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.

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.

The Amoral World of Diplomacy

In the amoral world of Diplomacy, [Loyalty, honesty, frankness, gratitude, chivalry, magnanimity] are the hallmarks of the born loser. If a fallen enemy reaches out a hand for assistance, the wise man lops it off. If a friend does you a good turn when you’re down, wait until he’s down, then beat him to death. If an ally asks for your help in planning the next season’s moves, give it freely and copiously, then do the reverse of what you agreed and let him take the counter-attack. Try to surround yourself with people who trust you, then let them down; find an ally who will gladly die for you and see that he does just that.

     -"The game of Diplomacy" by Richard Sharp 1978

For those who haven’t been following the diplomatic maneuverings in Providence, a little backstory:

When Against All Authorities (AAA) evicted Curatores Veritatis Alliance (CVA) from Providence nullsec and reseeded the space with hand-picked vassal alliances, they did a curious thing. They left Paxton Federation, a close CVA ally who fought alongside CVA during the Great Eviction, in place.

That raised a few eyebrows. Especially in CVA.

I mean, say you’re CVA. You’re being ignominiously defeated by AAA and driven from your 0.0 holdings. You’re locked in hopeless battle for nullsec survival, fighting shoulder to shoulder with your trusty Paxton Federation buddies. All for one! One for all! We stand or fall together! Rawr!

Then the enemy turns to Paxton and says: Look dude, my fight’s with CVA. Paxton, I kinda like. Paxton’s never crossed me and they’ve all got honest faces. So, I’m not going to take over Paxton’s systems and pass them out to my friends. Once the fighting’s over no hard feeling. Bygones, and all that.

Well. It’s one of those moments that test the bonds of trust.

Paxton quickly said it had nothing to do with AAA’s decision and was as surprised as anyone else. Paxton said that no secret deal had been struck under the table. No knife was poised behind CVA’s collective back. Paxton continued the losing fight as CVA’s trusted ally and the whole matter was chalked up as an attempt by the Machiavellian AAA diplomatic corps to sow mistrust between two loyal friends.

But when the war ended, the dust settled and CVA was relegated to low sec space, AAA was as good as its word. Paxton territories were not given away to friends of AAA. AAA even returned the station system D-GTMI to Paxton without evident preconditions. Kirith Kodachi and his Paxton brethren wondered openly what those clever lads at AAA might be up to with this unforeseen maneuver.

Now if you look at Paxton space, it is a line of systems running like a strand of pearls through the center of Providence. And there are two CVA systems (FX-7EM & MVCJ-E) that touch Paxton Space. If CVA decides to let sovereignty on these systems lapse for financial reasons (see “Friends Like These”), who better than Paxton to take them over. Sort of ‘Here. I’ll just hold these for you until you’re feeling better.’

And if CVA pilots longing for nullsec decide to move into Paxton corporations, is Paxton going to turn them away?

So. As CVA languished in lowsec, shedding pilots and plotting a comeback, Paxton appeared to thrive, growing stronger. And while the CVA/Paxton friendship remained solid, you have to think Paxton was relishing its new role as senior partner in the relationship. Its borders were secure and it had a good chance of expanding them if CVA dropped sov on systems bordering Paxton space. Paxton’s fortunes were looking up.

Alas, trouble loves company.

The rule among the alliances now occupying former CVA space is that they don’t mess with each other’s sovereignty. An alliance may not attempt to expand its sovereignty beyond the systems allocated to it by AAA without AAA permission. Period.

Last Monday, Chaos Theory temporarily lost sov in AY-24I due to some internal glitch. Paxton decided to have some fun at Chaos' expense and went in to shoot up the off-lined sovereignty mods and POS. CVA went along for the lulz. And CVA dropped a Territorial Claim Unit in Chaos Theory’s system.

For Paxton, it had to be a face-palm moment.

Supporting CVA would lose them AAA protection of their space. Extracting themselves from the situation would mean an end to the fiction of Paxton/CVA shared interests and the loss of Paxton’s only ally.

They chose (or were forced) to back CVA's play. Now the wolf, in the form of anyone with an interest in Paxton’s demise, is at the door. Unless Paxton’s diplomatic corps can talk AAA into calling off the dogs, the scouring of Providence has begun again – this time on Paxton’s nickel.

CVA had to know their action would be devastating for Paxton. So why do it?

I suspect that CVA took the opportunity to test Paxton’s intentions. In effect, it forced Paxton to either share CVA’s fate in exile, or renounce CVA openly. CVA leaders are known ideological purists – “with us or against us” types. In their minds Paxton’s need to observe AAA’s sovereignty rules in order to keep Paxton systems was in conflict with Paxton’s duty to help CVA recover their lost systems.

By breaking AAA sovereignty rules on Paxton’s behalf, CVA has broken any tacit agreements between AAA and Paxton. 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.

The High Road to Providence

The road to Providence is a long one from my usual haunts. I’m on a survey trip, and have wended my merry way from Gallente empire space, to Amarr lowsec and thence into nullsec Providence.

It’s a fair slog. Note to self: Don’t forget to install jump clones.

Providence has a decided Amarr flavor. I’m neither here nor there on the Amarri. Pretty ships, the clothing drapes well, but it’s hard to find a decent bar. They could do with a little less chanting. Nobody’s perfect.

CVA (Curatores Veritatis Alliance) are Amarri role players, which means they take the whole ethnic purity and smite the infidel thing pretty seriously. I’m an infidel in their eyes, so we’re already off on the wrong foot. Now I’m going down to occupy space from which they’ve been lately evicted. Space which, by the way, they view as Amarri space; and their holy duty to bring back into the greater Amarr empire.  

I don’t expect they’ll be having me over for the Empress’ birthday any time soon.

Our application to the Providence alliance has been accepted and we’re in the requisite waiting period. Meanwhile I’ve been plying the pipelines in nullsec, laying down safe spots, counting noses and getting a sense of who’s who. Beyond intel gathering, there are moon scans to be done and asteroid belts to assess. Overtures need to be made to the CEOs of the alliance’s other member corporations; introducing myself, assessing their relative strengths, and laying the groundwork for future cooperative ventures.

Plans are in motion back at HellForge central. Needful things are being packed for transport. So I need to find out what can be gotten on the local markets, what can be gotten from our allies, and what has to be shipped in from high-sec. Of course I’ll also be looking for critical gaps in the market that HellForge can fill, which will be good for local buyers and profitable for us.

Busy times, but then most beginnings are.