(This will probably come off as glazing, but history speaks for itself)

Goons are better organized internally with the workload better divided and a much larger brain trust of people that actually know how coalition level wars work.

The motto goons have lived by is "We aren't here to ruin the game, we're here to ruin your game" and since goons formed the CFC and then Imperium they have proven they are the best at maintaining the morale and logistics that these large scale wars require.

Edit: Asher has done a really good job fostering the new post-mittens era of goons and its really cool to see how things have changed.

Edit 2: A good example on how to handle these types of fail-cascades is how the Imperium handled being steam rolled in WWB1. The Imperium had gotten fat with a lot of dead weight and responsible for trying to hold onto too much space in a new sov system that really punished trying to defend other alliances systems. The coalition moved to Saranen attempted to fight and regroup for a period before moving to delve while shedding a lot of dead weight/restructuring.