I was wondering what if Gobbins ordered PH to do a bunch of reffing right before his big move. Say he talked this out with the CEO of every PH corp plus 7-15 people in leadership who were not CEOs (probably just buddies of his) and all the CEOs agreed to not tell their own members until the official announcement despite any reservations they might have about leaving Panfam.
174 hours before the move, he then sends a ping for a giant subcap fleet to form 6 hours before the big move (but he doesn’t call it that, he just lists a time). 6 Hours (which he calls the begining of the OP) before the big move, a 800 man subcap fleet then goes to 3 different systems of the Imperium which has refineries. In each system, they hit everyone doing PVE, every Astraeus, Raitaru, Athanor, Tarata, and POCO, then go home. he tells everyone to stay logged in becuase there is something important. At 0 hour, he sends out a discord message they are trying something radical, going independent, and that they’re moving.
My friend who is a line member of one of the Ex-Panfam groups that were abandoned by PH said none of that would work. He said Initative went independent from the Imperium and all Gobbins had to do was copy what worked. But if they did do my plan, they wouldn’t be able to form the numbers. Even if they did, they’d just hit damage cap on the structures and wouldn’t be able to “burn” 3 whole systems in a 6-hour period. Third, the spike in local would be a pretty big tip off as to what was going on since the place where the refineries are is not one jump away from PH staging groups, and without caps, the Imperium would just crush the PH subcap fleet before the they could burn though all the shields on all the Taratas.
Then even if everything went according to plan and a subcap fleet was returning to R-AG7W (instead of a bunch of people being deathcloned to their home base), they’d be followed by a bunch of angry bees who will hellcamp them before they can actually move. He said if Gobbins would go independent using some version of my plan instead of his prescription of “do what Init did” he could much improve on that by waiting for a Large or Extra Large blue structure in low or null sec to be reffed that was coming out within 1-6 hours from the desired move time (like 1-5 hours before downtime if he wanted to move after DT for example). Then after coming back, announce the move. It would still not work well, but it would work much better than their actual “plan” and better than my plan. So form his perspective in terms of best to worst for PH going independent: Copy Initiative > Move after defending a Blue structure > Move after my idea (assuming it actually worked which he says it wouldn’t) > My Idea if they couldn’t ref successfully = What they actually did.
Do you agree with his assessment? We assume that the small group I talked about doesn’t leak whatever plans they make and take that as a given. My friend’s arguments boiled down to “your idea doesn’t work for these reasons” and “they’d be hellcamped if they pulled it off.” I honestly think the second point is a bit moot since if they pulled it off and then got hellcamped, they’d be exactly in the same situation as what happened in November, except they’d have the survivors of the subcap fleet logged in to try to clear bubbles. Maybe my idea of smashing up 3 systems wouldn’t work and the Imperium would defend their structures on the shields for reasons he pointed out. What do you think?