This article is still being worked on. New info will be gradually added. ====== History ====== TEST has experienced dizzying highs and wearying lows, outstanding victories and humbling defeats. The political landscape of EVE is unfriendly and unforgiving, and through thick & thin TEST has withstood the test of time and lived to tell its tale. An incomplete list of battles TEST has fought is available at [[:culture:history:battles|]]. ===== The Beginning ===== Fletcher Hammond did stuff in February 2010, Dreddit was founded. TEST was founded 3 months later. Goonswarm Federation (GSF) looked at test as a younger version of itself, and provided TEST some guidance. Ended up living in Northern Coalition space, and spent a lot of time reinforcing CSAAs. What is B0RT? Initially the Reddit alien did not have an official name and Redditors began to refer to the alien as Bort. Some time after the founding of Dreddit the name of the alien was revealed to be Snoo. ===== Some Place in Lowsec ===== I wasn't there ===== The Upside-Down Map ===== Poitot is the only named system in Syndicate. Goons can be dicks. BoB invaded the north around June 2010. The result of the war was that Goons got half of Deklein, and Goons gave us the [[http://evemaps.dotlan.net/map/Deklein/4N-BUI,9CK-KZ,XCBK-X,GY5-26,VPLL-N#sec|TESTagram]]. A {{:culture:sov_summary_2010.png}} ===== The Testagram Gets Given Back ===== July-August 2010. Staged out of OWXT. Remember when the CFC (Dekco) was only powerful enough to take down Evoke? LOL TEST gave the TESTagram back to GSF in 2011, to strike out on our own in Fountain. {{:culture:sov_summary_2011.png}} ===== The Fountain Campaign ===== The North had just been reshuffled. The Northern Coalition had been collapsed. TEST had gone north to defend the VFK headshot and we successfully held the system until Fintroll gave up, and the lines solidified. TEST was currently growing. Massively. Blue to the CFC in the North. We were pretty secure in our sov. It was at this point that we were pretty quiet. So we explored some things, specifically a squad called Zulu squad started playing a game called Battlefield: Bad Company 2. It was pretty cool. We discovered that Pandemic Legion had a server so we jumped on there and started playing with them. We started broadcasting to all. It was a blast. At some point Morsus Mihi came to Delve to rebuild, to take some sov and try again. Morsus Mihi was a prime constituent to the Northern Coalition in the north. (Which we are blamed for leaving for dead) Now with a little spite, and a lot of anger from a Grath Telkin, we started running camps on their staging station (Grathcats) and forming up fleets to kill them. Goons eventually came too. We took all their sov. They disbanded. Now Goons and PL had a certain animosity at this point. They had after all led the attempt to headshot VFK. We were somewhat in the middle and theMittani made the wonderful quote that we were being ~wormtongued~ by Elise and his soft voice. It was funny. A few attempts were made to kill this relationship. DBRB brought a fleet to Delve to cause diplomatic incidents. First by primarying the TEST members of the Grathcat fleet on the camp of 1DH. Second he warped his fleet on grid, told them to disable their guns and attempted to bait TEST guys into shooting his fleet. I may have started recorded his fleet comms when he repeated his plan a second time. Awkward. In the end, with the intervention of Vile Rat, diplomacy succeeded and we returned to being friends. A few changes were made, suddenly the greater CFC were able to join the previously Goon-exclusive other gaming and we ended up playing games like Tribes: Ascend. We had no reason to compete and hung out socially. It was good times. {{:culture:sov_summary_2012.png}} ===== Russians & Technetium ===== Sometime early 2012. Mittens decided to retake the north via classic divide and conquer. The coalition which took the North a year previous was sundered by internal conflict and apathy. White Noise was way over-extended, and facing wars in the South, the CFC attacked and gracefully took Branch from them. Removing them from the North. Token efforts by NCdot and Raiden did little except lose supers IIRC. Next up was Raiden. TEST at this point decided it wanted to run an independent campaign. We attacked Vale of the Silent while Goons attacked Tribute. Forcing Raiden. to pick a side and stick with it. I FCed back then, mostly ineffectually against the days of blap Titans. We eventually got bored. Instead of trying a new plan, our CFC allies were offered moons by Goons to help in Tribute. Goons led a campaign of getting CCP to nerf Blap Titans via the CSM while stalling the war while feeding Drakes to Titans. It worked. CCP nerfed Titans and Raiden fell out of the North. Their Vale sov being transferred to NCdot via the Ankou who had decided to take the wallet and leave. We had however run out of things to do. We asked Uncle Shadoo for help. So we deployed to Geminate with PL. The proud Russians didn't really want our help. However we harassed SOLAR assets in Geminate. Taking the tech moons in the region and being very impressed by the Bomber meta that Gypsy band was showing off. Entire Tengu fleets nuked by waves of voids and EM bombs. Fantastic. It was slightly weird as now we had Raiden. as a batphone after previously fighting them. Eve was then quiet for a bit with SOLARs apparent victory. We deployed to Providence to take Chribbas station. We briefly allied with what would become Pizza here. Josh (of Pizza) was greatly disappointed that we wouldn't take *all* Providence stations and subsequently backed out. Sometime around now the Legend of WhenIamInSpace's Thrasher began. The campaign was a success. ===== Our Excuse to Invade Delve ===== We were once again left with little to do. Provi wouldn't even take back the station we took. Now around this time, long term TEST member Xystance had gone out to highsec to recruit the pubbiest corps he could find, take them to nullsec and scam them for all the money they had. Unfortunately he loved them too much. His alliance, The 99 Percent, came to Fountain and were successful fighting Fountain core residents. Xystance retired and left Triget in charge of The 99 Percent. Their first actions under new leadership? SBU Red Alliance space and see if they could prove themselves. 99% managed to take a system or two, and eventually the entire constellation of NJU-QV, while The Aurora Shadow (TASHA), another small allied alliance, took the adjacent constellation of SPNZ-Z. We were bored and decided to help them. The fights were good. Soon Shadoo was running a campaign to take Delve from a rapidly forming Southern Coalition. It was that time of year again that Shadoo would wipe .-A-. off the map. It was some great fights. PL and TEST was a solid combination with Shadoo in charge and we fought a list of alliances that included Nulli Secunda, Against All Authorities, Red Alliance, Red.Overlord, and a bunch of others. The propaganda campaign against Makalu started and we fighting them out of Delve in a bloody battle. Herculetz decided to escalate the situation by hiring a supercapital heavy alliance, Raiden. with the Initiative in an attempt to balance the supercapital numbers. It worked. [[:culture:players:montolio|Montolio]] panicked and hit the Horn of Goondor, summoning the entire CFC to descend upon Delve. They wanted a part of the content. The war flopped. The opposition stopped believing and it became about the grind. PL became disinterested and Goons wanted to lead. A few drama bombs dropped. They were pretty silly. TEST planned to do some timers when Goons simply pinged over us. In the end we dropped our dread fleets simultaneously on them, just to make a point, generally wasting everyone's time. The space the CFC wanted happened to be the most valuable space in Delve, but our leadership had unknowingly decided that it would be our new capital. In the end, the Goon Skymarshal raged out in Bad Gerden and the CFC returned north, leaving a bitter taste in everyone's mouths. At some point we dropped a station in K-6K, moved our dictor cache and then promptly killed 16 .-A-. supercapitals. They pretty much ceded Period Basis and Querious and retreated to Catch. We took these regions. Had our own drama with Logi vs Mildir. 99% and TASHA merged into Tribal Band and took over in Period Basis to guard the southern flank vs the remains of the Russian faction of the Southern Coalition in Stain and Paragon Soul. not sure exactly where to place these two: {{:culture:sov_summary_2013.png}} {{:culture:sov_summary_2014.png}} ===== Honeybadger Coalition ===== Shadoo grew bored. So we pushed into Catch and evicted .-A-. and all their associated entities. At this point Montolio started building the Honeybadger Coalition. Loosely a group designed as a counterweight to the CFC. Raiden. and Initiative joined us. Groups such as Unclaimed. formed from English speaking parts of the Southern Coalition. A few small groups were recruited. They were pretty garbage. Phreeze had his [[:culture:insidious_empire|]] pet project in Impass. This was roughly when Wrik Hoover got involved in some major drama in PL, and left the alliance. Joining TEST alliance with his corporation of himself, Hoover Inc. He was quite a popular FC, and formed Cloak Squad, hanging out with his old PL friends and making new TEST ones. They most famously deployed to X-7 in Pureblind and blopsed and fought SMA while popularizing Talwars as a TEST doctrine. The HBC grew and the CFC grew in response. War was brewing. Eventually though Shadoo backed out as he didn't want to be left stuck leading a time consuming campaign against the most difficult opponent in the game after leading so many campaigns. Shadoo suggested a Wargames initiative to remove HBC vs CFC tension. He believed that whoever attacked first would lose.The CFC pushed a solid propaganda campaign vs Montolio who stood down. Shadoo eventually moved to Australia. Internal drama in TEST was growing, a certain amount of leadership crisis existed and the torch was passed a few times. The HBC was redundant at this point. TEST was bored and incredibly bloated. Many of the members had gotten bored and unsubbed, or stopped PVPing, or recruiting nerds who weren't interested in PVP. TEST had spent the last few months fulfilling promises to alliances, helping them in wars against the Rus in the south in exchange for their help in a war that would never happen. When Fras Siabi became in charge, he decided to split the role of HBC leader from that of TEST alliance leader, appointing [[:culture:players:sort_dragon|]] as HBC leader and Boodabooda eventually replacing him. Zulu squad schism'd off in a certain style. Mittens declared this a great success as Zulu was apparently our cultural centre. Zulu had essentially folded into Nork. under Richter Enderas. When they left the alliance they opted to join Pandemic Legion, by merging their corporation into Sniggerdly. One of their first actions was to roam through Fountain, killing ratters while blue. Sort Dragon as head of the HBC, reset PL to never be blue again. His corp left PL, formed it's own alliance and attempted to lead the HBC. This went okay until he attempted to strongarm the new TEST CEO, the infamous Boodabooda. Tired of drama in the South. TEST ended up resetting everything east of Querious. While bold, this is commonly referred to as a bad move. It involved alienating a lot of what otherwise may have been allies. This was compounded by the fact that Cloak Squad was formed, went rogue and started murdering the remains of the HBC before they were told explicitly not to and complained about coward agreements. Eventually the Russians retook the SE. With Insidious Empire and the Initiative bailing north. ===== Not an Invasion ===== A little while later Black Legion. came to Delve to poke at TEST and to take sov. They were repulsed when they couldn't sustain the losses they had in the campaign. Sometime later Goon came to Delve to poke at Raiden. and NCdot and PL came for good fights. It ended in a bloodbath and showed how weak TEST was, unable to effectively blob hundreds of T3s and unwilling to adapt to the changing doctrine meta. Goons accused Booda of lying to them, and use that as a casus belli to justify the Fountain war. Unfortunately Raiden. pretty instantly folded with their head FC quitting the game and noone else willing to run things. Probably a bad decision to try and defend Querious with them. Just as Goons come for Fountain, TEST makes a tactical switch to bring back Apocalypses. A solid counter vs Tengus and other T3s as they are able to apply BS damage effectively to smaller ships. This is at the same time as a massive BS rebalance. Our initial plan was to simply cede Fountain. TEST were too weak to fight the CFC, especially with NCdot and PL at our necks in Querious. In the end however we agree to give NCdot Querious in exchange for N3s help in the war, of course after suiciding our Dread fleet into them in an attempt to kill a few supers on a move op. Under the advice of Elo we deploy to Aridia to avoid any headshots while we moved and were vulnerable. The ghost of Sort Dragon's anger did however cause ~5 Fountain station systems to immediately be ceded to Goons, with Goons dropping a new station egg in 4-E. A solid staging system for Fountain. Our new Apocalypses with Neut Geddons were the perfect counter to the HAM Tengu menace, capping them out and shooting directly into their EM hole. Goons switched out from Tengus to their Tech fleet. Pinning their hopes on this expensive battleship doctrine (Tempest Fleet Issues) and a new newbro only Fuck You Fleet made of just Celestis and T1 Logi. Apocs didn't have the raw damage to trade well with other Battleships. The Celestis concept wasn't new at all, but recent buffs and impressive numbers made this a considerable doctrine. We ended up running a lot of Rokhs, I lobbied a switch to Megathrons, losing the Rokh optimal bonus for significant increased bomb survivability. PL did not approve, their answer was to not get bombed. Beffah did not go for it. By this point I was pretty done, running occasional fleets and helping how I could. Kurator and Esildra ran the first few weeks of this war. NCdot brought a revolutionary doctrine of Sentry Dominixes, using drone assist they were functionally immune to the e-war heavy opposition. With Black Legion and the Retirement club in the North it was bleak for Goons. Stocks of Tempest Fleet issues were either market manipulated or gone. Goons switched to running Caracal fleets in an attempt to wear our doctrines down and to make time. With a little added spying they were able to save a few crucial timers and frustrate us considerably. A few weeks later, the Northern assault was ended when Mittens paid off Elo Knight, buying his services to come south and teaching the CFC the courage to use caps and hiring the Pizza ISboxing bombers and Delve harassment. Unfortunately with our progress stunted and our allies switching sides the war started to go sideways. The CFC switched to a new fleet concept- Baltec, based off the Megathron and named for a Megathron enthusiast in EuroGoon. Cheap, tanky, solid damage to a decent range. Spammable. Unfortunately our options for fighting them were the Rokh, and blap dreads and our allies. A few very big fights happened. Entire Rokh fleets evaporated to bombs. Entire Domi fleets evaporated to bombs. We were left with a mixed carrier blob attempting to save a timer in Z9PP with which we had no reps capable of actually saving it. Permenantly bubbled by Goons on July the 4th. Goons pinged wildly and managed to get enough subcaps in a single place to delete any ship from grid. If you waited long enough for TiDi. Getting on grid was impossible. We lost ~40 carriers before CCP accidentally broke the node, to much tinfoil from Goons. The Slowcat blob was defeated. We switched all our timers to AUtz to rely on our allies to be able to hold back Goons with friends like Scrap Iron Flotilla, a purely ANZAC alliance and VDD, an NCdot corp with assured supercap supremacy in their timezone.. After having held back Goons for a full month, we started to break, alarm clocking for timers out of TZ was burning our members our, let alone our FCs, a spy dropped all of the sov of the N3 renter alliances, causing our allies to go east to never really return. While we were just about able to pay reimbursements on time, Goon propaganda assured our members that going on fleets would see their ships never repaid, and liquidating moon goo to pay for the war was impractical thanks to Goon market manipulation and an abortive attempt to make a R64 cartel. At the end of the war, we were flying Prophecies whose main feature was they were cheap and could drone assist, and we were relying on Kurator and guest FCing from Canaris and ProgodLegend. 6VDT was falling and we formed up massive numbers, however most of our allies didn't believe. Over the last year Tribal Band had grown into a massively bloated alliance, and challenged TEST to bring more pilots to the final 6VDT timer. While they had no chance in Hell of bringing more pilots than us, at least they showed up. We went in to at least give a last fight, and discovered that the node couldn't process jumping requests above roughly ~4k characters in local. The TiDi was terrible. Biggest battle in Eve history. I made pasta for my Dad while we were locking targets. Allied fleets couldn't make it into system. Goons had a massive grid advantage and took it. In the old Eve, with old school lag. Everything cycles at the same speed because by the time the system calculates the request to use a module, it has had a lot of time. Our fleets of Prophecies and AHACs with their low alphas did very poorly vs the large Railguns and Blap Dreads of the CFC. Unfortunately they didn't get to leave the system for many hours while TiDi did its thing. Small victories. I did successful find a Li3 Titan using the passworded Goon POS in 6VDT. NCdot led the charge, we bumped it out of the POS and killed it. TiDi of the CFC panic logging in allowed us to safely extract before they could undock. The next day we tried the same trick in the CFC staging system. Unfortunately they wize'd up this time. Carriers immediately undocked, jumped, capped up and jumped back in rather then deal with trying to warp to the Titan or deal with TiDi. It worked. They saved it. So we retreated to Delve. Our allies assured us that it'd be easier to defend here, with the geography of the region favouring the capital usage this side of the Y-2, ZXB gate. Or something. We attempted to wrestle R64s back from Pizza. They were functionally useless in the short term due to our reserves of moongoo but it was important for the long term. It didn't go so well. We took back a bunch of moons. Before Pizza short stronted a moon and called BLs Crystal army (Dread fleet). We lost essentially what remained of our capitals. Rather than fight another war, and not believing we had any backup, we ended up opting to leave. I wanted to go to Curse. A few people wanted to go North. In the end a few loud mouths prevailed in demanding we don't move too far. Presumably Baki didn't want to have to do *too* much work in moving everything. We also wanted a clean slate. Booda took a list of corps and asked his newly formed high command to vouch to save any corps from the purge list. It was originally based off of poor fleet attendance, not being integrated or even simply being not a English speaking corp. Not sure where that thread is currently but I have equal pride and regret with it. We deployed to Soliara, or Somalia as it is called. One person who championed this may have returned to TEST relatively recently. I am not going to out him. He had his reasons. I also managed to alienate Beffah, by pointing out to Booda that we could not have someone who was essentially being a full-time employee, part-time carer trying to lead the military on weekends. He asked Ingen Kerr to help out, but Beffah took this the wrong way and was beyond the limits of the stress you can handle while playing a video game. ===== The Great Famine ===== Somalia went badly. It was without direction. It was after a string of deployments, and I clipped Huskers wings by saying he couldn't deploy the alliance immediately to pick on FA due to the fact we had moved ~3 times in a week and a half. While we had the Titans, or the blops to mid over there. They weren't motivated and it was adding extra effort that stymied any chance of success. This is when we started to lose corporations. I attempted to rebuild, a new MD team involving some friends in NOS, LDK, they tried their best and if they read this, I thank them for giving me the time. Some because the people running them were burnt out or alienated, like B0RThole. Some because they were literally renter pubbies, like Corporate Scum. A few wanted to stay behind. To fight for Fountain from Fountain core. Some simply became inactive. Unfortunately for us, a certain Emperor Salazar was best friends with Phreeze, who was running Insidious Empire. They saw an opportunity. Those corps who had active leadership, they reached out to, offering positions and power. They grew EMP with solid TEST corps. A couple of corps opted to join Goons. ENL-I was poached by Endie, who had an active spy in their corporation. Lovelocke survived roughly a week before being deposed and his industry director taking over. WEON went to Goons on the back of DingoGS. Hoover had left PL in drama, and took his corp to Black Legion, which was currently growing and doing exciting things. It was an easy choice because he was going to be inactive from the game and he knew the road that TEST was on. TRIBE tried a daring strategy to buy Catch from the Initiative. Triget asked me if I thought it could work. I told him it might if he had a deal with the Russians. He did not. He asked me for help and I told him I did not think the alliance was really in a position to move to Catch. He neglected to mention the Russians were in the process of headshotting their capital system. It was not until the final timer that we realised this. We formed up our biggest fleet since Fountain to try and save it.~200 AHACs with a wing of bombers. The plan was simple. We'd catch the Russians. Force them to MJD and our bombers would force them to warp off the field while we mop up what was left. Triget had invited PL to look menacingly at the Russians and stop them from dropping caps. They were very menacing in Talwars. Unfortunately Silentmajority was the bomber FC and there is nothing he likes more than bombing PL. He didn't follow the plan and went for the Talwars. The Talwars warped out. The Rokhs killed the many of the TRIBE ships and they had stopped bringing in replacements due to the potential imminent loss of their system. We did kill many Rokhs with AHACs. They unfortunately got into new Rokhs and bridged in. RIP Tribe. So we went to Curse. I had spent the last couple of weeks in Curse and enjoyed myself. I wasn't ready to lead again but I tried. We had some good times. We tried to take moons from the locals. Which we did. Unfortunately all the moons suddenly became N3 moons as they returned to the region. We had just been friends with N3 and there was no chance we could fight them so we didn't. This is where we lost our final few corps. A few went to Nulli, they were a neutral entity who had been competent enough and were considered favourably. TSK pretty much took all of NOS to EMP and L-D-K returned to Fountain. I was pretty broken. Booda was pretty done with the game and simply hadn't found a replacement for himself. The moment Skier volunteered. It was his. We deployed to Faction Warfare. A change of pace. New FCs were able to dip their feet into the water. We found Grega, Naliao, Ken Morton. We had drama in of itself but that was ok. We picked up a few corps, which was unfortunate. I personally made a lot of isk. I even still have FW LP and maintain that at tier 4/5 it is one of the best independent money makers in the game. While this was happening the Halloween war was ongoing. In an attempt to create a second front in the Halloween war, Phreeze invited TEST to join TEST… I mean EMP in the Vale of the Silent. This was taken very seriously when we actually took a system. Mr. Vee was deployed North with the CFC EUtz to defend. So naturally we deployed to Delve. To blops on CFC renters while Husker led Predditors and to generally be a nuisance. Massive fights happened in the Halloween war, leading to B-R and the hellcamp of Nulli systems. Naturally while the CFC was distracted, we killed a few FA CSAAs (caps led by Kenshin Woo, Subs by Naliao. Subs, caracals lol, managed to keep entire hostile domi fleet from doing literally anything while Caps killed 1 titan and 1 super in the cooker) and smugged while the CFC tried to defend both in Fountain and hold that station. We joined forces with BRAVE to head over to try to do a breakout fleet one day because PGL asked us to in his nicest voice. ===== HERO Coalition ===== Unfortunately EMP was only actually functional while winning, they collapsed. Much to Mr. Warr's chagrin, many of these corps decided to leave together to end up in Black Legion. Curiously enough, Mr CapriSun Kraftfoods is now functionally the leader of Black Legion. TEST went on from here to try something new. BRAVE had been paid to attack the RUS and to take Catch if they could. To create a second front and retake the sov N3 had lost against the CFC. This was unfortunately a wild success. With some of the most creative misunderstandings and the most roundabout co-ordination HERO apparently was a success. Hero was considered mildly successful in the first few months of the campaign, letting a number of FCs really grow their wings (Sajuuk, Naliao, Trafalgar) and step up to Strat FC roles. During this early period, a number of fights went well for Test and allies. While HERO didn't have the best coordination, it still worked relatively well. Such as this fight in WD-VTV, where INK thought they could plant TCUs and wipe the lower skilled HERO forces off grid. Instead they lost a Napoc fleet. This was also one of the first times Test was able to start flying decent ships again such as zealots. Allied POV, Test fleet led by Naliao using Zealots: https://youtu.be/Zi8YaYm_4gk Due to vastly differing cultures and opinions on how things should be ran, HERO eventually started to failcascade. A catalyst for this beginning is when an allied titan refused to bridge a Test subcap fleet into system where a Test cap fleet was betrayed and tackled by providence, who batphoned Black Legion(?) to come kill them, denying the subcaps a chance at saving some of the capitals. More drama and differing cultures clashed, as well as Brave not believing in doing any HR work whatsoever (thus letting spies, awoxers etc in) didnt help either. Eve culture at the time was much more toxic, so most everyone hated SOUND who was a very PC friendly alliance. Popular Doctrines at the time were Hurricanes, Ishtars, and then Zealots for heavy work. Brave mostly flew moas/eagles (and died quite often) resulting in many members from both Test and Brave getting bored, burning out, and generally not coming to fleets. Cynabals were also imported and flown without SRP as a fun skirmish doctrine, and later phantasms as well after Naliao managed to convince enough people theyd be fun. During this time, Sperg squad had undergone something of a resurrection. We were playing L4D2 almost daily. We were filling games. It was fun. We even started doing Eve things. I had brought Agustus and Husker into TEST and we were having fun. Booda returned to the game and wanted to try something new. He managed to harness this energy and formed his own corp. The concept was pretty simple. A small scale corp without the limitations of a massive alliance. With a pretty solid SP baseline and where we wouldn't have to worry about the lowest common denominator. I personally was pretty hyped for exploring some of the more exciting doctrines. Unfortunately at some point this went wrong. Booda wasn't really leading the corp, he was simply in charge. Drama with BRAVE had left a pretty divisive sentiment in TEST and something needed to be done. Faced with corp members leaving and being absent himself, he came to the only conclusion that would involve the corp staying together. Leaving TEST. The obvious destination was Black Legion. Nos and Sperg have always been life partners. {{:culture:sov_summary_2015.png}} ===== Wicked Creek ===== TEST then left HERO Coalition and decided to strike the earth in Wicked Creek. Everything was nice for the first few hours, but then Red Alliance (RED) put Almost Awesome. (N0FUX) up to attempt to headshot our new staging. They succeeded when AUTZ Fleet Commander [[:cul|Sajuukthanatoskhar]] did what he does best and lost an entire Ishtar fleet, the station and then everyone's clones (we ended up in highsec), at least for 12 hours or so. We called in a favor from Pandemic Legion to retake the station. Hurt by this betrayal, TEST declared a no-holds-barred jihad on N0FUX. Within a few months, N0FUX was effectively dead. With our allies Rebel Alliance of New Eden (RANE), Sock Puppet Federation (SOCKS), and Solyaris Chtonium (SLYCE), we eventually secured the rest of Wicked Creek. During this time, [[https://forum.pleaseignore.com/topic/80528-updated-windrunner-compendium-wr-hurricane-and-hfi-discussion/?tab=comments#comment-1133598|Windrunner Tornadoes]] were fully invented and TEST became renowned (in AUTZ/Late USTZ) to use these for devious maneuvers. This time was generally regarded as a fun era to be in Test. Naliao Vee also brought Phantasms, Cynabals, and a weird BYOB(attleship) doctrine called dropsquad to the mix - at least until ccp killed combat refitting. After this, there was sporadic fighting with RED and their allies over moons in the superregion. Eventually, Triumvirate. and friends forced RED and co. out of Insmother. Meanwhile, Gentlemen's.Club (GCLUB), our allies in Immensea, failcascaded, leaving Immensea in the hands of Stain Wagon. Shortly after this, TEST decided to forward stage in Detorid to fight with DARKNESS. and friends and to take moons after Pandemic Legion took moons in Wicked Creek for the lulz. After about two months, we retreated back to our main staging. Leadership had determined that content was drying up in Wicked Creek, and so, on March 19th, 2016, TEST left, with no return on the horizon. {{:culture:sov_summary_2016.png}} ===== World War Bee ===== TEST, along with many other alliances, took a contract from 1ronbank of IwantIsk fame to fight the Imperium in the north. We decided to stage in Obe, one jump out from Vale of the Silent. Within a week of the deployment, LAWN and BASTN abandoned Vale of the Silent, retreating to lowsec to regroup. The Imperium, in the opening days of the war, had no major victories. Then the coalition against the CFC began gathering steam with three successful CSAA abortion operations in 5 days, including one that was shorthopped to come out in AUTZ in which TEST still managed to field over 100 people but showed up 20 seconds too late to get on the killmail. The Imperium lost one of their own on March 29th, when Circle-Of-Two (CO2) reset the Imperium at 00:01 EVE time, switching sides. This was the culmination of a 6-hour, 1% Tidi slugfest across 6 systems involving over 4000 pilots [[http://imgur.com/0s0ZAmM|http://imgur.com/0s0ZAmM]] in a fight for M-O, CO2's main staging system in which CFC forces were resoundingly defeated. TEST managed to fill a 250-man Maelstrom fleet FC'd by Progodlegend as well as a 100-man bomber fleet under Vily. Other bomber fleets under the allies were there as well. The response from Imperium leadership was swift, stating that they were helping CO2 defend their space, and then they accused of CO2 of trying to lure LAWN and BASTN supers into a trap during their retreat/move-op into Deklein 48 hours earlier. The evidence for this was that no cynojammers were online at the outset of the battle, but they may not have noticed PL had reinforced them earlier that morning and destroyed them quickly at the outset of the battle. NOG8S and TEST also managed to pull off one of the dankest bombing runs in recorded history on a RZR Hurricane Fleet: [[https://br.inyour.space/?s=848&b=6963643&e=3&t=fqf&r=1&ro=2.433333333333333|https://br.inyour.space/?s=848&b=6963643&e=3&t=fqf&r=1&ro=2.433333333333333]]. Vily also pulled off one of the most impressive bombing runs of the day, erasing a full 256-man Machariel fleet (minus a couple ships) as can been seen in this highlight: [[https://gfycat.com/SlimyForthrightCentipede|https://gfycat.com/SlimyForthrightCentipede]]. While this was but a single battle, it has created a tidal wave of morale among TEST members not seen since the early days. Great names like theDisto are thinking about resubbing and Montolio even dropped by to hang out in the Bacon Bar for a while that afternoon (the timing of this being Easter weekend and the fact that long before he pushed for a coalition to bring down goons led some to believe that he may in fact be Jesus). The smug levels were so high a quantum smugularity was created on reddit that couldn't be contained on /r/eve so the thread discussing CO2's reset of the Imperium reached the frontpage of /r/all. The Imperium didn't fare too well the next day either, losing a Bastion Avatar to a combined PL-TEST fleet [[https://zkillboard.com/kill/52903993/|https://zkillboard.com/kill/52903993/]] while said Avatar was trying to retreat towards the inner territories held by GSF. On April 9th, TEST relocated to NPC Pure Blind to better strike at the Imperium. On May 1st, TEST relocated again, this time to TVN-FM in Vale of the Silent as part of the upcoming Vale Reconquista. About half of Vale, at the end, belonged to TEST, with the other half given to the Russians. ===== The Tribute War ===== After a bit of TEST exploiting the space we conquered during World War Bee, Pandemic Legion and co. decided to invade Circle-Of-Two's home of Tribute, ostensibly for good fights. Being allies, TEST assisted CO2 in the defense. It all seemed to be going well for us until certain key strategic victories tipped the scales in favor of PL. This culminated in the destruction of CO2's Keepstar, which effectively marked the end of CO2 habitation of Tribute. Surely enough, PL set their sights on Vale, and so at the end of 2016, TEST moved once more to the south, but not before forcing PL to grind for their new sov. {{:culture:sov_summary_2017.png}} ===== Legacy Coalition ===== TEST's first staging systems were Podion and Sendaya while everything was being worked out. A few weeks later, we moved to a LUMPY citadel in MB-NKE in Catch, and then to V-3YG7 a few jumps out. The goal here was to burn Stainwagon's sov to the ground, due to TEST needing a new home to rebuild, and also because Stainwagon helped the Imperium in World War Bee. Due to the pressure from TEST and allies, Stainwagon's presence in the south was effectively over. Shortly after, TEST moved down to Esoteria, first to DTX8-M, and then, after being captured by TEST AUTZ Forces (led by [[:culture:players:sajuukthanatoskhar|Sajuukthanatoskhar]] at the time) in a frenzied battle to D-PNP9, which is now the current staging. The other members of [[:culture:legacy|Legacy]] settled down in the other former regions of Stainwagon such as Impass, Feythabolis and Catch. Like someone who enjoys taking a steaming shit on little kids' heads, Pandemic Legion decided to partially deploy south to farm Brave (for the //third// time), who are our allies again(ew!~). ===== Legacy Schism of 2017 ===== Everything was going pretty cool for legacy. PL tried to pressure brave in catch, but it wasn't 2014 anymore. Legacy banded together and held them back. So, they started actively using their "SPAI NETWORK". PGL realized TEST was getting bored. So he decided to deploy the alliance up north, while the rest of the coalition crabbed up down south. So he worked out a deal with XIX to use one of their station up north to deploy. In return, we promised to help them if they get attacked down south. While we were up north things started getting weird down south. TRI decided they have crabbed enough and now its time to fuck with its neighbors. They declared war on Phoenix foundation, an alliance entirely built on crabs (well it was headed by FCON what did you expect?). And PFED promply joined the coalition headed by XIX to save their asses. So now TRI was at war with XIX. GIGX, the executor of C02 was getting bored too, and he wanted some of the systems held by russians. So, he chose to ignore every relationship LEGACY had with XIX, said FU to the alliance mates, and joined the war on TRIs side. This and the deployment of NCPL to save sort dragon and his merry band of retards (DARKNESS), pretty much ended the deployment up north. We came back and tried to get the house in order. GIGX refused every attempt to solve the conundrum. After several attempts, legacy decided to give an ultimatum to GIGX. Either stop helping TRI and sit out this war, or C02 was to be kicked out of IMPASS and their space would be given to BRAVE, who started growing again. The plans for the ultimatum was leaked to PL by their spai who was also the capital fc of BRAVE (oh brave, when will you learn?). They cherry picked the logs fed it back to GIGX. Who declared he's seceading from LEGACY. They would ally up with tri, and stop TEST from helping XIX by hitting us near home. GIGX also declared they werent going to camp TEST space because of the relationship we had(actually they started camping us the after 2 days). In the meantime GARST TYRELL the executor of TRI kept posting cherry picked logs and "NARRATIVE" on reddit. Read the links for more info. [[https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/6w0dmi/a_quick_explication_on_what_is_happening_between/|https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/6w0dmi/a_quick_explication_on_what_is_happening_between/]] [[https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/6vtcxd/test_and_co2_reset/|https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/6vtcxd/test_and_co2_reset/]] ===== The Legacy Reset of CO2 ===== After Legacy conquered the southern regions of New Eden, there was a delicate agreement in place between the different alliances that Legacy was composed of, and their respective allies. This included TEST, CO2, FCON, Brave, and others. Space in the south was to be carved up and utilized by the various alliances, and for a time there was peace. At some point in late 2017, clashes between Solar (a DRF entity) and CO2 arose. There are differing reports as to the cause of the attacks, though at the time, CO2 claimed Solar shot one of CO2's renters. When CO2 started shooting Solar renters in Feythabolis, it triggered diplomatic agreements where FCON was obligated to support the rest of the DRF if they were getting invaded. FCON came to the aid of Solar against the CO2 incursion, and CO2 used this as a pre-tense to claim FCON was supporting their enemies and were not "real allies." It should be noted that CO2 had an agreement in Feythabolis already in place not to go to war, and then further broke another agreement not to go to war with FCON. Due to a breakdown in diplomatic relations, a reset was decided on between GigX and TEST Diplo. For elaboration on how this came about, a small discussion took place in bacon bar voice comms, outlining what lead up to the reset: [[https://soundcloud.com/user-658755243/bacon-bar-co2-resett|https://soundcloud.com/user-658755243/bacon-bar-co2-resett]] On August 27 2017 the reset took effect, and CO2 gifted Fortizars and other structures to PL. TEST destroyed their citadels and successfully flipped sov and destroyed i-hubs in south Impass. Skirmishes in Impass last three weeks before the coup. C02 feeds us a cap fleet. [[https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/6ygg3u/xwy_br/|https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/6ygg3u/xwy_br/]] Then they got couped by The Judge and Goons. [[https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/6zkaxi/co2_is_now_cocoup/|https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/6zkaxi/co2_is_now_cocoup/]] It was bad, this effectively destroyed C02 in Impass. Goons bubble-camped the 68FT Keepstar for several days. GIGX publicly threatened The Judge (the couper) in alliance chat. He said he wanted to cut off The Judges hands, but things got out of his hands instead. CCP permabanned him. We allowed helped most of the Co2 corps to evac. Some joined us for a few months. But most went up north to join Sort Dragon and his merry band of retards. After that PFED died (big surprise right?). Tri had internal issues and lost corps to NC. This conflict however showed eve that XIX is now just a paper tiger Sapporo Jones Today at 1:42 PM (TEST Discord General) "gigx was a lippy serb, tantrummed out and buddied with panfam and panfam accessories, we went our seperate ways" don't need that many words …" ===== The Eastern Invasion ===== The mostly Chinese alliance Fraternity (FRT) was formed when the Chinese Eve players from Serenity server migrated over to Tranquility. They swelled up in numbers in no time. They had good relations with NC and PL, who assisted in attacks. (read ncdock).So of course, they joined TRI, skillu, PanFam. Their leader went to Mittens podcast and claimed the Chinese FCs were like Olympic athletes. Pfed and XIX kept feeding them ratting supers and caps so they had reasons to peacock. That stopped when we Legacy started engaging. They were Olympic athletes alright, Special Olympic though. [[https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/73dt17/fraternity_fqq_brawl_aar/|https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/73dt17/fraternity_fqq_brawl_aar/]] This conflict with FRT ended eventually with FRT surrendering and paying TEST a considerable amount in war damages. The day of surrender were proclaimed as [[:culture:victory_east_day|]] {{:culture:sov_summary_2018.png}} ===== Provi Aid and Faction Fortizars Heist ===== Then CCP decided to do away with outposts by converting them to faction Fortizers. It turned made Providence, a shitty nullsec region, into a lucrative gold mine target for PL and friends because CVA had installed outposts in every single of their 80 systems. PL had recently recruited a corp from Fountain who excelled at entosis sov warfare, and with the ever present providence alliances infightings, they failed to hold them back alone. Pl mass spammed Astras (smaller citadels) in Provi and entosised the region while Proviblock unsuccessfully tried to get rid of them. Provi had been under complete assault by Waffles, then PanFam for well over a year and were just worn out. They asked us for help, and we showed for several Fortizar and Sotiyo timers to assist CVA, but we kept getting pressured from the east in Immensea by FRT + pets and could not be in two places at once with our cap fleet. [[https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/88asxu/frat_declares_war/|https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/88asxu/frat_declares_war/]] They were ineffective. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIaZPpmESJw|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIaZPpmESJw]] We couldn't save Provi, but got some danke frags out of it. We dropped on a PL capfleet bashing Provi live on Mittens podcast. Did we mention that the NCPL FCs were also on that podcast? [[https://clips.twitch.tv/PoorMiniatureFungusTheTarFu|https://clips.twitch.tv/PoorMiniatureFungusTheTarFu]] This presented us with a unique opportunity to make isk for the Legacy coalition. How you ask? Well it was easy. TEST and a full Legacy contingent deployed in June 2018 to Providence for about a month and a half before CCP actually converted the outposts, and we simply took them from Pandemic Legion. They couldn't do jack shit. NC had deployed to Querious to take some pressure off from Shart Dragon and his merry band of retards (DARKNESS + C02, yes, C02 reformed), who were being farmed by Goonswarm sigs in the north; they were unable to assist PL in Providence. Legacy Coalition led my TEST captured and unanchored all but a few faction Fortizars, but gifted Provibloc several. ERVK in Catch was staging for Provi actions, which included brief entosis skirmishes with PL. In a couple of weeks, Legacy had flipped sov and then began destroying nearly 400b in PL citadels in Provi and low-sec Assah. Legacy worked with CVA and their FCs to help coordinate sov transfers during operations. TEST lost one titan during a Fortizar destruction in Y-MPWL with a hotdrop from Honorable Third Party that they pulled off flawlessly with T1 dreads. HTP had worked with PL for months. ===== War with the North-Eastern Bloc ===== Coming off from the Providence faction fortizar heist deployment, Legacy found themselves under attack by the hostile entities of Skill Urself, Triumvirate, Fraternity, v0lta, Hard Knocks, Pandemic Legion and Northern Coalition. This temporary coalition had no real official name so it was called the North-Eastern Bloc by some of the EVE gaming media. Vily and progodlegend did a [[:culture:state_of_the_coalition_2018_06_18|State of the Coalition]] address to the gathered forces of Legacy prior to the war kicking off in ernest. The North-Eastern Bloc invaded Immensea and in response Legacy anchored the B0rtstar One Keepstar in DY- to form a effective defence. The war went so so with a inherited FCON Keepstar (now Legacy property) being destroyed and a massive battle to prevent the forces of the North-Eastern Bloc from established a beachhead in Feythabolis. The battle was a isk loss for Legacy but succeeded in pushing the front back to Immensea. Legacy found the supercapital fleet of the North-Eastern Bloc difficult to contend with, a matter which was made much worse when Pandemic Legion decided to bring down their supercapital fleet as well. The war soon culminated in [[:culture:history:battles:ualx-3|The Battle of UALX-3]] were Legacy and North-Eastern Bloc supercapital fleets clashed in full over the anchoring of a Legacy Keepstar. The battle ended as a massive victory for Legacy with North-Eastern supercapital forces hellcamped for a week and effectively the end of the war. {{:culture:sov_summary_2019.png}} And now for the longer view: {{:culture:sovmaps.gif}} ===== World War Bee 2 ===== On June 21st 2020, vily [[https://forum.pleaseignore.com/topic/107923-the-die-is-cast/|announced to the world]] that the Great NIP Slip of 2020 had begun. Legacy was giving The Imperium its two week notice that the Non Invasion Pact between The Imperium and Legacy was coming to an end. The mittani went into a rage and hosted multiple cringefilled tirades on his multidollar streaming channel about how TEST was next and how they would punish this "betrayal". As war seemed inevitable, basically everyone else in the known universe united in their loathing of goons and a new megacoalition, PAPI, was formed in order to kill goons once again and remove the cancer from EVE that is the goon menace. [[culture:history:battles:world_war_bee_2|World War Bee 2]] was a fact. Goons were pushed back from basically all their space, seeing the vast majority of their infrastructure burn (including 40+ Keepstars), and they clung on to a single constellation, the 1DQ constellation, in Delve. There a stalemate was formed which would last for months and months. The Siege of 1DQ. Eventually, a massive push to finally pry the goons out of their stronghold was announced on the 24th of July, 2021. This never materialized as one week later, PAPI declared a full retreat and evac from the South. World War Bee 2 was officially over. We lost, goons won. [[https://forum.pleaseignore.com/topic/110088-end-of-war-it-was-a-good-run/|Progodlegends forum statement on the end of the war.]] and [[https://forum.pleaseignore.com/topic/110094-in-which-i-make-an-announcement-amidst-chaos/|Sapporo Jones, TESTs alliance exec, forum statement on the war.]] TEST moves to Outer Passage. ===== Hey Ho, Hey Ho, off to the Drones we go ===== In the beginning of August 2021, TEST began moving to their new home in the Dronelands following the defeat in World War Bee 2. During this evac, it was announced that the coalition TEST was the leader of, [[culture:legacy|Legacy]], was officially disbanding after 5 years of owning the South. During this time, TEST lived for about 3 weeks in the SUAD Keepstar in U-QVWD fending off multiple Imperium attempts to anchor siege fortizars while the supercapital fleet caught up from Delve. During this time, Army of Mangos and Evictus began to occupy Esoteria. The D-P keepstar and 15 others throughout the former chain in Esoteria were scooped. In late August 2021, it was announced TEST would be putting roots down in Outer Passage. The D-P keepstar was renachored in the new staging system T0DT-T. Once the evacuation was offical over, many of the former Legacy alliance members began to disband. Only TEST, Army of Mangos, Already Replaced, and BRAVE survived the culling. On September 9th, [[https://forum.pleaseignore.com/topic/110228-a-passing-of-the-torch/ | Vily announced ]] he was offically stepping down from TEST High Command after 5+ years of service. Succeding him were Sandrin Stone, and Karmen Jell In Novemeber of 2021, BRAVE sold their former staging Keepstars to Imperium. One of which (GE-8JV) was used as a staging point to kill the U-QVWD and 0-SHT keepstars. Later that Month, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k3YFGBq2rU |TEST took vengenace ]] [[ https://br.evetools.org/related/30001970/202111060100 | and killed over 100bil in BRAVE capitals. ]] A week after Christmas, TEST Deployed with FIRE against Red Menace Coallition to Impass and Feythabolis. (someone pls fill in time gaps) ===== The Return to Faction Warfare ===== November of 2022 Test joined Caldari Faction Warfare - CCP released a decent expansion for once, and revamped the FW system. CCP also sent everyone 7 free days of omega to check everything out, and ran a number of deals to encourage subs. This seems to have worked at least in some part, as numbers are up and the faction warfare areas are very busy. Before joining, the alliance had fallen on incredibly hard times, very low fleet numbers (30 on a **really** good day) and poor morale or motivation to log in. Hoping to repeat the success and rebuilding of joining FW from the last time in 2013, time will tell where Test goes next. ===== Joining WinterCo ===== In March 2023, TEST opted to join the coalition [[https://wiki.pleaseignore.com/winterco:start|WinterCo]], a coalition founded and led by the alliance [[culture:history:Fraternity]]. Test, alongside WinterCo, fought and forced B2/Goons/Brave into retreat. November 2023, Test Began attempting to retake the fabled Testagram (https://forum.pleaseignore.com/topic/111114-the-great-reclamation-the-testagram/) December 2023, Test retook the Testagram, Keep anchored in 3T7 and Dino's finally found a new(old) home.