Four Weeks into the Great Tenerifis Migration – We Live in Tenerifis Now

At least some of us live in Tenerifis now.  Getting an alliance of 48K characters run by more than 8K individuals, many of whom apply very different levels of effort to the game, means that there will be people moving for quite a while.

But the center of gravity of the Imperium, which is always Goonswarm Federation, has shifted east and, while many of us have moved, there is still much to be done in the new space.

To start with, there are simple things to update, like intel channels.

In null sec, and intel channel is a way that members of an organization announce and track hostiles who have been observed in their space.  The channel generally has some basic rules… intel only, so no chatter, and no blue intel, which is to say don’t report your own group members… and a standard format.  For Imperium intel channels that tends to be location, name, ship, and any relevant details, like on a particular gate or if they are using bubbles.  If there are multiple hostiles to reports… and as I noted previously, in a “not blue shoot it” situation, which is the Imperium’s stance, there are no neutrals, so you’re either one of us or you are a hostile… you want to report a name or two and a fleet composition, or a dscan reading if possible.

So you get a channel that scrolls by like this.

This is a vital tool for null sec groups, and contributing to the channel when you have intel can save somebody a lot of grief, while paying attention to it can let you know when whatever party you are hosting might suddenly get crashed by a roving band.

Traditionally, the Imperium sorted intel channels by region.  This was easy since we lived in Delve, Red Alliance lived in Period Basis, The Initiative lived in Fountain, somebody else live in Querious, DC lived in Catch, and so on.  The regional breaks worked.

Now GSF lives spread across four regions, Tenerifis, Impass, Immensea, and Catch.  We started out with just more regional channels, but that quickly proved untenable as even our move ops were crossing regions and key locations like UALX-3 are just a few gates from other regions, so being in staging and not seeing that there was a gate camp in Catch just two jumps away was bad.

There was a change to consolidate a couple of the intel channels, which involved people being kicked from old intel channels without explanation… you log in and get a message that you are no longer allowed access to an intel channel… as leadership tried to direct people to a new in-game channel dedicated to intel channels.

The consolidation was not enough and eventually the Imperium, like Gaul, was divided into three.  There is now the Western Empire, centered on the old capital in Delve, the Eastern Empire, where we are staged in UALX-3, now dubbed Goonstantinople, and the Southeastern Empire (which probably could have just been the Southern Empire if it were not for Period Basis) where some of the smaller members of the Imperium live. (Usual map source)

As previously noted, Brave, and to a lesser extent Dracarys, are picking up Delve sovereignty.  For those who have not been keeping score at home, the current membership of the Imperium is:

• Brave Collective
• Dracarys.
• Fanatic Legion.
• Get Off My Lawn
• Goonswarm Federation
• Tactical Narcotics Team
• Invidia Gloriae Comes
• Scumlords
• Stribog Clade
• Shadow Ultimatum
• Sigma Grindset
• WE FORM BL0B

Not all of them have opted to hold sovereignty on their own, though after years of quiet peace in a corner of Delve, the lawn gnomes of Get Off My Lawn have decided to get back on the horse with some systems in Querious.

And that was a pretty trivial bit of setup in a sea of things to do, like upgrading systems and getting new Ansiblex routes together.  I was surprised on Monday night when there was a call to get to Irmalin to defend a Fortizar… we lost it, but there was a good fight where we exacted a cost… to find that it is just 4 jumps from UALX to HED-GP and the edge of high sec.

We are still on the hook to help defend Delve as Brave does its own move ops into the region.  So the alpha clone doctrine, Control Alt Delve, is still based there.  In my moving flurry I hauled all those hulls east, so had to get my alpha clone back there… though he is omega currently because he has skills to be a covert cyno pilot for side adventures… and buy a new Ferox, which I did just in time to help defend another Fortizar.

The Aniseblex network is much reduced in Delve now thanks to Equinox and the handover to Brave, so defense means a lot more gates than one might expect.  But we got out there and chased off another PanFam fleet then waited around for the repair cycle to finish, while collecting drones they left behind.

And when we’re not running off to various points to defend things, there is trouble enough on the move route to Goonstantinople.  A lot of people know that we’re moving and it is always an opportunity to try and pick off some unsuspecting capsuleer who hasn’t signed into the new intel channels.  So we get action on our doorstep.

So there has been no lack of content.  Pings for ops are pretty regular.  I think at this point I am already on kill mails with all four of my Imperium characters this month, which is generally an unlikely occurrence for me.

I am also trying to figure out the lay of the land in our new space.  After all that time in Delve… and all the time spent there before we had to resettle there in 2016… I had a reasonably good mental model of where things were.  Now I am starting from scratch again, and all the more so given the proximity of multiple zones.

I have explored a bit.  We are fairly close to B-R5RB, the site of the first great titan battle, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year, so I went out to visit that and see the monument.  I had been there, if briefly, during the battle and the six most expensive kill mails I am on are all from that event.

I also went out to visit the local rats.  Out in Tenerifis and Immensea that means the Angel Cartel.  The long cleansing of the Blood Raiders has ceased for me.  Fortunately, I didn’t need to do much to tune up the old Ishtar much.  I have an old armor tanked one that has the adaptive resists module, so if Angels throw explosive at me, it resists explosive.  I just had to trade out the drones for the right damage type and I seemed to be good.

So it goes.  There is a lot still to be done and some days it feels like we’re straddling the breadth of the empire, but the move is still in motion.  Next we’ll have to see how the coming Revenant expansion might change things… though as I said after the first look at the proposed features, it doesn’t feel like it will change much.