Intergalactic Summit

Considering there's an active conflict between TEST/CO2 and NC and the latter are losing on propaganda front...

Naah, I'm probably too suspicious. Congratulations on your graduation! The thing is, as a space explorer/researcher, your best friends are cloak, patience and Interdiction Nullification subsystem, in that order. There's really no forcing out an entity that large.

You'll unfortunately have to learn very quickly that lowsec, nullsec, and wormholes should be considered very dangerous. If you get attacked in that space, there's not much you can do and you absolutely should expect it at all times. TEST cannot and would not make such an arrangement because then anyone could claim to be "explorers" for protection and then mess with them with impunity. Or, failing this, it would cause a large amount of drama inside of their alliance when individuals break that agreement (which would be a daily occurrence) and leadership simply cannot handle that much disunity and complaining.

As to removing them by force, the only people capable of doing that are people who are just as violent towards random capsuleers.

What you are requesting would be harder to do than to move a mountain with your bare hands. You're best off simply joining the entity in charge of the area you want to explore.

As to your questions about the war,

NC, or "Northern Coalition" is another nullsec territorial 'government', who along with their allies in Pandemic Legion, Pandemic Horde, Spaceship Samurai and VOID (a coalition of sorts) control random chunks of Fade, Pure Blind and other regions of the North. Basically, Northern Coalition is an alliance that is part of one of the larger coalitions in the North called PanFam. PanFam is invading Circle of TEST, or "Circle-Of-Two" Alliance and TEST Alliance who have a military pact for this war and have formed a coalition to defend Tribute and Vale from invasion. The war is best described as a locked stalemate, with PanFam unable to make a sustained push into Tribute, instead fighting a war of attrition along a frontline. It's suspected that PanFam's war chests are much larger than COT, but COT is gaining members slightly while PanFam seems to be losing members slightly. The war has been going on for about a month, and given its state, I'd say it's a little early to call which side is winning. Neither side seems to be winning yet.

I'm not an impartial party in the conflict, so you'd also best ask others what they think about the state of the war.

Hello, Ms. Motsu! The Vale is an interesting target for Jove research, but I'm uncertain what there is to find there. Minedrill's rumored to have found something in the E-8CSQ constellation, but so far as I know those facilities have been locked down by the Caldari Navy.

Alternative targets for research are likely spread through the Curse region, though you'll run into issues with the Angels.

Of course, another alternative yet might be research into the Sleepers and the Drifters, respectively suspected to be a non-Directorate Jove group that went into cryostasis and simply wasted away, and-- well, we're still not sure about the Drifters, save that they seem to rely on Jove corpses to create infomorph vessels.

Either way, do look us up. Via Neocom, check out 'Arataka Communications Router' for general discussion, or 'Consortium Operations' for our public fleets for Drifter Hive penetrations.

Whatever else, good luck on your research ventures! We're always happy to see more researchers enter the field.

I would say that evicting any of the established null powers without internal sabotage and "a bigger fish" assaulting them is a pipe dream. Your best bet, like already said, would be to kiss the asses of whoever hold the area currently. And by kissing ass I mean throwing a lot of ISK on their faces, how much, you'd have to ask them.

'Bigger' is a very subjective and complex issue.

Pandemic Horde by itself has more members (roughly 10,000) than either Circle-of-Two (5,300) or TEST (7,700).
Nordern Coalition has roughly another 3,000 and Pandemic Legion just shy of 2,000, and Spaceship Samurai add another 900 or so. So on that count, 'PanFam' has more pilots.

Pandemic Legion and Northern Coalition, between them, also control one of the largest Supercapital fleets in the Cluster. So on that measure, 'PanFam' is also 'bigger' ie: more powerful.

However, Pandemic Legion, Northern Coalition, Pandemic Horde, and their allies typically lack the wherewithal to continue motivating their numeric superiority to show up. Their supercapital pilots often remain motivated, but their numbers aren't typically high enough to forcibly evict a group of the size of TEST. Nor do they tend to want to do the grunt-work necessary to really evict a motivated defender. For most of those supercapital pilots, eviction isn't the real motive: it's getting 'fights'. Basically, they're bored and looking to be entertained by killing people.

In this case, however, certain economic realities have likely given the upper echelons of PanFam significant motivation to take the valuable space that TEST and CO2 hold. The war is only in its first few serious months, however, and it remains to be seen whether or not Horde can be motivated to repeat their success of a year ago in waging a long slog of Entosis warfare over the course of eight to ten months of large-scale daily effort and area denial.

I'm not a supercap pilot, but I'd say it's inaccurate to say just the supercarrier commanders think this way, it's a pervasive culture in PanFam from what I've seen, particularly amongst not so much the big guys but the little guys in Caracals. There's a reason they shout Valhalla.

It's also inaccurate to say it's a thrill from "killing people", if that were the case, they'd gank miners in highsec and get the thrill out of that. I can think of nothing more boring or pointless personally, and I subscribe to this enthusiasm over "good fights". Rather, it's the spirit of competition and the reality of finding a pilot that can best you, and learning something from them.

Of course, you're a Goonswarm Director, probably responsible for more pointless death than almost anyone in the cluster. You know all of this, but you're being your usual self.

See, Jason, that's why I made the distinction about supercapital pilots.

For the little guys in Caracals, yeah, it's definitely about going out and testing themselves, competition against their peers, and constantly getting just that little bit better, about the thrill of riding the edge of death and surviving another day. For the supercapital pilots, it's not. If it were, they'd engage in combats where they don't have overwhelming supercapital superiority. They'd seek out situations that put them in actual danger, rather than leaving the risk to dread and fax pilots.

And yes, Goonswarm's been responsible for quite a bit of pointless death. Never said we haven't. But this discussion's about the players in the CoTEST/PanFam war, so I didn't really see how analyzing the madnesses of the Swarm was relevant.

Wouldn't it only be natural that pilots of ships thousands of times more expensive would be thousands of times more risk averse?

You're trying to make this about individuals' character when it's much more logically and easily explained by basic risk aversion.

Hate to be arguing the side of "supercapital pilots aren't necessarily lunatics", because, weeeeeell....

..but even with this being the case, risk aversion is a stronger basic instinct with an extremely expensive ship than "they just like killing helpless people and won't escalate."

To my knowledge, PL/NC supers aren't super duper shy about escalating. See: B-R, M-O, etc etc.

Solid points.

I suppose supercap pilots don't have the luxury of being a hot dog.

Given your political affiliation, the topic and the way you worded it, I'm sure you can understand why I believed you were making a value judgement in a snarky, passive aggressive way. But I'll take your word for it that you were not.