31 Weeks of World War Bee

We are now past the seven month mark for the war, which officially kicked off way back on July 5, 2020.

The headline news of the week was probably Siberian Squads opting to join the Imperium.

Siberian Squads

I mentioned back in the Week 29 post that Siberian Squads was leaving Legacy Coalition and possibly moving north to join in the shenanigans going on up there.  Unlike Red Alliance, which left PAPI to join in with their Stain Russian pals, Siberian Squads is joining the Imperium as a full member.  The will be taking up residence in Querious to keep that front active.  What will happen to there holdings in Tenerifis remains to be seen, but I assume that they used the two week interlude to move their stuff out of the region.  The FI.RE coalition seems salty about this.

This is something of a reversal of the Casino War where I announced several times that this alliance or that was leaving the Imperium. (Or in the case of Circle of Two, had betrayed the coalition and changed sides mid-battle.)  Since the war started the Imperium has actually grown while Vily’s Legacy Coalition is now missing some of its members.

Delve Theater

I mentioned back in the Week 28 post that the Imperium had given up the gate camp in E3OI-U that was protecting what was being called Helm’s Deep in order to maintain the hell camp on the logged out titans in M2-XFE. (See the Delve map in the Week 27 post for my last mention of Helm’s Deep on the map.)  PAPI finally noticed that the camp was gone and made a push to reinforce those constellations, culminating in day long series of entosis contests.

The Helm’s Deep constellations

PAPI was able to bring the numbers and were successful in taking two of the four constellations in play.

Delve – Feb 7, 2021

The back two constellations are significant as they represent the homes of The Bastion, Get Off My Lawn, and TNT alliances as well as hosting the KarmaFleet home system.

The TCU Sovereignty

GSF owns all the ihubs since they have the numbers and can bring the entosis forces, but those alliances get the territorial control units so they show up on the sovereignty map.

PAPI has pushed hard on ihubs over the last two weeks and now controls all but four constellations in the region.  They key to things for the Imperium is 1DQ1-A.  PAPI has not made a serious effort against that system and so long as it and its Keepstars and other structures survive, the Imperium will remain defiant.

Other Theaters

PAPI also expended some effort in Querious when it came to ihubs.

Querious – Feb 7, 2021

PAPI put 800 pilots up to attack the GOP-GE, W6V-VM, F2OY-X, and RF-CN3 ihubs, but only managed to secure the latter two.  That leaves a couple of footholds with structures in the region for Siberian Squads to base from and start harassing Severance (-7-) and Stellae Renascitur (S.R.) in the region.

Catch remains a battleground, with The Initiative continuing to press on Brave and Warped Intentions, with the latter losing several more ihubs over the course of the week.

Catch – Feb 7, 2021

Likewise, Immensea next door has become another bleeding sore for Legacy Coalition.

Immensea – Feb 7, 2021

There both Warped Intentions and Federation Uprising have been losing ihubs and the occasional structure to Imperium and Stain Russian forces.

Down in Esoteria, The Bastion and its allies continue to hold the northwest corner, so I’ll just roll the same map as before.

Northwest Esoteria – Feb 7, 2021

TEST has been telling their pilots to leave Esoteria and move to Delve, which seems like a trip with a fire at either end.  But they have been away enough that they lost another Fortizar.

My Participation

I did not spend a lot of time in New Eden over the past week.  The sovereignty battles tend to happen in EUTZ, which I can sometimes join in on as a break from work, but not always.  I did spend some time at the M2-XFE hell camp, which continues watch on the ~130 titans still logged out in space and was fortunate enough to be there when an Apostle decided to log in.  That put me on the kill board for February.

Apostle Explosion

Otherwise much of my space time was spent doing maintenance things like collecting PI output to sell.  I did get my corporate dividend payment for my 5 Imperium war bonds.

War Bond Dividend #1

The 1.25 ISK payment appeared to be a test run to see if the system would even work.  41 million ISK isn’t a ton, but right now my only other income is PI, insurance, and SRP and every little bit helps.  Fortunately I did not lose any ships this week so I didn’t need to collect insurance or SRP.  My losses for the war remain:

• Ares interceptor – 15
• Malediction interceptor – 7
• Crusader interceptor – 5
• Atron entosis frigate – 6
• Rokh battleship – 5
• Drake battle cruiser – 4
• Scimitar logi – 3
• Ferox battle cruiser – 3
• Purifier stealth bomber – 3
• 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

This past week CCP posted a dev blog about the first battle at M2-XFE.  The Dev blog lays out some details as to who lost how many ships, how the battle compares to other large battles in New Eden history, and plans for a monument to commemorate the battle.

Planned monument

CCP was also awarded two Guinness World Records for the battle, which was detailed in a separate press release.  The records seem a bit dubious compared to some of the past records, but are still a good PR moment for the company.

Meanwhile, the weekend saw the peak concurrent user number stay up above 38K for another 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
• Week 29 – 35,996
• Week 30 – 38,323
• Week 31 – 38,167

Related

• INN – World War Bee: Week 31
• CCP – The Massacre at M2-XFE
• CCP – The Most Expensive Video Game Battle Ever Earns Two GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS
• TAGN – CCP Details the Titan Massacre at M2-XFE
• INN – Massacre at M2-XFE Immortalized By Monument
• NEP – Monument to Be Constructed in M2-XFE
• INN – The Myth of ‘Ceric the Cyno Killer’
• INN – Sweep the Skies—Why Carriers Aren’t Capital Ships
• INN – Siberian Squads Join The Imperium
• INN –  The Point of No Return
• Reddit – Frat vs The Freemen of the North Week 5
• Reddit – Attempt to tally the war losses so far