Daily Archives: July 19, 2021

54 Weeks of World War Bee

We got trolled for a bit on Friday when Hy Wanto announced on Pando’s FC Chat show #79 that Snuffed Out was set to join the Imperium since they were already mounting a campaign against Fraternity.

A wild Snuffed Out appears!

The Mittani was on the show and rolled with it, but later on said it was just a troll.  But the bit that made it believable was the fact that it would involve the return of Elitist Ops.  An early GoonSwarm corp, they were blackballed by Darius JOHNSON back in the day and went off to have adventures with Pandemic Legion before following their destiny with We Form Volta and Snuffed Out.

With the onset of World War Bee they came back to fight with their long estranged Goon brethren and were almost immediately causing headaches for the enemy, like when Madcows swiped a TEST Leviathan from an unfueled POS was back in week three of the war.  They were awesome to have around.

The war was a drain on them however and they went back to their home with Snuffed Out during week 36.  They left on good terms.  They made the war more enjoyable for us but we understood that they needed their space.   So to think that that might return for a bit for some more adventures lent some credibility to the troll, in my eyes at least, because I am sure they would be welcomed back if they wanted to come.

Compare that to the strife I mentioned last week in NCDot when two major USTZ corporations, Criterion and Original Sinners were apparently bored with the war and wanted to leave to join up with the NullSechnaya Sholupen alliance, which has been off doing its own thing.  While NCDot leader Vince Draken declared them personae non grata in PanFam space and structures, no decisions seemed final when I was writing that up.

This week saw both Criterion and Original Sinners in NSH, so the deed was done, with Vince burning their bridge as promised.  The thought seems to be that if you just let people leave, then the good people will wander off when they’re bored and how can you keep a war going under those circumstances.  The Original Sinners web site has a write up covering their view of the situation if you are interested. (And if you really want to dig into it, last week’s Trash Talk Tuesday goes into it.)

There is clearly a lesson to be drawn from the two situations.

Meanwhile, with two major corps out of the coalition, PAPI announced yesterday that planned town halls were canceled and that there would be a big announcement this coming Saturday, July 24th, regarding a unified plan for the coalition.  Given the reluctance so far to pay the price required to make headway against the Imperium capital constellation, my expectations are pretty low.

And, finally, I was told that this is what PAPI fears most.  This:

Set loose in their space

Yes, non-affiliated pilots in rookie ships.  I don’t get it either.  Maybe it is the name?

One Year Ago

CCP kicked off the Zenith Quadrant.

Legacy forces, after having setup a staging system in Catch on the border with Querious started some attacks in the region.

Meanwhile PandaFam, having staged in Aridia, began their attack on the Fountain region via the Taurus constellation.

I spent a bit of time in an alt being an entosis annoyance in Catch.

The good old POS, and POS shoots, were still a thing in World War Bee.

And I had my second weekly war summary post where I noted that CCP’s video titled War Ravages New Eden had nothing to do with our war.  It was about that Triglavian event where the outcomes were most predetermined.  The lack of coverage of what has been the largest war in New Eden was getting me down.

Delve Front

Strategically, the same map I have been using for months now still accurately describes where both side stand.

O-EIMK Constellation – July 18, 2021

PAPI gave up trying to break into the O-EIMK constellation back in May and things have fallen off since.   But that doesn’t mean that everything is quiet.  Hot drops and counter drops and skirmishes do happen.  And there was the clash on Saturday night when the Imperium sat around in T5ZI-S long enough to reinforce a Fortizar and their main Sotiyo.  Ships keep blowing up even if the map of Delve hasn’t changed.

So the Delve campaign report for week 54 shows a bit of an uptick in ship losses and, although a glitch last week prevented me from getting an accurate count, the ISK value of losses was up considerably from the ~270 billion ISK I estimated, ringing in at nearly double that.

Delve Campaign – Week 54

Other Theaters

In Feythabolis Red Alliance continues to hang onto the northwest corner of the region, which acts as a buffer to their holdings in Impass.  They did not lose any further systems, though one system they had lost to Vindictive is now in the hands of Warriors of the Blood God alliance, which is purple on the map.

Feythabolis – July 18, 2021

Who they are, who they have sided with, or where they even came from is beyond me.

Meanwhile, in Catch Imperium member Dracarys continues to push back against Siege Green’s attack on its holdings.

Catch – July 18, 2021

Dracarys took back 8 ihubs since the last update and looks to be continuing after Siege Green.

My Participation

I already wrote up a post about the big fight on Saturday night, the first war event I’ve bothered to post about in a while.

Other than that I went on a couple of smaller ops.  Jackdaws seemed to be the flavor of the week for a bit.

Jackdaws securing the bubbles again

I had no losses over the course of the week… lucky me… so my losses for the war remain:

  • 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
  • Guardian T2 logi – 2
  • Scalpel T2 logi frigate – 2
  • 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 announced the return of the Alliance Tournament with a surprise count down to a video that backfired on them a bit.

Coming this November

While people seemed happy enough to see the return of the event, there was clearly a feeling that giving back something that had been taken away did not perhaps warrant the big count down surprise treatment.  There are enough other things that players have been looking for… like an end to scarcity… that the AT seemed like a pretty low effort announcement.

CCP also announced that the ESS reserve bank keys would be live in New Eden before the end of the month… look for them on July 27th would be my guess… and that they have been deployed to the test server for people to try out.  A leading rumor is that the PAPI announcement on this coming Saturday will be that reserve banks will be considered coalition ISK to be farmed for SRP funds.  We’ll see if that comes to pass.

Dunk Dinkle wrote a piece about the need for new challenges in the game.

And then there is the weekly PCU.  I have been informed that any discussion of the PCU is Goon propaganda, so add that to my list of sins I suppose, at least so far as CCP’s white knight brigade is concerned.  I just started capturing it every week to see if it showed a correlation between player counts and significant war events.   And it has, passing the 40K mark during the early flurry of war fever.

Of late though, things have been down.

This past week saw another failure to crack the 25K mark, though the count did come close on Sunday.  That is three weeks running falling short of 25K.  It was just six weeks ago that the peak being under 30K was an oddity.

  • 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

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