Q-O in Delve was under attack just minutes ago by a force of what appears to be roughly 100 Drifter battleship, attempting to reinforce the Keepstar in the system. This has been followed by reports from TEST space of similar activities, and aggressive Drifter gate camps in Detorid, who are shooting and killing all players on sight.
These reports were then followed up by almost every other region of nullsec, as large fleets of Drifters appear to be present and pursuing their own objectives against player structures and ships.
This is a massive departure from the previous behaviour of the Drifters, who normally are only present in their own wormholes, or around the Jove Observatory structures and in defence of the Lancer NPCs that were their heralds and scouts in the cluster. As of yet, no structures appear to have been fully reinforced by these attacks, as defences have been mounted by those under siege from these aggressive Drifter fleets. However, given these fleets retain the subcap doomsdays present on other Drifter ships, they seem to be incredibly challenging to fight off.
This may be the third, and final stage of the Invasion storyline, with the Triglavians Incursions having been Part 2, as Drifters and Triglavians are strong enemies in the lore – Being called out alongside the Sansha in their declaration of war against the cluster.
However, what caused them to become hostile to players is as of yet unclear, with some even speculating that it could be the result of a bug. INN will keep an eye on this developing situation and update you as any new information becomes available. There are reports of Drifters having reinforced the Keepstar in U69 in Detorid, and attacking players in Anomalies. Early reports from the Keepstar indicate that the damage cap usually applied when shooting structures is not applicable to Drifter attacks. 
UPDATE 2140 UTC: A video has come out of the Keepstar being reinforced
UPDATE 2157: A GM has confirmed that this is intended and not a bug.
UPDATE 2314: INN has learned that at least one Pandemic Horde keepstar has come under attack. An attempt was made to reinforce the KQK Keepstar, but the Drifter fleet was destroyed.
CCP Weekly Wrap Up: November 2-9 2020
EVE in Lockdown?
New Eden Stargates Disrupted
Rob Bobbie
Will someone take advantage of the situation and finish them off? Will the Goons leave the north or hope that nobody will hit the structures when the timers run out? All of EVE is waiting with baited breathe to see what will happen next.
June 26, 2019 at 10:22 PMRob Bobbie Rob Bobbie
I called it. Goons are packing up and going home to defend their shit.
June 27, 2019 at 2:23 AMhttps://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/c5yojs/nc_enlists_drifter_forces_to_repel_cfc_invasion/
Arrendis Rob Bobbie
Yes, you called it… congratulations, I bet when you drop things, you can also predict they’ll go ‘down’.
June 27, 2019 at 3:19 PMJohn Newell Arrendis
Ive just tried to make a prediction on what happens when I drop things.
I think i can predict the future.
I… might be Jesus.
June 29, 2019 at 7:19 AMGuilford Australis Rob Bobbie
What a bold and unlikely prediction. Who could possibly have seen it coming? Did you also predict the U.S. would respond militarily after the Gulf of Tonkin incident?
June 27, 2019 at 3:39 PMdunklewelle rdw Rob Bobbie
:eyeroll: at least the Drifters undocked ….
June 27, 2019 at 7:28 AMDrkyDrky
Well, this spices up the game lol
June 26, 2019 at 10:34 PMGanthrithor
Congratulations CCP: you fucked up your game design ~*so utterly completely*~ that the only way to get players to undock and fight over anything is to bombard the gameworld with NPC attacks.
Fucking. Morons.
The trajectory of this game is staggeringly embarrassing.
June 27, 2019 at 2:52 AMBlacknife Ganthrithor
You are not undocking NPC or not why are you complaining ?
June 27, 2019 at 8:18 AMGanthrithor Blacknife
OK.
June 28, 2019 at 6:42 PMconcerned whiteman Ganthrithor
Sounds like a bitte keyboard VET that does not log in anymore. LET THE SALT FLOW you wont be missed
June 27, 2019 at 11:10 AMThe Constitutionalist Ganthrithor
They fucked up the game so badly that you’ve become utterly obsessed with bitching about it.
Bitch about people not undocking to fight. Bitch about the game dying. Bitch about P2W. Bitch about structure mechanics. Bitch about krabs. Bitch about AFK. Bitch about skill farms. Bitch about CCP being retarded.
Finally get a reason to undock…. bitch some more.
June 27, 2019 at 2:59 PMGanthrithor The Constitutionalist
I’ve been playing since 2006 and have paid four accounts almost non-stop the entire time whether I’ve been actively playing or not: that’s thirteen years, thousands of hours of gameplay, and about $9k USD invested in EVE. What have you done for the game lately?
I’ve more than earned my right to bitch when CCP fuck everything into the dirt. But go ahead: keep defending them as they bore everyone to death while stripping all the non-consensual PvP and consequences out of the game and replacing them with NPC space-white-walkers. What a shit show.
June 28, 2019 at 7:03 PMThe Constitutionalist Ganthrithor
Yeah, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that if you’ve spent $9k on subscriptions over the years, including while you were not even playing, your opinion should immediately be fucking dismissed because you have a mental problem. Not to mention, it’s 2019, if you’ve been playing for that long and can’t Plex 4 accounts… really? No one gives a fuck how long you’ve been playing or how much money you’ve fucking spent on the game. When the goddamn game loads up it doesn’t say Ganthrithor, it says CCP. It’s their fucking game, they can do with it as they please. People like you, who continue to spend your stupid ass money reward them for it.
July 1, 2019 at 3:08 PMGanthrithor The Constitutionalist
Thanks for straight up admitting that you and your unwashed poor friends are literally the reason this game is shit.
Yeah, ~*I’m*~ the crazy one for paying money for a service that appeals to me and then being upset when the developer changes the service. You and your unwashed poor friends who expect to run as many accounts as you like– for free– yet also feel entitled to bleet on reddit all fucking day about how the game should play exactly the way *you* want while you spend god knows how many hours per month doing repetitive space-errands so that you can play “for free” are the sane ones.
I don’t plex my accounts because I have a real job and it’s not worth it to me to spend hundreds of hours a month grinding the world’s least-interesting PvE content in order play a game that’s now of marginal interest to me. Why would I spend endless hours PvEing when it only costs me 1-2 hours of real-life work to sub all my accounts for a month? My EVE subs are taken care of before lunchtime on the first workday of the month. Who’s the one with the mental problem again?
And while we’re discussing payment, at the end of the day why should CCP give a literal flying fuck what you want? I’m paying them actual money and using my gameplay time in a way that contributes to the vibrance of the gameworld. F2P players bring nothing to the table: they don’t contribute realbux, and they don’t contribute in-game content because they’re too busy being risk-averse faggots who spend all their gameplay time min-maxing their way into various un-interruptable income streams so they can keep their 20 accounts PLEXed. Meanwhile, CCP expect a tiny minority of people (some with ~*actual*~ mental problems, since you brought it up) to keep the game afloat by spending thousands of dollars ~*PER YEAR*~ buying cosmetic items and other assorted worthless bullshit from their cash store.
F2P is fucking cancerous bullshit that guts games in order to arbitrarily inflate player counts while disproportionately burdening a tiny minority of eccentrics and credit-card warriors with the maintenance of the game. EVE would be in a much better place today if it were played by a smaller group of people who actually paid subs instead of the insanity we have now.
Honestly, when I read bullshit like your post it makes me want to just un-sub all my accounts. CCP have already more or less ruined the game (I keep coming back every few months out of nostalgia, but it just fails to hold my interest for more than a week or two at a time now), but I’d gladly give up my accounts if it meant CCP went bankrupt and all your F2P morons had to find somewhere else to shit.
July 2, 2019 at 3:47 AMGuilford Australis
When the ‘diamond’ NPCs and their Forward Operating Bases were introduced two years ago, CCP’s rationale was that the new NPC behaviors (aggressive EWAR, response fleets, escalation when confronted) were similar to player behaviors. Given that the FOBs could be destroyed to end the threat to a system, CCP claimed that these new mechanics were balanced.
The Drifters appear to be unbalanced in every way – appearing in large battleship fleets utilizing a subcap doomsday that players cannot use, reinforcing Keepstars in 15 minutes because they aren’t limited by the damage caps to which players are held, and presumably retreating into inaccessible wormholes where players cannot follow them to destroy their structures and end the ‘invasion.’
I… am not sure “we’re going to make EVE’s NPCs better than players” is the kind of design philosophy CCP should be pursuing if it wants to retain players in its, uh, player-driven PVP game.
June 27, 2019 at 11:47 AMtheseconddavid Guilford Australis
Goons claim to be the best at PvE. Here’s all the PvE you could wish for.
June 27, 2019 at 1:41 PMGuilford Australis theseconddavid
Goons don’t really claim to be the best at anything in EVE – that’s sort of fundamental to our culture – though there are plenty of things we do more of, in greater numbers, more enthusiastically, and with better leadership, organization, and infrastructure than other alliances (including PVE).
My observations above concern the incoherence of CCP’s design philosophy rather than personal or alliance preferences.
June 27, 2019 at 2:01 PMLrrp
Does the presentation in the vid remind anyone of the narrative in Homeworld? And while it has been awhile since I played Homeworld, the music at the end of the vid seems to be from Homeworld also.
June 27, 2019 at 12:13 PMMatt Critchley
Looks like Goons are about to get nerfed. About time.
June 27, 2019 at 1:36 PMGuilford Australis Matt Critchley
I see nothing in the article or the events it describes that points remotely toward “nerf Goons.”
If anything, Goons are far better equipped to deal with the Drifters than other alliances. We have superior supercapital umbrella(s) and territory that is more compact and defensible. We are numerically stronger than most alliances and capable of forming faster. We have more supercapital and capital pilots (and ships) than any other alliance, as well as optimal infrastructure to drop anywhere in our territory nearly instantaneously.
If by “nerf Goons” you mean “custom-tailor content to align nearly perfectly with all the strengths and assets of Goons,” then sure, dude.
June 27, 2019 at 2:12 PMФан-сайт EVE Online Russia
Good idea, very unpredictable
June 29, 2019 at 4:33 AMCarvj94
First of all. Fucking Savage. You ripped him apart like a rabid German Shepard with just a couple sentences.
Second EVE is doing fine. They sold out cause they needed connections and a extra safety net. Depending pretty much solely on EVE’s income no matter how much they try to make other games has got to be nerve wracking. All their eggs in one basket and such.
July 6, 2019 at 11:26 AM