Friday 12 February 2010

Eve Online: Goonageddon, Part Three

There's a saying "A week is a long time in politics" and it's certainly proved true regarding the political fallout of Niart Epar's neglience with regard to the Goonswarm sovereignty bills.

I'm going to do another cut and paste job for most of the rest of this post, partly because the story is well-told from an inside source and partly because it's in a post in the Eve Official markets forums which most people won't find.

The teller is the Goons' new Chief Finance Officer a thankless task if ever there was one, posting as Kalrand from the Charles Ponzi School of Business. And that in itself is a contender for the best corp name Eve has ever seen once you read more about Charles Ponzi.

The thread is a Goons scam and is in itself a fascinating example of how a team of players can use clever arguments from various perspectives to enhance the scam.

Here's what Kalrand has to say about recent events in Goonswarm:



28.1.10


Do you want to know what happened?



28.1.10

Background:
One of the things that Goonswarm has been good at for the last few years is getting high level spies into various alliances, or turning high level directors of warring corporations to our side.

Because of this, our directorate is structured in a way that any one director would minimize the damage to the alliance.

Example: Karttoon has the big giant reserve of all the money, and the only guy who can push the button to nuke the alliance. (Incidentally, this is why Yih's scheme was so hilarious to anyone in GS).

Our CFO, gets a large portion of the money, and any of the income, but isn't a "director" in game mechanics, so he can't just take more. This is then dolled out by him to the various projects and titular directors to spend on things. Any income is returned to him, and if there is an excess, it's kicked back up to the wallet controlled by the CEO.

Also, we have an independent auditor, who apparently didn't have roles to audit the alliance wallet.

Karttoon goes on his honeymoon, promising his wife no internet spaceships for a few weeks, and leaves with all the isk locked up.

Our CFO doesn't log into the game for a month, since he's (as we now know) burned out.

The auto-pay system continues to take isk from the designated wallet slot. The CFO is not monitoring this. The auditor can't. No one else should/does have roles to monitor this.

At the onset of Dominion, our logistics teams determined that they are able to save the alliance more ISK per month by taking down fuel burning towers (set up pre dominion to maintain sov) as compared to turning off sov in systems, though they do that in many of them.

Many of the goon member corporations take over the sov payments for their own constellation, with Goonfleet only having leftover to-be-removed systems, logistics systems, and important station systems.

War starts and logistics are diverted to fighting off three invading alliances, which with current Dominion mechanics, and Goonswarm's US timezone dominance, is actually going pretty well, though it's 100% defensive.

Dominion 1.1 changed the TCU online time from 12 hours to 8, meaning that, if there is no sov, an alliance can take sov in a single timezone. This is not a problem for Goonswarm since we're fighting a defensive war, and still have sov just about everywhere.

Two Days Before Sov Drops:
Dominion mechanics have autopay fail on many sov payments two days before they are due, and for the next two days send DED mails to various directors that sov is about to fall. Directors receive hundreds of these each day, and their mailboxes are eternally full, so no one sees them and raises the alarm.

The Day Before Sov Drops:
The CFO pops back in, tells people that he is kind of burned out, and tries to sell his cap ship manufacturing business. No one notices the "kind of burned out" part.



The Day:
IT happened to be going on some kind of a r64 reinforcement op, and are up later than normal, in force, but out in the middle of nowhere querious. Goons are harassing them, but IT had better numbers at that point. Goons had just finished some other major fight the day or two before, and were in the middle of moving combat ships to NPC Delve in expectation that IT would try to siege NOL, the Goon market capital soon.

The bill comes due. There's not enough isk in the wallet.

Sovereignty drops suddenly in most of the major station systems in Delve at 11pm EST, in the last third of the US time zone. Member corps are unaffected.

Our CEO is still out, and no one can reach him. The CFO is offline, no one has heard from him in two weeks, except for him trying to sell his cap ship business.

I figure out what happened, and post in the current op thread. At first most people think it is a billing bug, not a billing mistake.

The Mittani takes control and tells everyone to get everything they can haul out of stations to safety. Phrease raises a huge fleet and attempts to defend everywhere at one. Logistics starts onlining TCU's across all of delve.

IT realizes what happens about as fast as the rest of the game, and makes a beeline for any important system, especially NOL & J-L. Their numbers swell, as word gets out.

Goons log in in huge numbers. AAA invades station systems in Querious.

The fight/evacuation continues deep into the night, but IT/AAA/Stain has superior numbers. Random pirates come into querious to try to gank evacuating people in industrial ships.

Goons have been outnumbered for weeks, and were able to defend under Dominion mechanics. The only thing needed to defend a system, is to have dominance for one timezone, only once over a four day period.

Since sov has dropped, the first alliance to drop a TCU gains sov. IT destroys several goon TCUs all over delve, and replace them with their own. AAA does as well. Sys-K then joins the party and invades TPAR in Period Basis.

The Next Day:
Many of the Goon TCUs are saved, and online early in the morning the next day. Several of the most important systems were camped and controlled by IT, particularly NOL, the market hub, and J-L, the capital ship staging system. These then become IT systems later that morning after two large battles for control in early Euro prime.

Other systems are taken at leisure as the Euro prime goon numbers are not going to be dominant, and by the time Goons regain dominance in the evening US time, several other important, but less key, stations are lost.

The CFO pops back online and realizes what happened. The CEO still has no idea.


Epilogue:

The CFO is known to you as "Sophie Daigneau".

His cap ship venture was CAIDS.


 

3.2.10


Would you like to know what happened?



3.2.10

One Week before the disbanding
When we last left the story, Karttoon was happily away on vacation, Delve was on fire, and the CFO had just been sent to the pillory on the goon forum.

Over the next twenty four hours word trickled down from the remaining directors that we were abandoning any defense of Delve, and moving out as quickly as possible. The same game mechanics that allowed us to defend against a much larger hostile fleet outside our prime, would doom us to never taking back any of the fallen stations.

At this point The Mittani gave a State of the Goonion address which summed up the above points, and gave us a destination: Syndicate, the original home of GoonFleet.

Three days before the disbanding
Continuing on into the week, Goons evacuated Delve as best they could given the circumstances, first for NPC Delve, then Lowsec, then dumping their assets somewhere in Highsec space, and usually hopping back into Delve to help other people evacuate, and shoot at random IT people. People began to stage in Orville for the eventual push into Syndicate. Delve continued to get worse every day, and personal assets that weren't evacuated by day four would need a fleet to break the station camps.

Darius JOHNSON was pulled out of retirement to lead us until someone could locate the CEO.

Darius gave a second address to rally people ops focused on breaking ships and materials out of Delve. This continued for several days, with each day being slightly less successful.

A large number of mercenary corporations and assorted other wardecs were issued against GoonSwarm and, given the average goon's skill at this game, a huge number of ships were blown up across all of high sec.

Eventually Goons made it to Orvolle, which is right on the entrance to Syndicate. Whereupon the immediately got camped into the station by the area residents. Whenever a op was called to clear the undock, the hostiles would dock, and this has repeated for a few days.


Two days before the disbanding
Karttoon returns! He gets back from his vacation and promptly doesn't log in or post. He eventually shows up on Jabber, and tells everyone that he's not resigning. I have no idea what was going on behind the scenes. The capfleet hulls are transferred to him, to do reimbursements for everything over the last three weeks.

The day before
Karttoon logs into the forums and makes a handful of posts, half dealing with his vacation, and half trying to downplay how bad everything is. Almost every response is a post telling him to resign.

The Mittani begins to run interference to quell the angry Goons, and it tampers down on the forum, a bit. A poll is posted, and Goons are about two to one on the resign or not resign question, not that they have any say in the matter.


The day
Karttoon doesn't post. He logs into jabber, and I have no idea what he was up to.

Some guy named Kalrand gets appointed to the position held by the old CFO.

Around 11pm eastern time, the end of the US prime that most of goonswarm plays in, Karttoon logs in, and kicks out every corporation in goonswarm. Karttoon then takes away hanger rights from anyone he can in GoonFleet.

Any sovereignty still held in Delve is lost. Goons are suddenly not subject to wardecs and take the opportunity to fly around and move things.

Any titan/capship/whatever in space, at a pos, is bounced out of the shields as soon as the pilot logs in.

Hostiles decent on the North syndicate area and attack goons. Some goons attack other goons because standings aren't immediately correct between the member corporations. This is largely fixed pretty quickly.

Various directors use hidden alts to steal as much as they can from Goonfleet, but one of them announces this in the corporate local chat, which Karttoon sees, comments on, and continues to remove standings.

A mothership is lost to a hostile fleet.

A capship producers begins to insurance scam his existing stock that he hasn't been able to sell in a few weeks. Rumors abound that it's Karttoon destroying the cap fleet hulls that had been returned to him.

Karttoon starts to post on eve-online.com. He is stripped of access to goonfleet.com.

Now
Karttoon has the GoonSwarm alliance, the GoonFleet corporation, several wallet corporations, and the Band of Brothers corporation. Along with hundreds of billions in isk and assets.

Goons are dropping Goonswarm, and joining Goonwaffe, an old goon corporation from before the increase in the number of members that could be in a single corporation.

Darius JOHNSON is in control.

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