Conflicted

Early in their present conflict with the Northern Coalition (NC), it was widely assumed that the Drone Russians (RUS) would quickly spank the NC forces and bounce them from the Drone Regions. However, weeks later, the invasion of that space continues with the NC pressing the Russians on several fronts.

In the Kalevala Expanse, RAGE, Cold Steel and Brick Squad are in possession of roughly half the region and appear to be tightening the noose around R10-GN, while at the same time striking targets of opportunity in the remaining Legion/Shadow of Death and Bloodbound systems. Ratting activity is virtually flat-lined in the region with the exception of the three terminus systems of the 78-6RI constellation held by Shadow of Death, where the single threaded pipeline gives ample warning of any NC forces approaching; Colossal Cube is apparently banking as much ISK as they can in anticipation of a long winter.

While the NC fleets in Etherium Reach continue to harry RUS forces and renters in that region, they have not taken systems beyond LXQ2-T. The key market hub of R-6KYM in the outpost-rich 6-TT8Z constellation is an obvious next target, and there's been a healthy level of combat activity in that area. However, NC may be biding its time; picking up some good fights in a target rich constellation and applying pressure in Etherium Reach to pin down the RUS super cap fleet while NC forces in Kalevala finish off conquest of that region. That would free up sufficient NC forces to hold LXQ while attacking multiple RUS outposts in the Reach simultaneously.

For their part, the Drone Russian forces seem a bit conflicted of late.

On one hand they are a well financed coalition made up of seasoned PvP alliances. They are collectively in possession of the largest Super Cap fleet in all New Eden. At the same time, those ships represent significant financial asset and Legion of Death, Red Alliance, et al are wisely cautious about committing them where a target's value isn't an offset to potential losses. Further, the concentration of power represented by that fleet is, well, concentrated, while the combination of being on defense coupled with the diffused nature of their NC opponents ' forces doesn't allow RUS an obvious place to employ that power without the danger of it being drawn into a high-risk lag-fest.

While RUS forces in Kalevala and the Reach would certainly like to deliver a major blow to the invading forces, I don't have the sense that the coalition at large is overly concerned with NC's invasion. Their take-down of Atlas Alliance and AAA has given them additional, richer territories beyond the Drone Regions. As their forces and renters spread out to occupy this new real estate, the NC attack on the old neighborhood may carry less urgency than it once did; more an opportunity for good fights than a genuine threat. Otherwise, White Noise (though always a bit of an outlier in the coalition) would not be off attacking Systematic-Chaos in Period Basis, IT Alliance's back yard.

There are likely factions within the RUS coalition of the opinion that NC will eventually get bored and go home, after which the Drone Russians will simply reoccupy their space and reinstall their renters. However, once relocated to other systems in RUS space, those renters may be reluctant to return. Legion/Shadow of Death were losing renters even before the invasion. Memories of the high rents and hardscrabble ways of Etherium Reach under Legion will not have their former tenants yearning for a quick return.

Perceived Polarity

The World has changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was, is lost. 

In his latest blog post, The Tri-Polar Galaxy, the Mittani laments what he perceives as a collapse of nullsec's formerly diverse landscape of power and politics.

2009 saw the apex of the traditional bloc as an entity. At on point, there was Pandemic Legion, Goonswarm, IT Alliance, The Northern Coalition, the 'Drone Russians' (Solar Fleet, Legion of Death, Red Alliance), Atlas Alliance, the 'Southern Russians' (AAA, Red Overlord, Stain Empire). Each of these entities had roughly independent political destinies, different leadership styles, and was a force to be reckoned with in their own right.

Now, according to the Mittani, that beautiful dance of powers has collapsed into a tri-polar galaxy. There, three monstrous power blocs, The Drone Russians, The Northern Coalition and  IT Alliance, hold sway over New Eden. We face, he says, a future without political diversity in nullsec, with a fixed set of players hunkered down behind static borders.

As usual in Mittani-land, the source of this bleak future is the Dominion Sov mechanics which, he asserts, makes defending space far too easy and quashes diversity. 

Piffle, I say.

Now, while I don't piffle the Mittani lightly, in this case he needs a serious piffling. In order to make the case that nullsec power has been consolidated into the hands of a very few at the expense of the many, he has to dispense with much that is evident in the current political churn - to filter out obvious facts and trends that don't support his line of reasoning.

First of all, the Mittani's case for a static, tripolar universe assumes Dominion favors the defender more than did the old POS-based sovereignty model. In fact, as I wrote in Paradigm Shift, the opposite is true; and the pace and volume of combat-related territory turn-overs since Dominion bears this out. The Mittani suggests that alliances like Atlas fell because they had rotted from the inside. However, if Dominion so favors the defender, even a weakened Atlas should have been able to defend itself. In fact, the alliances that have fallen so far did so because their combat tactics and command structure had not adapted to the up-tempo Dominion paradigm.

Secondly, the idea that we are down to only three nullsec power blocs doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

The Mittani lumps The Initiative, which owns large swaths of former AAA space, into the IT Alliance coalition. He gives no real reason for this alignment and, aside from the cooperation shown at the end of the Catch Invasion against AAA, there's no reason to think that their current non-aggression is so much a matter of common cause and political unity as it is mutual convenience. The Initiative, Systematic-Chaos, Circle of Two and Dead Terrorists, known collectively as the Central South Coalition, meet all of the Mittani's criteria for a distinct power block, separate from IT Alliance.

Consider Atlas Alliance and Against All Authorities. The corporations that comprised Atlas have not simply evaporated. For the most part they have formed or joined new alliances. Meanwhile, though deprived of nearly all its space, AAA is still is a viable alliance. It and the rest of the Southern Russian Coalition are diminished, but still a non-trivial force in nullsec.

Any discussion of Goonswarm as an entity separate from the Northern coalition is dismissed by the Mittani as "...tedious and irrelevant to a practical analysis". This is analyst-speak for "I don't have a succinct counter-argument and it messes up my central thesis".  It's hardly a compelling line of reason, and somebody please slap me if I ever use it. Whether or not Goonswarm and Test Alliance (aka the Deklein Coalition) constitute an independent power bloc remains an open, arguable, question.

Pandemic Legion is dismissed from the ranks of nullsec power blocs by the Mittani, despite the fact that they've been playing King-maker in the post-Dominion nullsec, because they hold no territory. Holding territory is apparently central to the Mittani's definition of a "traditional" power bloc. This seems to say more about the inflexibility of the Mittani's definitions than it does about whether PL is a power in nullsec. A power bloc definition that excludes an entity whose support is a key factor in any major nullsec conflict is not a terribly useful definition.

Finally, having said all this, let me agree with the Mittani that we are seeing a shift away from the traditional power bloc structure as he knew them back in his pre-Dominion days.

However, I don't see influence coalescing for any length of time around a few actors. I think just the opposite is occurring. We are seeing the the breakdown of the old power bloc system into something much more fluid - pocket coalitions of smaller alliances that coalesce into larger political entities, break down and then reform into new entities; constantly shifting in response to political, military and economic conditions. 

Beachhead

Recall that when the Russian Coalition (RUS) of Red Alliance. Legion of Death and White Noise broke Atlas Alliance, a key RUS tactic was luring the Atlas Super Cap fleet into into a system already heavily occupied by RUS forces. The resulting lag tied the hands of the Atlas fleet, forcing them to withdraw - an action that left much of their Super Cap forces boxed in the local station. 

RUS forces have shown themselves to be very adept at treating system lag as a form of combat terrain and leveraging it to their advantage. In LXQ2-T, the Northern Coalition has shown that RUS' lessons in the strategic leveraging of lag has not been lost on them. A full day before LXQ station came out of reinforcement, both sides were staging forces in anticipation of a knock-down, drag-out lag-fest.  NC, with its numeric advantage, kept a constant 1,500 to 1,600 ship presence in system to prevent the RUS forces from gaining the system performance high-ground in local. The RUS forces brought in a fleet of more than fifty Super Caps so that those ships would begin any fleet fights on the grid, and possibly to intimidate the NC forces which are Super Cap poor and tend to fight without support from Titans or Motherships. 

To a certain extent, the engagement was something of a showdown between the Density of Firepower (DoF) approach preferred by Pandemic Legion, RUS Coalition and post-Dominion boutique alliances, and the swarm approach employed by NC as they leverage their superiority in numbers and time-zone coverage. Indeed, the whole Dronelands campaign has been a test of DoF, which eschews numbers in favor of the concentration of firepower that a relatively small alliance employing Super Caps, supported by an agile Armored HAC fleet can bring to bear. As I pointed out in Hit Them Where They Ain't, DoF is much more successful at taking territory, when the attacker chooses the points of conflict, than it is at holding territory when the number of potential points of attack a defender can actively and effectively defend is restricted by the number of pilots it can field.

To date the NC has been making good use of its numerical advantage, hitting Drone regions in multiple strategic strongpoints, denying the RUS forces a single point of conflict in which to concentrate their forces. Further, the NC has been harrying RUS renter systems and market centers; driving out renters, shutting down trade and industry, and generally gumming up the works of RUS' Droneland RMT machine.

While the odd Super-Cap has made an appearance, the absence of the larger RUS Super Cap fleet in campaign's big engagements has left many who'd expected a quick RUS victory wondering when RUS was going stop dancing around and get serious about slapping down the NC upstarts.

It's been evident to most that LXQ was the most likely place for that battle to occur. The move of the RUS Super Cap fleet into the system all but assured such a showdown when the Legion of Death outpost in system came out of final reinforce mode yesterday.

As of this writing, battle reports and killboards are still sorting themselves out. However, what is evident is that there was a near 24-hour battle in and around the system with the number of pilots in LXQ topping 3,000 at one point. CCP appears to have done a heroic job of keeping the node online, and pilots reported the lag was manageable even with the pilot count in system at around 1,700. However, the better part of the battle appears to have been conducted under heavy lag conditions, and the winner would be the side that was able to hang in the fight longest under those conditions. As downtime approached, the RUS forces began to log out, leaving the system to the NC forces who then proceeded with their conquest of the system.

While this must have been a disappointment to the RUS pilots, losing even a fraction of their Super Cap fleet to lag would have been a serious blow, whereas the NC fleet could have lost half its numbers and replaced them by the end of down time. That risk, along with RUS forces time zone limitations, makes their pullback the smart, if unpleasant, choice. NC has established an important beachhead in Etherium Reach, but the RUS Super Cap fleet is still at large.  

Smack-talk in the forums is making much of NC's initial comments that they were only invading the Dronelands for "good fights". This may have caused the RUS coalition to assume they could wait out NC, trusting the "Nobody but the Russians would have the Dronelands" doctrine would leave the NC indifferent to conquering and holding space in those regions. As to the NC's initial intentions, conquest can be addictive and escalating commitment is a powerful thing. Then there's the assumption that the Dronelands aren't desirable or economically viable. That's absurd on its face, particularly in the post-Dominion world where Carebears are migrating to nullsec in ever-increasing numbers and providing income that has nothing to do with ratting by an alliance's PvP contingent.

Every time someone says "nobody wants the Drone Regions" my first impulse is to jump up and say "I'll take a constellation or two". What I expect they really mean is that the Drone Regions aren't worth the risk of going up against the RUS coalition in a grinding fight to the death.

NC, leveraging the Dominion sov rules, may have just broken the back of that common wisdom. 
   

Lies, Damn Lies - and Statistics

Fiddler's Edge began its run in April of this year. My goal, then as now, is to create content that's interesting for me to write, resonates with you the readership, and fills a niche in the Eve blogosphere. That last is particularly important as said blogosphere is exceedingly vast and includes some very talented writers. It's easy to get lost in the crowd.

At the outset, I took a few months to let Fiddler's Edge settle into a pattern and direction. Then I began collecting web statistics. Five months later I now have a pile of data points and some interesting trends show up.

Needless to say, the Edge isn't burning up the net. However that was expected. The Edge focuses primarily on metagame analysis, which somewhat limits its audience. My pieces tend to not be the short, punchy, visually stimulating content that easily entertains - the classic model for the successful blog. As I write in The Rise of the Carebears:

It seems I'm sending invites to high tea in a world of rave parties.

But that's OK. There are plenty of rave parties out there and I'm happy to let them compete for that audience. My target audience is the capsuleer hungry for some depth in their Eve content. If there's a mission statement for Fiddler's Edge, it comes from Rise of the Carebears as well:

I've assumed you read the Edge for its thoughtful analysis, daring prose, deep insights, and its tendency to use words not writ nor spoken conversationally since Middle English went out of fashion.

I trust my readers.

Well, the numbers for High Tea With Mord are in. The audience and hit count for Fiddler's Edge doubled during September and have continued to grow during October. I'm particularly pleased with how many of you take the trouble to read through the Edge's back issues. That suggests my scribblings continue to be useful and worth reading for some time after their original posting.

I am encouraged to continue.

I get a smile or two out of looking at the "by country" audience statistics. The US and UK lead the list, which is no surprise. However it was interesting to learn Fiddler's Edge is more popular in Australia than it is in Canada (I'll have to ask Kirith what that's all about). A surprising number of hits from New Zealand have begun popping up in the last month, and the Edge regularly pulls in readers from Scandinavia. The articles on the Drone regions have caught the attention of readers from Eastern Europe and Russia, and I appear to have a regular reader from Saudi Arabia.

Shout outs to all y'all, and thanks for reading.


Fiddlers Note: Special thanks to Mynxee, an early encourager. Her Life In Low Sec continues to be linkage central for Fiddler's Edge and many other Eve sites. The same to Crazy Kinux who is chief enabler and lead cheer-leader for Eve bloggers everywhere. 

Galactic Settlers

Now, the classic renter alliance model as described in Galactic Landlords is fairly popular in New Eden in that it generates lots of income for the owning alliance. What it does not generate, as a rule, is loyalty to the landlord's alliance. It is a cash transaction.

As I wrote in Barbarians at the Gate, way back in July, Dominion Sov Mechanics favor the alliance that can populate their Sphere of Influence with players who will:

a)    Stay put while you’re off war-lording
b)    Act as a buffer between your systems and inbound barbarian hordes or magazine salesmen
c)    Keep their grubby mitts of your stuff (systems, stations, loots, et al) and
d)    Pay all sovereignty related expenses

Of these, b is particularly important in that, as I continually remind my readers, Dominion sov rules require an active defense of one's nullsec space.

Nullsec alliances who remain steeped in the pre-Dominion paradigm have yet to realize the value of the nullsec Carebear for this purpose. In Paradigm Shift I wrote that, even if they can't punch in the weight class of a Pandemic Legion or IT Alliance, nullsec Carebears are rougher and tougher than their highsec cousins and represent a sizable body of experienced nullsec PVP pilots. Properly organized and deployed, I went on, their numbers will make themselves felt and major alliances would be foolish to dismiss them.

The Northern Coalition alliances are no fools. They seem to have, by accident or design, developed a renting scheme that thrives in the Dominion paradigm and brings a sizable renter militia to their calls to arms.

Carebear alliances invited to operate in NC space are referred to as 'guests' rather than renters. While this may seem a minor distinction, it underscores the difference between the NC's approach to managing their space and that of their Southern neighbors. Guests alliances are given space to occupy. No rent (yes, you heard that right) is required of guests. They are, however, expected to respond to CTAs and assist in defending NC space. In other words, the coin expected of guests is loyalty, not ISK.  Unlike their renter counterparts, the NC guests do not pack up and leave when the wolf is at the door. Rather, they act like armed settlers who band together in a militia to support Northern Coalition regulars in defense of their space.

Note the possessive in the prior sentence; "their space". By including guests in the common defense of NC territory, the NC gives their guests a sense of ownership in the NC cause. As a result, the NC guest/renter alliances appear to have a close identification with the Norther Coalition alliances that practice the guest program.

The power of this approach was evident when IT Alliance, AAA and other "Southern Coalition" alliances invaded the North earlier this year. Rather than backing their bags and heading for the exits, which is often the case with conventional renters, the NC guests stood and fought the invaders. While they were not "elite" PvPers like the invaders, routine participation in NC CTAs had developed them into a respectable fighting force.

During that invasion, there was a good deal of smack talk from Southern pilots about the quality of the NC militia pilots, about the lack of finesse in their fleets and their tendency to blob the invaders. And yet, those ungainly blobs blunted and slowed the southern attack. Bogged down and handed unexpected losses by the defenders, the South eventually withdrew. The barbarians had come to the gates and been turned back. The Carebears had shown their worth.

Dronelands

The Northern Coalition's (NC) invasion of the Drone Regions* continues into this week with Shadow of Death's systems in The Kalevala Expanse and Etherium Reach bearing the brunt of the attack, with Shadow drawing support primarily from elements of White Noise and Red Alliance.

The first large scale fight took place in system UJXC-B (constellation 6-CBBM)  in the northern-most part of The Kalevala Expanse. Despite a very close-run (and, by all accounts, wickedly fun) fight, NC forces held UJX at the end of the battle. For those interested, an excellent battle report was posted by one the participants on the NC side on Kugutsmen's. It's very well written and has been both corroborated by other participants, and re-posted on several Eve news websites.

As of this writing, NC's RAGE alliance has taken sovereignty of UJX, as well as two adjacent systems UDVW-O and F48K-D. RAGE has also taken advantage of the Shadow of Death sovereignty abdications that occurred earlier this month due to Legion of Death's mishandling of their renters and occupied the better part of the 2Q-8WA constellation in the North-East corner of Kalevala.

The next likely target for the NC is L-GY1B, which a gateway to Etherium Reach and a stepping stone to 74-DRC. Entering the Reach via L-GY would put the NC in the D-GU3R constellation, which is part of a long, single strand of unoccupied systems (again owing in large part to Legion's poor renter management skills) that leads to Etherium Reach proper. 74-DRC is a single system bottle-neck between The Kalevala Expanse systems the NC currently holds and the remainder of  the region.

The I-Hub at Etherium Reach's gateway system LXQ2-T comes out of reinforced mode today. RUS has been fairly quiet since the dust-up at UXJ, which would indicate they've something in the works. If that's a smack-down in LXQ, it's going to be quite the party when NC arrives to finish the job. Should NC take LXQ and open up a second beachhead in the Reach via L-GY1B, while at the same time continuing their push into Kalevala, they may force Legion of Death to make hard choices as to where to hold and where to fold.

In that event, given that Legion has only nine Shadow of Death renter systems remaining in Etherium, they might choose to fall back to a more defensible frontier and relocate their Etherium renters to other regions in the Legion of Death sphere of influence. However, Legion's neighbors in the Reach, which include Red Alliance and White Noise, are unlikely to approve of such an action. RUS may require that Legion remain in place and put the interests of the coalition ahead of its own.

The Russian coalition has a passion for viewing the game from the standpoint of Russian military history. It will be interesting to see which page of that book they open to in planning their fight against the NC. They take a long view of the game and aren't demoralized by set-backs. For their part, the NC are not underestimating their opponents. They've brought their game-face, knowing they're stepping up to PvPers with a well-deserved reputation for discipline, guile and tenacity.

Its going to be interesting  

[*Fiddler's note: For those capsuleers new to Eve or unfamiliar with nullsec, Drone Regions are Eve-speak for the contiguous nullsec regions that have drones as their local pirate type]

Nerfing the Drake

Toward the end of World War II in the Pacific, an American pilot attempting to land his battle-wounded Dauntless dive-bomber on an aircraft carrier crash landed on the flight deck. The flight crews decided that the damage to the Dauntless was irreparable; that the pilot's airplane should be pushed into the ocean and replaced with one of the more modern Helldivers, which were then rolling off American production lines.

The pilot took out his .45 pistol, stood by the wrecked Dauntless and threatened to shoot the first man who tried to push his ride into the drink.

The history of war is full of weapons like the Douglas Dauntless; guns, planes, ships and vehicles that so exceed their design specifications that they perform with distinction long after their normal expected service life has run out. They are effective, reliable, useful beyond their original purpose, and their owners often develop a passionate attachment to them.

In the worlds of New Eden, the Drake is such a weapon.

For years, in a universe of ever more expensive tech 2, tech 3 and faction ships, the humble Drake has been scorned by the nullsec PvP community, derided as a mere mission-runner, or bait ship. Nullsec FCs frequently told pilots showing in fleet with a Drake to "lose that t1 piece of shit" - an instruction often followed by the Drake being declared primary by the FC and destroyed by the fleet on the spot. Nevertheless, for reasons I've described in a previous post, the Drake has remained one of the most popular ships in New Eden.

I've written elsewhere as to how the Super Cap/armored Zealot HAC combination came to dominate the battlefields of nullsec.The classic sniper-fit BS fleets, unable to counter the speed and low signature radius of the Zealots, were regularly raped by the hard-hitting HACs.  The fleets of the old nullsec alliances were rolled back on their heels. Atlas fell and Against All Authorities was falling. FCs desperately looked for a means of countering the new fleet configurations and tactics.
 
And the ever-useful Drake has stepped into the gap.

Suddenly, the Drake is the new darling of nullsec, and the owners of all those shiny t2 ships are crying foul to CCP. If a fleet of t1 ships costing under fifty million each to buy and fit can go toe to toe with a fleet of t2 ships that cost 150 million each to buy and fit, the reasoning goes, the game is out of balance and t1 ship obviously needs to be "nerfed".

In a devblog thread titled "Drakes- Do They Need A Nerf?", CCP Chronotis revealed that, while CCP rarely intervenes in emergent strategies, they are considering nerfing the Drake to make it less effective in fleet fights. 

Drakes on their own are reasonably balanced. When you get 50+ of them all buffer tanking and alpha striking people at up to ~85km as the current FOTM strategy is out there, this underpins their usefulness (max buffer for sig/speed tank and max range with same damage) so this is a scenario specific issue to large fleet warfare. There are counter strategies to this, but drakes+scimitars is an easier to coordinate tactic. The drakes tank or specifically its passive tank does concern us where both can be equally affected in a similar way. Food for thought anyway, we rarely intervene with emergent strategies and tactics as a counter usually matures after some time but will keep an eye on this thread to see what the rest of you think.

Going on, CCP Chronotis tipped what was really drawing the developers attention to the Drake

It is a hot topic internally as the number of drakes present in fleet fights is rising dramatically in the last six months and with this behaviour change we are witnessing a large impact on performance as the missile usage causes high additional load.

He later stepped back from that statement, responding to one poster that CCP would never nerf the Drake solely for system performance reasons. However, the words cannot be taken back, and I suspect the 'balance" issue is merely an search for an issue aside from performance to justify the nerf. 

All cards are on the table, we are merely analyzing for now with a high degree of concern its rapid rise in popularity and being open about it.

Now, when the Zealot was ripping the guts out of Sniper BS fleets, nobody at CCP was talking about nerfing that ship - maybe ticking up its sig radius or some such to make it more vulnerable. CCP didn't even twitch at the rapid rise in the popularity of the Zealot. And yet, when the Zealot is countered by a lesser ship, CCP suddenly becomes gravely concerned about "balance". 

It's interesting to note that the Zealot oriented alliances who would most benefit from the Drake being nerfed are those associated with the RUS coalition, who are, in turn, most commonly associated with Real Money Trading. These are folks for whom playing Eve is serious business - as in real income business. It appears that when real money talks, CCP listens.

Reading the blog thread surrounding CCP Chronotis' comments, what the majority of players think about nerfing the Drake is evident:

Don't. You. Dare.

The arguments they present against the nerf are very solid. With the missile nerf a year or so ago, the Drake along with the rest of the Caldari fleet has already been heavily nerfed. There is no way to nerf the Drake in a large fleet context without nerfing it in a solo or small gang context where it has long been considered balanced by CCP. This issue with performance is not Drake related, but lag related. If CCP would fix the lag and its missile tracking algorithms, the impact of missiles on performance, and the fact that missiles are more effective under lag conditions would not be an issue.

Drake fleets are not a silver bullet for all situations, and events in nullsec show that countering Drake fleets is not, as CCP Chronotis suggests, a terribly complex activity. Drake fleets, having large signatures, are vulnerable to Sniper BS fleets that can pour DPS into the Drakes that the battlecruisers, with their missiles' middling DPS and delayed strike, cannot match. They have also shown themselves very vulnerable to attacks by Stealth Bomber gangs.

Even Zealot fleets, the ships the Drakes were fielded in nullsec to counter, can match the Drake in a fight. Where the Zealot loses to the Drake is in the logistics of replacement. That is an old song in warfare. The World War II Panther tank was more than a match for the American Sherman. However, the Sherman was easier to maintain and operate, cheaper to build, and rapidly replaced if destroyed. On a price/performance basis, the Sherman was a better tank than the Panther, however they matched up one on one. I'm sure the German commanders found the situation unbalanced. War is like that sometimes.

Even in New Eden.