I was gone for most of last week as we had to drive up to Oregon to pick up our daughter and bring her back from her first year of college.  That meant about 12 hours each way going up and down US Interstate 5 and all the attractions that has to offer.

I will say that the Pilot/Flying J facility in Weed has some of the cleanest bathrooms you will find along any highway, and you can buy a camo muscle shirt emblazoned with the town name in their mini-mart.  We also had to stop in Yreka so that my wife could re-write an real estate purchase contract in the parking lot of the Starbucks using the WiFi with her laptop.  Between that and being on her phone while I drove, she didn’t miss a beat for most of the trip.

And, while I-5 is notoriously boring for much of its length, there is some nice scenery around the CA/OR border.

Meanwhile, the boring parts are mostly flat and wide and optimal for exceeding the speed limit, a habit or bother California and Oregon drivers who both seem to share the opinion that those numbers are mere suggestions.

But, it looked like a good week to be away as not much changed with the war.  There was some /r/eve drama when PAPI mod SapporoJones banned notorious Imperium shit poster Dr_Mibbles for reasons that, if applied more universally in the forum, would result in a dramatic decrease in posting for both sides in the war.  Then further bans hit Imperium posters pointing out the hypocrisy.  But because a PAPI mod went after an Imperium poster it just served as a rallying point for the Imperium and appears to have just reinforced the “PAPI can dish it out but can’t take it” narrative that The Mittani has been stoking up on The Meta Show.

So, not much happened in a general sense I suppose, though the Imperium did announce a Drake doctrine, which brings me back to 2012 and my first fleet battles.

I look forward to throwing heavy missiles around.

Delve Front

As noted above, not much has changed.  I can re-roll last week’s map of the O-EIMK constellation because the situation remains mostly unchanged.

The focus continues to be PAPI attempting to gain a foothold in 3-DMQT.  Rather than attacking the Ansiblex jump bridge, cyno jammers, and the POS towers set up by GSOL on every moon in the system, they have begun dropping their own structures.  Since the ADM for the system is high, they can’t drop a Raitaru or Astrahus, they have to go for large stuctures, and the Azbel seems to be the Upwell structure of choice.

It takes a while for those to anchor in a hostile system, so there is a wait for it to come online.

A couple were caught before they could get into the anchoring timer.

Otherwise, Delve remained an active region in the war.  I ran another week long campaign report which shows that while the ships destroyed number was down from the 16K it was last week, it was still well above the 8K or so it was the week before.

The ISK value of destruction was down some though, as there were no Keepstars and only a single capital kills to be found.  Also, both sides seemed content to feed Cormorants into fights, which even at PAPI prices are still relatively cheap hulls. (Also, I ran that report a little early in the day, there was a fairly big fight later on that boosted the number of kills by a couple hundred if you click on the link.)

Other Theaters

Feythabolis continues to see fighting, with Army of Mango (AOM) pushing into the region and a number of systems unclaimed by either side in the war currently.

Esoteria continues to be active as well as AOM is also pushing back The Bastion and its allies along the northern extent of their reach.

AOM has taken back six ihubs from the Imperium and its allies and is still pushing on the stretch of systems that the insurgents have held for months now.

The Initiative plans for attacking Etherium Reach were momentarily stymied when PanFam jump cloned back home to attack and destroy the staging structures that INIT had set up in Wicked Creek.  So the map of the region shows no change so far.

However, INIT just changed tack and settled down in an NPC station in Uemon in The Forge region, which is just two gates from Etherium Reach.  So the campaign against PanFam’s back field is not yet over.

My Participation

While I was away for most of the week, I was back home by Saturday and was able to jump into a few ops.  However, they ended up mostly chasing PAPI fleets around.  PAPI was looking for targets of opportunity and ran when numbers showed up to oppose them, so we mostly saw them off then hung around a bit to make sure they wouldn’t just jump back in.

As such, my losses for the war remain as follows:

• Ares interceptor – 17
• Malediction interceptor – 7
• Crusader interceptor – 5
• Atron entosis frigate – 6
• Rokh battleship – 5
• Scimitar logi – 5
• Ferox battle cruiser – 4
• Drake battle cruiser – 4
• Purifier stealth bomber – 3
• Guardian logi – 2
• Scalpel logi frigate – 2
• Raven battleship – 1
• Crucifier ECM frigate – 1
• Gnosis battlecruiser – 1
• Bifrost command destroyer – 1
• Cormorant destroyer – 1
• Hurricane battle cruiser – 1
• Sigil entosis industrial – 1
• Mobile Small Warp Disruptor I – 1

Other Items

EVE Online turned 18 years old last week, as May 6th 2003 was the official launch date.   People celebrated by posting pictures of themselves when they were 18.

On Thursday CCP launched a new login reward campaign with 8 days of rewards including SKINs, ships, and skill points.  The campaign runs long enough that if you log in today you can still claim all the prizes by visiting the game every day until the event is over.  The final day offers 100K skill points, even for alpha clones, so it might be worth the effort.

CCP also kicked of the new development quadrant.  Dubbed “Foundation,” it is focused on the main NPC empires of New Eden and has featured a number of significant lore events… well, significant for those into the lore anyway.  There was also a mention of the empires competing to construct  new stargates, with a hint that a low sec gate to the Stain region might be a possibility.

It is also your last chance to apply to run for a spot on CSM16.  Get it done now.

And then there is the peak concurrent user number for the week.  Week 44 of the war saw numbers stay on par with the previous week, though the peak landed on Saturday, no doubt because US players were all taking their mother’s out to brunch on Sunday for Mother’s Day.

• 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)

Related

• INN – World War Bee: Week 44
• Reddit – Activity metrics for WWB