The Initiative Leaves the Imperium Compact

It was announced on Saturday’s Imperium fireside that long time Imperium member The Initiative would be leaving the coalition as of downtime on June 4th, and would thus no long be a part of the Imperium or subject to any or its rules or agreements.

The Initiative logo in spaceships

Darkshines has not gone full Vily on us or anything.  The Initiative won’t be launching an attack on Delve anytime soon.  In fact, they will remain with friendly standings and they will retain access to dock in Imperium space and use our jump bridge network and Imperium members will retain the same access in their space.  If PAPI reformed again and attacked The Initiative in Fountain, we would go to their aid, and they would likewise do so if PAPI came to Delve.

The main change will be economic.  Neither side will be allowed to rat, mine, frack, PI, drop structures, or otherwise use or exploit the other’s space for gain.  Aside from that the impact on line members should be minimal.  They won’t be shooting us and we won’t be shooting them.

Darkshines has said that the current coalition system has led to stagnation in null sec and is putting his money where his mouth is by removing The Initiative from the Imperium, for whatever value that has.  I suspect that PanFam and Fraternity will call it a distinction without a difference.

That The Initiative is leaving isn’t the biggest surprise in New Eden.  They have always been very independent within the Imperium and the idea that The Initiative is leaving the Imperium has been common enough in the past to have achieved meme status, with it being regularly predicted during World War Bee.

Having The Initiative with us has enhanced the Imperium experience.  They have helped wedge us into wars by jumping in and getting the other side to escalate.  They have also invited us along for some adventures, like the Fort Knocks Keepstar kill in J115404.

Of course, it hasn’t been all a bowl of cherries.  Some will remember last year when their leadership let a Fortizar run out of fuel and quietly blew it up in off hours so they could loot all the possessions of former members of The Bastion.

Apparently, as part of this amicable divorce, the Imperium ended up with custody of Brisc Rubal, who decided to go with KarmaFleet as his home, no doubt to stay with his Rampage Inc. buddies, Merkelchen and Innominate.

So it goes.  Time will tell as to whether or not this change has any meaning, whether being a de facto member of the Imperium will have any impact different from them being an actual member of the Imperium.

Asher, in the fireside, described it as them leaving the Imperium compact, which shaped the title of this post, meaning they were no longer a party of or subject to any diplomatic agreements of the Imperium.  That could mean a number of things… or nothing at all.

The Initiative was a founding member of the Imperium, back in April 2015, when the great re-branding from the old Clusterfuck Coalition happened.  They stuck through the Casino War even as other, larger alliances abandoned (or, in the case of Circle of Two, betrayed) the coalition.  I noted when Executive Outcomes left after the migration to Delve that The Initiative had almost 2,200 members.  As an alliance it has grown quite a bit since then.

With the departure of The Initiative and its 12,367 members, Imperium membership, as of this moment, is made up of the following alliances:

• Goonswarm Federation – 36,183 pilots
• Dracarys – 7,040 pilots
• Tactical Narcotics Team – 2,512 pilots
• Invidia Gloria Comes – 2,426 pilots
• Sigma Grindset – 2,162 pilots
• Shadow Ultimatum – 1,781 pilots
• Get Off My Lawn – 1,245 pilots
• Stribog Clade – 723 pilots

That is a total of 51,910 characters.

The Initiative is only the most recent alliance to leave the Imperium.  Siberian Squads left back in December, The Bastion shut down in April of last year, and Ranger Regiment left as part of the Army of Mango debacle in January of 2022.

Related:

• INN – The Initiative Leaves the Imperium
• INN – The Meta Show – The Initiative Leaves Episode
• Reddit – Init leaving goons coalition tomorrow morning

A Look into April 2023 Destruction in EVE Online

The monthly economic report for April landed a couple of weeks back, which I mentioned at the time, but I’m just getting around to looking at destruction.  It has been kind of a busy month.  But here I am now, ready to parse through the killdump.csv and pull out some metrics to see what happened in April.

EVE Online nerds harder

April saw a wind down to the clash in the north around Pure Blind between defenders B2 Coalition and its Imperium allies and aggressor Fraternity and its PanFam allies.  After the big Keepstar kills, the last coming in early April, with a huge fight over the armor timer, there were many attempts by each side to get leverage against the other, to draw them into a battle that favorable to one side or the other.  There were many skirmishes, but no more critical structure fights, and as April drew to a close the Imperium was reducing its footprint in the war.

Overall there was a drop in the number of hulls destroyed, with 409,905 being the count for April, compared to 461,239 in March.

That puts my kills per day metric as follows:

• January – 13,729.96 kills per day
• February – 14,307.75 kills per day
• March – 14,878.67 kills per day
• April – 13,663.50 kills per day

That makes April the low point of the year… though we haven’t reach summer yet, where we’ll argue about whether the summer dip is real or not once more I assume.  It happens most years.

(For past years, I did monthly stats from 2020 forward here.)

When it comes to what was blown up, the top 20 by hull classification were:

Type	Count
Capsule	112,525
Frigate	67,383
Cruiser	35,316
Destroyer	26,939
Shuttle	22,696
Corvette	17,733
Combat Battlecruiser	16,375
Mobile Tractor Unit	11,395
Heavy Assault Cruiser	10,451
Hauler	8,529
Interdictor	7,977
Battleship	7,349
Interceptor	6,899
Assault Frigate	6,166
Stealth Bomber	4,243
Tactical Destroyer	4,089
Mining Barge	3,967
Mobile Warp Disruptor	3,955
Strategic Cruiser	3,860
Covert Ops	2,916

As usual, capsules lead the way, followed by frigates.

When we break it out into specific hulls, these are the top 20:

Type	Count
Capsule	111,489
Venture	11,687
Mobile Tractor Unit	10,941
Amarr Shuttle	8,257
Ibis	7,242
Heron	7,172
Caldari Shuttle	5,989
Ishtar	5,645
Caracal	5,248
Vexor	5,000
Velator	4,737
Gallente Shuttle	4,641
Sabre	4,101
Thrasher	3,891
Catalyst	3,619
Tristan	3,291
Hurricane	3,150
Minmatar Shuttle	3,146
Imperial Navy Slicer	3,101
Exequror Navy Issue	3,072

There is a dedicated group of people out there hunting MTUs still.  I wish them well in their mission.  Also, exactly 5,000 Vexors died in April.

I might cut those two charts down to a top 10 going forward.  I listed out 20 initially to get to some more interesting hulls or types.  But the real interesting part is when you get into hulls that were blown up exactly ONCE in a month.

Type	Count
Advanced Medium Ship Assembly Array	1
Angel Control Tower Small	1
Angel Medium Artillery Battery	1
Avatar	1
Blood Large Pulse Laser Battery	1
Blood Small Beam Laser Battery	1
Blood Small Pulse Laser Battery	1
Cenobite I	1
Civilian Amarr Shuttle	1
Cyclops I	1
Dark Blood Control Tower Medium	1
Dark Blood Control Tower Small	1
Dark Blood Medium Pulse Laser Battery	1
Domination Control Tower Medium	1
‘Draccous’ Fortizar	1
Dread Guristas Control Tower Medium	1
Dread Guristas Spatial Destabilization Battery	1
Equite II	1
Erebus	1
Geri	1
Gungnir I	1
Guristas Control Tower Medium	1
Intensive Reprocessing Array	1
Keepstar	1
Malleus I	1
Medium Ship Assembly Array	1
Miasmos Quafe Ultra Edition	1
Minmatar Propaganda Broadcast Structure	1
Pharolux Cyno Beacon	1
‘Prometheus’ Fortizar	1
Ragnarok	1
Reprocessing Array	1
Revenant	1
Sansha Energy Neutralizing Battery	1
Sansha Medium Beam Laser Battery	1
Satyr I	1
Scarab I	1
Serpentis Warp Disruption Battery	1
Shadow Warp Scrambling Battery	1
Small Mobile Siphon Unit	1
Standup Ametat I	1
Standup Ametat II	1
Standup Cyclops II	1
Standup Equite II	1
Standup Gram II	1
Standup Gungnir I	1
Standup Locust I	1
Standup Locust II	1
Standup Satyr II	1
Syndicate Mobile Medium Warp Disruptor	1
Vendetta	1

Okay, maybe that whole list isn’t all that interesting.  A lot of fighter groups got killed exactly once, along with some POS modules  But a Vendetta or a Geri, a tournament ship, now those are rare kills.

And there was a mobile siphon unit on the list!  I didn’t know they were still in the game.  Are those just sitting around in space, left over from the era of POS mining?

As with last month, I also want to account for how much value these losses represent.  So the top 20 hulls by total value of all losses are:

Type	Count	Sum of ISK Lost	ISK per loss
Capsule	111,489	2,666.98 billion	23.92 million
Vargur	806	1,680.56 billion	2,085.07 million
Paladin	874	1,494.72 billion	1,710.20 million
Ishtar	5,645	1,313.66 billion	232.71 million
Loki	1,457	1,059.15 billion	726.94 million
Tengu	1,298	920.13 billion	708.88 million
Golem	418	832.80 billion	1992.35 million
Gila	1,532	680.72 billion	444.34 million
Praxis	2,206	612.42 billion	277.62 million
Athanor	262	571.43 billion	2181.05 million
Revelation	107	569.20 billion	5319.60 million
Naglfar	111	458.04 billion	4126.50 million
Kronos	239	442.78 billion	1852.64 million
Proteus	609	440.68 billion	723.62 million
Nestor	174	360.29 billion	2070.63 million
Legion	496	333.91 billion	673.21 million
Orca	224	327.38 billion	1461.51 million
Tempest Fleet Issue	605	313.86 billion	518.78 million
Astrahus	190	309.21 billion	1627.40 million
Sabre	4,101	303.87 billion	74.10 million

Capsules lead the way overall, both due to volume and the price of some implants… implants that marauder pilots often use, which leads us to the next two, Vagurs and Paladins.  expensive losses those.

But when we flip that around to sort by the most expensive losses per hull, well titans top the list.

Type	Count	Sum of ISK Lost	ISK per loss
Avatar	1	82.63 billion	82.63 billion
Erebus	1	79.21 billion	79.21 billion
Ragnarok	1	73.34 billion	73.34 billion
Sotiyo	3	138.03 billion	46.01 billion
Revenant	1	35.80 billion	35.80 billion
Vendetta	1	26.92 billion	26.92 billion
Nyx	6	158.69 billion	26.45 billion
Hel	8	185.17 billion	23.15 billion
Aeon	2	38.56 billion	19.28 billion
Ark	10	153.35 billion	15.33 billion
Fortizar	21	284.24 billion	13.54 billion
Rhea	14	170.27 billion	12.16 billion
Nomad	3	31.82 billion	10.61 billion
Tatara	9	91.00 billion	10.11 billion
Anshar	6	57.98 billion	9.66 billion
Azbel	14	107.09 billion	7.65 billion
Marshal	11	83.22 billion	7.57 billion
Moros	34	210.37 billion	6.19 billion
Rorqual	48	275.84 billion	5.75 billion

Capital ships are expensive.  Who knew?  And that Geri I linked above should probably be on this list as well, but as I noted previously, AT ships do not get priced correctly because there is almost no market data for them.  Sales on the market are few and far between.

When we look to the losses by region, while the war in Pure Blind had cooled off by the end of the month, it hit its crescendo in the opening days, which was enough to keep it at the top of the list for ISK destroyed by a big margin.

Region	Sum of ISK Lost
Pure Blind	2,580.72 billion
The Forge	1,402.82 billion
Delve	1304.78 billion
Lonetrek	1.116.85 billion
Sinq Laison	1,035.52 billion
The Citadel	1,033.18 billion
Vale of the Silent	986.93 billion
Perrigen Falls	937.89 billion
Genesis	865.40 billion
Pochven	838.64 billion

Pure Blind led the way in the total loss count as well.

Region	Count
Pure Blind	26,656
The Forge	20,755
The Citadel	17,748
Essence	17,499
Heimatar	15,321
The Bleak Lands	14,357
Pochven	13,874
Genesis	13,864
Placid	13,511
Delve	13,040

I suppose I could dig in and get the cost per hull loss per region, but I am not feeling like digging in that deep right now.

When we get down to the solar system level, Pure Blind is still winning the ISK war, with that big Keepstar armor timer battle boosting X47L-Q to the top of the list, almost doubling the amount for second place.

Solar System	Sum of ISK Lost
X47L-Q	1,285.96 billion
Ahbazon	645.70 billion
Jita	584.57 billion
Arittant	519.81 billion
Auga	356.30 billion
Gheth	277.91 billion
OJT-J3	252.46 billion
Kourmonen	244.31 billion
J-CIJV	240.14 billion
1DQ1-A	232.09 billion

Meanwhile, Ahbazon in low sec was quite active as well.

For total hulls lost by solar system, X47L-Q gets demoted to fourth place.

Solar System	Count
Ahbazon	12,084
Jita	9,300
Auga	9,283
X47L-Q	8,924
Kourmonen	7,804
Rancer	4,616
Tama	4,538
Uitra	4,355
Deven	4,177
Heydieles	3,910

And that about sums up the usual data.

I have given up on the battles data that CCP provides.  I appreciate the effort of putting it in, but there isn’t much I can do with it.  You can view it in the MER.

For a wrap up I was looking at the kills and losses for various corps and alliances.  All that data is in the mix.  Losses are pretty straight forward, though kills only count towards the alliance or corp of the pilot who got the kill mail, so none of that 1,000+ people getting the same credit.

Anyway, I pulled out the top ten kills and losses for Goonswarm Federation for April.

Type Killed	Count	Type Lost	Count
Capsule	6,793	Capsule	6,418
Velator	465	Mobile Tractor Unit	1070
Sabre	419	Hurricane	805
Mobile Tractor Unit	400	Flycatcher	553
Vexor	317	Caracal	417
Ishtar	308	Ishtar	329
Heron	279	Stabber	272
Venture	279	Cormorant	269
Caracal	274	Hecate	252
Mobile Small Warp Disruptor I	251	Vexor	221

It turns out that those people hunting MTUs spent some time in Delve.

Then, as a counter, I pulled the same data for comparison for Pandemic Horde.

Type Killed	Count	Type Lost	Count
Capsule	8,296	Capsule	6,843
Mobile Tractor Unit	633	Ishtar	717
Caracal	416	Osprey Navy Issue	540
Flycatcher	397	Sabre	520
Kikimora	326	Caracal	476
Sabre	325	Hurricane	430
Vexor	325	Stabber	429
Ishtar	309	Vexor	426
Hurricane	307	Harpy	283
Exequror Navy Issue	276	Mobile Tractor Unit	225

I guess it figures that, since PH was trying to distract us in Delve, they killed quite a few of those MTUs of ours.  Those aren’t all ours, but I am sure some of them were.

And the Osprey Navy Issues, those were a favorite of Mist Amatin, who led a lot of PH fleets in to Delve.  Of course, now he is leading fleets FROM Delve, because he came over to KarmaFleet.

And that is the way it goes I guess.

Lots of Friday Bullet Points about EVE Online on the the 20th Anniversary Eve

Tomorrow EVE Online officially turns 20.  Today, some bullet points.  Also, it is Cinco de Mayo.  Do we celebrate that in New Eden?

• Go Omega Today to be on the Monument

I have mentioned this before, but I’ll flog it one last time just to make sure nobody can ask, “Why didn’t you tell me today was the deadline?”  In order to be added to the new set of name plaques being applied to the EVE Online monument you must have an Omega level account.

The EVE Online monument in happier times

The character with the most skill points on that account will be the name engraved.

If you were on the monument at the 10 year mark, you’ll still be on, but if you are Omega now you get a special marker to indicate that you’re still around.  Details about the monument are available here.

Addendum: The selection has now been extended to the whole month of May.

• CSM17 Summit Minutes

With CSM17 the CSM members were once again flying to Iceland to talk to CCP in person.  This happened at the end of January/beginning of February.

CSM17 meets with CCP

The end result of that, for those of us not covered by an NDA, was a 26 page set of minutes that CCP has put out as a PDF on DropBox so you can download it and see what happened. (Or, alternatively, grab it from CCP’s site here.)

I haven’t read through it yet, so I can’t tell you if there is anything worth going on about.  Glancing at it though it doesn’t show who from CCP attended the sessions, so it is hard to assess what has weight and what might be just the junior guy on the community team’s wishes.

• CSM18 Elections Delayed Until August

Also part of the CSM17 minutes notice above, CCP Swift announced in the forums that the voting for CSM18 are slated to take place in August, with details on the election cycle to be announced in July.

The stated reason for this is to allow CSM17 to finish their feedback cycle with CCP, so their terms have been extended to September 25, 2023.  The CSM17 minutes mentioned above, which I have now scanned, include a desire from CCP to have a more diverse CSM with fewer null sec bloc members.  They also want to align the CSM announcement with Fanfest, which at least implies that September will be the new Fanfest timing going forward.

The July announcement will no doubt be full of surprises.

Meanwhile I suppose CSM17 will now be called “The Long CSM.”

• Fireworks in Jita at 17:00 Tomorrow

The big anniversary celebration will include a coordinated (or uncoordinated) fireworks show at the Jita 4-4 station.

You may need additional chemicals to see this fireworks show

Jita is always the center of attention, but I suspect there will be other hubs of celebration.  At the ten year anniversary Chribba undocked the Veldnaut in Amarr for the big show.  I even made a video of the event.

Information about this and other anniversary events are available here.

• Community Events for Fanfest

Fanfest isn’t until September, but CCP already has a list of events planned for the big party at the top of the world.  These include:

• LAN Party
• Friday Fleet Up
• Midnight Northern Lights Explorer Tour

And CCP would like to remind people that tickets to EVE Fanfest are still available.

• The Caldari Built the Shipcaster

I don’t pay enough attention to the story events going on around Faction Warfare, but the patch notes this week say that the Caldari have built the first shipcaster.  That is basically a low sec, empire run jump bridge that will send you from the Caldari FW HQ system of Onnamon to where ever the fight with the Gallente is raging.

I hope somebody puts up a video of it in action, as I suspect I won’t be able to get there to see it.

• The Brave ESS Reserve Bank Story We Have Been Waiting For

A pilot in Brave used his Pandemic Horde spy alt to steal 150 billion ISK from PH ESS reserve banks.  Sadly, these will be listed in the MER as milking, because it was technically a PH pilot taking from a PH ESS.  But you can read the real details over at r/eve.

That is it for Friday.  Don’t forget to log in and collect your daily rewards from the anniversary event.

• BOSS Alliance Ends its Run

They have been under attack from Fraternity, Pandemic Horde, and NCDot off and on for over a year at this point in Venal, often thwarting their much more powerful opponents.  But they finally lost their staging Fortizar in the region and have decided to fold up shop.

They did leave us a farewell video.

Another small alliance fighting the good fight.

• The Pulse

Finally, CCP has a new episode of The Pulse, which… honestly… recaps a lot of what I just wrote.  I might have saved myself the effort but I put this post together over the last few days, so what are you going to do?

They are a little late on the news from X47, though at least it got some coverage.

On to the big anniversary tomorrow!

A Look into March 2023 Destruction in EVE Online

While I said I was giving up on the Monthly Economic Report posts for New Eden, destruction is both a little more interesting and a little less accessible than some of the other economic numbers CCP provides.  And these are economic numbers.  Nothing drives the New Eden economy like destruction.

EVE Online nerds harder

So once again into the killdump.csv file in the MER.

According to those files there was a total of 461,239 losses in New Eden in March.

That was up from the February number of 400,617 and the  January total, which was 425,629.

That gives a destruction per day, which I think is going to be my new activity metric for these posts, of 14,878.67 kills per day in March.  Using that metric the year so far looks like this:

• January – 13,729.96 kills per day
• February – 14,307.75 kills per day
• March – 14,878.67 kills per day

The daily destruction has been trending up.  I am sure the war up in Pure Blind is part of that, but there is always activity all around New Eden.

The top 20 types destroyed by hull classification were:

Type	Count
Capsule	122,313
Frigate	80,096
Cruiser	36,219
Shuttle	36,138
Destroyer	31,001
Corvette	17,973
Combat Battlecruiser	14,368
Heavy Assault Cruiser	12,924
Mobile Tractor Unit	10,148
Interdictor	9,294
Hauler	8,885
Interceptor	8,167
Assault Frigate	7,351
Battleship	7,321
Stealth Bomber	5,217
Tactical Destroyer	4,746
Mobile Warp Disruptor	4,640
Mining Barge	4,090
Strategic Cruiser	4,046
Covert Ops	3,397

I had been separating out capsules and corvettes previously, but I changed my mind on that.  If nothing else it keeps me from having to write an additional line about them and there is the top 20 data unfiltered.

I am also experimenting with formatting, just using the paste from Excel for the data rather than trying to turn it into a ranked list.  Feedback on whether that is better or worse would be appreciated.

When we dig into specific hulls, the top 20 looks like this:

Type	Count
Capsule	121,085
Caldari Shuttle	12,075
Venture	11,892
Amarr Shuttle	9,758
Mobile Tractor Unit	9,687
Heron	8,041
Ibis	7,409
Gallente Shuttle	6,701
Minmatar Shuttle	6,371
Ishtar	6,208
Caracal	5,392
Vexor	5,338
Thrasher	5,046
Sabre	4,792
Tristan	4,431
Velator	4,294
Merlin	4,091
Catalyst	3,736
Atron	3,657
Punisher	3,492

Now, I like those two lists, but they still feel very incomplete to me.  They give no sense of the economic impact of those losses.  I mean, we know that the corvette losses don’t mean anything, and shuttle losses are microscopic in the economy compared to many other hulls.

So I used Power BI to make myself a new list.   This is the top 20 hulls, the number lost, the total amount of ISK lost they represent (by which the list is sorted), and the average ISK amount per loss at the end.

Type	Count	ISK lost sum	ISK lost per
Capsule	121,085	3072.33 billion	25.37 million
Paladin	1,009	1993.65 billion	1975.86 million
Vargur	791	1625.23 billion	2054.65 million
Ishtar	6,208	1474.05 billion	237.44 million
Golem	516	1136.01 billion	2201.56 million
Loki	1,516	1114.96 billion	735.46 million
Tengu	1,404	1049.21 billion	747.30 million
Gila	1,777	835.82 billion	470.35 million
Praxis	2,285	642.44 billion	281.16 million
Athanor	331	596.73 billion	1802.80 million
Orca	274	464.80 billion	1696.35 million
Revelation	82	457.31 billion	5576.98 million
Legion	591	398.92 billion	674.99 million
Fortizar	37	385.93 billion	10430.61 million
Proteus	535	384.82 billion	719.28 million
Kronos	218	379.92 billion	1742.75 million
Rhea	32	376.51 billion	11766.00 million
Astero	2,000	347.05 billion	173.53 million
Nestor	168	344.69 billion	2051.72 million
Sabre	4,792	324.31 billion	67.68 million

So that is the economic impact of those losses.  Capsules do, in fact, belong at the top of the list because, while an empty capsule is valued at just 10K ISK, people do insist on plugging in shiny expensive implants.  And Paladins… that is the war up in Pure Blind driving that.

And, just to flip that around, I also sorted it by average amount of ISK loss per kill, just to show what hulls represent the most expensive average losses.  The results are, perhaps, unsurprising.

Type	Count	ISK lost sum	ISK lost per
Avatar	2	160.93 billion	80.46 billion
Leviathan	1	74.08 billion	74.08 billion
Victor	1	52.54 billion	52.54 billion
Wyvern	1	34.85 billion	34.85 billion
Nyx	11	295.64 billion	26.88 billion
Hel	6	139.67 billion	23.28 billion
Aeon	1	18.47 billion	18.47 billion
Nomad	8	105.52 billion	13.19 billion
Laelaps	1	12.94 billion	12.94 billion
Ark	18	219.68 billion	12.20 billion
Rhea	32	376.51 billion	11.77 billion
Anshar	11	118.61 billion	10.78 billion
Fortizar	37	385.93 billion	10.43 billion
Tatara	4	34.60 billion	8.65 billion
Azbel	12	82.79 billion	6.90 billion
Rorqual	43	271.94 billion	6.32 billion
Revelation	82	457.31 billion	5.58 billion
Moros	19	101.06 billion	5.32 billion
Moros Navy Issue	7	36.30 billion	5.19 billion
Bowhead	6	29.88 billion	4.98 billion

Hey, guess what, capital ships are expensive!  If you lose one it is kind of a big deal, economically speaking.  So are freighters and jump freighters if you fill them with stuff.

Also, Alliance Tournament ships are extremely expensive.  There are two on that list and I have linked to the kills on ZKill.  CCP is dramatically undervaluing those ships in its own world, though they are tough to value because they rarely, if ever, appear on the market.  Those two should really be at the top of the list.

Then, of course, there is the question of where all of this destruction was going on.  The kill dump file shows these as the top ten regions:

Region	ISK lost sum
Pure Blind	2.85 trillion
Delve	1.57 trillion
Metropolis	1.36 trillion
Lonetrek	1.27 trillion
The Forge	1.24 trillion
The Citadel	1.17 trillion
Vale of the Silent	1.17 trillion
Sinq Laison	1.17 trillion
Fade	1.06 trillion
Heimatar	1.03 trillion

The war in the north and the battles and the destruction of Keepstars would make you hope that Pure Blind would be at the top of the list, but sometimes it is nice to have that confirmed.

Delve also ranks because, while the war was going on the north, Pandemic Horde was trying to divide Imperium attention by sending fleets into Delve.  There were quite a few fights in Delve and even a couple of structures lost… and the usual capital lost because the pilot in question hadn’t really been paying attention to the war news and the warnings.

For simple loss count, the top ten regions were:

Region	Loss Count
Pure Blind	36,476
Pochven	29,315
Heimatar	24,552
Essence	21,889
The Forge	21,064
Delve	16,821
Metropolis	16,753
The Citadel	16,066
Fade	14,020
Vale of the Silent	12,965

Pure Blind remains at the top of the list, but the fights in Pochven… which is 12th on the value list, so didn’t make the top ten… burned enough hulls and capsules to jump to second place here.

Interesting is The Forge, home of Jita and often the top region, is a ways down the list in March.

That moves us along to a solar system view, with the top ten by ISK value losses being:

System	ISK Lost sum
Auga	608.34 billion
X47L-Q	589.28 billion
5ZXX-K	498.41 billion
Ahbazon	448.76 billion
Gheth	448.02 billion
Nalvula	393.35 billion
1DQ1-A	358.88 billion
Finanar	316.16 billion
Jita	312.50 billion
Sivala	278.47 billion

Auga, a low sec system in Amarr/Minmatar Faction Warfare topped the individual system list, with X47 and 5ZK, both in Pure Blind, following along..  Jita was way down in 9th position, and had 166 billion ISK fewer losses than in February.  People must have been busy elsewhere.

For raw kills the top ten solar systems were:

Solar System	Count of Losses
Nalvula	20,410
Auga	15,035
Jita	9,805
Ahbazon	9,479
Deven	9,159
X47L-Q	7,948
Ouelletta	7,335
1DQ1-A	5,185
Tama	4,983
Rancer	4,946

For sheer numbers Navula, takes the top spot.

And, finally, there is the monthly top battles data from CCP which generates this less than useful map.

Mar 2023 – Battles in New Eden by Participants

I will say, looking at the data they did seem to move towards some reconciliation between the CCP value of a battle and the ZKillboard value.  It isn’t perfect.  The totals have CCP with 38 trillion in losses and ZKill at 47 trillion.  But the top battles on their list are at least not off by orders of magnitude this time around.

Solar System	ISK Sum – CCP	ISK Sum – Zkill	Day
5ZXX-K	316.75 billion	323.45 billion	15
Nalvula	201.74 billion	218.97 billion	17
Finanar	147.80 billion	152.50 billion	3
KLY-C0	132.42 billion	128.58 billion	21
Nalvula	107.12 billion	108.44 billion	15
5ZXX-K	105.41 billion	111.82 billion	26
X47L-Q	104.49 billion	136.55 billion	12
Reblier	103.47 billion	112.11 billion	15
X47L-Q	87.29 billion	101.49 billion	12
O-BY0Y	83.60 billion	83.89 billion	1
Auner	82.58 billion	83.23 billion	30
2D-0SO	82.41 billion	83.77 billion	1
Farit	81.02 billion	80.43 billion	11
Manjonakko	79.90 billion	79.64 billion	11
KQK1-2	76.71 billion	75.97 billion	1
Egbinger	74.08 billion	74.10 billion	16
Istodard	69.45 billion	78.17 billion	4
AB-FZE	67.46 billion	72.06 billion	13
Ouelletta	64.19 billion	73.22 billion	11
F-QQ5N	57.08 billion	63.01 billion	26

This is where CCP’s map doesn’t help me much, even the HTML version that you can mouse over slowly and carefully to find the battles.

The 5ZXX-K Battle data from the HTML map

They are done as a heat map by participant, but then they don’t give me that data, only the loss values, so it is some work to tease out what really happened.

If I was feeling really motivated, with the data I have, I could go build up a battle report for the dates given… but I am not there at the moment.

Anyway, this was a look into the losses.  If nothing else, you can see that mobile tractor units remain a favorite target out in space.

Once again, all of this was drawn from the kill dump files you can find in the Monthly Economic Report for March 2023.  And, as always, feedback on what might be useful or interesting things to look into with a post like this is welcome.

The Imperium Dials Back Operations in Pure Blind

I made it to the weekly coalition fireside talk on Saturday, and it was a good thing I did.  I haven’t done much since I alarm clocked for that last Keepstar kill.  The word passed down was that we were pulling back in our commitment to the war.

We are not done up in the north, but rather than having capitals and a half a dozen or more doctrines to hand and everybody’s death clone set in the DO6H-Q Keepstar, the whole thing was going to be reset to be a jump clone effort with two doctrines left behind and everything else being hauled home.

And move ops home were to commence after the fireside, once a cyno vigil to a fallen member of the coalition was concluded.  That gave me enough time to get back to the Keepstar and get packed, because I had parked my main and my alt out Venal at 92D-OI and WLF-D3, a good dozen gates away from our staging, in anticipation of there being another set of Keepstar fights.

But Fraternity has been getting its act together, working to get gate and grid control going in advance, making it unlikely for us to succeed.

Warp bubbles deployed in WLF to hinder attacker movement

That and the whole time zone difference… you can only get your coalition to alarm clock so many times before it becomes a real drag… were big parts of why we were dialing things back.

I got both my characters back to the Keepstar safely, the route home being fairly empty.  I was even back in time to fly around the cyno vigil for a bit.

When the ping for fleets went up there were three, which filled up pretty quickly.  I had to leave one to get both characters in the same fleet.  We were told to have at least 60K of isotopes, the fuel that capital ships expend for jump travel, to be sure we could make it home.  I had 100K on each of my capitals, because I had TWO capital ships up in Pure Blind, an Apostle and a Ninazu.

The Apostle had been in Pure Blind for a Reavers deployment that never really came together.  It turns out that if your SIG leader is also the coalition leader, then your SIG doesn’t end up doing much… though we are always around for special tasks.

The Ninazu, meanwhile, is what I flew up to this deployment, a fleet hangar full of sub caps, most of which I never undocked.  So it goes.

The move op home was… well… exceptionally smooth.  It is almost like we’ve learned something since the trail of tears and the doomed convoy op at KVN-36 back in the day.

The classic Trail of Tears move op, an obligatory reminder for every cap move op

Once in the fleet there was already a cyno target in the MOTD.  We were told to undock and jump right away.

That put us at another Keepstar where we waited a bit for red timers to count down, then it was time to undock and jump again.

Jumping from the undock

We had to stop along the way at a couple of Fortizars, which meant that the supercarriers and titans had to sit out on tether while the rest of us docked up.

Landing on a Fortizar

Fortunately, the capital ship bumping mechanics have changed over the years.  I remember back in Delve in 2012 witnessing two titans bumping at a POS and that causing one of the titans to be flung more than a hundred of kilometers out of the safety of the forcefield.

Sent way down town

Now, while there is still bumping and you can get pushed off of tether quite easily, bumps are not that crazy.

Supers around a Fortizar in Cloud Ring

The whole thing was very low key, though I was sitting in the No Chatter channel which meant I only heard orders from the fleet commander, Apple Pear, about when to dock, undock, and jump.

I spent the intervals while we waited for jump timers to run down playing Civ II.  ManicTime says I spent a lot more time playing that than in EVE Online during the move op, which is a good sign for a move op in my opinion.

Apple Pear was encouraging people to get at least as far as J5A-IX in Fountain on the move, because that would put them back in friendly space.  Also, there was a surprise for us once we gated from Cloud Ring into that system in Fountain.

We got through and were bubbled on the gate, which is usually a serious faux pas on a capital move op.  Cap pilots get very anxious when unexplained bubbled pop up.  And then we were told to lock up a titan with the pilot Voltran and shoot him.  He wasn’t broadcast in our fleet and I couldn’t find him, get him locked up, and drop some drones because he was dead before I cold get my act together.

Voltran destroyed

Apparently Voltran was one of Pandemic Horde’s big spies in our super capital group and we were using this moment to purge him.  The bubbles were up to keep him from getting away.  It all happened so fast I didn’t even get a screen shot of the explosion, just the greasy smudge of smoke in space where his Avatar had been.

What remains of Voltran is a dissipating cloud of black smoke

If you go find his character in game you will see that he did, indeed, end up in Pandemic Horde once he was purged.  I would link his EVE Who profile, but the API end points are still disabled, so nothing is getting updated.

Other spies were reported purged as well, but none so dramatically.

Then it was to the Keepstar to wait for another jump timer.  We had two more jumps until we ended up in Delve on a Keepstar one jump from 1DQ1-A.  We were left there, but that was fine.  I had a long jump timer at that point and there is a safe cyno on the 1DQ Keepstar most days.  I came back later that evening and jumped myself home.

I ended up using about 47K isotopes, oxygen for the Ninazu and helium for the Apostle, because each NPC empire powers their jump drives with their own special fuel.  I am sure that makes logistics lots of fun.

Now we are back at home.  I have a couple of ships and two jump clones still up in Pure Blind should something happen, but most of my assets are now back down in Delve.

EVE Online – The Null Sec Alliance Influence Map 2007-2022

One of these videos pops up once in a while.  Somebody will go to the sovereignty maps page and digs into the archives where all of the daily maps are stored and string them together into a video.  This one popped up over on Reddit.

Where most people land

While the game itself is coming on 20 years in less than a month, sovereignty wasn’t a thing at first, and keeping track of it like this only started a little over 15 years ago.

I always stop and look at these videos.  And this one is a good one, as it has book marks for each year making it easy to find what you’re looking for.  If you have been a part of the ebb and flow of null sec, you can see the effects of some of the big moments and wars in the game.

You can see the disbanding of Band of Brothers in the southwest, followed a while later by GoonSwarm failing to pay the sov bill and losing all their space… and then the alliance in early 2010 when Karttoon decided to take everything. (See the leadership timeline)

I join in on things at the end of 2011 with the Winter War, which sees White Noise and Raiden driven out of the northeast and the beginning of the ascendancy of the CFC.

There is campaign in Delve in 2012 that left TEST in control, then the Fountain War in 2013 that drove them out, then the great age of rental empires, when the three major blocks all had rental space.

Then we get to Phoebe and jump fatigue, and empires can’t fling capitals around on a whim and there is some contraction.

Then there is the Casino War and the newly christened Imperium is driven from the north, only to pop up again back down in Delve.

Then we are neighbors with TEST again, and Vily is somebody we can work with because he was in Goons before.  Circle of Two disappears on Judgement Day, revenge for their betrayal in the Casino War, and we camp their remains at 68FT-6.

In 2019 Fraternity gets evicted from the south, but then finds a spot in the northeast where it becomes a dominate player.

Then comes World War Bee… or WWB2 or Beeitnam… and the Imperium disappears from the map, but we’re still holed up in a single constellation in Delve in the blue or TEST, Vily having become our most bitter foe.

But they cannot sustain that siege and fall apart, and TEST loses its space.  Then the shuffle continues as alliances rise and fall.  And the story continues on.  We had FI.RE collapse earlier this year and move to the northwest and now there is a modest war going on between two blocs in the north that could shift the map, while FI.RE’s old space has some new inhabitants as the blocs forswore interfering with that space for a year to allow new groups to form.

This ongoing story is a big part of why I continue to play EVE Online long after becoming tired of a lot of the mechanics and routine of the game.  I don’t want to mine or build things or run missions or explore much anymore, but I’ll hop in a ship and join a fleet if we’re talking about making that map change once more.

Friday Bullet Points about EVE Online before Tax Weekend

Here we are on the weekend before US Federal and most US State income taxes are due.  April 15th is the tax day, but this year it falls on a Saturday, so that means we have until Tuesday to get our taxes in.

Unless you live in a county where a Federal disaster was declared.  I live in such a county.  The power was out for 7 days over the course of the last month at my house due to storm conditions related to a “cyclonic bomb” or something.  As such, I don’t have to file my taxes until October.  But I am filing them this weekend because we’re getting a small refund this year.  Somehow I mistakenly managed to pay almost exactly the right amount of taxes in 2022.

All of which has NOTHING to do with EVE Online, which are what my bullet points are about today.

• New Launcher Beta

If you asked me what EVE Online needed, a new launcher wouldn’t have made the cut.  Then again, after having just patched up LOTRO after a 7 month hiatus, the importance of an up to date launcher was once again driven home.

Anyway, CCP has a new launcher in the wings that you can read about here.

Part of EVE Evolved

One of the new features of the launcher is the ability to set up launch groups to get multiple accounts up and running on one action, which is such an EVE Online feature.  Is there another MMO launcher that handles your logins at an account level rather than at a character level, that supports multiple accounts active in the same launcher?  I cannot think of one at the moment.

• Monument Reminder

I mentioned this in a post a couple of weeks back, but I though I would throw in a reminder because… well, this post was feeling a bit thin without it.  CCP is redoing the names on the monument and if you were not previously on it and want to be, you need to have and active Omega account on 6 May 2023.

The EVE Online monument

That date is rapidly approaching.   And yes, I know that CCP is playing the Fear of Missing Out card here in a very direct and obvious way… and it will probably work.  The PCU probably won’t move much, but Hilmar will get to report to Pearl Abyss that Omega accounts went up and something about MAUs.  But if you’re on the ball you can get away with the $5 three day visitors pass on the 5th to get yourself covered.

I just hope the are engraving the names into material that will last longer than 10 years this time.

• EVE Online Player Steals In-game Assets… Again

This is just a regular thing in New Eden, though I will admit that this person went through a slightly different path, leveraging the arcane, under utilized, and often little understood corporation mechanics in EVE Online.

Corporations are to EVE Online what guilds are to most other MMOs, but EVE takes that a step further and has the ability to have shares and voting rights and things like that.  This allowed somebody to infiltrate a corp, vote themselves into power because the corp leaders were not paying attention, kick all the other directors, and then loot about 130 billion ISK in cash and 2 trillion ISK in assets.

This has been, of course, made into a headline declaring the loss to be valued at $22,309, which I am sure gave some crypto bro a surge of adrenaline.  This is the game they want to tax.  The irony is that this theft pretty much models the way the “code is law” has been exploited in the blockchain world in order to steal assets… except it isn’t stealing if if is allowed, now is it?  The code is law!

Anyway, I have seen two detailed reports on the story, which you can find linked below:

• Ars Technica
• PC Gamer

EVE players will get up to trouble.

• The Next Fraternity Keepstars

After the month long battle for the Fraternity Keepstar in X47, which culminated in its destruction earlier this week, the question has been what will happen next.  Fraternity and its allies have fallen back to Tribute and do not seem ready to go on the offensive.  B2 Coalition and the Imperium however have found another flank, going after two Fraternity Keepstars located in 92D-OI and WLF-D3, which stand on the approaches in Venal, the heavily farmed Guristas held NPC null sec region.

Fortizars have already been anchored in anticipation of assaults on these structures.  However, Fraternity isn’t keep to lose them and, on the first set of armor timers, actually got on early, established control of the entry gates into the system, causing B2 and the Imperium to stand down.  But the usual calculus applies: The attackers only have to win once, the defenders have to win every time.

• Monthly Economic Report

The MER for March 2023 has been released by CCP and I am not going to do a blog post about it.  I have written monthly posts about the MER for more than six years now and they are kind of a lot of work.  They are also boring, if the blog stats are any indication.  Few read those posts, almost nobody ever has a comment, CCP already makes a bunch of nice charts if you are interested enough, and honestly you can find better analysis from Angry Mustache over at r/eve or from Arrendis in the official forum thread, which is why I link to those two locations every month.

I might write something about destruction.  That is a bit more interesting, especially with a war on.  But I’ll leave off the MER for now, so here are the usual links if you want to delve into it on your own:

• Monthly Economic Report for March 2023
• Monthly Economic Report forum thread
• Monthly Economic Report post on r/eve

And so it goes.  I am going to go file my taxes this evening so I can claim my $212 refund.  Maybe I’ll activate another account and get a new name on the monument with my windfall.

Fraternity’s Keepstar in X47L-Q Destroyed without a Fight

Not an unexpected outcome.  As I noted in the post about Friday morning’s fight, the second timer, the armor timer, is viewed as the make or break battle in these situations where an alliance has a lot of assets on the line.

The start point for the final timer was around 09:30 UTC, which put it at 2:30am local time for me.  But I set a quiet alarm (hoping not to wake my wife, though I warned her in advance) in order to get up, see if there was a fight, maybe get a couple of screen shots, then to head back to bed.  It was, after all, Monday morning and not a holiday.

The alarm went off, barely audible, just enough to wake me up and leave my wife asleep.  First success of the op!  I had left my computer on and myself logged into the game.  After Friday morning’s fight I had just docked up at one of the allied Fortizars on the Keepstar grid, so I just had to undock to see what was going on.  There were about 3,200 characters shown in local when I sat down and I undocked to see the Keepstar under attack with no defenders to speak of.

The Keepstar abides for the moment

There were a few hostiles on the undock, some in shuttles, there to watch the kill, and a few in small combat ships looking for opportunistic kills.  The structure was already below 70%, so I figured I could warp over, get myself in another 28km orbit, target the Keepstar, and go back to bed and I would get on the kill.

But things were moving along pretty quickly.  Tidi was less than 50% and the hit points were getting peeled away.  I was getting deflections on about every other shot, which meant that we were putting in close to the most damage that we could.  So I decided to sit and watch for a bit.

And, while I was there, I logged my alt in as well, also in the Fortizar, and put him in orbit shooting as well.  The could both be on the kill.

As 3am hit at my end, 10:00 UTC, the game popped up the warning that downtime was coming, the daily restart that CCP performs.

An hour away, plenty of time

Things were moving along so fast it looked like events would be done well before downtime hit.

I had a Jackdaw break tether and target me at one point, but we also had people looking for opportunistic kills.  He went red box, so I fired at me, but I was moving at 5km a second, so ran out of range long before the missiles could get to me and he disappeared, so I assume somebody got him.  One of us, maybe the PDS, I couldn’t find the kill, but not every kill gets posted.

Most of the damage was being done by fighters sent from one of the two Fortizars that we had anchored about 1,500km off of the Keepstar.

Carriers and supers controlling the attacking fighters

So the brackets on view (and graphics off, a unique EVE Online option, as I was trying to keep my alt from taking up too many system resources) showed lots and lots of the small caret symbols that represent fighters orbiting the target or flying over from the Fortizar.

Brackets only view

Those two Fortizars represent the greatest failure in the defense of this Keepstar.

View from the second Fortizar

It was bad enough that Fraternity and PanFam let us have a Fortizar in their staging system.  If you were part of World War Bee two years ago you may remember the ferocity with which the Imperium resisted allowing structures being anchored within their primary defense, with a series of ongoing battles over Azbels in 3-DMQT, not to mention the trillions of ISK we burned to destroy four anchoring Keepstars in NPC Delve.

They should have aggressively gone after these structures.  But, while they set the first timer a few times, their follow up was not very active considering these Forts were anchored within sight of their staging Keepstar.

And, yes, Fraternity has the opposite time zone problem from us, but they have US/EU allies in PanFam.  Oh well.

The damage continued to pull down the structure hit points at quite a clip until about the 30% mark, at which point various groups started cynoing in and getting on grid to get their hits so they too could be on the kill mail.

The Initiative’s Navy Apocs arriving on the Keepstar

That dragged tidi down to under 20%.  It was starting to look like downtime could be an issue.

At around 12% hull left another cyno was lit and the big toys dropped in, titans landing between the Keepstar uprights to add their firepower to the attack.

Titans landing and opening fire

That dragged tidi down again and the last 10% took what seemed like a long time to go by… though I was also kind of eager to get back to bed.

But the firepower was enough, and the Keepstar exploded, with the kill recorded at 10:51 UTC.

The explosion dwarfs our titans

The value on that kill mail on zKillboard is way too low, as it values the Keepstar itself at .01 ISK.  Add two hundred billion to that total and we’re probably closer to the mark.  Over all we’re probably past three trillion ISK destroyed in Pure Blind in March and April.  Not a minor war.

Then, even before the after effects of the explosion could finish, the downtime clock was up and advising everybody that the server was coming down.

Better log off or you will be logged off

By that point I had docked up and logged off my alt and was doing the same with my main.  It was time to get back to sleep.

Reddit has naturally lit up with propaganda about this, heightened by the fact that Brave is hitting its 10 year anniversary.

Now, with the final of Fraternity’s four Keepstars in Pure Blind destroyed, their year long attack on B2 Coalition has been pushed back to its starting point.  Those that could have pulled back into Tribute, forming up in the Keepstar in UMI-KK.  But those who could not get all of their stuff out of the Keepstar in X47L-Q, they will have to wait for the 20 day journey to asset safety.  Once there in a low sec NPC station (X47L-Q goes to Iitanmadan in Lonetrek, if you want to camp them) they will have to pay 15% of the assessed value of their stuff to unlock it, then move it back to where it is needed.

The Imperium and B2 Coalition Commit, Win the X47L-Q Armor Timer Through Downtime

The war continues to rage mostly when I am asleep.  This latest battle, over the armor timer for Fraternity’s Keepstar in X47L-Q, kicked off as Thursday turned to Friday for me, at midnight Pacific time, at which point I was sound asleep.

But it was just a bit early for Euros and no problem for the Aussies and our own Chinese allies to get stuck into things, so they went at it while Asher and a bunch of the Imperium command team in the US just stuck it out and burned around the clock.

I did not stay up or get up early because, first of all, I had to work yesterday, which is not something I relish on no sleep, even on a Friday and, secondly, downtime was probably go to screw us again.

You can read about downtime over on the EVE Uni wiki, but in short every day at 11:00 UTC (4am PDT for me) CCP brings the servers down for a reboot.  Everybody gets kicked off of the servers and the last time we were in an armor timer fight for the X47 Keepstar the node running that system did not really appreciate 6,000 accounts trying to jump in at the same time and there was some ugliness including a semi-roll back for those did not get blown up (but no roll back for those who did).

Now, we had lost the timer before than because of particularly bad “server weather,” as the wags call it, but the downtime transition went so badly I was pretty convinced that the X47 Keepstar might be unbreakable if defended, as the downtime would be an out.

So I slept easy believing that I would wake up to find that downtime had defeated us.  I felt for my late night comrades busy at their task, because that was REALLY going to suck.  But my losing a bunch of sleep wasn’t going to make anybody feel better.

Then, when I did get up and go to my computer at about 7am PDT, 3 hours after downtime, I first looked at r/eve to see how the post-fight propaganda was playing out.  But what I saw seemed to indicate that the fight might still be going on.

So I got Jabber up and running and found out that we had somehow bridged the downtime gap.  Asher had gotten everybody online and in fleets way early, got people in position, so that when the fight started we were able to stop the 15 minute timer very quickly so that when downtime hit, we had as much of a window to get back in and resume the fight as possible.

And they did it.  Those magnificent unsleeping bastards did it.

The Keepstar after downtime

Granted, it was a near run thing.  The timer, once they were able to stop it again, was down to 1 minute and 40 seconds.  That isn’t a lot of leeway.

The armor timer post downtime

I hopped in the shower, made myself some quick breakfast, then got myself online to join in on the take down.  We have a couple of AFK doctrines for structure shoots like this, small ships moving fast and firing lasers, which never need to be cycled so long as the crystals hold out.

It took me an hour to get myself in position, lined up and in orbit of the Keepstar before I could safely go AFK, but I got there and started helping to chip away at the armor layer of the citadel.

In my high orbit

The nice thing… or odd thing I suppose… about a Keepstar and its size is that burning away in a 30km orbit is a very big circle because you are 30km from the edge of the model.  But the model is 160km from top to bottom, and maybe more than half of that from side to side.  So people down on the undock can be pretty far away while you’re still able to hit the structure itself.

Most of that time getting into the system was spent waiting for it to load.  When I jumped in local loaded, but it was a 25 minute wait before I could see more than just the sky and my modules.  The overview didn’t load, other objects in space didn’t load, the name of the system in the upper left hand corner didn’t load, and the outstanding calls window just sat there with the instructions queued up and the timers running.

Just sitting and watching those timers

Fortunately, my invulnerability timer was also sitting still, so I didn’t get blown up unawares.

The peak number I saw in local was at that point, 4,477, but who knows how close to reality that was.  The server was grinding to keep up and sparing very few cycles to fit me into the mix with 4,000 other accounts on that grid.

UI off and brackets on, it was a mess

Looking at the EVE Offline chart for the 36 hours around the fight, you can see that downtime did not have the same hiccup as before… likely due to there only being ~4,000 people in system rather than more than 6,000… and there was a surge of people getting in after downtime to rejoin the fight.

EVE Offline and the downtime dip

The server held and I was able to get my main and an alt on grid and orbiting and shooting before I had to lead the daily standup for my team and focus on work.

Somewhere along the line the PDS on the Keepstar managed to reach out and kill my alt, despite the fact that the range on that is supposed to be 3km from the model and he was well past 25km, but the server will get things wrong now and again in its juggling act.

Fortunately, that was getting towards the end of the fight and the numbers in system were starting to drop off as it became clear that the attackers were going to take the day.  The PDS was fired off multiple times, despite defenders being there on the undock, in a last surge to try and get the timer unpaused.  They just needed a minute and forty seconds of relief.

Instead, at 17:59 UTC, the last shot was fired.  The attackers had won the armor timer and we are looking at another fight, a final fight that may very well end in a kill, on Monday night.

I gave you the time, you can do the math

Getting through downtime to win the fight was a pretty amazing achievement.

Overall the battle report shows that One Trillion ISK was destroyed in the fight.  But the destruction was fairly evenly split between the sides rather than weighing heavily on the attackers as tends to be the case.

Battle Report Header

That counts 5,794 pilots and 3,543 ships and pods destroyed, the the ISK balance tilting in favor of the defenders, but not by much.

Over at DOTLAN you can see the stats for the system and when the destruction was happening.

DOTLAN Reports

Now the question is whether or not the defenders will put their all into a final defense.  Often the armor timer is the real fight because if the defenders lose that then they face the possibility of not only losing the structure and being caught once it is gone in the middle of space with no tether or place to dock up, but also all of their stuff taking the slow trip to asset safety.  So if things look bad, they might decide to evac over the weekend and put up a weaker fight come Monday.

Or they might go all in, because if they do lose then not only does all of the above kick in, but Fraternity’s foothold in Pure Blind is pretty much at an end and their attempt to drive B2 Coalition out of the region is over.

Also in the mix is the scope of the final fight.  The final timer is 30 minutes rather than 15, so it the attackers will not face the same thing margin of time when downtime hits.  They will have a much better chance of getting back online and engaging the structure again.  The armor timer fight was also especially strenuous because the Keepstar was fit with five armor plates, giving it a huge amount of armor hit points, so it took a long time and a lot of firepower to grind it down.

Those plates will not impact the final fight, so the kill should not take as much time.

Either way, B2 Coalition and the Imperium will be resting up and getting ready for that final timer.  We have set the armor timer quite a few times… I think the count is nine at this point, though we did not contest every single one of those, something that makes the defenders salty… but now we’re at the first hull timer so I expect we will be all in.

Related:

• CCP Twitter Coverage with pictures: One, Two, and Three
• NEP: Ninth Time’s the Charm as Fraternity’s X47L-Q Keepstar Enters Its Hull Reinforcement

The “Made You Form” Stage of the War in Pure Blind

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.