The Cream Rises, and Gets Scooped Off

So TEST has had a bit of a rough go of it in Aridia.  Down 1/3 of their members in fact.  And if some were booted, many, even most, were not.  In any organization the cream rises to the top.  There it can be seen, observed, studied, and stolen.  There are many who have left TEST who didn’t have the cojones to deal with the upheaval.  There were far more who had better opportunities elsewhere, especially with as many frenemies as TEST had.

Of note to me is Di-Tron, formerly the core of Atlas.  Enlightened Industries, a 2011 TEST corp.  Ponywaffe, which joined Di-Tron in Insidious Empire, not to mention the numerous defections to Black Legion and the leadership that has abandoned ship.  TEST is bleeding talent out of proportion with the numbers of players they’ve lost.  Which is something of an achievement when you’ve lost 5000 members in the last week.

So today TEST announced that they would harass Fountain.  The good news is they won’t be taxing their leaders by demanding that they set up safespots, they should have good ones already.  The problem is TEST is announcing this while still pouring random liquids on the million house fires they have burning in Aridia.  They thought they were stepping on a roach nest in the classy russians of Infernal Octopus, instead they got scorpions.  But really who could forsee Russians fighting with determination and fury when defending their homelands?  When has this ever happened before?  They thought they’d get breathing room to recover their strength, in a region that has connections to *Deep Breath* Delve, Fountain, Khanid, Solitude, Genesis, and 2 jumps into Solitude takes you into Syndicate *Gasp*.  But surely there’s no one that could set up a midpoint cyno in Khanid, Ertoo or Hophib for Titan Bridges.  So having moved from the fire into the frying pan TEST has decided that dancing on the edge of the pan and dipping their toes in the fire is preferable to out and out frying pan treatment.

Edit:  Apparently the folks of Infernal Octopus use this gif to show how well TEST has moved them out (other than whomping some POS towers)

Good luck with that.

TEST still has the solid for of (D)Redditors to keep the alliance extant, but beyond that their ability to project power is more on par with an alliance less than a quarter their size (yet still in the top 20 alliances size wise) their ability to SUSTAIN that power projection is practically nil.  They are broke on many levels.  Their leadership capital is probably damn near negative.  Their personnel capitol is scraping the bottom for an alliance half their size.  Their money capital is a well advertised nil.  I wouldn’t trade places with Booda if he promised to not touch all the wallets exactly as they are.  They still have their super fleet, and they have their name.  They don’t have a name.  They don’t have enough FCs to run any kinda of a fleet, their logistics is beyond a shambles, yet they will survive.  They will get pounded.  They might fall below 6000 members.  If they purge inactives they might fall below 3000, and they will take body blows on the way.  They cannot realistically hope to drive FA from fountain.  They can only hope to take some heat off the frantically reorganizing nullbears in Aridia.  Some of the heat.  Not a lot because the Russians will be there, as will the rest of the Aridia locals.  TEST has been lucky running 80 man fleets around to pop Infernal structures, that kind of fleet looks awfully tempting to many of the folks in the area.

TEST has launched a campaign in Fountain when I cannot believe for a second that they have any clue what capabilities they really have to bring to the field beyond shitposting.  They need to establish leaders who will be there for more than a week.  They need to take stock of what they really have, even if it means mass kickings of people who can’t be arsed to show up or even log in.  They need to take the time to get people on the same page, get them organized and get them moving in a direction that makes sense.  They need time to develop a fresh crop of folks.  They need time for cream to rise to the top, and time away from the spotlight so it doesn’t get crapped on or stolen before it’s any good.

I’m using it every time I can

Howdy Neighbor (Bring my Killing Shotgun)

So I go to bed having decided to work with JIHADASQUAD in Khanid, and wake up with a new neighbor over in Delve.  TEST Alliance. Which more and more seems to be determined to turn into Dreddit and pals.  I think it’s safe to say nearly anyone paying any attention expected TEST to git while the gittin’s good.  I don’t think Aridia was that high on anyone’s list.  The constellation they have chosen is traditionally infested with Russians.  There will probably be some skirmishing and bickering with them and the other Aridia locals.

And by that I mean these guys will take every chance to beat up on the sick and feeble parts of TEST.  TEST can roam the area and probably put out multiple fleets the locals can’t handle.  But can they be everywhere?  Can they save themselves from their more moronic members running around like… well… morons and getting themselves killed.  Possibly in shiny caps and whatnot.

So on to Khanid, and welcome to our new neighbors.  You might want to dig in a bit.

I’m using it every time I can

PEW PEW Roam

So after a calamitous day at work I needed to unwind.  First we set up a very unwieldy gank operation in Niarja that yielded…. Bupkis.  Then, more and more corp members kept logging in.  I realized we had enough for a fleet so I started getting guys moving to our staging system, picking up our kitchen sink ships and getting organized.  Then I saw Thryson of Bondage Goat Zombie hop on.

We have a bit of a history with BGZ.  Amazingly it’s even a friendly one.  When Fancy Hats were in S I L E N T. we had friends in BGZ who would come along and cause trouble with us, or pick fights and invite us in for the fun.  It worked pretty well up until S I L E N T. fell apart.  I recently noticed BGZ tooling around Ami so I have been talking with BGZ.  I convoed him last night about our upcoming roam:  BOOM doubled our fleet size.  Formup took a while as we wanted to be mostly T1 with a Rapier and a Onieros as support.  Even getting into AMI was fun.  A catalyst, an Ashimmu and a Stabber were all popped very quickly as the fleet started to coalesce.

The fleet finally got moving rather later than I’d hoped.  I wanted to ‘splode more ships so I hung on as long as I could.  Heading to Antem we found nothing other than an Omen Navy Issue that had the bad luck to land in our fleet and jump through without even forcing us to split our fleet.  We set ourselves up to head for Old Man Star for more blood.  The way down proved somewhat fruitful.  We tagged an Itty V that was in the wrong place at the wrong time, then lucked into a Tengu that just wasn’t paying attention and tore him apart.

Nearing Old Man Star we found a hostile T3 BC fleet with a Scimi and some fast stuff.  We jumped through them into OMS and let them jump in.  Sadly I managed to NOT have my overview showing attack battlecruisers somehow.  Sigh.  We nailed the firetail, but couldn’t get anything else and we lost the Onieros, a Cane, a Blackbird and an Incursus.  I’m sure we’d have nabbed one of the T3s if I’d, ya know… seen it and been able to call it primary, still our fleet was a pretty healthy success, especially for Fancy Hats which ended up down a Hurricane and a Blackbird.  Somehow I managed to get on a Rapier killmail even though I’m almost certain I was out of the system by the time it popped, and don’t remember shooting a Rapier in the first place….

It was a nice, fun impromptu fleet.  We got to blow things up, work with new people, and most importantly:  Blow things up.

Fly dangerous.

I’m using it every time I can

Lowsec Ratting

So ratting in Lowsec has proven to be a decent bit of isk with an indecent amount of risk.  The new tags are highly lucrative.  I’m dropping off about 100 mill for a couple hours of work as I type this.  It is definitely not for the faint of heart.  You HAVE to go into lowsec, the rats you fight against are quite tough, and the toughest of them not only take a while to kill but tackle you and do quite respectable damage on their own.  While you are in lowsec.  That’s a fun thought.

It offers plenty of opportunities.  If you know what you are doing and build the right ship you can make a great amount of isk pretty fast.  It also offers new life to what I like to call Proxy mining.  You can tool around for long hours, hunting these rats, killing them, or you can find something suitably cloaky, find an area where OTHER people hunt rats, wait till they are well and truly engaged (ideally with something that tackles them itself) and wallop them.  Thus you can avoid the hazard of killing rats, and go straight to collecting the tags from some poor sap who probably isn’t quite up to handling the rat AND you.

This method of money making doesn’t have a ton of appeal, but it is fun.  It leads to a fair amount of cash, as well as some chances at a fight.  It’s actually amazingly good at repairing your sec status as the rats themselves offer a HUGE boost to sec.  It also encourages people to seek out new space.  The best places to do this kind of ratting are nearly deserted, as you will be trolling asteroid belts anyone can head to.  Many of the rats can be killed by a straight forward Cruiser or BC, The toughest ones will require something a little beefier to kill.  Personally I like my pilgrim for where I rat.  Being cloaky helps a lot, being tough helps a lot.  Being something people generally don’t want to catch too bad helps too.

Fly dangerous, score kills.

I’m using it every time I can