44 Weeks of World War Bee

I was gone for most of last week as we had to drive up to Oregon to pick up our daughter and bring her back from her first year of college.  That meant about 12 hours each way going up and down US Interstate 5 and all the attractions that has to offer.

Weed is as advertised

I will say that the Pilot/Flying J facility in Weed has some of the cleanest bathrooms you will find along any highway, and you can buy a camo muscle shirt emblazoned with the town name in their mini-mart.  We also had to stop in Yreka so that my wife could re-write an real estate purchase contract in the parking lot of the Starbucks using the WiFi with her laptop.  Between that and being on her phone while I drove, she didn’t miss a beat for most of the trip.

And, while I-5 is notoriously boring for much of its length, there is some nice scenery around the CA/OR border.

Mount Shasta

Meanwhile, the boring parts are mostly flat and wide and optimal for exceeding the speed limit, a habit or bother California and Oregon drivers who both seem to share the opinion that those numbers are mere suggestions.

But, it looked like a good week to be away as not much changed with the war.  There was some /r/eve drama when PAPI mod SapporoJones banned notorious Imperium shit poster Dr_Mibbles for reasons that, if applied more universally in the forum, would result in a dramatic decrease in posting for both sides in the war.  Then further bans hit Imperium posters pointing out the hypocrisy.  But because a PAPI mod went after an Imperium poster it just served as a rallying point for the Imperium and appears to have just reinforced the “PAPI can dish it out but can’t take it” narrative that The Mittani has been stoking up on The Meta Show.

So, not much happened in a general sense I suppose, though the Imperium did announce a Drake doctrine, which brings me back to 2012 and my first fleet battles.

The battle joined with Drake fleet in 2012

I look forward to throwing heavy missiles around.

Delve Front

As noted above, not much has changed.  I can re-roll last week’s map of the O-EIMK constellation because the situation remains mostly unchanged.

O-EIMK Constellation – May 9, 2021

The focus continues to be PAPI attempting to gain a foothold in 3-DMQT.  Rather than attacking the Ansiblex jump bridge, cyno jammers, and the POS towers set up by GSOL on every moon in the system, they have begun dropping their own structures.  Since the ADM for the system is high, they can’t drop a Raitaru or Astrahus, they have to go for large stuctures, and the Azbel seems to be the Upwell structure of choice.

A TEST Azbel deploying in the system

It takes a while for those to anchor in a hostile system, so there is a wait for it to come online.

More than five days left when I took this shot

A couple were caught before they could get into the anchoring timer.

Otherwise, Delve remained an active region in the war.  I ran another week long campaign report which shows that while the ships destroyed number was down from the 16K it was last week, it was still well above the 8K or so it was the week before.

Week 44 destruction in Delve

The ISK value of destruction was down some though, as there were no Keepstars and only a single capital kills to be found.  Also, both sides seemed content to feed Cormorants into fights, which even at PAPI prices are still relatively cheap hulls. (Also, I ran that report a little early in the day, there was a fairly big fight later on that boosted the number of kills by a couple hundred if you click on the link.)

Other Theaters

Feythabolis continues to see fighting, with Army of Mango (AOM) pushing into the region and a number of systems unclaimed by either side in the war currently.

Feythabolis – May 9, 2021

Esoteria continues to be active as well as AOM is also pushing back The Bastion and its allies along the northern extent of their reach.

Esoteria – May 9, 2021

AOM has taken back six ihubs from the Imperium and its allies and is still pushing on the stretch of systems that the insurgents have held for months now.

The Initiative plans for attacking Etherium Reach were momentarily stymied when PanFam jump cloned back home to attack and destroy the staging structures that INIT had set up in Wicked Creek.  So the map of the region shows no change so far.

Etherium Reach – May 9, 2021

However, INIT just changed tack and settled down in an NPC station in Uemon in The Forge region, which is just two gates from Etherium Reach.  So the campaign against PanFam’s back field is not yet over.

My Participation

While I was away for most of the week, I was back home by Saturday and was able to jump into a few ops.  However, they ended up mostly chasing PAPI fleets around.  PAPI was looking for targets of opportunity and ran when numbers showed up to oppose them, so we mostly saw them off then hung around a bit to make sure they wouldn’t just jump back in.

On the E-VKJV gate in 3-DMQT once again

As such, my losses for the war remain as follows:

• Ares interceptor – 17
• Malediction interceptor – 7
• Crusader interceptor – 5
• Atron entosis frigate – 6
• Rokh battleship – 5
• Scimitar logi – 5
• Ferox battle cruiser – 4
• Drake battle cruiser – 4
• Purifier stealth bomber – 3
• Guardian logi – 2
• Scalpel logi frigate – 2
• Raven battleship – 1
• Crucifier ECM frigate – 1
• Gnosis battlecruiser – 1
• Bifrost command destroyer – 1
• Cormorant destroyer – 1
• Hurricane battle cruiser – 1
• Sigil entosis industrial – 1
• Mobile Small Warp Disruptor I – 1

Other Items

EVE Online turned 18 years old last week, as May 6th 2003 was the official launch date.   People celebrated by posting pictures of themselves when they were 18.

EVE Online becomes an adult I guess

On Thursday CCP launched a new login reward campaign with 8 days of rewards including SKINs, ships, and skill points.  The campaign runs long enough that if you log in today you can still claim all the prizes by visiting the game every day until the event is over.  The final day offers 100K skill points, even for alpha clones, so it might be worth the effort.

CCP also kicked of the new development quadrant.  Dubbed “Foundation,” it is focused on the main NPC empires of New Eden and has featured a number of significant lore events… well, significant for those into the lore anyway.  There was also a mention of the empires competing to construct  new stargates, with a hint that a low sec gate to the Stain region might be a possibility.

It is also your last chance to apply to run for a spot on CSM16.  Get it done now.

And then there is the peak concurrent user number for the week.  Week 44 of the war saw numbers stay on par with the previous week, though the peak landed on Saturday, no doubt because US players were all taking their mother’s out to brunch on Sunday for Mother’s Day.

• Day 1 – 38,838
• Week 1 – 37,034
• Week 2 – 34,799
• Week 3 – 34,692
• Week 4 – 35,583
• Week 5 – 35,479
• Week 6 – 34,974
• Week 7 – 38,299
• Week 8 – 35,650
• Week 9 – 35,075
• Week 10 – 35,812
• Week 11 – 35,165
• Week 12 – 36,671
• Week 13 – 35,618
• Week 14 – 39,681
• Week 15 – 40,359
• Week 16 – 36,642
• Week 17 – 37,695
• Week 18 – 36,632
• Week 19 – 35,816 (Saturday)
• Week 20 – 37,628 (Saturday)
• Week 21 – 34,888
• Week 22 – 33,264
• Week 23 – 33,149
• Week 24 – 32,807 (Saturday)
• Week 25 – 31,611
• Week 26 – 39,667 (Saturday)
• Week 27 – 34,989 (Saturday)
• Week 28 – 34,713
• Week 29 – 35,996
• Week 30 – 38,323
• Week 31 – 38,167
• Week 32 – 37,259
• Week 33 – 35,886 (Saturday)
• Week 34 – 35,626
• Week 35 – 35,379
• Week 36 – 35,085
• Week 37 – 34,394
• Week 38 – 36,319
• Week 39 – 35,597 (Saturday)
• Week 40 – 35,384 (Saturday)
• Week 41 – 33,708
• Week 42 – 33,521
• Week 43 – 33,731
• Week 44 – 33,742 (Saturday)

Related

• INN – World War Bee: Week 44
• Reddit – Activity metrics for WWB

LEGO Star Wars The Skywalker Saga is Coming

Cyanbane first tipped me to this over on his new blog, the fact that there was a new LEGO Star Wars game coming in the form of LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.  October 20, 2020 is the planned ship date.

All Nine Films Covered in One Game

Long time readers… diligent readers with very good long term memories… might remember the occasional post about LEGO Star Wars: The Original Trilogy or LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga from back in 2007 when my daughter was little and playing games on the Wii was our Saturday morning tradition.  I liked the game well enough to even get a copy for our now aging PlayStation 3.

But that was part of the console era at our house, and we haven’t played games on the PlayStation 3 or the Wii for a quite a while now.  We got the Wii out a couple of years back to play Just Dance at a party, but right now the PlayStation 3 isn’t even plugged in and the Wii has been packed away out of sight.  So Traveller’s Tales LEGO games have been pretty much off the menu because, frankly, the PC ports of them suck, even if you have a controller on your PC.  I could not recommend them in any way.

As such, the news of a new LEGO Star Wars title might spark some interest in me… I did a post about LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens when it was announced… but I was unlikely to play any new title, as our console days being behind us. (Though they did make a PlayStation 3 version of that!)

Now however, things have changed a bit.  My daughter and I both have Nintendo Switch Lite units and the new game is going to be released for the Switch, so a LEGO Star Wars title might be worth looking into for us once again.

Of course, we have a ways to wait.  October feels like a long way away right now and the future has been uncertain for a while now.  But for the moment I can watch the trailer.

The word is that Traveller’s Tales is making this a pretty big title in their line up, with all nine movies wrapped up into one game, the classic levels in with the new, some 500 unlockable characters reported to be available.  I just hope it plays well on the Switch Lite.

An Evening of Explosions in Etherium Reach

Cainun had pre-pinged that we had a big op planned for last night, that he wanted as many of us who could make it.  He was determined to undock and take whatever fight was offered after standing down a few times when Pandemic Horde and its allies brought out multiple fleets.

The enemy was laying in wait for us again, though Cainun had called in some help.  In addition to our Eagle fleet, which swelled to over 200 pilots when we undocked, not bad for just a squad like ours, we had an additional fleet of Cerbs fly out from Delve, and bomber fleet led by DBRB come along, a fleet from TEST, and another from GoTG to all converge on LXQ2-T in Etherium Reach.

We sat on one side of the gate in Paala while Pandemic Horde and its allies sat on the other.  And then we went in and the battle started.

The first stage of the evening took place around the Paala gate in LXQ2-T, which PH had thoroughly bubbled.  Those of us in the logi wing were immediately busy as the fleet started moving and engaging the battleship fleet close to hand.

Bubbles around the Paala gate

Things did not appear to be going too badly for us so far as I could tell.  We were catching people and repping them before they died, including one lucky Eagle pilot who was way into structure before we saved him.

Hemo Lived… once we got reps on him

He ended up on a lot of battleship kill mails and made it through the night.

But as you can see in the first screen shot of the gate, the pink spots at about 11 o’clock of the gate, PH dropped in capital ships, carriers and super carriers, to support their battleships.

Even the capitals were not so bad at first.  Fighters take some time to get around and are vulnerable.  Drones were sent against them as we popped battleships.

But eventually the fighters started to overwhelm us, focusing on the logi in the fleet.  There were more than 30 people in the chain channel and as one would be blown up they would drop out.  The fighters were overwhelming our reps more quickly as each Basilisk went down and I spent then last two minutes of the fight trying to swap up who I was chained with for capacitor as the losses were hitting faster than I could lock people up.  I was the next to last person in the logi wing before I too went down.

I happened to be near the edge of one of the bubbles… and a good 100km off the gate, so I motored out and warped off.  With the logi gone Cainun took the rest of the fleet out as well and tethered up at a citadel we had in the system.

The fight at a distance from my pod

I don’t know why I felt I needed to get out.  It was an empty pod, no implants, so getting blown up would just put me back in our staging station.  That would have been convenient too, as Cainun was calling for logi to reship and get back into Paala.  But the word was that there were no more Basilisks up on contract and I had been using my backup Basi already, not having replaced the one I lost previously, so it seemed like we were done for the night.

Still, I figured I would try to get back to our staging.  I warped into the thick of things and started to motor to the gate, pretty sure that somebody would shoot me eventually.  It took a while, and I had decided to self-destruct rather than wait, but then I was painted, marking me for a quick return home.

Pod express all set

Being back in our station didn’t help much.  There were still no Basis on contract.  But Cainun kept telling logi to reship and get into Paala.  And then I checked the contracts for the third time in 20 minutes and found that somebody had listed a bunch.  So I reshipped and headed to Paala where we tethered on an Astrahus and waited for instructions.

Fresh Basi on the Space Violence citadel

The situation was unclear to me at that point.  Actually, it is still unclear to me now.  I have tried to build up a battle report for the events, however the data the tool gets in dramatically incomplete.  I suspect that the new push to keep people from giving zKillboard their API might be having an effect.  Long a Pandemic Legion tactic, somebody recently decided that you give away too much intel if you have your API linked there.  So a lot of kills do not show up on the battle report, including my own.  But my kill is there on zKill, so maybe the tool is the problem.

Meanwhile, our fleet was split up.  Cainun and the bulk of the Eagles and surviving support were sitting tethered on a citadel in LXQ2-T while the reconstituted logi wing was doing the same in Paala, with just a gate and a killing ground between us.

Eventually he called for us to warp to the LXQ2-T gate and hold.  We sat there for a bit, then he called for us to jump and anchor up and the fleet was back together again.

However, by that point the whole thing had been going on for almost two hours and most of the locals had moved off to other things.  We were not alone, but there wasn’t much to shoot at in the mass of bubbles.  So Cainun took us out of the bubbles and warped us off to the 8KE-YS gate where we jumped in.

There we were able to find a solo Apostle hanging around in space, which we quickly jumped on and bubbled and started to shoot.

Tackled Apostle

However the Apostle was able to cyno in some friends and we soon had nine HAW dreads drop in to join the fight.  At least I could nine on the kills, eight Revelations and a Naglfar.

Dreads arrive to assail us

This didn’t seem to bother anyone despite our mauling at the hands of a single HAW dread just the other night.  However, that dread had a subcap support fleet.  This pack of capitals were on their own.  PH was busy elsewhere, though a Jackdaw fleet did show up to try and support the caps.  However, the Cerb fleet from Delve was still roaming around looking for targets, so they came and chased the Jackdaws off, leaving us to our work.

I was bummed at this point as I had been in a hurry to get to Paala when Basi contracts went up so I forgot to buy some drugs and I forgot to stuff a combat drone in the drone bay to whore on easy kills, and this group turned out to be pretty easy.

Cainun just pulled us back out of the optimal range for high angle weapons and proceeded to pick the dreads off one by one.  The fax slowed us down, and the first dread was well fit, so that first kill took a while, but eventually we got there and it exploded.  And then another exploded.

A dread explodes

The dreads seemed happy to sit around unbubbled for quite a stretch, accepting their fate while trying to score a kill.  Still, we wanted to kill them all so a call went out to get some more dictors in fleet and over to help hold them down and maybe keep away any rescue attempt.  I had my alt already logged in.  He was in a Naglfar, as there was the possibility of us counter dropping, but I swapped him to a Sabre and zipped off to join the effort.

Meanwhile another dread explodes

Eventually we were down to the Apostle, and then the drag began.  The Apostle had armor repairers mounted and was able to counter the firepower the fleet was able to bring to bear.  Now I really wished I had some combat drones with my Basi, we needed every last DPS.  I even put the little guns of the Sabre on the Apostle.

Eventually Pittsburgh2989 dropped by in a Revelation to add his firepower to the fight, and even then it wasn’t going well.  There was talk of getting a second dread to join up with us.  But eventually the tide started to turn and with each rep cycle the armor on the Apostle was pushed back ever so slightly from the previous peak.  Soon we could see damage bleeding through into structure and the end seemed in sight.  The Apostle was doomed.

Our Revelation as the Apostle explodes

With the Apostle down… and he did not go easily into the night… we had ten capital kills under our belt for the evening.  I am not sure that balances out losing 30 Basilisks earlier, but it made us all feel pretty good.

At that point it was time to wander back towards home.  We stopped again in LXQ2-T to loot the battlefield and shoot the drag bubbles still arrayed about the gate.

Back at the Paala gate

With a full cargo hold (do I really need 150 cap batteries?) and no combat drones I just orbited the gate until we were done.  Then we moved on to our staging and stood down for the night.  We were almost at the four hour point by then, so a second PAP was issued for those of us who stayed around after the first action.

Meanwhile The Mittani was pinging about war on Jabber, so I am wondering if this was the opening salvo.  We will find out on Saturday, or so I am told. (Though, naturally enough, Reddit claims to know the target already. We shall see.)

Addendum: Another battle report tool (there are no end of EVE Online tools out there), mentioned in a Reddit post about the battle, shows an about even split when it comes to the ISK war, though PH won the objective, installing an ihub in LXQ2-T. (We didn’t really talk about the ihub in fleet that I recall.)

LXQ2-T and 8KE-YS combined report

That report includes both systems where I fought and includes my dead Basi as well as the Apostle that tanked us for so very long.  That group of dreads and the Apostle helped balance out the ISK war.

Who Gets Banned for Botting in New Eden?

Renters?  Is the answer Renters?

CCP Peligro posted a chart to Twitter yesterday showing the top 25 alliances by amount of users banned for botting.  And the list was heavy with organizations that rent null sec space.

Click to Make Larger/Readable

There are a lot of familiar names on that list, not to mention some old one.  That data is for all time, since alliances were introduced into EVE Online.

One omission from the top 25 that no doubt will make some people upset is Goonswarm Federation, which so many angry people accuse of botting, RMT, and whatever else because that is what they want to believe as opposed to having any actual evidence.  GSF not making the list unsurprisingly made The Mittani a bit self-righteous.

CCP Peligro cautions on taking this data for more than it might mean.

BEING ON THIS LIST DOESN’T MEAN YOUR ALLIANCE IS FILLED WITH BOTS NOW – data from EVEstart. The only point I’ll make here is that 0.0 and in particular rental alliances have been disproportionately represented in bot bans for as long as I can remember.

Of course, we’ve been told this before, that rental alliances, by their very nature, attract botters.  They are not beholding to the landlord, or watched over, so long as the rent is on time.  The Team Security presentation from the 2015 EVE Fanfest had a similar chart when it came to bots.

EVE Fanfest 2015 Team Security Presentation – Page 30

No names were named back in 2015, and the data was for just a ten month period of time, but the caption to the left indicates that the the top three were well known renter alliances, and you don’t have to look very hard at the influence map to pick them out.

EVE Influence Map – March 30, 2015

I’m going to guess Northern Associates, Shadow of xXDEATHXx, and the Greater Western Co-Prosperity Sphere.  This was back when null sec was a trilateral mix of rental empires.  That map, at the end of the data set for the presentation, is from more than a year after I describe it in terms of the world of 1984, but many of the same players are on the map.

Which means that if you want to find bots today it seems like your best chance would be to go where there is still rental space in play.

Of course, if you look at the heat maps from that 2015 presentation that show where botters were caught, you might think high sec space would be a more fruitful location.

EVE Fanfest 2015 Team Security Presentation – Page 39

More high sec exceptionalism.  The Forge, Lonetrek, Domain, and Tash-Murkon look to the be biggest locations.  But I guess if you are botting in high sec then you are in an NPC corporation and won’t appear on the alliance chart.  So does that mean the answer isn’t “renters” but “randos” instead?

Meanwhile Reddit is alive with various tales and accusations as to who supports botting and who is responsible for policing it.  The potential for further fallout seems high.

MER – Fruitful Farms and Fallow Fields

CCP has their monthly New Eden economic report out for April 2018 so it is time once again to see where the various regions rank.

I started doing posts about the monthly economic report (MER) in part to watch how Delve, the home region of the Imperium, was doing compared to that of competing coalitions.  By that sort of measure the whole things has gotten a bit dull with the repetition of “Delve wins again…” when it comes to various metrics, such as mining output.

One of the responses I figured would come in time would be the rise of some competitor, some group set to vie with the economic power of Delve.  Every month I look again for a challenger, but every month I seem to see much of the same instead, and April’s numbers seem true to form, starting with mining output.

April 2018 – Mining Value by Region

Once again Delve is at the top of the list, a point yet again accentuated by the accompanying bar graph. (As always, you can click in the charts to see them in full, or at least more legible, size.)

April 2018 – Mining Value by Region – Bar Graph

The region held steady it total value mined, though with a further dip in overall mineral prices, that may mean more actual ore, as measures by volume, was actually extracted from the region.

April 2018 – Economic Indices

Delve remains a happy place for those tending the asteroid fields, farming them for their ore, as this actual picture from Delve indicates.

Literally the Delve Standing Fleet

Perhaps more interesting these days is where mining output is going down.  Fade, Pure Blind, and Deklein, where we have been fighting a guerilla war against Guardians of the Galaxy, saw another down turn.  Deklein was especially hard hit, with output dropping from 1.36 trillion ISK in value in March to just 455 billion ISK in April.

But other places of recent conflict have been down as well.  Cobalt Edge, in the process of changing hands, saw a large drop.  Providence remains suppressed as part of the PL invasion of the region.  And even Querious, a holding of the Imperium, is down, likely due to NCDot deploying to Gehi to spur fights around there.

NPC bounties show a similar pattern.

April 2018 – NPC Bounties by Region

As the bar chart clearly indicates, Delve remains out in front on this measure as well.

April 2018 – NPC Bounties by Region – Bar Graph

While Pure Blind and Deklein both continue to decline due to our adventures in the north, Fade held steady though the number was small.  Branch, on the other hand, remained on par with last month.  Branch is the one GotG region outside of the reach of our deployment, so remains a safe(r) place for them to rat.

Meanwhile high sec saw a slight increase in its piece of the bounty pie.

April 2018 – Bounties by Space Sec Rating

In April high sec had 7.2% of the bounties, up from 6.3% in March.  That boost seems to have come as a dip in the overall amount of bounties as April wrapped up.

April 2018 – Top 8 ISK Sinks and Faucets

High sec activity, as measured by agent mission rewards, remains a constant while bounty payments fluctuate.

On trade value The Forge, home of Jita, remains the leader.

April 2018 – Trade Value by Region

It continues of dominate so hard that the bar graph is only worth looking at when you remove it.

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

With The Forge excluded Domain, with the Amarr trade hub, continues to rule. (Domain is also pretty strong for high sec mining, coming in fourth place overall and ahead of The Forge.)  Delve is behind that, but pretty strong for a null sec region.

When it comes to contracts though, The Forge’s lead dwindles.

April 2018 – Contracts Trade Value by Region – Bar Chart

The strength of Delve when it comes to contracts seems likely tied to production, as selling fully equipped ships (common for doctrine ships or when you order a capital or a super capital) boosts that.

April 2018 – Production Values by Region – Bar Graph

For whatever reason there was only a bar graph for production this month, so actual values are missing.  Delve stands out in front, though I suspect that if we were able to add up the regions around Jita, which include Lonetrek and The Citadel in addition to The Forge, we would find that those together out-produced Delve. (I could find this in the raw data, but I’m not feeling motivated enough to go download that.)

Anyway, production continues in Delve sufficient to outpace any null sec aspirant.

Then there is the regional summary chart, which I like because it stacks up a number of key items into one picture.

April 2018 – Regional Summary Stats

Last month I ended on some questions, which I guess I should try to answer.  They were:

• Will Fade, Pure Blind, and Deklein remain down?
• Will the Space Violence SIG showing up in the north push them down further?
• Will the “Bee Control” attacks on Delve suppress its numbers?
• Will the Locust Fleet boost Querious mining?
• Will Delve production remain this high?
• Am I going to have to bring up Fountain at some point?

I am going to call it, “Yes, yes, no, no, yes, maybe.”

And so it goes.  Another month and not much real change in who is doing what and where.

As usual, the actual monthly economic report contains more charts and all the raw data.