Pilots; it seems some steps are being undertaken, and we’re now being clued in rather more. The Provost Marshal’s Galnet feed also carries much of this.
Thoughts?
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A few, mostly wondering what form these measures will take. Are they going to be regular patrols or some sort of guard post in the affected systems?
Well, it’s great that they’re now trying to counter boarders and hijacking. I can’t believe this has never been a problem before now, so I am left wondering “why now?”
What manner of new style of boarding action prompted this development?
Also, Derelik and Molden Heath! Argh. That’s a bit too close for comfort for me, but it can’t be helped. Perhaps we should start bringing marines along on our ships?
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Any time a bureaucracy announces a massive military build-up/expansion to ‘protect’ against a threat they’re not willing to actually provide information on, they shouldn’t be trusted.
And any time a bureaucracy isn’t doing that? They probably shouldn’t be trusted anyway. But especially when they are.
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that’s not a bad idea…
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On the boarding front, to be honest, I think in most cases it was probably a settled matter in the spacelanes. Boarding is a non-trivial task, excepting with properly armored exosuits. Even then, suit breaches are nasty business.
My guess, then, is that these boarders are technically more capable than what we’ve seen before, or the danger their operations engender is substantially greater.
After all, it remains remarkable that these ships disappeared without a trace for months before it started to raise red flags.
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Well, that was quick, and it justifies creating a new, separate division within CONCORD.
We know that “vast majority of ship disappearances fitting the pattern have been civilian vessels” with no mention of any kind ransoms demands fells weird.
Could the perpetrators not be interested in money (aside slavery outside of the empire space) or they have other goals.
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Let’s go down the list, I suppose. Aridia, Derelik, Molden Heath.
- Guristas - ransoms, general piracy. No indications of ransoms taking place, so probably not them.
- Serpentis - ransoms, general piracy. No indications of ransoms taking place, so likely also not them.
- Angels - slavery, piracy, etc. One would assume that slaves would be sold, though, and we’d eventually hear of captured crew or passengers making their way to camps that are liberated.
- Blood Raiders - blooding. This is possible, as the survivors may never be seen again outside Blood Raider circles.
- Sansha - ‘true’ slavery. This is also possible, as captured crew and passengers would never be identified once captured.
- Rogue drones - resource harvesting. Probably not, though, as we know of no proper ‘infantry’ used by the rogue drones.
- Triglavian Collective - we have no idea, and so can’t rule this out one way or another.
- Vigilant Tyrannos - while possible, we’ve never seen anything resembling infantry in use by Drifters. All indications are that the number of repurposed Jovian clones in existence is probably quite small., by comparison with other factions.
I can only assume Capsuleer organizations couldn’t achieve something like this without CONCORD knowing essentially immediately. Likewise, the regions seem to make little sense for an Imperial force, though the Amarr are rumored to be the progenitors of Sleeper-derived infantry technologies.
So, given regions, it could be the Amarr, the Blood Raiders, or the Sansha. However, if it were the Amarr, then CONCORD intervention would result in rapid dissemination of the technology between the empires, and we’d have heard of it.
But this is a very rough cut at things, as CONCORD has been doing much to avoid giving so much as a hint as to what the danger is.
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My speculation would be that someone, a mysterious third party, be they pirates, Triglavians, Drifters or otherwise, has developed some kind of new boarding technique or delivery technology that renders the non-trivial task considerably more trivial.
Either way, I hope not to find out the hard way. Now to do the cruel calculation of whether to bring more lives aboard a vessel or take the risk…
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That line of systems are effectively the Amarrian border with the rest of the Empires. Could be someone is trying to destabilize things.
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Ms. Vuld; fortunately, to this point, it seems Capsuleer vessels haven’t been threatened, else someone would have lived to tell the tale. Still, you have a point…
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Indeed.
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Does it? Why?
We’re told that. We have a record of… one ‘disappearance’, and news of a report by independent researchers who haven’t actually provided the report or any explanation of their methodologies or sourcing. We don’t know anything. So we shouldn’t go overstating the level of surety we’re working with.
As for ‘who’… there’s at least 2 factions Makoto didn’t include who can’t be ruled out:
SOE
CONCORD
We don’t have any particular reason to suspect them, but we can’t rule them out.
If we believe that the Amarr wouldn’t attempt to hide it from CONCORD.
Right now, we have almost enough information to qualify as ‘wildly uninformed speculation’.
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Just a thought, but has anyone checked with Schism/Valkyrie contacts in case they know anything about this? That was the last time someone came up with new clone tech outside of Empire space. Perhaps they’ve branched out into infantry clones.
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I misspelled, I meant that with the information the CONCORD has now they don’t believe that the existing divisions can handle the task and it needs a new specialized division - AEGIS.
Provost Marshal Valkanir does not specify the numbers, but it’s way more and it supposedly has been happening over last 12 months.
Well Makoto did not include the Empires, EOM, Thukker, Syndicate, Imperium… the list can go on.
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It bothers me that, even with the formation of this new division and the identification of a Case Green Magic and so on, we still know next to nothing about what happened to the Navy ship or any of the others. Instead we’re just left to let our imaginations run wild on what they want us to believe is a very credible, very dangerous threat.
Is more information too much to ask for?
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Provost Marshal Valkanir does not specify the numbers, but we’re told it’s way more. We have a record… of one ship.
No, she included the powers that operate in the affected regions. CONCORD claims to. The SoE show up everywhere.
You wouldn’t think so, but… well.
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Without going into the long of it, CONCORD’s been circumspect about nearly everything since their childrens’ crusade under the name of Operation Spectre.
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Don’t forget, justifying a new division means expanding their budget. Promoting Kasiha to Provost Marshall is probably a hike in pay grade. I don’t doubt there is something going on, they are being very cagey about it. It may be an embarrassment and they have been forced to take action, in part due to the Aidonis/SoE report https://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/world-news/large-increase-in-crew-losses-says-joint-report-by-aidonis-foundation-and-soe/ .
Civilian shipping isn’t monitored to the extent Capsuleers are.
“All your ships are belong to us.”
We know of the ships that are missing, the worst scenario would be the ones that returned without giving any hint…
“They walk among us”(?)
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