Operations in Delve as World War Bee Continues

The announcement of the PAPI withdrawal from Delve following Monday’s final drive against 1DQ1-A has led to an upsurge in activity in the region.

Some of that is to be expected.  PAPI will have move ops running and the Imperium has a few regions of space to reclaim.  We were certainly wasting little time in Delve, lighting up ihubs and TCUs with enotsis ops the next day.

Delve – Aug 4, 2021

The systems highlighted with the orange aura have been targeted by the Imperium. (Some of which have already been taken since I took that screen shot.)

Some of those systems likely don’t concern PAPI very much, but they can’t let them all go because the Imperium has a plan.

After committing to more than half a year of stubborn defense in an attempt to convince PAPI that they should pack up and go home, we’re now trying to make that evacuation as costly as possible.  We aspire to turn an orderly withdrawal into Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow if we can.

Around Delve, Querious, and Period Basis the Imperium has been dispatching fleets to destroy Anisblex jump bridges belonging to PAPI in order to hinder their movement.

A reinforced Ansiblex waiting to be destroyed

More than 20 have been destroyed since the end of the big battle.

Some kills from yesterday… I am on a couple of those

And if the Imperium succeeds in taking the ihubs in key systems, PAPI won’t be able to simply throw up a replacement Ansiblex, so they have to form up and defend some systems rather than just moving home.

This was the case in 1-SMEB, a key system in Delve as it is the gateway to Aridia, a low sec region that is also the shortest route home for many of the PAPI alliances.  The Imperium being able to block that system would me at least some hazard getting through or a need to re-route moves through Fountain or Querious, extending the route home and leaving more opportunity for mishap.

When the Imperium started hitting the 1-SMEB ihub, PAPI had to respond.  And when they started spinning up fleets we responded in kind.  Once again we had more than 2,000 people in a system battling over an ihub.

A HAC Fleet in the bubbles, their logi in the foreground

That kicked off when I was busy with work, but carried on long enough that I could jump in to the fight.  When I was ready there was a call for interdictors to hold down the hostiles, so I jumped into a Sabre I had in my hangar, insured it because I was sure it would get blown up, and headed to the fleet titan to get bridged in.

The instructions for dictors were pretty simple; get on the enemy fleets and bubble them so that couldn’t leave.  In I went.

Flying my Sabre into the thick of things

I managed to deploy a few bubbles and take a few potshots with my gun, but the node was not reinforced, or so I guess, and the fight degraded performance beyond what the 10% tidi number indicates.  Lots of people were having problems with modules not cycling down.  My interdiction sphere launcher went to reload after the first three bubbles and never finished.

PAPI’s guns managed to cycle on me however, and I lost my Sabre as expected.  I had plenty of time to file for reimbursement while waiting for my ship to finally explode.  I got paid before the animation finished.  Then I waited for my self-destruct… 2 minutes in 10% tidi is 20 minutes in real time… which let me watch the battle for a while.

Ishtars from The Initiative flying past as I wait

Then I reshipped back in 1DQ.  But I didn’t get back in the fight.  The results had been decided and there was no reason to throw more people at the node.

We won.  We reinforced the ihub and killed a lot of PAPI ships to according to the battle report.  Objective and ISK war.

Battle Report Header

There is also a John Hartley video of the battle, if you enjoy those.  I like the music choice.

Losing that ihub match means PAPI is going to need to take a break from packing and come back to contest that ihub today at 19:52 UTC, or about two and a half hours after this post goes live.  We shall see how that turns out.

Meanwhile, along with ihubs and Ansiblex jump gates, fleets have also been setting timers on structures that TEST has been trying to unanchor.  Setting a timer makes them start the unanchoring timer from scratch again, even if we don’t contest the timer.

The reason for this is pretty obvious.  PAPI’s biggest claim to victory is the amount of destruction they imposed on the Imperium.  We want to hold those structures in place to give us a chance to even up that score a bit.

So the war is not over.  There is still a lot of work to be done on both sides.

Related:

• INN – Legacy Failscade as Rout Continues
• TNG – Cleanup on Aisle Delve

Promptapalooza and a Quote of the Day

It is August, which means it should be Blaugust, but since we effectively did that in April (which was Blapril), Belghast decided, based on some feedback, that encouraging people to post every day for another month might be too taxing on some.  So, instead, we have Promptapalooza, where each of the participants gets a writing prompt to drive a post.

August means some sort of Blaugust

Yesterday was Everwake’s turn, which involved rituals.  You should go and take a look. Today it is my turn, and my prompt is:

• What is a favorite Quote/s, and tell us why

This seems like a bespoke prompt for me as somebody who has a blog category devoted to quotes.  (Reminder: If you click on that link, you need to scroll down as this post will appear first, being the latest post about quotes.)

And I certainly have a lot of quotes to choose from, ranging from some Smed classics (there is a whole Smed tag to look at) to Chris Roberts and optimism of developers to Derek Smart and his own influence to some Gevlon staples to perennial developer complaints and F2P discussions and prescient quotes about the genre so on.  Lots of things to work with.

But I am going to go with a quote that I have used before but has never quite made it to the Quote of the Day status.

Being an elf doesn’t make you turn off the rational economic calculator part of your brain.

–Edward Castronova

Dr. Castronova is known in our circles for his study of virtual worlds… though “synthetic worlds” seems to be the vogue term at the moment… and their economies, often covered by his posts at Terra Nova and on his own blog, both of which has been pretty quiet for some time now.  He has written a lot of interesting, thought provoking, and occasionally wildly optimistic things about video games over the years, but I like this one the best.

I like it best because it explains a lot of player behavior.

We will tend to do things in order to maximize our progress, however we choose to measure it. There are always exceptions, but that tends to be the way of things.  We will work towards the things we are focused on and do the things that reward us in the ways that we most desire.  Currency, kill board stats, battleground achievements, levels, whatever is our prime motivator, that is where we put our efforts, and we will focus on this things that most optimize the best results for us.

Why do the immortal god-like capsuleers of New Eden shoot NPCs in anomalies?  It is the easiest way to earn ISK, which is the foundation needed for other activities.  Why did we rush off to do battle grounds in Warhammer Online?  That was the fastest way to level up to get into the “good” content, the city raids and such.

The problem is that we live in this world and not the world of our games, and are driven by the desires and needs and goal we have here and not by what our character, elf, orc, capsuleer, or otherwise, might find as their own motivation if we were able to give them life and consciousness.

So it goes.

Next on the list for Promptapalooze is Stignite at The Friendly Necromancer.  Go visit their site to see which prompt they got for the event.

Interdiction Nullification and Warp Core Stabilizers and Absolutes

I am going to wander into this minefield in the way that only the uncaring can.

Interdiction nullification and warp core stabilizers are twins in that they are hated by subgroups of New Eden.  They are hated because they make getting kills more difficult.  There are plenty of wandering excuses as to why they are bad game play or how the lore shouldn’t support them or whatever, but in the end it comes down to people angry that they missed a kill.

Interdiction nullification is a null sec and wormhole thing, a feature of certain interceptors, a strategic cruiser subsystem, and luxury yachts which allows them to bypass warp disruption fields as though they were not there.  Basically, it allows you to fly through bubbles.

A field of bubbles… they are everywhere in null sec

Bubble come in a few flavors, which are mostly covered over at the EVE Uni Wiki.  But it is pretty safe to say that bubbles are the primary method of holding down hostiles outside of empire space.  They have the advantage of being an area effect tackle method when launched from an interdictor, so if deployed correctly they can hold down a whole fleet.   A null sec fleet commander that undocks without some interdictors isn’t looking for kills.

So, in null sec or wormholes, a ship with interdiction nullification is an exception to what is otherwise a hard and fast rule, that what gets caught in the bubble can’t warp off.  That it is a somewhat recent addition, that many of can remember a time when interdiction nullification wasn’t a thing, makes it all the more contentious and even CCP has seen fit to make changes, removing the feature from combat interceptors last October, ending the reign of the Fozzie Claw.  But it still remains an aspect of fleet interceptors, such as my Ares.

Ares on the move still

And, while people may moan about Slippery Pete Tengus or, more recently, nullified Lokis ranging around space, passing through stop bubbles with impunity, you can still stop them the old fashioned way, the way people have to in low sec.

Which brings us to the warp core stabilizer.  The stab, as the module tends to be abbreviated, fits in the low slot of any ship and adds one to the strength of the warp core of the ship for each stab you add.  That number, warp core strength, is used in the calculation of tackling.  A few subcaps like deep space transports and the Venture have a bonus to warp core that reflects their role, and capital ships have the own bonuses, but for the most part one is the basic number.

A Thanatos getting the tackle treatment

That number gets used against the tackler trying to keep you from warping.  They are likely fitting a warp disruptor or a warp scrambler with which they are trying to keep you from warping away.  The disruptor applies one point of stopping power, while the scramble applies two along with having some side benefits, like shutting down microwarp drives.  There is also the infinite disruptor that HICs can fit and some other details which the EVE Uni wiki covers, but those are the basics.

The simple arithmetic of the encounter is if the tackler applies points equal to or greater than your warp core strength, your ship won’t warp.  If you want to defeat a disruptor you need one stab, while a scrambler requires two.  If somebody has fit two scramblers and your ship only has three low slots, you’re not getting away.

Stabs are not a get out of jail free card however, despite the way they have been cast at times.  They do eat up valuable low slots and they come with a penalty when fit in the form of a hit to scan resolution and targeting range, as this chart indicated. (Chart source)

Warp Core Stab Variations

So fitting a pair of stabs drops your lock range rather dramatically and increases your lock time as well.

The reason I have lumped these two items together is that they have a couple things in common.

First, and most loudly complained about, is that both of them are absolute counters.  If you have interdiction nullification no bubble is going to catch you ever.  If you have warp core strength one greater than the person trying to tackle you, then you absolutely get to warp off, end of story.

It is my read that it is the absolute nature of these counters which gets people worked up.  There are just situations where the prey is going to get away no matter how on your game you are.

That brings me to the second thing that these two things have in common; they both counter mechanics that are themselves absolute.  If you are in a bubble and lack nullification, you won’t be warping anywhere unless you motor out of range or kill the bubble.  Likewise, if you apply points greater than or equal to your target, they don’t get to warp off.  You can argue that they can fight you to get away, but if somebody is trying to get away it probably means the fight is going to you regardless.

There used to be a way to counter getting tackled with a disruptor or scrambler in the form of ECM.  However, people complained loudly about ECM being “cancer” and CCP decided that ECM was not fun or engaging game play, so with that patch last October they made a change so that you can always target the person who is applying ECM.  With that change you could no longer break tackle via ECM.  It was already an unreliable mechanic with a chance to fail, but it was pretty much eliminated as an option at that point.

You can carry ECM drones.  Those have been nerfed as well, but they still have a chance of working.  You better have a a drone bay, no need for other drone types unless your drone bay is large, and a big enough tank that you can wait around aligned to warp while the game rolls the dice to see if the drones will land a hit and break the lock on you.  Your ECM drones also have to live that long, since blowing them up is an option for the tackler.

And yes, you can go reductio ad absurdum listing out all the ways the target could have avoided the situation before they landed in the bubble or were pointed, but you might as well just start with “don’t undock” and save us all the bother.

I am reluctant to endorse any idea that leaves absolute mechanics in place without a counter.

In fact, if it isn’t obvious by now, I am not fond of absolutes like this as mechanics, and even less so as fixes to mechanics.  So when somebody brings up the often discussed on Reddit idea of changing it so stabs simply won’t allow you to lock targets at all, I sigh with dismay at yet another absolute fix that serves the specific needs of one group. (I am also suspicious of simple “just do this…” solutions, as they are almost always faulty, so add that in as well.)

What to do?

I don’t have an answer, but I feel as though people are not asking the right questions around these.  The assumption that warp bubbles, warp disruptors, and warp scrambles ought to be absolute mechanics seems baked into the discussion, so the ongoing drive by some to remove or render useless anything that mitigates these mechanics feels like people bitching about not getting enough kills.

Rooks and Kings – First Light on the Fifth Day

It has been a while since we have had a new Rooks and Kings video, the last one being Message in a Bottle that saw them moving to the Serenity, the server that hosts the mainland China version of EVE Online. (There is a timeline of their videos on the Rooks and Kings site.)

There wars were fought, with battles between supercaps and titans of the like that we are only beginning to experience in the west on the Tranquility server.  The wars left the Pan-Intergalactic Business Community alliance, or PIBC, the dominant power in null sec, able to rule in a way that no western alliance has, as the influence maps make clear.

Serenity Server Null Sec Influence Map – August 3, 2018

This led directly to the migration of players from the Serenity server in China to the Tranquility server in the UK that serves the rest of the world.  This is the genesis of alliances like Fraternity and Ranger Regiment of the Winter Coalition as well as the P.L.A. corp in GSF.

The new Rooks and Kings documentary, First Light on the Fifth Day, follows the ascension of PIBC, the exodus of its foes, the battle for who represents China, and how the two servers still interconnect.

Available in 5K video, you can click through to watch it in high def on YouTube directly.

Rooks and Kings sent out an email blast to a variety of EVE Online related sites on Friday night, so you will like see this video all over.  Still worth reposting here for me to have my own context down the road.

Day One on the Beachhead in Lonetrek

Well, my gut was right.  We are setting up shop in Lonetrek in order to attack in the north.  However, my lack of understanding of the strategic situation put my guess as to where we might stage off by a ways.  We were not headed to Saranen, but to Hakonen to set up shop.

This puts us right by the M-0EE8 entrance to Tribute as well as within bridging and jump range of quite a bit of the region.  My misapprehension was that we might be set to do something in Syndicate.  Instead, the idea was to draw NCDot and their friends out of Syndicate by attacking their home.  Our arrival made them start moving back, which cost them a few titans and super carriers along the way.  The battle report showed it to be quite a one-sided loss.

Once I found out our destination I made the run there with my main and alt.  That probably blew an easy PAP link for me, but the distance was only twelve jumps and I wanted to get there and start getting set up.  I traveled light, taking only a couple of light ships with specific fits, figuring if we were going to be in low sec space that resupply would be easy.  Being in Hakonen made it even more so, since it isn’t that far from Jita.

By the way, if you’re selling in Jita, now is a time to stock up your listings.  I got in early and bought some stuff, but reports came back later of the place being stripped dry of things like Hurricane hulls and various other essentials.  Time to make some money by supplying the war.

I sent my alt over and had him buy a Typhoon and then had a NPC corp alt fly in a couple more ships while I looked around the system.  Naturally enough, we had a couple of Astrahus citadels going up along with a Raitaru.  I wasn’t too sure as to why we were putting that up, but I will admit my own sense of the strategic can be lacking.

Raitaru finishing up its deployment cycle

There were pings for fleets and things to do pretty much from the moment I got settled in with my ships. The enemy had come down to reinforce a couple of the POSes we had planted.  We need those as safe homes for the titans that will be bridging us into Tribute.  So I ended up in a Hurricane fleet flying cover for Minokawas sent to repair the POSes.

Minokawas in siege repairing the POS tower

PL, NCDot, and the various alliances to the north did not come to contest the towers once they were exposed, so we mostly just flew around and waited.  Somebody used their free high slot to mount a festival launcher, so we had some fireworks to entertain us.

A Happy Hurricane Fleet

We followed the Minokawas around to a couple to destinations, covering them as they did their work, then aligned back to the station to dock up.

Hurricanes aligning en masse

We stood down, my first op for the deployment done.

About an hour later there was the expected call, a pre-pinged op.  I jumped on and got into the Typhoon fleet and not a second too soon.  It filled up as did the Hurricane fleet that was called.  They setup a third fleet, which also filled up, so a fourth fleet was required.  There were about a thousand Imperium pilots online in Hakonen looking for trouble.

I was in the Typhoon I had bought, but the word came down that we were short on logi, so I bought a Guardian off contract and swapped into that.  Anything to help the cause I suppose.  At least it had the right rigs, unlike that other Guardian I bought ages back.

Purity white Guardian with the Typhoons

The first bit of trouble expected had to do with the Raitaru coming online.  It turned out that the Raitaru wasn’t actually part of the plan, but since it was there the locals were forming up to kill it as it came online, so the first part of our operation was to stand by to fight them.  However, they ended up standing down and the Raitaru came online without issue.

We then set about hitting PL POSes in the system.  The first one was unfueled, so was an easy kill.

Missiles and drones hitting the helpless stick

I regretted not having put a combat drone in my drone bay to get on an easy kill.  But I am sure there will be more.

The next one was fueled so we just knocked down its shields until it was reinforced.  That will be a target for later.

All the while The Mittani had been showing up in coms to tell us what was going on at a strategic level.  He told us about the NCDot super loses and how Pandemic Horde was supposed to show up and contest the Raitaru in Machariels, then opted for a much cheaper (to lose) Ferox doctrine and about how even that form up declined to move against us.

Not keen to fight, the hostiles stood down.  However, before they had done that we were sitting on a titan waiting to be bridged into Tribute.

Typhoon fleet sitting at range

We sat there patiently waiting for the enemy to stand down and for things to go quiet.  That meant sitting there looking at a wall of Typhoons for a while.

Many Typhoons waiting

Eventually the word came it was time to go, a cyno had been lit, the titan bridge went up, and off we went into Tribute.

Landing in Tribute

We had been sent to the system PBD-0G, which coincidentally was my old home system when we lived in the region, where I used to rat and such.  It was also the system where I packed up my carrier and got the hell out of Dodge when Co2 betrayed us and it was clear we couldn’t hold the region.  There is still some liquid ozone in the station there, just about all I left in Tribute.

But we were not there to collect my left behind belongings, but to take advantage of the vulnerability window of the NCDot Sotiyo anchored there.

Where NCDot builds

We spread out and the shooting began.  Unlike the Blood Raiders Sotiyo however, nobody undocked to challenge us.

The stoically silent Sotiyo

As we shot that other fleets were bridged in to help and to cover entosis ships hitting the station, the infrastructure hub, and the territorial control unit.  We followed Plexlive around in his command Legion and plinked away… or just followed for those of us in logi.

FC was wearing one of the new T3 cruiser skins

The Satiyo was reinforced, eventually the entosis work was done, and it was time to align out and head back to our staging system.

Typhoons showing their exhaust

There was a group of hostile interceptors trying to grab stragglers, which was a bit of a problem.  Pushing all of us through those gates was causing time dilation to flare up and people were getting disconnected or stuck in warp tunnels or just having to wait on Traffic Control to let them into systems.  But we mostly made it home in one piece.

And so the fighting begins.  I asked what we were calling this deployment/war.  There is a faction that just wants to call it the Casino War, seeing it as a continuation of the fight we withdrew from a year back.  But that doesn’t fly with me.  One might as well argue in favor of calling WWII the Franco Prussian war, since the seeds planted then helped lead to WWI and then WWII.

So while the Casino War certainly fed into this fight, so did a lot else, meanwhile much has changed, not the least of which was the end of the casinos and the banning of some of those running the casinos as well as the confiscation of ISK being used for RMT.

But no other name springs to mind for me either.  Something will stick eventually.  I need something so I can tag the posts for later reference.

I Bet Blizzard Really Wants to Mention Subscription Numbers About Now…

World of Warcraft remains the No. 1 subscription‐based MMORPG in the
world.

Activision Blizzard Q2 2016 Financial Results

It is easy to justify dumping a metric when it isn’t portraying you well.  But once you’ve publicly vowed never to bring that metric up again, and suddenly it might show you in a good light, what do you do?

Apparently you beat around the bush hinting about it.

Yesterday was the Activision Blizzard call for the Q2 2016 financial results.  All the data and slides are over at the investor relations site.

The company had plenty of good news to report.  Revenue was strong, their monthly active user (MAU) metric was up, and they had a hot new title to brag about in Overwatch, which has sales in the $500 million range to date.

They also highlighted Blizzard in general, which had strong growth, and World of Warcraft in particular.  Along with the quote at the top of the post, they say:

…strong pre-expansion momentum for World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft MAUs double digit growth quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year

[Legion] per-purchases tracking in-line with the last expansion.

Strong momentum in China following the Warcraft film…

That all sounds great, but they are just words.  What does “momentum” really mean here?  If you don’t publish per-game MAUs, which are a bullshit metric anyway, is double really that good?  Why aren’t they ten times better?  And if you make the claim that your game is the #1 subscription based MMORPG, I think it is incumbent on your to back that claim up.

Yes, the categories on the balance sheet where WoW fits in are up quite a bit, a sign that something is going on.  And if you’re playing WoW right now, it likely “feels” like the so-called “momentum” is building, that more players are back in the game.  I doubt anybody would seriously argue, with the WoW Legion expansion this close, that numbers are not up.

But you know what would seal the deal?  A nice little statement about how, at the end of Q2 2016, back on June 30th, after a year long content drought, subscriptions were already trending up on anticipation of the expansion with a hard number.  Anything higher that 5.5 million would do, though I think if they could have said 7 million it would have been a massive validation that the game is still strong and still has its own legion of loyal fans.

But instead, last November, when things were down, Blizz said they were not going to talk about subscription numbers any more.

I made what I felt was the case for continuing to report them every quarter.  Saying you’re number one is fine, but it isn’t news.  Trotting out a 7 digit subscription number though, that guarantees some headlines, be it up, down, or stable.  That gets your game in the eye of the press and being talked about.

I wonder, if WoW Legion does well, really well, and subscriptions are up into 8 digit figures again, if Blizzard will be content to just claim they are number one still, or will they roll out a special press release for that?