"D-GTMI" via Ga'len
anyone who ever played X-U games will understand why
but im going to go in to the detail a little bit anyway
the Argons where name of one of the major races in X
and the argon one was there flagship :P i always awed at it (even though it was the same hull as my flagship)
so i name my carrier after it
i lost it in the last stand for D-G
now i dont mind loseing my cap ship in a blaze of fire with me shooting other cap ships while they desprity try to take me down :) with the rest of my buddys
but want i dont like is loseing my cap ship and i did not even know it or have the chase to fight back (or even run away)
coz at the time my eve shows me inside the POS sheild my carrier was fine in the sheild full heath and everything. then i get a message saying my insurace had be payed... dam it!
20 mins later i see myself next to my cap ships hull 300KM away from the POS (then poded) and the cap fleet left inside the POS jump away to safety
4 titans on my killmail i think that is worth noteing: killmail
new one im going to call agron two!
easy loss as for what else happend in D-G well im not sure but in the end it was lost
we will fight for it again just need to sort some stuff first
anyway iv been real busy with work at the moment so iv not had the chase to update my blog in much detail
this is also why this blog is so late
stay tuned and i will update with a blog iv been working on and some new pics soon
I don’t want to rehash all the details of the war so far. There’s a good, non-biased article on the fight here. One of the arguments that came up immediately following the battle of D-GTMI was that –A- and Ushra’khan were guilty of “metagaming.”
The prefix “Meta” stems from the Greek μετά which means “after”, “beyond”, “with”, “adjacent”, “self”. It’s used in “…English to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter.” (From Wikipedia )
Web programmers are familiar with meta tags in the head of webpages. The information in these tags is known as “metadata” which describes the content, author, etc. of the data in the body which is displayed by the browser. Metadata is “Data about Data.” In a more abstract concept “meta” can be used to describe something that is related to a larger concept, but not in a concrete way. I really enjoy wikipedia’s example of “meta-answer”: “A meta-answer is not a real answer but a reply, such as: ‘this is not a good question’, ‘I suggest you ask your professor’”
What then, is “Metagaming?”
According to our research above, metagaming would be “gaming about gaming” or “game beyond game.” I think the former works best for the situation at hand here. Metagaming in roleplaying games seems to be all about using knowledge that your character wouldn’t necessarily have access to in order to gain an advantage. This could apply to something as benign as understanding the mathematical relationship between agility and critical hit percentages in World of Warcraft.
In the D-GMTI situation CVA’s accusation of metagaming refers to the enemy gaining access to their voice communications which resulted in access to a password to their player-owned station (POS) allowing –a- and U’K to ram ships (“bumping”) out of the force field and into a vulnerable position.
There are a couple points of view on the matter:
- Because voice communication is offered within Eve it is considered “in game” and thus not “metagaming.” If CVA had been using Eve Voice instead of Ventrilo/Team Speak it would have been as simple as getting a spy into their fleet and joining the communications network. This is not much different than what presumably happened.
- Similar to argument 1, but rooted in the idea that voice communication is an integral part of any group activity within Eve is thus “in game” even when not provided by the code of the game itself. (Despite their being an identical function in the code of the game)
- Because there is no way for your character to “hack” the voice channel themselves without the use of a second character/account allied with the target alliance (a spy) the act of infiltrating communications is beyond game. (I suppose you could social engineer yourself an invite to the fleet, but that would probably be pretty short-lived.)
- Spying on voice communications ruins the “purity” of the engagement and and defeats the goals of the battle/game which are presumably to win through skill at contest. (we could get into a great discussion of “playing to win” here if you want…)
What do you think?
The thing about loyalty, the part that trips people up, is that it's a two-way street. A lot like friendships that way, or relationships in general, both parties have to want to tango. If not, well then that is called Blind Loyalty. And while that might work out for you in a Cult, it doesn't work for me. Give and take, not too much of either. Hey, I believe that is called balance.
I've spent a huge amount of time and isk over the last year moving back and forth between places. Selling off assets, getting ganked in my Badger, or jumping into a gate camp in my Gila, risks I wouldn't have been taking if things had gone differently. Doing these moves has not only hurt my killboard, which I don't really care about, but took a huge chunk of time away from the game. Which is something I do care about. The "game". Hauling, selling, dying while hauling, these are not "game" things, these are "work" things. And I am growing tired of working in my game. I have precious little time to give to Eve as it is, I want to make the time I do have count.
These last few weeks have been a whirlwind for me. I came back to Providence to help out with the expansion into Catch, a struggle that I have been advocating for over a year. Fully expecting to fight, the whole thing fell apart rather quickly in my opinion. I never even really got a chance to fight much, at least not in any way that mattered. And we are talking about 12-16 hour CTAs here, this was never a question of commitment, not on my part. After the fall of D-GTMI everything vanished. CVA wanted our leadership to quit, our leadership wanted to strike a deal with -A-, and everyone started moving assets out of Providence in a panic. Nature abhors a vacuum and that's what we had for over three weeks. That stress can't be sustained and eventually we started losing members and then entire Corps.
The final straw, for me, might have been a combination of events that all happened immediately after the subsequent fall of 9-UY (Capital of CVA). Once again, under orders, moving assets to low-sec, then being told to move some of them back, all while our Corp leadership struggled to make any decisions, one of our members managed to steal 20 billion in Corp assets including an Anshar (a very expensive Jump Freighter for those that don't know). These events led Angor and I to decide to leave Providence for good. To move on and get the stink of Provi, NRDS and all the drama from our boots.
Fortunately we weren't the only ones thinking along those lines. Convo followed convo and eventually, along with a great group of fellow PvP focused pilots, we decided to form a new Corp - Unforgiven Blood. To focus on having fun, raising Hell and shooting anything that we want to shoot. We're forming up now, not a lot of us at the moment and that's just the way we like it.
So that brings the story up to the present. I want to play Eve and not have it play me. I've learned to stay out of politics and try to focus on the parts of the game that I really enjoy. It is a game and needs to be treated as such. I'm hopeful that the following months won't involve any more moving, changing Corps, Sov warfare and lag fests, and just wall-to-wall shooting of other people in their ill-fitted low-sec spaceships.
I’ve been reading around a bit and thinking about it and I think I’m now able to discuss the Providence-Catch situation in a nice balanced fashion. This is a huge topic and I’m not going to attempt to tackle it in a single post.
On 17th December, 2009, Against ALL Authorities allowed their sovereignty claims on the 9K0E-A, WD-VTV, SV5-8N, and F9E-KX systems to elapse. Under the new Dominion mechanics there is no point in paying for the maintenance of systems that aren’t actively used. These border systems are away from -A-’s heartland in central Catch and their principal purpose was as a defensive buffer for the strategically important high-sec gateway system HED-GP.
At the same time the Providence residents were beginning to eye up a way to expand their Empire. From what I can make out from Aralis’ interview with Hallan Turrek their reasons for this seem to be a little bit confused. Their initial pronouncement said that they deemed Providence to be fully “delivered” and were now looking to bring the godless region of Catch under Amarrian rule. If they are looking to expand their borders Catch makes good sense. It is the only nullsec region that borders Providence and the Holders (especially Sylph Alliance and Sev3rance) have a strong presence from the border all the way down to 2J-WJY. In fact, this region of Catch has plenty of unclaimed systems which would have opened up the way for an expansion into the sparsely populated Immensea region. Instead, CVA and LFA chose to strike into the border systems and directly threaten -A-’s empire logistics. It should be pointed out here that Providence is unusual in that is has not just one but three empire exits, including one to high security space. As soon as -A-’s logistics were threatened then a swift retaliation became inevitable. A move for some of the systems in eastern Catch would have been a far safer way of testing the water and getting experience of the new sovereignty mechanics.
Once the retaliation begins the reasons for the initial attack become confused. In his conversation with Hallan, Aralis suggests that this was a strike against -A- not because the Providence residents need more space but because “the core reason is them giving bases to UK in their space.” Okay, so now this is a “war against terror”. If that is the case why was the initial assault limited to just four unclaimed systems? If they really wanted to take the war to -A- while they were occupied in Querious, then surely they would also have set up SBUs in HED-GP and 36N-HZ not to mention claiming the other systems in that pipeline. A few lines later he says “AAA are a big alliance beating up their neighbours as they have always done. AAA were and are our enemies dedicated to our destruction.” So now the reason is self defence. -A- is out to destroy CVA and therefore CVA needs to expand “such that no one has bases within jumprange of your core systems.”
So as you can see, CVA’s reasons for the initial assault seem to be confused. Was it a strike at -A- for harbouring their enemies? Was it because Providence is now under the rule of God and the message must be spread to the next region on the map? Was it because -A- roam in Providence and threaten their very existence? On the last note it should be pointed out that when CVA lost sovereignty due to an account hack, -A- very vocally and forcefully stood forward and declared that they would defend Providence until the reason for the disband had been discovered. This is how Aralis responds to Hallan’s questions on the subject:
Hallan Turrek > Wait, during the dissolution of CVA by hackers, didn’t they help protect Providence?
Aralis > Well they certainly didn’t abuse the situation.
Aralis > An honourable gesture and respect to them for that.
Hallan Turrek > I was to understand they actually camped gates to protect your space.
Hallan Turrek > Is that not true?
Aralis > I don’t actually know it wasn’t in our space. It could have been.
He doesn’t know whether -A- put themselves between a crippled CVA and the slathering hoards! Where was he, under a rock?
Anyway, looking at what happened and some of the leaked responses from other Holders such as Paxton Federation, it seems that LFA and CVA saw some vacant systems on their border and made a grab for them. In support of this the LFA sovereignty claim began at 8:16 am on 10th January but CVA did not announce their official expansion of Operation Deliverance until a week later at 00:50 on 17th January. They do not seem to have wanted to make a direct attack on Against All Authorities and seem to have acted without the consensus of the entire region.
Itarulde has posted an excellent analysis of the tactical flaws in CVA’s assault over at Scrapheap Challenge. It is definitely worth a read.
Coming in Part 2: The Battle for D-GTMI.
Related posts:
- Catch 22 – Part 2: In Which Failure To Prepare Results In Piss Poor Performance
- The Neighbourhood
- Quick Links
