If Ever There Was A Time To Blog!

Well this is the time I suppose, if I was ever going to resurrect my blog and start writing again now would be the time.

I've not had much that's inspired me to write a lot in Eve recently, I know there have been campaigns, there have been battles and there have been moments that should inspire the creative juices but if I'm honest something has been lacking.

The fact that the missing 'something' has returned with this ASCN war is probably most evident in the fact that it's made me want to blog again. Little wonder then that I'm up at 5am having been writing all night despite having to get up for work at 7am (although the fact that my computer doesn't like Eve at the moment despite being allegedly fixed at the weekend, may have something to do with the fact that I am writing rather than playing!).

So I'll be adding entries to my blog as often as I can during this war, the first two having been posted tonight.

I'm going to start with saying that all of my blog entries regarding the ASCN war are going to be my own opinion and I fully understand the risks involved with objective reporting of events. I do not propose to write my memoirs of this war with a deliberate slant, far from it, contrary to how our enemies would have you believe it I propose to quite simply tell the truth.

BoB are quite well known for our forum propaganda so this is a point worth dwelling over. To begin with BoB's forum propaganda from my perspective as one of the 5 CEO's in the alliance (SirMolle of Evolution, Galavet of Reikoku, Tholarim of DICE, TWD of TAOSP and myself of BNC and BNC.E) is based on one precept and only one, the effective use of facts to expose our enemies shortcomings.

We do not deal in lies. Our members would recognise them for what they are. Not only would our members recognise them if we told lies but they would also then question our ability to lead the alliance and undoubtedly expose us as the frauds that we would be if we did. BoB has a remarkably open communications structure, we do not censor our members on the Eve-O forums, we do not censor our members on our own internal boards. 90%+ of our decisions as an alliance are made within an IRC channel that all of our Directors have access to and we poor neglected hard working CEO's (:P) very rarely keep information back from our Directors and management teams.

In short we have no need (and I personally have no need regarding my own corp) to lie or missrepresent the truth about how our alliance is performing in Eve. To lie about the way we are performing would mean we are lying to ourselves and not acknowledging our defeats and attempting to improve.

I have an anecdote regarding the early stages of the Great Northern War to share with you that illustrates how we do not lie to each other. During the seige of BKG m0o, RKK and Evolution were permanatly engaged with PA camping BKG and fighting as soon as the enemy stuck it's head out in local. Other allied forces were directed elsewhere in the north. BNC were still a part of NORAD and because we couldn't fly with m0o (we were very anti-pirate in those days before we grasped the new model of conflict within Eve i.e. inter alliance warfare) were assigned to empire wars against targeted PA corps as well as to hold the EC-P8R corridor.

Following a couple of very successful empire space campaigns against PA corps we moved back to Pure Blind and to our EC-P8R operations. It soon became apparent that we could be better used elsewhere (as Pure Blind was becoming increasingly less hostile) so we were assigned to lock down Venal whilst RKK, m0o and Evolution held BKG. So BNC moved en-masse to Venal.

We lost a shit load of ships. There was no hiding the fact to begin with that the PA corps left in Venal gave BNC an incredibly hard time, we lost more than we killed. In head to head encounters with equivalent fleets we more than held our own, in fact the BNC Amarr Navy gank squad was to be feared back then, we used to hunt with 6-10 Armageddons and 1-3 Apocolypses and could alpha strike anything that came within locking range. However, we had a lot of noob pilots who did not know how to survive in 0.0 space and were ruining our kill stats and boosting the PA's morale.

Bearing in mind that BNC had just come out of a successful war against RSA/COD/FE, were on a high and that myself as CEO and Doctorgonzo as COO had effectively run the NORAD alliance we were unused to being told we weren't hacking it and were very unused to facing up to any shortcomings (we simply hadn't been adequately tested at that point) it was quite a surprise for us to discover that most Evolution pilots thought we were useless noobies.

They were of course right and Molle soon made a point of telling us.

This was weeks before BoB was created and BNC were included anyway. Molle gave DG and I a dressing down about our corporation such as I haven't received since I was in the British Army and forgot to polish my boots! He was right with everything he said. Several weeks later we were officially in BoB anyway.

Why were we allowed into the alliance? You could ask Molle, Galavet, the CEOs of Ruffnecks, m0o and ATUK to get their views but I'll give you mine. We accepted the facts as presented to us and we did something about them. More to the point we booted over 100 characters from the corp who couldn't hack living in 0.0 space, we got even more active in fighting our opponents, we stopped losing ships and we killed more. In short we addressed what we had to address.

BNC has progressed to be a full member of BoB in the months and years since the GNW, we have consistently performed equally as well as the other corps in the alliance and at times outperformed them. Why have we been able to do this? Simply because someone took the time to honestly tell us that we needed to improve, so we have.

So how is that relevant to an opening discussion about me updating my blog about the ASCN war?

It is relevant because it illustrates the fact that right from day one BoB as an alliance has never shirked from telling each other what the score is, we have never felt the need to lie about our performance and as illustrated by BNC in this particular example we have always taken steps immediately to move ourselves forwards, to evolve and to succeed in the face of adversity.

ASCN do not do this.

ASCN's leadership, as I will go on to demonstrate in future blogs about the war, continue to lie to their members regarding how the war is going, they make spurious claims about their success, about their kill ratios and about their progress.

I've decided to restart my blog in order to make a record about the ASCN war from the perspective of a BoB CEO so that unfettered by the moderation of the Eve-O forums I can report what is actually going on.

I will no doubt at times fall foul of embelishment but I do not mean to.

I will no doubt suffer from the bias of an involved party but I do not mean to.

I will do my best to be as objective as I can be.

I will not discuss strategy, tactics or how our Fleet Commanders win specific engagements exept in the broadest terms, I don't want to give away trade secrets! I will however explain how events are unfurling from our broad perspective.

Here commences my record of the war between two of Eve's largest and greatest alliances.

Enjoy the read as much as I enjoy the writing.

Blacklight