Eve and The Big Lebowski...

My favorite line in the "The Big Lebowski" is the following:

The Dude: ....I've got information man! New shit has come to light! And shit... man, she kidnapped herself. Well sure, man. Look at it... a young trophy wife, in the parlance of our times, you know, and she, uh, uh, owes money all over town, including to known pornographers, and that's cool... that's, that's cool, I'm, I'm saying, she needs money, man. And of course they're going to say that they didn't get it, because... she wants more, man! She's got to feed the monkey, I mean uh... hasn't that ever occurred to you, man? Sir?

Well, "new shit has come to light..." and "she's got to feed the monkey"... Triumvirate is closing, BRUCE is vacating Fountain and Destiny and Insurgency running for the hills. I have to say, this is very reminiscent of the the collapse of the German Army in Russia in 1944. A complete and total collapse of all force cohesion. This is what happened yesterday - everyone ran for the hills.

I packed up my shit this weekend - seeing everyone else wandering around the train station. This was enough information to me. We felt (as a corp) that we needed to find some new pvp pastures. My Eve Friend, Bri (who has a good blog) has made that transition, and I think with insurgency vacating Branch - Insurgency will get back to what they are good at, hard core PVP.

If you look at Eve history, the really interesting alliances all "epic fall" when they begin to think about holding space. I've concluded that in Eve, unless the game mechanics change, space holding will be a combination of POS bashing and internal strife. I would imagine CCP will get this view as well, and I would think in future releases - new game mechanics will be introduced. Here are some that I think would be interesting:

1. Bug out fever -- I want to see the enemy run for the hills and break.. that's the whole point. There should be some initiative option that allows the alliance the press the attack, right now, it's kinda boring from one system to the next to remove POS's etc.. I think that a Blitzkrieg idea would be neat - sabotage, or something.. using Black Ops as Special force to open the door into a fast attack. The ability to break the passwords of POS's and shutting them down - a very small likelihood, but if you have the skill with a black op, you could pave the way... kinda like hacking but, uber hacking
   
   
2. Keeping the core alliance personnel - for example, Germans didn't all leave Germany, if you are vanquished, you become part of the spoils of war - this will make things more interesting in terms of size and scale. You are part of the conquering alliance for a period of time with no roles - not exactly how this would work, but ideas none the less.
   
   
3. Seizure of Assets (if you lose a system or series of system) you lose ISK and assets, or some transfer mechanism - but you need to get some more spoils to make the war making more interesting. This is war - you don't get to take the art and gold when you leave.. that shit is property of the invader - stations and outposts are not enough in my mind.
   
   
4. True tactical campaign management within Eve - organizing fleets are real Fleets and battles as combined arms. I think gang warfare is interesting, but it would be nice to have a campaign tool to organize units and then describe the attack like modern tactics are articulated. This would be a nice feature of ambulation - where a senior fleet commander can show how tactics would be implemented - right now I write my own tactical plans for operations - I would prefer to have something (like my link above) in Eve. I love Tactical plans. The only problem with plans is that they never survive the first shot.. but at least we try
   

So, ideas are just that .. ideas.

Frankly, it has to get more interesting to wage war, I really am disappointed that one alliance collapses and the rest follow suit - they should fight and fight hard for their space.. It's too easy to surrender and take your shit and leave.. war isn't waged this way.. there should be consequences on both sides; if you wage war, you better have the means to win and end it.. and those that are attacked, well,, fight..

I think we have too many French alliances in Eve.. as they like to say.. "I have some brand new French rifles to sell you.. never fired once!"

On to my new corp and pvp.. I think I'll have some fun in the coming months - these guys seem like a good bunch.