Editor’s note: The following transcription of Progodlegend’s address to the Legacy coalition has been very slightly shortened for brevity and clarity. Otherwise, these are the exact words spoken. We have provided the section headings for easy scanning. All timer notations designate the end of the section quoted.
We’ve actually been looking for an excuse to have a coalition meeting cuz we want to announce some future plans, but you never want to call a coalition meeting without doing something at the same time, so at least Initiative gave us that excuse, which is pretty nice. So now we can actually do something and actually announce some future plans, which I’m pretty excited about. 1:00
The Doom Clock Technique Has Failed
So basically, Goons are down to their last thing that they can reasonably spin about. A couple weeks ago they went on this big deal about their doom clock and how our strategy to save iHubs until we could cyno jam in against their Keepstars was everything that mattered, and how it was stupid and how they were going to put up this app to track all the iHub timers. 1:29 Then, they were going to kill our iHubs before we could cynojam systems, which was nice because then we just quickly pivoted to holding those iHubs and for the most part we’ve held them. 1:41 We’re going to lose one or two here or there, but for the past few weeks we’ve mostly been focused on holding those iHubs while we clear out some other structures and kind of slow the pace down a little bit before we do this last big push. 1:53
With Goons not really being able to kill our iHubs, they really only have one thing left and that is their staging 1DQ and their little Helm’s deep pocket of E30I. They’ve once again pivoted. Now they don’t talk about the doom clock that much. A few weeks ago it was pretty much the most important thing in this war; now it’s kinda of, you know, another forgotten plan by Mittani and them. 2:25
Only Two Tough Battles Remain
So, we can kill structures at a steady pace and we’ll continue to do so, but probably the two toughest battles . . . among the two . . . I don’t want to say the two toughest cuz you never know what’s coming . . . the two battles where we will be at our most tactical disadvantage in the war are coming up and those will eventually be the battles to clear out the 1DQ iHub and the E3OI iHub. Goons have set these systems up with cynojammers; they’ve got caps in the system already; it’s going to be pretty complex. We took a shot at it last week when it didn’t look like the Goons had formed up and we had a form up going, so we kind of spur of the moment said, “Hey, if they’re not going to form let’s just take a shot at it, see what happens, get a gage of the situation in there.” Goons formed up pretty hard for it and we were able to pretty easily extract and now we kinda know what it’s going to take to get into 1DQ and E3OI. While we’re getting our iHubs up and getting these doom clocks slowly ticking down and killing sotiyos and killing faction forts . . . I mean I think we killed five or six faction forts yesterday alone . . . those battles are coming and they’re coming pretty soon. 4:19
There’s not much left to do in Delve other than to assault those fortresses. It’s going to be bloody. It’s going to be intense. It’s going to be a good battle. But it is going to be a situation at our most tactical disadvantage.
So, over the next . . . I don’t want to give an exact timeline; I don’t want to telegraph our move, but over the next month or two you can expect more big battles on the level of the Keepstar drops that we did a couple months ago. However, they will be different kinds of battles. Those Keepstar drops . . . and I know a lot of you had a lot of fun just fucking nuking Goon ships left and right and getting killmarks on your long-range dreads and you know and all of your ships, but they were a little tedious I would say. These battles are going to be different. They are going to be actual fights and they are going to be spread out over multiple grids and probably a little less laggy. I would say they are going to be the best big battles we have had in awhile. Every time you get 4,000-5,000 in local it’s pretty amazing, but it does get a little laggy. These are going to be pretty good, I would say. Better than most. The nodes that 1DQ and E3OI are in are pretty great. We were in there last Monday and there were 3-4 thousand in local and it was running extremely smoothly, not even a ten percent tidi. 5:58.
Goons Now Looking for the Door
So, those big battles coming up are going to be intense, going to be tough, they’re going to be bloody, but they’re going to be good I would say and definitely something to look forward to. 6:07 In addition to that, Goons don’t really have that much left, so they’re looking for other things to do. It’s looking like they’re looking for the door. Any time your main lead FC is taking his SIG and is pulling away from the war and leading 30-man fleets, instead of harassing us or doing anything to stop us from burning shit down, you know you’re kinda burned out. And that’s basically what happened. Asher has deployed his SIG to Catch, in addition to Initiative, which you guys know about . . . and so Goons are looking for other ways to kind of fuck with us, kind of slow us down in any way possible.
Initiative has a . . . deployment [sound muffled] in Catch. When they did that move op we went and poked Fountain a little bit and instead of even attempting to defend Fountain, which is something they spent a lot of time retaking and building the infrastructure, they pinged their guys to move their ships into NPC stations and abandoned Fountain. So, they really do not want to be involved in this war anymore. They are looking to take the next step. They have always wanted to go back to Curse. This is something we’ve known. . . . Today we’re going to move a staging over there and go about the process of crushing this deployment in its infancy, just like we did when Initiative tried to do their stupid Esoteria deployment. 7:43
The general thing to take away is that these guys are looking for any out, really, and they are starting to strain a good bit. With the big battles coming up and with Goons and Initiative looking for any kind of opening, any spark, kind of poke at our edges, this is really the time to redouble our efforts and really push this thing through. It’s not going to be over once we take the 1DQ iHub and the E3OI iHub. They’re still gonna have a lot of Keepstars. The writing is going to be on the wall for them and we do believe you’ll start to see some bleeding after that. Initiative is losing corps at a pretty regular pace now. We think Goons will start to do that too once they experience the same hopelessness Initiative experienced a little while ago. 8:41
But, even once we clear those iHubs, there will still be some stuff to do, but I think we’ll be past the most tactically difficult battles once we clear those iHubs. Then, we can reasonably say we’re in the driver’s seat from that point. Still a lot of work to do, but at least we’ll be in the driver’s seat. And that’s kinda what we meant when we said, we really want to push this through, and you know, we’re looking at being on the cusp of being through this war, to an extent. 9:12
Legacy Must Redouble Efforts
So, we want to redouble our efforts. I’m going to reiterate what our stance is regarding death clones and jump clones and where ships should be and all that today, both for Legacy and for TEST. TEST is doing a little bit of a different move op from Legacy today. 9:31
We know it’s been a long war. I can say confidently now that all of you who have been here and have been involved in this war in any capacity have now participated in the most intense, largest, bloodiest, ruthless war in EVE history. There have been wars that have been slightly longer. There have been wars that have involved just as many alliances and as much of the game, but I don’t think there’s been anything to this fucking intensity. So this is that “I was there” moment that EVE talks about. You’ve all been a part of it. It’s not been glamorous at times. There’s been great battles; we’ve dunked Goons repeatedly; we’ve lost sometimes; we’ve won many times more. But it’s been a long war now. And it’s going to go on for at least a couple more months, unfortunately, or fortunately. 10:47
We do have some good battles coming up. We are pretty much in the driver’s seat. Once we’re past these two tough battles, we’ll definitely be in the driver’s seat.
Legacy Has Led the Greatest War in EVE History
I can say with 100% confidence that this will end up being the biggest and most important war in EVE history. It dwarfs everything that I’ve been a part of and I’ve been playing for 11 years. No, more than that actually, shit. It has definitely lived up to the hype here. So, being on the winning side of that, putting in the effort we’ve had, we started out this war holding Goons by attacking through regional gates with subcaps into their super fleets so that we could clear Initiative out of Fountain while defending all of our home space. No Goons incursions, or whatever you want to call it. Then, we built a 13-Keepstar chain to go all the way around their space and moved all our supers and titans through. We had to anchor five Keepstars just to get one down in Delve. We’ve killed trillions and trillions of ISK of their stuff. It’s been pretty incredible and it’s something that I sometimes think about some of the stuff we did at the beginning of the war and it seems like so long ago. It’s amazing how much has transpired. We are starting to get in view of the end of it and once it’s all said and done you’re gonna be happy you were a part of it. I think I’m already pretty thrilled with what we’ve been able to achieve. 12:34
It’s time to redouble our efforts. Get through these last couple big fights; you know, put in the work to get everything else cleared out. There’s really not much else to say about that. They’ve got two iHubs we need to clear out and then we need to shit on Initiative’s deployment in Catch. There’s really not much else to think about that. 13:00
Legacy Will Reorganize After the War
I can talk about post-war, though, at least give you a little bit of a preview of it. We had an alliance leadership meeting for Legacy yesterday. We’ve been having them for the last two months trying to craft what will be our post-war stance. It’s no secret to say Legacy, organizationally . . . there can be improvements made. Everyone can make improvements. There’s definitely some . . . you know, some pain points that we’ve learned about during this war. One of the good things to take away from this war, being the biggest war in EVE history, and probably the biggest war in EVE history for awhile, is that the lessons we have learned from this war, we can apply them for quite a long time. We didn’t know how our organizational structure would strain. It was doing great for awhile. And it’s still doing fine. Everyone, including Goons and Initiative are feeling the strain a little bit, just from the length of the war. The lessons we are learning from this we can apply, and kinda reorganize Legacy going forward, but we’re not going to be able to do too much of it during the war just because any drastic changes we made right now would kinda pause what we are able to do and kinda take away from our combat effectiveness. 14:19
Legacy Will Own Delve, Querious, Period Basis, Fountain, and all Its Current Holdings Too
But we do have some things we can announce today that are pretty exciting I think. Legacy will be taking Fountain, Delve, Querious, and Period Basis while maintaining all of the space that we currently hold. So we will be getting an additional four full regions. Every single Legacy alliance will be getting space in Delve, Querious, Period Basis, and Fountain. We will be divying it up as a coalition. Our intention there is to build a proper fortress. If Goons have shown us one thing, it’s that it’s incredibly difficult to invade Delve, Querious, and Period Basis as long as you don’t fuck it up and do an absolutely stupid defense plan. For those of you who aren’t aware, Querious is the key to holding Delve and Period Basis, not Delve. So, as long as you attempt to defend Querious, it’s an incredible fortress, it really is. If there’s one thing we learned . . . there’s really only one approach point through those regions. Clearly with the way CCP is going with the economy and bounty redistribution and all these mechanics we’ve been bitching about, three regions is not enough for the entirety of Legacy, or four, with Fountain included. 16:03
So there’s a reason we’re not giving up our space. We don’t want to give up any space. You know, we took it – we own it. But also we need the space to make sure everyone has enough ratting and mining and all of that. 16:18 We’ve become pretty adept with our dual staging, with jump clones and everything and we have some plans on how to manage both sides, we’ll call it the west side and the east side. . . . We’re not going to announce those specifically today because it’s still in the works a little bit and obviously there are still some game mechanics changes between now and the end of the war that CCP will throw on us without warning. But, we are pretty confident we can hold both (our old area and our new area) with dual stagings. It’s something we’ve become pretty good at. We do intend to create a fortress in Delve, Querious, and Period Basis that everybody has a home in that we can move our most critical and most vulnerable infrastructure into. We’re gonna want to do most of our super building in Delve, Querious, and Period Basis, for example, preferably all of it, but we can get to that point. 17:20
So, we’ve got what we think is a pretty good plan for the future. We think we’ve learned the lessons we need to learn from this war to kinda be ahead of the meta, as we always have with Legacy. We’ve been having a lot of success these past four or five years. We’ve pretty much won every war we’ve been in. Well, we have actually. The only one TEST loss is the one before Legacy. 17:50
Legacy is Ahead of the Curve
We’ve been pretty ahead of the curve and seeing which direction the game is going and understanding the meta and putting ourselves in a position for success. I think that’s something we’re going to continue to do with this plan we agreed to yesterday as a coalition leadership. Over the next couple months we will start shifting towards that. It’s just something to look forward to. 18:20
