The Imperium’s entry into the war in the north that is centered on the Pure Blind region saw some immediate results. There were battles with thousands of ships involved, including a server breaking battle over a Keepstar timer, Keepstars and Fortizars and lesser structures have been attacked and destroyed.
The X47 Keepstar a couple weeks back
And then things slowed down, which always tends to happen in a war. Fraternity and PanFam couldn’t simultaneously four Keepstars in Pure Blind, but now that they are down to just the staging Keepstar in X47, their ability to form to defend is pretty easy. So, while we can set the armor timer, they can all just log in and be on the structure to defend it.
So we have entered the time that comes in many wars where the front lines have solidified and making headway by brute force becomes difficult and costly. The Imperium and Fraternity have staging Keepstars just one titan jump apart.
The jump from DO6 to X47
You can tell when a was enters this phase because over on r/eve the propaganda front in the war shifts over to things like “made you form,” “too scared to form,” and the traditional favorite, “not winning fast enough.”
This stage of a war tends to remain static until one side gets tired of it and stops showing up. So there can be days, weeks, even months… as we saw when PAPI invaded Delve and cornered the Imperium in a single constellation… of fruitless fights, calls for fleets only to stand down, and name calling as neither side makes any progress.
Somebody breaks eventually. The attackers may get tired of not making any progress, or the defenders may lose hope and stop logging in, but morale will slip with one group and the fail cascade will begin. The other side will start to make progress and their morale will soar while the other side’s will crash. Then the war will move towards its conclusion.
But we’re a ways from that now. On the main front we’re locked into something of a stalemate, with either side able to counter the moves of the other, so both sides are looking for alternate paths or ways to divert hostile forces away from the main front.
Pandemic Horde has spend some time attacking Delve in an attempt to get the Imperium to pull back and defend there. But our Alpha Clone defense doctrine, which pits a mnass of secondary accounts in cheap Feroxes, Cormorants, and Ospreys against the attackers has been successful so far. We lose a lot of ships, but they tend to be 30 million ISK Feroxes against ships 3 to 5 times that price (or more sometimes), so the ISK exchange is poor for the other side while we’re fully reimbursed on the contract price of the ships so we happily jump into fights because we make money on the insurance if we get blown up.
In March my Alpha Clone homeland defense character is on a lot more kill mails than my main who got stuck into some of those big fights.
None of which means there aren’t fights happening or won’t be more fights. This week there has been a struggle for the Imperium and B2 to get a Fortizar anchored on the same grid as Faternity’s X47 Keepstar. That promises to be bloody, but in and of itself will not be conclusive.
Fights will continue. What will be missing for a while is any definitive victories or defeats as each side looks for a lever to give themselves an edge in budging the other side.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 