“[The Odyssey expansion] has come, and it has left us destitute…Who is right and who is wrong doesn’t really matter: if we do not invade Fountain, someone else will—and they will enjoy the kind of wealth that we once had, while we wallow in wrenching poverty.”
–The Mittani, CEO Goonswarm Federation
ON JUNE 6, 2013, a pilot named Trii Seo of the nullsec corporation “Executive Outcomes”—a member of the ClusterFuck Coalition—was sitting in a cloaked Tengu scanning for data sites. It’s an exploratory process that sees players deploying probes to scan for “cosmic signatures.” After pinging the data site, Trii approached a small structure in deep space—a solitary husk of technology of indeterminate purpose with gyroscope-like metal rings rotating around it—underneath the famous Cloud Ring nebula.
“One of the most breathtaking of [New Eden’s] nebulae is the Cloud Ring,” wrote EVE journalist Lee Yancy. “Upon approaching the Cloud Ring region in the Western Rim of the galaxy, the roughly circular nebula that the region gets its name from appears and begins to grow larger as your ship travels across dozens of light-years of space. Once a ship enters the region, the pale green sea of gas suddenly dominates the sky. The ring-shaped nebula can be seen cradling star systems in almost every direction, providing one of the best examples of EVE’s dynamic space scenery.”
As Trii Seo finished up the little mini-game you have to play to “bypass the defense subsystems” of the data site and collect your reward, he noticed on his overview that the local population within the system had suddenly surged from just 2 to over 200 ships. Something was up. Not that it was anything to be concerned about, because all 200 of the ships were allies. It was a friendly fleet moving through Cloud Ring on its way somewhere. Trii had no idea what they were up to, but it must’ve been important to warrant getting this many people in fleet.
In awe at the sight of hundreds of alliance-mates, Trii warped from the relic site in deep space to the stargate the fleet was arriving through near this system’s second planet. Not many people know what it’s like to see a warfleet like this in the wild, let alone by accident. Many people only see EVE fleets when they’re bogged down by time dilation and lag in the major fleet engagements that make the news. Feeling the weight of the fleet in full operation is another thing entirely.
Trii swelled with pride upon viewing the huge formation of 200+ friendlies. Dozens upon dozens of ships in this convoy continued to rip through the stargate in beams of light and massed on the other side. After taking a quick peek around, weaving through the spherical formation and using the “Look At” command to send the camera to inspect the coolest ships, Trii Seo logged in to Jabber to see what was going on.
“Warping to the local jump bridge I see allied ships landing by the dozens,” Trii wrote. “Then a Jabber broadcast from our directorate tells us to tune into the coalition Mumble server, because we, as Executive Outcomes, are going to back the CFC in a war.”
The target was TEST Alliance’s Fountain region. Trii was told to pack up a Black Ops cloaking ship, and get ready to go behind enemy lines. Moments earlier, The Mittani had concluded a State of the Goonion address to more than 2000 subordinates on Mumble, announcing the beginning of the operation.
“Welcome to our fellow Goons, our CFC coalition partners, our frenemies, our temporary allies of convenience, and even to our enemies—thank you for coming today. I’ll keep it brief.
My people, Odyssey has come—and it has left us destitute.
For the past few years our coalition has become accustomed to a lifestyle that is the envy of EVE. Due to technetium and sound fiscal management, we have been able to fund a peacetime reimbursement system, carrier giveaways, and galaxy-changing events like Burn Jita and the Ice Interdictions. But now that has all changed. […]
Wars in EVE—and in the real world—begin with a declaration of grievance, followed by a quest for justice. The enemy did a bad thing to us, and now we must go after them to redress the balance; they are bad people and need to be punished. White Noise DDOS’d our servers, so we took Branch. Raiden abused Titan blobs against our people, so we took Tenal. NCdot violated a treaty, so we took Tribute. So it goes.
Just as the aggressor claims a grievance against the defender and demonizes them, the defender inevitably claims that the reasons stated for the war are a lie, and that the motives for the war are a crass manipulation of politics. We are being attacked just for money, for space, for greed, say the defenders: the aggressors are lying shills. We have seen this drama played out for every war, on every [forum thread.]
Tonight we are invading Fountain. But we are not going to bother with stating a grievance or demonizing the defender—we are doing it because we need the region and its moons for our people and our friends.
TEST has abruptly found itself in an untenable position as a sovereignty holding alliance—in its current space, at least. Odyssey has vastly enriched the Southwest, while simultaneously there have been a series of unfortunate errors which has alienated most of their former allies, many of whom are now actively attacking them. […]
What is happening now in the Southwest is a mass land grab motivated by economic pressure and diplomatic realignment: the owners of the richest space in the game have managed to politically isolate themselves and turn their strongest allies into enemies in a matter of weeks. Meanwhile, the Russian forces in the southeast are putting pressure on the former HBC to find new homes in the southwest.
Who is right and who is wrong doesn’t really matter: if we do not invade Fountain, someone else will—and they will enjoy the kind of wealth that we once had, while we wallow in wrenching poverty. […]
Now we go to war. There will be no Q&A session. Every node en route to the staging area has been reinforced to make way for our coming. Our goal is now to get the CFC staged and commence siegework as soon as possible. Ops will continue into the late US time zone.
One final note: do not underestimate the defenders. This may be a long war, and we have grown soft from too much peace.”
–The Mittani, Goonswarm Federation
June 6, 2013
The Mittani was essentially making the case that if the CFC didn’t displace TEST Alliance, then TEST’s own troubled diplomacy would mean that someone else would. He was framing this not as a betrayal or even as an act of hostility, but more of an unfortunate real politik necessity. He was also seemingly trying to solidify nullsec’s vision of TEST as a lonely, isolated power. TEST still had friends, even if things were strained.
As TEST Alliance leadership scrambled to arrange a response, it was hampered by a mysterious DDOS attack on its voice chat platform.
“Shortly before Goonswarm’s State of the Alliance earlier today, TEST [voice comms] fell victim to a SYN flood-style DDoS attack, and has been in disarray since,” reads an article by author ‘Parliament’ on TheMittani.com. “Lack of [voice chat] made the initial response to the CFC’s invasion announcement one of disorganization.”
While the State of the Alliance was being prepared, TEST leaders posted in Reddit threads instead.
“TEST isn’t just a conglomerate of random pubbies,” wrote TEST’s Military Director Beffah in a Reddit thread. “If the now horribly destitute goons want to take what’s ours, we’ll make them bleed every step of the way.”
Posting in the same thread, TEST leader BoodaBooda offered a somewhat less measured response, “WE ARE GOING TO KILL THE FUCK OUT OF THESE NERDS IN FOUNTAIN, AND THEN WE’RE GOING TO KILL THE FUCK OUT OF THESE NERDS IN DEKLEIN.”
In some ways it was a typical response from BoodaBooda. He was a leader raised up by Reddit itself, and he wielded power in a typically Reddit-style. Here we see him not so much leading as much as he was trying to start an avalanche. He rallied the anonymous masses and summoned waves of emotion to put hundreds of pilots in fleet. He faced a similar problem other leaders of New Eden had confronted over the years. He needed to convince TEST’s pilots to show up and commit to a fight that would be long, arduous, and—given that it was against the most powerful bloc in nullsec—possibly hopeless. He did so by drawing on raw emotion and giving them the feeling of taking part in something larger than themselves. He also did it by promising that no matter what happened TEST would go down in a blaze of glory that they’d be proud to be a part of.
If The Mittani wanted to take Fountain he would need to fight through a classic threadnought given form in starships.
THE INVASION OF FOUNTAIN
Even as The Mittani announced the invasion of TEST Alliance Please Ignore, CFC fleets were already being mobilized. TEST leadership had been aware that the war announcement was in the works for weeks already and had spent that time squabbling about how to respond. Now the ClusterFuck was coming whether TEST was prepared or not.
The CFC main fleet was heading for the border of Fountain in a system called J5A-IX, where it hoped to establish a beachhead into the region. Meanwhile, Trii Seo and his corporation Executive Outcomes were ordered to deploy their cloaking guerilla ships behind enemy lines in the core of the Fountain region and cause all kinds of logistics hell.
Trii and the small gang would sit cloaked in TEST space and count the number of ships in the TEST fleets as they headed off for the first battles along the border. Though the cloaked scouts were separated from the main force, they’d try to keep track of how well the battles were going by counting the number of TEST escape pods that floated back. The Fountain War reached them mostly through chatting with friends on the front lines and listening to leadership speeches. Their day-to-day job was to make life as difficult and time consuming as possible, by sniping TEST’s newbies, disrupting money-making operations, and generally forcing TEST to do everything the hard, annoying way so they’d log out and go play something more fun.
They had plenty of work to do, and it was growing more and more important because TEST had managed to convince its larger supercapital friends to help defend Fountain. Nulli Secunda and the rest of N3 viewed the strike against TEST as an attack on all anti-CFC alliances during a moment of weakness, and declared that it would help TEST hold Fountain. Pandemic Legion recognized the seriousness of the situation, but responded in a typically aloof way. PL insisted that it would only be in Fountain as an “unaffiliated third party.” PL was there to shoot the CFC because it was a clever loophole in the B0TLRD Accords, (Pandemic Legion never said it wouldn’t attack the CFC, just that it wouldn’t disrupt its renter operation.)
With the supercapital fleets of N3 and Pandemic Legion now committed, the ClusterFuck Coalition’s main fleet was having a difficult time cracking through the critical system of J5A-IX.
A DRAGON SLEEPS IN FOUNTAIN
However, TEST had a weak point in the border systems that only those in top leadership positions fully understood and feared: several of the systems on the border were technically owned by Sort Dragon through a subsidiary, a paperwork technicality leftover from their old coalition relationship.
“On June 9, 2013, TEST abruptly lost control of five systems deep within Fountain,” wrote gaming journalist Addie Burke. “Under a special arrangement, Sort Dragon had been allowed to maintain control of these systems when TEST left the [Honey Badger Coalition.] Apparently bearing TEST ill will over the HBC’s demise, Sort Dragon abandoned control of 4-EP12, PXF-RF, R-BGSU, XUW-3X, and ZUE-NS—but not before alerting the The Mittani of his plan.”
The ClusterFuck Coalition black ops fleets had already been moved into position to harass some of these five systems within Fountain which were very suddenly up for grabs. Within hours the CFC had captured four of the five systems. It wasn’t exactly a foothold, since the systems were deep in Fountain and isolated from the frontline, but they represented an annoyance to the defenders who now had to divert time and resources to get these systems back under control.
The very same day, June 9, 2013, with TEST reeling and trying to recover the lost systems, the CFC main fleet struck the gateway system into Fountain with full force.
THE BATTLE OF J5A-IX
“Three CFC fleets attacked TEST infrastructure in J5A-IX in an attempt to capture the system,” wrote Burke. “As the single connecting point between Fountain and CFC home territory, capturing J5A-IX was an essential step in any planned invasion. If Allied (TEST/N3/PL) forces could hold the J5A-IX choke-point, they could deny the CFC a beachhead in Fountain.”
However, the loss of five systems uncontested ignited a furor in TEST Alliance over what they perceived to be another Sort Dragon betrayal. Sort Dragon saw it as comeuppance, but the memes were merciless.
TEST members were suddenly even more inspired to get online and hold the line in J5A-IX. With TEST’s numbers suddenly invigorated, BoodaBooda finally got the avalanche he was looking for and it pushed the CFC fleet out of the system.
In a moment of celebratory grandeur, the TEST/N3/PL combined fleet chased the CFC out of J5A-IX with overwhelming force. Drunk on victory, they pursued the CFC across the border and back to the station the attackers were staging from. The pursuit turned out to be wildly overzealous however, and it was broken by the CFC’s near-endless ability to re-ship its pilots outside its own supply depot.
But avalanches of enthusiasm don’t last forever. The two sides continued to skirmish in J5A-IX for some time afterwards, but after five days the strain of trying to hold the system while recapturing the Sort Dragon systems finally became too much. TEST lost control of J5A-IX, the bridge into Fountain, and the CFC surged forward into the breach.
At this point, the war had become huge news within the EVE community, and hundreds of thousands in the wider gaming community were now aware of the public falling out between TEST and Goonswarm, one of 2013’s great internet dramas. This was great for recruiting pilots to fight in the war, but it also attracted opportunistic pirates who thought this might be the perfect moment to take their revenge on distracted nullsec enemies. While TEST was fighting at J5A-IX on the northern tip of its empire, TEST’s resource-generating moons in the far south came under attack by a group calling itself Confederation of xXPIZZAXx.
Similarly, the CFC’s richest moons in the far north came under attack by the veteran dreadnought fleets of Black Legion and its lead Fleet Commander Elo Knight (a rare third party force in EVE capable of using capital ships to strike the biggest blocs and living to tell the tale.) Rather than diverting forces to defend against Elo Knight, however, the CFC instead offered Elo Knight a contract as a mercenary to move south and harass TEST instead.
“The war was not going well in the south (Fountain,) and bouncing back and forth was severely hurting our ability to either defend our space or prosecute the war,” wrote Goonswarm’s Sion Kumitomo about the Elo Knight attacks. “After Elo Knight wiped out our [defense] fleet, we signed a [mercenary] contract with Black Legion, effectively eliminating the threat to our back yard, and allowing us to focus on Fountain completely. This was important as we were still very much outnumbered in Fountain, and losing ground.”
Though they had already damaged CFC space, Elo Knight and Black Legion became an important arrow in the CFC’s quiver. But the space that was damaged in the initial attack became a source of administrative friction in the CFC.
“After the contract was signed, Gigx pulled [Circle-of-Two] back to ‘eliminate hostile towers’ in the north, which were of course the old staging towers [Elo Knight] had been using to hit our holdings. With [Elo Knight] under contract, there was no threat from those staging towers, but Gigx temporarily pulled his forces from the war—and jeopardized the coalition’s chances in the war and our newly signed [mercenary] contract with [Elo Knight]—to appease his pride. This was the first sign that [Gigx’s] mentality had started to shift away from ‘how can we help the coalition and prove ourselves’ to ‘fuck you, got mine.’”
The strains of wartime squeezed and pressured both coalitions in unforeseen ways, and developed cracks that wouldn’t be fully understood until years later. One of the most difficult tasks of coalition leaders in EVE is managing dozens of egos and conflicting interests, and in this case a resurgent Gigx was feeling less and less beholden to the larger ClusterFuck Coalition.
HAARGOTH AND LOVEGOOD
Sometime in late June, The Mittani was approached by a pilot named Xenophilius Lovegood. Xenophilius was a director in the rental association run by Nulli Secunda which was called “S2N Citizens.” S2N Citizens was the shell alliance through which Nulli Secunda rented out its space. That rental money constituted a critical income source for funding N3’s presence in the Fountain War. Lovegood approached The Mittani with an offer that was now practically routine within EVE Online. Steal. Disband. Defect.
The Mittani saw an opportunity to deal an existential blow to his ancient enemies in N3. Just as spywork had undone his foes in the Great War, so would it dispatch the imposing Titan fleet of ProGodLegend’s Nulli Secunda and NCdot (who still counted such luminaries as SirMolle among its membership.) But this was a delicate operation that required a very specific sequence of User Interface actions in order to properly exploit. So The Mittani called in the only person who had ever personally executed a heist and disbandment on this sort of scale: Haargoth Agamar, the Traitor of BoB. Although branded with the mark of the traitor, he’d been serving dutifully within his new alliance as a diplomat under the very same Goonswarm Intelligence Agency handlers who had helped him defect to Goonswarm back in 2009.
Agamar showed Lovegood exactly what to do, and Lovegood carried out the heist on July 1, 2013. The next morning, the holding corporation ”S2N Citizens” ceased to exist, and N3’s sovereignty dropped in more than 200 of its star systems. Its entire rental empire, which brought in hundreds of billions of ISK per month, was shut down, and a free-for-all began as smaller alliances rushed to grab the former holdings.
N3 announced its immediate intent to pull back from the Fountain front to reposition its fleet and recapture the 200 lost systems in the south. Pandemic Legion would join them to help shore up that critical income source. The effects on the battlefield in Fountain were felt immediately. N3/PL’s fleet of Titans and supercarriers were most effective in their role as a bully that could scare off the CFC’s subcapital fleets. N3/PL’s Titans often won battles simply by being in position and preventing the battle from ever taking place. The CFC had now managed to completely isolate TEST from its allies. Without N3 and PL’s supercapitals—and the critical battlefield intimidation factor they provided—the situation for TEST began to deteriorate.
As small battles began to tip toward the CFC, the CFC “Sky Command” team grew more and more comfortable deploying its own heavy ships toward the front line. Momentum was growing, and players were excited that the slog was finally paying off. Plus, they were now flying in fun operations that weren’t quashed immediately by the N3/PL Titan fleet. Eventually, TEST was forced to field its own capital ships to fill that void.
BALTEC FLEET
Throughout the war thus far, the CFC had been experimenting with a number of different fleet archetypes to crack the defense in Fountain. Everyone was required to fly in a certified ship or else it wouldn’t be reimbursed if destroyed. One pilot, however, refused the orders every time, and insisted on only flying his favorite ship class: the Megathron Battleship, which hadn’t been in regular use for years. No matter what kind of fleet composition was ordered, the pilot “Baltec1” showed up in his signature Megathron, earning unanimous ire from CFC fleet commanders. But because he always showed up on-time and paid attention, this strange obsession was indulged. Baltec1 tinkered with his favorite ship’s component configuration relentlessly, determined to unlock the inner secrets of the Megathron’s capabilities.
“[Baltec] made fame by showing up to every single fleet in a Megathron,” Goon fleet commander Mister Vee told PC Gamer reporter Steven Messner. “People were not encouraged to do silly stuff, everyone had to shut up and get in line. Baltec, however, always stood out. He was so stubborn.”
“Until Baltec showed up, it was stupid to think that a Megathron would ever do something different,” wrote Messner, one of the most prolific chroniclers of New Eden in the gaming press. “But Baltec is a theorycrafter. What others saw as impossible, he saw as an exciting challenge. He began spending all his time and ISK fitting his Megathron with modules that would help bridge the gap between it and the ships he was flying with.”
But over time, Mister Vee started to notice that even when his fleets were decimated on the Fountain border, Baltec1’s Megathron always seemed to survive.
“It started building this reputation as an unkillable ship because it kept coming back,” Baltec1 told PC Gamer’s Messner. “It was like a morale boost. When you lose fleet after fleet after fleet, people stop showing up. But when this thing was coming back every time, it gave people something to celebrate.”
When Mister Vee and his theorycraft advisers were informed that the war was costing too much money for the cash-strapped CFC, they were tasked with coming up with a fleet concept that made sense in the high-casualty warzone they now found themselves in. The previous fleets were good, but they were also expensive, which isn’t great in fights with hundreds of casualties. As the war began to drag, the Sky Command team realized they needed something cheaper, more survivable, and above all, something the membership would enjoy flying.
That’s when Mister Vee remembered Baltec1. On paper, Baltec1’s unique Megathron—honed to perfection over months of experimentation—was exactly what the CFC needed. With his configuration it was cheap, tough, fast, and the CFC could afford thousands of them. Vee gave the order to his pilots to begin training for “Baltecfleet.”
THE MIRACLE OF Q9PP-H
The CFC still controlled only two systems inside Fountain—one of the former Sort Dragon systems alongside the freshly conquered J5A-IX—and TEST was constantly trying to push its adversary back out of the region at every opportunity. TEST wanted to clamp down on the chokepoint stargate pipeline that led into Fountain, so one day it anchored defensive hardware in the midpoint system along the route.
“It was a day like any other for the combatants in Fountain,” wrote CFC fleet commander Kcolor.
The CFC needed that pipeline to stay open if it was going to have any hope of breaking Fountain, and CFC fleet commander Mister Vee responded by attacking the defensive emplacements with his brand new Baltecfleet before the emplacements were fully online. TEST didn’t want to be pushed around by a bunch of Megathrons, however, and it began preparing to retake battlefield dominance.
As it would happen, this was the day before TEST Alliance had scheduled an in-person gathering of the North American TEST membership in Chicago, Illinois. BoodaBooda was on his way there while this was happening, and Military Director Beffah took the role of delivering a State of the Alliance to focus attention on what was happening in Z9PP-H. Hundreds of TEST pilots gathered on Mumble, or listened the next morning on SoundCloud.
On the recording, Beffah can be heard delivering her speech while also swatting down bad suggestions from the alliance chat room for the upcoming propaganda Theme Week.
“Tonight—after we’re done with this—we’re going to go save an iHub in Z9PP-H, and we’re going to kick some Goons asses. There’s like 500 of them in local right now in [their staging system] B-D. This entire weekend we have some major major major [stations coming out of reinforced mode.] We’re coming to the final timers of all the sov that dropped when Sort dropped it. I know [the timers] are really really early for most of us—it’s like 4 in the morning my time.
There are going to be a lot of people away for the Testival so Euros this is your time to shine. I know a lot of you aren’t listening to this live and you’re listening to it in the morning on a relay, but this is your time to shine. We have the numbers to send Goons back to Cloud Ring, and this is where you need to show up. Participation. Fleet cohesion. I know you guys like flying whatever the hell it is you fly, but if the [Fleet Commander] calls for Foxcats, show up with a Foxcat ship. Don’t be that dude who shows up in a Rifter. If that’s all you can fly, show up in a Rifter, but if at all you can: show up in a DPS battleship, show up in a logistics ship, show up in a webbing Loki. Booster pilots, I know it sucks because you don’t get Killmails, but we absolutely cannot run fleets without you.
Grr Goons.
I have one request for you nerds. We need propaganda. Good propaganda. Show up in fleets and make propaganda. […] I know there are dozens of you nerds who are amazing with Photoshop and Paint. Post all of your shit.
Like I said I’m making it short and to the point because the Z9PP-H timer is in about 40 minutes.
–Beffah, Military Director, TEST
The meeting was interrupted when a TEST member suggested an Ayn Rand-theme for the Propaganda Week, and the meeting devolved into a fight about Libertarianism. It eventually recovered and a fleet was formed to head out to Z9PP-H. It wasn’t long after arriving that the fleet met Mister Vee’s Baltec fleet.
The CFC leadership logged on and spammed the chat channel to rally the membership to rendezvous with a fleet and head to the battle site. TEST responded by calling up carriers and dreadnoughts to try to gain an overwhelming advantage. Manfred Sideous of Pandemic Legion offered to help out with a fleet of his arguably-impossible-to-kill “Slowcats.” However, without sufficient support ships on the battlefield, this wing of the carrier fleet was scrambled as well, and a post-battle report by Manfred Sideous suggests his fleet and TEST’s were in such disarray that they literally became entangled and started bouncing off one another. With the battle spiralling, Manfred Sideous found an opening to align Pandemic Legion’s fleet and get them out of this rapidly deteriorating situation and safely off the field. But even as he warped away he could see two CFC heavy interdictors streaking toward TEST’s carrier wing. His heart sank, knowing his allies would now be stuck, unable to retreat.
Over the course of the next hour the battle at Z9PP-H escalated wildly, and things started to look precarious for TEST. More than 300 TEST battleships and 30 of its 100 capital ships were now wrecks. TEST knew it had to muster some kind of response.
“With carriers dying at a steady rate, TEST decided to bring in more subcapitals in an attempt to either save their carriers, or at least slow their deaths,” wrote CFC Fleet Commander Kcolor, the day afterward. “More Rokhs (DPS ships) hit field, along with a small anti-support fleet. […] An attempted “doomportal” (stealth bombers bridging into the middle of the fleets and launching bombs one squad at a time) by [Pandemic Legion] was foiled by the large amount of anti-bombers the CFC had on field.”
As the CFC’s reinforcements streamed into the battle, 4000+ people gathered on Twitch [big numbers for that era] to watch what was shaping up to be “the next Battle of Asakai.” As the CFC closed in on TEST’s capital fleet some had even said it might be the killing blow in the Fountain War. A familiar process of escalation took place, as both sides continued to ping their networks for reinforcements. The in-system population soon topped 2000, and showed no sign of stopping.
CCP Games saw this happening and wanted to try to smooth out performance of the battle. The server administrators opted to reinforce the server node that ran Z9PP-H. Once a battle is underway there is nothing that CCP can do to add computing power to the server node that is simulating it, because any change would require resetting the node and disconnecting everyone inside it. The only thing that can be done is to reduce the number of other things that the server also has to do so it can focus on the battle as its singular task. Since any given node operates as many as 7-10 other star systems on a normal day, the other systems nearby Z9PP-H could be remapped to a different node to ease the load on the main battle. Those systems would experience a brief disconnect, but this was fine since the major action taking place was confined to Z9PP-H. This would help smooth out a small amount of the lag in the system and hopefully allow the players to have a functional battle.
“CFC had the entire TEST Capital fleet at their mercy,” wrote Trii Seo. “The node was under heavy strain and CCP chose to remap other systems away from that node. However, when typing in the whitelist of systems that would not be remapped, the [server operator] slipped and typed ‘Q9PP-H’ rather than ‘Z9PP-H’.”
Two thousand and five hundred EVE Online players from around the world blinked bewilderingly at a black screen with the same message:
“Connection Lost: Node is being remaped [sic].”
The uproar was swift and vigorous as thousands of angry players clicked “OK” in the error window then slammed “submit” on their livid forum posts.
It was actually worse than anyone yet knew. If this had been a simple service interruption, then the TEST and CFC fleets would have stayed in space as their pilots were knocked offline (as had happened during other high-profile server crashes.) Things would have been chaotic, but the battle would continue and TEST’s fleet would most likely still be destroyed.
However, the remapping process was more like the process that occurs at downtime, which completely removes all ships from space even if they were engaged in combat. So TEST’s fleet—which was nearing destruction—was removed from space entirely and because of that its pilots didn’t have to log back in. The ships were technically still there—or they would be the next time the character was logged in—but that needn’t be anytime soon.
With thousands of missiles and lasers streaming toward the TEST capital fleet, its ships were saved and removed from space in what became known as “The Miracle at Z9PP-H.”
WITH RENEWED ZEAL
TEST’s fleet was saved for the moment, but this incident ignited a long-simmering fire in the CFC, who saw this event as yet another incident of CCP malfeasance. The narrative began to develop that CCP was once again conspiring against the Goons, and that they had pulled the plug on the node on purpose to save TEST.
The CFC experienced a wave of its own as fleets were suddenly overstaffed and full of members ready to once again answer the call to defeat what they saw as some rogue CCP developer’s attempts to intervene in the sandbox of EVE Online.
The military situation looked bad, but that’s not the only issue TEST was facing as the CFC’s rejuvenated fleet bore down on them. Even with its hide temporarily saved in Z9PP-H, things were going poorly inside TEST Alliance Please Ignore.
A week later, BoodaBooda—back from the Testival—held another State of the Alliance meeting in which he explained TEST’s finances were in dire straits after the mass loss of capital ships at Z9PP-H and continued Confederation of xXPIZZAXx attacks on its moons. He broke the news that if TEST was going to survive it needed a mass of personal donations from the pilots.
The members were generous and the donations flowed in and helped stabilize the stressed social group, but it was a less than proud moment for an alliance that once saw itself as the heir apparent to EVE itself.
“If we’re going to continue enjoying the hell out of this war, everyone in TEST has to want it,” BoodaBooda said in the address. “We need to be intensely focused. We need to be as strong as possible. We ALL need to give this war 100%.”
The tone of his speeches had shifted considerably from his original “WE’RE GOING TO KILL THESE NERDS” style, and indicated that things were going even worse than most people knew.
Among TEST’s commanding officers, things weren’t going much better. It seems that a dispute broke out between TEST Military Director Beffah, who was experiencing strife in her personal life, and 20-year-old CEO BoodaBooda, who couldn’t understand her lack of commitment to the video game at the most important time in the alliance’s history.
Beffah eventually defected mostly-amicably to Pandemic Legion, citing a “cult of personality” in TEST centered around BoodaBooda. A player named Ingen Kerr was appointed to replace her. Ingen Kerr looked at the situation as he came in and decided that no credible defense of Fountain could be made with TEST’s supercapital allies gone, the walls breached, much of the capital fleet still logged out in Z9PP-H, and CFC fleet commanders setting their sights on 6VDT-H. Kerr and BoodaBooda instead decided on a climactic last stand as a fitting end to TEST’s days in Fountain. Some were surprised by the announcement that 6VDT-H was to be their Alamo.
“6VDT-H is not anywhere near the level of strategic importance it once held,” wrote CFC fleet commander Vily. “Its use as a transit hub is mostly deprecated, and it no longer represents an active military base for more than a fraction of TEST’s forces. However, the morning after the initial attack, we awoke to a surprise: All TEST operations for the following two days had been canceled. All forces were to prepare for a defence of 6VDT-H on Sunday, the 28th of July. This was where they would hold the line. This was where they would end our advance.”
In truth, by this point TEST knew that the defense of Fountain was lost, and now the only thing TEST leadership wanted was to go out with a bang. They wanted to create a historic send-off to the Fountain War and the pilots who had sacrificed most of their summer fighting it. The chyron above the main station in 6VDT-H read, “BoodaBoodagrad.”
One last charge for 6VDT-H, where TEST’s journey in nullsec began.
