When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. And that one sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that’s what you’re going to get, Son, the strongest castle in all of England.
–King of Swamp Castle, who only took four tries to get his castle built
On the bright side, the Imperium didn’t have to sacrifice another trillion ISK in ships.
Today saw the fifth attempt by PAPI to get a Keepstar planted in NPC Delve, this time in YZ9-F6, the site of the failed trap last week. When the Imperium jumped in and warped to the structure to start the fight, we found it surrounded by 149 warp disruption bubbles.
Bubble wrapped Keepstar
There were also dictors putting up bubbles inside the bubbles and various groups of hostiles deployed around the Keepstar.
When the timer hit zero they managed to get the Quantum Core in right away, so we didn’t even get the free hits we got away with last time around. But there were so many objects on grid that people were getting disconnected as they warped onto grid. There was a momentary discussion about what we should do, but the timer was ticking down in real time. In the end, there did not seem to be a way forward, so after some small clashes we turned around and went home.
Bubble fly by
The battle report shows a very small amount of losses compared to previous battles.
Battle Report Header
I had to go in and fix the battle report to get people on the correct sides. That is a sure sign that not much happened, when the BR tool doesn’t know where to put people.
We were, of course, out numbered as usual, though not by the margin that the BR might suggest. There was around 4,500 people in local, so the numbers on the BR are an under count of people who who showed up, since it only grabs people who were on a kill mail.
4,438 in local as the timer started
If you came and left without blowing something up (or getting blown up yourself), you were not added to the tally.
Bubbles in bubbles with more bubbles showing up
So PAPI has their foothold in NPC Delve. Now where will they go from there? Have they changed their mind about avoiding our Keepstars? Or has the past two weeks of fighting in NPC Delve convinced them that would be a bad idea? Either way, some of us got most of our Sunday back to do other things. But somebody had to hang around and clean up those bubbles.
Other coverage:
- New Eden Post – PAPI Keepstar Fully Operational in YZ9-F6, NPC Delve
- INN – PAPI Keepstar in YZ9-F6 Comes Online
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
Last I checked, putting up enough bubbles to cause server issues in local was a bannable offense. Something changed?
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@anypo8 – If you read the New Eden Post article I linked, which is the PAPI news site, they were quite direct in saying that they put up 149 bubbles because 150 is the alleged threshold at which CCP will come in and do something. They were also constantly spawning dictor bubbles, which don’t count towards that number but which also add to the problem on grid.
This is why game companies don’t draw hard lines in their EULA and ToS, because the moment they do some players will get as close to that line as possible and point out they haven’t crossed it. But here there is apparently a hard line so I wouldn’t expect CCP to do anything. And there is no paper trail that could prove they did it specifically to cause server issues. And you can argue that it was a legitimate defensive measure to keep us from warping on and off grid. So PAPI gets their win and the war goes on. Some times the server favors you, some times it favors your enemy.
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