The universe at war

How did it feel to be outnumbered and outgunned? Tristan Day is one of BoB’s most senior commanders. He saw that there was a political gold rush going on: that all the major corporations had aligned against his alliance. “The most interesting thing has been watching groups of people taking the ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ mantra a bit too far,” he said. “There are people aligned against us that are [allied] to each other that really do not like each other at all. It’s quite amusing.”

It’s understandable. There is a third front to EVE’s vast conflict: the propaganda war fought on the forums. The arguments, trolling, and general lunacy has seen gamers put about as much effort into BoB-war threads on the forum as they have into the game itself. EVE’s players have become obsessed with the machinations of their PvP elite, and each announcement or battle-cry is seized upon by enemies and allies alike. Each Titan death or announcement by BoB’s SirMolle caused threads dozens of pages long. Everyone wanted their say. It was propaganda and spin, in fact, which largely decided BoB’s position. RedSwarm managed to pull alliances such as the Tau Ceti Federation, Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate, and Against All Authorities onto their side. BoB managed to sign up some big corporations, but the overall forces on their side were never quite the same.

EVE’s history has begun to repeat itself. Like Band of Brothers before them, RedSwarm have begun to install vassal corps in the wake of their victories. Momentum is everything: few will stand in their way. Meanwhile, the RedSwarm ply their message: Help out the Federation and you’ll be rewarded. Band of Brothers, as a territorial power, are massively reduced. They own a fraction of the territories they once did. Their pilots are exhausted. Their resources are stretched. And betrayal follows them everywhere. Their former allies are deserting them.

Just after Christmas 2007, BoB’s strongest ally, the huge consortium of pilots-for-hire known as Mercenary Coalition, declared BoB’s second home region of Period Basis (the other being Delve) to be their own independent state. Mercenary Coalition, along with megacorps KIA, Outbreak and Evoke, took the region for themselves. The territory tore a giant hole in what was left of BoB’s central powerbase. As I write, BoB have been forced back into a single region. They’ve lost most of their territory to the zerg of Northern and Goon forces. The fighting, as intense as ever, could see Band of Brothers lose it all.

What’s most fascinating about the continuing war is the stream of stories - the tales of commitment and tenacity from both sides. Whoever you talk to, on either side, will have a story of how their fleet mounted a 48-hour continuous defense of a single system. How they set their alarm clock for 4am so they could be up in time to finish off an enemy installation. Or how they tricked the enemy into losing some priceless piece of hardware.