BRAVE: The 1DH plan

I've written two previous plans for a home for BRAVE alliance and such friends as want to accompany us: one, probably impractical, plan for Thera and a plan for Tasti in Caldari low sec that was well received.

This plan is for 1DH in NPC Nullsec in the Delve region.

Let's assess this place in terms of the three most important criteria: who we fight, is the station viable? and line member income.

Currently Delve is being invaded by the full force of the CFC and scary armadas of 1000 experienced players, huge gangs of harpies and bombers are roaming the region. I'm going to predict that DARKNESS and The Kadeshi are going to crumble before this onslaught and that within 4-6 weeks the last great Dominion sov war will be over with a pet or a renter installed in the region.

I don't think we could contemplate a move until the CFC undeploys but that fits in with our agenda - Lychton stated we're not moving any time soon.

So that would see the neighbourhood of 1DH containing some second tier CFC alliance/renter, Pizza who base from next door at PR-, various independent Russian mission runners, and - if they manage to hang on to it - NC. and their renters in Querious. There's also the BRAVE effect - anywhere we are predators are drawn to get fights ganks and kills.

So I think enough content during times when NC. and CFC are not at all out war.

When they are actively fighting BRAVE should be ok. There's too much of NPC Delve for anyone to lock it down, if they camp us people can operate out of neighbouring stations. We would be ideally situated to service mercenary contracts for either side. And we'd have non-stop action and the biggest fights right on our doorstep.

So basically fine for content as long as we don't try to move the entire alliance while CFC is deployed to Delve.

In the longer term if we stay there we will eventually be able to push out and take nearby sov and then get pushed back. It's actually quite a good base for an independent entity that will sometimes be strong enough to take sov and sometimes not. We also have opportunities to deal with nullsec superpowers for sov should we wish - CFC has already offered us Delve in the past and NC. has given us sov before.

Unlike our Catch adventure being based in 1DH means that we can't be pushed into a disorderly evac by sov conquest - we just get pushed back to NPC Null.

How's the station?

It's a non-kickout  has cloning, repair and 50% refinery. It does kinda look like a kickout but it isn't I just tested it in an inty. You stay 0m from the station for ages. It has two level 1 mission agents so even if we were hellcamped in we could run missions in inties, warping to instaundocks while saying pffft as we go past. Of course there are higher level and much more lucrative mission agents all across the two constellations of NPC Delve. There's factory and research stations in other NPC stations nearby. No school systems so most skillbooks have to be imported.

How's line member income?

Blood raider missions. Nearby Empire missions in Aridia if people prefer those. Fabulous exploration with 6 pipes out of NPC Delve.

It may also be possible to rat and mine in other people's systems. We would be surrounded by renters and nullbears.

There's a gas cloud constellation a little to the south, OK-FEM.

Importing is much more viable than it was in Delve. It's 2 jumps from high sec to 1DH by jump freighter with a wide variety of mids to choose from for greater security.

Blood raider LP is not paying well at the moment. However I have a cunning plan.

Anyone who heard episode 5 of EN24's excellent new podcast will have been intrigued by Jeffraider's comments. He claimed that if he with BRAVE's numbers he could have killed PL's whole super fleet using an innovative idea that he could express in a single word. He didn't reveal what the word was.

So I will: neuts.

The power of neuts, in fact the power specifically of Bhaalgorns, against caps is shown in the famous and excellent Eve video Clarion Call 3. In this video a Bhaalgorn is used to neut out key ships from the hostile fleet allowing a win while outnumbered. It's particularly fun seeing helpless capped out Moros just sat there waiting to die.

No one has ever massed Bhaalgorns into a major part of a nullsec alliance fleet doctrine. Traditionally they were simply too expensive. However now they're about the same price as a TFI.

Let me explain a complicated virtuous circle of why using Bhaalgorns would be so strong for us as an organisation.

First as you see in Clarion Call 3 they're really good. If that's not enough here's another Bhaalgorn enthusiast. PL's TFI doctrine uses Bhaalgorns to web and neut targets for the battleships to shoot - in addition to enough neut power to completely cap out any battleship in one alpha neut the two of them can web out to about 30km.

So if BRAVE started using large numbers of Bhaalgorns as part of a battleship doctrine it suddenly becomes very chancy to use Archon triage, to drop supers against us. Sure, some forces, such as a 1000 strong CFC armada spearheaded by 60 Titans are too much for us without help but there's no shame in not being able to fight the entire force of the CFC head on.

So what happens when an alliance uses faction battleships. Well if it loses a lot of them and hey, we are BRAVE, the limited supply of them means that the price very quickly goes up. This would be incredibly lucrative for Blood Raider mission runners and people who explore combat sites in Blood Raider space. That would be us.

Even better because we know in advance that we're going to cause this price spike we can prepare for this by buying masses of Bhaalgorns at bargain basement prices before we launch the strategy. This is a 100% safe speculation for our alliance leadership. In fact we could buy up Bhaalgorns, announce a doctrine, sell to speculators as the price spikes, then cancel the doctrine proposal leaving those random market dudes high and dry

All in all this plan would put us at the heart of Eve politics, in a place where we never have to run from and can't really be hellcamped for any sustainable length of time, where newbros can make decent isk and where we will get very cheap Cruors, Ashimmus and Bhaalgorns which are all pretty fun ships. We could take sov and retreat from sov elegantly and sustainably according to the ebb and flow of local power politics.

Another aspect of this is that it would be very easy to implement. We're currently deployed to Defsunun in Aridia. Moving 7 jumps to 1DH will be cheap and relatively easy for subcaps and it's an acceptable one mid route by Jump Freighter. Imports from Empire are relatively easy, much easier than they were in Catch.