59 Weeks and the End of World War Bee

One last weekly update.  There is rarely a clean transition from war to peace.  The Imperium will be clearing out left behind PAPI structures for a while still.  But the pace of things has wound down significantly over the past week.

PAPI forces are all returning to their respective homelands.  Brave is clashing with Psychotic Tendencies in Geminate, and I can only wish them the best in that fight.  And they have their first ihub in NBPH-N in the region.

TEST though seems to be struggling to get to its new home in Outer Passage.  They do not appear to hold any ihubs there yet.  The word is that they have made it at least as far as A24L-V in Insmother on their route home, but that fuel constraints are hitting hard.

TEST has also dropped out of the Alliance Tournament.  I hadn’t heard why… probably ISK… but when they were pulled by CCP in the Alliance Tournament Feeder draw stream (you can see that at the 30 minute mark when they draw for spot 17), CCP Aurora said that TEST had asked to be left out.  They are still listed in slot 17 (see brackets here), but I guess they have decided to forfeit.

Progodlegend got up at another TEST town hall to motivate the troops during their retreat.  He once again tried to sum up the war favorably, declaring that 4,500 Goons just sat in 1DQ for 13 months.  I guess the battles in NPC Delve and M2-XFE, and the Guinness Book world records that went with them, were all just some sort of collective Goon fever dream.

You tell yourself whatever story you need to in order to get to your objective I guess.

And the rest of the former Legacy coalition is scattered about, settling into new homes or looking for a couch to crash on.

The overall PAPI coalition looks to be breaking up.  Pandemic Horde reset a large number of other null sec alliances, while the PAPI Assemble Discord server looked to have been taken down.

No more honking

Without PAPI there is no blue donut to fight for now.

One Year Ago

Niarja fell to the Triglavians, and the WWB participants were involved.

CCP added metaliminal storms to null sec so we could have space weather to worry about.

We fought over the O-PNSN Keepstar and lost, but at the fight over the KVN-36 Keepstar it was a server crash that saved the day for the Imperium.

In my week seven summary I looked at what coverage the war was getting, our losses, and Legacy getting pushed back in Querious.

Imperium Space Cleanup

In the Imperium regions of Delve, Fountain, Querious, and Period Basis all of the ihubs have been retaken and we’re in the count down to when GSOL can start installing Ansiblex jump gates again to facilitate movement around our space again.  Right now, if you don’t have a bridger and a cyno handy, moving around means taking a lot of gates.

TCUs, or territorial control units, are getting cleared out as well.  Those are less critical as their primary function these days is to act as a flag on the map for a given system.  They are a legacy of Dominion sov.  If you go to the null sec influence map for yesterday you will see that Delve TCUs have been retaken, but that TEST and Warped Intentions still have some down in Period Basis.  Those will be taken care of soon enough, but the ihubs are what matter.

Delve is Goons, Anime is Cartoons

And now it is the rebuilding time.  Structures are being put down again.  ADMs need to be raised in some systems to support infrastructure hub upgrades.  A new standing fleet for home defense has been arranged.  A list of supplies went out that the coalition will need to help rebuild.  I got my Planetary Industry stuff rolling again to help fulfill a few items on the long list of needs.

There is a lot of work still to be done, but plans are rolling out to focus our efforts in building a new Delve.

My Participation

I went out on a few ops this past week.  The pace of operations definitely started to taper down as the week went along.  The almost constant tempo of pings showing up for structure shoots fell off noticably.  Still, I got in on a few of them.

An Astrahus blowing up

We also got to run out and blow up a Hel supercarrier, which was a fun distraction.

Hel tackled in Catch

I did lose one ship this week, a Purifier to a gate camp.  It was a dumb, avoidable loss where I immediately said, “Why did I do that?”  But I am not going to count it as a war loss because the group that got me, Pax Sex and his gang, are neutrals that used to hunt in Delve in peacetime.  Losing ships to them is a normal thing now and then.  So my total losses for the war are:

• Ares interceptor – 18
• Malediction interceptor – 7
• Drake battle cruiser – 7
• Atron entosis frigate – 7
• Cormorant destroyer – 5
• Purifier stealth bomber – 5
• Crusader interceptor – 5
• Rokh battleship – 5
• Scimitar T2 logi – 5
• Ferox battle cruiser – 4
• Jackdaw destroyer – 4
• Scalpel T2 logi frigate – 3
• Guardian T2 logi – 2
• Sabre interdictor – 1
• Eagle heavy assault cruiser – 1
• Scythe T1 logi – 1
• Raven battleship – 1
• Crucifier ECM frigate – 1
• Gnosis battlecruiser – 1
• Bifrost command destroyer – 1
• Hurricane battle cruiser – 1
• Sigil entosis industrial – 1
• Mobile Small Warp Disruptor I – 1

That is 86 ships and a deployable.  I am surprised I didn’t lose more really.

Other Items

CCP release the Monthly Economic Report for July, which I covered a bit.  It generally showed that July was kind of a slow month.

We also got a quick, three day login campaign for some skill points.  CCP hands those out like candy these days.

And CCP did the draw for the Alliance Tournament brackets.   The feeder round starts on September 4th.

The Final PCU Report

With each of the weekly updates I have reported the peak concurrent user count for that week, mostly as a record to see if those numbers tracked along with the intensity of the war.  There are a lot of other factors that play into online numbers, but they did seem to generally follow the war.  CCP reported that at one point during the second M2-XFE Keepstar battle more than one third of accounts logged into the game were in that system, T5ZI-S, or 1DQ1-A.

Anyway, I made a little chart out of the data with some annotations.

Over the timeline of the war

Over the 60 data points… I counted day one of the war as the “zeroth week,” which means that the numbers at the bottom of the chart are offset by +1… the following states can be derived:

• Average weekly PCU – 33,893
• Maximum weekly PCU – 40,359 (Week 15)
• Minimum weekly PCU – 24,262 (Week 52)
• Median weekly PCU – 35,075 (Week 9)

Weekly PCU isn’t all that accurate of an indicator.  It is more of a flavor for how each week went.  But it doesn’t reflect well if a whole week was busy or if we just had a busy day.  You can go to EVE Offline for a more granular look at the war.

The last year chart via EVE Offline

My chart lines up somewhat with that chart, though that cuts off the start of the war, which probably drops the average a bit when compared to mine.

And, of course, the final data set listing:

• 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)
• Week 45 – 33,758
• Week 46 – 31,768
• Week 47 – 29,898
• Week 48 – 31,462 (Monday)
• Week 49 – 27,914
• Week 50 – 26,045
• Week 51 – 25,661
• Week 52 – 24,262
• Week 53 – 24,290
• Week 54 – 24,922
• Week 55 – 26,259 (Saturday)
• Week 56 – 27,176
• Week 57 – 29,953
• Week 58 – 29,111
• Week 59 – 29,749

Related

• INN – Beeitman: Week 59
• INN – Horde Resets Dozens of PAPI Members
• INN – Progodlegend’s Disingenuous Test Townhall
• INN – PAPI’s Retreat: The Final Butcher’s Bill
• INN – Top Ten Things for the Imperium to Consider
• NEP – Legacy’s Breakup
• Polygon – Eve Online’s Yearlong War Ends with an Epic Retreat

58 Weeks of World War Bee

The week of maximum Imperium smug may have passed, what with all the PAPI structure kills being racked up.  The main battles have been fought, the outposts of our foes that haven’t been destroyed yet are on their way to that fate soon enough.

The war is starting to feel over.

The enemy has fled, the invasion is no more, and the coalition that joined together to attack us hangs together loosely at best.  I might be at the last weekly update.  We’ll see what happens in the coming week, but I could be done.

Not that I ever meant for this weekly post routine to become a thing.  It sort of just happened and, once it started, it seemed like a good idea to just carry on.

There is still a lot going on.  PAPI forces are bunched up in a few systems trying to get out and have moved at a slow enough pace that, thanks to CCP having systems with very similar names in Catch, other groups have been able to setup bait cyno beacons that continue to provide juicy targets like this FinFleet Ragnarok.

And, with thousands of capital ships in motion across null sec, there is now apparently a jump fuel shortage with isotopes of all four flavors being scarce, which has caused prices to jump dramatically. (It isn’t all Imperium spies in Pandemic Horde relisting things on the market.)  The CCP scarcity drive made ice mining less productive and broke ice belts in some places so that there just isn’t anywhere close to enough supply arriving on the market to cope with the huge demand.

The PAPI trail of tears back to the Dronelands may be an extended journey.

Then there are the organizational shakeups underway as various groups shed members or recruit from traumatized alliances whose members are fed up.

Sov losses and member movement

There will also no doubt be a shift in the alliance coalition structures as PAPI breaks up into smaller regional groups.

The Mittani announced a general moratorium on accepting members of PAPI alliances into the Imperium for the next couple of months.  We are not seeking fair weather friends.  I am not sure how diligently this will be enforced, but you can expect that if you were in PAPI then KarmaFleet won’t be recruiting you for the time being. (Unless you made the Operation PAPIclip list.)

One Year Ago

The CCP update included armor plate tiericide and EDENCOM turned hostile towards anybody supporting the Triglavian invasion.

We lost the Keepstar in IGE-RI in Fountain and our tactics did not extract much of a penalty from the attackers.

When we got to the Y-2ANO Keepstar we had changed up enough to make PAPI pay for reinforcing it.

In the Week 6 Update I noted that Fountain was almost completely lost to the Imperium, that Legacy was getting pushed back in Querious, and we dropped 70 Athanors in Esoteria just to annoy TEST. (68 anchored successfully.)

Delve

As I mentioned last week, all the ihubs in Delve have been taken and the focus has turned to clearing out structures left behind by PAPI in their retreat.  There have been lots of structures to kill, with resistance by PAPI tapering off to almost nothing.  There are a few PAPI members who are out there trying to grab the cores when the structured die, and they have had some success, but mostly it is just things getting blown up.

Of course, the big kill of the week was the Tower of Legends, the primary PAPI staging Keepstar, but it was hardly the only Keepstar to die this past week.

The Tower of Legends brought down

The Delve campaign report shows this, with more than 3.5 trillion ISK destroyed in the region over the past week, 94% of which has been PAPI ships and structures.

Delve Campaign Report – Week 58

Listing out just the PAPI losses by type, you can see that structures dominated the list.

Week 58 – Top 15 PAPI Losses by Type

That is a lot of structure bashing that went on in Delve, including 7 Keepstars… and apparently a lot of expensive capsules.  I read somewhere that defense was so easy that nobody should ever lose a Keepstar.  Maybe TEST will defend some of theirs.

Other Theaters

Fountain has been purged of PAPI ihubs, save for the constellation that LowSechnaya Sholupen (LSH) has.  They should not be confused with NullSechnaya Sholupen (NSH) who were part of the PAPI coalition.

Querious has been getting cleared out.  Brave still holds some ihubs and has structures all over… again, they were clearly committed to living there… but have mostly fled the region.  There are unreinforced Brave structures in Querious just sitting there, not unanchoring, waiting to be blown up.  We even got on in an abandoned state the other day, an Athanor, which turned into a 3 billion ISK loot pinata for GSOL.

Period Basis has also been getting some attention, but a lot of the focus has been on Catch, where TEST had to retake an ihub in a system where they had a Keepstar for the evacuation route.

Catch – Aug 15, 2021

I’ve marked the travel waypoint and the system with the bait beacon, CCP having nicely put two systems in the same region that have very similar names to help make this possible. (There are also two systems that start with “GE-” in Catch, so CCP had something in mind or the random name generator blessed the region twice.)

My Participation

I went on quite a few fleets this past week.  As I have said, there were a lot of structures to kill.  While I was out in my Bhaalgorn a few times, most of the week was work for bombers and blops.  My Purifier undocked over and over.

Another structure out there to bash

And then there were the blops pilots who were ferrying us all over Delve and Querious.  I will say that conduit jump, where the black ops battleship and 30 bombers go in one jump, has become a useful features.

A Redeemer blops lighting a covert cyno

While there were a few attempts to interfere with our shoots, I made it through the week without loss, leaving my war time total as:

• Ares interceptor – 18
• Malediction interceptor – 7
• Drake battle cruiser – 7
• Atron entosis frigate – 7
• Cormorant destroyer – 5
• Purifier stealth bomber – 5
• Crusader interceptor – 5
• Rokh battleship – 5
• Scimitar T2 logi – 5
• Ferox battle cruiser – 4
• Jackdaw destroyer – 4
• Scalpel T2 logi frigate – 3
• Guardian T2 logi – 2
• Sabre interdictor – 1
• Eagle heavy assault cruiser – 1
• Scythe T1 logi – 1
• Raven battleship – 1
• Crucifier ECM frigate – 1
• Gnosis battlecruiser – 1
• Bifrost command destroyer – 1
• Hurricane battle cruiser – 1
• Sigil entosis industrial – 1
• Mobile Small Warp Disruptor I – 1

Other Items

The propaganda party never stops as Srsli put together another music video for the Imperium.

CCP has gone into its August hibernation mode and the patch update for August so far was pretty minor.  They haven’t mentioned the war lately, but they only seem interested in it when it produces a couple of Guinness Book world records, which happened at FWST-8 and M2-XFE.

This is in contrast to the Casino War where CCP covered events, mentioned it in their video series The Scope, and even tried to name the war.  Now CCP seems more interested in stagnating the game by strangling the economy.

On the weekly peak concurrent user numbers we crossed the 29K line again.  Oddly Monday was close to that peak number, hitting 29,033.  It wasn’t a holiday anywhere that I can recall, so it must have been the continuation of the Sunday peak and the orgy of entosis and destruction that was going on as the Imperium worked on clearing out Delve, Fountain, Querious, and Period Basis.  But Sunday just eked the top number for the week, hitting 29,111.

• 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)
• Week 45 – 33,758
• Week 46 – 31,768
• Week 47 – 29,898
• Week 48 – 31,462 (Monday)
• Week 49 – 27,914
• Week 50 – 26,045
• Week 51 – 25,661
• Week 52 – 24,262
• Week 53 – 24,290
• Week 54 – 24,922
• Week 55 – 26,259 (Saturday)
• Week 56 – 27,176
• Week 57 – 29,953
• Week 58 – 29,111

Related

Surprise! The change in fortunes in the war generated a lot of writing!

• INN – Beeitman: Week 58
• INN – PAPI’s Retreat Daily Report: Day 8
• NN – What Daedalus Can Teach Us
• INN – PAPI’s Failure to Rationalize Defeat
• INN – PAPI’s Retreat Daily Report: Day 9
• INN – Vily, Manny, the Council of Wardens, and the Lies That Led to Beeitnam
• INN – The End Is Here: Three Reasons Why
• TAGN – Destroying the Forge of Heroes
• INN – PAPI’s Retreat Daily Report: Day 10
• PC Gamer – EVE Online’s record-setting war ends with a whimper
• Reddit – zKillboard Number Crunching (The WWB ISK War)
• INN – How to Win a Narrative War
• TAGN – Towards a New Delve
• INN – The Tower of Legends Falls
• TAGN – The Downfall of the Tower of Legends
• TNG – EVE Online ACU/PCU Climbs as War Activity Continues
• INN – PAPI’s Retreat Daily Report: Day 11
• INN – Dreadbomb Dreadbombs
• INN – The Battle for Hearts, Minds, and Butts
• INN – Joining EVE In Wartime: Fluffeh’s Story

57 Weeks of World War Bee – Victory in Delve

The tide certainly turned this past week.

The battle of 1DQ1-A on August 2nd, the final assault on the Imperium capitol, turned out to be the high water mark of the PAPI invasion.  Even as PAPI forces, trapped in the bubble field, were being routed, alliances in the Legacy coalition began to unanchor structures that they wanted to save from any Imperium counter stroke.

This mid-fight move caught Legacy’s allies in the PAPI coalition by surprise, so rather than getting word from their leaders many PAPI coalition members found out due to Bjorn Bee mentioning it on his stream.

PAPIstarted trying to pull out of Delve gracefully as the Imperium did its all it can to hinder tham.  PAPI told their line members they would have two weeks to get their stuff out of the region, but the Imperium’s pressure moved that up to “get out this weekend or asset safety!”  And even then some groups, like Pandemic Horde, just punted on their late subcap move ops, leaving some of their line members to fend for themselves.

As for TEST, whose leadership were the ones to declare the war of extermination, they have been offered a home in Outer Passage, possibly the second furthest region from Delve, and only because somebody wants Cobalt Edge, the furthest region.

To get there they have a long march ahead.

The TEST Route from Delve to Outer Passage

Once there, behind the bulk of WinterCo, Fraternity has promised to remain blue to them.  In return Fraternity will now receive a share of the Tranquility Trading Consortium profits, presumably out of TEST’s cut, TEST no longer being the leader of a major coalition, but a supplicant.  Legacy Coalition is dead.

Brave is said to be set to take up some space in western Geminate, under the cover of PanFam.  Evictus is going to head back to Esoteria where they still hold some space, while rumor has it that Federation Uprising and Eternal Requiem might just disband, though they seem to be holding together for the moment.

Then, in a sign of a conflict to come, the Army of Mango Alliance that it was also leaving Legacy behind and forming a new coalition under the Pan-Intergalactic Business Community banner, the PBIC.

Those who pay attention may recall that is the name of the alliance that “won” EVE Online on the Serenity server by becoming the all powerful ruler of New Eden there.  That is sure to draw attention and ire from some of the other Chinese alliances on Tranquility.  AOM, Fraternity, Ranger Regiment, Dracarys, as well as some corporations like the People’s Liberation Army all came from the Serenity server in China.  I don’t recall who was on vs. against the PBIC there, but I suspect that this move will make them choose up sides.

And, finally, there has been a lot of talk in the Imperium about historical analogies and the name of the war.  I have favored Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, but it lacks meme-ready imagery and a snappy name.  Things that have floated around include Afgoonistan and Dumbkirk.  But the one that has gained some traction is Beeitnam, so now INN is rebranding the war as that.  I’m sticking with World War Bee for the sake of consistency, as I did with the Casino War when everybody was trying to rebrand that further down the road.

One Year Ago

CCP announced Metaliminal Storms, some of which would keep you from cloaking.

We were running out to Stain to work with the Russians who were happy to take shots at TEST.

The ihubs in Fountain were largely lost and we were starting to fight on Keepstars in the region.

In my week five update I noted that French ConneXion had joined the Imperium and that PAPI was already confused about who was invading whom, demanding that we attack them.  Also, Fountain Frank made his meme debut.

The latest update on 35m ISK Corms

He is now Frank triumphant.

Delve Front

The situation went down hill fast for PAPI in Delve.  But at least we’re done with that Siege of 1DQ map that I have been running every week since late April.  The bubble sphere around the T5ZI gate in 1DQ is gone as the Imperium no longer wants to hinder traffic through the gate, since traffic is pretty much all us going out to attack PAPI.

There is an Amarr jump in the middle of that

The week started with the final assault on 1DQ that I mentions above, which went south fast and led to PAPI declaring that they were leaving Delve.

PAPI, attempting to keep their evacuation route secure, formed up multiple fleets when the Imperium went to contest the ihub in 1-SMEB on Tuesday.  This also went poorly for PAPI.

They continued to put up fleets to skirmish with us up into Wednesday, then ihubs began to fall and the rush for the exits began.  By Friday Imperium fleets were moving about the region unhindered save for the occasional gunner in a citadel.  Even in T5ZI, where they occasionally put up a small gate camp, structure shooting fleets went about their business with impunity.

I was considering dragging out the old Delve map template I had with each of the constellations named and highlighted in order to chart progress made on ihubs, but then the Imperium went all out with fleets around the clock for structure bashes and entosis ops and… well… there are no PAPI held ihubs in Delve any more.  The last few fell Sunday afternoon.

Delve – Aug 8, 2021

I haven’t spent this much time in fleets since the M2-XFE hell camp.

TEST, who had planned to move into Delve and live there after the war, left structures all over the region and was in the process of trying to unanchor most of them.  That takes almost a week and has to start over again if the structure is reinforced, so we have been interrupting as many as we can.  It seems unlikely that TEST or PAPI will be around in force in Delve by the time the unachoring process can cycle through again.  TEST is going to lose a lot of structures as they seemed to have dropped things as haphazardly as we did back in the day.  That will be the first payment extracted from TEST.

The Delve campaign report for week 57 bears out how much went on this week.

Delve Campaign Week 57

The report broke because Pandemic Horde and/or capsule counts caused an error, but rolling back a day puts the total losses at 1.6 trillion ISK, with PH accounting for 232 billion.  TEST rang up an amazing 322 billion ISK in additional losses on Sunday, so the total for the week is probably close to 2 trillion ISK.  The is a 4x increase and the structure losses are still coming.  Fortizars are being dropped on grid with each of the PAPI Keepstars to serve as platforms from which to destroy them.

Other Theaters

The Initiative went to town in Fountain, starting to purge ihubs from west to east on the map, starting with the Federation Uprising space.

Fountain – Aug 8, 2021

They have vowed to cleanse the region of PAPI.

Over in Querious, Imperium forces have taken the ihubs in “Fake Querious,” the portion of the region that is an enclave within Delve space, as well as driving along the north of the region, which happens to be the PAPI evacuation route.

Querious – Aug 8, 2021

It may not be the Brave route though.  I was in Badivefi on Sunday and there were a lot of Brave pilots docked up in the NPC stations there.

And even down in Period Basis PAPI ihubs have started being purged.

Period Basis – Aug 8, 2021

The 13 month long assault on the Imperium is being rolled back in just days.

My Participation

A busy week.  I was there for the grand assault on 1DQ, the fight over the 1-SMEB ihub, and for a bunch of structure shoots.  I did lose a Sabre in the 1-SMEB fight, but that is what Sabres are for.

In tidi you get to watch your ship go boom

I also lost another Atron entosis ship along the way.  I got a bit ahead of the pack.  But mostly I was out helping tear down PAPI structures.

Shooting PAPI structures in T5ZI in my Bhaalgorn

The Imperium is very serious about making all those structures explode.

A TEST faction Fortizar explodes in 39P

At the end of the week, my total losses for the war added up to:

• Ares interceptor – 18
• Malediction interceptor – 7
• Drake battle cruiser – 7
• Atron entosis frigate – 7
• Cormorant destroyer – 5
• Purifier stealth bomber – 5
• Crusader interceptor – 5
• Rokh battleship – 5
• Scimitar T2 logi – 5
• Ferox battle cruiser – 4
• Jackdaw destroyer – 4
• Scalpel T2 logi frigate – 3
• Guardian T2 logi – 2
• Sabre interdictor – 1
• Eagle heavy assault cruiser – 1
• Scythe T1 logi – 1
• Raven battleship – 1
• Crucifier ECM frigate – 1
• Gnosis battlecruiser – 1
• Bifrost command destroyer – 1
• Hurricane battle cruiser – 1
• Sigil entosis industrial – 1
• Mobile Small Warp Disruptor I – 1

Other Items

Amarr Foundation Day arrived, with login rewards and events for players.

Your Foundation Day login rewards

Then there was good news on the peak concurrent user front this week, with the uptick in war activities driving the number up to nearly 30K concurrent on Sunday.  After several weeks where the count never topped 25K, week 57 saw every day in the 26-28K range.

• 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)
• Week 45 – 33,758
• Week 46 – 31,768
• Week 47 – 29,898
• Week 48 – 31,462 (Monday)
• Week 49 – 27,914
• Week 50 – 26,045
• Week 51 – 25,661
• Week 52 – 24,262
• Week 53 – 24,290
• Week 54 – 24,922
• Week 55 – 26,259 (Saturday)
• Week 56 – 27,176
• Week 57 – 29,953

Related

• INN – Beeitman: Week 57
• INN – Legacy Failscade as Rout Continues
• NN – 1DQ Status: It’s Happening
• INN – BlackOps In The Backfield
• INN – Progod announces TEST moving to Drones as PAPI Allies abandon war
• Reddit – Transcription of TEST Post-Town Hall Statement
• INN – Silver Linings for PAPI; Considerations for Goons
• INN – The Unfettered Flame
• INN – Honey-golden linings: A Response to Seir
• NEP – PAPI Forces to Seek Withdrawal from War, Null-Sec Shakeups, Disbands, and More
• TNG – The Siege Of O-EIMK Effectively Ended Yesterday
• TAGN – PAPI Begins Pulling Out of Delve
• TAGN – Operations in Delve as World War Bee Continues
• Reddit – FRT and Winter Co Plans
• INN – PAPI’s Retreat Daily Report: Days 1-7

56 Weeks of World War Bee

While we spent much of the week waiting for PAPI to prepare for the coming onslaught on the Imperium capitol, a true hero of the PAPI coalition emerged in the form of one Syrio Ikunen of TEST who managed to launch an electron bomb from their Purifier that caught a John Hartley Kestrel fleet dead on, destroying 119 Kestrels and two support ships in one go.

They were not the only attacker on the battle report, but their bomb was the most spot on and a majority of the Kestrels blown up were marked as solo kills attributed to them.  That Purifier has a lot of kill marks on it now.

Who got all the kills?

XtraSquishy captured a bit of the bomb run on video.

I am actually kind of bummed I missed that because I had one of those Kestrels sitting in my hangar waiting to get used. (I have now named it “Syrio Ikunen Target.”)  They’re zippy fun to fly around, but clearly they are a bit thin on the tank end of things.

One Year Ago

CCP did some updates to command ships, though I couldn’t tell you if that changed anything.

In the war I was out on a fleet in Paragon Soul with Dabigredboat chasing TEST dreadnoughts.

And in my summary of week four of the war it looked like 10 trillion in ISK had been destroyed so far, split fairly evenly between the sides.  Fraternity and PanFam had broken into Fountain and we were falling back.  Legacy was deep into Querious.

Delve Front

Since this was just move op and re-subscribe week for PAPI, the strategic situation in Delve did not change, so I can once again re-roll the same image of the front lines.

O-EIMK Constellation – Aug 01, 2021

The expectation, given the PAPI announcement last week, was that, come the weekend, things would heat up, that the actual assault on 1DQ1-A would begin.  And it seemed for the briefest of moments that this was going to come to pass.

As I got up and got online Friday morning I opened up Jabber and there were pings about hostiles in 1DQ.  I logged in, but all the fleets were full, so I undocked in a Kestrel to see if I could get a shot in on something.  I managed to get missiles away on one target before it blew up… my one kill mail in 1DQ for the week… before the whole thing was over.

But it wasn’t even a real attack on us.  Some Imperium pilot in a Nyx warped into a bubble and PAPI tried to take advantage, as we would in a similar situation.  It was just another minor skirmish in a week that was mostly minor skirmishes.  The weekend saw no assault, and every time PAPI pinged for a fleet we stood to with a counter and they declined to come to us.

There have been rumors of move ops heading away from Delve, rumors of structures being unanchored, and somebody noted that there were a number of titans for sale in the T5ZI Keepstar, the Tower of Legends as it has been named, just across the way from the Forge of Heroes Sotiyo, but there has been no official announcement that PAPI has called off the assault on 1DQ yet.  Even some PAPI members are getting tired of their inability to commit.

Meanwhile, the NPC Delve interdiction campaign, aimed at cutting off 1DQ from the rest of New Eden petered out when Imperium pilots shot up the first few bubbles deployed to the NPC station undocks.  Nobody seemed interested in maintaining the watch on 11 different camps.

As for the weekly Delve campaign report, numbers were up again as the Imperium prodded PAPI and shot structures and generally tried to be a pain.

Delve Campaign – Week 56

So there were a half a trillion in ISK in destruction, and that doesn’t even count all the clashes in E-VKJV, because that system is in Querious.

Other Theaters

Do we care at this point?  Something might be happening in Feythabolis, but no ihubs have changed hands.  Likewise, whatever was going on in Catch appears to have tapered off.  All eyes were supposed to be on Delve.

Really, the only interesting bit was Snuffed Out baiting Fraternity into another fight in the northeast.

My Participation

After hitting the 5K kill mail mark last week I was able to go back to flying logi… and promptly lost a Scalpel in a skirmish in E-VKJV between an Imperium Harpy fleet and PAPI Retributions.

Scalpel still alive

I also lost an Eagle late on Friday night when we went into E-VKJV to reinforce the Ansiblex jump gate there to make any attempt to go around the back on Saturday, when we expected that the assault might begin, a little more awkward.

Tidi makes for nice explosion shots

Given the lateness of the hour, I was surprised how on the ball the reimbursement team was.  I got my payout in under a minute.

Eagle loss paid out 47 seconds after being submitted

I am pretty sure this is becoming a point of pride for the Imperium after we keep hearing that some PAPI line members wait for weeks to get something.

I was actually fairly active as we went to visit PAPI in their space multiple times.  I was there in a Scalpel, an Eagle, a Ferox, a Kestrel (long after the fleet mentioned at the top of the post), and at one point we took a wormhole out to Insmother to try and nab a capital, but were too late so we caught a Thera connection back to Fountain and gated through T5ZI without incident.

Kestrels escaping from T5ZI

As a measure of the tide of the war, I was on 98 kill mails in week 56 and only one of them was in the pocked of space the Imperium still holds.  We spent a lot of time poking PAPI.

Anyway, the two losses above bring my total loss count for the war to:

• Ares interceptor – 18
• Malediction interceptor – 7
• Drake battle cruiser – 7
• Atron entosis frigate – 6
• Cormorant destroyer – 5
• Purifier stealth bomber – 5
• Crusader interceptor – 5
• Rokh battleship – 5
• Scimitar T2 logi – 5
• Ferox battle cruiser – 4
• Jackdaw destroyer – 4
• Scalpel T2 logi frigate – 3
• Guardian T2 logi – 2
• Eagle heavy assault cruiser – 1
• Scythe T1 logi – 1
• Raven battleship – 1
• Crucifier ECM frigate – 1
• Gnosis battlecruiser – 1
• Bifrost command destroyer – 1
• Hurricane battle cruiser – 1
• Sigil entosis industrial – 1
• Mobile Small Warp Disruptor I – 1

Other Items

CCP dropped the expected Grand Heist patch on Tuesday, releasing the reserve bank keys into New Eden.  I hope we get some report later on about how much of that ISK gets harvested by the groups that own the systems they are in.

The Grand yet Slow Heist

The whole thing got off on a bit of an awkward foot as the low sec sites with the keys were broken when the update hit and it took CCP the rest of the week to get things corrected.  I think things are good now.

CCP also started straight up giving us ISK in a login campaign.  I’ll take 235 million ISK thank you.

Collected them all

I wonder how this will influence the July MER?

They also reduced sales tax and broker’s fees in NPC structures by 50% for the next three months.  Again, I don’t think anybody is going to complain about making more money on market transactions, but I do wonder what the goal here is.  Are they trying to stimulate the economy, jump start production, or undercut the Tranquility Trading Tower in Perimeter?

The latter would be amusing for the Imperium.  Even if it wasn’t the intended effect, CCP made NPC stations cheaper to sell from if you have all the right skills, so a lot of trade moved from Perimeter to Jita.  While we get a 20% cut of the TTT, Pandemic Horde and TEST are much more dependent on it for income.

When it comes to the peak concurrent user number for the week, New Eden was up again.  No doubt the promise of a huge battle got people to peek in.  We’ll see how the failure of that to materialize affects numbers next week, but we saw the numbers pass 27K for the first time since week 49.

• 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)
• Week 45 – 33,758
• Week 46 – 31,768
• Week 47 – 29,898
• Week 48 – 31,462 (Monday)
• Week 49 – 27,914
• Week 50 – 26,045
• Week 51 – 25,661
• Week 52 – 24,262
• Week 53 – 24,290
• Week 54 – 24,922
• Week 55 – 26,259 (Saturday)
• Week 56 – 27,176

Related

• INN – World War Bee: Week 56
• INN – PAPI’s Perfunctory Plan
• INN – WinterCo Town Hall
• INN – The Assault Begins (but not really)
• INN – A “Humanitarian” Effort in T5ZI-S