PAPI All In to Win the War in Four Weeks

But they need a week to get ready… after waiting a week to make the announcement… after spending nearly three months with us bottled up in the O-EIMK Constellation… more than a year since the war kicked off.

There are days when it feels like they never really had a plan for the war.

Anyway, with a week’s notice for the announcement, when the time came it was the Imperium that seemed most invested, with more than 2,200 capsuleers logged into the capital system of 1DQ1-A and a few hundred more watching the back door of the O-EIMK Constellation in 3-DMQT, a gate away in T5ZI-S PAPI fell about a thousand behind the Imperium total.

O-EIMK Constellation – The focus of the war

Still, the announcement, spread across multiple PAPI alliances at 19:30 UTC yesterday, was at least enough to pull the peak concurrent player count above 25K for the first time in four weeks, with the numbers capping at 26,259 at just after 20:00 UTC.

The announcement time

That will make week 55 of the war the first real uptick, bringing it back above the week 50 peak, though still more than 1,500 players shy of week 49’s 27,914 peak.

Rumor is that Fraternity, which made a strong statement earlier in the week, was the force behind the announcement as it is alleged that they threatened to leave the coalition if there was not a serious effort to end the war.

In the TEST alliance meeting Progodlegend said that they would be going all in on defeating the Imperium, using capitals, supers, and titans to break down the defenses and take the Imperium’s final null sec defensive position.

The week’s delay is to get everybody resubscribed and back into T5ZI-S after Progodlegend previously said that PAPI was taking the rest of the summer off.  They also plan to use that time to try and contain Imperium harassment efforts coming out of NPC Delve, where they claim to have a thousand warp disruption bubbles ready to deploy.  They will need to defend those bubbles however, as Goons do love to shoot things that do not shoot back.

So that was the big announcement.  It looks like we will have at least another week of skirmishes and harassment before they get together the forces to begin the assault in earnest.  Progodleged asked that people give the effort four weeks once it started, that being their estimate as to how long it will take to grind Goons down under the weight of their attack.

How it will actually play out remains to be seen.

• INN – A Flaccid “End Game” PAPI Announcement
• TEST – Alliance Meeting Recording
• Pandemic Horde – Alliance Meeting Recording

Finding a Crimson Forest

I mentioned the Nether Update for Minecraft last week and expressed my desire to find some of the new stuff that came with it.

The problem is, as always with new stuff in Minecraft, that you need to spawn fresh chunks for the new stuff to appear.  That means exploration, which means some danger in the nether.  Also, getting lost.  Roaming around on the floor of the nether and trying to find your way can be difficult and disorienting.  Lava and mad terrain and lurking threats keep you on your guard.

The safe path is to get up into the roof of the nether and tunnel.  In our old world we ended up building a whole transport nexus in the roof of the nether, and in the new world out nether portals were close enough to the roof that I went with that option.

Working in the roof is not without its challenges though.  You go through a lot of picks.  Your inventory fills up with netherrack.  Hidden pockets of lava can surprise you, and lava flows very fast in the nether.  You also have to be careful to dig ahead.  I accidentally dug straight down just one block only to find that there was only one block between me and a long drop into the middle of a lava lake.  Feel the burn.

And progress can be both slow and difficult to measure.  Every once in a while you need to dig down enough to see if you’ve gotten close to anything you are seeking.  This is when I fell into the lava lake.  Eventually though, I poked through some netherrack and saw something new down below.

First peek

It isn’t easy to distinguish in the gloom of the nether, but that is one of the crimson forest biome mushrooms just down below.  There is also the bridge/causeway system related to a nether fortress visible as well.

Now I just had to get there.

In Minecraft, as in the real world, it is much easier to build upwards than down.  I have not figured out how to build down to something, so my usual plan is to jump down and build up.  To do that, I needed to find a place I could safely jump down.  So I eyeballed a potential spot and started digging around in the roof trying to get over it so I could drop onto it.

A couple of tries led me to the right spot and I jumped down onto one of the big fungi and then built some steps back up into the roof.  Then, using the fungi as an anchor, I was able to get down onto some solid ground to complete the steps.

From there I started to explore a bit, and quickly got lost.  I am sure the dark red on dark red with dark red highlights color scheme wasn’t helping me.  And, of course, I was on a high spot above a lava lake, so watching my step was kind of important.

Looking down is always bad

I did grab some of the warped stem blocks from the fungi, which is a form of wood which you can use to make some alarmingly ugly doors, among other things.

They need a black light block for those

I hadn’t gone too far and managed to retrace my steps with the wood and some shroomlights, a new light source that you can harvest in the biome.  I ran those back to a chest I had up the tunnel a ways, then went back down to poke around some more.

There were Piglins about in groups.  They seemed to respect the gold armor rule and just looked at me when I got close.

Piglins off on another platform

There were also hoglins, the pigs who now live in the nether.  They were not at all impressed by my gold helmet and proceeded to attack me.  The little ones were not so bad.  They run away when you whack them a good one, though you then have to chase them down to finish them off.

The big boars though, they were a bit of a hazard.  The charge and have some knock-back, which is just what you want when you’re on a platform full of pitfalls over a lake of lava.

I was a bit surprised by the relationship between the Piglin and hoglin though.  I kind of expected them to be partners together in the world.  But then I saw a group of Piglin chasing a hoglin around and found of different.

Piglins eat hoglin for dinner I guess

I once again got turned around and ended up fairly far away from my one landmark, the steps coming down out of the nether roof, which was hard to spot amid the towering fungi.

Off in the distance I think I see them

I tried to carefully make my way back towards them, vowing to make some sort of more obvious marker and path to guide me.  At one point I was near the edge of one platform when something whacked me from behind, sending me flying off and down.

The drop wasn’t too far.  I had been at full health and still had two hearts left.  I looked around to try and get my bearings when I saw a Piglin coming down the slope and straight towards me, gold sword in hand.  He killed me.

Another death in the nether

I am not sure what I did to aggravate him, but he was clearly after me and the gold helmet wasn’t convincing him of anything.  Still, I had found at least one of the new biomes the update brought to the nether.

I still need to find Soul Sand Valley, a Warped Forest, and a Basalt Delta, plus some of the other new things.  That probably means back into the roof, though first I have to get back to base for some fresh equipment.  I had barely put any wear on that diamond sword I had with me.

Planned VNI Nerf Hits By Surprise

Back in June at EVE North one of the things that CCP announced that they had in the works was a planned nerf of the Vexor Navy Issue, the ubiquitous ratting ride across all of null sec.  Nosy Gamer has a summary of CCP’s EVE North statements.

The Glacial Drift SKIN on a VNI

A dev blog followed that up up last week with more details as to how the VNI problem would be addressed.

The problem itself is that a single hull had become generally accepted as the right answer for null sec anomaly ratting to the point that it is rare to see anything else.  The hull was also usable by Alpha clones, meaning that disposable accounts could be used to snuffle up ratting ISK, and if the account was run by a bot, caught and banned, the perpetrator could just roll up a new account and start over.

The approach to taking on the VNI scourge was two-fold.

First, to change the VNI to make it more of a railgun platform by adding in bonuses for that while reducing the drone control bandwidth so it couldn’t field the full flight of heavy drones it had before.

Second, to reduce drone skills available to Alpha clones so that it is more difficult to AFK rat with drones.  Those changes were:

• Reducing Heavy Drone Operation from level IV to level III
• Reducing Medium Drone Operation from level V to level IV
• Reducing Drone Interfacing from level IV to level III

The VNI would remain a decent ship, just not for unattended ratting, and especially not for Alpha clones.

That was what was under discussion per the dev blog, which came out last week.  However, people logged in today to find that the VNI and Alpha clone changes had been applied without much in the way of notice.  The update was appended to the June release patch notes.

This move was unexpected for two reasons.

First, CCP generally saves these sorts of changes for monthly updates.  They get announced, mulled over in the forums for a couple of weeks, get a final dev blog, and become part of the release.  They generally don’t just show up randomly on a Thursday unannounced.

Second, there was a feeling that that CCP wouldn’t bother with the VNI nerf until the local channel blackout in null sec had run for a while.  Part of the appeal of the blackout to many in null sec was going out and blowing up VNIs.  Why make them even more scarce when they are such appealing targets?

But there we go.  The nerf hit today and people were surprised.  CCP moves in mysterious was.  I heard that earlier today CCP Falcon blew off a scheduled meeting with CSM9.

The June MER and the Effect of War on Delve

CCP got out the Monthly Economic Report for June 2019 last week, apologizing for its lateness, though it has come out later in some recent months.  But as long as we get it I’m happy enough.

Every month I try to have a theme when I look at the MER, this month the theme is “What happens when the Imperium schleps up north for a war?”  With that we can look at what happens in Delve while they are gone and what happens in the regions where they show up.

We will start with mining, one area that Delve has consistently dominated since Goons tamed the region in the back half of 2016.  But last month?  Not so much.

June 2019 – Mining Value by Region – Bar Graph

The stack rank takes Delve out of the top… I was going to guess top five, but it almost fell out of the top FORTY regions when it came to mining.

The top ten regions for mining value in ISK were:

1. Esoteria – 3.31 trillion
2. Detorid – 1.84 trillion
3. Insmother – 1.78 trillion
4. Domain – 1.31 trillion
5. Branch – 1.25 trillion
6. Querious – 1,19 trillion
7. The Forge – 1.16 trillion
8. Fountain – 1.12 trillion
9. Sinq Laison – 843 billion
10. Metropolis – 829 billion

And, way down the list, in 40th place, between Oasa and TKE is Delve.

• Delve – 276 billion

That is down, way down, from the 4.9 trillion mined in the region during May, which itself was way down from the 9.8 trillion mined in the region during April, which in turn was down from the more than 13 trillion ISK in minerals mined in the region in the month of March.

So, without a doubt, the Imperium deployment put the reigns on mining in the region as those who ignored the fact that the supercap umbrella was gone paid the price in Rorqual losses.

Overall mining numbers looked like this per region.

June 2019 – Mining Value by Region

Mining was down in other places, so we should probably look at the mineral price index to see if some of the decrease in value was related to a drop in market prices.

June 2019 – Economic Indices

As it turns out, the mineral price index was up so, if anything, the ore mined was worth more, so less was needed relative to May.  Mineral prices still remain well below previous highs, but appear to be climbing slowly.

June 2019 – Economic Indices Long Term

Turning to NPC bounties, Delve fell out of first place last month, with Branch grabbing 5.6 trillion ISK in bounties to Delve’s 5.1 trillion ISK.  That changed further with June’s totals.

June 2019 – NPC Bounties by Region – Bar Graph

Delve did not fall as hard as it did on the mining front, but it still fell out of the top ten, landing in the eleventh position overall for NPC bounties, behind even the Imperium rental region of Period Basis.

1. Branch – 4.90 trillion
2. Esoteria – 3.56 trillion
3. Detorid – 2.88 trillion
4. Insmother – 2.71 trillion
5. Deklein – 2.70 trillion
6. Cobalt Edge – 2.15 trillion
7. Fountain – 1.96 trillion
8. Tenal – 1.80 trillion
9. Perrigen Falls – 1.70 trillion
10. Period Basis – 1.67 trillion
11. Delve – 1.57 trillion

Overall NPC bounties actually picked up as the month headed towards a close, though overall NPC bounties remain down from recent peaks.

June 2019 – Top Sinks and Faucets over time

The bump at the end corresponds somewhat with the commencement of the Drifter attacks on null sec, when everybody pulled back home. During that first week of attacks the Drifters ignored those ratting and mining in anomalies, concentrating Upwell Structures and those who came within range.

Overall NPC bounties totaled up approximately 48.2 trillion ISK in payouts, down from the 55.5 trillion ISK in payouts delivered in May, and well down from the pre-nerf total for March, where 71.4 trillion ISK was paid out for NPC kills.

That led to an actual reduction in the money supply in game over the course of the month.

June 2019 – Sinks and Faucets

Faucets were down by almost 15 trillion ISK, though sinks were also down, coming in 8 trillion ISK less than in May.  However, the active ISK delta, which includes ISK seized by GMs for botting and RMT, was up 14 trillion ISK, leading in an overall reduction.

And, finally, since there was a war or two going on in null sec, we might as well look at the destruction numbers.

June 2019 – Destruction Value by Region

Stack ranking that by region ends up looking like this:

June 2019 – Destruction Value by Region – Bar Graph

The top ten regions saw the following destruction:

1. The Forge – 3.46 trillion
2. Detorid – 2.3 trillion
3. Sinq Laison – 1.69 trillion
4. Tribute – 1.58 trillion
5. The Citadel – 1.53 trillion
6. Black Rise – 1.37 trillion
7. Delve – 1.28 trillion
8. Placid – 1.11 trillion
9. Lonetrek – 1.10 trillion
10. Vale of the Silent – 1.10 trillion

The Forge, home of Jita, is also a nexus of high sec suicide ganking, and is always at or near the top of the list, was up from 3 trillion last month.  Detroid, where TEST and Fraternity were clashing, made it into second place, up half a trillion from May.

The war zone for the Imperium, Tribute, only managed to make it into fourth, even with some Keepstar kills.  There were no great battles of titans.  Likewise, Vale of the Silent, which also saw structures and ihubs attack, only made it into tenth spot.

Delve, with no supercap umbrella, was in seventh, down from second in May, with a decrease of 700 billion in destruction.

Other regions, The Citadel, Lonetrek, Black Rise, Sinq Laison, and Placid, see action from their proximity to trade hubs. (Domain, which covers the remaining trade hub, was in 11th place.)

And so it goes.  The war pulling so many people out of Delve had an impact.  But with the coming of the Drifters we all came back home.

The theme for the July MER, when it comes out, will be what the Drifters, who did end up hitting ratters and miners this month, and the blackout, did to the numbers.  I suspect that the day the blackout shows up and forward will be dramatic on that sinks and faucets chart.  We shall see.

As always, all the charts and spreadsheets that make up the MER are available from CCP if you want to wallow in the data.

Summer Movie League – Board of Equalization

With week eight of our Summer Fantasy Movie League complete we are officially into the back half of this fourteen week run.

While we are past the $100 million launches, there are still a whole string of new films waiting to hit the screens while the early blockbusters hang on week after week. For week eight we had the following choices.

Mamma Mia 2               $526
The Equalizer 2           $403
Hotel Transylvania 3      $334
Ant-Man and the Wasp      $210
Skyscraper                $167
Incredibles 2             $149
Jurassic World            $135
Unfriended 2              $103
The First Purge           $61
Sorry to Bother You       $42
Sicario 2                 $29
Ocean's 8                 $24
Leave No Trace            $23
Uncle Drew                $21
Won't You Be My Neighbor  $20

As I noted, ten out of the fifteen films on the list are sequels, which I am sure says something. And the top new choices on the list also added to the sequel count, with Mama Mia 2 expecting to to the box office, followed by The Equalizer 2. After that we were into more sequels, with Skyscraper being the only anchor choice without an antecedent… and I am sure that it being the only original story in that group says something as well.

For the Monday Hot Takes league I decided to anchor once again on The Incredibles 2 again. However, as the week wore on a bit, I decided to break my five week affair with The Incredibles 2 and hop over to Jurassic World in my lineup. For the last few weeks the two films have been incredibly… erm… very close in box office result, and with Jurassic World cheaper again this week, I made the jump.

However, with my lineup of 7x Jurassic World and 1x Sicario 2, I felt like I hadn’t spent my money as well as I might have. So I swapped out Sicario 2 and a screen of Jurassic World for Skyscraper at the top and Leave No Trace at the bottom.

That was a mistake.

Not a huge, week wrecking mistake mind you, but not my best choice. My logic was that Skyscraper, after a disappointing opening, might at least have a soft landing for its second week, coming in ahead of The Incredibles 2 and Jurassic World. No such luck however, as it ended up doing about the same as the cheaper Jurassic World and less than The Incredibles 2. Though I will say Skyscraper did about what I budgeted for. It was the dinos and Parr family that beat my expectations.

Summer Movie League – My Week Eight Picks

Meanwhile, Leave No Trace was a gamble on good reviews and word of mouth and a hope that it would expand into many more theaters than the 311 it was in last week. However the theater count only rose by 50 and word of mouth wasn’t enough, so it ended up in sixteenth place for the week. Basically, anything else I could have put in that slot would have been a better choice. Still, at least it wasn’t the worst performer for the money. That honor went to Unfriended 2 though Uncle Drew was close on its heels and they traded positions a couple of times.

But at least I had the dinos. Jurassic World (and The Incredibles 2) lost very few screens and were still enough of a draw to keep my lineup alive. The winner of the week though was The Equalizer 2.

As the estimates came in it looked like Mama Mia 2 was on track for about the expected amount, somewhere around $35 million, despite an inexplicably savage review by Rex Reed. I mean, there are some lukewarm words about the film over on Metacritic, and there there is the big fat zero from Rex Reed. Not an ABBA fan I guess.

The surprise of the week was Equalizer 2 which, rather than loafing behind Mama Mia 2 by $6-8 million as expected, was running neck-in-neck with its musical, eventually passing it to take the top slot for the week, a performance that also made it the best performer in leagues that give a bonus for that. Not the TAGN league for sure.

Still, its run away box office made it the optimum anchor for the week in any league. It headed up the perfect pick for the TAGN league, which ended up being 2x Equalizer 2, 1x The First Purge, 1x Sorry to Bother You, 1x Sicario 2, 3x Won’t You Be My Neighbor.

Summer Movie League – Week Eight Perfect Pick

The scores for the week ended up as:

1. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $84,297,170
2. Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – $79,863,521
3. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $79,339,103
4. I HAS BAD TASTE – $79,339,103
5. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics – $77,556,503
6. Joanie’s Joint – $70,923,433
7. Too Orangey For Crows – $69,612,552
8. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema – $68,524,263
9. Goat Water Picture Palace – $64,255,715
10. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $60,741,210
11. grannanj’s Cineplex – $59,822,230
12. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $46,953,336
13. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $44,638,270
14. Kraut Screens – $39,318,422 (did not pick)
15. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $38,186,929 (did not pick)
16. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $37,555,835 (did not pick)
17. aria82’s Cineplex – $26,248,436 (did not pick)

Hampsterplex was the only one to go with two screens of The Equalizer 2 as their anchor and so won the week.

After that was me and the dinos followed very closely by Corr and I HAS BAD TASTE who both went with six screens of The Incredibles 2 as their anchor.

Pak was in the running for second anchoring on three screens of Ant-Man and the Wasp.

But after that the scores starting falling off with mixtures of Hotel Transylvania 3 and Mama Mia 2 dragging people down. And then the filler started dragging people down, with Po getting the worst of it by riding on six screens of Unfriended 2. Ouch. And then there were people who didn’t pick. Is it the early cut off, the fact that it is summer, or a loss of interest that is causing us to see so many missed picks this season?

That left the overall scores looking like this:

1. Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – $763,504,908
2. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $756,232,332
3. I HAS BAD TASTE – $739,664,638
4. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $736,026,252
5. Goat Water Picture Palace – $717,683,449
6. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $701,638,152
7. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $684,610,043
8. Kraut Screens – $683,116,941
9. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $682,702,338
10. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $668,749,031
11. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $666,428,796
12. grannanj’s Cineplex – $654,331,579
13. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics – $641,653,028
14. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema – $636,639,570
15. Too Orangey For Crows – $620,561,633
16. Joanie’s Joint – $613,672,747
17. aria82’s Cineplex – $605,936,381

I managed to hold the top spot, tip-toeing a millimeter or two further ahead of Corr. But the big change at the top was Vigo, whose failure to pick dropped him back a few spots. At this point staying in the top five is as much a matter of picking every week as it is getting a good win, though not getting a sour lineup does help.

But there are still six weeks left to go! Still plenty of time for anybody ahead of you to screw up, starting with the week nine lineup.

Mission: Impossible        $756
Mamma Mia 2                $227
The Equalizer 2            $201
Hotel Transylvania 3       $157
Teen Titans GO!            $149
Ant-Man and the Wasp       $116 
Incredibles 2              $89
Jurassic World             $76
Skyscraper                 $61
Blindspotting              $41
The First Purge            $28
Eighth Grade               $26
Unfriended 2               $18
Sorry to Bother You        $18
Three Identical Strangers  $16

This week we lose Sicario 2, Ocean’s 8, Uncle Drew, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, and Leave No Trace off the end of the list.

Dominating the list this week is the return of Tom Cruise to his Ethan Hunt role in Mission: Impossible – Fallout 76.  While not expected to come close to the $100 million mark with its opening, it is tracking for a good $60 million, which is nothing to sneeze at in the middle summer market.  And it is really the last BIG opening this summer.  But if you anchor on it you’re off to picking inexpensive filler.

Also at the upper end up the list is Teen Titans GO! to the Movies.  When we saw the trailer for this I said to my daughter, “You used to watch that.” which got an icy response of, “I used to watch Teen Titans, NOT Teen Titans Go!”  Pardon my ignorance.   While it is a youth focused movie opening in the summer market, it only comes up in fifth place, tracking for somewhere around $15 million.

Further down the list is Blindspotting, a crime thriller set in Oakland, which has good press but opened on only 14 screens last week, so needs to expand quite a bit to contend this week.

Then there is Eighth Grade, which follows a girl during his last week in middle school before moving on to high school.  It has been out for two weeks already, has good press, and did better than Blindspotting last week on 33 screens.  Again, its performance this week depends largely on how much it expands.

And finally there is the return of Three Identical Strangers to the list.  Had this been on the list last week it would have beat Won’t You Be My Neighbor and Leave No Trace.  Coming into its fifth week, I assume it is expected to expand onto more screens to justify its return over a title like Sicario 2.

Given those choices my Monday Hot Takes league picks were 1x Mission: Impossible, 2x Jurassic World, and 5x Sorry to Bother You.  My thought is that a film like Mission: Impossible is landing on fertile ground this week with, with only The Equalizer 2 offering up an alternative action option, so it could very well.  Still, The Equalizer 2 is cheap, so Tom Cruise needs to suppress the opposition as well as exceed expectations to be worthwhile.

We shall see if I hold to that position all the way to the Thursday morning lock time.

And, speaking of lock time, the league locks less than 24 hours after this post, so go make your picks now!

SuperData Research Says Pokemon Go is Back but not in the Top Ten

The SuperData Research numbers are out for June 2017.

SuperData Research Top 10 – June 2017

On the PC side of the chart, the top six entries remained the same compared to the May chart.  World of Warcraft is still listed as a single entry rather than being broken out East/West.

Further down the list, World of Tanks was down a slot, losing seventh place to the hot new awkwardly named kid on the block, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.  Likewise, Overwatch lost ground, dropping to tenth position, being overtaken by comparatively long in the tooth title ROBLOX.  The miracles of massive online games I guess.

Dropping from the PC top ten were Counter Strike: Global Offensive and New Westward Journey Online II.

At the other end, while SuperData noted in the text accompanying the chart that Pokemon Go saw a significant boost in June due to the gym and raid update, it was not enough to get the game back on the list.   Candy Crush Saga, which returned to the list last month dropped from seventh to eighth place, but somehow hangs on in the top ten revenue list after all these years.

Blogger Fantasy Movie League – Week Eight

What happens when you and your main rival both throw a “Hail Mary” pass?

My eventual picks for week eight were something of a risk, but I felt that risk was really the only way forward in catching up with Liore.

I started off the week’s picks the way I always do, without looking at any predictions or forecasts from the various movie industry pundits.  That led me to a lineup anchored on Dunkirk, which seemed very likely to be the top box office draw for the week.  That justified its top position on the week eight price list.

 Dunkirk            $667
 Girls Trip         $334
 Planet of the Apes $299
 Spider-Man         $266
 Valerian           $219
 Despicable Me 3    $148
 Baby Driver        $70
 Wonder Woman       $57
 The Big Sick       $54
 Wish Upon          $33
 Cars 3             $22
 Transformers       $14
 The House          $10
 47 Meters Down     $6
 The Beguiled       $5

However, its price meant you could only play it once which required loading up the other seven screens with cheaper items.

Then I started looking into what the industry watchers were saying.

The three new movies out this week were Dunkirk, Girls Trip, and Valerian.  Early in the week the estimates were strong for Dunkirk, at about $55 million, while Girls Trip and Valerian were both close to the $20 million mark for estimates.

Then as the week wore on, estimates began to vary.  At one point Variety was practically damning Dunkirk with faint praise, saying that it would make at least $35 million in the US weekend box office.  Mired in the sands, I sought to emulate the movie and get elsewhere.

I tinkered with four screens of Valerian since they were cheaper than any of the alternatives in that estimate range, but the review were soft and the estimates began to sag.

Meanwhile, Girls Trip was suddenly the hot item with excellent reviews.  I had said in last week’s post that it needed to bring in $30 million to justify the price on the list, and the estimates were heading that way while its rivals were shrinking.

I went back and forth on what to pick, not finalizing until Thursday morning with two screens of Girls Trip and six screens of The Big Sick.  The latter I picked because it seemed to be a shoe-in for best price/performance (and the accompanying $2 million per screen bonus) if only it could get to $5 million.  It seemed risky, but I figured that the only way I was ever going to catch Liore was to take a risk to get a big win.

And with the final numbers in, it looked like my picks paid off.

At least I kicked the Baby Driver habit

Alas, The Big Sick failed me, but Girls Trip won it the bonus instead.  Still, a winning combo as it added up to the perfect pick of the week, a win I shared with 655 other players.

Week 8 perfect pick

Unfortunately, it did not do me a bit of good because Liore was one of those 655 other players who got the perfect pick.  So I neither caught up nor fell further behind.  Instead, the gap between Ocho, in third place, and myself widened as nobody else doubled down on Girls Trip.  The left the scores for the week as:

1. Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes – $101,452,698
2. Wilhelm’s Clockwork Lemon Multiplex – $101,452,698
3. Murf’s Matinee Mania – $80,224,322
4. Void’s Awesomeplex – $79,914,548
5. Pasduil’s Popcorn Picturehouse – $79,879,251
6. Bel’s House of Horrors – $79,690,570
7. Moderate Peril’s Sleazy Porno Theatre – $78,720,086
8. Ocho’s Octoplex – $78,477,848
9. Syl’s Fantasy Galore Panopticum – $77,657,470
10. Braxwolf’s Waffleplex – $76,164,575

Liore and I are over $20 million ahead of the pack, but after that less than $5 million separates third from tenth place.  And there were a variety of picks in that group, anchored off of four different movies.  None of them were Girls Trip however.

That leaves the overall standings at the end of week eight as:

1. Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes – $897,719,151
2. Wilhelm’s Clockwork Lemon Multiplex – $859,233,803
3. Ocho’s Octoplex – $783,974,744
4. Void’s Awesomeplex – $754,934,995
5. Moderate Peril’s Sleazy Porno Theatre – $737,576,296
6. Pasduil’s Popcorn Picturehouse – $721,168,928
7. Braxwolf’s Waffleplex – $698,641,677
8. Murf’s Matinee Mania – $697,599,400
9. Bel’s House of Horrors – $646,729,434
10. Syl’s Fantasy Galore Panopticum – $645,737,926

The standings did not change much with this week’s results, save for Belghast overtaking Syl.  Liore remains solidly in first place, with me struggling to close the $38 million gap between her and myself in second place.  Then there is Ocho in third place, facing a $76 million gap between us, and $114 million barrier between him an first place.  But his own third place position is fairly secure as he himself is ahead of Void by a good $38 million.  Void in turn is $17 million in front of Moderate Peril.

The upper rankings are spaced well enough that they seem unlikely to change due to the cumulative nature of the contest.  Unlike more traditional sports standings, where a win has a constant set value, here the bigger your win the bigger your lead in the season.  It doesn’t mean people cannot catch up, but it requires both a big win for the person behind and a bad week… or weeks… for the person up front.  So for Syl to catch Liore, as an example, she has to close a $252 million gap, which means beating Liore for the remaining five weeks of the competition by at least $50 million every single week.

That seems unlikely in the extreme.

Even my $38 million gap means beating her by almost $8 million a week for the remainder of the season which, considering I have beaten her twice so far, seems beyond my grasp.

But we carry.  I, for one, have enjoyed the season so far which, in part, explains why it has gotten about a thousand words a week on the site.

Moving on, for Week Nine we have the following options:

The Emoji Movie          $400
 Dunkirk                 $373
 Atomic Blonde           $289
 Girls Trip              $219
 Spider-Man              $151
 Planet of the Apes      $126
 Despicable Me 3         $100
 Valerian                $99
 Baby Driver             $52
 The Big Sick            $44
 Wonder Woman            $39
 Wish Upon               $15
 Cars 3                  $14
 Transformers            $6
 Guardians of the Galaxy $4

It is a sad weekend in summer when the estimated king of the box office is The Emoji Movie, featuring Patrick Stewart as the poop emoji.

The other big release for the week is Atomic Blonde.  I plan to see it.  However, it is rated R in the US, which limits its audience as the summer movie season favors kids and families, which is why it opens behind both The Emoji Movie and Dunkirk this week.

Meanwhile, the perennial filler pick of the summer, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, made its way back onto the list again, having been pushed off last week.  Not bad for a movie that released in early May.  Take that The Mummy and Captain Underpants!

And a week with no clear champions offers some potential for interesting picks, or so I hope.  The FML research vault already shows Atomic Blonde as the most picked movie for week nine so far, while Valerian is at the bottom of the list, so an early pattern is developing.  Can I fine a lineup that will help me catch up to Liore?

Pointed Towards Delve

Almost five years of deployments and move ops have instilled in me a need to get in on any move ops as early as possible.  In my experience, if you are not on a move op and at the destination in the first 48 hours, move ops quickly start to taper off and getting to the destination becomes increasingly problematic.

With that experience in mind I was up on Saturday morning and in the first fleet op I could find.

As I mentioned last week, we had been told that we would be moving out to a new home come the weekend.  That new home is Delve, a surprise to almost nobody.  Delve is where Goons go when they don’t know where they should go.  Of course, the last time we left Delve, during the great consolidation before Fozzie Sov, I was very diligent in extracting every asset from the region.  Another lesson learned; just leave stuff in Delve.  We’ll be back eventually.

Anyway, the destination was clear.  We would be leaving Saranen in Lonetrek for Delve.

The general direction

Of course, this could not/would not remain a secret… it was announced on Reddit before we were told officially… and so the path to Delve would be festooned with traps and those looking for stragglers and solo travelers for easy kills.  There was apparently a very successful batch of smart bombing battleships sitting on a gate in Aridia that knocked off a stream of Imperium pilots making the run south in interceptors.

Thus, being in a move op convoy was all the more important.  So I jumped into Asher’s subcap fleet that was forming up.  We undocked after a bit and headed out to a titan for a bridge.  We were on our way.

Approaching the titan

Except, of course, we were not on our way.  Subcap move ops to Delve had not yet… and as of this writing have not yet… begun.  We were formed up to cover the movement of supercaps as they started their way down south, a necessary if tedious duty.  I spent more than three hours in the fleet and the biggest event was when NCDot nearly caught a Leviathan off of a citadel.

We were rushed off the moment that seemed to be a possibility, but by the time we arrived the Leviathan was safely off and NCDot’s Macheariel strike force was sitting about getting hit by the citadel’s gunner.

Another bomb lands on an Apostle

As the morning wore on into afternoon, I had other things to do and dropped out of the fleet in a station a few jumps from Saranen.  However, given how well camped the area around Saranen has been, that ship is now effectively out of range of Saranen unless I can find a fleet to swing by and pick me up.

Later in the day things were still going on, but I remained stranded so eventually decided to clone jump back to Saranen.  Since move ops seemed to be picking up for capitals, I thought I might pack up my carrier and see if I could that moved down south.  That would be one major anxiety off my list.

I was able to stuff almost all of my remaining ships into it, leaving behind only a couple of combat ships for our current doctrines.  Those I figured could wait for subcap convoys and would remain available for any further cover operations we might have to run.  I also bought quite a bit of fuel for the run, just to be safe.  My carrier, packed up, was ready to move.

Hey, we have a video ad now too

Sunday morning I was up in time to get into a capital move op led by Jay Amazingness.  The pace for that was… slow.  We had to wait for some people to jump their capitals into Saranen, and then wait for their jump fatigue to fully subside before we were able to undock and make our first jump.  But the time finally came and we were told to undock and jump to the cyno that had been lit for us.

It was at that point I had a problem.

I had never been in a fleet with other capital ships before.  I have had the carrier for almost three years now, and have jumped it to various locations in the past, but that was always in a two person fleet.  So I have always just right-clicked on my alt in the fleet window and selected “Jump To” from there.  But now I was in a fleet over 150 players strong and had no idea who had actually lit the cyno.

So I had to speak up on voice coms to ask how to jump to the cyno the fleet was going to, and immediately became “that guy” in fleet once again.  Jay, after asking a couple of questions to determine I was in the right ship in the correct location, told me to right-click on my capacitor and select “Jump To” from there.  With that bit of information, I jumped successfully to the first waypoint.  Jay was quick and efficient in his response, leaving the mockery for after.  Even a few hours later he was complaining about the sort of people who were in his fleet, citing the fact that he had a guy who didn’t even know how to jump to a cyno.

We jumped, docked up, and then we waited.  As it turned out, we were going to sit and wait for everybody’s jump fatigue, the blue timer, to run down after each jump.  That wasn’t made clear, at least not to me, for the first two jumps.  So the first time around I sat there patiently at my desk for the 54 minute timer and then while longer as people got back together and we were cleared for the next jump.

Making the next jump

The second time around I asked if we were going to wait down the timer again, but got no response as I think Jay had already wandered off for the timer.  I didn’t sit there the whole time, but I kept an eye on things, lest I get left behind.  By the third jump I was fully aware of the process.  However, we hit a point where the move op was halted, just over a dozen gates from Saranen.  We were going to hold there while other move ops got people up to that point.  After that, further ops would move forward from our current location.

That left me committed to moving the carrier, with my jump clone timer still many hours from letting me shift again.  As the day moved on, more pings went out for fleets and move ops, but nothing from my location.  Then, during the evening, after a couple of pings for caps to form up in Saranen, I saw a ping in the evening that announced that caps from my location had successfully moved closer to Delve.  I clearly missed an opportunity to move on.

That is where the great move stands for me right now.  I am still in Black Rise, an awkward number of jumps from Delve.  We have gotten the word that these move ops will keep going, so I hope to get end up down south this week.  On the other hand, I don’t want to clone jump away from my carrier, sitting at an early waypoint station, lest I miss the ping that announces a move forward.  So I am sort of stuck where I am.