Only thing this proves is that the problem of gigantic blocks rolling over everybody in their path now extends to wormhole space.
Sure, there was seeding in both, but in the end there was only something like 15-20 caps seeded in Nova and they didn't win the battle. That battle was largely won by a small group of the prevalent untouchable meta at the time: slippery pete's, all of which fit through a single hole anyway.
I find the logistics of seeding 650 battleships and the infrastructure to support them in a hole much more interesting than rage rolling relatively few capitals into a high class hole.
Disclaimer: I won Eve shortly after the Nova eviction because I just didn't have time anymore after graduating and starting work.
Lol, is this what players call leaving? I like this.
They've arguably had the most strategically advantageous position in the game for years now, and have exerted a lot of control over all of J-space.
Wormhole mechanics heavily favor the defender, and they have the most lucrative resource nodes in the game.
If we want to discuss real estate, stratification, and tiny renter alliances getting rolled or Borg'd, okay. But Hard Knocks does not fit in here.
Eh, how do you figure? According to dotlan they're number 11 for space held [1] and number 8 [2] for total number of members.
http://evemaps.dotlan.net/alliance/systems
http://evemaps.dotlan.net/alliance/memberCount
Or are you just bitter vetting in which case carry on.
"Over 550 members of The Initiative logged in to answer the alliance’s call to battle. Elsewhere in EVE, allied fleet commanders in The Imperium and in Snuffed Out were asked to provide additional numbers to help the operation."
The Imperium is a coalition of corps with the goons but it's not exclusively made up of goons as far as I know. So it's kinda of disingenuous to dismiss this as a goon op when they weren't directly responsible for it.
Wasn't wormhole space designed to give smaller alliances a refuge from the bigger nullsec alliances? If it hasn't been formulated already, someone should come up with a law about Eve Online. Any game mechanic designed to keep gankers from messing up your stuff or large alliances from taking over will be subverted, or something like that.
The next question becomes: what possible protections could a WH alliance have against such an attack (or is there anything CCP should change to mitigate the math on such an attack---for one thing, it's a little odd that you can make a freighter un-attackable by logging out with its pilot, squirreling those assets away in-game indefinitely; maybe the balance of power needs to be changed on how freighters warp out at logoff?)
It's actually pretty hard to seed such a big ship in a wormhole, which is why they had to time it for when HK had a small presence. People that live in wormholes tend to obsessively dscan (kind of like a medium-distance radar that lets you see when ships are somewhere nearby you) and rapidly scan down new signatures (which can be PVE sites or new wormholes that people could be bringing things through). On top of that, big ships like freighters are slow to warp and hence quite susceptible to being caught on the way in.
In the freighter example, in order to safe logoff as you describe one has to be uncloaked and relatively stationary (ie: not warping around) for 60s (longer if they've attacked or been attacked recently). This is quite a vulnerable time for such a large (and hence easily scannable) ship. A well skilled player in a well specced ship (like most higher-level wormhole players will be and have) can scan down, warp to, and attack (giving a 15 min logoff timer) such a big ship well within that 60s if they are paying attention.
Removing the option for people to safe logoff in dangerous space would heavily discourage exploration of basically anywhere outside of high-sec which, imo, is where the majority of interesting content in the game is.
Still, it's a hair-raising 60 seconds. ;)
It's a game of cat and mouse, where the mouse can sit afk with a cloak on for however long they like until they think the cat is bored or not paying attention. Also worth noting another trick if you have reliable internet is to stay afk cloaked until the daily downtime logs you off. This way it's impossible to be scanned down because everyone gets kicked from the server at the same time.
But I'm glad Eve exists. As long as the griefers are playing Eve and griefing each other, they aren't playing (or at least aren't focusing on) all the other games.
OP isn't mentioning the hundreds of freighters worth of material that init manufactured and then spirited into the wormhole over an entire year without getting caught (either in transit through multiple wormholes or from spies sniffing out what they were up to). Freighters are not dainty snowflakes, one even getting sighted would have been disastrous since it's presence would have immediately alerted hard knocks to what was going on (there's literally no reason anyone would ever run a freighter through multiple wormholes except if they were setting up for an eviction).
Goons helped put asses in seats for the week the op was going on but what init pulled off over the course of a year is astounding. It also puts the obnoxious wormholer holier-than-thou 0.0-players-are-spod-brains space obnoxiousness they've spun as long as I've played the game to shame.