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    Thursday, August 27, 2020

    Eve Online RIP Sprinkles! The abandoned Ogre who wasn't fast enough for the FC before warping the fleet out

    Eve Online RIP Sprinkles! The abandoned Ogre who wasn't fast enough for the FC before warping the fleet out


    RIP Sprinkles! The abandoned Ogre who wasn't fast enough for the FC before warping the fleet out

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 12:43 PM PDT

    When you finally buy that expensive ship, but are too afraid to fly it yet

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 05:56 PM PDT

    Why Goons are the "Good Guys" of Eve - An essay by Asher

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 01:41 PM PDT

    Quick note: This post took me a long time to write, many hours between conception, editing, and execution. If you would be so kind as to not downvote it strictly because you disagree with me, I'd appreciate it. If you think this is a low effort post, or doesn't contribute to discussion, then please do. This started out as more of a bullet point list of reasons but as I rewrote it became more of a story of my experiences as they relate to Goons. I hope you all enjoy it more this way.

    One of the conceits of the war from the PAPI front is that "Goons are the bad guys of Eve". I've found this narrative vexing, because over the last five years I think Goons have swung from comical Eve bad guys to the best of the large alliances in Eve. I'll explain why I believe this is so.

    But first let's address some things: One of the disadvantages of being around for so long is that we have to carry around all of the bad baggage from years past. There are a lot of "old twitter posts" some of which are pretty awful. Bad people, bad memes, and the like. Some of it is just stupid in retrospect, some of it deeply embarrassing.

    The positive news is that I think the alliance has become the leading example of what a large alliance should be in the game. Good to its members and a fun adversary to an outsider. Going back to 2015 Goons had gone through 1 "cultural revolution" which had defanged a lot of the casually terrible stuff that was common in Eve back then (ie: jewing was a common term for ratting/krabbing) but still had a lot of vestiges that wouldn't be fully swept away until cultural revolution 2 (where we probably landed on the side of too heavy handed, but that's a story for another day). However it was, in my opinion, peak "bad Goon" in terms of gameplay philosophy. Sion had just pushed the Viceroy plan - something I considered one of the most ill-conceived efforts to get content in quite a while. "Helldunks or blueballs" was the byword, and Reagalan snapping the phrase at some unremembered skirmish commander saying just that was the talk of the Eve subreddit. Spin was, in the most generous terms, pretty far-fetched. Line members were considered pretty dumb and the apparatchik were fairly devoted to passing down the party line.

    At the time I was an up-and-coming FC. I had already formed my Reavers SIG about a year before in Oct. 2014 and had won some heavily outnumbered fights against most expectations. I was getting a big push from alliance leadership and kept winning fights as I got sent out on mainfleets I was quickly got promoted into bigger roles to the point where I was running main fleets as the main FC. Laz was mostly AFK after winning B-R5 and trying to do the streamer thing, but still around for big fights. Not long after Vily left Goons. A few months later Endie, Elise and others would start aggressively lobbying me pretty hard to leave Goons and I started getting BIG CASH OFFERS on the table from other people as well. This was the start of the Casino War. At this point I think Mittens started sensing the sharks circling and promoted me to 'skymarshal'. This is a mostly tongue in cheek position but one that meant you were in charge of the Goon military.

    At this point I had a lot of problems with the way some things were being handled in the alliance military, but I was fully committed to making change from inside rather than leaving my group behind (I had only been playing Eve seriously since 2013, but I've been a Goon since the early 2000s). One of my biggest problems was the "helldunks or blueballs" philosophy. I thought it was a great way to win one war but a terrible way to retain members. During much of 2015 I had the feeling that we were rotten to the core, that our strength was mostly fleeting. Although there were some specific moments that I felt could have stopped the Casino War before it started, (mostly by counteracting SMA's mind boggingly bad decisions) I felt that theViceroy program and the disasterous lowsec campaign had already exposed a lot of our weakness to the whole galaxy.

    Despite the losses, the Casino War turned out to be a huge boon to Goonswarm and our allies that stuck with us. It got us out of Deklein into Delve which was (at the time) much better space. We would have never got rid of Deklein otherwise. It taught us a lot of lessons about sprawl and not fighting over-extended. It showed us the flaws in our organizational structure. But most importantly it opened minds to re-evaluating certain dearly held doctrinal beliefs. One that I wanted to challenge almost immediately was helldunks and blueballs. I felt that our guys being generally unchallenged lead to us having great numbers of fair weather friends who could be relied on for dunks but would split when the going got tough, both in Goons and throughout the other alliances in the CFC. In our exile to Saranen, we saw exactly that.

    My doctrinal belief was, and still is, that regularly placing your guys in tough positions results in better pilots and in people who are happier overall. We grow personally and as a group by overcoming challenges. A helldunk is a Pepsi Cola. A struggle overcome is a 14 year old scotch.

    After the Casino war we moved to Delve and were in pretty bad shape resource wise but you knew every person who stuck with you was true blue. I've never had more fun than my days in Saranen as the war wended its course to an end, and part of that reason was you knew that every person who was with you in Saranen would ride with you against all odds. I was determined to capture the 'Saranen Spirit' for people who were there and for those who would start playing or join us later.

    It took a while though. When we first arrived in Delve PGL followed us there with the goal of destroying us once and for all, but by this point there was no fat left. Every single person was battle hardened and the money and will to follow us had run out. We stopped his campaign pretty quickly.

    Change came slowly at first. We had a lot of wounds to lick, a lot of data to process and people were just tired. The first turning point against helldunks/blueballs came with our Hakonen deployment. We took a shot at Tribute with just carriers and dreads versus an enemy supercap force that clearly outnumbered us. It was a very fun deployment for us but we did eat a ton of negative publicity about how "bad" we were. I think it bothered Mittens a bit (maybe a lot) and I don't think he had yet realized the value we gained out of it.

    After seeing GOTG's impressive subcapital and supercapital contributions during the Hakonen deployment, we decided to deploy some of our combat SIGs to Pure Blind to begin harassing our enemies on that front, once again committing to an offensive in a deliberately handicapped fashion. For almost a year, we whittled down multiple alliances with relatively tiny subcapital fleets and the odd dreadbomb. All of this built up to a climax in 2017.

    X-47 was one of the most consequential fights in recent memory, and once again we put ourselves in a rough spot to get it. We started the titan fight with dead-even numbers against an enemy with Keepstar advantage and all that entails. Less remembered but even more significant was the oppressive tether doomsday bug/feature, which put our super fleet at a significant disadvantage. In the armor timer, we gave them the opening volley and it started off really poorly for us, but we ended up pulling out a victory. The hull timer was a much more lopsided victory in terms of Titan kills, , and the Keepstar death all but ended serious resistance in the war. Still, I remember the anxiety going into the fight, I don't want to sound over-dramatic but I spent the whole night before prowling my house, unable to sleep. I had figured out the value of the Imperium supercapital fleet and it was in the millions of dollars if you converted it to plex. It's a huge amount of pressure on the shoulders of the FC to know that if you mess up you could lose that for the people who put their trust in you. It's also a very small group of people in video game history who can make a statement like that so it's a fun and unique cadre to belong to and my respect to those of you who have shouldered that burden before.

    Throughout all of these campaigns, I think it became more and more clear that this new military philosophy was the superior one, and ditching the 'helldunk' strategy was the correct move. Over time I slowly pulled Mittens towards my view point on this - that there is something of more value than just numbers. Our doctrines started evolving too. This might sound comical, but for a long time Goons had avoided cap chains. It was thought that the Goon line member couldn't handle it. Now when I see our fleet spreading ewar really effectively, and our very effective cap chaining logi, and multiple FCs all doing different tasks, I can't help but smile. Hard work pays off.

    After X-47 we wrapped up that war and went home. We would come back in the not too distant future to finish the work we had started. We expected a stronger response in Tribute, but after an initial hard fight the regions were vacated and we glassed it. Unlike every other group in the game, we didn't immediately find some renters or delegate an underling to occupy the space. We left it fallow and a really healthy ecosystem of small alliances has flourished. We didn't know exactly what would happen in this space, but since we left Deklein we have very conspicuously and openly avoided taking space and sprawling out. And I was very satisfied to see what can happen when you leave some space open for anyone to use.

    After that last northern campaign, we went home again during the chaos era before we started our GEF campaigns the following year. Once again, we deployed against superior enemy numbers with capital superiority and fought outnumbered in two separate campaigns. At this point it felt like we had burnt away all vestiges of helldunks or blueballs.

    Coming into July I had this short convo with Mittens, and I think it illustrates how our relationship has grown and the trust that you can build even with people who initially had vastly opposing views on how things should be run: https://i.imgur.com/YyIE1bs.png

    I'd like to address a few more points that I think lie strongly in our favour: Supercaps – Goons have been opposed to them for as long as I can recall. All our CSMs have publicly come out in favour of them being nerfed, even though it's long been to our strategic benefit for them to be strong. Over the last few years we've lost people in comparison relative to other alliances. Some people have aged out, some didn't like the way we fought wars and went to climes that agreed with them more, but we've always had the most supers and we've constantly argued that they are unhealthy for the game. I have personally lobbied for them to be nerfed, in public and in focus groups with Devs, because it's our belief that they are unhealthy for the game. Part of why we are being attacked is because our enemies believe that dreads can be used against titans much more effectively than in the past, and they can flex their numbers advantage in that area on us. If we end up losing because of this, we'll have lobbied ourselves into that position.

    I think part of the gulf in perspective between us and our enemies, especially the TAPI FCs is that they just fundamentally view the game differently than we do. But at one point we were much closer. Vily left in 2015 in the middle of helldunk/blueball and copious spin and he's brought the Goons culture of 2015 to Test. There's a Test poster – who I won't name because I'm pretty sure he gets off on being recognized – who has been making the argument that Test are more Goonie than Goons. And to him I say: I agree with you. Test have inherited the mantle of Goons and we became something else. Vily is Goons without the growth. PGL tried to destroy us in 2016 and thought we'd cave in like a rotten pumpkin because that's what happened with his alliance. When we didn't I believe he was shocked but he thinks it will be different this time. Well, I'm going to be the bearer of bad news for him because this group has been through much worse than we had in 2015. We have a lot of people who have been fighting consistently against people who had every advantage over them and they've come out the other end stronger. Will it be enough to beat 3x our numbers? Who knows, but I know these guys will be with me no matter what happens.

    I've been hearing the same story over and over in my fleets, I have pretty open comms (sorry Euros that I annoy with this policy) and people have been more reflective as of late. And I kept hearing the story from one guy after another about how they thought that Goons were the bad guys until they joined them. So tonight I asked my fleet to X up if they thought or had heard that Goons were the bad guys before they joined, this was the result: https://i.imgur.com/mJCEiS7.gif

    I've been pondering this, and wondering why people would join the bad guys. Every story varied but often people had tried other things and were unhappy and Goons were an unhappy choice initially but once they were in they saw how things actually worked and were happy with it. Some ended up by chance through a corp moving or just a friend invited them and that overcame their doubts. The point was that even though they heard we were the bad guys once they were here and got to experience our culture they saw it was different than what they had elsewhere. That's partly why I think a lot of our guys are really passionate, they feel unfairly attacked.

    Now I've come a long way, but I want to address the 5 ton elephant in the room: The Mittani. I'm very aware that he said something stupid almost a decade ago. I addressed my thoughts in much more depth here. I don't believe it was said with malice, but it still was an awful thing to say. However in my time interacting with him he's always been a very passionate guy but I've never seen him suggest an untoward thing. He wants to win, he wants to use whatever legal way possible to do it and he's a guy who's shown a lot of growth personally. If he wanted to do something I thought was immoral I would hear about it and I wouldn't support it, but I've never once been put in that position.

    I think a lot of you don't understand that he's a wrestling promoter. He can't help but play a heel. He's fantastic at it. And he's fantastic for the game, lots of you guys on the other side want to win so you can wipe the smug smile off his face. This is awesome. More leaders should be like this, there are a few I really would like to do the same to (or have done in the past) and it's great to have people that motivate you to fight them. The worst thing for this game would be a bunch of staid boring diplomats who didn't inspire any vitriol. This game is about fighting after all.

    Another good thing about Goons and the Imperium is our diplomatic stance, although I don't want a bunch of diplomats running the game I am very keen on keeping our words and Goons have done this more than any other group. Sister Bliss was talking with me about why Init has stuck with Goons and he said something about how every other group in the game had promised Init the world then screwed them when it was convenient and Goons were the only one who stuck to what they said and he values that.

    A few quick more bullet points:

    • Goons do not like renting. Of all the big alliances we've had the smallest rental program, we only reluctantly got into it when OTEC was broken and had to secure some income. We closed our rental program, but we kept out word and grandfathered our old renters so that they could stay and not lose what they'd agreed to. I think renting is a net bad thing for the game, actually very bad so I'm proud of this one. Culturally Goons have always opposed rental programs.

    • We forced the game into taking on all players regardless of skill point level. Groups like Brave, Horde, etc followed in our footsteps on this one. I firmly believe that getting players into groups that have the bandwidth to teach them the game with proven programs that know how to retain people is the best way to do it, rather than just hoping they join random highsec corp #1850 and hoping they aren't run by toxic incompetent people.

    • Goons don't sprawl. We've held 4 regions but 2 of those were more out of necessity than any desire to hold them. In one region we did the Querious Fight Club which has launched over 20 corps into nullsec alliances around the game or independently. Right now Pandafam covers 12 or 13 regions and is renting out many of them to aggressively botted alliances. If you look at the MER Frat is making more money than any other nullsec group and it's not even close. Because of how densely packed we are our space is terrible for botting, probably the worst space in the game for it, which is another tick for us.

    • This is a personal one but Goon doctrines are more interesting. Screw Munnins, down with boring arty doctrines. I'm really happy we've been iconoclastic in our doctrinal decisions and have seen success with those choices.

    So, that about wraps up my voluminous tome. What should you do with this information? Well, I hope no matter what side you were on you found it an interesting read. I'm not trying to convince anyone to not fight us. Jay and I were talking right as the war was starting about how we were in the perfect spot, no one expects us to win so if we do it's more credit to us but if we lose it's to be expected. If we end up back in an NPC station then I get to just replay my favorite time in Eve ever. But I hope I have shown you a little bit about why I believe Goons are one of the best alliances in the game right now, thanks for reading.

    submitted by /u/Eve_Asher
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    Lowsec Subway Map

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 05:18 AM PDT

    Titan Of the Floodplains

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 10:37 AM PDT

    Last guy had great luck... any good stainless cleaning tips? Brand new Allclad, first use, cooked with a little oil and this won't come off...

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 06:55 PM PDT

    Into The Dumpster

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 12:04 PM PDT

    CCP knows eve like no other........

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 12:28 PM PDT

    insider video of TEST super cap move op to Delve

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 08:12 PM PDT

    Brave - This is Not a SOTA

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 07:13 AM PDT

    Critical Hi-sec Trade Routes Endangered Again!

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 04:01 PM PDT

    Hello my fellow capsuleers. I am here reporting that the system of Bei is now under triglavian invasion!

    While this system is Not a liminality candidate it is nonetheless a critical choke point on the new "silk road" trade route (and incidentally, part of Brave's apparent new "30+ jumps longer hi-sec logistics route".

    If Bei is taken by Triglavian forces, it will result in a minor victory - While this will not force the system into "fake nullsec" like niarja, within a few days triglavian forces will install their npc fleets and sentry guns on the system's stargates, making it extremely dangerous for anybody not triglavian-aligned or cloaky/instawarp to travel through - these rats can and will tackle you, and are more than willing to give you a seat on the pod express. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that attacking the sentry guns spawns large response fleets, and thus poking the guns to trigger the fleets while aligned out and warping off is an excellent way to make sure the gates stay camped full time.

    Should Bei fall, there will be no "safe" hisec route between jita and amarr except for triglavian-aligned pilots. You might say "but i can just get friendly with trigs on my freighter alt, right?". The reality, however, is not so simple. There are already edencom minors and/or fortresses on the route, and it is not reasonably possible to avoid being kill on sight to both at once. Even if you were to make a triglavian-positive freighter pilot, you would still have to contend with the edencom systems (which are mechanically symmetrical, and will happily dunk your triglavian freighter pilot).

    Perhaps nullsec will get involved in this one again? Goonswarm, for instance, was a key member of the battle for Niarja - allegedly under the motivation of "fuck brave". While not another Niarja, Bei would certainly be an opportunity to the triglavian forces to create even more headaches for Brave shipping, as per the discord pings posted here when Niarja came under attack.

    At the time of this posting, Bei is currently at 54% Edencom and rising - if the triglavians (or other entities) want to contest this one, they had better deploy here fast!

    EDIT 1: Entities for both sides are entering the system, but Edencom still appears to hold the upper hand, allegedly being the majority of the now approximately 120 pilots in local. Which way will this one go?

    EDIT 2: Now at 56%E in system, local stabilizing in the 115-125 range

    EDIT 3: as of 23:47, system is now 57%E. It is unclear if their rate of rise is slowing, but the system of Wirashoda is now first liminality and it is expected that many of the pro-trig forces there will be deploying to Bei with only a small group left to finish off Wirashoda. Local is now over 130

    UPDATE (00:15): Local rising, approx 150. system appears to be stalling at 57%E. Perhaps the rise in local is due to the pro-trig fleet redeploying from Wirashoda

    UPDATE (01:30) Local has exceeded 170, system resumed edencom drift - Current Status 61%E. Not looking good for the Trig forces, but they have a historically weak USTZ. More updates as it happens, or until I sleep

    submitted by /u/Arkamenitas
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    Serious post: Stay safe in the South U.S. over the next week or two

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 11:14 AM PDT

    It looks like storm season has hit the south coast of the U.S. again.

    https://preview.redd.it/poce3iid1ej51.png?width=1100&format=png&auto=webp&s=2a8710de1924be509860963508e9431650a7e155

    Whatever side your on in this war. Stay safe. When its over, hope to see you on the battlefield.

    <3

    submitted by /u/Coffeeaficionado_
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    World War Bee II: Electric Boogaloo by the numbers

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 04:38 PM PDT

    You know they say all alliances are created equal, but you look at Panfam and you look at Goons and you can see that statement is NOT TRUE! See Panfam is a supercap freak, and we are not normal! So you got a 25 percent at best at beat us! And then you add INIT to the mix? You...the chances of winning drasticy go down. See, the 3-Way at WWB II, you got a 33 and a third chance of winning. But Panfam! Panfam's got a 66 and two thirds chance of winning, cuz INIT KNOOOWS they can't beat us, and they's not even gonna try. So, Goons, you take your thirty three and a third chance minus my twenty five percent chance (if we was to go one on one) and you got an eight and a third chance of winning at WWB II. But then you take my 75 perchance-chance of winnin' (if we was to go one on one), and then add 66 and two thirds…percents, Panfam's got a 141 2/3 chance of winning at WWB II! Señor Asher? The numbers don't lie, and they spell disaster for you at WWB II!"

    submitted by /u/Panther_X
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    They really did it tho.

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 10:51 AM PDT

    CCPLz: Minmatar need a tracking bonused projectile battleship that doesn't cost 2b

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 07:19 AM PDT

    Short of the Vargur, Minmatar don't have any projectile battleships with a tracking bonus.

    When comparing the Navy battleships, all races get a Navy Battleship with a tracking/application bonus:

    Amarr = Apocalypse Navy Issue

    Caldari = Raven Navy Issue

    Gallente = Megathron Navy Issue

    All T1 and Navy Minmatar projectile battleships lack an application bonus. If we go by other Minmatar Navy ships, the Firetail, Stabber Fleet Issue and Hurricane Fleet Issue all have tracking bonuses, but for some reason, this hasn't carried over into the battleship line.

    The Tempest Fleet Issue

    In the past, i've suggested (and others as well) that the Tempest Fleet Issue should get a tracking bonus along with some additional changes (You can read this article I made awhile ago on this topic for the juicier details: https://newedenreport.com/2019/04/05/navy-ship-and-pirate-ship-progression/ ).

    While, ideally, i'd like to see the Tempest Fleet Issue get the bonus as it is Minmatar's projectile focused battleship, there are also others who feel the Tempest FI is in a good spot for fleet engagements and a good alternative to Machariels, so changing its bonuses to include a tracking bonus and losing one of its damage bonuses would not be ideal for fleet comps.

    The Typhoon Fleet Issue

    Instead of changing the Tempest FI which may have some niche in fleet warfare, why not improve the TyFI's currently useless gun bonus and actually allow it to fill in a niche.

    The current TyFI's gun bonus is useless when compared to other projectile battleships. It only has a 7.5% RoF bonus per level, in comparison, the Tempest and Tempest FI both have 7.5% RoF bonuses and a 5% damage bonus per level with the same gun slots. The Tempests are superior projectile damage platforms, and they also get the same dual utility highs as the typhoon FI. The Tempest FI and Typhoon FI also have comparable speeds.

    The Typhoon FI already has a 125mb drone bandwidth, which as i discussed in the NER article linked above, was needed to offset the dps loss if we removed one of the Tempest FI's damage bonuses. So, the TyFI is already covered on that front and means less work for CCP.

    The Typhoon Fleet Issue Change

    With CCP's changes to the VNI and adding multiple bonuses to achieve a design goal, why couldn't the same be done with the TyFI? For example, we can update the TyFI with these bonuses to fill a niche in the minmatar projectile line-up (and also improve its existing missile bonus at the same time)

    Typhoon Fleet Issue:

    7.5% bonus to heavy, cruise and torpedo missile damage and torpedo and cruise missile explosion velocity per level

    7.5% bonus to large projectile rate of fire and large projectile tracking speed per level

    This would provide 2 bonuses for each weapon system and actually allow the TyFI to utilize its gun bonus to fill in a needed niche. This would also provide Minmatar with a tracking/application focused Navy Battleship just like all the other races and bring up a currently underwhelming projectile bonus and making it much more desirable (even at a loss of dps compared to the tempests).

    submitted by /u/Stitch_K
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    some stabber pvp

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 03:21 PM PDT

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yZGqs4GMmK6X0zwOO_zak7IEXgErHZQn/view?usp=sharing

    Vid is NFSL for those who are sensitive to feed and poor piloting

    submitted by /u/Chinguatles
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    Structure deployment is to easy!

    Posted: 27 Aug 2020 01:38 AM PDT

    This is partially to address the citadel spam, but also the problem how easily you can deploy structures.
    Yesterday we have tackled enemy industrial, but before it died pilot managed to quickly deploy citadel it was hauling.

    Just few clicks and it was anchoring in space.
    This is simply insane how easy is the process.

    My proposal on this is simple.
    Instead of just quick deploy & forget method we should move to something looking like the old outpost anchoring methods.

    1. You launch the structure that becomes "can in space"
    2. You fill this can in the rest of the materials
    3. You click anchor when all required materials are provided

    Same process that is currently for the planetary customs offices

    What will this change?

    If you want to deploy a fortizar you need to drop a structure and then provide additional input sitting at 0 on the structure with quite probably additional industrial ships.
    Maybe doing multiple trips.

    submitted by /u/HisAnger
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    Niarja doe's it again (Victim calls out covid)

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 06:16 AM PDT

    GIF Request: Dude jumps to playing Eve Online right as he comes home from work

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 10:50 AM PDT

    Google wont help

    submitted by /u/Siggward_
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    Noble tireless workers or cutesy short-lived drones in service of a Queen? You decide...

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 05:09 PM PDT

    Are Drone Horde sites worth looting

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 01:04 PM PDT

    I notice the towers drop cargo containers. Are they worth looting?

    submitted by /u/Correct-Ad-6614
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    New Game?

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 03:08 PM PDT

    It looks like CCP's Shanghi office are hiring people for a 4X mobile game.. which might be to help net ease with echoes.. but..

    submitted by /u/DaReaperJE
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    Footage of the fight in 1-SMEB last night

    Posted: 26 Aug 2020 11:16 AM PDT

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