Experiencing Tenet

Last Friday I declared a movie night, suggesting that we sit down and watch Tenet.

Tenet

Somewhat to my surprise I received agreement from both my wife and daughter.  This almost never happens.

My daughter had been told by one of her film loving friends that she should see it while my wife, having watched the trailer on her phone after I suggested it, was good to go as well.

My wife actually said that the trailer made it feel a bit like Inception, an insight I had to applaud because Tenet is another Christopher Nolan film.  I, having seen neither the trailer nor having been coached by a friend about  the movie, was actually the least informed about it.  Nothing was spoiled for me in advance.

And, having watched it, it is very much a Christopher Nolan film.  I quite enjoyed it.

It is both a decent action flick and a puzzler that makes you keep track of what is going on.  John David Washington, Elizabeth Debicki, and Robert Pattinson all put in good performances, and I have been a sucker for Kenneth Branagh since Henry V, though I am starting to wonder if he only even plays non-Englishmen in his roles.  He’s played Americans, Germans, Russians, and Swedes.

Anyway, my main observation about the film, not wanting to spoil anything, is that it is very much a movie that seems designed to make the viewer feel clever.

You start out following the main character through their voyage of discovery as to what is going on.  They know nothing, you know nothing, and so things get explained to the both of you as things progress.  This can be a very powerful technique and, in my opinion, made films like The Matirx the successes they were.

As the film progresses and more bits and pieces of information are filled in, you will start to make guesses as to what is going to happen as well as the meaning of what has happened already.  We actually paused the film a couple of times to confer about what was really going on.  I can see fans watching the film over and over to pick out all the bits and clues about what is really going on.

The combo of learning with the main character and the feeling of cleverness really left me with a positive impression of the film.  I feel a bit like Christopher Nolan created this to draw in people like me.

And yet, for all of that cleverness, I still didn’t call the ending before it happens.  Nolan doesn’t give you all the clues and teases you with a few things, the camera lingering on this or that leaving you knowing it must mean something yet unable to attach it to something yet.

That sort of tease can be a bit of a hazard.  I have been annoyed by shows that spin you around and don’t give you some critical bit of information until long after it should have likely been revealed.  I was very critical of the first season of the series Broadchurch because at the end it felt like it had been jerking you around with false clues for seven episodes, then suddenly had a “hey surprise!” moment and it was obvious who had done it.  I didn’t come back for the next two seasons after that performance.

But Tenet successfully avoids that trap and feels quite satisfying at the end.  You feel clever, but not too clever, like the film gave you too much.  I wouldn’t mind watching it again, just to see what other clues I might have missed.  Maybe I could have figured it all out if only I had seen something.

Fortizar Kill in Notoras

To cut to the chase, we blew up a Fortizar in Notoras, which is Black Rise, which is low sec space.  It belonged to Snuffed Out.

Another structure goes boom

There were actually a lot of us on that kill mail.  Looking down the list of the 413 characters listed, I can see at least three different fleets represented.  The Initiative brought a Zealot fleet, while a Sacrilege and Jackdaw fleet formed up in Cloud Ring and flew out to join in.

Zealot getting reps after flying into the PDS

There were also some capitals formed up and jumped to a mid point, though they were not called in.

We were clearly expecting a fight.

I didn’t see any pre-pings for the op, but happened to be online and done with work in the afternoon just in time to join up.  Asher was leading the Sac fleet and I almost didn’t get into it, as it filled up so fast.  A few people must have jumped to the Jackdaw fleet or swapped to a capital, because I managed to slip in after getting the fleet full message for a while.

I was going out in my lucky Guardian, being lucky that it lived through the last op.  I actually volunteers to be a capacitor transfer Guardian this time around.  You pull off the remote repair modules in your high slots, swapping them out for some more capacitor transfer module so you can cap up other ships in the fleet if they need it.  I had read up on the doctrine and saw this was something we might need once in a while, so had brought the modules with me.  I would be in the cap chain, but could turn off broadcasts for repair as I couldn’t repair anything.  I was just there to fill up the tank of other ships.

Things formed up and got settled pretty quickly and we were soon undocking.

Everybody out of the Keepstar

The capitals jumped from the undock, while the subcap fleets went off to meet up with a pair of titans to get bridged on their way to the target.

Simultaneous bridges up

That got us into low sec, where we gated out way to the destination, fighting the usual time dilation issue that comes up when you start pushing a few hundred ships through otherwise quiet parts of space.

The gate animations are pretty cool in slow motion

We got into the Notoras and sat on a friendly structure for a bit before being warped on grid with the Fortizar.  The final repair timer was already counting down and a gunner was present in the structure.

On grid with the target

On grid with a lot of ships, we didn’t see any opposition other than the structure itself.  But Asher told us the hostiles were formed up.  Capitals had jumped into position to oppose us, having passed through a mid point while somebody was watching, while they were reported to have a full Muninn fleet and additional formations ready to drop in on us.  A fight sounded imminent.

And then a Pilgrim force recon showed up at range from us and lit a cyno.  Asher warped us to it and we blew it up quickly enough.  A quick kill to get the event started.

Asher warped us back into range of the Fortizar and we went back to shooting it.  Well, those with weapons did, the logi just orbited around their anchor and listened to what was happening in coms.

Guardians out and orbiting

Arrendis, the logi anchor, moved us around to keep us in range of the fleet but to avoid some of the bombs coming from the Fort.  In taking stock of the logi, he apparently noticed Crake MaddAdam for the first time, who was along in an Exequror.  Arrendis told him he was likely to die when the fight came, but I had to admit he had picked the right SKIN to join up with us.

Still the best logi SKIN ever

Meanwhile, we started getting word about the impending fight.  Its likelihood seemed to be diminishing rapidly.  Asher reported that the hostile capitals were spotted heading back from whence they came, that some subcaps that had flown in from the dronelands were homeward bound, and that the Muninns might be standing down.

The question then was whether or not we had killed their only cyno ship, because everything seemed to be building for a fight right up until that exploded.  It seems unlikely, but sometimes people forget to have backup plan.

So it looked like we were just going to blow up a Fortizar with a bunch of people.  As the structure got down under 10% I slipped away from the logi and into range so I could launch a drone to get in a couple of hits so I too would appear on the kill mail.  The gunner had abandoned his post as the end came near so the PDS was off.  My drone made it there and back.

Things went boom.  Nkosis wanted to loot and there was some discussion around that.  And then we turned around and gated back home.

Returning to base

That took a bit, once again due to time dilation caused by pushing that many ships through low sec, but it wasn’t all that far to go, even without a titan bridge short cut.

We made it back, free burning most of the way, and I docked up, pulled the extra cap transfer modules off the Guardian, putting the remote armor rep modules back on lest I forget, and that was that.  There were a few points during the fleet where bombs were hitting us and I thought about repping, only to realize I could only cap people up, so I had very little to do save look out the window and listen to coms.  But at least my Guardian made in back home again.

Simulating the WoW Classic Opening

The beta for WoW Classic has been up for a bit now.  Some people, and not a few streamers, seem to have made the cut for the beta which Blizzard has said it wants to keep limited.

I opted in for it but did not get an invite.  That is okay, as I likely wouldn’t play too much.  But as somebody who opted in I remained in the pool for stress test events, the first of which was yesterday.  I did get an invite for that.

Time to pile on the server

Blizzard can get lots of tactical information… not to mention some reports of bugs that are not bugs… from the normal beta.  But to be ready for opening night and the crush that will no doubt follow they need to load up the servers to see how their mixture of new and old tech responds.

Anyway, I downloaded the stress test beta, which appeared to be a subset of the WoW Classic package and waited for the start time.  They wanted people to log in and get up to level 5, which was where the test would be capped.  A minute or two early I launched the client to see if the server was up already.  I was not alone.

545 deep, estimated time under 1 minute

That seemed like a pretty optimistic number.  However, it did tick down very quickly and soon I was… kicked out to the login screen.  Well, I was in there ahead of time.  So I waited until the appointed hour and tried again.

1637 deep, estimated time 2 minutes

Now the surge was beginning to build.  There was a time, back in the day and at most expansion launches, where that many people ahead of you would have meant you had time to watch a movie or go have dinner.  Again, the queue drained readily and I was soon disconnected and back at the login screen.  But it did take less than 2 minutes.

I waited a couple of minutes, then once more unto the breech.

2052 deep, estimated time 3 minutes

The queue was getting deeper, but the time estimate stayed low.  And this time I was passed through and able to choose the server.

The server in sight

It may have showed a low population, but that seemed to be because it was having problems getting people loaded in.  I was once again at the login screen with an error.  But this was what we were here to do, load up the system to see where it breaks.  Back in I went.

2776 deep, estimated time 4 minutes

From this point forward I made it to the server selection every time, however the status of the server changed from time to time, being low population, offline, or locked at various points.  But I kept pressing the button every time I got kicked out.  That was the high water mark for my queue, though it stayed in the 2600-2700 range for the rest of the test.

Meanwhile, on Twitter WoWHead was posting screen shots and retweeting various streamers who were in the game and running around with the mass of players.  Life it good when you’re special I guess, though I suspect that nobody was retweeting people saying they couldn’t get in.

At about the 90 minute mark of the two hour test I was able to get on the server successfully and start on character creation.  I went for a night elf druid just to give that a spin, at which point I ran into the next problem.

Character creation timed out

That persisted for the balance of the test time frame, so I missed out on some of the special things that popped up during the test, like Ragnaros showing up.

Here's our highlights from the WoW Classic Stress Test, including Ragnaros and Onyxia spawning, and Omar the Giant Paladin trolling us all in Duskwood! https://t.co/wT1P7oF3bt pic.twitter.com/LBkztz8JYN

— Wowhead (@Wowhead) May 23, 2019

Of course, that all showed up around Stormwind, so I wasn’t going to see it anyway… not unless I made the run across the Wetlands, which I actually planned to do.

While the time frame of the test was over, Blizzard said they would leave the servers up and later in the evening I was able to get in and experience the starting zone.  The opening cinematic narration was interesting, as it spoke of the planting of Teldrassil and how it was the vanity of the elves and their desperation to get back their immortality that made them do it, against the wishes of Malfurion Stormrage, and that it had been corrupted by the Burning Legion.  I had forgotten all of that.  Maybe Slyvannas was just doing Azeroth a favor by burning it down?

Anyway, I was in, a lowly night elf druid with 16 bag slots and some boars and nighsabres to slay.

In at last… but reporting tools up front and center

Even off peak, with the queue gone and no problems getting in, the starting area was overrun with other players.

Anyway, while I did not show up to actually play, I did run around and do the first couple of quests, got a level, and got myself into the mindset of what WoW Classic will really be.  It is easy to forget what it was like being fresh to the game back in the day.  I think one of the things that keeps us going in MMORPGs is the accumulation of things that ease our journey.  It is much easier to carry on with a game we’ve already earned that stuff in than to start raw and fresh in a new one.

Given that the test seemed to go less well than one might have hoped, I expect we will see another round or two.  If I get invited I’ll join in again to add my weight to the server load.  That was what we were being invited to do after all.  People angry that things were not perfect need to remember this.

I hope Blizz got some good data out of this that will make the launch in August, where I expect servers to be completely slammed by both the dedicated old school fans and the curious alike, go smooth.  Or at least not be a disaster.  I doubt it will be smooth on day one no matter how much Blizz throws at it.  We’ll see if this new layering tech works out.

Anyway, if you want to see how the login queue works before August you need to opt in for the WoW Classic beta, which is its own category in your beta options.

Spring Movie League – Papal Fallibility

Week twelve of our Spring Fantasy Movie League has come and gone, with another blockbuster opening.

However, this time around there was a change up compared to how things usually play out.

Coming into the summer blockbuster season, the early entries are already upon us.  We had The Avengers: Infinity War already, and it made bank.  Week twelve brought us Deadpool 2, a big enough title to be split three ways, giving us the following price choices.

Deadpool 2 FRI      $501
Deadpool 2 SAT      $452
Deadpool 2 SUN      $337
Avengers            $280
Show Dogs           $99
Book Club           $98
Life of the Party   $76 
Breaking In         $73
Overboard           $50
A Quiet Place       $45
Pope Francis        $25 
I Feel Pretty       $21 
Rampage             $19
Tully               $13
RBG                 $13

The Avengers, in their third week, had settled down from blockbuster range to being predicted to bring around $30 million, something that would otherwise be a good opening week for a film of less spectacle and ambition.  Deadpool 2, being estimated between $130-150 million was expected to bring in more than that on any of its three days and was priced accordingly.

So way back on Monday evening when the picks unlocked and I was writing last week’s post, the question seemed to be which days of Deadpool 2 should you take.  Being the blockbuster of the week, of course you should anchor on it and of course you should take two days of it, because of course you should.

Then there was something of a disturbance in the quiet contemplation of the week.  Book Club, of which I was somewhat dismissive on Monday night, started getting forecasts that seemed to put it as the likely best performer of the week.  It seemed to be priced in expectation of doing about $9 million or so, but was quickly buoyed up past $12 million.  At that price it seemed like the best lineup might be 1x The Avengers 7x Book Club.

I had that selection in my list of possible lineups.  While the new multi-league picking interface is awkward, it does let me keep several lineups in play with a plan to copy the one I eventually pick to the other leagues.

Meanwhile, another wildcard seemed to be in play in the form of Pope Francis.  Religious films having done fairly well this year, as well as bio-pic RBG, the allure of the pope caught on a few places.  It seemed to be priced conservatively, as befitting his holiness, and you could get in Deadpool 2 Friday and Sunday and six screens of it.

I was tempted by that lineup for a bit, and had it up on my list.  However, in the end, I was more sold on women reading Fifty Shades than the leader of the holy mother church of Rome as a box office draw.

So it was down to that mix of The Avengers and Book Club or some load out of Deadpool 2, as much Book Club as I could get, and some filler.  I was fine with a single screen of Deadpool 2 at that point.

Then on Friday morning the numbers for the Thursday night previews came out and showed Deadpool 2 had drawn $18 million, a number that would be added to the Friday totals, which sold me on Deadpool 2.  My final pick was 1x Friday, 4x Book Club, 1x Life of the Party, 2x RBG.

And it wasn’t a bad pick I suppose.  I ended up pretty high up the list on most leagues relative to my performance over the last couple of weeks.  But it wasn’t the perfect pick.  The perfect pick was the lineup I had been considering earlier in the week, 1x The Avengers, 7x Book Club.

Spring Week Eleven – Perfect Pick

As it turned out, Deadpool 2 didn’t live up to that Thursday night rush. (And the Thursday night numbers for Book Club didn’t seem all that spectacular.)  While I can hardly bring myself to say it “only” made $125 million over its opening weekend, a huge number that secures its spot in the league of blockbusters, especially as an R-rated title, that was still less than I (and many others) had calculated on.

But at least I didn’t bet on the Pope.  Pope Francis only brought in half a million, less than half of what RBG brought in, despite the fact that RBG was half the price.  In hindsight, it shouldn’t have even made the list.

Super Troopers 2 and Black Panther should have been retained as they both outperformed Pope Francis and Tully.

The picks in the Meta League were quite varied and the scored for week twelve ended up looking like this:

1. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema (T) – $143,528,520
2. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $143,528,520
3. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $132,317,638
4. Wilhelm’s Broken Isles Bijou (T/M) – $125,473,035
5. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite (T) – $124,708,463
6. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $119,401,760
7. JHW’s Cineplex (T) – $105,188,471
8. Kraut Screens (T) – $105,078,227
9. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $100,045,032
10. Bean Movie Burrito (T) – $99,332,982 (Did not copy picks to the TAGN League)
11. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex (T) – $98,105,435
12. Joanie’s Joint (T) – $95,651,071
13. DumCheese’s Cineplex (T) – $94,334,631
14. Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $94,334,631
15. Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies (T) – $91,456,556
16. Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes (M) – $91,268,046
17. Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $88,467,250
18. Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $88,079,508
19. Goat Water Picture Palace (T) – $88,079,508
20. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $88,079,508
21. I HAS BAD TASTE (T) – $84,825,769
22. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex (T) – $84,257,700

The Meta League Legend:

• TAGN Movie Obsession – players from it marked with a (T)
• MCats Multiplex – players from it marked with an (M)

At the top end, both Biyondios and Pak got the perfect pick, so led the week.  The rankings from that point down pretty much follow how many screens of Book Club people went with, the top lineup with any of it being SynCaine at $100 million.

Two people bet heavily on Pope Francis, Ben and Goat, and they suffered for their sins.  Meanwhile, Liore went all-in on Deadpool 2, going with Friday and Saturday, 2x RBG, and four empty screens, but the merc with the mouth failed to back up his talk, leaving her in the lurch.

All of which led to some changes in the overall Meta League lineup:

1. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema (T) – $1,396,770,078
2. Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $1,365,230,792
3. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $1,347,931,759
4. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite (T) – $1,325,281,625
5. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $1,305,785,817
6. Wilhelm’s Broken Isles Bijou (T/M) – $1,295,861,503
7. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $1,290,801,335
8. Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes (M) – $1,285,536,880
9. Goat Water Picture Palace (T) – $1,267,297,820
10. Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $1,227,139,350
11. Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $1,223,975,074
12. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $1,197,832,271
13. Kraut Screens (T) – $1,148,370,041
14. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex (T) – $1,136,109,993
15. Joanie’s Joint (T) – $1,110,145,634
16. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $1,096,836,908
17. DumCheese’s Cineplex (T) – $1,096,432,028
18. I HAS BAD TASTE (T) – $1,075,682,342
19. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex (T) – $1,054,768,564
20. JHW’s Cineplex (T) – $1,037,512,961
21. Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies (T) – $1,031,959,008
22. Bean Movie Burrito (T) – $934,535,318 (adjusted to reflect main league pick)

Biyondios getting the perfect pick combined with Ben betting on Pope Francis meant a change in the number one spot, putting Biyondios solidly in first place.  Pak, also with the perfect pick, moved ahead of me, but I also moved ahead of Aure, Liore, and Goat.

So we go into the final week of the season with Biyondios in a strong first place position, Ben within striking range of Corr, Pak maybe eyeing Po, and a bloodbath still possible in the fight for fifth or sixth place.

And so it is appropriate that we are going into a big, big final week for the season.  Week thirteen has the following options available.

Deadpool 2          $680
Solo FRI            $587
Solo SAT            $371
Solo SUN            $334
Solo MON            $271
Avengers            $252
Book Club           $133
Life of the Party   $57
Show Dogs           $52
Breaking In         $49
A Quiet Place       $35
Overboard           $33
RBG                 $16
Rampage             $10
I Feel Pretty       $8

The big new film on the block is Solo: A Star Wars Story.  It is expected to open big enough to be split.  But since this is a holiday weekend, it has been split into four days for your lineup amusement/confusion.

Four slots of Solo means that nothing else new made the list, while the Pope Francis and Tully were knocked off.  As I mentioned above, they should have even made the cut last week given their performance.

At first glance you might think it will be all about Solo this week, but then you notice that Deadpool 2 is at the top of the price list.  Having done $125 million last week, its combined take over four days should easily eclipse any single day of Solo unless Solo breaks out and exceeds expectations.

And there is still The Avengers out there and Book Club, which might be the counter pick as it isn’t a big budget action adventure film.

Meanwhile, at the low end there is still a pretty reasonable selection of filler options at prices to suit what remains of your budget after your anchors take most of it.

So it seems to come down to how much you believe in Solo this week.  Something in my gut says that it being another Star Wars filler story after Rogue One (the “why did we need to make this?” movie) and following on The Last Jedi (the “screw everything you knew about Star Wars” movie) is going to lead it to being at the low end of expectations… expectations that have been dropping week after week in long range forecasts.

But some part of my brain still asks, “Who bets against Star Wars?”  And who bets against Han Solo… or young Lando?

Anyway, it will be a big week, a week where the right pick could change your standing dramatically.

Also, remember to make your tiebreaker pick and to apply your picks to all your leagues, unless you’re going to be like me and play something odd in a couple leagues. (I may be in too many leagues.)

Finally, be ready to pick next week.  The summer blockbuster season starts next week and, thanks to a four day weekend, picks will only unlock on Tuesday evening while the new rules for the TAGN League (not fully set yet) will require you to pick by Thursday.  (Though, for week one, that will be pushed to Friday as any holiday week gets their picks pushed back a day.) There will be no Meta League for summer, only the TAGN League. (So I can stop coloring letters every week!)

Good luck with your picks!

Deadpool 2 $680
Solo FRI $587
Solo SAT $371
Solo SUN $334
Solo MON $271
Avengers $252
Book Club $133
Life of the Party $57
Show Dogs $52
Breaking In $49
A Quiet Place $35
Overboard $33
RBG $16
Rampage $10
I Feel Pretty $8
Pope Francis
Tully

New Skill Injectors for Those on an ISK or Skill Point Budget

In addition to the announcement earlier about new PLEX being paid out to those remaining holders of Aurum, today also brings a new type of skill injector to New Eden.

With today’s update (I’m a bit surprised CCP didn’t hold this for the YC119.6 update, but sometimes you undock as soon as you’re ready to go I guess) there will be two flavors of skill injectors/extractors on the market.

Things capsuleers do to themselves…

The previously existing injectors/extractors, which hold 500,000 skill points will now be prefaced with the word “Large,” while a new set of injectors/extractors will be available today with the word “Small” up front.  These new small units will work pretty much the same as the old injectors, they will just do so in increments of 100,000 skill points.

As with the original extractors, they will always pull the full amount of skill points from a character, but when used to inject the amount of skill points delivered will depend on how many skill points your character already has.

For Small injectors:

• For characters with less than 5mil SP:  100k SP
• For characters with 5mil – 50mil SP:  80k SP
• For characters with 50mil – 80mil SP:   60k SP
• For characters with more than 80mil SP:   30k SP

For Large injectors:

• For characters with less than 5mil SP:  500k SP
• For characters with 5mil – 50mil SP:  400k SP
• For characters with 50mil – 80mil SP:   300k SP
• For characters with more than 80mil SP:   150k SP

Of course, skill injectors have been around for a while.  They went in with the YC118.2 update on Mardi Gras last year and there was immediate activity. as well as the usual comedy and abuse and commentary in the community.  At Fanfest this year CCP gave us a peek at how popular the skill trading, as they refer to it, really was.

Skill trading stats as of Fanfest 2017

There is something telling in those most extracted/injected skills.

For me, with the characters I use well over 80 million skill points, injectors seem like a waste of ISK.  I continue to skill up the old fashioned way, by simply waiting.  But I have an alt who, when he isn’t training a skill he needs, just trains up skill points to extract, something that has provided a decent income.  I sold an injector in Jita on Sunday for 740 million ISK which, less the price of the extractor (I bought a pile of those when there was a bit of a glut on the market) netted me some spending money for other things.

Now we will have both large and small injectors on the market.  Price wise, large injectors should be five times the price of small injectors, so small injectors ought to show up somewhere between 140 and 150 million ISK, if the price of large injectors holds stable.

But will there be demand for smaller injectors?  All things equal, one large is the same as five small and the prices should be locked together by the 5 to 1 ratio in Jita.  However, markets are not always logical, at least not in the short term.   If 100K skill points isn’t as desirable as 500K, will the new injectors end up being a drag on the price?  We shall see as time rolls on.

CCP to Pay Out Remaining PLEX for Aurum

CCP announced earlier that after downtime today those who had less than 1,000 Aurum when New PLEX went live back on May 9th would be getting the PLEX owed them.

The New PLEX in New Eden

You can find the announcement here, but it is short enough to quote:

We are happy to announce that all pilots who had Aurum balances outstanding from the PLEX changes have now had their converted PLEX balances delivered as of downtime May 23rd.

In order to protect the market and value of PLEX during the transition, all pilots who had less than 1000 Aurum in their wallets did not have this converted to PLEX when the changes were deployed on May 9th, and were notified that they would receive their Aurum balance in PLEX three months after the deployment of the PLEX changes.

After careful consideration and close monitoring of the market, we have decided to reimburse these PLEX earlier.

Today’s daily downtime was extended slightly in order to allow for a reimbursement script to be run, and all pilots should now have their outstanding PLEX balances reimbursed.

As it turned out, the market did not need much in the way of protection.  The price of 500 new PLEX (needed for the 30 days of game time that a single old PLEX would grant) went up after the conversion and has remained up.  This wasn’t all that surprising to me.  It seemed akin to a 500 for 1 stock split, and the price of a stock almost always goes up after such a change. (If it doesn’t, you shouldn’t have done the split.)  And new PLEX can be used for more things (even if character transfers are no longer on the list) so more demand, and an accompanying rise is price, seemed likely.

That means ISK is effectively cheaper if you want to sell PLEX.  If you are buying PLEX to pay for your null sec Rorqual mining alts in the face of nerfs and low mineral prices however, this might be a painful time.  I will be interested to see what the monthly economic report for May and June will show.

Anyway, I will have to check in and see if I have 42 more PLEX on the accounts that had the 300 gift PLEX.

Citadels in Saranen

Last week The Imperium changed its sovereignty timers to run in EUTZ.  Previously they had been running in AUS TZ, where we had had considerable success on defense for a while.  The changes to EUTZ was billed as a way to catch hostiles running entosis links during a time when we could put more pilots on the field.

I supposed this worked to a certain extent.  The primary bit of evidence is the kill boards, and Pandemic Legion’s stats in particular, whose killboard ISK efficiency is lower this month than even January 2014, when the battle at B-R5RB took place.

Efficiency down for May

The flip side of this is that our foes are also strong in EUTZ and still out number us.  So this strategy lasted for about a week after which we were fresh out of sovereignty to attract targets.  Last night the few remaining systems in the constellation around D2-HOS fell and that was that.

The last corner of Pure Blind falls

We have now reached one of those possible victory conditions I mentioned previously.  The Imperium holds no sovereignty, so we’ve lost.  Right?

GSF sovereignty now officially zero

Reddit, the official forum of the MBC, is certainly celebrating victory right now.

But are we defeated?

Judging from pings and ops going out and systems being reinforced and numbers showing up for fleets, it certainly does not look like it.  We are currently dug into Saranen and even managed to drop a citadel on grid with our station the other night.

In response to this PL dropped a large citadel, a Fortizar, on the same grid as our home station in Saranen.

The Fortizar looms

We are in a state where the game as a whole is still figuring out what to do with citadels.  At first glance, and this is my guess as to motivation, this gives PL a station that overlooks our undock.  PL even declared war on all of the remaining Imperium alliances, so that NPC station and gate guns in low sec space wouldn’t fire on them any more when they shot at us.

However, this turned into one of those “tracers work in both directions” sort of things, where the fact that they could sit and watch our undock meant that we could also sit and watch them, either by undocking or by sitting on our of medium citadel, safely tethered and waiting for something to happen.

Hurricanes tethered

Meanwhile, our response to actually getting a citadel anchored and running was to immediately drop another citadel on the station grid in hopes of drawing more hostile fax machines into the system to kill with Hurricanes.

Another medium citadel freshly dropped and spinning up

The Hurricane has become the backbone of our defense and any time hostiles show up in force in capitals or T3s or other expensive ships, we undocked in them in order to trade cheap, well insured T1 battlecruisers for whatever they choose to bring.

Saturday, when that second citadel was coming online we formed up in Hurricanes again to see if there would be another brawl like the ones we saw last week.  As the citadel finishes building there is a period of vulnerability during which it has no defenses of its own, so anybody can show up and pop it if you do not defend it.

Citadel vulnerability as it deploys… it kept getting renamed

We were again up in Hurricanes and trolling around the station grid as the time counted down to the vulnerability window.  However, aside from some hostiles playing station undock games with us… which included a PL Nidhoggur that managed to aggro and get caught by us, which was a surprise as we expected him to dock up pretty much right until he exploded… all was pretty much quiet.

Hurricanes cruising the station grid

Our foes decided to try something different.  They had some carriers sitting off their citadel. When the vulnerability window hit, those carriers launched fighter squadrons to attack the citadel.

PL Thanatos tethered on the Fortizar

The big grid meant that we could see the carriers launch and the fighters on their way.  (Also, the new camera nicely lets you look at anything on grid now, the 100km limit having been removed.)

We warped over to the citadel and destroyed most of the fighter squadrons as they arrived.  Out of about 30 squadrons sent against the citadel, 26 were destroyed completely… something that, unlike drones, generates a kill mail, which might be helping to weigh down PL’s efficiency this month… with the remaining ones withdrawing before the citadel finished its cycle.  That was the extent of the operation.  We won another minor economic victory.

The response to getting a second citadel anchored and running on the station grid was to… deploy a third one.  I suppose we will have a set of safe spots on grid now, because as long are you aren’t aggro’d you can get within range of these citadels and be safe as well as getting repaired while you wait.

Then on Sunday there was a ping for a fast form as PL had destroyed an allied POS that was on the station grid and then dropped their own tower there to replace it.  However, they did not hang around to defend the stick as it went online, so we ended up forming more than 400 people in two Hurricane fleets to shoot that.

Shooting the PL tower

Nobody showed up to get in the way of that and so the tower went boom.

A tower kill

Then GSF dropped their own tower back in the location of the original tower and we hung about making sure that it anchored, went online, and got fully fueled.

Tower Anchoring

Meanwhile, that third citadel kept on moving through its deployment cycle.  The model fills in as the timer gets closer to the end of its count down.

Citadel three in Saranen

I wasn’t around when that third citadel went live.  However, in scrolling back through Jabber, I do not see a defense fleet being called for it and there were no citadel kills reported in Saranen, so I am going to take a guess that it went online and is now on grid with its two siblings.

I suppose the question is now “Where does the war go from here?”  We’ve been removed from sov null, but still form up to harass our foes nightly and to fight when the odds aren’t stacked against us.  Meanwhile, PL and NCDot, who have been sovless for quite a while, now hold sovereignty within easy reach of our staging station.  A modest role swap there.  Who will tire of this state of affairs first?