Eve Online: Intelligence on a target corp

I may have contributed to an assault on Turamarth's wormhole so the least I can do is continue my series of posts about wormhole life with an in-depth analysis on a corp, using their opponents as an example.

They were attacked yesterday by members of Revenge of the Liquidators. So let's have a look at them based on googling, with particular reference to killboards. Once we have gleaned data from that we check their posting history on Evegate and add them to contacts in-game with alerts when they log in.

Revenge of the Liquidators [ROTL] was founded 22.8.09 by Shtuka. No war history, they've never been part of an alliance. 1000 shares (mildly noobish), 21 members, 0.0% tax (possibly a sign of an alt corp). No in-game description (so probably not recruiting and never having newbies, again a sign of an alt corp). Headquarters: Frarn VI Moon 18 (but usually means nothing).

CEO is Niku Aleera. Her only corp is ROTL which she joined 21 minutes after she was made (almost certainly an alt). Her only posts are attempts to buy a supercarrier pilot in the character bazaar. She eventually bought a Nyx pilot from someone in her own corp (possibly her own alt). The sale is suspicious - too cheap. That's perhaps a sign of someone laying a fake trail, people who are doing spying or who otherwise have a dodgy corp history sometimes want the character to have a record of being sold. So let's look at the character she bought: previous corp history Viper-Squadron VS, Digital Fury Corporation (a Hydra alt corp that famously shared Alliance Tournament 9 with their mother corp), LUSH Industries (high sec carebears), Legion of Spoon (part of CVA a famous NRDS nullsec alliance), Exile Corporation, Panda Academy (a Chinese language corp), Middleton and Mercer LLP (who seem to be a SOLAR renter), Pwnswarm, then a couple of corp for just a few days each, then Sierra Research (one person corp), then Xenobytes (the lead corp of null sec alliance, Stain Empire, Russian-speaking).

So you can see why she laundered the character's corp history! Lots of half-arsed attempts to be in nullsec without really coming to much. That is the real history of their CEO. But even Flatdog is almost certainly an alt as the character's only posts are in the Character Bazaar. So let's see what we got - a bitter vet who owns Niku Aleera, nominal CEO, Flatdog, Nyx pilot and likely has a main in a nullsec alliance. Those rather half-baked forays into nullsec make more sense if the player's main character is in an alliance like Goonswarm as does the attempt at laundering her spy's history.

That may be good news. If this war is just something these guys are doing while their mains are bored in nullsec they may lack staying power. On the other hand they can harass you if you give them targets of opportunity but otherwise log off onto their main characters.

Another tidbit - at one point the player posted with the wrong character so we have another one of his alts - Supreme Goddess. She links us back to LUSH Industries again. All three of these characters have only posted in the Character Bazaar so I think we still haven't found his main. While some people don't post on the official forums it seems improbable that someone would post on a rather obscure utility forum but never post anywhere else. Incidentally the CEO of LUSH industries has also only ever posted on Character Bazaar which fits the profile - possibly another one of this player's alts. If so we have another clue. Lane Fox is the name of a failed British CEO, famous in Britain but vanishingly obscure outside this country. I'm guessing that this player may be British. (Watching when the characters log in may help confirm this). Also it's a somewhat Goony naming convention as several of the Goons alt corps have in-joke allusions, eg The Charles Ponzi School of Business. (Edit: I later realised that both the British connection and the Goon connection didn't fit the rest of the pattern when I looked at other corp members. Both are probably red herrings but it's useful to consider all the hints and clues).

Checking Flatdog's recent kills we see a bit of wormhole pvp including a POS bash.

Now let's look at more people in the corp:

Sen Black: clearly a player who's not afraid of a POS shoot either. Interestingly these POS structure kills show a similarly sized gang to the Kronos kill, about 5-6 people. It certainly should be possible to build a POS that stops a gang of this size. The one they killed was apparently only defended by two guns.

Sen is also ex-Xenobytes (Stain Empire). No forum posts so possibly an alt.

KopeLLI. The Kronos is this pilot's only kill this year. Also ex-Xenobytes, his bio suggests he's from Minsk, Belarus. No forum posts.

NuKua. Seems to fly exclusively Amarr, has been quite active recently after a long pvp hiatus. Character was recently bought by Arslan Bek of the Bathing Bay of Space Pirates, a small Russian corp.

Curzon Dax. This character was once a famous Eve scammer. He was even an Eve musician. Character has been sold a few times and recently is ex-Xenobytes.


Summary: this corp is a small handful of bitter vets. They are rich and enjoy the bullying side of the game. They lack tenacity and manpower. A well defended POS should be too much for them unless they call in favours. I half-remember some story about Stain getting a kicking a few months ago, these guys probably bailed after that and are now, in the time-honoured tradition of people who have just had a kicking, looking for someone smaller to bully.

Tur, I think you can wait these guys out if you have a well-defended POS. They will try to kill your POS but the one they killed recently was a rubbish POS with two guns. Drop lots of EWar modules and I doubt they'll even get it into reinforced. There are 21 people in the corp but all the recent kills seem to have been done by the same core group. They like spider tank battleships. Neut modules might do well. If you have these on watch list you'll know when they're coming, nothing will happen without at least one of these five being online.

Virtually all of these characters have been bought on the character bazaar. I now believe the lack of posting history is simply because they're Russian (or similar). I don't think the main guy is a Goon spy, I think he really is someone who's failed over and over again in nullsec and given up each time. Because they're alts they'll probably log in all at the same time so don't expect to catch them solo.

If your POS is too hard a nut for them to crack they may drop their own POS and attempt to wait you out. This will be an important stage of target denial. If you deny them easy kills and pick them off if they try to rat I'm sure they'll give up. If it comes to that stage.

Most likely is that they'll have a go at your POS and if it's too much for them they'll move on, maintaining an Eve history of doing things in a half-arsed way then giving up at the first hint of adversity, a strategy that has served them so well over the years.

I also, having finished my research, don't think they're Goon spies, don't think they read my blog, in fact don't think they even read English language blogs. They're Russians/Belarus. It's more that someone was flying a billion isk Kronos without paying attention, without being aligned and without watching D scan. After getting an easy gank they'll see if there's easy pickings (preferably through social engineering, although they'll definitely try a POS bash if your POS is weak). I don't think they're attacking you because they're looking for a wormhole, they're attacking you because they think you're easy loot.

If you can assemble something to beat a fleet of 5 reasonably good small gang pvpers in recons and battleships I'm sure you could bait them into a fight.