The ice must floe

So goons are ganking bots and people who are mining gallente ice (which produces oxygen isotopes), to fill the game with tears and fuck.

You can read the plan. There's been some discussion as to whether it's for real or not, and I was curious to know what was actually happening. So I checked.

The plan includes a list of target systems. Shortly after hearing about the project I checked a few systems and found no gankers, and about 10-20 miners in each ice belt. 12 hours after that, I went through the list and checked every (non-island) system. This is what I found:

• Ardallabier - 2 miners, down from ~15 earlier. Ganks ongoing.
• Brapelille - 12 miners, ganks ongoing.
• Jaschercis - 5 miners. These ones are trying to be tricky, using ECM drones, RR, and hulks instead of mackinaws. An alpha pest or maybe two smartbombers could kill them, but I hung out for a while and nobody took them out.
• Angymonne - 1 miner.
• Aydoteaux - 5 miners, ganks ongoing.
• Carirgnottin - 6... 5... 4 miners, ganks ongoing.
• Tolle - 1 miner.
• Ignebaener - A single miner, being bumped by a gank brutix while the brutix pilot mourned the lack of remaining targets.

Out of curiosity, I then re-visited the systems in reverse order

• Tolle - No miners.
• Carirgnottin - No miners.
• Aydoteaux - 3 miners, surrounded by exhumer and gank ship wrecks. I suspect they were replacing lost mackinaws from a stock in station. Obviously bots. Ganks ongoing.
• Angymonne - No miners.
• Jaschercis - 2 miners. No visible gank activity.
• Brapelille - 2 miners, ganks ongoing.
• Ardallabier - 1 miner, ganks ongoing.

Here's the goon killboard. The search tool shows 280 exhumer and mining barge kills in the last two days, which appear to have taken place almost exclusively in gallente highsec.

I'm gon' call it, highsec oxygen isotope production has been shut down hard. So what's going on with the market?

Well, as soon as the 'goonswarm shrugged' announcement was made, well before ganks started, speculation drove the price of isotopes up to about 3 times their previous price. At that point people started selling stock for hilarious profits, which caused the price to stabilize and even decrease. Some people who would have otherwise held their stock mistook this for a peak and also put their stock up for sale. Currently oxygen isotopes in jita are 1050 isk per unit, down from a peak of about 1300.

And what happens next? Two possibilities:

1. Goons stop killing miners, prices return to normal.
2. Goons keep ice production shut down, stocks are depleted and the price increases more. Possibly a lot more.

I'm betting on number 2 at the moment. It won't last forever, but things could be really interesting in the meantime.

Lastly, forums. There is a thread, and it is full of sperging goonhate, tears and some of the dumbest shit I've ever read. It's beautiful.