A Look into February 2023 Destruction in EVE Online

This is my third post looking into monthly destruction based on the kill dump file that is included as part of the Monthly Economic Report, and I am already seeing some of the limitations of this as a recurring monthly post, at least when it comes to keeping it somewhat fresh and interesting.

For example, the baseline stat, the total number of ships and structures destroyed in New Eden in February was 400,617.

That is 94% of the January total, which was 425,629, but February only has 90% of the days that January has, so that is pretty close to a consistent result.

Likewise, 110,089 of those were capsules, compared to 115,904 the previous month, and 25,384 of those were corvettes while in January the number was 27,221.

34.97 trillion ISK was reported in the loss column as a result of destruction, which lines up exactly with the destruction data in the MER from the produced/destroyed/mined chart, which means they must be drawing from the same source, and is in line with the regional destruction data, though that is lower because it does not count wormhole space.

There is still the lack of alignment between the regional data in the MER, which puts these as the top ten regions for destruction

1. The Forge – 1.67 trillion 4.82% (Caldari High Sec)
2. Pure Blind – 1.61 trillion 4.68% (B2 Coalition)
3. The Citadel – 1.52 trillion 4.40% (Caldari High Sec)
4. Vale of the Silent – 1.45 trillion 4.19% (Fraternity)
5. Fade – 1.43 trillion 4.15% (B2 Coalition)
6. Sinq Laison – 1.40 trillion 4.05% (Gallente High Sec)
7. Lonetrek – 1.38 trillion 3.99% (Caldari High Sec)
8. Delve – 1.32 trillion 3.83% (B2 Coalition)
9. Perrigen Falls – 1.23 trillion 3.56% (PanFam)
10. Metropolis – 1.08 trillion 3.12% (Minmata High Sec)

While the data from the kill dump file puts the top ten regions as:

1. Pure Blind – 1.51 trillion
2. Fade – 1.32 trillion
3. Vale of the Silent – 1.30 trillion
4. The Citadel – 1.28 trillion
5. The Forge – 1.22 trillion
6. Sinq Laison – 1.10 trillion
7. Perrigen Falls – 1.08 trillion
8. Delve – .97 trillion
9. Lonetrek – .91 trillion
10. Heimatar – .77 trillion

And that list is based on the total value of the ship’s loss, including modules that dropped, and not just what was destroyed. That list is actually the same regions in the same order, but the numbers are a bit smaller to account for the approximately 10 trillion ISK in modules and cargo that was left on the field to be recovered.

By the way, if you want a safer place to hang out, try Khanid.  That region saw a mere 41.71 billion ISK in destruction.  The only locations lower were a few under used wormhole systems.  Omist was the null sec region with the lowest destruction, ringing in at 57.53 billion ISK destroyed, but it is also in that area that FI.RE departed that hasn’t yet found a new permanent owner.

When we drill down to the solar system level, Jita does win out when we are counting ISK lost:

1. Jita 478.89 billion
2. C4C-Z4 475.29 billion
3. Auga 469.22 billion
4. F-NMX6 452.31 billion
5. Ahbazon 424.01 billion
6. Sivala 304.61 billion
7. Gheth 255.11 billion
8. MJ-5F9 252.15 billion
9. Miroitem 233.06 billion
10. 4-HWWF 198.13 billion

But Jita is only in third place when we count total individual losses:

1. Auga 11,499
2. Deepari 10,278
3. Jita 10,226
4. Ahbazon 6,909
5. Nagamanen 6,800
6. C4C-Z4 6,638
7. F-NMX6 5,983
8. Miroitem 4,846
9. Tama 4,654
10. Oinasiken 4,461

Deepari isn’t quite the outlier it was before, but it still has a lot of destruction even for a new player system.  I would expect to see the other empire new player starting system on the list, unless there is some advantage to Amarr for Alpha Clone alts or bots/

If we take capsules and corvettes out of the equation, which pares down total destruction to 266,144, the most destroyed classes of ships in February were:

1. Frigate 64,906
2. Cruiser 33,130
3. Destroyer 27,144
4. Shuttle 18,726
5. Combat Battlecruiser 13,359
6. Mobile Tractor Unit 10,900
7. Heavy Assault Cruiser 10,556
8. Hauler 7,970
9. Interdictor 7,667
10. Interceptor 6,877
11. Battleship 6,099
12. Assault Frigate 5,949
13. Stealth Bomber 4,614
14. Tactical Destroyer 4,198
15. Strategic Cruiser 3,938
16. Mobile Warp Disruptor 3,676
17. Mining Barge 3,206
18. Covert Ops 3,134
19. Marauder 2,203
20. Command Destroyer 2,049

And, when we get down to specific hulls, the usual suspects are there in the top 20 as well.

1. Mobile Tractor Unit 10,467
2. Venture 10,290
3. Heron 7,328
4. Caldari Shuttle 6,696
5. Ishtar 6,070
6. Caracal 5,234
7. Amarr Shuttle 5,156
8. Vexor 4,663
9. Thrasher 4,252
10. Sabre 4,052
11. Catalyst 3,809
12. Tristan 3,620
13. Gallente Shuttle 3,554
14. Hurricane 3,235
15. Kikimora 3,175
16. Punisher 3,091
17. Merlin 2,817
18. Atron 2,720
19. Rifter 2,701
20. Minmatar Shuttle 2,638

There is a little change.  Herons beat Caldari Shuttles this month.  But it is about the same.  The people of New Eden seem set in their routine.

So we haven’t seen anything really new and different so far.  Kind of cool if you just like to see the details every month, but I like to chart changes and see if they track to events.  For March we’ll have some battles in Pure Blind and the Frigate Free For All in Ouelletta that should stand out.  I’ll look for those.  But I have been fishing around for something else to look into.

One thought was new battles graphic that CCP included in the MER.  As I noted, as an image it is not very useful or enlightening unless you just happen to know what those circles are referencing.

Feb 2023 – Battles in New Eden by Participants

However, even though the data is provided in the form of a JSON file (named kill_dump.json, which is a bit confusing next to kill_dump.csv), it is somewhat incomplete.  I could not reproduce that chart with the data provided.

The problem is that they exported some of the key data, but in creating the chart they had access to additional data they did not include.  For example, they do not system name, only system ID, so I had to made a translation table to map the names to the IDs because I am pretty sure few of us know off hand that system ID 30000142 refers to Jita.

And then there are participants, which I haven’t figured out how to tease out of the data structure in Power BI and the fact that the ISK value of battles is given in two forms, CCP valuation and ZKill valuation, and they can be pretty far apart.

All told CCP’s valuation for battles only totals up to 28.29 trillion ISK, while ZKill valuation rings in at 60.37 trillion ISK.  That is kind of a big gap, and it is unevenly distributed.

For example, the top five battles in cost using CCP’s valuation system are in:

1. 8-4GQM – Feb 21 – 242.26 billion
2. DFH-V5 – Feb 26 – 216.82 billion
3. Egghelende – Feb 21 – 175.29 billion
4. Dooz – Feb 7 – 168.42 billion
5. T-RPFU – Feb 5 – 148.31 billion

While using the ZKill valuation the top five battles were:

1. Urlen- Feb 8 – 377.12 billion
2. K4YZ-Y – Feb 22 – 236.10 billion
3. J5A-IX – Feb 9 – 208.40 billion
4. Sadana – Feb 1 – 182.03 billion
5. B3QP-K – Feb 1 – 109.59 billion

I ended up feeling like the ZKill valuations are just wrong, in part because it is difficult to find supporting evidence.

So, going back to the CCP valuation list, I went looking for that top battle and was able to find it on the HTML version of the map CCP provided, which lets you mouse over the circles to get details.

CCP’s map at 8-4GQM battle details

With that, I went to go make a battle report for that time frame on Feb 21st, and came up with what looked like an actual battle in Branch on that date.  Here is the header from the battle report.

8-4GQM Battle Report Header

Pandemic Horde and Fraternity got into it with B2 Coalition and capital ships were deployed, with Karter Viper of Siberian Squads (they left the Imperium after some internal drama and went and joined Fraternity as part of WinterCo) losing a titan as part of the mix.

Then I let ZKill generate its own battle report (which might have caught a mistake in mine, as I have Banderlogs on the the Fraternity side and ZKill puts them on our side, but I can’t remember where they actually sit) and then I tried to compare all the data.

The side totals from ZKill

And for the battle we have the following valuations:

• CCP value – 242.26 billion ISK
• BR Tool value – 136.6 billion ISK
• ZKill Related kills value – 136.3 billion ISK
• CCP ZKill value – 31.73 billion ISK

So I am not sure how valuable that is.  I know the data is going to vary from site to site based on the parameters around collecting it, but I feel a bit like the old saying about how a man with one watch always knows what time it is, but a man with two watches is never quite sure.

Anyway, as a reason to continue doing these sorts of posts CCP’s battle data isn’t going to sustain me.  It is a bit too much for somewhat inconsistent results.  Then again, when we get the March MER it will include some battles that I was in.  And maybe they will have gotten some feedback on the data presentation.