[EVE Online] Crack in the Armor

Note: Read the first part of this article here

It’s been said that most serious wars in EVE aren’t won by the strategic superiority or cunning, but by capitalizing on one grievous mistake made by the enemy. Whether it’s a mistake made due to the strains of war or simply due to ineptitude, if an opponent reaches this point the war can often be one with a single decisive action.



A little over a week ago, some chat logs were leaked implying that after an argument Vince Draken, the leader of Northern Coalition. (NCdot) had removed 800 billion ISK from the alliance wallet and revoked co-leader Wicked Princess’ roles to access said wallet.

Another chat log leak revealed that the incident started over an issue with a Black Legion. pilot shooting a neutral Falcon that belonged to Vince. When it comes to shooting other ships in-game, most nullsec entities live by NBSI rules: not blue, shoot it. According to this rule, shooting the Falcon was an appropriate action. Vince (speaking as his neutral character) demanded compensation from the pilot, who promptly told him no. Vince, still speaking as his neutral character, threatened to reset the standings with his alliance. By saying this through his neutral character, it lacked sincerity and the pilot didn’t believe him. The argument with Wicked Princess occured after this happened.

The drama that followed is a little muddled at this point, but Wicked Princess left NCdot, either by choice or by force, joining up with Black Legion, the alliance Elo Knight, her internet romantic interest was a leader and fleet commander of. Black Legion pulled out of the coalition’s shared staging system back to their own. Nulli Secunda also pulled their assets out of the shared staging system as a security measure. [note: If an alliance loses docking rights to a station owned by another alliance, then any assets in that station are ‘locked down’ and inaccessible until docking rights have been returned.] Around this time one of NCdot’s primary fleet commanders also left the alliance, although apparently for unrelated reasons.

NCdot’s primary tactic in the war up until this point had been to time all of their structures to come out of reinforced mode in Australian time zone (the block of time people living in Australia of asia are most likely to be playing), one of the CFC’s weakest timezones, and run harassment fleets the rest of the day. This meant that structures became vulnerable to attack at this time and required the CFC to form fleets at inopportune hours to destroy them.



Elo Knight spearheaded the harassment effort, often running fleets around the clock. This earned him some measure of respect among the CFC, who appreciate anyone who is so willing to fight an enemy as large and formidable as them. The overall result was that while the CFC was steadily taking Tribute from NCdot, it was slow, and it was grinding, and it was a chore, which doesn’t sound like an accomplishment, but the CFC hadn’t faced opposition this stiff in almost a year. They even revamped their fleet doctrines to compensate for the increased resistance.

With Elo not running fleets anymore, fights began to dry up. Structures were still timed for the CFC’s weak timezone, but US and EU timezones suffered from lack of activity.

As the story now goes, Mister Vee, one of the CFC’s strategic fleet commanders and generally considered one of the most successful FCs in the history of the game, got upset at NCdot and Black Legion for not giving him any good fights, and in a whirlwind of anger, sieged what was left of the enemy’s structures in Tribute in a single night, totalling over 11 stations and various other sovereignty structures. This accomplishment was played up by CFC leadership and used as a propaganda tool, raising morale high enough to attempt a killing blow. Tonight, the CFC (a coalition exceeding an estimated 9000 individual members) is going to form up for a major operation with the objective of capturing every one of the reinforced stations and effectively conquering the remaining half of Tribute in a single night.



Actions of this nature; massive strategic upheavals intended to cripple and destroy an enemy in one swift movement have gone by a lot of names over the course of EVE’s lifetime. The phrase commonly used in the game’s current lexicon is ‘going in for the dick-chop’. The story has yet to be finished, but it can’t be argued that the war came to this point because one side made a mistake that the other side exploited for massive strategic benefits.