It was a week of continuing to come to grips with the post-M2-XFE situation for Legacy, as other alliances in the coalition had meetings, including Brave and Warped Intentions. The Brave meeting was notable for Dunk Dinkle, whose usual mellow countenance was replaced by an angrier, expletive spouting Dunk. Since he is one of the titan pilots still logged out in M2-XFE (I saw his Leviathan during the fight) he has some reason to be on edge. And then there is the situation in Catch and Brave’s need to neglect Delve and any break out attempt in order to defend their own space from “knuckleheads.”
We also might be coming up on an infrastructure hub crisis. The war has seen ihubs destroyed in unprecedented numbers. Every time a system swaps hands, a new ihub had to be hauled out and deployed. We’ve already seen in some less hotly contested areas like Querious a lack of desire by both sides to expend ihubs on systems not deemed strategic. But it sounds like stocks of Planetary Interaction materials, from which ihubs are built, might be running low. It might be a good time to start on PI.
The Delve Front
The situation in Delve has largely revolved around PAPI trying to come to grips with their situation and regain momentum in the war. They need to keep pressure on us in Delve and, of course, they need to do something about their trapped titans, supers, and other capital ships.
On the former, the week did heat up some as PAPI tried to re-assert control over ihubs in the region after we used the post-M2 calm to snatch many key systems back. That has led to a bunch of fights over timers, though the number of systems actually changing hands has not been that big.
Delve – Jan. 17, 2021
The hell camp in M2-XFE continues, to the exclusion of other strategic camps for the Imperium. The Helms Deep camp has been abandoned for now, so I have removed it from the map for now. Those systems do not seem to be in play at the moment however.
PAPI has pressed on the M2-XFE camp several times in attempts to clear bubbles. They have also been trying to drop Azbel’s in the system to get themselves a defensible foothold from which to work. But so far, after two weeks, the camp is holding fairly strong.
Meanwhile, the situation in M2-XFE looks like this.
The M2-XFE Keepstar grid
The hostiles have been logging in some ships every day just before downtime (11:00 UTC) in order to try and cap them up so that, when the breakout comes, they will be able to jump out. However, Imperium forces have been countering that for neuts and focused void bombs and the like every day so this could be a long process. We shall see who has the patience to sit this out the longest.
The Catch Front
Catch picked up in activity over the last week as The Initiative found some more friends to come in and help assail Brave and Warped Intentions. Brave has held onto their territory so far, but has had to clash repeatedly to do so, often coming up on the short side of the fight when the numbers are counted. This has kept Brave focused on Catch rather than Delve.
Meanwhile, space that once belonged to The Watchmen has started to get picked up by Dreadbomb, expanding out of Providence.
Catch – Jan. 17, 2021
While Catch has shed one metaliminal storm, which moved on into Querious as expected, the other one is hanging out in the middle of Brave space. It might move on towards Querious and Delve as well.
Other Theaters
In Queirous the Imperium has popped Legacy Coalition ihubs in a dozen systems, the bulk of them having been held by Brave. Neither side has been keen to drop a fresh ihub in many systems in the region though, so that made for a fresh batch of unclaimed locations. Meanwhile, that metaliminal storm that looked to be heading out of Catch made its way into Querious and might keep moving into Delve.
Querious – Jan. 17, 2021
Over in Esoteria The Bastion and its Stain Russian allies haven’t expanded their ihub holdings this week, so I can re-run last week’s map.
Northwest Esoteria – Jan. 17, 2021
They have, however, been shooting structures, including planetary customs offices and the like in order to be a nuisance and prevent TEST members from picking up their PI materials. (Which, as noted above, can be used to make ihubs… or structure fuel blocks… or a number of other essential items.)
A fruitful evening of POCO kills
The Bation’s main FC Qicia was on The Meta Show this past weekend to talk about what has been going on in the region, which included TEST flying a Munnin fleet out from Delve to defend structures in Esoteria.
My Participation
I have been on the M2-XFE hell camp for a while every day, helping out to cover the USTZ hours. As I have said before, PAPI keeps logging in just enough targets to keep everybody happy and hopeful. I have also made it out on a few for some of the ihub skirmishes.
Out in Eagles with Mister Vee
The week saw no ship losses for me, so my count for the war stands as follows:
- Ares interceptor – 15
- Crusader interceptor – 5
- Atron entosis frigate – 6
- Rokh battleship – 5
- Drake battle cruiser – 4
- Malediction interceptor – 4
- Scimitar logi – 3
- Ferox battle cruiser – 3
- Purifier stealth bomber – 2
- Guardian logi – 2
- Scalpel logi frigate – 2
- Raven battleship – 1
- Crucifier ECM frigate – 1
- Gnosis battlecruiser – 1
- Bifrost command destroyer – 1
- Cormorant destroyer – 1
- Hurricane battle cruiser – 1
- Sigil entosis industrial – 1
- Mobile Small Warp Disruptor I – 1
Other Items
As I mentioned over the course of the week, we hit the date where structures need Quantum Cores in order to provide station services like repairs and tethering. Also, new structures that are deployed now need a core to come online, otherwise they will never enter that state and will remain immediately killable.
This is the big money moment for many alliances. As I mentioned previously, TEST was pulling down structures in their space, likely to avoid having to core them. The Imperium started issuing war bonds in order to cover that bill. While I have yet to receive my shares in the corporation that is being used for the war bonds, they did boost up the number of shares available from the default 1,000 to 21,000. At a price of 1 billion ISK per share, that is potentially a lot of liquid cash.
Share count
That does not necessarily mean that they raised 21 trillion ISK from the offer, but they did get enough to drop cores into our critical structures.
And the peak concurrent users for the week remained about on par with the previous week:
- Day 1 – 38,838
- Week 1 – 37,034
- Week 2 – 34,799
- Week 3 – 34,692
- Week 4 – 35,583
- Week 5 – 35,479
- Week 6 – 34,974
- Week 7 – 38,299
- Week 8 – 35,650
- Week 9 – 35,075
- Week 10 – 35,812
- Week 11 – 35,165
- Week 12 – 36,671
- Week 13 – 35,618
- Week 14 – 39,681
- Week 15 – 40,359
- Week 16 – 36,642
- Week 17 – 37,695
- Week 18 – 36,632
- Week 19 – 35,816 (Saturday)
- Week 20 – 37,628 (Saturday)
- Week 21 – 34,888
- Week 22 – 33,264
- Week 23 – 33,149
- Week 24 – 32,807 (Saturday)
- Week 25 – 31,611
- Week 26 – 39,667 (Saturday)
- Week 27 – 34,989 (Saturday)
- Week 28 – 34,713
Related
- INN – World War Bee: Week 28
- INN – Brave Looks to Catch, Asks M2 Subs to Login
- Dunk Dinkle – CCP’s Dilemma
- NEP – Large Battles Over IHUBs in Delve
- INN – The Wealth of Alliances
- Polygon – Eve Online is getting crushed by its own success
- INN – Legacy Leaders Discuss Future Plans
- The Meta Show – War situation talk (without The Mittani)
- Soundcloud – Warped Intentions alliance update
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