Powerplay Powerplay Analysis - Cycle 22
- Thread starter Martin Schou
- Start date
Whoops - forgot to set proper access on the sheet. It should be available now.
I was going to make a thread with the same name as this one, thats a bit of a waste, and this already has a link to Martins excellent spreadsheet.
Its been quite a while since Cadoc wrote one of his PP weekly reports.
Corrigendum has taken over with a small group of players representing each Power (myself included) but its become just the Galnet summary.
What I enjoyed about Cadocs articles was his analysis and speculation.
I disagreed with most of his conclusions, but it was enjoyable to read nonetheless.
So here's my take on cycle 22, hopefully its useful to some of you, even if you disagree with my speculations
The raw data is available for everyone to look at, so I won't copy it here, I'll just use charts.
Player Distribution
Above you can see the total number of known merits earned by Power.
Whats striking to me is the now small gap between Hudson and ALD.
Aisling is still secure in number 3, and the other 7 powers have much less between them.
Hudson players earned slightly less (2336488 vs 2393600) than the 8 smaller powers combined.
Although ALD and Hudson certainly have the 2 highest amounts of player participation, their combat expansion method dominates the merits earned and skews the results. This is also true of Delaine, Patreus and Antal, who also expand with combat.
So here is the same chart, without expansion merits
Things get a bit more interesting, ALD is still number 1, but Hudson drops to number 3 and all the powers are in a more natural looking distribution of players. Whats the true distribution of players? Probably somewhere between the two charts, but neither of these charts includes all the merits from undermining, because the raw data doesn't show where that comes from.
The other interesting thing is the total number of merits that Mahon is able to get away with for being ranked number 1 for so long, and only this week dropping to number 2.
Effective Merits
So thats the grinder charts. Who cares if your Power has more players at rating 5, you need to be able to earn your merits efficiently to be the most help to your Power.
This here sums us a seismic shift in PP. Hudson is doing the same amount of effective work as ALD.
You can see again the purple sections on ALD and Hudson dominating where they earn their merits, and the same large ratio is also on Delaine, although he obviously has a much smaller player base. Patreus also has a large amount of his merits coming from expansions, and all 4 of these powers expand through combat. Antal had no systems to expand to, so you don't see the same thing for him this week.
Perhaps most of these expansion merits could be considered waste, since they are usually many times more than what was needed to secure the expansion.
So here are the effective merits just for fortification and preparation. I think this is the most interesting chart.
Aisling number 1, Hudson number 2, ALD number 3 and Winters number 4, not much between them, but another chart showing ALD not having a commanding lead, and in fact not even being first or second.
So do I think Hudson has the same number of players as ALD?
No.
They are certainly doing the same amount of effective proven merits, that is, fortification, preparation and expansion.
ALD has hit a wall on how many merits they can actually earn.
They are winning all their expansions, are fortifying a massive amount each week, and can show they can fortify 100%, and they are preparing the systems they want.
Earning more merits for them doesn't actually do anything.
Opposition
This is the part I always like to see, what silly amount of opposition have been thrown at Archon Delaine this week?
Well here's a surprise, Mahon has the most amount of total opposition, Winters was publicly targeted by ALD, then Aisling and Patreus joined the attack later in the week, but opposition to Mahon was still greater, without any Power publicly stating it was them.
Delaine and Hudson receive their usual high opposition and Sirius rounds out the Powers who were opposed in any meaningful way.
The effective opposition tells a similar story
Archon Delaine takes out the top spot, with a large ratio of opposition to his expansions, and then Winters, Hudson and Mahon round out the top 4.
You can also see most of the opposition to Sirius is just mindless grinding
Antal and the Empire were basically left alone
Weekly Progress
And now the charts looking from week 6 to 22.
First one, Fortification:
ALD did another record number of total fortifications, but this didn't translate into 100% of their systems getting fortified.
Aisling did her usual large amount of fortification, but its not been as much in the recent weeks as in the past, and with her bad starting CC balance it wasn't enough to defend against a small amount of undermining.
The real mover here is Winters. On the left chart you can see the orange line jump up, but whats impressive is its position on the right hand chart. Just a massive amount of effective merits.
You can just make out Antals yellow line, its been growing by a large % recently, in response to his worsening economy, and you can see it die off last week at they attempt to go into a controlled Turmoil.
Weekly Undermining:
You can see the total undermining ALD received to be undermined 100% 2 weeks ago was by no means a record, but the right hand chart shows how little waste there was and is the current record holder for most total effective undermining.
I believe the previous record holder on Hudson in week 18 was also due to his expansion at AF L.
Total undermining on Winters actually dropped very slightly, but the efficiency of it was much improved.
Weekly Expansion Opposition
The data is missing here for weeks 13 and 16
Welcome to Archon Delaines house.
Opposition on the Pirate Lord is down from the sky high records of a few weeks ago.
Hudson makes up the second place, but as seen on the other charts, Hudson has a massive amount of expansion merits which easily counteract this amount of opposition.
Opposition for the other powers is very low by comparison with Delaine, but Mahon seem to usually be the 3rd most opposed.
In this chart you can more clearly see the opposition against Delaine vs everyone else combined
Undermining and Opposition
Not much to see on this chart, Hudson, Winters, Mahon and Delaine are all attacked the most, at somewhat similar levels, Antal and the Imperials are left alone, but ALD has been getting attacked much more recently, and its effects have shown with the amount of time since she was ranked number 1.
Powers Summary and Speculation
1 Hudson
Hudson moved back into 1st place, after securing 4 new control systems, taking his total to 75, with 1034 total systems and a population of 902 Billion.
More importantly he has a very healthy weekly starting CC amount of 663.
This gives him lots of wiggle room to avoid Turmoil due to undermining, and lots of room for further system expansion.
You can see on the above charts that Hudson is neck and neck with ALD when it comes to effective merits, and they certainly deserve to be in the top 2.
This week should be another interesting one for Hudson with the AF Leporis saga continuing.
I've had nothing to do with AF Leporis, but personally I think its the best thing thats happened in PP, and its a shame there isn't more if this.
Very brief summary, Sirius had AF Leporis, they lost it, and they, ALD and Hudson have all tried to take possession of it for many weeks.
There have been preparation wars between different powers for a system they all want (this shouldn't be a rare thing but it really is) and Powers have been put into Turmoil to make their winning expansion fail.
ALD will try to fully undermine Hudson, and probably try to enlist the help of the other 3 Imperial Powers, Sirius, Antal, Mahon and Delaine probably won't get involved.
2 Mahon
The Prime Minister has held onto first place for many weeks, but even with 2 new expansions it wasn't enough to keep back the Hudson juggernaut.
That brings Mahons total number of control systems to 73, total number of systems to 1066 and a population of 805 billion.
With Hudson in a galactic struggle with the Empire, Turmoil is possible, which could more Mahon back into 1st place, but should Hudson fortify enough, it would be very difficult to see the Alliance ranked at number 1 at the end of the week.
The charts above show that Mahon is punching above his weight in regards to his Players merits and his galactic ranking, but charts can't tell the full story.
Mahon is sitting on the most profitable systems in the Galaxy, which translates into needing to do much less fortifying to avoid Turmoil.
He has a massive weekly starting cc balance of 1094, which means there is plenty of room for further expansion.
ALD has more players, and may be able to move Mahon down to 3rd spot at some future date, but its hard to see anyone else being able to move above him.
3 ALD
ALD moved back into the top 3, and was able to fortify out of Turmoil without any loss of systems, and securing an expansion taking her to 71 control systems. Although this is a similar number of systems to Hudson and Mahon, her total population is only 585 billion, which might play a part in her lower ranking.
At the moment ALD as 2 main hindrances (other than Hudson and Mahon) stopping her getting to the number 1 slot.
Her weekly starting balance is -301, which means she needs to fortify around 12 systems to avoid Turmoil, before anyone even undermines her, and even if all her systems are fortified, she can still be put into Turmoil, as happened 2 cycles ago
The second problem is the growing gap between her total player merits and effective merits. This isn't just an annoying waste of potential, the fortification grinding culture makes it very difficult to shed the bad systems that are causing the -301 starting balance, and until this is fixed ALD could hit Turmoil without her players having any chance to stop it.
If ALD is able to push Hudson into Turmoil this week, it may be enough to push him down to 3rd, and her up to 2nd, but its difficult to see how she could move ahead of Mahon this week.
4 Sirius
Sirius is another Power like Mahon punching above their weight, with 2 more systems added they have just risen to the lofty heights of 4th.
They have a similar strategy of neutrality to Mahon, and Antal, expand everything profitable they can, and sit back and let the Federation and Empire knock lumps out of each other.
This week would be an ideal time for the neutrality to be dropped, and join ALDs attack on Hudson, but I don't see that happening.
Its probably for the best, because their entire territory is based on the kindness of strangers, and the federation has shown their ability to do massive amounts of effective undermining.
Sirius is in a territorial speculative bubble, and they will continue to need to work overtime on diplomacy to delay when the bubble bursts.
They just don't have the player numbers to fortify 100% of their systems, but that might be needed to stop a dedicated attack from pushing them into Turmoil.
With most of the galaxies profitable systems already claimed, its only a matter of time before someone snipes them again, and AF Leporis the second begins.
Until then Sirius should be secure in the top 5, but with only 1 expansion this week, which they are trying to lose, Winters will probably move ahead of them.
5 Winters
The Shadow President was the only Power to not change position at the end of the week, but it was hardly uneventful.
Winters was in Turmoil and ALD began the week with the goal of keeping them there.
Mid cycle Aisling joined the attack, then Patreus, and things got so serious the Imperial High Command announced Winters as their target, which is the first time I am aware of any target being nominated by the IHC other than Archon Delaine.
Winters was able to fortify enough to leave Turmoil without a loss of any systems, but the effort curbed their undermining activities, with all 4 Imperial Powers receiving low amounts.
It is yet to be seen if Aisling and Patreus will continue their attack on Winters, but with ALD focused on Hudson any attack would be lessened from the previous cycle.
Winter will probably move above Sirius at the end of the week, and if Hudson hits Turmoil its possible Winters would move past him into 3rd place.
6 Aisling
I could write a whole book on Aisling Duval and her Players.
As seen in the charts above, Aisling has the 3rd most players, but she isn't always ranked in the top 3, and tumbled down to 6th.
She has the same 2 problems as ALD, but both seem worse.
A terrible starting economy, somewhere around -700, and a large number of fortification grinders who fortify her bad systems.
Aisling receives record low amounts of undermining most weeks, but every now and then she receives slightly more, and hits Turmoil, all because of that starting cc balance.
It was an eventful week for Aisling Players last cycle. A fairly unified Aisling Player base announced an attack on Winters, in support of ALDs attack.
This resulted in 3 of her systems getting sniped and her falling into Turmoil.
This week will probably be busy with everyone trying to fortify every system, but with her terrible economy even fortifying 100% wont ensure she keeps her systems in Turmoil.
Hudson will probably be too busy this cycle to hit Aisling, which might be enough for them to save their systems.
Its hard to see where Aisling will go from here, there are very few profitable systems within 120ly of her capital, and until her economy is fixed she could keep bouncing between 4rd and 7th
7 Torval
Torval was able to move out of the bottom 3 by securing 2 new systems.
Although Hudson announced Torval as their undermining target, undermining levels were light, and Torval was able to fortify enough and secure 151cc for preparations this week.
She has 2 expansion targets, one terrible, and one very good, although both have been listed as systems they don't want.
If they fail both expansions they could maintain their position above Patreus, and if Aisling stays in Turmoil and loses 3 systems, Torval may move up to 6th place.
This may be short lived after the resignation of one of Torvals main organizers, JemyM
8 Patreus
Patreus moved down one position to 8th after successfully failing both of their loss making expansions but also avoiding Turmoil.
He finds himself in a tough spot, with no profitable systems to expand to and a starting economy on -163.
There is very little to do to fix his economy, Patreus is at, or very near the maximum number of systems he can maintain.
A controlled Turmoil may be the best answer, but losing bad systems is easier said than done.
Patreus doesn't seem to have any where the level of mindless fortifiers that ALD and Aisling do, so although difficult, controlled turmoil could work for him.
It is unknown if Patreus will be assisting ALD in their attack on Hudson, but either way, the Kumo Crew will surely be on their undermining list as usual.
9 Delaine
The Pirate Lord moved up from 10th for the first time in a while.
This was mostly due to him securing 4 expansions and 3 preparations.
Opposition to the Kumo Crew was around the usual very high levels and most of the player efforts were spent fortifying and expanding, not undermining.
With Antal going into Turmoil, Archon Delaine becomes the only power to have never entered Turmoil.
Undermining may be down slightly this week, with ALDs attention on Hudson, but level are expected to be very high.
10 Antal
Antal dropped back to 10th position, partially because they purposefully hit Turmoil.
So far the controlled Turmoil is going as planned, 7 bad systems are ready to be shed, if the turmoil can continue into next week.
No power has been able to do this successfully yet, all eyes will be on Antal to see the result.
They will have to be careful with their fortifications, too much and they won't lose all 7 systems, not enough and more systems will go into Turmoil. As long as they feel confident on fortifying out of it, the best bet is to fortify not enough this week, to ensure all 7 systems are lost.
Time will tell is another Power takes this opportunity to carve a piece out of Utopia for themselves.
Its been quite a while since Cadoc wrote one of his PP weekly reports.
Corrigendum has taken over with a small group of players representing each Power (myself included) but its become just the Galnet summary.
What I enjoyed about Cadocs articles was his analysis and speculation.
I disagreed with most of his conclusions, but it was enjoyable to read nonetheless.
So here's my take on cycle 22, hopefully its useful to some of you, even if you disagree with my speculations
The raw data is available for everyone to look at, so I won't copy it here, I'll just use charts.
Player Distribution
Above you can see the total number of known merits earned by Power.
Whats striking to me is the now small gap between Hudson and ALD.
Aisling is still secure in number 3, and the other 7 powers have much less between them.
Hudson players earned slightly less (2336488 vs 2393600) than the 8 smaller powers combined.
Although ALD and Hudson certainly have the 2 highest amounts of player participation, their combat expansion method dominates the merits earned and skews the results. This is also true of Delaine, Patreus and Antal, who also expand with combat.
So here is the same chart, without expansion merits
Things get a bit more interesting, ALD is still number 1, but Hudson drops to number 3 and all the powers are in a more natural looking distribution of players. Whats the true distribution of players? Probably somewhere between the two charts, but neither of these charts includes all the merits from undermining, because the raw data doesn't show where that comes from.
The other interesting thing is the total number of merits that Mahon is able to get away with for being ranked number 1 for so long, and only this week dropping to number 2.
Effective Merits
So thats the grinder charts. Who cares if your Power has more players at rating 5, you need to be able to earn your merits efficiently to be the most help to your Power.
This here sums us a seismic shift in PP. Hudson is doing the same amount of effective work as ALD.
You can see again the purple sections on ALD and Hudson dominating where they earn their merits, and the same large ratio is also on Delaine, although he obviously has a much smaller player base. Patreus also has a large amount of his merits coming from expansions, and all 4 of these powers expand through combat. Antal had no systems to expand to, so you don't see the same thing for him this week.
Perhaps most of these expansion merits could be considered waste, since they are usually many times more than what was needed to secure the expansion.
So here are the effective merits just for fortification and preparation. I think this is the most interesting chart.
Aisling number 1, Hudson number 2, ALD number 3 and Winters number 4, not much between them, but another chart showing ALD not having a commanding lead, and in fact not even being first or second.
So do I think Hudson has the same number of players as ALD?
No.
They are certainly doing the same amount of effective proven merits, that is, fortification, preparation and expansion.
ALD has hit a wall on how many merits they can actually earn.
They are winning all their expansions, are fortifying a massive amount each week, and can show they can fortify 100%, and they are preparing the systems they want.
Earning more merits for them doesn't actually do anything.
Opposition
This is the part I always like to see, what silly amount of opposition have been thrown at Archon Delaine this week?
Well here's a surprise, Mahon has the most amount of total opposition, Winters was publicly targeted by ALD, then Aisling and Patreus joined the attack later in the week, but opposition to Mahon was still greater, without any Power publicly stating it was them.
Delaine and Hudson receive their usual high opposition and Sirius rounds out the Powers who were opposed in any meaningful way.
The effective opposition tells a similar story
Archon Delaine takes out the top spot, with a large ratio of opposition to his expansions, and then Winters, Hudson and Mahon round out the top 4.
You can also see most of the opposition to Sirius is just mindless grinding
Antal and the Empire were basically left alone
Weekly Progress
And now the charts looking from week 6 to 22.
First one, Fortification:
ALD did another record number of total fortifications, but this didn't translate into 100% of their systems getting fortified.
Aisling did her usual large amount of fortification, but its not been as much in the recent weeks as in the past, and with her bad starting CC balance it wasn't enough to defend against a small amount of undermining.
The real mover here is Winters. On the left chart you can see the orange line jump up, but whats impressive is its position on the right hand chart. Just a massive amount of effective merits.
You can just make out Antals yellow line, its been growing by a large % recently, in response to his worsening economy, and you can see it die off last week at they attempt to go into a controlled Turmoil.
Weekly Undermining:
You can see the total undermining ALD received to be undermined 100% 2 weeks ago was by no means a record, but the right hand chart shows how little waste there was and is the current record holder for most total effective undermining.
I believe the previous record holder on Hudson in week 18 was also due to his expansion at AF L.
Total undermining on Winters actually dropped very slightly, but the efficiency of it was much improved.
Weekly Expansion Opposition
The data is missing here for weeks 13 and 16
Welcome to Archon Delaines house.
Opposition on the Pirate Lord is down from the sky high records of a few weeks ago.
Hudson makes up the second place, but as seen on the other charts, Hudson has a massive amount of expansion merits which easily counteract this amount of opposition.
Opposition for the other powers is very low by comparison with Delaine, but Mahon seem to usually be the 3rd most opposed.
In this chart you can more clearly see the opposition against Delaine vs everyone else combined
Undermining and Opposition
Not much to see on this chart, Hudson, Winters, Mahon and Delaine are all attacked the most, at somewhat similar levels, Antal and the Imperials are left alone, but ALD has been getting attacked much more recently, and its effects have shown with the amount of time since she was ranked number 1.
Powers Summary and Speculation
1 Hudson
Hudson moved back into 1st place, after securing 4 new control systems, taking his total to 75, with 1034 total systems and a population of 902 Billion.
More importantly he has a very healthy weekly starting CC amount of 663.
This gives him lots of wiggle room to avoid Turmoil due to undermining, and lots of room for further system expansion.
You can see on the above charts that Hudson is neck and neck with ALD when it comes to effective merits, and they certainly deserve to be in the top 2.
This week should be another interesting one for Hudson with the AF Leporis saga continuing.
I've had nothing to do with AF Leporis, but personally I think its the best thing thats happened in PP, and its a shame there isn't more if this.
Very brief summary, Sirius had AF Leporis, they lost it, and they, ALD and Hudson have all tried to take possession of it for many weeks.
There have been preparation wars between different powers for a system they all want (this shouldn't be a rare thing but it really is) and Powers have been put into Turmoil to make their winning expansion fail.
ALD will try to fully undermine Hudson, and probably try to enlist the help of the other 3 Imperial Powers, Sirius, Antal, Mahon and Delaine probably won't get involved.
2 Mahon
The Prime Minister has held onto first place for many weeks, but even with 2 new expansions it wasn't enough to keep back the Hudson juggernaut.
That brings Mahons total number of control systems to 73, total number of systems to 1066 and a population of 805 billion.
With Hudson in a galactic struggle with the Empire, Turmoil is possible, which could more Mahon back into 1st place, but should Hudson fortify enough, it would be very difficult to see the Alliance ranked at number 1 at the end of the week.
The charts above show that Mahon is punching above his weight in regards to his Players merits and his galactic ranking, but charts can't tell the full story.
Mahon is sitting on the most profitable systems in the Galaxy, which translates into needing to do much less fortifying to avoid Turmoil.
He has a massive weekly starting cc balance of 1094, which means there is plenty of room for further expansion.
ALD has more players, and may be able to move Mahon down to 3rd spot at some future date, but its hard to see anyone else being able to move above him.
3 ALD
ALD moved back into the top 3, and was able to fortify out of Turmoil without any loss of systems, and securing an expansion taking her to 71 control systems. Although this is a similar number of systems to Hudson and Mahon, her total population is only 585 billion, which might play a part in her lower ranking.
At the moment ALD as 2 main hindrances (other than Hudson and Mahon) stopping her getting to the number 1 slot.
Her weekly starting balance is -301, which means she needs to fortify around 12 systems to avoid Turmoil, before anyone even undermines her, and even if all her systems are fortified, she can still be put into Turmoil, as happened 2 cycles ago
The second problem is the growing gap between her total player merits and effective merits. This isn't just an annoying waste of potential, the fortification grinding culture makes it very difficult to shed the bad systems that are causing the -301 starting balance, and until this is fixed ALD could hit Turmoil without her players having any chance to stop it.
If ALD is able to push Hudson into Turmoil this week, it may be enough to push him down to 3rd, and her up to 2nd, but its difficult to see how she could move ahead of Mahon this week.
4 Sirius
Sirius is another Power like Mahon punching above their weight, with 2 more systems added they have just risen to the lofty heights of 4th.
They have a similar strategy of neutrality to Mahon, and Antal, expand everything profitable they can, and sit back and let the Federation and Empire knock lumps out of each other.
This week would be an ideal time for the neutrality to be dropped, and join ALDs attack on Hudson, but I don't see that happening.
Its probably for the best, because their entire territory is based on the kindness of strangers, and the federation has shown their ability to do massive amounts of effective undermining.
Sirius is in a territorial speculative bubble, and they will continue to need to work overtime on diplomacy to delay when the bubble bursts.
They just don't have the player numbers to fortify 100% of their systems, but that might be needed to stop a dedicated attack from pushing them into Turmoil.
With most of the galaxies profitable systems already claimed, its only a matter of time before someone snipes them again, and AF Leporis the second begins.
Until then Sirius should be secure in the top 5, but with only 1 expansion this week, which they are trying to lose, Winters will probably move ahead of them.
5 Winters
The Shadow President was the only Power to not change position at the end of the week, but it was hardly uneventful.
Winters was in Turmoil and ALD began the week with the goal of keeping them there.
Mid cycle Aisling joined the attack, then Patreus, and things got so serious the Imperial High Command announced Winters as their target, which is the first time I am aware of any target being nominated by the IHC other than Archon Delaine.
Winters was able to fortify enough to leave Turmoil without a loss of any systems, but the effort curbed their undermining activities, with all 4 Imperial Powers receiving low amounts.
It is yet to be seen if Aisling and Patreus will continue their attack on Winters, but with ALD focused on Hudson any attack would be lessened from the previous cycle.
Winter will probably move above Sirius at the end of the week, and if Hudson hits Turmoil its possible Winters would move past him into 3rd place.
6 Aisling
I could write a whole book on Aisling Duval and her Players.
As seen in the charts above, Aisling has the 3rd most players, but she isn't always ranked in the top 3, and tumbled down to 6th.
She has the same 2 problems as ALD, but both seem worse.
A terrible starting economy, somewhere around -700, and a large number of fortification grinders who fortify her bad systems.
Aisling receives record low amounts of undermining most weeks, but every now and then she receives slightly more, and hits Turmoil, all because of that starting cc balance.
It was an eventful week for Aisling Players last cycle. A fairly unified Aisling Player base announced an attack on Winters, in support of ALDs attack.
This resulted in 3 of her systems getting sniped and her falling into Turmoil.
This week will probably be busy with everyone trying to fortify every system, but with her terrible economy even fortifying 100% wont ensure she keeps her systems in Turmoil.
Hudson will probably be too busy this cycle to hit Aisling, which might be enough for them to save their systems.
Its hard to see where Aisling will go from here, there are very few profitable systems within 120ly of her capital, and until her economy is fixed she could keep bouncing between 4rd and 7th
7 Torval
Torval was able to move out of the bottom 3 by securing 2 new systems.
Although Hudson announced Torval as their undermining target, undermining levels were light, and Torval was able to fortify enough and secure 151cc for preparations this week.
She has 2 expansion targets, one terrible, and one very good, although both have been listed as systems they don't want.
If they fail both expansions they could maintain their position above Patreus, and if Aisling stays in Turmoil and loses 3 systems, Torval may move up to 6th place.
This may be short lived after the resignation of one of Torvals main organizers, JemyM
8 Patreus
Patreus moved down one position to 8th after successfully failing both of their loss making expansions but also avoiding Turmoil.
He finds himself in a tough spot, with no profitable systems to expand to and a starting economy on -163.
There is very little to do to fix his economy, Patreus is at, or very near the maximum number of systems he can maintain.
A controlled Turmoil may be the best answer, but losing bad systems is easier said than done.
Patreus doesn't seem to have any where the level of mindless fortifiers that ALD and Aisling do, so although difficult, controlled turmoil could work for him.
It is unknown if Patreus will be assisting ALD in their attack on Hudson, but either way, the Kumo Crew will surely be on their undermining list as usual.
9 Delaine
The Pirate Lord moved up from 10th for the first time in a while.
This was mostly due to him securing 4 expansions and 3 preparations.
Opposition to the Kumo Crew was around the usual very high levels and most of the player efforts were spent fortifying and expanding, not undermining.
With Antal going into Turmoil, Archon Delaine becomes the only power to have never entered Turmoil.
Undermining may be down slightly this week, with ALDs attention on Hudson, but level are expected to be very high.
10 Antal
Antal dropped back to 10th position, partially because they purposefully hit Turmoil.
So far the controlled Turmoil is going as planned, 7 bad systems are ready to be shed, if the turmoil can continue into next week.
No power has been able to do this successfully yet, all eyes will be on Antal to see the result.
They will have to be careful with their fortifications, too much and they won't lose all 7 systems, not enough and more systems will go into Turmoil. As long as they feel confident on fortifying out of it, the best bet is to fortify not enough this week, to ensure all 7 systems are lost.
Time will tell is another Power takes this opportunity to carve a piece out of Utopia for themselves.
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Excellent read, Fergal.
I, too, am curious about the Antal planned turmoil. I think they stand a good chance of succeeding - they're rarely hit hard by undermining and they don't have a massive grinder issue.
I, too, am curious about the Antal planned turmoil. I think they stand a good chance of succeeding - they're rarely hit hard by undermining and they don't have a massive grinder issue.
Can't rep you more today.
Great work, much appreciated.
Can you clarify what is meant by "effective merits".
Is that ignoring anything over 100% as wasted extra effort?
Does that also ignore anything below 100% wasted insufficient effort?
I'm saddened, but not surprised to hear that JemyM is leaving Torval leadership.
He chose an interesting power and worked hard, but he has often sounded frustrated and over it.
I hope leaving the pressures of office brings him more pleasure from playing the game.
I'm only a casual player, but I have a sense of the scale of effort and continuous commitment needed by leaders.
Salute!
Great work, much appreciated.
Can you clarify what is meant by "effective merits".
Is that ignoring anything over 100% as wasted extra effort?
Does that also ignore anything below 100% wasted insufficient effort?
I'm saddened, but not surprised to hear that JemyM is leaving Torval leadership.
He chose an interesting power and worked hard, but he has often sounded frustrated and over it.
I hope leaving the pressures of office brings him more pleasure from playing the game.
I'm only a casual player, but I have a sense of the scale of effort and continuous commitment needed by leaders.
Salute!
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Sadly I can't rep you again yet, so here is a +1.
Yeah, old news. But we know exactly who it it is doing it. You don't need to be a genius to work it out. HudsACHOOO! Sorry ArisAchoo!... Scuse me, just going to get a tissue.
Yeah, old news. But we know exactly who it it is doing it. You don't need to be a genius to work it out. HudsACHOOO! Sorry ArisAchoo!... Scuse me, just going to get a tissue.
For fortification and undermining, the exact amount of merits used to get to the 100% trigger is what I used as effective, so if it wasn't fortified, all those merits were wasted, and everything over was also wastage.
For Preparation all the merits that went into a successfully prepared system were used for efficiency, and any merits in a system not successfully prepped was waste.
For Expansion and expansion opposition I haven't calculated any wastage, which is one reason for the lead of ALD and Hudson over everyone else on the efficiency graphs.
Its a tricky one to do, over 100% isn't a waste, but at some point there is an insurmountable lead and it needs to be recognized as waste.
I'm aware of more than 600% being put into expansions at the last moment, perhaps everything over 1000% in front should be listed as waste?
I automate this in mine. Granted, the numbers are typically from a few hours before the cycle tick, but it's the same principle. If you need 10,000 merits to win an expansion and you have 10,001 merits, that's 1 wasted merit. It's a bit harsh, but it's the same principle as applied everywhere else.
I could do that, I just think its not that simple. With fortification and undermining there is no doubt going over 100% is a waste, there is no need for a buffer.
But with expansion you don't know what will get dumped on you in the last few hours.
Since Delaine gets the most opposition it might be only him that is dumping 500% or more on the last day in it to win, maybe it is a waste for everyone else.
You are correct. The same applies for preparation wars. The buffer is quite important, I was just saying how I do it in expansions.
I didn't chop the preparation either, I'm assuming you do?
I put all the prep from the systems that didn't go to expansions into waste, but I kept all the prep for the ones that did, no matter how hight it was.
No - but that's a very good point. If I'm not chopping the preparations I shouldn't chop the expansions either or vice versa.
Of course if I do chop preps the question becomes one of "*how*". Those you didn't get would obviously be complete waste, but suppose you won two preps out of six possible, and number two was a prep war, would number one on the list show all but 100 merits as waste? It makes more sense to not make it a waste and similarly for expansions.
Thank you, I've got a little bit to add, and I didn't post any of the weekly comparison charts.
I think I'll also go with Martin Schou book of efficiency, if it ain't perfect, its a waste
This will chop down the expansion merits quite a bit.
Thank you, I've got a little bit to add, and I didn't post any of the weekly comparison charts.
I think I'll also go with Martin Schou book of efficiency, if it ain't perfect, its a waste
This will chop down the expansion merits quite a bit.
You should pop round our TS some time. There might be some good knowledge sharing to be done.