I've been watching the Providence campaign of the Imperium, expecting it to get traction after a slow start, but hey, it's already over! The propagandists of the Evil wrote how they "managed to kill a simple majority of those ihubs" and then go down in detail which alliance killed what. Why did they target IHUBs? - one wonders. The answer is simple, it's hard to track it, so their failure won't be obvious.
Unfortunately for the little bees, it's not that hard to track it. As they wrote "Blowing up the ihub significantly lowers ADM and resets sov index to 0". Too bad that Sov index has an own map layer on Dotlan. Update: Dotlan Sov index reports seems to be bugged. But the in-game map works:
You can also check the ADM and see it for yourself. I put a black circle around systems with 0-2 ADM and grey around 2.1-4 ADM:
Let's compare it to Pure Blind which is completely safe and used by Section 8 and those useless NPC living nobodies have absolutely no effect (besides forcing CO2 and TNT home admittedly even by evil propagandists):
The killboard data is not yet in, but I doubt if it adds anything to the picture. The Imperium failed to capture most systems in "lolprovi". They only targeted one out of the 3 structures per systems (Provi has stations in 77/84 systems) and failed to take half of it. It's clear that the "mighty" Imperium is unable to fight a Sov war under the Aegis system, due to half of their alliances are unable to operate alone, the other half can fly only a few fleets as 250 F1 monkeys with 1 FC is still just one fleet, working on one node. You can't split it, since the half without the FC won't be able to make decisions.
PS: despite defeated, the minions of Evil clearly caused some mess in Providence and deserve retribution. I'm sure Provi alliances could afford a modest donation to the Mordus Angels SRP. Their 75% ISK ratio means that every billion donated is turned into 3 billion dead minions of Evil!
I'd like to add three battle reports. The first is a usual "capital battle" between BASTN and MoA.
The second is more interesting. Exactly as the Goon propaganda says, MoA was out in interceptors hunting AFK Ishtars, when one of the Ishtars were bait, the other ratters from other anoms warped to it and killed 3 interceptors. As the saying goes, sometimes you get the AFK Ishtar, other times the AFK Ishtar gets you. If you want to experience AFK Ishtar hunts, jump on Mordus Public channel and ask for a recruiter.
The third one is the proof that MoA is being hellcamped into their staging station and any try to undock ends up in lost ships.
PS2: FCON...
Unfortunately for the little bees, it's not that hard to track it. As they wrote "Blowing up the ihub significantly lowers ADM and resets sov index to 0". Too bad that Sov index has an own map layer on Dotlan. Update: Dotlan Sov index reports seems to be bugged. But the in-game map works:
You can also check the ADM and see it for yourself. I put a black circle around systems with 0-2 ADM and grey around 2.1-4 ADM:
Let's compare it to Pure Blind which is completely safe and used by Section 8 and those useless NPC living nobodies have absolutely no effect (besides forcing CO2 and TNT home admittedly even by evil propagandists):
The killboard data is not yet in, but I doubt if it adds anything to the picture. The Imperium failed to capture most systems in "lolprovi". They only targeted one out of the 3 structures per systems (Provi has stations in 77/84 systems) and failed to take half of it. It's clear that the "mighty" Imperium is unable to fight a Sov war under the Aegis system, due to half of their alliances are unable to operate alone, the other half can fly only a few fleets as 250 F1 monkeys with 1 FC is still just one fleet, working on one node. You can't split it, since the half without the FC won't be able to make decisions.
PS: despite defeated, the minions of Evil clearly caused some mess in Providence and deserve retribution. I'm sure Provi alliances could afford a modest donation to the Mordus Angels SRP. Their 75% ISK ratio means that every billion donated is turned into 3 billion dead minions of Evil!
I'd like to add three battle reports. The first is a usual "capital battle" between BASTN and MoA.
The second is more interesting. Exactly as the Goon propaganda says, MoA was out in interceptors hunting AFK Ishtars, when one of the Ishtars were bait, the other ratters from other anoms warped to it and killed 3 interceptors. As the saying goes, sometimes you get the AFK Ishtar, other times the AFK Ishtar gets you. If you want to experience AFK Ishtar hunts, jump on Mordus Public channel and ask for a recruiter.
The third one is the proof that MoA is being hellcamped into their staging station and any try to undock ends up in lost ships.
PS2: FCON...
14 comments:
This entire post is based on inaccurate data. The API (and therefore, dotlan) are not currently reflecting Strat Index changes properly. It's easily verifiable in game - bring up the in game map and check the indexes there, it clearly doesn't match API.
Dotlan seems fucked because in game DNR-7M and other systems show as 0 for strategic index. Just sayin. Since I know that hub died in the Yulai Federation pocket. As well as 3 in the Sev3rance pocket.
One other note on the ADM numbers: while its true that killing a hub will eventually lead to declining ADMs by way of declines in the Military and Industrial indices, that takes time. The conflict lasted all of 4 days, which at best would see any index fall by no more than 1 level, assuming the hubs were replaced and activity got back to normal.
On paper, the concept is accurate that snapping the hubs will lead to lower ADM's and thus shorter entosis time needed to reinforce or destroy/capture a structure, the fact is that index levels declines at 1% per hour. So the amount of time to wait for levels to decline to a point where the timers change all that much isn't really a thing.
Damn Dotlan. They should have removed the data that is inaccurate. Anyway, I've updated with in-game map and the minions of Evil still look pretty bad. Too bad their damn propaganda is just spin and not factual lie.
@Dirk: true, but at first they claimed much larger effect and my point is that after their "glorious" campaign, Providence still have better indices than Pure Blind, so if the goal was decreasing them, then 1300 men MoA did better job than the 40K Imperium.
Actually, after your report, and reading their report, you didn't post numbers. How many I hubs wereally killed? How much does an I hub cost? How much damage was then inflicted in all of 4 days.
The idea, as my understanding is, was to test the new sov, not to actually take it. If they got, let's say 45% of all ihubs in 4 days, and it will become easier to take, I would actually consider it a win. Not really a strategic win, but a proof of concept win.
They can go out, blitz regions, cause mayham, burn and salt, inflict economic damage.
That is scary. They could become vikings.
They can shit all over they want, and cause regions to suffer.
Saying that they are lying (propaganda) is not really true, depending on what their ethos was.
Now the new sov system needs to be tested on a smaller level. Let's see a 100 man alliance take sov from another 100 man alliance and hold it. My guess is that, if that is true, the same would hold true that the 100 man alliance that gets booted out, could harass the shit out of the new holders. Ultimately making the game pointless.
If this were true though, moa would be doing more disturbing.
@Dirk MacGirk - I was actually surprised it was over so quickly, is the general consensus that the objectives were achieved or did the rank and file feel that it was too much of a grind? i.e. to really pound an established alliance to the dust you have to fight a long protracted war over months.
If Goons really motivated to f*ck with people they could just keep blowing up ihubs at a rate that they cannot be replaced with ratting / moon income. I don't know how much fun that would be though.
Basically, provi can no longer anchor jump bridges in over half their space for the next 3 month and they lost more isk than you have in the course of 3 days. Was it a complete success? No, of course not, even The Mittani has explained what the failing were and how they'll do it better next time, but it certainly wasn't a failure like you claim it was.
Jump bridges are no longer important since Phoebe. Not like you'd jump around.
Do you have any reliable data on the Provi ISK losses, or just repeat the Goon propaganda which does NOT contain any numbers. Yes, a well upgraded IHUB can be expensive, but can you somehow show the upgrade level of the destroyed IHUBs?
Finally, even if they were expensive, that just show that Provi were dumb to bling them out. People will learn from this mistake and won't upgrade IHUBs that they can't defend or not planning to use.
Sure Provi suffered from it and I hope they spend lot of money to retaliate on Goons, but they kept their most valuable systems and reclaimed the rest. The Imperium were only able to a short burst and even that was only enough to destroy less then half of the IHUBs.
There's no way to show ihub levels on the map, no, but that doesn't mean they weren't upgraded. And provi did use their space and their ihubs, that's why the indices are all so high. You're not going to push and index to 5 by ratting and mining in belts alone. Provi certainly didn't keep their most valuable systems, they lost their capital and the surrounding systems for starters.
The Imperium chose to do a 5 day deployment, that was announced in advance of it. It was never supposed to be a long war. Sure, they didn't achieve all of what they'd hoped and they'll learn from that, but you act as if it was a complete failure, which clearly it wasn't. They had a good time, learned loads and did a heck of a lot of damage.
I would give Provi its dues, they put up a good defense.
Jump bridges are still used hugely for moving equipment using freighters and industrials. While the fatigue has made it harder to move fleets back and forth through a JB network, to move modules, drones, hulls etc etc via a freighter or DST's again and again is rather easy.
Why are you comparing to Pureblind, Why not compare it to Deklein or somewhere like that?
It would be easier for me to understand the scale of "win" if someone could arrive at more explicit numbers about how much ratting / mining income was lost by Provi and how much income has the Imperium in captured stations.
Should be possible to understand it with the kind of ratting intensity per system analysis that Gevlon used to make once for Imperium, made for Provi and ex-Provi systems before and after.
If all this is achieved is forcing Provi to rat/mine in the same amounts in the smaller area, then i'm not really seeing th damage done.
@Gevlon - Yeah Wollari confirmed today in a tweet that apparently the sov level i.e. strategic index isn't in CREST. As far as the ADM levels go, we came, we destroyed like half of the hubs, and then left. Didn't leave a lot of time for ADM levels to fall much before hubs were back up and mining/ratting resumed. As for Pure Blind, well, as a member of TNT who knows what Pure Blind has always been until very recently with the changes to anomalies, Pure Blind was an empty wasteland. At least as far as any kind of permanent settlements of activity. MOA and those who frequent NPC areas aside, it was flyover space.
@A Merc - It was always planned to be a short deployment. The stated goals were higher than what was achieved. Did we miss them or were they "reach goals"? Using the Aegis sov system, coupled with how the Imperium split everything up by individual alliance, and the limited amount of time, led to it not being 100% achieved. That being said, I'm happy it was limited in duration and we didn't stay as long as it takes to fully burn Provi. That would have been overkill just for the sake of overkill. I can't speak for high comman or other alliances, or even my own. I personally came away feeling like I learned a lot about the use of Aegis Sov and how to improve upon the tactics we would use both as an attacker and a defender. 4 days was enough for me. An entrenched enemy willing to fight or use other tactics can in fact make this sov system a protracted affair. It probably won't stop a committed, well-organized adversary, but it can make their path to success a living hell. But I'm OK with that. Sov war probably should be hell. Whether that makes for a good video game, I just don't know. But it does make for a valid simulation of warfare. I'm less worried about how the Imperium would fight an actual war of conquest. It probably wouldn't be by splitting up the coalition. It would probably be through the tried and true method of massing the entire force and then creating constellation-sized dominoes of timers and then just steamrolling across a region over more than 4 days. The bigger question is how do groups smaller than the Imperium get it done? They probably start by not even consider region-size objectives.
I could be misunderstanding here, but it looks like you're comparing all the work MoA did since the release of the new Sov system to the damage the Imperium did in 4 days. It also seems like MoA were attacking a side project rental region compared to the Imperium attacking a core region, and that the results were in the same region.
That doesn't seem like a crushing victory for MoA, it looks like the Imperium can get bored, spend a few days blasting someone for fun and have similar (or financially greater) effect.
Ps actually, we learned a lot too. Just as much as the cfc. We needed to learn how to defend in the new sov mechanics. Expensive lesson, but we would rather learn it from someone who doesn't actually want our space, then to learn it from someone who wants to take it from us.
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