The Imperium Loses the XZ-SKZ Infrastructure Hub

I was just on about entosis warfare and now one of the first big fights over sovereignty took place earlier today when the Imperium formed up to defend the the infrastructure hub in the system XZ-SKZ in Period Basis.  That is one of those systems on the invasion routes I pointed at in my Tuesday post.

Where the ihub was

There was a fair size battle spread out over the constellation where the system is located in order to contest the nodes.  The battle report shows some fighting took place, though the losses were small… a combined 65 billion… relative to the number of capsuleers listed on the battle report.

Battle Report Header

I managed to jump in a reinforcement fleet that was late to the party (lunch time while I was working from home) and saw no action, so there were more people floating around the constellation that the battle report indicates.

While the Imperium won the ISK war by a small margin, that is cold comfort now that TEST controls the ihub in the system.  That will allow TEST to more easily anchor Upwell structures in the system which will allow them to use it as a bridgehead into Imperium territory.

Jin’taan has a bit of footage from the fight, with a video that sums up with “1 down, 239 to go.”

The next timer down in Period Basis will be around the TCAG-3, on the route from Paragon Soul, which will happen early in the day (for me at least) on Friday.

Period Basis DOTLAN Map

TEST tried to deploy an old fashioned POS in TCAG-3 last night, with an eye to safing up a bridging titan in the system… to the point that the titan was through the gate and in the system… but they were pushed back and the POS tower was destroyed.

They will have to wait for the timer fight I guess.  We had best win that one.  Losing XZ-SKZ we can route around, but losing TCAG-3 would cut off a large chunk of Period Basis from easy access… sort of, the DOTLAN map makes it look further away than it is, so bridging and Ansiblex jump gates are still viable… and perhaps put the battle line at the south end of Delve.

Meanwhile, over in Querious, we did win the contest over the AO-N1P ihub.  That is in the constellation that includes 49-U6U, which is the route in from Catch.

Entosis Drake on the job

The war carries on.

Last Chance to Run for CSM15

The deadline to sign up to run for CSM15 was extended until 23:59 UTC on Wednesday, May 13th due to the sign up page giving a 500 error when people were trying to apply, so there is still time left.

The next round is coming

When I last looked at the CSM candidate campaign forums, where by the new rules I reported on previously, all candidates must put up a post in order to provide some basic information about themselves and why they are running, there were just 31 candidates signed up to run.

That is a new low of interest, down from the 44 candidates that ran for CSM14.

Currently only five members of CSM14 are running for CSM15, so the incumbent count is down, though there are arguably a dozen candidates from the null sec blocs who, if they all get on the various group recommended ballots, are once again likely to take at least eight of the ten spots on the council.  There are also a few past CSM members like Mike Azariah, Xenuria, and Brisc Rubal who are running for spots again.

Still, if you’re an optimist, you know you don’t have to be faster that the tiger, just faster than 21 other candidates that it is going to eat.  May the odds ever be in your favor and all that.

Candidate who make the application cut will be announced on May 18th and the election for CSM15 will run from June 1st to June 8th.

Capsuleer Fortitude Reward

CCP is giving out some more free skill points.  This time they are throwing us another pile in compensation for the outages that were caused by the DDoS attacks earlier this month.

Reward Award

If you log in between now and downtime on March 9, 2020 you will be able to claim those free skill points.  If you are running an Alpha clone you get 100,000, while if you are an Omega subscriber you get that plus 250,000 more, for a total of 350,000 skill points.

Always a class divide

Since this is coming through the login reward interface, if you’re an Alpha clone but are just dying to get those extra 250K skill points, you can subscribe and claim them.  It doesn’t matter if you were an Alpha during the outage, you just have to go Omega before time runs out on the offer.

Something in the back of my brain says I should be angry about CCP selling skill points this way.  If you’re a high skill point salt that is one and two-thirds of a large skill injector for just $14.99, or 500 PLEX.  Probably not a great price, but a price none the less.  And who cares anyway?  We’ve long since crossed that bridge and burned it behind us.

So don’t forget to log in and grab the free skill points.  I know I will drag out every account, because who knows when I might need it some day.