Fall Movie League – New Season, Original Rules, New Scoring

I am committing to at least one more season of Fantasy Movie League.  We will see how the fall season goes before I try to predict further out into the future.

There will be some changes for the Fall 2018 season.

First, the league will be moving back to the standard rules.  Most importantly, the league will go back to locking at 9am Pacific Time on Friday morning in the hope that fewer people will forget to pick.

Likewise, the bonus structure will return for best performer and perfect pick.  I think not having the bonuses was an interesting experiment and, in small way, kept people from opening up huge leads or falling way behind based on a bad pick.  But the change wasn’t all that great and didn’t do much for people who fell too far behind as there was still no way to catch up.  Malcanis again.

Also, I was expecting the perfect pick to be different for a no bonus league a lot more often.  Instead it was the same overall most weeks.

Second, the Fall season will have two forms of seasonal scoring, the traditional cumulative box office score as well as a well as a weekly point rank system.  This is another experiment and, if it works out well, I could see adopting the new scoring method as a differentiator.

The way it will work, as was discussed in TAGN FML Chatter, is that with every week’s score lineup, players will receiver a point based on their ranking.  First place will get 10 points, second 9 points, third, 8 points, and so on with everybody below ten getting a zero.

Testing this on the Summer League scores, it didn’t change things radically.  The top three places were still the same people, the order changing on the final week showing the “catch up” potential of the system.  And it did bubble at least one person who had a few good weeks up into the top ten.  Here is what the top ten looked like with that scoring system:

1. Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – 91
2. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – 88
3. Goat Water Picture Palace – 76
4. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – 62
5. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – 55
6. I HAS BAD TASTE – 49
7. Too Orangey For Crows – 48
8. Ben’s X-Wing Express – 43
9. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – 38
10. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – 35

The gap between Corr and I was such that it wasn’t decided until the week 14 scores were final.  Up through the Saturday morning estimates he seemed poised to win with that scoring system.

Compared that to the raw box office score ranking:

1. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $1,233,260,784
2. Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – $1,192,800,479
3. Goat Water Picture Palace – $1,168,442,901
4. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $1,099,917,789
5. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $1,068,381,300
6. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $1,053,023,190
7. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $1,050,270,086
8. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $1,046,285,672
9. Too Orangey For Crows – $1,012,717,545
10. Joanie’s Joint – $1,012,254,458

The system eliminates the “big win” weeks which have, in the past, seen people open up insurmountable leads or fall so far behind that they are completely out of the running.  It also does away with the flat weeks, like week fourteen, where we’re all so close in score that only those who failed to pick changed in ranking. The new scoring system making winning the week, or at least getting into the top ten, more important.

The question will be how many points should be given out each week?  My run through last season’s scores with the 10 point scale worked in part because there were only 12-14 people playing consistently over the season, so only a few people got a zero on any given week. (Everybody got at least one zero. Nobody made the top ten every week.)

I am not sure a 10 point scale would work if we had 25 people and 15 people got no points on any given week.  If that were the case it might have to be a 15 point scale, or maybe a 20 point scale.  Or maybe not.  I am, as I said, not sure how this ought to play.  But that is why this will be an experimental scoring system this week, and it may very well get changed as the season progresses. (If you have any insight into this, please pipe up in the comments.)

Third, I am going to try and cut down on the length of the weekly league update posts.  These are starting to get into the 2,000 word zone and that really isn’t necessary.  So I will try to simplify them largely by omitting the narrative about how I ended up with my picks for the week.  I am not sure anybody reads that besides me and, honestly, I am not sure I even care that much.  My need to write stories just gets the better of me some days.

So I am going to try, starting next week, to keep things to a much more terse style, with the movies in play, which, if any, did better or worse than expected, the scores, a summary of what picks did well, the overall scores, the experimental overall scores, then a summary of what is coming up for the next week.

Also, for scores, I am only going to list out the top ten when it comes to scores every week.  That, if nothing else, will keep me from having to figure out who picked badly versus who forgot to pick but their whole lineup rolled over to the next week.

We shall see if it sticks.  Some days I am overcome by the desire to write excess narrative.

And, since this is the first post of the season, let’s get on to the movies in play.  The choices this week are:

The Nun                     $615
Crazy Rich Asians           $218
Peppermint                  $205
The Meg                     $88
Mission: Impossible         $62
Searching                   $62
Operation Finale            $52
God Bless the Broken Road   $48
Christopher Robin           $42
BlacKkKlansman              $37
Alpha                       $32
Happytime Murders           $30
Mile 22                     $26
Incredibles 2               $26
Hotel Transylvania 3        $16

We are not quite to the point where candidates for the Oscars are hitting the screens yet.  That will be at the back end of the season, since the academy can only remember movies from November and December when nomination time shows up.  We’re entering the pre-Halloween zone first.

Gone from the list this week are Kin, A.X.L., and Ya Veremos.

New this week are The Nun, Peppermint, and God Bless the Broken.

The Nun is a “Gothic supernatural horror” genre entry about an demonically possessed undead Romanian nun.  I think.  The copy I saw included the line “…the abbey becomes a horrific battleground between the living and the damned…” which certainly seems exciting, if not exactly what the Catholic Church really wants on screen these days… or ever.  There has been some buzz about the film, enough that even I have seen bits of it.  It is also part of a sucessful horror franchise, though I only figured that out when I looked it up.  And FML has it priced high, so it should top the charts.  But the horror genre and what succeeds and fails in it remains a mystery to me.

Peppermint is an action revenge story in the I Spit on Your Grave genre where I gather people die horribly.  But it stars Jennifer Garner, which could give the venture the gravitas it needs to succeed.  Maybe.

Then there is God Bless the Broken Road, which is based off the country western song Bless the Broken Road.  I mean sure, films have been inspired by flimsier themes than a song.  Hell, The Gambler ended up launching a five movie series for Kenny Rogers, and most of us only remember the chorus to the damn song.  But this tale of a window and her daughter getting caught up with a race car driver isn’t as popular as The Gambler, doesn’t have any big names, isn’t exactly trending, and the only review I have seen so far puts it below Happytime Murders.  Ouch.

My Monday Hot Takes league pick was 4x CRA and 4x Alpha, mostly because it spends an even $1000.

So there it is.  The league is back to locking on Friday at 9am Pacific Time, which is 16:00 UTC, so you have time to do some research and make your picks.

If you want to join the league I will put a link in the comments after this posts.

MER – Pre-War Delve Numbers

CCP has released the monthly economic report for June 2018, and it might turn out to be an interesting report for comparison sake.  June was a month of dull peace in Delve, with ratting and mining and production and commerce rolling along unhindered.

But now, in July, we have conflicts in null sec.  Pandemic Legion has deployed to the southeast to join in on the attacks on TEST and the Legacy Coalition while the Imperium has taken PLs absence from the north as an opportunity to roll north, drop a Keepstar, and start pounding on Circle of Two and Guardians of the Galaxy.  That not only pulled a bunch of capsuleers north, but also the super capital umbrella that protects Delve as well, leaving those who didn’t get the word (which always happens), or thought they were invulnerable, open to attack.

So we can look at the June numbers as a baseline for how war changes output in Delve.  And we can start, as usual, with the mining numbers.

June 2018 – Mining Value by Region

We even have the bar graph back this month.

June 2018 – Mining Value by Region – Bar Graph

Delve is, as usual, far ahead of every other region in mining output, and second place is Querious, which is also controlled by the Imperium and the host to the monthly “locust fleet” operations to harvest moon output in the region.  The scourge of the Rorquals I suppose.

Delve was up 600 billion over May, which is fairly impressive because the mining value measurement depends on the price, and prices were again down in June.

June 2018 – Economic Indices – Three Year Snapshot

If the price of minerals is still headed down but mining value in Delve is up, that means a lot more ore had to get mined.

Mineral prices aren’t close to their all time low yet, as the long term chart shows.

June 2018 – Economic Indices Long Term

But the trend is still way down.  Cheaper prices make it harder to get rich as a miner… unless you’re running a fleet of Rorquals… but they also make manufactured items cheaper overall in Jita.  If you’re not a miner, this is probably good.  If you are, it probably pisses you off.

On the NPC bounties front, Delve also held on to its top spot.

June 2018 – NPC Bounties by Region

Again, we have the bar graph back.  Several of those went missing for the May report.

June 2018 – NPC Bounties by Region – Bar Graph

Delve, despite its dominance, was down almost 2 trillion ISK compared to May.  Meanwhile Branch was up, the place where the groups in the north have fled to escape the attentions of the Imperium SIGs and Squads.

Fade was up, almost doubling from May’s 396 billion ISK number by hitting 747 billion ISK.  That is no doubt due to Circle of Two moving in and settling down in the region and having the first half of the month free of attacks as the Imperium took two weeks off in June to give its pilots a break.  I suspect that number will be down in the July report due to the return of the Imperium.  Rumor has it that GigX has forbidden anybody to rat in anything more expensive than a VNI or mine in anything better than a T1 barge.

The share of bounties across sec status remains heavily tilted towards null sec.

June 2018 – NPC Bounties by Sec Status

High sec, which was trending up a bit over the last couple of reports, was back down to 6.2% of the total, while overall bounty payments saw a slight decline over the course of the month.

June 2018 – Top 8 ISK Sinks and Faucets

On the trade front The Forge was in no danger of losing its top position.  Jita remains the place to go to buy and sell.

June 2018 – Trade Value by Region

The bar graph shows the dominance of Jita more clearly.

June 2018 – Trade Value by Region – Bar Graph

That dominance is such that they have to make a bar graph without The Forge in order for people to see how other regions stack up against each other.

June 2018 – Trade Value by Region – Bar Graph, Forge Excluded

There we see Domain, home of Amarr, still comfortably in second place, with Delve trailing behind in third.  After that are the three other New Eden high sec trade hubs, then Geminate, home of Pandemic Horde.

For contracts however The Forge is not as dominant.

June 2018 – Contracts Trade Value by Region – Bar Chart

There are a lot of contracts in Jita, but Delve is not far behind.  As usual, I suspect this is because a lot of things like fleet doctrine ship sales, capital and super capital sales, buy back schemes, and some raw material sales are done via contract.  Still, overall, contracts remain a small item in Jita relative to the main market.

Then there is production.

June 2018 – Production Values by Region

Previously Delve was the top region for production, though the three regions in the vicinity of Jita still combined to well out produce Delve.  However this month Delve slipped, dropping from 40 trillion ISK in production in May to 33 trillion ISK in June, putting it in close competition with The Forge, which held steady with 32 trillion ISK.

What happened in Delve?  Did we run out of pilots rich enough to buy a titan finally?  Is that why The Mittani was was extolling us to get alts into supers if we already had a main in one?

Anyway, production was down.  We will see if a war suppresses it further or if losses… should we join battle in any serious way… will spur production in order to replace them.

And so this month’s chart of interest is the destroyed value by region.

June 2018 – Destroyed Value by Region

War in New Eden may make this chart interesting to compare with next month’s chart.  But I also wanted to compare it against May’s chart to see what Into the Abyss did to the numbers.  I was wondering if the losses in abyssal pockets would up the numbers.  But abyssal pockets aren’t in normal space, so in places like The Forge, ever a hot spot for suicide ganking, destruction numbers actually went down 800 billion ISK.

So Into the Abyss didn’t change the chart, but I suspect war might.  So we will revisit this one again next month.

Finally, I will close with the usual regional comparison chart.

June 2018 – Regional Stats

That just nicely summarizes the stats for a few key regions.

Those were the June numbers.  But now, in July, war is on, both in the northeast around Fade, where the Imperium is pressing on CO2 and GotG, and in the southwest, where Pandemic Legion is leading a large but loose coalition of alliances against the TEST and the Legacy Coalition.  If both conflicts carry on, the numbers could change up quite a bit.  But wars can also end suddenly.  We shall see.

Again, you can find the monthly economic report here.  It includes many more charts than I choose to review and has all the raw data if you care to make your own.