Declaring War on Providence

  
Last night, the members of the Imperium gathered together to hear our much anticipated war plans on Providence Bloc. This war has been expected and foretold since before the Aegis patch changed sov warfare from the aging Dominion style of gathering giant blobs to bash structures to the almost Factional Warfare-like nodes of today. All of Eve’s nullsec populations have been awaiting this conflict with varying degrees of patience. Whether people are rooting for the Imperium, or decrying them as an axis-of-evil-space-terrorist organization, nearly everyone interested in sov warfare has been eagerly anticipating The Imperium’s first foray into this new era of war. The plan was laid out over Imperium Mumble, safe and secure from the prying ears of enemies and ne’er do wells.  So of course within hours, the war council, in its entirety, was uploaded to SoundCloud for all of New Eden to hear and pick apart. This was expected and even planned for in the last part of the announcement, since there’s absolutely no way that an organization as big as The Imperium can be completely without spies and leaks.

The Plan

The Imperium aspires to be General Sherman from the American Civil War, marching through the enemy’s villages and cities, burning their crops, razing their towns and sowing their fields with salt. The overall goal is to roll into Providence, and set everything on fire. Then, rather than watching it burn, The Imperium intends to turn around and head home having caused a ludicrous amount of damage both in ISK and in effort required to repair. Imperium pilots will be separated and deployed at a corporate level. Each corporation will be assigned a constellation, and beyond that the alliance level management ends. The doctrine is simply to exist in space causing chaos, destruction, and havoc. The end game is to blow up the hostile Infrastructure Hubs, and then retreat. The goal is not to engage with massive blobs and the overwhelming force of The Imperium’s super-capital fleet, but to abuse the smaller gang fights that the new Sov system is supposed to support. Imperium pilots will be encouraged to find a system, and start ‘living’ there, running constant search and destroy missions for anyone ratting or mining in space. While this is happening, a larger fleet will find a chokepoint in the constellation and set up a blockade to prevent any reinforcements from coming in to support the systems. So at a corporate level, the attackers will more closely resemble the group of british commandos “Inglorious Basterds” is based upon rather than Gen. Sherman on his “March to the sea.” By the time the command nodes spawn, the goal is for there to be little to no resistance. Command nodes will be flipped and infrastructure hubs will be destroyed. Ihubs are estimated to be roughly 500 million ISK individually, which should lead to upwards of 500 billion ISK destroyed across the entire campaign. On top of the financial damage, each ihub requires several hours of work to replace, and the loss of the system’s strategic index values will cause massive vulnerability windows and even more work to raise.

‘Why pick on Providence?’

Providence is the best possible testing ground for Fozziesov warfare. They have a large tract of densely occupied space and are more than willing to fight for it even against overwhelming numbers. Most importantly, it’s space that The Imperium under no circumstances wants to keep. This allows pilots to go in, destroy everything that is worth destroying and leave without any regret. This war will not include centralized doctrines or intensely researched ship combinations.  Each corporation inside of the alliance is being asked to bring to bear whatever it feels is the best option for engaging in these tactics. The intent is to create the doctrine for Fozziesov in a “trial by fire” manner in Providence. Some systems will not be taken, and some constellations may even resist, but that is completely expected. From the successes and failures of this incursion, the new Imperium doctrines will emerge. Sovereignty warfare under the Aegis-sov rules seems to promote a style of gameplay that favours a lightning-quick blitz as opposed to the former Dominion-sov style of setting up a staging area, moving all of your assets into the area and trying to slug it out with the largest swarm of ships you can field. Structure grinding is a thing of the past, and it won’t be coming back. According to Imperium leadership, the best way to learn the new system is a trial by fire, working within the rules of the new system and not simply voiding the new rules with a blob of capital ships.   In addition, the people of Providence have so far refused to lift the veil from their eyes and swear fealty to Maximilian Singularity, the true heir to the Amarr Empire. Until the backwards heretics deny the false empress, The Imperium and its pilots have a moral duty to uphold.  Should the war-weary in CVA bend the knee, I’m sure Maximilian and The Mittani can negotiate a cease-fire.
Tags: Aegis soverignty, cfc, providence, Sarin, The Imperium

About the author

Sarin Blackfist

Sarin Blackfist is a linemember with Karmafleet, part of the Imperium.