Cycle 23 is over, raw data is out.
Martin Schou's effective merit analysis: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet..._TXfIX60dlFNKnYX1wq8pKc49k/edit#gid=185735328
Link to week 22: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=197561
So, cycle 23 was the big Galactic Showdown between ALD and Hudson for AF Leporis (again)
Known Merits
Here are the total known merits (Preparation, Expansion and Fortification)
Whats plainly obvious is Hudson Players did all the work last week. ALD had no expansions, but did put a big effort into Preparations.
Hudson players did 47% of all known merits., so not quite as much as the other 9 Powers combined, but very very close.
Aisling is still comfortable in 3rd place, and Mahon and Winters are very close for 4th.
Interestingly Patreus takes last place this week, even though Antal also had no expansions to earn merits at.
Delaine has a fairly even distribution of merits from all 3 sources, which is very rare for any power.
And here are the total merits with expansions removed:
Here you can see ALD clearly having more merits than Hudson, but Hudson is above Aisling, unlike last week.
Thats the grinder charts, lets look at the important ones, the effective merits:
There it is, Hudson smashing all other Powers with 56% (thats more than half) of all known merits earned.
Mot much more really to say, ALD and Aisling comfortable in 2nd and 3rd place.
And lets look at effective merits without the expansion merits:
Here you can see the massive amount of merits ALD put into preparations, and you can also see that Hudson put more effective merits into his fortifications than Aisling, even though Aisling fortified 100% of her systems.
Winters was a little bit better than Mahon, and Patreus and Antal swapped positions from the total to effective charts.
So, how much did Hudson (and Aisling) fortify?
You can see on the left hand side chart, ALD still hold the record for most total fortification, and did the most total fortification last week again.
But on the effective chart on the right you can see that Aisling set a new record for most amount of effective fortification, well she would have, except Hudson did even better.
Aislings been up to similar amount of effective fortification before, but Hudson smashed what they normally do.
Everyone elses fortification is at their usual levels, you can see Winters dropped back down from the large amount they did last week.
Opposition
You can see Hudson had the most total opposition, followed by Archon Delaine, with Mahon and Winters taking out the top 4 spots.
Sirius was 5th as usual, with the Empire and Antal receiving effectively no opposition as usual.
The effective opposition tells a similar story
It looks like some of the opposition that Winters and Mahon normally receive was moved onto Hudson, with Delaine being the second most opposed Power.
Sirius again had a very large amount of wasted opposition on them, their effective numbers were around the low levels ALD and Aisling received.
Toval moved into last position as the least opposed power.
The weekly comparison chart gives a good overview
You can see the efforts put against Hudson moved him above the normal public enemy number 1, Archon Delaine, who also encountered an uptick of opposition.
Winters and Mahon in the middle, everyone else down the bottom.
Speculation and Commentary, Updated 13/11/15
So what happened with AF Leporis?
Hudson certainly was attacked the most, and they more than countered it with the most effective fortification amount so far.
Was it a close struggle?
Nope.
In fact Hudson was about as far from being put into Turmoil as any power has been.
On the expansion front it was about as one sided, 920913 vs 360931.
Opposition to Archon Delaines 3 expansions was higher at 366690
ALD had no expansions of their own, they should have had 1.5 - 2 million merits worth of combat grinders good to go oppose.
If this happened the result would have been different, but it didn't.
These 2 million merits just vanished for ALD in cycle 23.
Why was this?
There was a BH CG in ALD space (something that really shouldn't be allowed, all it does is magnify their overpowered faction bonus), and at the same time a nerf to their BH bonus was announced.
These 2 things together might have made their expansion players decide for one last chance to earn 100s of millions of merits this week.
1 Hudson
The Federation President held onto 1st place with 3 expansion, bringing his weekly score to 85%.
He has 1349cc to spend on preparations this week, which means there is a high likelihood of 2 or more bad preparations making it onto his list, which will be all but unstoppable in the expansion phase.
He will be unlikely to face the amount of opposition seen last week, and will have to put a large effort into controlling his prep list, perhaps a new record amount of prep spent in one week?
With only 1 expansion (which will win easily) Mahon is still breathing down his neck, and staying in 1st place will not be easy. Unless he hits Turmoil, there is no chance of him dropping down to 4th next week, and ALD is another one to watch out for moving above Hudson.
Hudons players are targeting ALD for undermining, obviously for the purpose of maintaining his top 2 position, and this will also help Winters to move up into 3rd place if successful.
2 Mahon
The Alliance Prime Minister secured 2 new systems, bringing his weekly score to 83% vs Hudsons 85%.
He still sits on a massive 1104cc before fortification and undermining, and with 3 expansions will likely move above Hudson if all are successful.
None of these 3 expansions are bad, so all should be attempted to be expanded.
All diplomatic avenues should be used to keep Hudson and ALD at each others throats, although its becoming clear that the high undermining levels Mahon gets each week already come from Hudson and ALD players.
As usual it will be extremely difficult for Mahon to be pushed into Turmoil, and if this doesn't happen, 3rd place should be the worst position he finds himself in at the end of the cycle.
3 ALD
The Emperor had a bad week with the failure to stop Hudson from gaining AF L, and with no expansions, merits earned by her players were down.
A massive amount was spend on preparation (260000 merits) and this week she has 8 expansion, ranging from good to mediocre (which is all you can hope for at this stage) and all will probably be expanded easily.
With 8 new systems ALD could move into the 1st position, but ALD is vulnerable to being pushed into Turmoil, even if she fortifies 100% of her systems.
Fortification should be her players number one priority if she is to have any hope of gaining the number 1 position.
This in turn makes ALD the logical target this week for the federation to attack.
Will this week have a new record for total effective undermining merits?
ALD players have launched Operation Hades, which is aimed at preparing a system right next to Winters Capital, deep in federation territory.
Its a bold plan (I know someone thought of doing something similar in cycle 4) and it will be interesting to see how many expansion merits ALD players can bring to it so far from their home, when they could only do 360000 in opposition to AF L.
ALD certainly needs to change something, to help fix their -300 starting economy.
4 Winters
The other half of the Federation moved up one place past Sirius and officially had what looks to be a quiet week (for Winters).
Undermining levels on her were down, ALD focused more on Hudson, and Patreus seemed to abandon helping Aisling in their continuing hostilities with Winters.
What is apparent is Aisling on her own can't push Winters into Turmoil.
If she wins all 3 of her expansions she wont move above ALD, unless ALDs 8 expansions fail. This may very well be their primary focus, but its just as likely that Aisling will be pushed back into Turmoil by Winters if hostilities continue.
As mentioned above, ALD has launched Operation Hades, which plans to prepare a system right next to Winters Capital.
This will force Winters to out prep it this week, which will leave them with a terrible system to expand.
The other alternatives are to oppose its expansion next week, or to push ALD into Turmoil in 2 weeks time, which may allow them to shed some bad systems, if they hit Turmoil this week.
5 Sirius
Sirius slid down one position even though they got 1 expansion, Met 20, a system they didn't even want.
Opposition to Sirius has been rising in the last few weeks, and with the number of profitable systems in the galaxy fast running out, Sirius has very few preparation options, and is looking more and more like a juicy morsel for the Federation and Empire to start eating.
With a starting cc balance of 181 there isn't much wiggle room for Sirius to fight off undermining.
Bad preparation systems are becoming a bigger problem, especially for the smaller powers, and clearing them from the Prep list will drain needed merits from Sirius's fortifications.
No power is publicly attacking Sirius, and until this changes they should be secure in 5th or 6th position, but it will be very difficult for Sirius to move ahead of Winters unless they are pushed into Turmoil.
This week he sits on 58% along with Aisling, neutrality may no longer be the best position for Sirius, but there are no indications his players are moving to support the Empire over the Federation, or vice versa.
6 Aisling
As seen above, Aisling did a massive amount of effective fortifying, and it would have been the most ever, except Hudson did even more.
Aisling was hit with a low amount of undermining, but this was enough for one of her systems in Turmoil to be lost, even though she fortified 100% of her systems.
This all comes down to her terrible CC balance before undermining and fortification of -765.
With no easy way (it may very well be impossible if Torval, ALD or Patreus start taking the systems she loses) to fix this situation, a rethink on her war with Winters may need to be made.
The only profitable place for her to expand to is in systems other Imperial Powers lose, but until the player base is willing to promote this there don't seem to be many systems left for Aisling to expand to.
With the 3rd most active player base, but the worse economy, its hard to predict where Aisling will be ranked week to week, but it seems certain that there will be more fluctuations on her ranking than anyone else.
7 Torval
Torval was able to fail expanding in her one bad expansions, while win her one good expansion, which put her score on 49% vs 52% for Aisling.
Although the "good" expansion has a profit of 123cc, it pushed Torvals overheads up by 170cc, giving her a weekly starting balance, before undermining and fortification, of -86.
This puts Torval in a similar position as Sirius, not enough players to fight off a large scale dedicated attack
She has one expansion this week, and Aisling has none, so may very well move past Aisling to 6th position. If Aisling is put back into Turmoil this should be a certainty.
With Patreus in Turmoil ranked behind her, there is no chance she should move down a rank, but with her overheads set to go up by 176 more if she wins her expansion, Torval may be her own worst enemy.
8 Patreus
The Senator was pushed into Turmoil although it is only one system, and one with mediocre income.
Any system loss to Patreus right now will improve his starting cc balance, because of the massive overheads he gains per new system.
This makes is virtually impossible for any further expansion, and may very well be a case of him needing to lose one, to gain one, then fall back into Turmoil to lose a system.
Unless the population of the "bottom" end of inhabited space is increased, there is nowhere left for Patreus to expand to, other than lost systems from the other 3 Imperial Powers.
The Kumo Crew will likely be the primary target once again.
9 Delaine
The Kumo Crew was able to push Patreus into Turmoil, but it wasn't enough to move ahead in the rankings with scores of 30% vs 32%
One expansion was won by Delaine, although it was an unwanted system which has pushed his starting cc balance down to 990, which is still the second best after Mahon.
The Crew attempted to go into Turmoil in the last 24 hours to stop the expansion, but the Empire ended their undermining attack in response.
An abnormally large amount of preparation was spent on cleaning up the list, but with no profitable systems in Delaines part of space, every expansion brings its own problems.
Patreus will be the main focus of his attacks again, and he should move into 8th place if he can get Patreus to lose a system.
The Sirius expansion at Dhak will also get opposed by the Kumo Crew.
With Antals reduced number of systems, and no expansion, there will be very little between their scores, and moving back down to 10th is a possibility.
10 Antal
The crazy Utopians did it.
Their controlled implosion shed 7 bad systems and their starting cc balance moved from -300 to 400.
Undoubtedly a new system on the edge of the known universe will be prepared soon, until then, the Utopians can bask in their own glory of being the only Power able to successfully remove bad systems.
Time will tell if all new bad systems replace the old ones, or if a new profitable path can be followed. With very little good systems left, it may be time for Utopia to look towards Patreus for their future growth.
One last Picture for everyone
Martin Schou's effective merit analysis: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet..._TXfIX60dlFNKnYX1wq8pKc49k/edit#gid=185735328
Link to week 22: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=197561
So, cycle 23 was the big Galactic Showdown between ALD and Hudson for AF Leporis (again)
Known Merits
Here are the total known merits (Preparation, Expansion and Fortification)
Whats plainly obvious is Hudson Players did all the work last week. ALD had no expansions, but did put a big effort into Preparations.
Hudson players did 47% of all known merits., so not quite as much as the other 9 Powers combined, but very very close.
Aisling is still comfortable in 3rd place, and Mahon and Winters are very close for 4th.
Interestingly Patreus takes last place this week, even though Antal also had no expansions to earn merits at.
Delaine has a fairly even distribution of merits from all 3 sources, which is very rare for any power.
And here are the total merits with expansions removed:
Here you can see ALD clearly having more merits than Hudson, but Hudson is above Aisling, unlike last week.
Thats the grinder charts, lets look at the important ones, the effective merits:
There it is, Hudson smashing all other Powers with 56% (thats more than half) of all known merits earned.
Mot much more really to say, ALD and Aisling comfortable in 2nd and 3rd place.
And lets look at effective merits without the expansion merits:
Here you can see the massive amount of merits ALD put into preparations, and you can also see that Hudson put more effective merits into his fortifications than Aisling, even though Aisling fortified 100% of her systems.
Winters was a little bit better than Mahon, and Patreus and Antal swapped positions from the total to effective charts.
So, how much did Hudson (and Aisling) fortify?
You can see on the left hand side chart, ALD still hold the record for most total fortification, and did the most total fortification last week again.
But on the effective chart on the right you can see that Aisling set a new record for most amount of effective fortification, well she would have, except Hudson did even better.
Aislings been up to similar amount of effective fortification before, but Hudson smashed what they normally do.
Everyone elses fortification is at their usual levels, you can see Winters dropped back down from the large amount they did last week.
Opposition
You can see Hudson had the most total opposition, followed by Archon Delaine, with Mahon and Winters taking out the top 4 spots.
Sirius was 5th as usual, with the Empire and Antal receiving effectively no opposition as usual.
The effective opposition tells a similar story
It looks like some of the opposition that Winters and Mahon normally receive was moved onto Hudson, with Delaine being the second most opposed Power.
Sirius again had a very large amount of wasted opposition on them, their effective numbers were around the low levels ALD and Aisling received.
Toval moved into last position as the least opposed power.
The weekly comparison chart gives a good overview
You can see the efforts put against Hudson moved him above the normal public enemy number 1, Archon Delaine, who also encountered an uptick of opposition.
Winters and Mahon in the middle, everyone else down the bottom.
Speculation and Commentary, Updated 13/11/15
So what happened with AF Leporis?
Hudson certainly was attacked the most, and they more than countered it with the most effective fortification amount so far.
Was it a close struggle?
Nope.
In fact Hudson was about as far from being put into Turmoil as any power has been.
On the expansion front it was about as one sided, 920913 vs 360931.
Opposition to Archon Delaines 3 expansions was higher at 366690
ALD had no expansions of their own, they should have had 1.5 - 2 million merits worth of combat grinders good to go oppose.
If this happened the result would have been different, but it didn't.
These 2 million merits just vanished for ALD in cycle 23.
Why was this?
There was a BH CG in ALD space (something that really shouldn't be allowed, all it does is magnify their overpowered faction bonus), and at the same time a nerf to their BH bonus was announced.
These 2 things together might have made their expansion players decide for one last chance to earn 100s of millions of merits this week.
1 Hudson
The Federation President held onto 1st place with 3 expansion, bringing his weekly score to 85%.
He has 1349cc to spend on preparations this week, which means there is a high likelihood of 2 or more bad preparations making it onto his list, which will be all but unstoppable in the expansion phase.
He will be unlikely to face the amount of opposition seen last week, and will have to put a large effort into controlling his prep list, perhaps a new record amount of prep spent in one week?
With only 1 expansion (which will win easily) Mahon is still breathing down his neck, and staying in 1st place will not be easy. Unless he hits Turmoil, there is no chance of him dropping down to 4th next week, and ALD is another one to watch out for moving above Hudson.
Hudons players are targeting ALD for undermining, obviously for the purpose of maintaining his top 2 position, and this will also help Winters to move up into 3rd place if successful.
2 Mahon
The Alliance Prime Minister secured 2 new systems, bringing his weekly score to 83% vs Hudsons 85%.
He still sits on a massive 1104cc before fortification and undermining, and with 3 expansions will likely move above Hudson if all are successful.
None of these 3 expansions are bad, so all should be attempted to be expanded.
All diplomatic avenues should be used to keep Hudson and ALD at each others throats, although its becoming clear that the high undermining levels Mahon gets each week already come from Hudson and ALD players.
As usual it will be extremely difficult for Mahon to be pushed into Turmoil, and if this doesn't happen, 3rd place should be the worst position he finds himself in at the end of the cycle.
3 ALD
The Emperor had a bad week with the failure to stop Hudson from gaining AF L, and with no expansions, merits earned by her players were down.
A massive amount was spend on preparation (260000 merits) and this week she has 8 expansion, ranging from good to mediocre (which is all you can hope for at this stage) and all will probably be expanded easily.
With 8 new systems ALD could move into the 1st position, but ALD is vulnerable to being pushed into Turmoil, even if she fortifies 100% of her systems.
Fortification should be her players number one priority if she is to have any hope of gaining the number 1 position.
This in turn makes ALD the logical target this week for the federation to attack.
Will this week have a new record for total effective undermining merits?
ALD players have launched Operation Hades, which is aimed at preparing a system right next to Winters Capital, deep in federation territory.
Its a bold plan (I know someone thought of doing something similar in cycle 4) and it will be interesting to see how many expansion merits ALD players can bring to it so far from their home, when they could only do 360000 in opposition to AF L.
ALD certainly needs to change something, to help fix their -300 starting economy.
4 Winters
The other half of the Federation moved up one place past Sirius and officially had what looks to be a quiet week (for Winters).
Undermining levels on her were down, ALD focused more on Hudson, and Patreus seemed to abandon helping Aisling in their continuing hostilities with Winters.
What is apparent is Aisling on her own can't push Winters into Turmoil.
If she wins all 3 of her expansions she wont move above ALD, unless ALDs 8 expansions fail. This may very well be their primary focus, but its just as likely that Aisling will be pushed back into Turmoil by Winters if hostilities continue.
As mentioned above, ALD has launched Operation Hades, which plans to prepare a system right next to Winters Capital.
This will force Winters to out prep it this week, which will leave them with a terrible system to expand.
The other alternatives are to oppose its expansion next week, or to push ALD into Turmoil in 2 weeks time, which may allow them to shed some bad systems, if they hit Turmoil this week.
5 Sirius
Sirius slid down one position even though they got 1 expansion, Met 20, a system they didn't even want.
Opposition to Sirius has been rising in the last few weeks, and with the number of profitable systems in the galaxy fast running out, Sirius has very few preparation options, and is looking more and more like a juicy morsel for the Federation and Empire to start eating.
With a starting cc balance of 181 there isn't much wiggle room for Sirius to fight off undermining.
Bad preparation systems are becoming a bigger problem, especially for the smaller powers, and clearing them from the Prep list will drain needed merits from Sirius's fortifications.
No power is publicly attacking Sirius, and until this changes they should be secure in 5th or 6th position, but it will be very difficult for Sirius to move ahead of Winters unless they are pushed into Turmoil.
This week he sits on 58% along with Aisling, neutrality may no longer be the best position for Sirius, but there are no indications his players are moving to support the Empire over the Federation, or vice versa.
6 Aisling
As seen above, Aisling did a massive amount of effective fortifying, and it would have been the most ever, except Hudson did even more.
Aisling was hit with a low amount of undermining, but this was enough for one of her systems in Turmoil to be lost, even though she fortified 100% of her systems.
This all comes down to her terrible CC balance before undermining and fortification of -765.
With no easy way (it may very well be impossible if Torval, ALD or Patreus start taking the systems she loses) to fix this situation, a rethink on her war with Winters may need to be made.
The only profitable place for her to expand to is in systems other Imperial Powers lose, but until the player base is willing to promote this there don't seem to be many systems left for Aisling to expand to.
With the 3rd most active player base, but the worse economy, its hard to predict where Aisling will be ranked week to week, but it seems certain that there will be more fluctuations on her ranking than anyone else.
7 Torval
Torval was able to fail expanding in her one bad expansions, while win her one good expansion, which put her score on 49% vs 52% for Aisling.
Although the "good" expansion has a profit of 123cc, it pushed Torvals overheads up by 170cc, giving her a weekly starting balance, before undermining and fortification, of -86.
This puts Torval in a similar position as Sirius, not enough players to fight off a large scale dedicated attack
She has one expansion this week, and Aisling has none, so may very well move past Aisling to 6th position. If Aisling is put back into Turmoil this should be a certainty.
With Patreus in Turmoil ranked behind her, there is no chance she should move down a rank, but with her overheads set to go up by 176 more if she wins her expansion, Torval may be her own worst enemy.
8 Patreus
The Senator was pushed into Turmoil although it is only one system, and one with mediocre income.
Any system loss to Patreus right now will improve his starting cc balance, because of the massive overheads he gains per new system.
This makes is virtually impossible for any further expansion, and may very well be a case of him needing to lose one, to gain one, then fall back into Turmoil to lose a system.
Unless the population of the "bottom" end of inhabited space is increased, there is nowhere left for Patreus to expand to, other than lost systems from the other 3 Imperial Powers.
The Kumo Crew will likely be the primary target once again.
9 Delaine
The Kumo Crew was able to push Patreus into Turmoil, but it wasn't enough to move ahead in the rankings with scores of 30% vs 32%
One expansion was won by Delaine, although it was an unwanted system which has pushed his starting cc balance down to 990, which is still the second best after Mahon.
The Crew attempted to go into Turmoil in the last 24 hours to stop the expansion, but the Empire ended their undermining attack in response.
An abnormally large amount of preparation was spent on cleaning up the list, but with no profitable systems in Delaines part of space, every expansion brings its own problems.
Patreus will be the main focus of his attacks again, and he should move into 8th place if he can get Patreus to lose a system.
The Sirius expansion at Dhak will also get opposed by the Kumo Crew.
With Antals reduced number of systems, and no expansion, there will be very little between their scores, and moving back down to 10th is a possibility.
10 Antal
The crazy Utopians did it.
Their controlled implosion shed 7 bad systems and their starting cc balance moved from -300 to 400.
Undoubtedly a new system on the edge of the known universe will be prepared soon, until then, the Utopians can bask in their own glory of being the only Power able to successfully remove bad systems.
Time will tell if all new bad systems replace the old ones, or if a new profitable path can be followed. With very little good systems left, it may be time for Utopia to look towards Patreus for their future growth.
One last Picture for everyone
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