HERO: The Tasti Plan

HERO coalition is currently stumbling back into Empire, Badgers stuffed with people's worldly possessions brave gate camps as we flee the collapse of Catch. (Except that guy. That guy's still ratting away in his VNI watching movies and not realising anything is happening. Don't be that guy.)

It's time for a new direction and I'd like to give an example of a direction that could work out well for us in the longer term.

The idea is this: The forever home. A place from which we won't have to move. Ever.

That rules out sov. In the long term everyone loses -  5 years ago Goons were homeless bums crashing on Tau Ceti Federation's couch.

I think it rules out NPC Null. If someone really wants to make life hard in NPC Null they can. Last year there was a hell camp of 5ZXX-K where MOA live that lasted weeks - 24/7 camp with many bubbles and a fleet of carriers permanently on the undock. MOA waited it and they eventually got bored out but BRAVE would feed them constant kills which would keep them there.

Wormholes are an option offered by many BRAVE and HERO corps and I think that's the right level - an option if people want to but not something everyone in BRAVE has to do. It's quite hard to live somewhere where there's no automatic way out - you have to scan it or find someone else who had scanned it.

So that means low sec.

However we still want to haze null and we like being involved with the drama and the sweet mercenary contracts that desperate null empires may offer.

So low sec near a strategically critical part of null where we can impact events there.

Have a look at Tasti.

Tasty doughnuts

It's in a low sec pocket in The Forge region not too far from Jita. Logistics are super easy. There are 3 null sec entrances within 4 jumps and they're strategically very interesting.

LXQ2-T is the gateway to the Dronelands, a key system with 10 regions depending on it as their way out to Empire. It is consistently one of the most violent systems in null sec.

BWF-ZZ is the home of Legion of xXDeathXx. xXDeathXx (the name refers to both the person and the alliance) is a Russian with wide links in the Eve community - he's a friend of The Mittani for instance and PL also get on with him very well. However he is an independent and as such they face a lot of conflict - they're currently in a war against TRI and SOLAR. This is also one of the consistently violent systems in null sec.

EOA-ZC however is a quiet back entrance to null sec, leading to Goon renter space and XDeath ratters - great for a hunting fleet.

What's more in the long term whoever owns the space there will always be high conflict potential here because these are gateway systems to large swathes of nullsec. They're naturally violent.

What else is to do in Tasti?

Well we have clone soldier tags and exploration and mordus rats and all the standard low sec content provided anywhere in low sec.

In addition we have faction war space nearby. 3 jumps away is Todifraun, an entrance to the entire Amarr v Minmatar conflict - it's at the top right of this map. So BRAVE could put itself into faction war which would be another very newbie friendly source of line member income as well as extra content because those guys run fleets open to all militia member. The ships given out are very nice too - Firetail, Stabber Fleet Issue and Tempest Fleet Issue for Minmatar; Slicer, Navy Omen and Navy Apoc for Amarr. (Plus some other infrequently used ship rewards).

We have missions available. There are plenty of security mining and distribution missions nearby including two level 5 security mission agents within 4 jumps and a system with 2 level 4 security mission agents (making it easier to drop undesirable missions). There's a level 4 Sisters of Eve agent at nearby high sec Osmon for people who want to earn themselves Asteros and Stratios. It's a much better base for running the very obscure CONCORD storyline missions which can have great rewards.

The station I'm thinking of is Tasti V - Moon 1 - Science and Trade Institute School. Unusually for Empire this is a station with everything - repair, cloning, 50% refinery, factory. It's non-kickout. It's even a school station so skillbooks are seeded on the market automatically. This is very helpful for newbros. In addition gaining faction with the School is very easy so people could grind out important standings to make their lives more easy and more profitable. (eg at standing 6.7 you no longer pay taxes on reprocessing, market fees are reduced by corporation and faction standing, at standing 8.0 you can install jump clones).

Defensively living there would put us in a much better position. It's normally considered dumb to use titans in lowsec where doomsdays don't work (EDIT: I'm told they do work in low sec now but even so most of this stands - it's very high risk to commit titans so close to other large titan owning powers) so we defang PL and other bullies to some extent. We can't suffer from having our station services shot. We can't be bombed or bubbled. It's also much riskier to casually drop supers in out of time zone small operations the way PL has been doing in Catch. There are many people around who can certainly murder supers - someone can only use supers really if they're prepared to escalate all the way up to another Asakai.

How is it for industrialists? Well here's the big big thing - NOT MOVING. I imagine I've already won most of you over!

In addition there are lots of factories, you can either use Tasti or go to a nearby system for lower costs. You can mine the asteroid belts and random anom spawns. There are 28 belts in Tasti and Caldari ice in nearby Fuskunen (1 ice anom) and Osmon (3 ice anoms). You can coordinate with mission runners to use their sites and mine the rocks there after they run their missions. And you can also venture into nearby nullsec to mine using the bigger toy - the Rorqual if you're a devotee of the BUZ flavour of dangerzone mining. As the political wheels turn we may find that our neighbours become blue to us and you can go into their space in nearby nullsec relatively safely. (Although I don't think BRAVE should ever again hold sov itself).

Alternatively you can import easily from nearby Jita.

At the alliance level of income there's the prospect of taking low sec and null sec money moons and setting up POCOs for our members PI. All low sec systems can have money moons and we're in a pocket of low sec that we would probably dominate. If PL or someone stage against us to take moons we can just lose them without impacting the line members much then re-conquer when they go away.

As for PI, low tax friendly POCOs and low sec extraction rates are pretty good. Not quite as good as null but moving PI really sucks. There's also the option of setting up PI with one of HERO's wormhole groups.

The alliance may also be able to make money from Faction War if we become involved with that. TEST did this - they set up an alliance cashout programme and people knew that when they cashed out their LP they got a good price and also helped the alliance. I'm sure our friends in TEST would be happy to walk us through the details if needed. (FW cashout inefficiency is a huge source of trading profits - traders like Gevlon and Moxnix have raked in trillions from underpriced LP cashouts by FW players).

Moving to Tasti would put us very near both RvB and Eve Uni. That opens up a number of possibilities. Arranged fights would be easier - so would non-consensual fights if we wanted to wardec them. I'd also like our diplomats to see if it's possible to develop some sort of mutual defence pact. While we're normally frenemies if PL or someone come down and monster Eve Uni, BRAVE and RvB would be there to help them fight.


For complete beginners Tasti is a much more newbie friendly option than GE- was. It's nearer to where a lot of beginners start, you're not cut off once you fly out. and so on.

Let's analyse the Tasti Plan by department:

MILITARY: content content everywhere. We can run a campaign to secure pocos and money moons, even into nullsec regions. We have an active war to third party on currently raging in Etherium Reach. We will become a beast when entosis links come in, threatening N3 renters, XDeath renters and CFC renters. We could enter faction war and lead a campaign to hit level 5. It's also more satisfying to conquer, say, a R64 and know that the coalition isn't going to move off and abandon it. We will from time to time get dominated as major forces deploy to this corner of the universe but we can't be shut down by bubbles. And when they go we get "our" money moons back because this is our area and they're just tourists.

Another nice thing is that Battleship doctrines become much more viable because much of the time we're not in bombable areas. Battleships are fun.

Because of the relatively short distances in AU it's possible to blops around hitting a wide range of targets.

DIPLO: Continuity is vital for diplomacy and we can develop long term relations with local low sec entities and null sec powers. We can build a string of batphones so if we do tackle a super we have like 12 neutral alliances to call to help kill it (most people will rush to get a non-friendly super kill). We are a pivotal force in nullsec and very much worth hiring as mercs. Let's take the current Delve war as an example. If NC. hired us to help in the delve war what could we do from Tasti? Well what we wouldn't do is deploy to Sakht. Instead we could invade Vale and start SBUing Goon renter space. That would force the CFC to pull alliances out of the front line and send back, say, The Bastion and Razor to contain us. If they sent enough to dominate us then that would seriously weaken the front line. Of course the CFC could get ahead of that by making us a better offer and having us invade N3 space forcing NC. to send elements of their armada over to deal with us. It would create a bidding war. Additionally lots of small relatively weak alliances try to carve space out here - we would be a huge asset as mercs to any of them. The Phoebe Freeport Republic started out trying to take space in Etherium Reach - if only they'd had HERO to hire then poor Coelomate wouldn't have ended up so bitter.

In addition I'd love to see a mutual defence pact between Eve's 3 great newbro organisations. RvB already do this - Red fights Blue but when someone picks on them they combine into a defence force they call Purple (cos it's Red + Blue, geddit?)

INDUSTRY: Continuity, multiple alternative markets, great logistics, many explosions, mining opportunities in low sec and, depending on the local level of nullsec violence, sometimes in nullsec. The Thukker Assembly Array makes it possible to make Capitals competitively.

CAPITALS: Much better place to get aggressive with caps, it's really hard for enemies to look at a bunch of HERO dreads and have any idea how much escalation we've got up our sleeves. Escalating on us is super risky because it means your supers are committed in what will almost certainly become 10% tidi. The tidi means if our infinipoint hics can hold a hostile super in place for 6 minutes a batphoned fleet has an hour to get here, say, from the CFC super staging system in Deklein or Black Legion's home in Venal or PL's home in Amamake. Our ability to tidi systems is an amazing defence against escalation!

A JDC 5 carrier can hit a lot of systems in lowsec and Geminate from our base making single jump offence and defence possible. If the cap fleet takes gates into nearby nullsec then jumping all over Etherium Reach/Kalevala Expanse or Geminate/Vale becomes possible.

DOJO: handy access to skillbooks, access to pretty much every style of gameplay in Eve, attractively near where most people begin so easy to run over and recruit, great logistics, continuity - not having to move!, and perhaps the possibility of joint ops with RvB and Eve Uni. I think this base will work well for DOJO.

PROPAGANDA - with deployable billboards coming soon a great base to broadcast our messages to Eve's most heavily populated region. The interesting politics of the area is likely to keep the alliance relevant and a factor in any great war.

RECON - much easier to recon from a stable base - for instance you don't need to re-do basics like moon scans because we moved. There's a level 4 locator agent in nearby Maila. Local hotspots are very predictable - BWF and LXQ.

LEADERSHIP - I think with a secure base the alliance will be more drama-free, will need less time to be spent dealing with logistics headaches and will simply become more fun to run. We will always have options - in the extremely unlikely event we're short on content we can always invade XDeath or Etherium Reach or wardec RvB.