The May Monthly Economic Report Charts the Decline of Industry in EVE Online

It is once again time for the EVE Online Monthly Economic Report, this time for May 2021.

EVE Online nerds harder

Production

The April MER showed a big spike in production in the lead up to the industry changes that affected battleship and capital ship production, after which production fell off just as much.  The downward trend in production carried on into May as expected.

May 2021 – Production vs Destruction vs Mined

While the chart only goes back as far as 2019, going back to older versions of the chart, that 2019 dip was pretty much the lowest point for a long stretch (and roughly corresponded to the Blackout), so the fact that we’ve now dipped below that seems significant.

Of course, what has really happened is that producers created a bunch of inventory while it was cheap to do so and have had no incentive to build any more battleships or capitals because the market price for hulls is still well below the new cost to produce.  And given how reluctant players are now to risk capitals, that doesn’t seem likely to change in the near future.

Overall the MER totaled up production for May as 115.44 trillion ISK in value, down from 168.4 trillion ISK in value in April.  The top producing regions were:

1. The Forge – 20.87 trillion
2. Delve – 12.88 trillion
3. Lonetrek – 8.45 trillion
4. The Citadel – 7.67 trillion
5. Sinq Laison – 5.15 trillion
6. Vale of the Silent – 5.13 trillion
7. Fade – 4.4 trillion
8. Domain – 4.02 trillion
9. Malpais – 3.78 trillion
10. The Kalevala Expanse – 3.69 trillion

As usual, The Forge and nearby regions, which serve the Jita market, remain very active, though all of the regions in the top ten were down in May.

Mining

I speculated that part of the ongoing rise in mineral prices last month was related to the rush to produce as many hulls as possible before the industry changes hit.  And there it is on the May chart, the first significant decline in mineral prices, coinciding with the industry changes.

May 2021 – Economic Indices

Hey, supply and demand works in New Eden!  The other indices are still garbage, anchored on things they shouldn’t be, but minerals are finally coming down.

As you can see from the long term chart, mineral prices are still at record highs, thanks in large part to the ongoing mineral starvation plan that CCP has running.

May 2021 – Economic Indices – Long Term

Mineral prices going down might at least mean that hulls not impacted by the industry changes, T1 frigate through battlecruisers and their T2 upgrades, might ease off in price over time.

As for where mining happened, here are the top ten regions for May:

1. Vale of the Silent – 2.43 trillion
2. The Forge – 1.63 trillion
3. Metropolis – 1.49 trillion
4. Domain – 1.43 trillion
5. Sinq Laison – 1.15 trillion
6. Lonetrek – 1.03 trillion
7. Everyshore – 907 billion
8. Genesis – 789 billion
9. Heimatar – 726 billion
10. Kador – 723 billion

A total 31.35 trillion in ISK value was mined in May, up from 27 trillion in April.  Mining remains primarily a high sec vocation, with the exception of Vale of the Silent, the null sec region run by Fraternity.

Trade

Trade was also down in May, there no doubt being a relationship with reduced mineral demand.  The total ISK value of trade in May was 598 trillion, down from 626 trillion in April, with the top regions as:

The Forge – 422.69 trillion (Jita)
Domain – 53.83 trillion (Amarr)
Sinq Laison – 18.45 trillion (Dodixie)
Delve – 15.73 trillion (Imperium/PAPI)
Lonetrek – 15.03 trillion (Caldari high sec)
Metropolis – 10.53 trillion (Hek)
Heimatar – 9.12 trillion (Rens)
The Citadel – 5.48 trillion (Caldari high sec)
Vale of the Silent – 4.33 trillion (Fraternity null sec)
Essence – 4.28 trillion (Gallente High Sec)

Those are pretty much the same ten regions we see every month at this point, though sometimes the order changes at the bottom now and again.

ISK Faucets

Commodities remain the dominate ISK faucet still, topping the chart again for May.

May 2021 – Faucet end of the chart big chart

Broken out as the over time chart:

May 2021 – Top Sinks and Faucets Over Time

And then commodities broken out:

May 2021 – Top Commodity Items Over Time

As usual, the Sleeper items from WH space top the chart, though there was a burst of Sansha incursion activity in there.

Meanwhile, the old faucet king, NPC bounties, topped out in these ten regions:

1. Vale of the Silent – 2.16 trillion (PandaFam)
2. The Kalevala Expanse – 1.19 trillion (PandaFam)
3. Lonetrek – 1.06 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
4. Querious – 1.02 trillion (Legacy)
5. Insmother – 1.02 trillion (FI.RE)
6. Tenal – 1.02 trillion (PandaFam)
7. Tribute – 977 billion (PandaFam)
8. Oasa – 955 billion (PandaFam)
9. Metropolis – 928 billion (Gallente High Sec)
10. Malpais – 924 billion (PandaFam)

PandaFam is clearly using the war in Delve to fill up their coffers in the northeast of null sec, far from the fighting.  Interesting as well is that there are now two high sec regions on the list, an indication of how much bounties have been tapered off in null sec.

Destruction

Finally, there is still a war on, and Delve remains the focus even in the lull, so it tops the region list again.

1. Delve – 3.39 trillion
2. Lonetrek – 1.78 trillion
3. The Forge 1.77 trillion
4. The Citadel – 1.56 trillion
5. Sinq Laison – 1.4 trillion
6. Querious – 1.22 trillion
7. Metropolis – 1.13 trillion
8. Vale of the Silent – 1.05 trillion
9. Pure Blind 894 billion
10. Tribute – 741 billion

The damage in Delve was almost exactly what is rang up in April, though I suspect that we will see that number taper off when we get the June MER next month.  The siege of 1DQ has slowed down.

Total destruction was 32.73 trillion ISK in value, down some from April’s 35.12 trillion ISK number.

So it goes.

As usual, all the charts and source data are available for download from the May MER dev blog.

The May MER and Mineral Starvation in New Eden

CCP released the Monthly Economic Report for May 2020 so we can see how the mineral starvation plan has progressed.

EVE Online nerds harder

With CCP’s mineral starvation measures all in place for two months now we can see if we’re getting anywhere close to a new normal.  Mineral prices continued to rise.

May 2020 – Economic Indices

The slope of the price climb for ore and minerals isn’t as steep as it has been for the last few months, but it continues to go up.  We are still short of the all time mineral index high, which occurred back in 2012 with the Escalation expansion, when CCP changed the drones in the drone regions to have bounties rather than dropping minerals.

May 2020 – Economic Indices – All Time

However, with a war brewing in null sec, prices might see a boost based on demand alone.

The Primary Producers Price Index (PPPI) did not rise as sharply.  Though ore and minerals make up part of that index, so does Planetary Interaction materials, and the market for that has been flooded lately as it turns out Upwell structures provide those when salvaged, and a whole bunch of Upwell structures have died since CCP introduced the “abandoned” state with the Forsaken Fortress update and turned them into a loot pinata free for all.  So that probably help keep the PPPI from rising.

The Secondary Producers Price Index (SPPI) though, that is made up largely of PI items, and you can see that it just kept on falling.  Hope you weren’t trying to make some money on PI the way I was.

And the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is made up of finished goods, remained flat.  Again, we shall see if war has any impact on that.

As for where mining is happening, the top ten regions for May were:

1. Delve – 1.78 trillion  (Imperium)
2. Domain – 1.44 trillion (High Sec)
3. The Forge – 1.39 trillion (High Sec)
4. Sinq Laison – 1.34 trillion (High Sec)
5. Lonetrek – 1.13 trillion (High Sec)
6. Oasa – 1.07 trillion (PandaFam)
7. Metropolis – 919 billion (High Sec)
8. Fountain – 864 billion (Imperium)
9. Malpais – 857 billion (PandaFam)
10. Perrigen Falls – 832 billion (PandaFam)

I decided to just mark each region with its owner.  PandaFam is the name coined by Jin’taan to cover the coalition that includes Pandemic Horde, Pandemic Legion, NCDot, and Fraternity as its major players.

There was 29.54 trillion ISK mined all told in May, down from 31.58 trillion mined in April.  This probably means less was mined in May as the price, on which these numbers pivot, were up.  Last month the top ten was:

1. Delve – 1.81 trillion (Imperium)
2. Domain – 1.64 trillion (High Sec)
3. The Forge – 1.59 trillion (High Sec)
4. Oasa – 1.35 trillion (PandaFam)
5. Sinq Laison – 1.34 trillion (High Sec)
6. Lonetrek – 1.15 trillion (High Sec)
7. Fountain – 911 billion (Imperium)
8. Metropolis – 888 billion (High Sec)
9. Genesis – 878 billion (High Sec)
10. Tash-Murkon – 869 billion (High Sec)

Null sec has upped its game somewhat since May, or at least PandaFam has.  They must be planning for a war or something.

And then there is the bounties front.

May 2020 – Top Sinks and Faucets Over Time

We saw a dip in bounties when the Surgical Strike update hit the game and nerfed damage resistance modules.  That looks to have bounced back once people adjusted their fits.  It is still down from where it was earlier this year though.

A total of 47 trillion ISK in bounties was paid out, with the top ten regions being:

1. Oasa – 4.06 trillion (PandaFam)
2. Delve – 3.75 trillion (Imperium)
3. Cobalt Edge – 2.92 trillion (PandaFam)
4. Fountain – 2.71 trillion (Imperium)
5. Perrigen Falls – 2.69 trillion (PandaFam)
6. Branch – 1.88 trillion (PandaFam)
7. The Kalevala Expanse – 1.73 trillion (PandaFam)
8. Esoteria – 1.66 trillion (Legacy)
9. Feythabolis – 1.59 trillion (Legacy)
10. Insmother – 1.58 trillion (Legacy)

The big three null sec blocs did most of the ratting, with Oasa topping the list.  Last month Delve was at the top:

1. Delve – 5.79 trillion (Imperium)
2. Oasa – 4.47 trillion (PandaFam)
3. Perrigen Falls – 3.02 trillion (PandaFam)
4. Fountain – 2.54 trillion (Imperium)
5. Cobalt Edge – 2.50 trillion (PandaFam)
6. Branch – 1.91 trillion (PandaFam)
7. Esoteria – 1.90 trillion (Legacy)
8. Omist – 1.87 trillion (Legacy)
9. Tenal – 1.62 trillion (PandaFam)
10. Malpais – 1.58 trillion (PandaFam)

There was a general order against super carrier ratting in Delve when the Surgical Strikes update hit, and that remains in place.

So it goes.

Next month, when we seen the June MER, we will get a glimpse of post-change stability again, plus a look at the economy before the big war starts on July 5.  We will have to wait until August to see what impact that really has, though the focus on ADMs in the Imperium might see bounties jump some all the same.

In addition to the MER, CCP put out a look at the Q1 2020 New Eden economy, which covers what is important to their point of view, including things not covered by the MER, like the PLEX price trend.  CCP seems to be happy that the price is going down for PLEX, though that also means people buying PLEX to get ISK are getting less for their real world cash.  I suppose there is a happy medium in there.

Anyway, the MER and all of the data is available at the usual location.

Starter Pack Frenzy

I suppose we should not lose sight of a key bit of irony that has stemmed from the controversy surrounding the whole EVE Online Starter Pack thing this week.

The reasonably priced packs

By objecting loudly to the Starter Pack, by bringing attention to it to as many people as possible, those against such things have probably been able to sell a lot more of them that CCP would have otherwise manage on their own.

CCP dropped this Starter Pack update on their DLC page right after EVE North and without any fanfare and a group of angry capsuleers went and did the marketing for them.

One of the arguments for the Starter Pack has been that a million skill points isn’t all that much in the grand scheme of things.  For any but the youngest character a million skill points isn’t going to change the world, and for a crusty old vet like me, with over 200 million skill points on my main, the Starter Pack barely moves the needle.

But that is the wrong way to look at this.  That ignores what will be the motivation for many, which is value.

The blurb on the Starter Pack says “Worth $10,” but that is wrong… very wrong for some people.

A million skill points is two large skill injectors worth.  A large skill injector was selling for around 1 billion ISK when I last checked.  (EVE Market Data confirms that for the moment.)  With PLEX past the $4 million mark each, you need to buy about 500 PLEX in cash to end up with enough ISK to buy two fill skill injectors.  So a million skill points is roughly worth 2 billion ISK, which even at the current end-of-quarter sale prices, comes out to more than double that “Worth $10” statement, if you buy the 1,100 PLEX pack.

But that assumes that you have a character who can get the full benefit of a skill injector, which have diminishing returns the more skill points you have.

• < 5 million total skill points = 500,000 skill points per injector
• 5 million – 50 million total skill points = 400,000 skill points per injector
• 50 million – 80 million total skill points = 300,000 skill points per injector
• > 80 million skill points = 150,000 skill points per injector

So for a vet like me, a large skill injector is worth just 150,000 skill points.

350K SP go to waste

That means that a million skill points is actually worth almost SEVEN large skill injectors to somebody over 80 million skill points, or 7 billion ISK or 3,500 PLEX or somewhere past $100 even at the current PLEX sale prices.

Basically, a lot of people read this deal and see “Seven Large Skill Injectors for $5!”  Why wouldn’t you throw a bit of change at that, even if you can only buy it once?

And then, with their promise to change the Start Pack, presumably in the near future, CCP has put a time pressure on getting the deal, so people think they have to buy it now or miss out!  I mean, CCP could have yanked it from the buying options immediately.  They have that power.  Instead, they let it linger.  It is still there as I write this.  I doubt it will be gone before Monday.

Hilmar was on Twitter discounting the idea that this Start Pack was going to sell enough units to have any real impact on the financial numbers, but I suspect that whatever modest goals they had for it have been exceeded in less than a week, all thanks for player rage.  Talk about getting your cake and eating it.  They get the money, the attention, and the good will for walking back their change, but only after it has had time to sell even more units.

Well played CCP, well played.

No More Toys for Us

I remember the coming of the big Toys R Us store in Sunnyvale, over on El Camino Real near Mathilda Avenue.  It was, in a somewhat conservative time, a brash statement of color.

Something akin to what it looked like back in the day

And, more importantly to me at the time, if was full of toys.

More recently they transformed the building into the bland beige store front style so common on strip malls across the country.  But for a while it stood out.  And it was haunted.

Of course, as a kid, it was a big deal even without the alleged ghost. (There is a post on Snopes about the haunting, a recurring story here in the valley, which had to get mentioned one last time when the location was set to close.)  But toy stores seemed to be a thing back then.  We not only had Toys R Us expanding into the valley, we also had a local chain, Kiddie World, with a couple of equally sizable locations, and later another big store… King Something’s Kingdom of Toys I think… it was over off of Interstate 880 with a big wooden soldier on the front of the building … along with smaller local retailers and the mall toy stores that eventually all became KB Toys.  And then there were the pseudo-toy stores, the hobby shops and the like, which grew in importance to me as time moved along.

I suppose it is in the nature of being a child, know where all the toy stores are and which retailer has a decent toy department and which does not.  I recall being disappointed with the one at Sears back in the day.

But even before the internet began to thin the heard of brick and mortar toy stores things were changing.  Silicon Valley was growing.  The population has more than doubled since that Toys R Us location opened.  Population pressures and a level of land scarcity (exacerbated by zoning laws favoring single family detached dwellings, leading the valley to be called a gang of suburbs in search of a city) began pushing up real estate prices, something reflected in retail rental costs, which killed off a lot of the small, independent toy stores.

Time, change, and competition send others packed.  That big toy store off 880 whose name eludes me was gone by the end of the 80s.  By the mid-90s Kiddie World, shrunk to a single location not too far down the road from the haunted Toys R Us, was trying to make its way by focusing on patio furniture and backyard play sets before it closed down.  And, as I mentioned, KB Toys scooped up the mall toy stores… at least before land value made having as many malls as we did economically nonviable.  And then even it fell over, as did the famous FAO Schwartz.

But Toys R Us seemed to be able to hang on and even thrive, scooping up fallen rivals and opening up Babies R Us in the late 90s, the go-to store for new parents.  Gift cards to Babies R Us were very welcome at baby showers and the like.  And in the age of Amazon the chain was able to strike a deal with wrecker of the status quo, even if Amazon reneged on the deal.

The chain was around for my daughter to grow up with.  Trips there were fun for the both of us.  There is something about being able to see and touch toys in person, to get their measure in reality, that surpasses any online purchasing experience.  The web is for buying, but stores are for browsing.  And Pokemon events.  Toys R Us used to host Pokemon download events, and my daughter and I attended more than a few of those.

However the internet kept pressure on the company while retail competitors like Target and WalMart.  Then they screwed up a couple of season of buying and were soon in deep trouble, needing to borrow more money for 2017 holiday season, a time of year which generates the lion’s share of their revenue.  That did not pay off and, having not turned a profit since 2013, the company was in serious trouble.

And so it goes.  Today, Friday, June 29, 2018, the last Toys R Us in the US is closing down.  It has been reported that their overseas subsidiaries will follow suit and the company will effectively disappear.  There is a farewell notice on their web site.

Farewell from Toys R Us

I am, at least theoretically, well past the need for a toy store, though I have persisted pretty well on the “don’t ever grow up” front.  As well as can be expected.

My daughter too is past toy stores for now, but she was sad as well when she heard the news.  She remembers going there when she was younger.  It was a memorable experience, a rite of childhood, being able to go to a big toy store.  And she has picked up some of my sense of nostalgia as she has realized that childhood doesn’t last forever.  The only constant in life is change.

And so one more facet of my life, of my daughter’s life, of the life of the valley, passes into memory.

Good-by Geoffrey!

It will be a while… I hope… until grand kids are a concern.  I wonder what will fill the gap for them?  What will replace the toy store experience?  Or will video and virtual be all they know?

Tower Repair in Fountain

Before I was done with work on Tuesday a ping had gone out for an op to defend assets from our neighbors to the east.  That actually ended up being three fleets worth of people heading out to defend a timer… enough people that nobody showed up to oppose if I heard right.

There was a follow-up ping from Asher indicating that there would be another USTZ fleet going out later for those of us who were busy or lived on the wrong coast.  That seemed to mean me, so when that ping showed up later I was ready to go in the coalition staging Keepstar.  The call was for Cerberus fleet.

Once we had formed up a good enough composition… with three fleets already out we were not likely to get an ideal form up… we undocked and flew north to meet up with a titan to get a bridge.

Getting in range for the bridge

We were heading into Fountain where The Culture had put three of our towers into a reinforced state.  We were there to fly cover and counter The Culture if they showed up to try to finish off the towers once they came out.

Cerbs over the POS shield

There we met up with a couple of force auxiliaries who proceeded into siege mode to repair the tower shields once it had exited reinforcement.

A Lif in the foreground, a Minokawa behind

They went about their slow work while we waited to see if The Culture would respond.  Scouts out reported nobody coming our way, so we flew in a lazy formation following Asher in his dirty Phantasm. (It seemed much shinier back in Saranen, though that might not be the same ship.)

Does not use the “clean ship” button

I have been on any number of such operations over the last five years.  You go out to the tower and see if there is going to be a fight.  If not, you just wait until the tower’s shields are repaired back up to 50%, at which point the tower can be refueled with strontium clathrates, which enables the tower to go into reinforcement mode.

With two faxes and our own logi the tower took a while to get back to 50%.  But once there GSOL showed up to get things into shape.

GSOL rides in Rorquals

That was one tower down.  However, there were three in the system, all of which had come out of reinforce and needed to be repaired and refueled.

Fortunately a few more faxes ended up joining us so the second and third towers ended up going by much more quickly.

Minokawas join us at the tower

Once the last tower was finished we were set to head home.  Nobody showed up to oppose us, so it was more of a “cost of doing business” sort of op.  We got our participation credit to show our service to the coalition.

These specific sorts of ops will be coming to an end at some point.  All three of these were moon mining towers.  Those are fairly passive operations, just needing to be fueled regularly and have the output collected now and again.

Come the winter however, CCP is suppose to implement refineries.  Mentioned back in March, these will act as moon mining platforms while will be much more hands on when it comes to harvesting the output.  These platforms are supposed blow chunks of moons into orbit where they will need to be harvested by mining ships.

CCP’s image of a moon chunk

At that point it will be an Upwell Consortium structure running the operation, which will no doubt be more akin to the Citadels and Engineering Complexes already available in its mechanics.  The somewhat strange mechanics of POS towers will be a thing of the past.

Currently we hold a moon mining towers outside of our home region.  We shall see how that works out when moon mining becomes a more active operation.

The Call of Free Trade in Norrath

Daybreak put up a new EverQuest II server yesterday.  Named “Isle of Refuge” after the original new player starting area, Daybreak is billing this as a “Free Trade” server.

Obligatory Isle of Refuge screen shot stolen from Daybreak

Back when the intention to launch this server was announced, I wasn’t sure I got the appeal of the”free trade” idea.  And now that it has gone live, I’m still not sure.

Isle of Refuge, the Free Trade server, is now open! Create your character today! https://t.co/Xcon6W4Q6S http://pic.twitter.com/aF1YTio50i

— EverQuest II (@everquestii) June 28, 2016

It isn’t like the concept is difficult or subtle.  I am pretty sure I get what they mean from their description:

Isle of Refuge is what we call a “Free Trade Server.” This means that almost all items can be traded freely between players. There are a few exceptions – Heirloom items purchased via a merchant or in the marketplace, granted from repeatable quests, or received via /claims will remain Heirloom.

Basically, what we might call “bind on pick up” items in the context of WoW will mostly be “bind on equip” when it comes to this server.  Yes, I know that in EQII the flags “attuned,” “no trade,” and “heirloom” are used, but I think WoW’s descriptions are better.  So you can sell or trade your epic raid gear, or twink alts with it, or whatever.

I am just not sure I get WHY this is seen as a significant enough differentiation from other normal live servers to justify rolling up a new server.  Is there a huge demand for free trade?  Have people been agitating for it in the forums for ages?  It certainly doesn’t seem to justify the Daybreak tag line for it:

Get ready to journey to a Norrath like you’ve never experienced before.

Because it will otherwise be a live server.  It won’t be content locked or involve progression or have steeper experience tables or harsher death penalties or any of those things.  I don’t even think the Isle of Refuge will appear on a server named “Isle of Refuge.”  Daybreak, like SOE before it, seems to have no sense and/or fear of irony.

The only restrictions will be that you won’t be able to transfer a character to or from another server (but you can buy a level 90 if you want), some “/claim” items won’t be available, there won’t be battlegrounds, and you will have to be a subscriber in order to play, which was the experience they used to offer back before EverQuest II Extended launched the free to play idea at SOE.

Basically all stuff I have, in fact, experienced before.  I’ll even count transfers, given how prohibitively expensive they were back in the day.

Of course, I think it is the last bit, the All Access requirement, is the real key to the situation.

After ages of the SOE “Free to Play, Your Way!” mantra, which admittedly meant trying to get you to subscribe via a variety of sticks and carrots, Daybreak has bought into the idea of special servers for subscribers.  We saw progression servers on the Daybreak road map almost immediately after they were free from SOE.

However, my guess is that they couldn’t quite bring themselves to put up a new, subscriber-only server where the big draw was “No Freep Scum Allowed!”  So “Free Trade” became the MacGuffin here.  It is all about that.

Not that their plan lacks its appealing aspects.

New server smell, with no transfers from the rest of the game, does mean building a new community.  It will be a fresh start on a new server with new markets and new guilds, all in the current content package; same expansions, same events, same specials, same cash shop, just about the same everything.  So you can leave behind your old, overstuffed bank and those offending freeloaders and come play on a server for people who have some skin in the game!  Also, free trade!

I do sort of wish that the level 90 buy-in option wasn’t available, but I am sure it will be popular and help soak up the remains of the giant pool of Station Cash that I bet is still left over from the foolhardy sales during the dark ages of SOE’s failure to understand economics, an era which led to people paying as little as $5.00 for expansions and $1.25 a month for a Gold subscription.

So there it is.  A chance to play on a fresh server with some minor rules variations.

Now the question is, after Daybreak built it, will they come?  Will people… subscribers… flock to this new opportunity?  Does new server smell, with a side order of free trade, have the draw?  And if it is successful, will it simply draw off the paying membership from the recently consolidated live servers, fragmenting populations and leaving live in something of a bind?

Finally, if it does have some success, will it be headed to EverQuest next… erm, I mean headed next to EverQuest?

We shall see.  The new server isn’t up on the Daybreak status page yet, so I cannot tell if it is bursting at the seams or a ghost town.

Hat Tip to EQ2 Wire for reminding me yet again that this server was a thing.

A POS Shoot in Saranen

Going to do hurricanes if I can get better numbers, our enemies are coming to fight us so get in fleet, I want to volley some nerds. Op 1

~~~ This was a broadcast from asher_elias to all at 2016-06-29 01:57:39.912887 EVE ~~~

Though the station camp itself… never really a “hellcamp,” no matter how often EN24 chose to use the term, but still active and heavy at times… had largely subsided by late last week, actual fights in Saranen every night were still a regular item through the weekend, with the enemy dropping supers on us when we undocked a battleship fleet.

So the expectation of a fight was not unreasonable when I logged in and joined the fleet.  That has been the established pattern for weeks now.  The original ping had Nagas an option… I still have two sitting in station waiting to get used… but it changed to Hurricanes as more people piled into the fleet.  Asher wanted lots of Hurricanes, asking people for once to switch out of logi and into them.  Of course, due to the perverse nature of the universe, that meant we ended up with more logi that usual.  Once we hit what Asher considered critical mass, we undocked.

Once more out of the soda warehouse

The first thing I noticed was an almost complete lack of hostiles on the overview.  There was somebody hanging out on the NCDot citadel, which is on the station grid by more than 1,500km away, but that was about it.  The station camp had gone from its desultory of late state to missing altogether.  Local was mostly blue.  No foes present to shoot.

Hurricanes rolling around Saranen

So we set about to try and make some hostiles appear, starting with an NCDot POS tower in the system.  This had been mentioned as a possibility, and I had brought along some cheapT1  ammo for a POS shoot.  Well, it was cheap ammo when I bought it.  Somebody, playing market warfare games in our station, bought up all the T1 and relisted it at an outrageously high price.  So, for many, faction ammo was the cheap ammo option.

Shooting a POS

We disabled the offensive modules on the POS then shot “the stick” until it went into its reinforced state.  While there was a report of an NCDot fleet on the Pure Blind intel channel, which is starting to come alive again as people venture into null in smaller groups, nothing came our way.  We were even able to bring in some dreadnought support to speed things up a bit.

A Naglfar at the shoot getting hit by fireworks

One done there, we went on to another tower in the system.  This one was mostly faction mods around a faction tower with better resists, and hardeners to boot, so things went more slowly.  We chipped away its guns first, the put our guns on the tower while leaving drones working on incapacitating the warp disrupting and webbing modules scattered about.  More dreadnoughts joined us for the effort and the tower was eventually put into a reinforced state as well.

And that was about it for the evening.  I saw SynCaine in fleet.  He got blotted out by the second tower in his Vigil.  A few frigate suffered that fate.

The fleet was mostly chatting and reminding people to activate their guns after they reloaded.  There were exactly three kills, an executioner that strayed into the extreme edge of our range and go popped, Oxygen’s cyno Rifter, which at least dropped the module and fuel, and a cyno bait ship sitting on a death star POS, which we quickly blapped on the way back to the station.  I wasn’t quick enough to get on any of those.  Two POS towers were reinforced.  And the 02:00 citadel went online without being contested.  Life in Saranen at the end of June I guess.

Meanwhile, in Pure Blind, a couple more systems were taken by us since I last posted on the topic (G-M4I8 and O-A6YN), while another traded hands back and forth (M-YCD4).  NCDot seems to be handing systems over to MOA, and a lot of work remains before us as we try to push back into null sec.