EVE Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Weak Allied Blocs: For Atlas, it was a case of terrible luck that Against All Authorities, Atlas’s primary bloc-level ally and neighbor, began to collapse spontaneously around the time that Atlas found itself under heavy assault. Barely two weeks after -A- announced publicly that they would be coming to Atlas’s aid, Manfred Sidious, the -A- leader, was deposed and replaced. In the aftermath of this pseudo-coup, a number of veteran member corporations have chosen to leave -A- entirely for parts unknown. This left Atlas facing several bloc-level foes without any support.

Collapsed Buffer Zone: The failure of Atlas to support its buffer-state pets in the border zone between Atlas’s main territory and the Drone Russians is probably the largest and most obvious failure. While the quality of pets in battle is questionable at best, they have a great utility in being able to fill up a system being defended to the point that lag incapacitates any attempted offense. Atlas had a large network of pet alliances, totaling almost 7000 pilots. The most likely explanation for why the buffer pets weren’t supported is because Bobby Atlas wasn’t providing direction at the time the anti-pet campaign began; had he not been out of the game, it’s possible that Atlas would have been more aggressive in defending its tenants. It’s also possible that there was the leadership ability to defend them, but the pets were written off as not strategically necessary.

Lack of Transparency: Atlas is notorious for keeping its membership in the dark about the progress of the war, particularly when things began to go poorly for them. This is never a good idea, as players will find out war information either from their alliance first, or failing that from external sources that may be distorted by one’s enemies. As it stands presently, the best news for an Atlas member about the war they’re involved in comes from external forums like Kugutsumen or Scrapheap, rather than from their own leadership. This breeds distrust, as well as killing motivation to rally to the alliance’s banner.

Supercapital Blobs in Dominion Lag: This is a particularly nasty problem. As everyone in nullsec is now aware, lag in EVE has been completely incapacitating since the release of Dominion last year. Fleet fights are regularly rendered impossible at populations as low as 250 in a system, while alliances have expanded in size and could potentially engage in 800 vs 800 battles. As the “Lag Ceiling” has lowered the number of players who can function in any given system, the population of supercapitals in the game has only increased. Atlas is the first alliance to face the problem of having over 100 hostile supercapitals in one system at one time. Due to the Dominion lag situation, there is no physical response possible to that kind of force; the number of supercapitals required to defeat the attacking supercap blob would not have been able to function in the game. Therefore, the attackers essentially won by fiat, having mustered enough supercapitals and support before Atlas. That said; the mere fact that 100 supercapitals are attacking Atlas is itself a sign of a greater failure of diplomacy, for both uniting their enemies against them so effectively, and for not having the buffer pets available to ‘lock out’ the defending system.

Conclusion
While events beyond Atlas’ control (-A- collapsing, Dominion Lag) were contributing factors in the loss of their capital, the current situation is undeniably an avoidable one which could have been ameliorated by better leadership, more transparency, and better defense of buffer pets. It’s going to be interesting to see if they manage to recover and regroup in Omist, of if this will end in a humiliating cascade. Next week, we’ll examine a catastrophic failure closer to home, taking a look at how exactly Goonswarm imploded and what we can learn from that particular disaster.