Raw Data Here
Cycle 24
Cycle 23
Cycle 22
The raw data isn't out yet, and wont be for several hours.
I'll update this post with the charts and numbers when that happens. Update. Raw Data is now available
Until then, there was quite a bit going on last week, and this week is already looking very interesting, so I though I can post my speculations on what is / will be going on.
And thats exactly what it is, speculation, please post any disagreements you have with my points. I will argue with you, but that doesn't make your speculation any less valid
Total Merits
As usual, AL and Hudson dominate the total merits with their expansions:
Aisling 3rd as usual, and Winters and Mahon are close to each other in 4th and 5th position.
Antal was able to prepare again, and you can see a massive proportion on their total merits were from this, which reduced their fortification levels.
Patreus is in last position, but being in Turmoil for the second week, he couldn't earn merits in preparations or expansions
And the totals without the expansion merits:
Aisling and Hudson both put a large amount of Merits into Preparation, with Antal doing the 3rd most total preparation.
Effective Merits
So onto the effective merits:
Because ALD and Hudson both went into Turmoil, they failed all their expansions, so all their expansion merits were waste.
The power who put in the most effective merits was Aisling, with ALD very close behind.
Torval nearly did as much effective fortification as Mahon, which was needed to not hit Turmoil because of her poor cycle starting CC balance.
Opposition
ALD was hit the hardest last cycle, although its hard to tell how much is from legitimate enemies, and how much was from ex-ALD players who defected to Sirius
Patreus, Torval, Aisling and Antal receive basically no opposition as usual.
The effective chart tells a very similar story:
ALD hit the hardest, followed by Winters.
Delaine, Hudson and Mahon received their usual high amount of effective opposition.
You can see the big difference for Sirius between the total and effective opposition. They have one system that just gets grinded on, Heverduduna.
This system received nearly 60% of all undermining on Sirius.
Patreus and Aisling had basically no undermining at all, and Torval and Antal both had 0 systems undermined.
Weekly Charts
You can see the general uptick in effective fortification for most powers.
And you can see the increase in undermining on ALD, but nothing close to record breaking.
The two things that seem to stick out are the high effective vs total undermining on ALD all the time, and the low effective vs total undermining on Sirius all the time.
Speculation and Commentary
This chart shows the starting CC surplus (or deficit) for all the powers for cycle 25.
This is separate from the available cc to prepare with. That number is the balance from the end of cycle 24, these numbers are what everyone starts on before undermining and fortifying.
ALD and Hudson are both in Turmoil, so their true starting balances are actually higher than what the chart shows.
This chart shows the number of control systems, the capital system is not included, so to calculate overhead costs you need to add 1.
This is a good basis for the underlying score for every power. The total number of systems, not just control systems is probably also important, but this gives a good overview.
You can see there are 3 or 4 groupings, Hudson, Mahon and ALD clearly at the top.
Winters Aisling and Sirius in the second grouping.
Torval and Patreus in the third group, but you could combine all 5 of these powers together.
And Antal and Delaine in the last group.
Baring Turmoil and Expansions this is approximately where the Powers will be Ranked.
It actually matches up quite well this week
Both charts above are identical, just two different methods to display the information.
I wouldn't think the information would match up this well normally.
You can see there are 4 scores too low, where the red line or bar is much higher (the number of systems) than the blue line or bar (the score or ranking)
Hudson is slightly off and Hudson is in Turmoil, so this is expected.
ALD is off by a long margin, and is in Turmoil so this is expected, but the difference is much larger than Hudsons, so something else is still obviously involved.
Sirius is off, but isn't in Turmoil, I'm not sure why they went down in ranking by so much last week.
Patreus is not in Turmoil, but they did lose a system, which is one step worse than Turmoil, since Turmoil is just the warning that you could lose a system.
Its not very scientific, but its an interesting comparison.
Mahon 85%
The Prime Minister moves back into the 1st position with 2 successful expansions, and Hudson and ALD both falling into Turmoi.
As usual there was no publicly announced attack on Mahon, and they were deep into a deficit with less than 25 hours left to go, but were able to fortify enough to avoid Turmoil.
Both expansions were not harmful to their starting CC balance, which is still the very high total of 1128, which gives their players a massive amount of undermining that can be absorbed each week.
Hudson has one expansion, just like Mahon, and ALD has no expansions, so should Mahon avoid Turmoil, and both ALD and Hudson get out of Turmoil, Mahon will probably still be ranked number 1, but Hudson should have a very close score, and its difficult to know for certain what will happen, but Mahon will certainly be ranked in the top 3, most likely the top 2.
Hudson 71%
The President and Patreus were the only 2 Powers to not change rank last cycle.
Hudson has fallen into Turmoil with the blessing of many of their players, to stop their harmful expansions into Winters territory.
The actual systems selected for Turmoil are collectively profitable, and this will be the best opportunity for months for the Empire to make Hudson lose Valuable systems.
Hudson also completed the preparation of HIP 44811, which intersects with 12 of ALDs systems, and will certainly be under heavy opposition. This may also make Hudson the primary undermining target of ALD, and perhaps any other Imperial players they can get help from.
Patreus has been listed as the official target of Hudson, which may be a cause of concern for the Senator.
Winters 65%
The Shadow President moves up to the 3rd position.
Last week ALD was expanding a system next to the Winters capital, and the only way to oppose it was to push ALD into Turmoil, which the Federation was able to do.
Hudson was also pushed into Turmoil, which helped stop his expansions, some of which would contest even more of Winters systems, so it was a very good week for Winter.
Patreus has been listed as the official target of Winters this cycle, if anything close to the undermining that ALD faced is brought to Patreus, he may be in the worst Turmoil anyone has seen since Week 5.
With the aggressive preparation of Amuzgo, which contests 11 of ALDs systems, its unclear if ALD should focus their attack on Winters or Hudson, which is probably precisely what the Federation wants.
Aisling 64%
The Peoples Princess moved back up from the bottom 5 into 4th position (only 1% off 3rd) with an expansion into a system they had lost to Turmoil a few weeks ago.
Aisling did her usual massive amount of fortifying, but you can see on the chart far above, she still has the worst starting economy, on -741cc, which means fortification is what most of her players can look forward to.
Preparation is their main focus this week, to ensure they spend their 231cc from last week on profitable systems, to start to help fix their economy.
No official undermining target has been listed by Aisling players yet, but the Pegasi Pirate war is still on their reddit, and they will undoubtedly be attempting to stop Delaines expansion at Dhak.
It is unclear if ALD can get official help from Aisling this week against Hudson or Winters.
With a score very close to Winters, its feasible that Aisling could move into 3rd position if she secures her one expansion and ALD remains in Turmoil, but the Aisling expansion is into a loss making system, so they are probably trying to arrange other Powers to help them fail the expansion.
ALD 57%
The Emperor falls back from 1st to 5th due to hitting Turmoil, but its difficult to see why there was such a big drop in ranking, 3rd seemed more reasonable, particularly after Hudson did not move from 2nd position while also going into Turmoil.
A large part of ALDs score that put her on 1st last week was from gaining 6 expansions, and with no expansions this week, should ALD leave Turmoil 3rd is probably where she will be ranked.
The aggressive expansion into Winters space last week was in part to force Winters to undermine ALD, giving her an opportunity to lose some loss making systems.
One of the 3 systems selected for Turmoil is profitable, the other 2 are slightly loss making, so the ALD players may consider Turmoil as a minor victory, and will put up with more short term pain, for long term gain.
In the past, when ALD has had no expansion, the 2 million or so merits her players earn at expansions seems to just disappear. It will be interesting if some of this can be transferred onto the Hudson expansion inside her territory.
If it can't, keeping Hudson in Turmoil should be their primary goal.
Although the raw data doesn't show who does the undermining, it looks more and more like ALD does the vast majority of Imperial undermining, perhaps as high as 90%, with Aisling and Patreus doing the other 10%.
If this is the case, getting Patreus and Aisling to help attack ALDs target may not make much of a difference.
Torval 52%
Torval has become the new Antal, a peace loving idealist, friend to all, enemy to none, competing for the least undermining.
The Elderly Senator moves up to 6th, although I thought it would have been over Aisling, not Sirius.
Torval fortified enough to afford her expansion, bringing her total number of systems, including her capital to 55, which means she has reached the exclusive Overhead Bailout Club.
To get here she has shattered her once strong starting CC balance, down to -407, but from here on out she only needs to worry about looking for systems with a profit of over 62.1cc.
As with every power, Torval would benefit from a controlled Turmoil to try to shed her unprofitable systems, but this is easier said than done.
Until she is attacked, Torval should be safe in either 6th or 7th position, and if Winters or Aisling lose some systems, Torval could move into the top 5.
Sirius 50%
Sirius dropped back a few positions to 7th, but nothing really happened to Sirius to warrant this.
Torval and Aisling each got an expansion, and this seems to be enough to move in front of him.
With a starting cc balance of 164, he is in a much stronger position than Torval, but like Torval, may hit turmoil should one of the larger powers target him.
With no-one in the Empire talking of attacking Sirius, and the Federation having more than enough Imperial targets, Mahon is the only power able to easily attack him, but this is extremely unlikely.
And the 47 Ceti Oasis Zone (it really sticks out, profitable systems right next to 5 or 6 powers) opened up, there is a viable area of space to move into that is very close to their capital, but there are no public plans to do so yet.
Unless they hit Turmoi, Sirius should be ranked in a similar position to Torval, 6th to 7th, higher depending on what happens to Winters and Aisling.
Antal 38%
Antal moves up to 8th on the back of 5 successful preparations.
Things are certainly getting interesting, and the facade of neutrality may be slipping.
Their expansion at Kenna is right next to the previous Patreus Control System of Utgaroar (which I'm calling the Utagaroar Oasis Zone), and is the start of a provocative aggressive stance.
They are also involved in a preparation war in the above pictured 47 Ceti Oasis Zone with Patreus, in the system of Dheneb.
This is precisely what should happen from now on when a Power loses a system. Because there is no where else to expand to, these "Oasis Zones" should be hot spots for conflict, just like AF Lepolis.
The 47 Ceti Oasis Zone is also closer to SIrius and Antal than it is to Patreus, and isn't too much further away from Delaine, so all 4 of these powers could be competing with each other there for weeks.
With Antals current low number of systems, they will be ranked in the bottom 2, unless Patreus, Torval or Sirius are in Turmoil or lose systems.
Delaine 35%
The Pirate Lord moved down one position, his one expansion wasn't enough to keep back Antals score increase from preparations.
The 47 Ceti Oasis Zone was successfully cleared by Delaine, but Patreus was able to leave Turmoil.
Patreus again has been listed as his primary target, and Delaine has been listed by the Imperial High Council as their only official target, with his expansion at Dhak being the focus.
With ALD being stretched by the Federation, and Patreus under attack from all sides, it will be interesting to see what change in undermining levels the Kumo Crew receives.
With a similar number of systems to Antal, if Antal expands to more than one system, Delaine should be ranked under him.
Unless Patreus is pushed back into Turmoil, or Torval or Sirius hit Turmoil hard, the odds are Archon Delaine will the 10th at the end of the week.
Patreus 33%
The Senator was able to fortify enough to get out of Turmoil, but he lost the system of 47 Ceti.
This was a profitable system, but the station was over 500000ls away, making it extremely difficult to fortify each week, so not as large a loss as the profit makes it look.
With the loss of a system, this slashes Patreus's overheads and he begins this week back in positive territory, 37cc.
With the 47 Ceti Oasis Zone being cleared, and Patreus having 143cc to prepare with, an expansion in this zone has been targeted.
As mentioned above, the same system has also been targeted by Antal, and with Delaine, Winters and Hudson all publicly listing Patreus as their primary target, high levels of foritficaion will be needed, which will make winning a prep war more difficult.
If Patreus can avoid Turmoil, he should return to 8th position, if not, he could be 8th, 9th or 10th.
Cycle 24
Cycle 23
Cycle 22
The raw data isn't out yet, and wont be for several hours.
I'll update this post with the charts and numbers when that happens. Update. Raw Data is now available
Until then, there was quite a bit going on last week, and this week is already looking very interesting, so I though I can post my speculations on what is / will be going on.
And thats exactly what it is, speculation, please post any disagreements you have with my points. I will argue with you, but that doesn't make your speculation any less valid
Total Merits
As usual, AL and Hudson dominate the total merits with their expansions:
Aisling 3rd as usual, and Winters and Mahon are close to each other in 4th and 5th position.
Antal was able to prepare again, and you can see a massive proportion on their total merits were from this, which reduced their fortification levels.
Patreus is in last position, but being in Turmoil for the second week, he couldn't earn merits in preparations or expansions
And the totals without the expansion merits:
Aisling and Hudson both put a large amount of Merits into Preparation, with Antal doing the 3rd most total preparation.
Effective Merits
So onto the effective merits:
Because ALD and Hudson both went into Turmoil, they failed all their expansions, so all their expansion merits were waste.
The power who put in the most effective merits was Aisling, with ALD very close behind.
Torval nearly did as much effective fortification as Mahon, which was needed to not hit Turmoil because of her poor cycle starting CC balance.
Opposition
ALD was hit the hardest last cycle, although its hard to tell how much is from legitimate enemies, and how much was from ex-ALD players who defected to Sirius
Patreus, Torval, Aisling and Antal receive basically no opposition as usual.
The effective chart tells a very similar story:
ALD hit the hardest, followed by Winters.
Delaine, Hudson and Mahon received their usual high amount of effective opposition.
You can see the big difference for Sirius between the total and effective opposition. They have one system that just gets grinded on, Heverduduna.
This system received nearly 60% of all undermining on Sirius.
Patreus and Aisling had basically no undermining at all, and Torval and Antal both had 0 systems undermined.
Weekly Charts
You can see the general uptick in effective fortification for most powers.
And you can see the increase in undermining on ALD, but nothing close to record breaking.
The two things that seem to stick out are the high effective vs total undermining on ALD all the time, and the low effective vs total undermining on Sirius all the time.
Speculation and Commentary
This chart shows the starting CC surplus (or deficit) for all the powers for cycle 25.
This is separate from the available cc to prepare with. That number is the balance from the end of cycle 24, these numbers are what everyone starts on before undermining and fortifying.
ALD and Hudson are both in Turmoil, so their true starting balances are actually higher than what the chart shows.
This chart shows the number of control systems, the capital system is not included, so to calculate overhead costs you need to add 1.
This is a good basis for the underlying score for every power. The total number of systems, not just control systems is probably also important, but this gives a good overview.
You can see there are 3 or 4 groupings, Hudson, Mahon and ALD clearly at the top.
Winters Aisling and Sirius in the second grouping.
Torval and Patreus in the third group, but you could combine all 5 of these powers together.
And Antal and Delaine in the last group.
Baring Turmoil and Expansions this is approximately where the Powers will be Ranked.
It actually matches up quite well this week
Both charts above are identical, just two different methods to display the information.
I wouldn't think the information would match up this well normally.
You can see there are 4 scores too low, where the red line or bar is much higher (the number of systems) than the blue line or bar (the score or ranking)
Hudson is slightly off and Hudson is in Turmoil, so this is expected.
ALD is off by a long margin, and is in Turmoil so this is expected, but the difference is much larger than Hudsons, so something else is still obviously involved.
Sirius is off, but isn't in Turmoil, I'm not sure why they went down in ranking by so much last week.
Patreus is not in Turmoil, but they did lose a system, which is one step worse than Turmoil, since Turmoil is just the warning that you could lose a system.
Its not very scientific, but its an interesting comparison.
Mahon 85%
The Prime Minister moves back into the 1st position with 2 successful expansions, and Hudson and ALD both falling into Turmoi.
As usual there was no publicly announced attack on Mahon, and they were deep into a deficit with less than 25 hours left to go, but were able to fortify enough to avoid Turmoil.
Both expansions were not harmful to their starting CC balance, which is still the very high total of 1128, which gives their players a massive amount of undermining that can be absorbed each week.
Hudson has one expansion, just like Mahon, and ALD has no expansions, so should Mahon avoid Turmoil, and both ALD and Hudson get out of Turmoil, Mahon will probably still be ranked number 1, but Hudson should have a very close score, and its difficult to know for certain what will happen, but Mahon will certainly be ranked in the top 3, most likely the top 2.
Hudson 71%
The President and Patreus were the only 2 Powers to not change rank last cycle.
Hudson has fallen into Turmoil with the blessing of many of their players, to stop their harmful expansions into Winters territory.
The actual systems selected for Turmoil are collectively profitable, and this will be the best opportunity for months for the Empire to make Hudson lose Valuable systems.
Hudson also completed the preparation of HIP 44811, which intersects with 12 of ALDs systems, and will certainly be under heavy opposition. This may also make Hudson the primary undermining target of ALD, and perhaps any other Imperial players they can get help from.
Patreus has been listed as the official target of Hudson, which may be a cause of concern for the Senator.
Winters 65%
The Shadow President moves up to the 3rd position.
Last week ALD was expanding a system next to the Winters capital, and the only way to oppose it was to push ALD into Turmoil, which the Federation was able to do.
Hudson was also pushed into Turmoil, which helped stop his expansions, some of which would contest even more of Winters systems, so it was a very good week for Winter.
Patreus has been listed as the official target of Winters this cycle, if anything close to the undermining that ALD faced is brought to Patreus, he may be in the worst Turmoil anyone has seen since Week 5.
With the aggressive preparation of Amuzgo, which contests 11 of ALDs systems, its unclear if ALD should focus their attack on Winters or Hudson, which is probably precisely what the Federation wants.
Aisling 64%
The Peoples Princess moved back up from the bottom 5 into 4th position (only 1% off 3rd) with an expansion into a system they had lost to Turmoil a few weeks ago.
Aisling did her usual massive amount of fortifying, but you can see on the chart far above, she still has the worst starting economy, on -741cc, which means fortification is what most of her players can look forward to.
Preparation is their main focus this week, to ensure they spend their 231cc from last week on profitable systems, to start to help fix their economy.
No official undermining target has been listed by Aisling players yet, but the Pegasi Pirate war is still on their reddit, and they will undoubtedly be attempting to stop Delaines expansion at Dhak.
It is unclear if ALD can get official help from Aisling this week against Hudson or Winters.
With a score very close to Winters, its feasible that Aisling could move into 3rd position if she secures her one expansion and ALD remains in Turmoil, but the Aisling expansion is into a loss making system, so they are probably trying to arrange other Powers to help them fail the expansion.
ALD 57%
The Emperor falls back from 1st to 5th due to hitting Turmoil, but its difficult to see why there was such a big drop in ranking, 3rd seemed more reasonable, particularly after Hudson did not move from 2nd position while also going into Turmoil.
A large part of ALDs score that put her on 1st last week was from gaining 6 expansions, and with no expansions this week, should ALD leave Turmoil 3rd is probably where she will be ranked.
The aggressive expansion into Winters space last week was in part to force Winters to undermine ALD, giving her an opportunity to lose some loss making systems.
One of the 3 systems selected for Turmoil is profitable, the other 2 are slightly loss making, so the ALD players may consider Turmoil as a minor victory, and will put up with more short term pain, for long term gain.
In the past, when ALD has had no expansion, the 2 million or so merits her players earn at expansions seems to just disappear. It will be interesting if some of this can be transferred onto the Hudson expansion inside her territory.
If it can't, keeping Hudson in Turmoil should be their primary goal.
Although the raw data doesn't show who does the undermining, it looks more and more like ALD does the vast majority of Imperial undermining, perhaps as high as 90%, with Aisling and Patreus doing the other 10%.
If this is the case, getting Patreus and Aisling to help attack ALDs target may not make much of a difference.
Torval 52%
Torval has become the new Antal, a peace loving idealist, friend to all, enemy to none, competing for the least undermining.
The Elderly Senator moves up to 6th, although I thought it would have been over Aisling, not Sirius.
Torval fortified enough to afford her expansion, bringing her total number of systems, including her capital to 55, which means she has reached the exclusive Overhead Bailout Club.
To get here she has shattered her once strong starting CC balance, down to -407, but from here on out she only needs to worry about looking for systems with a profit of over 62.1cc.
As with every power, Torval would benefit from a controlled Turmoil to try to shed her unprofitable systems, but this is easier said than done.
Until she is attacked, Torval should be safe in either 6th or 7th position, and if Winters or Aisling lose some systems, Torval could move into the top 5.
Sirius 50%
Sirius dropped back a few positions to 7th, but nothing really happened to Sirius to warrant this.
Torval and Aisling each got an expansion, and this seems to be enough to move in front of him.
With a starting cc balance of 164, he is in a much stronger position than Torval, but like Torval, may hit turmoil should one of the larger powers target him.
With no-one in the Empire talking of attacking Sirius, and the Federation having more than enough Imperial targets, Mahon is the only power able to easily attack him, but this is extremely unlikely.
And the 47 Ceti Oasis Zone (it really sticks out, profitable systems right next to 5 or 6 powers) opened up, there is a viable area of space to move into that is very close to their capital, but there are no public plans to do so yet.
Unless they hit Turmoi, Sirius should be ranked in a similar position to Torval, 6th to 7th, higher depending on what happens to Winters and Aisling.
Antal 38%
Antal moves up to 8th on the back of 5 successful preparations.
Things are certainly getting interesting, and the facade of neutrality may be slipping.
Their expansion at Kenna is right next to the previous Patreus Control System of Utgaroar (which I'm calling the Utagaroar Oasis Zone), and is the start of a provocative aggressive stance.
They are also involved in a preparation war in the above pictured 47 Ceti Oasis Zone with Patreus, in the system of Dheneb.
This is precisely what should happen from now on when a Power loses a system. Because there is no where else to expand to, these "Oasis Zones" should be hot spots for conflict, just like AF Lepolis.
The 47 Ceti Oasis Zone is also closer to SIrius and Antal than it is to Patreus, and isn't too much further away from Delaine, so all 4 of these powers could be competing with each other there for weeks.
With Antals current low number of systems, they will be ranked in the bottom 2, unless Patreus, Torval or Sirius are in Turmoil or lose systems.
Delaine 35%
The Pirate Lord moved down one position, his one expansion wasn't enough to keep back Antals score increase from preparations.
The 47 Ceti Oasis Zone was successfully cleared by Delaine, but Patreus was able to leave Turmoil.
Patreus again has been listed as his primary target, and Delaine has been listed by the Imperial High Council as their only official target, with his expansion at Dhak being the focus.
With ALD being stretched by the Federation, and Patreus under attack from all sides, it will be interesting to see what change in undermining levels the Kumo Crew receives.
With a similar number of systems to Antal, if Antal expands to more than one system, Delaine should be ranked under him.
Unless Patreus is pushed back into Turmoil, or Torval or Sirius hit Turmoil hard, the odds are Archon Delaine will the 10th at the end of the week.
Patreus 33%
The Senator was able to fortify enough to get out of Turmoil, but he lost the system of 47 Ceti.
This was a profitable system, but the station was over 500000ls away, making it extremely difficult to fortify each week, so not as large a loss as the profit makes it look.
With the loss of a system, this slashes Patreus's overheads and he begins this week back in positive territory, 37cc.
With the 47 Ceti Oasis Zone being cleared, and Patreus having 143cc to prepare with, an expansion in this zone has been targeted.
As mentioned above, the same system has also been targeted by Antal, and with Delaine, Winters and Hudson all publicly listing Patreus as their primary target, high levels of foritficaion will be needed, which will make winning a prep war more difficult.
If Patreus can avoid Turmoil, he should return to 8th position, if not, he could be 8th, 9th or 10th.
Last edited:
