So! For example, fly to Isseras. Fly to the Jove Observatory. Wander closer to it. Autothysian Lancers-- and if they’re in system and active, Drifters --will fire on you.
You’ve done nothing more than fly in Caldari high sec, but now you’re being fired on.
Are you saying that pilots in good standing with the State shouldn’t be able to fly freely in secure State territory?
So, is that what Makoto considers as “sovereign” space?
Amusing.
Have you tried poking into like… ANY… any deadspace pocket, infested with Sansha, Rogue drone, Guristas, Federals, Angels, Blood raiders?.. If they will fire on you, will you be surprised and start another drama, crying all over IGS boards that they’re taking sovereignty?
Or do smaller criminal gangs hiding in shacks and attacking a police officer peeking inside would go that far to claim sovereignty?
Or maybe you in ARC claim sovereignty that way, for example in your quarters in some Maker-forsaken station where you personally might hide from Caldari justice, eh?
Stop wasting my time.
Ah, excellent. So, many of the examples you cite are pirates, or those you’re at war with.
I think that proves my point adequately.
Ladies and gentlemen, according to Makoto it seems that every our system is filled like cheese with multiple bubbles of sovereign pirate space.
I could entertain that thought a bit more, but it really leads nowhere.
Begone.
ITo be fair, isolated pockets of pirate activity don’t really present a threat to empire sovereignty (though we are, as you say, riddled with them like holes in cheese).
The Drifters, on the other hand, could most certainly present such a threat if they pushed their advances, which they have done in the past (Drifter Incursions) and may do in the future. What point this is even relevant to is beyond me, but that’s neither here nor there.
To say the Drifters are “claiming Jove Observatories as sovereign space”, however, is a stretch at best. The Drifters’ Circadian Sleeper and Autosynthian Lancer drones are scouts, nothing more.
Indeed there was a drifter incursion. And it was quite a hostile move without any doubt.
But again, it’s those who raid Anoikis actually are launching incursion in their space. They started doing it way before Drifter’s incursion started. And incursions into Wormhole space still go on as we speak.
These capsuleer raiders don’t simply sit in there, defending astrahuses from Sleepers and Drifters, they are actively attacking their structures. So far I haven’t seen such aggressive behavior neither from Drifters themselves, nor from Triglavians who are fighting them.
I don’t have to remind you that we don’t understand the Drifters. We know their technology is significantly more advanced than ours (Thankfully, as I’d hate to see their doomsday weapons become commonplace), so my personal suspicion is that the matter is one of numbers. The Drifters, perhaps, simply haven’t built up enough combat force to mount more than small scouting incursions.
We are, however, certainly the most aggressive party in this conflict. That doesn’t mean we are in the wrong to defend ourselves now, when gunfire flows both ways. It merely means that we Capsuleers are as trigger-happy, on the whole, as we’ve ever been.
And it’s still no excuse to make the baseless assertion that, if the Drifters were ever interested in diplomacy, they might be interested in it now. If you’re willing to make that assertion, however, feel free to present your argument to a Drifter battleship. I look forward to the possibility of some unforeseen result, but I think we all know the most likely outcome.
The Drifter attacks in Semiki involved, probably, in excess of 300 Drifters, the majority of which were cruisers and above.
And how did they fare, again?
A conservative estimate; not very well.
The Drifters have superior technology, but not the numbers required to best Empire or Capsuleer fleets in open warfare, therefore.
I’m sure all the Sleeper and Drifter facilities we Capsuleers destroy aren’t doing the Drifters’ infrastructure any favours.
It isn’t that superior, the battleships and cruisers are nice, their one big advantage is that they appear to have the Jovian wormhole generating tech. Arithmos is quite meaty, but the others, once the DD has fired, are not that tough. Concentrated fire can be heavy though.
We simply do not know the extent of Sleeper facilities, caches constantly pop up in hisec and its impossible to know how many facilities and clones the Sleepers replicated in Anoikis. The Drifters are a totally separate, albeit, once related group. There are 5 complexes with Hives but that doesn’t preclude other Hives existing. They are seen all the time pulling pieces from Jove Observatories. It is possible that they also recycle components from capsuleer plundered Sleeper facilities and I have seen Lancers investigating planets, so their resources are unknown. I still suspect that we have yet to see the actual extent of their production facilities. Nobody, not even ourselves are making serious inroads on their current stockpiles of ships.
Your arguments are as difficult to confirm as mine. We simply don’t have the information to assess their resources.
Consider: if they do have a mass of fleet power and resources we haven’t seen… where is it? Why don’t they use it, or why haven’t they used it? What are they reserving their reserves for?
Attempting to prosecute the war they’re in with the Triglavians? It’s not unreasonable to think that they consider the other 2Jove remnant more of a threat than us.
This is actually entirely possible, and we may have evidence of it… but what’s this other Jove Remnant you’re referring to?
Encounters in the abyssal pockets do suggest the Drifters are primarily concerned with “invading” that territory. Furthermore, they have modified the Sleeper drones to support that activity.
Unless “invasion” consists of running around in a mad dash to blow up treasure boxes, the true battle between the Drifters and the Triglavians is taking place out of our sight.
Are all of the abyssal pockets we are allowed to visit located above the same apparently lifeless terrestrial planet orbited by the remains of a large moon?
As usual, Ms. Noh, unprecedented questions with confusing answers. I’m inclined to agree with you that there are deeper recesses of the Abyss where the Drifter/Triglavian conflict rages fiercer than we’ve yet seen… and the sooner we gain access to them, the better.
The Drifters and the Triglavians are likely both remnants of the Second Jove Empire. We know, for example, that the First Empire was more advanced than the Second (as the Second was more advanced than the Third or the Directorate). We also know that the Talocan were about as far past the First Empire as the First Empire was past… us.
The Drifters and the Triglavians appear to be at a rough parity in terms of their combat effectiveness. If the Triglavians were anything older than the Second Empire, they would be rolling over the Tyrants without a care. If they were a later civilization, then presumably the Directorate would have at least mentioned them to the Society, and we would likely have more information than we do. Thus, it stands to reason that the Triglavians are also Second Empire Jove.
The Triglavians appear to have fairly specific knowledge about “The Tyrants,” reinforcing the argument that they are either a fragment of the 2nd Empire themselves, or a contemporary civilization that was attacked by The Tyrants.
Though not impossible, it also seems less likely that Triglavians would call Drifters an “ancient enemy” if the Triglavians were even more ancient.
You… may have misinterpreted me. I believed you were mentioning the Drifters mopping up two Second-Empire remnants. Yes, we’re pretty sure the Triglavians are one… but I was inquiring about the other Remnant you’re referring to. You weren’t referring to one, just using an odd shorthand. I’m caught up now.