Here we are again. Today marks the third month of World War Bee, as it started back on July 5, 2020. A lot has happened since then, though not so much with the war itself.
This past week saw CCP actually take some official notice of the war, mentioning the battle at 49-U6U in their latest EVE Pulse video. The mention happens in the first 40 seconds of the video:
CCP Mirage calls out the Imperium losses (true enough) and then declares that the Fortizar was saved (not true at all). The former is likely due to them using TEST streamer RonUSMC as their source, while the latter reflects the recent state of disdain the company has for null sec, viewing the region as more of a problem to be solved rather than a play style of value. (But they still love us more than faction warfare, so we have that going for us.)
PAPI, or “the snake people” as they are now called by some, also finally decided to step up and do something in Delve. They didn’t actually invade the region yet, but they were alleged to be offering a bounty for killing ratters and miners in Delve. PAPI players can earn 100 million for blowing up a ratting Myrmidon. If anybody is interested, I’ll undock an insured Myrmidon and let you blow it up if you front me 30 ISK million in advance. I won’t even file for SRP.
Of course, the deal as posted didn’t say the 100 million would be in paid in ISK. It might be simply delivered in “value” like the Tranquility Trading Consortium profits.
The author of the post later deleted the details and now only the title of the post remains, so it could be that there was no bounty offer at all, making the whole thing yet another example of failure to take action in Delve.
We did, however, get the news that CCP had deployed a “UI only mode” for the game client to the test server. That should make big battles better for many players. especially those running multiple game clients on their system.
In the end, if that is all I have for an opening, then it wasn’t much of a week.
Querious Front
This is pretty much where things seem set to happen. The invaders have staged here, so this is where the action should be taking place.
I mentioned in last week’s post that the invaders had managed to drop a Fortizar in SVM-3K, which is actually in Delve. The timer for that came out on Tuesday in the early AM my time and was promptly blown up by Imperium forces, with PAPI only fielding a token effort to try and pick off some kills. I was hoping it might brew up into a long fight, but by the time I logged on in the morning the field had been looted and everybody had gone home.
The best bet for potential action last week seemed to be around the Keepstar that the hostiles dropped in 8QT-H4. That is in Querious still, but on the boarder with Delve, just one gate over from the Fortizar they lost above.
Keepstar deploying
Again, it would begin anchoring very early in my time zone… like 4am… so I wasn’t going to make it to the start of whatever came to pass, but my hope was that a big fight would ensue and I might get in with some reinforcements later on in the day.
However, once I was up and online (6am my time) the fight was over and the Keepstar had anchored successfully.
Apparently Asher had a new tactic to try out involving a host of stealth bombers and a series of strategic bookmarks However, he shared the bookmarks alliance wide with full add/edit/delete capabilities and somebody deleted them. It isn’t clear if this was the work of a spy or just commonplace stupidity on our part, but Asher’s plan failed and now the invaders have dropped their ~20th Keepstar in pursuits of their “Maginot Line offensive” where they place a structure then hope we’ll come and fight on it.
Otherwise the Querious front was remarkably quiet. The invaders blew up some Fortizars we left behind in the region and we poked around some, but not much changed.
Other Theaters
The destruction of our Fortizars left behind in Querious was balanced out somewhat by The Initiative destroying Fortizars the invaders left behind in Foutain and Aridia. The big kill though was in Aridia where LowSechnaya Sholupen, a member of the invaders that has actually stuck around in Fountain and contested a bit of space, got caught trying to deploy a Keepstar in Hier only to have it blown up by Siege Green. Both sides in the war rushed out to whore on the kill.
Other than that, there were the usual range of skirmishes in roams into hostile space and attempts to hack ihubs all over. Period Basis saw a bunch of hacking activity on our side, and we returned the favor in Esoteria, keep the low order conflict around the TCAG-3/G-M4GK gate simmering.
Edit: Of course, I wrote this Sunday morning when nothing seems likely to happen (though I guess the week should go Saturday to Sunday, but whatever) then, when I was out, a fight broke out in SNM-3K as PAPI made its first capital push into Delve to try and take the ihub in the system. 120 billion ISK total lost according to the battle report doesn’t make it a big fight, not after 49-U6U, but John Hartley got his titan on grid and got the kill on a TEST Rorqual because he likes to live dangerously. The ihub was defended but PAPI won the ISK war and I missed the whole thing.
My Participation
I went on exactly one fleet last week. Not much was going on during the USTZ time frame when I am able to dedicate time to fleet operations. I went out on a fleet that chased around some TEST hackers down in Period Basis. We blew up a few of them, they blew up a few of us, but we stopped their enotsis attacks and everybody went home. I was not among the exploded, so my loss count for the war remains:
- Ares interceptor – 9
- Atron entosis frigate – 5
- Ferox battle cruiser – 3
- Drake entosis battle cruiser – 3
- Guardian logi – 2
- Malediction interceptor – 2
- Scalpel logi frigate – 2
- Scimitar logi – 1
- Bifrost entosis command destroyer – 1
- Cormorant destroyer – 1
- Purifier stealth bomber – 1
- Hurricane battle cruiser – 1
- Sigil entosis industrial – 1
Other Items
Despite some early examples, this is becoming the war where nobody shoots Keepstars. PAPI has not touched the Keepstar we have in 49-U6U and we’re not doing anything with the Keepstar the dropped in 8QT-H4.
The word is that the enemy hasn’t even moved into the 8QT-H4 Keepstar yet, that it is just bait to try and get us to commit titans.
On the Meta Show this past Saturday The Mittani speculated that the invaders may still try and drop a Keepstar in NPC Delve, though the fact that he seemed to salivate at the prospect may mean that is more wishful thinking than anything.
Delve remains relatively unmolested three month into the war. Given that is where we live, Vily’s war aims of extermination and removal of the Imperium, articulated in the Polygon article I quoted two weeks back, remain essentially unfulfilled. I am sure his recent attempts to walk those goals back are completely unrelated.
There was some mention of other groups taking advantage of the Drone lands residents being away for the war to mess with their space, with some ihubs getting taken in Geminate and some ratters and miners finding themselves hunted, but it is not clear if this is any sort of concerted effort of just a moment of opportunism.
The PCU count for each week of the war looks like this:
- 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
Down a bit from last week, though still holding in the same range. The fight late on Sunday came well after the peak.
Other coverage:
- INN – World War Bee: Week 13
from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8262364
