The Providence Hubris
Forlorn Wongraven
These are the common tales told about Providence. There is one blemish however: it is all a lie.
Pandemic Legion is currently on a Rapid Deployment staging from Assah. If you are unfamiliar with this concept, each pilot takes one carrier loaded with ships of the currently used doctrines while leaving the vast majority of supercapitals at home. We use roaming doctrines and shy away from using capitals. We use SBU and sov timers to generate fights when the local residents avoid fighting against us. Rapid Deployments are not mandatory in any way as well so you can find a good number of PL pilots remaining around in Fortress Amamake.Providence is as rich as any other region as far as moon goo is concerned, although not all moons are listed on DOTLAN. There are at least three R64’s in Providence that mystically do not appear on any official list – I know this because I fueled those POSes for some time in 2010. Additionally there is a good chance that the Rubicon patch added more R64s to Providence as 227 new moons were seeded in New Eden. There are enough R16s and R32s to maintain a healthy network of reaction chains as well. As there is no real manager of such income, many corps and alliances inflate their own wallets while any chance of proper region-wide SRP is lost. Some corps and alliances offer an internal SRP but with no checks and balances a lot of ISK is landing in personal wallets. For example, CVA has a tiny SRP wallet that covers doctor losses only.
When you look at EVE 3rd party forums or reddit, you will read that Pandemic Legion is fully deployed and plans to destroy Providence. Also we are dropping supercapitals everywhere and harassing the poor residents. There is a lot of internal drama leaking to those forums which indicates a divided Providence overall. Unlike CFC or N3, the Provi bloc lacks a cohesive narrative – alliances are looking down at each other and always point out what others are doing wrong. Alliances are losing assets, but at the same time shy away from fighting, mining and building Ruptures and Caracals they sell overpriced to the PvPers which eventually get wiped out by Pandemic Legion. While everyone screams how they live, breath and die for Providence, it is mostly for show. Many secretly backstab, steal and take advantage of one other as long as it’s not too obvious. There are a few honest idealists among them though.
The reason why Providence still exists is that almost every entity uses this region to entertain their pilots since alliances there will often only field cheap T1 fleet doctrines but you can catch the 2b ISK Marauder or the unscouted Freighter. Until you get trapped and camped you will have a good roaming experience. The day that CCP allows destruction of player outposts will be the day many decent players that started in Providence but over time moved on to other alliances will bond again to put an end to the endless station spam still going on there. Hopefully decent newbie friendly alliances will find a place there. It will be a good day.
About the author
Forlorn Wongraven
PL pilot, 2013 alliance tournament winner and Eve financier extraordinaire, what Forlorn doesn't know about Eve probably isn't worth knowing
