48 Weeks of World War Bee

War drama spilled over into EVE Online Twitch more so than usual this week as Matterall, who runs the steadfastly pro-PAPI Talking in Stations, lashed out at The Mittani this past week.  When CCP was doing candidate interviews on May 29th, Vily’s interview rather suspiciously landed in the same time slot as The Meta Show.  The Mittani pinged out to the Imperium that The Meta Show would be delayed until after the interview so he could pick it apart during the show.

The Mittani pings

This saw the viewership surge on CCP’s channel and probably made Vily’s the most watched interview in the series.  He was razzed in chat by Imperium members, but his interview was not visibly affected even a tiny bit by what was said in chat.  I suspect he wasn’t even watching the chat scroll by, which was probably the smart thing to do.  Otherwise it was a fairly bland presentation, which is all that somebody who is guaranteed a seat due to his coalition is obligated to give.

But Matterall took grave offense at The Mittani’s ping, comparing it to the January 6th assault on the US capitol.  He made it clear that he felt INN should no longer be allowed to be part of the EVE Online partnership program and vowed to take action.  Of course, this set the TIS Discord server on fire and made it to Reddit when the TIS Director of Programming quit over the Matterall’s statements which in turn dug up how Matterall had purged people who had any association with INN.  It was all quite a distraction from the state of the war for a few hours and should probably blow over if Matterall and his staff can stop digging the hole deeper for themselves.

We’re a long ways from Matterall’s “I know The Mittani” days.

As for the state of the war, the stalemate in Delve continues and PAPI in general, and Legacy in particular, has started to try another narrative shift.  The new line… well, really a revived old line… from Vily on Trash Talk Tuesday was that the Imperium is losing because they are not attacking PAPI… in Delve.  The Legacy backfield we’ve destroyed doesn’t count.  Continuing the make them jump clone for fights in other regions doesn’t count.

The questions about who blued 100+ alliances and out numbers whom by 3:1 aside, the PAPI war aim remained, as of last week’s Legacy Town Hall, to destroy the Imperium and drive us all from the game.  I don’t think that has actually changed, though Vily seems to be trying to unsay his past statements, as he does whenever they stall only to reiterate them again when they get make some progress, so we win by surviving to fight the blue donut and the Council of Wardens, which has been capitalized as “COuncil of WARDenS” to indicate the Imperium response to that idea.

Of course, there is a probably reason for this latest narrative swap and it may involve what happened in Delve during week 48.

Delve Front

After a low population weekend PAPI failed on Monday to contest the two Azbels they dropped in the AU/CN TZ attack the previous week.

Or maybe later

PAPI decided to roll with the same time zone surprise attack again.  I woke up Tuesday morning to find pings going out calling everybody into fleets to defend the Imperium capitol constellation.

PAPI was trying to force their way in and drop more two more Azbels, though they were shooting for systems besides 3-DMQT this time.  One of them was blown up in N-8YET before it could get past its 15 minute initial vulnerability, while the one in MO-GZ5 managed to get past that and is now on the list as a target once the six day deployment time runs down.

In the mean time The Initiative had been baiting PandaFam to jump back to their space in the Dronelands to hit an Azbel they dropped in the Pandemic Horde capitol system of R10.  That was destroyed, but it opened a window for them to drop a Keepstar on the E-VKJV gate grid in 3-DMQT.

The Initiative eye now watches the gate

The following day when the Keepstar was set to anchor the Imperium showed up in force, with supers and titans on grid.  PAPI chose to pass on contesting the structure.  They remain unwilling to commit supers and titans to anything beyond uncontested structure kills.

There is now a Keepstar doomsday weapon that can reach out and smite hostiles on their way into the constellation, making PAPI’s job just that much harder.  The Ansiblex in 3-DMQT was moved over to the E-VKJV gate grid as well, so now we can gate straight into action when it comes.

The new Keepstar

With that in place PAPI ran another AU/CN TZ op later in the week in order to try and plant more Azbels and shoot cyno jammers elsewhere in the constellation, which ended up with about the same results as previously.

As such, I can once again re-use my map of the siege of 1DQ for the fifth week running, as the status quo remained.

O-EIMK Constellation – June 7, 2021

The campaign report for Delve shows that total ship losses and loss value were down again.  Week 46 saw nearly 15K ships explode, week 47 was 11.5K ships, and week 48 saw that number drop to about 9K ships.

Week 48 Losses in Delve

Other Theaters

Out in Esoteria Army of Mango Alliance kept pushing on the space hel by The Bastion and its allies, taking one more ihub since week 47.

Esoteria – June 6, 2021

Likewise, out in Feythabolis, The Bastion lost one of its ihubs and a couple others traded hands among the groups vying for the region.

Feythabolis – June 6, 2021

Meanwhile, The Initiative’s campaign in Etherium Reach appears to have gone on a break for a bit, as no ihubs are currently reinforced.  They are probably still celebrating their ruse to get another Keepstar planted in the Imperium capitol constellation.

My Participation

I woke up Tuesday morning to find pings going out to repel invaders and managed to log in just in time to get in on the tail end of the AU/CN TZ PAPI incursion into our space.  I undocked in time to help pick off a few PAPI members as they ran for the T5ZI gate in 1DQ.

After that, the week was fairly quiet.  PAPI stood down several times after we counter-formed them and I mostly shot bubbles in their space for the rest of the week.  They did try to drop one of our ADM fleets in 3-DMQT, so I joined in on that, but not much happened.

I hung around for a bit as the Jackdaw cover fleet ran some Blood Raider sanctums to help keep the ADMs for the system up.

Jackdaws in a sanctum

I had no ship losses for the week, leaving my total for the war at:

• Ares interceptor – 18
• Malediction interceptor – 7
• Drake battle cruiser – 7
• Crusader interceptor – 5
• Atron entosis frigate – 6
• Rokh battleship – 5
• Scimitar T2 logi – 5
• Ferox battle cruiser – 4
• Cormorant destroyer – 4
• Jackdaw destroyer – 4
• Purifier stealth bomber – 3
• Guardian T2 logi – 2
• Scalpel T2 logi frigate – 2
• Scythe T1 logi – 1
• Raven battleship – 1
• Crucifier ECM frigate – 1
• Gnosis battlecruiser – 1
• Bifrost command destroyer – 1
• Hurricane battle cruiser – 1
• Sigil entosis industrial – 1
• Mobile Small Warp Disruptor I – 1

Other Items

A lot of the week away from the war was focused on the CSM16 elections, which kick off tomorrow, June 8th, after downtime.

Dunk Dinkle did another informal survey of capital ship builders to see if anybody had resumed production since the industry changes.  The general response was that pre-change hulls are still available for well below what it costs to build hulls now, so there isn’t much point.

Meanwhile, the daily user numbers remain down.  Only Monday, Memorial Day in the US and UK, saw the peak user count pass 30K.  Sunday is generally the peak day in any week, though some weeks Saturday is at the top.  For this week, because I go from Monday to Sunday in my reporting, Monday takes the crown.

• 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
• Week 32 – 37,259
• Week 33 – 35,886 (Saturday)
• Week 34 – 35,626
• Week 35 – 35,379
• Week 36 – 35,085
• Week 37 – 34,394
• Week 38 – 36,319
• Week 39 – 35,597 (Saturday)
• Week 40 – 35,384 (Saturday)
• Week 41 – 33,708
• Week 42 – 33,521
• Week 43 – 33,731
• Week 44 – 33,742 (Saturday)
• Week 45 – 33,758
• Week 46 – 31,768
• Week 47 – 29,898
• Week 48 – 31,462 (Monday)

Related

• INN – World War Bee: Week 48 [Not this week I guess]
• INN – INIT Plays 3-D Chess with PAPI
• INN – How Do Goons Look To An Outsider on Week Six of PAPI’s Siege?
• INN – World War Bee: The Elephant in the Room
• EN24 – Interview with Noraus [Leader of the Fraternity alliance]
• Reddit – Ongoing activity metrics for WWB #7
• Reddit – Analyzing PVP Engagement Numbers – A comparison of methodologies