Daily Archives: August 27, 2015

Stormhold and Deathtoll Players See Their Shadow, 30 More Days of EverQuest II Classic

Another poll result for the EverQuest II Time Locked Expansion servers.

That is Daybreak's graphic for the idea

Wooo! Nostalgia!

Last weekend I was imploring players on the Stormhold server to vote no on unlocking the Desert of Flames expansion a mere 30 days into the life of the server.  Too soon!  Too soon!

DoFUnlockPoll1

Well, the results are in and have been posted to the forums.

Thanks to all on the TLE servers who participated!

DEATHTOLL: Voted “NO” on the expansion. The 2/3rds requirement was not met by a long shot.

STORMHOLD: Voted “NO” on the expansion. The 2/3rds requirement was not met by an even longer shot.

We will re-run the Desert of Flames Expansion vote again on Sept. 20 – 27 for one week!

Woo hoo!  Another month for me to get my act together and get a character past… oh, I don’t know… level 20 maybe?

Seriously though, I felt pretty strongly that 30 days was an awfully quick time frame in which to get the player base to level 50 and ready for more content.  I know that some people rushed through and are even now complaining on the forums about being bored.

As somebody pointed out in the forums, the vote actually runs through tomorrow.  But EverQuest Franchise Executive Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale decided to announce the results early as the voting was strongly against the unlock to the point of being extremely unlikely to change between now and when voting ends.

The question is now more about how long the server will be held in the “classic” EverQuest II state.  The rules say that if there are three failed unlock votes in a row, the voting moves to every 90 days.  That could lead to a long stay in the land of classic.

Providence and the Fleeting Existence of Infrastructure Hubs

Providence continues to be the hot spot in null sec, leading the chart again for ships and pods destroy in the last 24 hours by a significant margin.

ProviMostViolent2

F-YH5B seemed to be a particularly contested system as almost a quarter of the ship kills in the region happened there.

While after the non-event of last night I opted to watch some more of season 4 of Boardwalk Empire with my wife, others in the north used their jump clones or hopped into interceptors for the ~20 minute run down to Provi to join in on the action there.

This was, after all, day four, when the timers set on day two started to come out and structures became vulnerable to the Fozzie Sov whack-a-mole attack/defense mini-game.

Again, I do not have any personal anecdotes or pretty screen shots to distract people with, having come back to the north during day two for our own little Fozzie Sov mambo in UMI-KK.  So I figured I would sit back and at least tally up the score from the events down south.

The primary stated mission of this war, aside from experimentation with Fozzie Sov mechanics, was to blow up all the infrastructure hubs in the region.  Taking sovereignty by eliminating territorial claim units and freeporting stations and such, those were bonus objective.  The ihubs were the goal.  So I should count how many ihubs were destroyed.

Unfortunately, ihubs do not impose themselves on the game in a very trackable way.  You can find out when they are reinforced.  There is a listing up on DOTLAN for each region.  But once they have been destroyed, what gets left behind?  There are not structure kill mails any more.  The ihubs don’t flip sides, they just go away.  There is no history of them being there, so far as I know, just an indication as to whether they are there or not right now.

So I have to go with what I wrote yesterday, when I looked at the structure map for Providence to find out how many systems in the region lacked an ihub.  My visual tally was one.  A single system lacked an ihub, which meant that there were 83 ihubs in the 84 systems.

Unfortunately, of all the maps variations of which I took screen shots, that was not one of them.  So my somewhat faulty memory is in play here.  I don’t know how I can prove there were 83 ihubs yesterday.  All I can do is show you the map as it stands to day, of which I damn well took a screen shot.

Providence Structures - August 27, 2015

Providence Structures – August 27, 2015

That map view shows the structures in each system, with T being a TCU, I being an ihub, and S indicating the presence of a station.  If you expand that and count you might end up with the same number I did on the third try, which was 46 systems with ihubs, 38 without.

So 37 ihubs destroyed out of 83 possible so far, with some still counting down to their vulnerability time frame.  44% success to this point, with another 26 ihubs still reinforced or vulnerable according to Timer Board.  So that number could peak at 60 ihubs, or 72% of the region.

I also count, looking at the structure list for the region, 15 stations that were put into Freeport status, which means anybody can dock up there.  That actually seems like a very Provi thing, maybe they will keep that.  Or maybe not.  It will affect the ADM.  Anyway, out of 77 stations in the region, that means a mere 19% were set to Freeport status.  But that was also a secondary objective, so count that as you will.

As for TCUs, for that we have to look at the sovereignty view of the map, because any system that is owned by an alliance has to have a TCU.  So for that we can count unowned systems plus systems captured by alliances of The Imperium.

Providence - August 27, 2015 (late)

Providence – August 27, 2015 (late)

On that map I see 9 unowned systems and 2 systems captured by alliances of The Imperium, one by The Bastion (BASTN) and one by Space Monkeys Alliance (SMA), for a total of 11 systems down, plus another system grabbed by the Gun Fun Alliance (GFA in H6-CX8) a third party that appears to have taken advantage of a moment of opportunity, bringing the tally up to 12.  Provi bloc has not, as yet, recaptured any of their systems according to the sovereignty change listing for the region on DOTLAN.  That is 14% of the region turned.

The summary I come up from this is:

  • 37 ihubs destroyed (44% of ihubs in the region)
  • 15 stations put into freeport stations (19% of stations in the region)
  • 12 TCUs destroyed (14% of the region)

Plus, of course, lots of battles and ships destroyed.

That is my attempt to summarize the war in Provi with some of the metrics available.  I would be interested to hear if somebody has come up with a better, clearer, or more reliable way to track sovereignty war progress under Fozzie Sov given the information available.  This is, after all, Spreadsheets Online, so agreed upon numbers are clearly required.

Addendum: As brought up in the comments, Gun Fun Alliance is a Provi Bloc alliance, so while the TCU destroyed count remains at 12, the Provi Bloc have recaptured a system by dropping a new TCU.  My mistake for not looking into Gun Fun Alliance more deeply than I did.

Non-Event in UMI-KK

For all the smack talk they did in local, on Reddit, and other forums, when push came to shove Mordus Angels were pretty much a no-show in Tribute today.  All the structures they reinforced the other day were successfully recovered, even the ones in their prime operational time.

For the UMI-KK station timer TNT formed up a bit before it came out of reinforcement to get in position, sending out scouts and putting our fleet on the main route into UMI-KK

Cerb fleet undocking in UMI

Cerb fleet undocking in UMI

When the time hit, Entosis Link module ships headed out around the constellation and started running the modules on command nodes as they came up.

Prophecies idling on the undock in UMI

Prophecies idling on the undock in UMI

There was a report of MOA undocking a stealth bomber fleet, but that came to naught.  We caught a couple of them trying to slip into UMI-KK, but that was the extent of their presence.  One pod got locked down with webs and points to keep it from escaping too quickly.  We were not inclined to send him home the fast way by shooting him.

The new Galatea effects in action

The new Galatea effects in action

Otherwise it was just flying about and watching the counter run down as one node after another was hit.

Not sure where the TNT logo went

Not sure where the TNT logo went

Cerb conga line in UMI-KK

Cerb conga line in UMI-KK

So Tribute is once again mostly safe for The Imperium, with just two structures running down to an event at this point.

Tribute - Aug 27, 2015

Tribute – Aug 27, 2015

Meanwhile, Providence appears to be on fire, with structures falling all over.  Systems with the red highlights have structures that can be captured or destroyed.

Providence - Aug 27, 2015 early

Providence – Aug 27, 2015 early

The Bastion even went so far as to capture a system.  But more on that later once I figure out how to keep score on ihubs and such.