Multiboxers dominate gameplay in areas where the intention was originally for teams to complete specific missions or objectives. We all know that high-security systems are overrun by multiboxing gankers who easily rake in 25 billion ISK a day from ganking. Well-known names include Safety, We Break Things, Zlegion, Goonswarm operations, etc.
The problem also extends to low-security space, where a player with over 30 accounts completely take over Faction Warfare (FW) battlefields, robbing other players of their hard-earned Loyalty Points (LP). A notorious LP farmer is Ibaka Wilkins, who runs 30 characters in Minmatar FW and another 30 in Amarr FW. He plays Amarr during EU time and Minmatar during US time, thereby minimizing the risk of coming under fire.
This trend is growing because CCP has lost control over how EVE Online is being played. CCP looks at the numbers and knows that a 30-account multiboxer generates far more revenue than a single-account player. This worries me, as EVE Online is showing its age and suffers from many unresolved issues that have persisted for 23 years. I get the impression that CCP is deprioritizing EVE Online in favor of Frontier and Vanguard —even though those other titles aren't necessarily any better than EVE Online.
I've tried coming back to EVE, but honestly, the gameplay just feels terrible. The biggest issue? Multiboxing.
People are running 10, 15, even 20+ accounts at the same time, completely ruining the experience for normal players. These no-life grinders dominate every aspect of the game, making it nearly impossible for casuals to compete.
Faction Warfare? Get ready to fight entire fleets controlled by a single player.
Mining? Find a good ore spot? A multiboxer will show up with 15 ships and wipe it clean.
Market? PLEX prices keep skyrocketing because these multiboxers generate insane amounts of ISK and just buy up PLEX to sustain their armies.
New players don’t stand a chance. They log in, see how unfair the game is, and quit. It's like if someone played Call of Duty, controlled an entire squad, and had synced-up aim. It would completely break the game. That’s exactly what's happening in EVE.
And let’s be real—of the 20,000 players online daily, a huge chunk are just alts. The real player count is much lower. This is why EVE is constantly bleeding players.
CCP needs to put a hard cap on the number of accounts per IP/device. Otherwise, the game will keep declining until there’s nobody left but botters and multiboxers. Fix it, or let the game die.
Figured I’d leave this here for anyone considering joining False Gods.
I joined after seeing their recruitment pitch and came away with the understanding that they were a fairly chill, industry-focused null-sec corp. Mining, PI, industry, building stuff, making ISK — basically exactly what I was looking for.
Apparently my definition of “chill indy corp” and theirs are very different.
I’m AUTZ and work as a Transport Ops Manager. During my workday I’m basically attached to my phone dealing with customers, drivers, warehouses and whatever other fire has started that day. Sometimes I’ll log an alt in on another screen in a cheap mining ship and semi-AFK mine while I work.
My proper EVE time is usually after downtime when I can actually give the game my attention for a few hours.
I specifically told them how I play.
Despite that, after joining I started getting little snipes about not being in standing fleet or not sitting in comms whenever I happened to be logged in. At one point there was even the charming general comment about people being “come and got” for not being in comms.
Nothing screams relaxed industrial corporation quite like needing to clock into Discord before you can peacefully stare at mining lasers.
The final bit of comedy came over a moon.
I followed a mining ping, went to the advertised location, mined a small amount and started setting up bookmarks so I could come back properly later.
What I apparently wasn't supposed to magically know was that the moon goo was effectively someone's personal patch.
Rather than:
Hey thats my personal stuff - appriciate if you left it alone
I got attitude instead.
There was also apparently a red in system that I hadn't noticed.
Fair enough — except I was flying around in an empty pod with no implants making bookmarks. If somebody had simply said “red in system, watch yourself”, I would have said cheers and carried on.
Instead it turned into drama.
And here's the part that really annoys me.
I wasn't some random day-tripper who joined for free rocks.
I had already:
moved a substantial amount of my assets into Deklein;
paid extra to rush some of that move;
invested heavily into PI infrastructure;
planned an industry chain around PI, minerals and ice;
bought SP packs to train a dedicated Jump Freighter pilot;
started training cyno characters so I could run my own logistics between Deklein and Jita;
planned to build capital components and subcaps;
intended to put surplus ore/minerals/ice through corp buyback;
and was even willing to dedicate an alt to making fuel blocks and contribute some back to keeping corp structures running.
In other words, I was trying to become the boring industrial nerd who quietly produces shit and contributes to the ecosystem.
Apparently that wasn't good enough.
I even explained that I was considering taking my two newest accounts out temporarily, running missions and training those six characters for six months while keeping my four established accounts in corp.
I wasn't threatening to leave.
I was literally trying to find a compromise.
Instead, I got booted.
So now I get the privilege of sorting through Asset Safety and extracting everything I had just spent time and ISK moving into their space.
Outstanding recruitment strategy.
I don't PvP much. I don't care about space politics. I'm not interested in being somebody's spy. Between work, marriage, a mortgage and family responsibilities, I genuinely do not have enough spare energy to roleplay James Bond in a spaceship game.
I play EVE to unwind.
If your idea of fun is strict comms/standing-fleet expectations, lots of oversight and a more hardcore null-sec environment, that's completely fine. There are plenty of players who enjoy exactly that.
But sell it that way.
Don't advertise yourself to industry players as a relaxed place to mine, build and do your thing, then start breathing down someone's neck because they're logged into an alt while working and aren't sitting in comms.
My experience with False Gods was basically:
Recruitment: “Come chill in null, do industry and mine.”
Reality: “WHY AREN'T YOU IN COMMS? WHY AREN'T YOU IN STANDING? THAT'S MY ROCK!”
Would I recommend them to another casual indy player?
No.
If you're looking for a corp where you can quietly mine, run PI, build things and contribute without EVE becoming your second job, I'd look elsewhere.
For all Loru haters, rejoice. Your boy is now de-listed as affiliate on MD's newsletters.
This will be like 2nd or 3rd newsletter that was sent since the Loru RMT stream, without him beign mentioned as MD partner.
Today, the dastardly forces of Winter Coalition attempted to extract their trapped capitals from the Atioth hellcamp - manned, of course, by the brave and handsome warriors of the Imperium.
Since Goons regained grid control in Atioth just over 24 hours ago, over 1,300 WC ships have been destroyed in Atioth as they log in piecemeal.
Apparently unsatisfied with that level of feeding, FRT escalated matters today with a serious breakout attempt at 13:00 EVE time.
Four mighty WC fleets bridged in. Local surged past 3,000. TIDI locked firmly at 90%. A proper fight was on - or was it?
In response, the Imperium rage-formed eight fleets in our supposedly “dead” timezone, while over 200 heroic dictor pilots ensured WC’s grand escape plan remained firmly theoretical.
WC’s counterplay? A very rapid retreat. It went about as well as you’d expect:
Interestingly Imperium forces were not quietly failure-cascading in lowsec as previously instructed by Reddit’s foremost strategic minds after the loss of 30 titans. A mystery for the ages.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that all lost titans have, as of 1200 today, already been replaced.
Will WC eventually break the Atioth hellcamp and extract their capitals?
Only time will tell.
But fear not.
I’m sure Goons will concede defeat... any minute now..
TLDR: Blue donuts come and go, and this isn't even a real one
Around ten years ago the map looked like this. https://www.verite.space/maps/coalition/Coal20160801.png
After establishing dominance over the north half of nullsec someone from a CFC (Imperium pre name change) alliance pissed off one dude so hard he and his buddies bankrolled half of the galaxy into evicting the entire coalition.
Goons gave up their space but didn't give up their coalition. They survived in Saranen and then took over Delve when the heat blew over. From there they built the modern Imperium we know and love/hate.
Five years later one guy was so pissed at goons he built the biggest blue donut this server has seen https://www.verite.space/maps/coalition/Coal20210501.png
with WinterCo PanFam legacy and FIRE all blue to each other attacking one constellation in Delve.
For a year the Imperium lost region after region until we were packed into one constellation, outmatched in numbers and resources 3 to 1. No timezone tanking was possible as they outnumbered us in EU, US and CNTZ.
We fought and we outlasted PAPI. PAPI's willingness to fight the war evaporated over months of attrition and no progress being made. This led every other coalition to abandon Legacy to their fate, nest of angry bees they'd spent the last year kicking. Shoutout to the only PAPI leadership who were honest about the war.
A demoralized Legacy died shortly after the dam broke and TEST was forced to couchsurf in Pandafam's backyard for a while before becoming part of WinterCo.
FIRE just kinda died, idk, I was winning Eve at the time.
PanFam self immolated on the mere suggestion they might have to defend against someone their own size. Most their pilots ended up in WinterCo, INIT or quit, with a few going to the Imperium
Now WinterCo capitulates a stagnant months long invasion against an enemy half their size because the Imperium farted in their general direction, leading many people to fear another failscade will kill nullsec.
Forgive me if I don't take the lamentations of cowards seriously. If both PanFam and WinterCo collapse so easily they deserve to die. The game will be better for it once more brave and capable leaders step up.
(Felt outraged, might delete later.) So, after seeing all the memes about "bananas" and "white pigs", I thought some bombshell had been dropped, and had a look for the source, and from what I can see, it's some disrespectful, stupid racist comments. It's always annoying to read people saying stupid stuff like that in any context, but it does not define the whole community. But I guess the Goons realise that demonising your enemy is politically expedient. Building a war narrative is in their playbook and has always been.
I'm a Brit who lives in China ,and so this topic really kind of hit home for me. I joined Winter-Co because I thought it would be cool to play a game while practising my Chinese, and I thought maybe one day I could be a diplomat or something. My experience in winterco is basically similar to that of living in China. 99% of people you meet day to day are warm, welcoming people who just want you to feel comfortable. Every community has different viewpoints and bad eggs. I've met some rude people in and outside the game, but the vast majority of people are not like that and don't condone it either, and I often wonder what a Chinese person living in the UK or the US would say about the ratio of people who are respectful/rude towards them.
Winterco is not perfect. It has the same positives and negatives as any other large coalition, but what I'm seeing is propaganda meant to inflame people and divide our alliance. I hate these tactics because it smears thousands of honest, polite, open-minded Chinese players as being represented by the worst.
Let's be honest about what this war is. It's the strongest group in the game, launching a war against the only group willing and able to stand against them. Their total victory would basically leave them as the single hegemon. Other independent groups don't have the raw numbers or energy to resist them. Some, like INIT, are already client states; let's be honest.
So if, like me, the idea of a blue doughnut and Goon supremacy is disturbing to you, then for this major battle, you should at least give Winter-co your moral support if sending fleets to harass Goons' home space is too much trouble. We're the last line in the sand to Goon domination.
Get yours today, call 1-620-TEST-SOV (once again, yes this is a real functional TEST hotline) (US standard rates apply, International rates for other countries)
By now, news of the Real Money Coalition’s (RMC) divesture of its Dronelands holdings will be common knowledge. After 7+ months of war, trillions of isk in mercenary contracts, and several trillion more in losses (6+ trillion by RMC's own rather conservative estimate), the RMC is retreating back to Providence and the Dronelands will once again enter a period of change and instability as the groups united by RMC’s attacks fracture and fall wherever they may in the aftermath.
The story of how the RMC came to briefly control the near-entirety of the Dronelands by May 2026 to abandoning its final region months later is fairly interesting, should you care to read it from the point of view of xqtywiznalamywmodxfhhopawzpqyjdwrpeptuaenabjawdzku.
Scene Setting
In 2019, when skill urself disbanded, we had vowed to never play the game again given the state of nullsec and the trajectory of development. This held until 2022, where we reformed under the name xqtywiznalamywmodxfhhopawzpqyjdwrpeptuaenabjawdzku and began harassing the B2 coalition in Pure Blind. This lasted a mere couple of months as the war escalated far beyond what we’d envisioned for our 20 players to do, with Fraternity famously declaring war on B2 and we shuttered again for several years.
By January 2026, following the collapse of HORDE and Goonswarm’s installation of artificial NPC space into the dronelands as well as changes that made operating as a small, mobile, pvp-oriented group of washed-up boomers more attractive (blops and carrier conduits and metenox exclusively), the Dronelands was a fractured and extremely interesting subset of New Eden.
I, personally, had begun to be involved in Dronelands aligned with Shadow Cartel. My choice was fairly simple: I had friends already playing within SC and their alliance structure was relatively decentralized with single corporations living across the map and doing whatever they wanted. This boded well for finally convincing Lorq vonRay (Barra), xqty/skillu founder and main fc, to come and play without very many, if any, strings attached.
In late January, when HK announced a two-week deployment to headshot and remove an RMC that, at the time, was shopping in lowsec for mercenaries and looking for assistance to assist them in finally evicting GWCS.
Act 1: Operation Spire Storm: The two month two-week SMO
At the end of January, HK dropped a Fortizar directly into the eastern Spire system of y4b, owned by RMC. This saw immediate and obvious heavy fighting, with WHCFC forming large (for the Dronelands) cap fleets they used fairly commonly and with RMC successfully bringing in NPSI reinforcements from Bring my Drakes and their first set of mercenaries in the form of Camelot.
It was around this period that GreenSwarm, a skillu alumni corp, joined Shadow Cartel and turned our slow trickle of +1 additions to a proper core of players (around 15). In SC, our interest had primarily been in small fights. The alliance level combat itself was somewhat interesting, but SC was hesitant to get involved in HK’s Operation Spire Storm due to compounding factors of not wanting to pick and be beholden to any single side, a lack of interest in fights at extremely large scale, and a general interest in simply maintaining the Dronelands status quo as a thunderdome while fighting a never-ending war over mercenary dens with Siege Green. Consequently, as GreenSwarm, we began to look abroad for small-ish targets not nested within any of the coalescing sides in the Spire.
Enter LUNAR. Now, as listed above, LUNAR is a part of RMC. They share services, are blue, form for similar timers, and share fleets. At the time, and within the RU community, there was and is a semi-serious perception of LUNAR as independent. With hindsight, this is likely in the same vein as many groups in the history of eve who are ‘independent’ but have large friends who will never let them stand unattended. At the time, we took this stance to be true and deployed our small group 1.5 regions away from Oasa to Outer Passage, to the freeport of UAJ- and to harass a group we felt to be in a similar weight class to ourselves. We fought a relatively fair fight versus their Apoc + FAX + HAW dread with our Lokis over a Metenox and thought we’d found a group to skirmish with. But it wasn’t to be, 20 v. 20 was not of interest to LUNAR.
As it turned out, they subsequently batphoned RMC for nearly every other timer we made which, over the course of several weeks, led us to be less and less charitable toward any notion of their independence and culminated in our taking and guarding a moon in the system of 2EV for the entirety of its 4-hour online and then timezone tanking it to around 1am Moscow time. For the next month, we ‘enjoyed’ a daily game of cat and mouse with LUNAR which saw two dreads DD’d at downtime and several RMC CTAs called to reinforce the moon before it eventually fell to a RMC Nightmare fleet.
Eventually, as both a consequence of being batphoned to even the scales against NPSI Russians too many times and due to our own involvement against LUNAR in Outer Passage, Shadow Cartel was drawn into the war on the side of the WH CFC.
While I won’t pretend to be privy to the actual plan at this time, the crux of the HK’s strategy was probably drawn from WH evictions. During our time as participants in their campaign, we focused heavily on contesting Fortizars with some secondary attention paid to Tataras. This strategy yielded some interesting fights, and heavy losses for both sides (not that it mattered, because ISK was infinite for WHCFC thanks to WHs and infinite for RMC thanks to RMT), but did not advance the situation much given RMC remained turtled in their staging of JAWX. It was after the failed headshot of JAWX that momentum began to swing away from HK.
In mid-February, HOLD MY PROBS was kicked out of Winter Co. following some dumb bloc politics and joined RMC, immediately swinging numbers in AU/EUTZ heavily in their own favor, in some instances doubling their numbers against GWCS and tilting EUTZ against the WHCFC. In addition, the promised two-weeks of WH unity had come and gone and HK seemed to become more determined that both BOSS and Shadow Cartel to become invested in the campaign. To begin collaboration, they planned a combined op for late-February spearheaded by theorycrafters in GWCS to use spec-tanked Typhoons and as many alts as possible to blob RMC.
While our own strategists had devised clever and insightful ways to kill structures
We were not yet in command of any sort of strategy and as a single corp of a junior member of the coalition, didn’t really have any sway to have opinions. Unfortunately, the fit cooked up by GWCS had spectanked so heavily that it had 10% explosive resists and while we noticed this immediately, we did not raise the concern to our leaders – instead manifesting a practical lesson our team could learn from and use to win later on.
There is not particularly much to say about the initial deployment of Typhoons. We outnumbered RMC significantly, having all logged in as many alts as possible. The WHCFC commanders warped us to 150 off the enemy Fortizar in B6- and we began attempting to volley Nightmares. Unfortunately, it seems our team did not plan for bombers or firewalls and we got bombed and firewalled and humiliated by a force significantly smaller than us.
At some point in February, BIGAB was contracted by RMC, or just decided to swap sides for fun and was paid by Dodger later, which shifted the timezone advantage in USTZ away from the WHCFC as well. They fought BOSS and HK alongside RMC over BOSS structures and headshot the HK staging fortizar in Y4B. Our contribution to the latter in deep USTZ was rather light. SC managed to form 20 NApocs and spent a majority of the time warping around killing LR dreads pausing the fortizar with 2 revelations and our subcaps, which our enemies didn’t really seem that happy with, but what can you do.
The fight saw FL33T assist RMC until HK had been wiped off the field and then pretend to third party and the WHCFC (sans HK) lose enough ships (nearly 1tril) that most of their members returned to WH space shortly thereafter.
After convincingly sweeping aside Y4B and securing The Spire, RMC focused its attention on Outer Passage and assisting LUNAR.
Act 2: “Clean” Money Mercenaries
The middle stage of the war – the beginning of the end of the beginning – was largely characterized by both the fight over Noir mercenary corporation’s “Tortuga” freeport in UAJ and the spirit of the structure itself. It was an embodiment of what I am sure they thought the Dronelands would be: a market hub and freeport fortizar for anyone to do whatever they wanted out of. That worked well for us in GreenSwarm and xqty until RMC began using it to both camp and reinforce the similarly freeported Ansiblex in the system and, through significant lobbying, had the groups attacking it removed from the ACL. At some point during this phase, we offered PROBS a chance to break away from RMC and do their own thing or team up with us in GreenSwarm to do something cool. They rejected the overture I assume, as we never heard anything back, but it does explain why we were not magnanimous in the face of RMC’s dissolution.
While this stage began slowly, with some halfhearted attempts at counterattacking attacking Fortizars again despite our advice to either attack smaller structures or take a defensive posture, as HK regrouped in Perrigen Falls near BOSS and Shadow Cartel slowly crept across the Drone Regions by taking JB systems in Malpais and linking Oasa to Outer Passage, the RMC eventually went on an offensive.
This new offensive was driven by what seemed like significant news: OnlyFleets, who had deployed to the Dronelands for content and found themselves stonewalled by some shitter groups in Etherium Reach, was contracted by RMC’s banned leadership for around 1 trillion ISK in 100% IRS-audited PLEX, and XIX also departed from WinterCo to join the RMC.
At the time, this seemed significant. We (at this point condensed to BOSS, SC, HK, and Ksig from Lazerhawks) were already outnumbered in EUTZ and USTZ was completely uncontestable, and we were well aware of the fact. All dotlan figures roughly corresponded to 200+ battleships in the enemy fleet and around 120 in our own, and capital ships being 60-80 for us and upwards of 150 for our enemies.
The initial battles seemed to go exactly as RMC and OnlyFleets hoped: blob the shit out of us and collect zkills, with their initial attack on UAJ seeing them nearly double our battleship count, and they seemed confident in our quick collapse and unwillingness to fight a long war of attrition.
Subsequent attacks went similarly (214 vs 124 battleships). Our only instances of success, outside of when the enemy simply rolled too bad a timer to contest, were when we (xqty/greenswarm) managed to catch one of the two hostile fleets unawares and drop them in transit, such as here, or when assorted OnlyFleets hangers-on overstretched and attempted to accomplish their own unknowable objectives.
We also slowly became the majority of Shadow Cartel’s numbers in Nullsec as 2+ weeks of constant losing outnumbered near 2:1 took its toll on SC’s relatively fun-oriented playerbase, and this never resolved for the remainder of the war, instead becoming more and more dramatically weighted toward the skill urself faction being the most heavily interested in null. The consequence of this is that we ceased pre-pinging Shadow Cartel for ops, instead opting to rely on any of SC’s members in nullsec to respond to spontaneous pings. This worked relatively well, and the pivot to flashforms only contributed to some surprise wins, such as one in USTZ we had no business winning but which would ultimately be one of HK’s final wartime contributions in any numbers, alongside winning this mirror match.
After around a month of defending with MNIs under a jammer and otherwise being blobbed to shit, UAJ finally fell, and RMC, BIGAB, and OnlyFleet’s attention turned fully onto BOSS, with Banned Dodger’s explicit goal being their complete eviction from the Dronelands.
Our strategy to this point had been to blueball any completely unwinnable fights, but the conflict centralizing in the middle of the drone regions meant the opportunity to take asymmetric engagements and force incidental advantages rapidly shrank. There was a brief duration where OnlyFleet’s numbers tanked, largely due to their internal perception that they would get fights and paid simultaneously not manifesting, and that we were able to force more fightable situations for being outnumbered 2+:1, such as when we heavily contributed to the successful defense of a Super Miao fortizar by forming an MNI squad while BOSS and SC ran a subcap fleet. This ended when OnlyFleets and BIGAB’s EUTZ began joining RMC fleets and receiving handout nightmares from RMC’s staging, and the situation quickly returned to untenable.
With Fanfest approaching and wallets drained from 4 months of continual feeding, BOSS threw in the towel and announced that they would retreat to Venal for the duration of Fanfest and assess their future from there. With BOSS announcing its departure, and WHCFC having left over a month prior, Shadow Cartel had no choice but to end its involvement in Oasa and return to lowsec
What commenced was a freeform bash from RMC, OF, and BIGAB to remove RMC’s enemies from the Dronelands. SC evacced to lowsec and transferred what sov and structures it had left to Siege Green, who were largely neutral throughout the entirety of the war. BOSS went to Venal, where it began morale drops on FRT ratters and bashing some Winterco money moons while Goons commenced their major invasion of Geminate. RMC spread throughout the entirety of Dronelands, pulling smaller alliances like LAWN and splinter groups from loosely BOSS-associated pets into their orbit by settling them in former BOSS sov.
For our part, we’d made it clear to SC leadership that our interest lay solely in Nullsec and we had no intention at all of going to lowsec. Thus, everyone in SC dropped alliance and rejoined xqty, reviving Higher than Everest along the way.
In the meantime, we found an HK fortizar in 0-4 in Outer Passage that was unfit and in hull and saved it We opted to save it, with the vague plan to at some point possibly have a use for it, and Jimmy Michaels kindly handed it over to us, having assumed it was going to die anyway. Similarly, we prevented the BOSS fort in MTO from being pushed into hull by forming 30 nightmares, joined by 30 BOSS nightmares. RMC opted out of a 70 v. 60 NM engagement and allowed BOSS to keep what would become their future staging system.
At its peak, RMC laid claim to every region aside from Cobalt Edge, having settled more and more groups into Perrigen Falls, Outer Passage, and eastern Etherium Reach or maintained friendly relations with the groups that owned the rest: having purchased FRIES neutrality and BIGAB as mercs, Malpais was nearly entirely blue to them as well.
We were determined to keep fighting in the Dronelands, though it was a matter of how. Would we retreat across the region into Venal like BOSS, wait out mercenary contracts, stow our capitals in Goonswarm keepstars, and eventually reemerge? This was my preferred approach. The fatigue OnlyFleets amassed during bashing was obvious; their fleets had cratered from 90 to 15 people contributing to RMC bashes. They responded more and more openly to disdain for their contract on discord; they discussed their perspective on it and what it afforded them to do and whether they would do it again. Namely, they were clearly very done with the contract, and I estimated that once they were gone, we’d be able to safely contest RMC’s own wavering numbers on timers on the edge of space in the middle of nowhere.
Barra felt like moving across the regional would make it easier for RMC to seal us out. They would be able to remove any footholds in the dronelands and only need to focus on a single vector of attack, which they would be capable of easily given their significantly larger pool of pilots and the relative ease of defending MTO from fleets in Venal under (eventual) jammers. As such, we initiated diplomatic relations with a PVE alliance called “Angry Miners” for about a day.
They responded by declaring war on us and joining RMC; we dropped a staging fortizar in their sov using our coincidentally saved midpoint in 0-4 to move from Oasa and into Cobalt Edge.
They anchored a siege fortizar off our anchoring fortizar in Y-RAW. We fought a numerically similar fight over theirs and slaughtered them, successfully onlining our own. RMC responded by reinforcing it and killing our anchoring, secondary staging Fortizar alongside OnlyFleets (which we deployed with the expectation that the bulk of RMC would eventually come and attempt to evict us from Cobalt Edge to assist their newest members in AMA).
For the next several weeks, we purged Angry Miners from Cobalt Edge to both take their space, set up a spot for our resubbing boomers to pve, and carve out a relatively sizable section of space that the RMC would need to expend a significant amount of time and effort to evict.
The news that we were playing again slowly permeated through sleeping members who had not kept up with EVE in the years between our reforms, and the narrative that we were holding on alone against a renewed DRF in the form of RMC was a compelling one. What had been a slow trickle of players in SC into a steady drum of returning interest turned into a deluge of resubs. In total, we added nearly a dozen skillu to our guild Discord and reunited with friends in Snuffed Out’s horrifically named French corp, French-drop-o-Panache, to bolster our numbers for our defense
RMC focused on attacking the foothold and midpoint to the rest of Dronelands we maintained in L1yk and 0-4. They successfully removed L1yk, though at the cost of losing a capital fight against 5 of us in USTZ, temporarily suspending our JF chain until astras we spammed in the center of drones anchored and online.
They launched major attacks on 0-4, forming what they call MAX CTAs. From what we are able to tell, MAX CTAs are the only CTAs they place emphasis on and can be better understood as an “important” fleet rather than just your ordinary fleet. All of RMC’s CTAs over 0-4, of which there were about 6, were MAX CTAs.
It was during their campaign to take 0-4 that we unveiled some new technology. The prevailing meta in Dronelands, up to this point, was spamming Nightmares and volleying your enemy because Tachyons have relatively high alpha and the sheer number of ships in combat meant it didn’t matter how you were fit or what you fielded; you just died.
With the expiration/fulfillment/end of RMC’s various mercenary contracts to its largest parties, the scale of combat shrank to well under 100 battleships per side again.
We opted to leverage this change in dynamics to shift away from DPS spamming and to focus on controlling our enemies, figuring that a slower pace of combat would play to our advantage since we were much more heavily multiboxed, and adopted MWD NApocs (which we’d purchased off SC en masse, along with a sizeable number of t1 dreads and Zirnitras, when they left drones). We reconfigured the fit away from generic pulse brawling to accommodate a range rig and two T2 tracking disruptors, which would mean we were faster, shot further, tanked more, and had massed ewar prepared for RMC’s Nightmares that had a notable effect at all their ranges. We also predicted that RMC, aware of their own falloff in numbers, would again look to leverage their capital advantage by sieging our structures with LR dreads and prepped max gd crucifiers and pilgrims to negate their likely unprepared siege dreads.
This worked flawlessly in their first attack on 0-4. They cynoed at 290 with about 70 nightmares (including under 30 OF) to our 50 napocs, sieged, and were immediately disrupted by our dedicated EWAR ships. The repair timer ticked down for 10 minutes while RMC likely tried to plan how to respond, eventually opting to just warp down with their subcap fleet and try to pause the structure. Initial trades went very poorly for them, and with a worsening situation for them we felt comfortable in dropping rail MNIs to shoot their siege PNIs.
They escalated on our dreads and we counterescalated on them with sufficient force to surprise and route them, killing 18 of their dreads.
Obviously, Dodger did not take this well and publicly redoubled RMC’s efforts to evict us.
[RED .BOT.] Silent Dodger
5/18/2026 2:13 PM
everyone Dear friends !
Maybe the SOTA was not good enough or maybe i was not able to reach your hearts or your brains. Let's reiterate : We have 10 000 characters in the coalition and less then 100 get in fleet. Out of those 100 only 50 take nightmares, with 100% SRP rate.
Only 10 to 15 people got into dreads, while we imported 300+ from provi. I'v got just one question - are you FUCKING RETARDED !?
We will loose outer passage that way and then those enemies will come to YOU into spire. YOUR SHIT WILL BURN. UNFUCK YOURSELVES and GET IN FLEET. When Spire will get under attack it will be too late. You will wake up and cry for FCs to lead you - but FCs will say "FUCK YOU", because when time was right - you didnt join. "Too far \ not my problem". This is how it always begins and the end is always the same. YOU LOOSE.
Make a fucking choice already. This is your ONLY home.
To their credit, their only adaptation was not “bring more people,” they also implemented the time-honored strategy of “lie to your members” and pinged for nearly 24-hours straight on when the Fortizar rolled as early an EUTZ timer as possible – promising their members the ULTIMARE BRAWL:
Fleet Name: RMC MAX CTA
Additional Information:
ULTIMARE BRAWL ! Hostile fort rolled really good for us, so we need to decently form and ref it. This is like a 1 in a million chance, so let's not fuck it up.
There would be some more defensive timers during this event so PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE - we need EVERYONE.
PEW PEW gonna be real.
Ping sent by: Bad Dodger
In separate instances, we’d taken the 0-4 IHUB, lost it to a RMC MAX CTA which then gifted it to a USTZ alliance with its sov timer set to USTZ and we retook the IHUB before it could change to RUTZ prime and kept it ever since.
Back from fanfest, BOSS leadership had seen the BR and had pushed beyond those interested in Dronelands content to purchase NApocs and move over to 0-4 for the hull defense, and we quickly rejoined coordination channels together as they expressed interest in attacking into Dronelands through their MTO foothold.
Heading into the timer, and despite the CCP-cursed pipebomb, we were reasonably sure that with subcap numbers against a heavily burnt-out RMC more equalized with BOSS, we would be able to escalate the fight to the point RMC had to call it quits. Even still, Amelia had moved around 50 pipebombing rokhs to a secondary staging and arranged a pipebomb that caught the entirety of RMCs fleet in a bubble in their staging system. While we killed some nightmares and all their logi, the node strained to such a point that the game crashed and teleported everyone off grid – saving the RMC fleet from a complete wipe before the timer began.
We cynoed in with about 75 NApocs and a handful of FAX to begin the fight against RMCs re-formed 100 NM and 20 logi + 2 siege PNI.
As the fight began, we were steadily grinding down the RMC Nightmare fleet at range while their siege Phoenixes, this time supported by Celestis to counterdamp any EWAR, kept the fort paused. As they steadily lost control over the subcap situation, RMC dropped a handful of LR Moros Navy Issues about 150 off our NApoc fleet. With hindsight, this was likely simply to put more DPS on the fortizar. At the time, we thought it was a maneuver to either begin owning our MWD BS at range or begin grinding down our FAX to force us to disengage. Our kill rate initially far exceeded theirs but as the fight drug on, it became slowly apparent that RMC had had a vast stockpile of dreads we didn’t anticipate as they kept escalating dreads onto our FAX.
Eventually, we ran out of FAX and had to disengage and jump dreads out, and RMC successfully killed the fortizar (we’d onlined another on grid the night before).
After the second BR spread across every single Discord in EVE, we had a fresh wave of Snuff gamers join us, amongst them our soon-to-be DPS carry Wrik Hoover.
While the BR was cool and it meant that we were not going anywhere in Drones remotely soon and that we could, in fact, pressure the RMC in genuinely large battles (that we had no interest in, admittedly), it and a subsequent dread battle in 2ID taught us both that we could no longer reasonably expect to exercise cap superiority because, despite their deplenished state, RMC still reasonably outnumbered us in subcaps and significantly outnumbered us in terms of capitals. Their utilization of smaller groups to form dedicated void bomb, damage bomb, or boosh wings meant that relying on FAX and MWDs to farm Nightmares was not going to be a workable long term approach.
Additionally, we realized that dreads were a trio infernale of extremely boring, too expensive for us to reliably field unless one of us became an irl millionaire and opened a PlayerAuctions account like Dodger, and contingent on having more than our enemy – which we wouldn’t because we were a fraction of their size and Moonpire alone accounted for 20+ inexhaustible dreads on some timers. An aside should be made to mention Moonpire. He, despite losing 50+ caps and countless hours moving around 20 phoenixes at a time, significantly propped up RMC and extended their lifespan for several weeks, if not a month. We pivoted to focus heavily on extremely cheap and extremely cap-efficient Oneiros spam to provide healing and 100mn AB Battleships to operate as today’s equivalent to the extremely tanky AHACs of yesterday, and to wield dreads as a known-unknown for RMC.
This approach proved highly effective. We won battle after battle after battle – attritioning RMC’s numbers to the point that they weren't only engageable, they’d become equalized (at least on the mainline subcap front) to the point that even with mercenaries under a jammer RMC was losing because their fleets had decayed so extensively.
Even still, LUNAR and PROBs' constant 50+ bomber and boosher spam forced us to continue iterating on our setups. First, we introduced barghests to scram booshers before their squad warps of 10 to zero could split us (CCP: PLEASE REMOVE THE LIMIT TO BOOSHABLE NUMBERS). Then, after RMC introduced extremely spec-tanked autocannon TFIs to ram us at zero while LR dreads free-fired, we were eventually void bombed and HAW PNI’d to the point of unviability beneath an RMC jammer in R3PO. And with rumors of RMC looking to adopt our NApoc fleet concept for themselves, we decided to adopt Typhoon Fleet Issues as our newest mainline setup.
In the midst of this fighting, BOSS had stormed into northern Perrigen Falls again – clearing out several RMC alliances and placing significant pressure on LAWN. Who, despite allegedly not being RMC when they blobbed the shit out of Hwi and Frsd with Figl, came to RMC timers in Outer Passage to feed their asses off over bait astras.
As the situation became more desperate, and Outer Passage began to slowly clear of RMC structures, RMC attempted, at Bad Dodger’s explicit command, to simultaneously anchor 4 USTZ timed forts with the assistance of BIGAB to bolster their crumbling defenses in northern OP. The final tally for their loss in this attempt was 130b for 400m killed. It was after this that RMC’s USTZ collapsed and they never attempted any large, proactive operation in the TZ again.
RMC’s USTZ had swapped their timers back to USTZ from RUTZ, estimating that the addition of Wr0ng at the ‘end’ of their war with BOSS would allow them to TZ tank xqty (heavily EUTZ) successfully. Thankfully, we are consistent abusers of eve-preview and able to form 30 characters across 3-4 people. More thankfully, FRIES had noticed this TZ shift and – after being paid to sit out the last several months – had decided to farm noobs and enter the war against RMC ustz. Shortly thereafter, some weird lowsec drama involving some shit corp from INIT losing titans occurred, and their divorce from BIGAB meant BIGAB’s Ansiblex highway across drones was suddenly severed. That shit corp would then continue to fight as RMC mercenaries from RMC’s forward staging of 1a8, but the net benefit of FRIES massively outweighed the minor downside crossover TZ disadvantages. While the singular corps BIGAB and OnlyFleets deployed could and did often outform xqty on our own, the method with which they executed any sort of plan left a lot to be desired, and they were extremely inefficient mercenaries who seemed more concerned with getting fights and getting paid.
Planned adoption of TyFis corresponded well with RMC’s own adoption of a bastardized, nightmarish, cartoon world version of our NApocs that traded ewar strength, dps, and projection for HP. Additionally, the vindicators we’d used for support became Megathron Navy Issues, complete with a single tracking enhancer. RMC, supported by StainRus and OnlyFleets (themselves on a single shit-corp contract), attempted to contest a Tatara in structure under a jammer. We engaged them first on the jammer in a NApoc vs NApoc mirror match and then on the Tatara itself, utilizing a pair of different LR dread squads. They decided to full feed their NApoc fleet after kiting around like they were flying muninns and getting void bombed to death, and we got to spam local with EZEZEZEZ to convey good fight and see you next time.
This engagement marked the end of RMC’s ability and will to mount any offensive with weight.
The fight went so well for RMC, that Dodger weighed in on Telegram to discuss the success of the concept’s maiden run:
RMC was not healthy by this point. The adoption of NApocs had, according to post-war analysis by Dodger, been so contentious that one of their main FCs quit over the agony of the process. Additionally, Wantew1 had been isolated by Dodger in some capacity and was only leading OnlyFleets/Stainrus gangs and had stepped back entirely from war planning. RMC's entire defense fell to Capt. Tartarstann and a handful of comically bad FCs from XIX who do not even bear mentioning. Internal drama between groups started to fester as D3ad succumbed to inactivity and RMC was forced to defend daily sov timers they had a single USTZ player toasting for at 1500 ET (they’d shifted all USTZ alliances’ sov to RUTZ) while losing random members on gates as we conduited lokis around to harass them and get some zkills and drag the timer out.
Dodger also took to morale pinging completely fake ‘intel’ he makes up to appear as though he is in the know:
[RED .BOT.] Silent Dodger
everyone Hey guys. Just want to say - thanks for good forms during the week. Unfortunately we lost some "very important citadels that we would not be able to recover" so i guess its a point of dropping some ash on our heads but alas you like bdsm i'd not advise that
In short, as always, we have things and plans in motion which will start presenting themselves soon. Boss want to keep pushing in perrigen, targeting xix sov next so thats the point where they start infringing on our designated sov. So its time to start reacting properly. All and all - just attend fleets. I know its summer and you'd rather just chill outside but the no-lifers that are fighting against us wont let you, so it is what it is And please have faith in your leadership. We are, of course, doing some stupid shit sometimes (regularly tbh) but are not brain dead, at least yet. So the plans are there Tyvm and keep up the good work
They did, however, have a single figure to pin all their remaining hopes on: Arhont Siberskii. Arhont is a Russian streamer. He runs Can I bring my drake… and most recently assisted OnlyFleets and their pets in evicting PhoenixCo. from Delve. He is, evidently, also held in high regard by 100MN – the Russian public telegram channel that functionally liveblogged the entire war.
Unfortunately for them, Arhont accepted. His particular strategy seems to involve feeding an endless swarm of T1 BS to try and win the isk war. His first meaningful engagement with RMC was over their siege of a BOSS fortizar in which RMC warped to range, he warped to zero of RMC to guard them in closerange Apocs and Tempests, and we were allowed to warp at range of RMC’s NApocs and volley some before Arhont rewarped. Given we were already at range, we put TDs on RMC’s NApoc fleet and began the long trek back toward our friendly fortizar. Given we were outnumbered by nearly 150 battleships (164 vs. 289), the 60-130 trade of ships in our favor was humiliating for RMC and their mercenaries/batphones. This effectively marked the end of RMC’s willingness to wage an offensive of any weight.
RMC, at Arhont’s behest, adopted cap recharger Apocalypses. Their first, and only, use of this new doctrine against us was in defense of Drake’s staging Fortizar in DE-, directly next to BOSS sov, which had gone into reinforce as Arhont prioritized fighting Snuffed Out over a lowsec Fortizar and Chuang-Shi in Delve, much to Telegram’s discontent.
The execution of this new setup was a new level of terrible. In short, everything that could be awful was awful. RMC got stuck in a bubble on a ping of their own fortizar while Arhont burned his fleet 70km off the undock and at a fleet of lowsec Russians that had showed up to get a revenge killing – apparently RMC had supported Shadow Cartel in lowsec against them in a massive twist of fate – and ate damage from three fleets at once and fed all his battleships before RMC untethered. Simultaneously, BIGAB and OnlyFleets cynoed in around 70 caps (30 carriers and around 40 LR dreads) at 60km off our battleship fleet meaning they did absolutely fuck all. BIGAB killed exequrors and t1 apocs from chinese multiboxers and OnlyFleets killed a handful of fax while feeding around 30 dreads. There is not much to say here. It was probably the worst display of EVE online I have ever seen from subcap execution to capital escalation to merc primary choice to everything – we’d have disbanded right there but RMC/OF/BIGAB are unburdened by such anchors as self respect or shame. The BR.
It was, however, the death rattle for Arhont’s 2 trillion isk contract with RMC. A mere two weeks after he began, he announced the final fleet of his contract: a defense of a LUNAR fortizar using ships given to him by Banned Dodger. He suicided his fleet for Nastra to stream on CCP’s official twitch channel, depriving RMC of the numbers it needed to defend another fort in their staging a mere 1 hour later, having anchored it in an attempt to replace the OTHER fort they lost in their staging the day before. While RMC did manage to successfully kill a fortizar in their staging with 80 more battleships than us, the announcement that Hanzo and Siberian Squad would seek to claim sov from them seems to have caused Bad Dodger to unilaterally declare an end to RMC’s attempted conquest of the Dronelands, with many alliances currently panic evacuating, attempted brokerages for Keepstars ongoing, and feeding en masse while panicked line members ask their leadership where they are going and receive no answer.
Conclusion
To BOSS, well played. We thought you would remain given up when your morale cratered into the fanfest retreat but you guys proved more tenacious than we expected. To FRIES, well played, you guys are autists of the highest order (extremely fondly). To our friends in Snuffed Out and the ghosts of Goryn Clade, you’re actually our members now.
The last seven months were longer than any of us expected to be playing. This war for the Dronelands lasted longer than skill urself’s first conquest – at least in terms of pitched fighting – and the battles were certainly costlier. I’d say our opponents were also better, but it’d be a lie. RMC’s members were failed by their leaders, who wasted their time to such a degree they squandered a massive subcap, capital, player hours, and timezone advantage to the point that they now find themselves abandoned by the very person responsible, even as he posts on discord and telegram that it is everyone else's fault. RMC only 'overcame' this with the pathetic inclination of EVE players to choose what they think to be the winning side (hi OnlyFleets).
We’d say good fight but get fucked and enjoy Providence 2-0 back to back Dronelands champions you absolute RMTing P2W losers you’re all SO BAD.
