Category: EVE

The conference room of the Kinetic Regret smelled faintly of burned coffee, ozone, and resignation. A series of blinking regional maps floated midair, updated with worrying precision. Red dots here. Blue clouds there. One pulsating gold beacon labeled simply: “C-J.”

Captain Gobbins entered, mug already in hand, and gestured at the map like it owed him money.

“Alright, listen up. This is either the beginning of a tactical masterpiece or the part of the war novel where everyone starts dying off in alphabetical order.”

No one laughed. He didn’t expect them to.

He continued. “For the last few weeks, we’ve been in a standoff. Us, dug in up here in the Dronelands—our cold, wonderful home of anchored crap and endless bubble traps. Them, posturing down south, slamming into Insmother.”

He jabbed at the region with his mug. “Imperium. Mainline. Hitting hard. Meanwhile, our sigs have been tap-dancing in their soft zones—Delve, Querious, those lovely holiday destinations.”

He turned, tapping the table. The lights dimmed. The map zoomed in dramatically. “Now. Today? Big shift. Imperium’s packing up and moving in. They’re staging in C-J—right on our border. And they’re giving Delve and Querious the ol’ ‘good luck with the fire sale’ treatment. One week’s notice to their locals. One week.”

Gilthune Aideron tilted her head. “So… they’re abandoning two entire regions to come live next door?”

“Exactly,” Gobbins said. “So first off—and mark this moment—I’m going to say something… nice about Goons.” He held up a finger. “They’re sacrificing a lot. Uplifting their core. Relocating their entire war machine just to come brawl at our gates. That takes guts. Or hubris. Possibly both.”

He took a long sip, then sighed. “And frankly, we might get some good fights out of it. Medium scale. Frequent. The kind where you lose a Harpy and don’t spend six hours in structure. The fun kind of suffering.”

“But?” Gilthune prompted.

“Oh, there’s always a ‘but,’” Gobbins said. “The big fights—those’ll be messier. Titan buffs from the last patch are lopsided, and we’re still working with a numbers disadvantage. So in those cases, we rely on regional mechanics and defender’s advantage. You know, terrain. Cynos. Lag.”

A low murmur rippled through the crew. Someone coughed in the background. Someone else sighed audibly and opened a stims packet.

Gobbins’ voice dropped just a hair. “Let’s not kid ourselves—Imperium’s still the biggest bloc on the server. In EU and US timezones, no one else comes close. But we’re probably the closest. And if they’re tied up with us… then we’re doing our job.”

He tapped the holomap again. The glowing system of C-J pulsed brighter.

“Now, I know everyone’s wondering if we’re moving again. HQ’s evaluating some better staging systems. For now, instructions remain unchanged. So don’t start shoving your carriers into a bowhead just yet.”

He paused, glancing toward the back.

There sat Gallente Citizen 4586793463, silently recording on a notepad that looked older than the war. As usual, they offered no questions. Only scribbles.

Gobbins gave a faint shrug and turned back to the map.

“Prep for contact. Keep your clone in region. And maybe… clean your cargohold. I don’t want to die next to 300m in fireworks and a single exotic dancer again.”

He paused.

“Again.”

Most of the time, I have no issue completing data / relic sites – but other times, especially if I’m some place dangerous, I will cherry pick the sites. Here’s my hacking method for those sites.

Scan it down, warp to the site at 100km (cloaked). Since my helios is very fast, I decloak and burn off until I’m 150km (or more) from the nearest can. Then I bookmark that location (also known as a perch). Make sure you’re in a fleet with yourself. I’ll warp to the nearest can, and cargo scan everything. If it has more than 5m in loot, I’ll hack it (leave untagged). Otherwise, I tag it with a 0, and then warp back to the perch. Tagging lets me see in the overview the cans I’ve decided to ignore and the ones that I haven’t done yet. Then I just warp around to the cans with no tags, and hack them.

If I see things on d-scan I’ll either continue hacking or I might warp back to the perch and hang out for a bit and make a judgement call depending on what they’re flying, if I think they’ve brought friends with them, that sort of thing. I also think about the ISK left in the cans, sometimes if I’m not in a huge rush I’ll number them based on the ISK value so I go after the more expensive cans first in case someone pops in.

My ship of choice is still the helios, and I don’t think (for pure hacking) there’s any reason to fly anything else – at least not for me. This little ship is so speedy and costs just pennies compared to what I’m hauling around. It normally takes me a single system to recoup any loss I might experience.

Now I just need to figure out what I’m going to do with all of these blueprints.

Fly your way! o7

The Kinetic Regret hung just outside tether range, cloaked in that familiar pre-fight silence—a silence thick with dread, caffeine, and unspoken regrets about doctrine choices.

Captain Gobbins stood in the situation room, pointer in hand, mug in the other, and a projection of the southern front pulsing over the table like a migraine.

“Well,” he began, “Imperium’s finally done it. They’ve set up shop on the edge of Insmother and are now lovingly punching it in the face. We’ve restaged to our southern border to say hello.”

A low groan rolled across the table. Brin was already halfway through her stim pack.

“We’re both hitting each other’s peripheral regions,” Gobbins continued. “Us, with surgical sig deployments. Them, with the full sledgehammer approach. I’m told that’s called ‘doctrinal identity.’ I call it expensive.”

The map flickered slightly, then zoomed out. Regions lit up like an arcade screen.

“I’ve seen some people refer to these regions as ‘floodplains.’ Cute. But if I catch anyone else saying that, I’m going to throw you into a fleet full of unfit Griffins and walk away.”

Gilthune Aideron raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you the one who called Tenerifis a ‘lightly scorched buffer zone with delusions of grandeur’?”

Gobbins waved her off. “That was poetry. This is war. Look, not every region’s a crown jewel, but that doesn’t make them disposable. Insmother matters. It’s not just about stalling—it’s about showing up.”

He tapped a flashing system on the map. “The fights have already started. EU timezone? Delve’s on fire. Join the BRO sig if you like long burns and moral superiority. US timezone? Home turf. Most of you will be bleeding on our side of the gate.”

Gilthune leaned over the table. “And other timezones?”

“Scattered. Sporadic. Chaotic. Just the way we hate it.”

A pause. Then the map shifted again, this time highlighting ship silhouettes.

“Let’s talk escalation,” Gobbins said grimly. “We’re slightly outnumbered overall, but we can still pick smart fights. What’s trickier is how we escalate. Caps and supercaps—there’s a bit of a… paradigm issue.”

Gilthune groaned. “Oh no. Not another meta shift.”

“Oh yes,” Gobbins replied. “We built around dreads. We’ve got good dread numbers. We were going to use that to punch up against titan-heavy fleets. But then—surprise!—the last patch turned titans into actual nightmare gods.”

He flicked to the next slide. “Doomsday damage? Up 50%. Tank? Buffed to hell. Fax penalties? Lightly massaged away. It’s like someone at CONCORD said, ‘What if we made the terrifying superweapons even more terrifying, and also cheaper to heal?’”

The lights dimmed ominously as a massive golden silhouette of a Leviathan rotated slowly.

“So yes,” Gobbins said, “while our dread meta was sound a month ago, now we’re back to playing ‘how many titans can you not afford?’ Spoiler: it’s still most of them.”

He took a breath. “Which brings me to: Titans. And why Horde needs more of them. We came up in the 40b dread era. The old alliances got their titans for a fraction of what they cost now—while we were still flying Brutixes and talking about drone bandwidth.”

Gilthune muttered, “I miss when doctrine updates meant changing ammo, not selling organs.”

Gobbins nodded. “Same. But here we are. The focus is shifting. We’re pivoting from dreads to titans—specifically Ragnaroks and Levis. No Avatars, unless you want to look cool and die confused.”

He looked around the room, then fixed his eyes on the back—where, once again, Gallente Citizen 4586793463 was seated with a notepad and a neutral expression. No questions. Just observation.

“Anyway,” Gobbins concluded, “more info on titan building will come next week. Until then: hold the line, defend the south, and stop saying ‘floodplain.’ You’re not hydrologists. You’re capsuleers.”

He turned off the map, leaving only the glow of the room and the soft scribbling of one anonymous journalist.