providence by AAA under the New Providence Holder terms and conditions. 

It appears that, with rumors of the phantom fleet and Atlas' defection swirling in the forums, CVA leadership managed to convince some of their old Aegis friends in Opticon's leadership that the New Providence Holders were about to be swept from Providence and that the smart money was on switching sides while there was still time. Casting aside common sense, Opticon bet the house on CVA. Opticon renounced all agreements with AAA and the New Providence Holders and declared themselves CVA allies. 

And immediately shed half their membership. 

It seems some of the Opticon corporations are well aware of CVA's track record where its friends are concerned, and were not swayed by unsubstantiated rumors of super-cap armadas. Within a week of the internal announcement, twelve of Opticon's twenty-five corporations left the alliance, taking 405 of the Opticon's roughly 750 pilots along with them. Several of the larger departing corporations, such as Leather Knights, were former Aegis corporations, indicating a sharp split among former CVA allies as to how far CVA could be trusted. 

Needless to say, the vast invasion fleet never materialized, evaporating into the mists of political fiction. When an NC capital and super-capital fleet did appear, it was in Venal rather than Providence. That fleet, lagged and caught in an apparent log-off bug, was badly mauled by it's opponents. Meanwhile Atlas Alliance has made no move to join the Northern Coalition.

Opticon, having cast aside the sovereignty protection of its AAA agreements is under attack. As of this writing it has lost one of its systems and, with its membership fractured, doesn't appear to be well positioned to defend the rest. As with Paxton, CVA has been able to convince a friend to sacrifice itself on the altar of CVA's ambition. 

Why would CVA do such a thing to friends? 

For one thing, I suspect CVA's leadership would rather see its friends destroyed than to see them prosper in a Providence controlled by CVA's enemies. Further, in order to stave off its growing irrelevance, CVA seems determined to exercise any control it retains in Providence affairs. If that control is limited to persuading friends to self-destruct, so be it. However, CVA is running out of friends to throw on its own funeral pyre. 


As I've pointed out elsewhere, CVA's combat effectiveness is limited, even by the standards of much smaller alliances. On paper it boasts nine hundred members, however pilot activity and fleet sizes indicate a large portion of those members are alt or inactive pilots, left unculled in order to keep up appearances. CVA members themselves admit that retaking Providence is a distant dream. And that dream slips further away as CVA continues its slow, relentless failscade.


Even CVA's sole hope of regaining Providence; that a major nullsec player, in order to spite AAA, will retake Providence and re-install CVA to its former place, has all but evaporated.


Let's say the stars totally align for CVA's ambition. Let's say AAA becomes completely occupied with matters elsewhere, implodes or is otherwise unable or disinclined to intervene in Providence. Let's also say cooperation among the New Providence Holders in the face of a mutual threat breaks down and those alliances are at each others' throats. Finally, a major player in EVE nullsec decides to twist AAA's tail, comes down upon Providence like the wrath of god, and sweeps the New Providence Holders away.

Ammar victor? Not bloody likely.

The assumption that an alliance like Pandemic Legion is going to hand Providence over to CVA, who's leadership has already pissed away one nullsec empire, betrayed CVA friends, and generally shown themselves to be incompetent, both militarily and administratively is, to be polite, idiotic.

Even if this weren't the case, CVA is not the alliance they once were. One could argue that they haven't been that alliance for some time - even before the Great Eviction. Empires tend to rot from the inside out. They survive on reputation long after their ability to back up that reputation has been spent. Finally events conspire to expose the internal weakness; the empty vessel CVA has become. Given Providence on a platter, CVA could not hold it. 


Incapable of anything but minor mischief, more a threat to its friends than to its enemies, CVA has become the proverbial "man who wasn't there"; doomed to in-substance, but unable to leave and rebuild its fortunes elsewhere.

Of Two Alliances and Billy Joel

You’ll recall the closing lines from my post The Amoral World of Diplomacy:

By breaking AAA sovereignty rules on Paxton’s behalf, CVA [Curatores Veritatis Alliance] has broken any tacit agreements between AAA [Against All Authoriries] and Paxton [Paxton Federation]. CVA has made sure Paxton will not profit from CVA’s losses, and that Paxton pilots are fully committed to the CVA cause.

CVA appears to have found an ally who will gladly die for them, and are in the process of making sure Paxton does just that.

More prophetic words than even I realized at the time.

Evicted from Providence, Paxton Federation’s member corporations were unable to agree on a direction forward. After an extended debate on the question, and faced with member discontent at the lack of movement, Paxton Alliance went into failscade at the end of May. As of two days ago only Paxton Industries, last as it was first, remained in the alliance alongside the three-member executor corp.

This caught most Providence watchers by surprise. Paxton had the reputation of a well-run alliance that managed the difficult feat of doing both industry and pvp exceptionally well. Despite their eviction from Providence, they’d had much advance notice of events. They’d fought well against overwhelming odds and, when the time came, retreated in good order with their heads held high and their morale intact.

Alas for the best laid plans of mice and men.

A lot of Paxton pilots appear to blame CVA for bringing the Providence house down, and burying Paxton in the rubble. The degree to which that’s true can be seen in absence of Paxton orphans making the jump to CVA in any numbers.

Where Paxton’s fall was like a lightning bolt, CVA seems content to flicker out slowly, like a guttering candle. CVA’s slow but relentless decline continued with the departure of Davy Jones Locker and its 72 pilots. That leaves CVA with a pilot count hovering just above 900, down from between 1,400 and 1,500 at the beginning of the Great Eviction.

900 (914 as of today, to be precise) still seems like an awful lot of pilots. However, the kill-board numbers, along with the size and composition of the fleets CVA is able to field, suggest the active pilot count is much smaller and of poorer quality than their total player count would suggest. 

Some of that attrition may be due to financial constraints. A communication from a purported CVA member stated:

“…if we feel we can do enough damage to warrant the cost of SBUs, you can bet we're going to drop them.”

As per my reply to him, a 900+ member alliance that frets over the cost of SBUs is an alliance in deep trouble financially. That CVA does so while paying upwards of 1.8 billion isk per month for sov costs on nine systems that return little strategic or financial value brings the quality of their leadership into question.

While CVA continues to hold sovereignty of station system X-R3NM, this appears to be a function of defensive indifference on the part of the New Providence Holders, who seem to perceive CVA pilots as a convenient source of pvp targets rather than a threat.

In other words, CVA’s relevance in Providence has slipped to the level of a null-sec resource to be harvested. Scary stuff that, if you’re a CVA pilot.

So we arrive at the end of an amazing story arc. The much admired Paxton Federation goes out with a bang. Meanwhile, scorned CVA persists; whimpering its way toward irrelevance.

It seems Billy Joel was right: Only the good die young.

Surprise!

Since the Great Eviction, CVA (Curatores Veritatis Alliance) has been basing their operations out of Misaba, the low-sec system adjacent to R3-K7K. CVA gate camps in R3, particularly on the Misaba gate, have become a daily fact of life for the AAA (Against All Authorities) vassal alliances occupying Providence space (aka the New Providence Holders).  

Last night, just after the Tyrannis patch was installed CVA attempted to take advantage of long-standing defensive indifference on the part of Sytematic-Chaos Alliance (SC) and launch a surprise attack on R3-K7K.

The surprise attack caught everyone by surprise. 

With most residents of Providence occupied with the Tyrannis upgrades (looking at planets in Planet Interaction Mode, puzzling over why their own POS were trying to kill them, etc.), NPH was slow to mount a defense. The system fell, and many CVA high-fives ensued. 

In fact the NPH have generally been indifferent to CVA's defacto control of R3, viewing it as SC's system and therefore SC's problem. Noir Mercenary Group (NMG) went so far as to tell renters of Noir Space that the CVA concentration in R3 were not Noir's business, unless the renters were willing to hire Noir to bust the gate camps.

However, with CVA's recent capture of the X-R3NM next door to R3-K7K, the NPH was forced to respond. Leaving R3 in CVA hands, even for a few days, would allow CVA to build on their X-R3 momentum.

It would put CVA within one system (N8XA-L) of cobbling together a coherent block of CVA space in the 04-H4M constellation connected to Misaba and empire space. From that block, the next obvious target would be AY-YCU, which would cut off the Legio station system ZT-LPU from the rest of Legio space, and allow CVA to blockade NMG's space in the H-KW4A constellation.

Further, the appearance of ongoing success could breathe new life into CVA, which has been dancing on the brink of irrelevance. It would boost CVA morale, and possibly bring new pilots and additional support from larger alliances to its efforts to reclaim its old place as lord of Providence.

With this in mind, the NPH was highly motivated to react to the taking of R3.

A NPH fleet was assembled early this morning EVE time and dropped into R3-K7K. At 3:47, the NPH fleet destroyed CVA's Territorial Claim Unit and the station is in the hands of Flying Dangerous, the New Providence Holder alliance that controls the N8XA-L system next door.

As I've said elsewhere, taking systems is not enough for CVA. They must hold what they take.

Taking R3 was a throw against long odds for CVA, but likely a necessary one. However, its loss so soon after taking it openly displays CVA's weakness when confronted by the NPH acting in concert. Further, the NPH have obviously decided they can no longer allow CVA breathing room to recover.

Now a very active Flying Dangerous (as opposed to the MIA Systematic-Chaos) stands in R3, between CVA's only station system in X-R3NM, and their low-sec base of operations in Misaba.

The Hail Mary

During the Great Eviction, CVA (Curatores Veritatis Alliance) was not only pushed out of their Providence systems, they shed pilots at a furious rate. After the shooting died down, while CVA’s former holdings were divided up among AAA (Against All Authorities) vassals, CVA numbers stabilized at about 1,065; about a twenty-five percent loss in all.

Unsatisfied with one debacle, CVA persuaded their ally Paxton (Paxton Federation), who’d survived their alliance with CVA during Great Eviction with Paxton's holdings intact, to follow them into a second lost cause. This time the results were never in doubt. Despite some heroic stands by Paxton, the new Providence holders prevailed and Paxton was forced to retreat from their Providence systems.

While Paxton began to look for other opportunities CVA, ever the role-playing zealot, vowed to fight on and take back the Providence (Amarrian sacred ground, you know) no matter how what the cost. Roughly fifty more pilots left CVA, having decided that losing causes, while fun for a while, are a bit of a bummer in the long haul.

People don’t pay CCP every month for a bummer. They pay to have fun.

And this is a very important game mechanic. Like the Romans of old, capsuleers have only one leader: Victory. If your guys are getting their ass handed to them every other week, losing expensive ships and watching as the isk in their accounts dwindle and golden memories of their null-sec past dim, they are not having a good time.

And if you, as alliance leader, just keep yelling “On you cowardly dogs, once more unto the breach,” you quickly become part of a bad gaming experience.

Then your guys will go be somebody else’s guys. 

So, with 1,016 pilots remaining (based on fleet turnouts, I’d venture that only half that number are combat effective; and that may be optimistic), CVA is stuck on the horns of dilemma.

The smart strategy would be to temporize. Cut loose useless systems, use the sov funds to rebuild the fleets and rehab the remaining CVA pilots’ morale and numbers. Make some new allies. Wait for current Providence love-fest to end. After all, the presence of CVA is the glue that holds the new Providence holders together.

Alas, time is precisely what CVA doesn’t have.

Bad CVA decisions have been compounded by more bad CVA decisions. Now, for good or ill, they’ve boxed themselves into a corner. The longer they sit in place, the weaker they get; the best PVP pilots don’t want to sit in low sec playing pirates. After two full scale debacles, CVA’s got to get a win on the board if they’re going to hold onto any sort of a coherent fighting force. And by win, I mean they have to take and actively hold Providence systems.

In American football parlance, CVA is forth and long on the CVA twenty yard line, with only enough time on the clock for one more play.

Yesterday, CVA threw a Hail Mary pass and took X-R3NM from Chaos Theory Alliance. 

Smack-talk on Kugutsmen’s suggests this may have been made possible by internal divisions within Chaos Theory. There may be some truth to this as U’K (Ushra'Khan), rather than Chaos Theory seemed to be leading the system’s defense.  CVA, meanwhile, is claiming support from Core Factor and Paxton.

Paxton, however, having been burnt twice in following CVA’s lead seems disinclined to shed still more blood on CVA’s behalf for old times’ sake. Kill-boards from the dust-up in X-R3NM show very limited Paxton involvement. 

A notable exception was Tarkina Koslix who was a one-capsuleer wrecking crew in her stealth bomber. Unfortunately, one of her bomb runs caught fellow Paxtoneer and interceptor pilot, Giana Malakia, in the blast range. So she has the honor of being listed as a member of a U’K fleet on a kill mail.

The few Paxton pilots who made the battle were likely waiting for relocation orders from their leadership and tagged along for the lulz.  While Paxton is still blue to CVA, I’m guessing most Paxton pilots are happy to be making decisions that don’t involve CVA.

All things considered, unless CVA has some big guns behind it somewhere, it’s doubtful they’ve the strength to keep X-R2NM. Taking it is not enough for CVA. If they can’t hold X-R3NM CVA may be in a worse situation than if they hadn’t taken it at all.

Sadly, it’s not enough to throw the Hail Mary pass; someone has to catch it.