Daily Archives: May 3, 2021

43 Weeks of World War Bee

The week saw an uptick in clashes in Delve as PAPI, after having announced last week that anybody waiting for a huge capital fight over the O-EIMK constellation was going to be disappointed, kept to their word about assailing the systems with subcaps.  With no Keepstars left to shoot, they launched their subcaps at the Imperium.  I put together a campaign report to try and capture a general sense of how much destruction went on over the course of the week.

Delve Campaign in Week 43

The PAPI side is an incomplete list because I haven’t the energy to add all 100+ alliances in the coalition, but I put in the major players that were active. (Also, I missed Siberian Squads on the Imperium side, but they add just 13 ships to the total.  Next time.)  The Imperium losses are padded out a bit by a few final structure losses, but is mostly ships.

If you change the campaign dates to the week before, the ISK value is a little more, largely due to the final two Keepstars, but the total ships destroyed is about half.  That feels like a serious boost in activity in Delve to me.

Delve

I think I can forego the full Delve map for now as the sovereignty situation outside of the O-EIMK constellation seems unlikely to change so long as the PAPI assault continues. (And the metaliminal storm has moved off into Querious.)  Instead, I’ll put up a map focusing on the primary PAPI objective.

O-EIMK Constellation – May 2, 2021

While the bulk of both forces sit facing each other in the adjacent systems of 1DQ1-A and T5ZI-S, most of the fighting has been taking place in 3-DMQT.  1DQ1-A is a tough nut to crack and the easiest for the Imperium to defend, as we can just undock and join the fight.  The other systems in the constellation are cyno jammed and have no connection to systems held by PAPI.  That has left 3-DMQT as the most viable target to attack.

PAPI has set up an Ansiblex jump gate connection between their staging system and 3-DMQT, as the Imperium has between 1DQ1-A and 3-DMQT.  In order to gain a foothold in the system, much of the PAPI effort has been expended in attempting to bring down the Imperium Ansiblex in 3-DMQT.

The Imperium guarding the 3-D Ansiblex

PAPI has managed to reinforce the Ansiblex there several times, including during a large brawl on Saturday.  However, even when they succeed with that, the system is not cut off from 1DQ.  Imperium command simply drops the cyno jammer in 3-D and uses titan bridges to throw forces into the system.

Watching another repair cycle

The battles over the system will no doubt carry on until PAPI either takes the system or tires of the effort.  However, that effort is really only putting off the inevitable.  If you look at the constellation map, there are only two systems they can get directly into before they have to setup and fight in 1DQ1-A itself.

And they still have to turn the ihubs in those two systems in order to follow through on their usual plan of setting up jump gates and cyno jammers in order to kill the Keepstars.  The sovereignty battle won’t be easy.  They cannot jump or gate directly into the rest of the constellation and the ADMs are high enough that they have to spend most of an hour on each node in an entosis contest, while we will be able to pop nodes in a few minutes.

O-EIMK constellation ADMs

This feels like a clash that is going to carry on until one side or the other gets tired of it.  Combat alone won’t likely won’t resolve the struggle, some persistence is going to be required.  We shall see.

Other Theaters

Feythabolis continued to see contests over ihubs as The Bastion. Red Alliance, and other allies pushed into the region.

Feythabolis – May 2, 2021

Likewise, the push and pull continues in Esoteria, which connects to Feythabolis, as The Bastion and allies continue to vie with Army of Mango and Evictus.

Esoteria – May 2, 2021

Last week also saw The Initiative move on from the torched regions of Catch, Immensea, and Impass to open up an new front in the enemy backfield.  This time the target is Etherium Reach in the dronelands, where PandaFam and their associates live.

Etherium Reach – May 2, 2021

The particular target, according to Fountain Frank on the Meta Show, is Solyaris Chtonium, generally referred to by their ticket, Slyce, though Pandemic Horde holds a stretch of systems there as well.

My Participation

I managed to get into the first big fight in 3-DMQT at the start of the week, which I covered in a post.  I declared it the start of the PAPI assault based on just that first fight, so am happy enough to have been vindicated in that statement by the ongoing fighting since.  I have been through the Ansiblex into fights more than a few times… and in via a titan bridge as well.

The Ansiblex in 1DQ1-A

My lucky streak ended in a fight when Tom Flood who, in this age of “kitey bullshit,” still loves to take his fleet in close to brawl, managed to get his whole logi wing destroyed, including me in a Scimitar.  So I will add that to the loss list for the war.  My revenge was quick in coming as I managed this epic kill.  Fear the corvette plague.

My losses for the war are now:

  • 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 has been nominated for a Webby award for the Project Discovery work and CCP would very much like it if you could go cast a vote to support that.

CCP dropped the second part of their industry update, which added new components to all battleship and larger hulls.  This has caused uncertainty and price jumps for those hulls, as well as further mineral price increases as people scrambled to get builds in before the change, so that when I checked Jita earlier, Rokh hulls are now selling for more than what I paid for a fully fitted Rokh on contract about a month ago.  Manufactured T1 battleship hulls look to be 350 million ISK and up.  It might be a good time to try a Praxis, which appear to be much cheaper.

CCP also introduced a new set of packs, complete with game time, SKINs, and skill points.  But selling skill points for cash has already been normalized, so whatever.

The validity of the MER and its consumer price index, which includes non-player produced items like skill injectors, was both a topic of discussion at The Nosy Gamer and on The Meta Show.

And, on the peak concurrent user front, numbers remained about the same this week this week despite all the activity over the O-EIMK constellation.

  • 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

Related