Cycle 38
Raw Data
Raw data is out for cycle 39.
Known Merits
ALD had no expansions but Hudson did, so you can see Hudson dominated the Total merits with a massive 2.6 million merits in his expansions.
ALD, Aisling and Winters had a similar number of total merits, with the next 5 Powers all having 300000 to 200000 merits each.
Delaine had the least total merits, less than half of the total merits Antal did in 9th position.
On the effective chart Hudson dominated with a large amount of fortifying as well as a big amount of effective merits in his expansions.
Winters was second, with a massive amount of effective merits in her expansions (massive for anyone except Hudson and ALD, but more so because she doesn't use combat for expansion).
Aisling was in 3rd position, and ALD was down to 4th most effective merits for the second week in a row, but as stated above, she had no expansions to earn merits in.
Mahon down to Delaine have a steady decrease in effective merits.
Opposition
Hudson and Winters both saw a very large amount of total opposition, with Mahon and Delaine seeing a high amount.
Sirius down to Antal received a medium to low amount of total opposition, with Aisling being much higher (although still a small amount) than usual.
On the effective opposition chart Hudson had a huge 550000 merits in effective opposition, which might be a new record.
Winters was also very high, with Mahon getting a very large amount of effective undermining.
Aisling got a very high amount of effective undermining for her, with nearly every system undermined showing evidence of the piracy mechanic being used.
Delaine and Patreus saw a medium amount of effective opposition, with the other seeing a low to very low amount of opposition.
The Invasion of the Empire
Cycle 39 saw the largest amount of expansion merits when ALD had no expansions, most of it directed at systems which contest ALDs systems.
Hudson had 4 expansions contesting ALD systems, Winters had 1 in an area ALD just lost, and 1 contesting ALD systems, and Delaine had 1 expansion contesting ALD systems.
Excluding Winters expansion at DR Cruis (which didn't contest any ALD systems and had Alliance involvement)
The 4 Hudson, 1 Winters and 1 Delaine expansions had just under 3 million merits handed in, and the opposition to them (presumably from mainly ALD players, with support from Aisling and maybe Patreus) was 1.7 million merits.
This is shown in the first 2 bars in the chart above.
Factoring in triggers, ALD needed 2.2 million merits to stop all 6 expansions, which is shown in the 3rd bar.
The Patreus expansion at Neali contested federation systems, so it could be included in what might be called Galactic War I (of course there needs to be a Galactic War II for this name to be used, until then it might be called The Great Galactic War), but the numbers at this expansion on both sides were under 1000% which means they don't effect the above chart much.
This Week In Slavery with Archon Delaine
Aisling lost the system of Conii, which had around 15 million Imperial citizens in its bubble.
These people will now be subjected to the threat of being turned into Imperial Slaves, now Aislings protection has been removed from them.
Winters won her expansion at Amuzgo, but this area looks to be all Independent and Federation, so there was no Slavery there before Winters took over.
Patreus expanded to HIP 2239, which is an Imperial system, so no change to slavery there.
Hudson won 3 expansions, Carpaka is independent so no change there.
Concantae is Imperial, so its 23 million people have now been freed from the threat of Imperial Slavery, since Hudson bans Imperial Slavery in his control systems.
LPM 229 is also Imperial, it only has a population of 200000, but there people are also free from the threat of becoming Imperial Slaves.
Change in Starting CC
Above are the changes in starting CC each power had from the end of cycle 38 to the end of 39.
Sirius saw a slight improvement with 9cc more.
Winters one expansion lost them 56cc, and the Patreus expansion cost him 77cc.
Hudsons 3 expansions cost him 162cc, and the Winters expansion, along with the Hudson expansions cost ALD 227cc
Commentary and Speculation
Mahon 86%
Mahon was once again in the 1st position at the end of last cycle.
Interesting things continued to happen with the situation at DR Crucis.
Last week I said the actions of the Minor Player Faction NULL were equivalent of what has been called 5th column against Mahon, but things seem to have heated up last week, and since DR Crucis is a profitable system its not entirely clear how much regular Mahon pledged players do or do not want the system.
The Winters expansion was defeated by what seems to have been mostly non imperial forces, mercenaries from IPC forming a large part of the opposition.
This week Mahon is again prepping DR Crucis and more words have been exchanged between the Alliance and Federation players, which may lead to a seismic shift in the Galactic balance of power.
Mahons total merits have been shrinking week after week, but this doesn't exactly mean his power has been shrinking, just the amount of merits they have needed to avoid turmoil and win expansions has been going down.
Should a Power actually, finally, publicly admit they are undermining Mahon, this will give a better idea of how much fortifying the Mahonites can actually do when they need to (I imagine quite a bit, perhaps the most ever)
Until then, Mahon should avoid Turmoil again this week, and will again be number 1 at the end of the week.
Winters 75%
The shadow president moves up one position to 2nd, although its not really clear why, since Hudson had such a huge week.
As mentioned above, there are tensions with the Alliance over DR Crucis, and in general there are just less system to expand to, and since the federation and alliance share a massive border, this sort of thing should become more common.
Winters ended the week with a large CC surplus, which means they will need to spend many credits pushing the loss making systems from their prep list.
Winters has only one expansion this week, and it had been listed by ALD as a priority to oppose.
With only a 1% lead over Hudson, its anyone guess if they will be 2nd or 3rd at the end of the week.
Hudson 74%
Hudson won 3 out of 4 expansions, and did a large amount of fortifying, but this wasn't enough to hold onto the 2nd place.
A massive amount of expansion merits were expended cutting into ALDs income, but to ensure they weren't put into Turmoil Hudson over fortified, and now can afford to prepare 9 or 10 systems.
This will make it all but impossible to have all expansions next week go into systems they will want, but perhaps a new record level of preparation merits will be expended.
One of his expansions contests 8 systems of Winters, and is already winning by over 2000%, his second expansion is also profitable.
Hudson may move up to 2nd, but probably won't drop to 4th, even if he hits Turmoil.
ALD 58%
The Emperor had maybe one of her worst weeks, but she was in a terrible position with 6 dangerous expansions to stop, and she was able to stop 2 of them from succeeding, a much better result than could have happened.
The outcome was all the worse because ALD had finally gotten rid of enough loss making systems to have a positive starting CC balance, which means her players could avoid Turmoil if they fortify enough.
Now another 5 or more systems will need to be lost to move back into positives, which would leave only Antal, Patreus and Delaine with less systems.
This week ALD has 2 profitable systems to expand to, and they should win easily, which will begin the slow effort to fix her CC issues.
If ALD is put into Turmoil, she will probably be 7th again, if she avoids Turmoil, she will have 2 new systems, but will probably remain in 4th place.
Sirius 55%
While all the attacks on ALD were happening, Sirius quietly won expansion number 56 into a profitable system, slightly improving their position, and moving 1 system in front of Torval.
This week Sirius has another profitable system to be expanded into, and its likely he will have more systems than Aisling in a few weeks, and depending on what happens with ALD, its possible Sirius will be the 4th largest Power in the Galaxy, something I didn't think I would be writing.
Until then, both Aisling and ALD should be ahead of Sirius, but with Aisling having no expansion this week, should he win his expansion, he should remain in the top 5.
Aisling 55%
Aisling dropped out of the top 5 this week, although she is actually equal 5th with Sirius, the way the weekly scores are calculated there are no decimal points being rounded up or down, they are both exactly on 55%.
Aisling saw the most undermining she had had for quite a while, and with no Power publicly claiming any of it, and the evidence showing piracy had to have been involved in most systems, its obvious that Aisling players dropped their fortification merits for other pledged Imperial players to "pirate" to push them into the brink of turmoil so they would lose their 2 expansions, one of which was in the system of Chnumar, which they have fought very hard to remove from their prep list.
Aisling also unfortunately lost the profitable system of Conii in the process, but there was no way for her to keep that system and lose the expansion, with the massive undermining trigger Chnumar has.
This week she doesn't have enough cc to prep Chnumar, so there will be no prep war with her own pledged players over it this cycle.
With Sirius sneaking in more systems it might be time for Aisling to directly oppose them to help maintain her position, but this probably wont happen.
If Sirius wins his expansion he will probably be above Aisling again, but Aisling did just lose a system, so her score may improve on its own.
Torval 44%
Torval slipped down to 7th at the end of last cycle.
Her number 1 prep right now is DR Crucis, but it is likely a massive amount of merits will be needed to beat the Alliance and the Federation, and maybe ALD for this system.
With Sirius having 1 more system than her, she will more than likely be ranked 7th each week, and as I said for Aisling, Torval should start directly opposing Sirius to help maintain a higher position than him, but there is an extremely low chance of this happening.
Hudson has listed Torval as one of their targets this week, so a moderate to high amount of fortification will be needed to avoid Turmoil, and this could be used to shed a few more bad systems.
Antal 39%
Antal had no expansions last cycle, after losing one prep race to Mahon, and having this others disallowed with the extra CC that was added mid week.
The system of Sukree is one of Antals expansions again this week.
This system is up near Hudson and Mahon, but both of these powers may be too busy to notice (or care) and the expansion should have a good chance of winning this time.
Antal is still on the steep part of the overhead curve though, so if he wins one or both expansions, he will need to do much fortifying to be able to afford the actual expansions.
He still has 2 more systems than Patreus, and with Patreus having no expansions this week he should still be in the 8th position, but their scores have been getting closer and closer.
As with Sirius and Aisling / Torval, Antal and Patreus really should start directly opposing each other to move ahead of each other in the standings, but this also will not happen.
Patreus 32%
Patreus had 3 expansions last cycle, the one in federation space took up most of his players efforts, and with one of the 3 winning he moved slightly closer to Antals number of systems.
The discrepancy in how the scores are calculated were highlighted again, with him falling down to equal 9th with Delaine, even though he won 1 expansion, and Delaine won 0.
The score does seem to penalize losing expansions (Patreus lost 2 expansions to Delaine losing 1) more than rewarding winning expansions.
He lost his prep battle so had no expansions this week, which ironically should improve his score, and should Antal lose both of his expansions, Patreus could move back up to 8th.
With the news that his rating 5 bonus is now being patched, he may get an influx of new players from Mahon and Sirius, the kind of players who are always looking for a discount.
Most of his players efforts will probably be focused on stopping the Delaine expansion at HIP 111880 which contests some of his systems.
Delaine 32%
The Pirate Lord had a quiet week, with some of the lowest total merits seen in PP.
Evidence suggests some of the merits were moved into GTA V.
His preparations were hit with the same bug that has plagued many of the Powers, the CC cost reported for preparing systems is inaccurate, and instead of being able to afford 2 systems, only one is available for expansion.
ALD has listed his expansion as a priority to oppose, and 2 weeks ago his expansions were also listed by ALD as a priority to stop, which prompted his preparation into ALD territory, and the same will probably happen again this cycle.
With only one expansion that will be heavily opposed by Imperial players, Delaine will probably not win this expansion and move down to 10th (from equal 9th) at the end of the cycle.
Raw Data
Raw data is out for cycle 39.
Known Merits
ALD had no expansions but Hudson did, so you can see Hudson dominated the Total merits with a massive 2.6 million merits in his expansions.
ALD, Aisling and Winters had a similar number of total merits, with the next 5 Powers all having 300000 to 200000 merits each.
Delaine had the least total merits, less than half of the total merits Antal did in 9th position.
On the effective chart Hudson dominated with a large amount of fortifying as well as a big amount of effective merits in his expansions.
Winters was second, with a massive amount of effective merits in her expansions (massive for anyone except Hudson and ALD, but more so because she doesn't use combat for expansion).
Aisling was in 3rd position, and ALD was down to 4th most effective merits for the second week in a row, but as stated above, she had no expansions to earn merits in.
Mahon down to Delaine have a steady decrease in effective merits.
Opposition
Hudson and Winters both saw a very large amount of total opposition, with Mahon and Delaine seeing a high amount.
Sirius down to Antal received a medium to low amount of total opposition, with Aisling being much higher (although still a small amount) than usual.
On the effective opposition chart Hudson had a huge 550000 merits in effective opposition, which might be a new record.
Winters was also very high, with Mahon getting a very large amount of effective undermining.
Aisling got a very high amount of effective undermining for her, with nearly every system undermined showing evidence of the piracy mechanic being used.
Delaine and Patreus saw a medium amount of effective opposition, with the other seeing a low to very low amount of opposition.
The Invasion of the Empire
Cycle 39 saw the largest amount of expansion merits when ALD had no expansions, most of it directed at systems which contest ALDs systems.
Hudson had 4 expansions contesting ALD systems, Winters had 1 in an area ALD just lost, and 1 contesting ALD systems, and Delaine had 1 expansion contesting ALD systems.
Excluding Winters expansion at DR Cruis (which didn't contest any ALD systems and had Alliance involvement)
The 4 Hudson, 1 Winters and 1 Delaine expansions had just under 3 million merits handed in, and the opposition to them (presumably from mainly ALD players, with support from Aisling and maybe Patreus) was 1.7 million merits.
This is shown in the first 2 bars in the chart above.
Factoring in triggers, ALD needed 2.2 million merits to stop all 6 expansions, which is shown in the 3rd bar.
The Patreus expansion at Neali contested federation systems, so it could be included in what might be called Galactic War I (of course there needs to be a Galactic War II for this name to be used, until then it might be called The Great Galactic War), but the numbers at this expansion on both sides were under 1000% which means they don't effect the above chart much.
This Week In Slavery with Archon Delaine
Aisling lost the system of Conii, which had around 15 million Imperial citizens in its bubble.
These people will now be subjected to the threat of being turned into Imperial Slaves, now Aislings protection has been removed from them.
Winters won her expansion at Amuzgo, but this area looks to be all Independent and Federation, so there was no Slavery there before Winters took over.
Patreus expanded to HIP 2239, which is an Imperial system, so no change to slavery there.
Hudson won 3 expansions, Carpaka is independent so no change there.
Concantae is Imperial, so its 23 million people have now been freed from the threat of Imperial Slavery, since Hudson bans Imperial Slavery in his control systems.
LPM 229 is also Imperial, it only has a population of 200000, but there people are also free from the threat of becoming Imperial Slaves.
Change in Starting CC
Above are the changes in starting CC each power had from the end of cycle 38 to the end of 39.
Sirius saw a slight improvement with 9cc more.
Winters one expansion lost them 56cc, and the Patreus expansion cost him 77cc.
Hudsons 3 expansions cost him 162cc, and the Winters expansion, along with the Hudson expansions cost ALD 227cc
Commentary and Speculation
Mahon 86%
Mahon was once again in the 1st position at the end of last cycle.
Interesting things continued to happen with the situation at DR Crucis.
Last week I said the actions of the Minor Player Faction NULL were equivalent of what has been called 5th column against Mahon, but things seem to have heated up last week, and since DR Crucis is a profitable system its not entirely clear how much regular Mahon pledged players do or do not want the system.
The Winters expansion was defeated by what seems to have been mostly non imperial forces, mercenaries from IPC forming a large part of the opposition.
This week Mahon is again prepping DR Crucis and more words have been exchanged between the Alliance and Federation players, which may lead to a seismic shift in the Galactic balance of power.
Mahons total merits have been shrinking week after week, but this doesn't exactly mean his power has been shrinking, just the amount of merits they have needed to avoid turmoil and win expansions has been going down.
Should a Power actually, finally, publicly admit they are undermining Mahon, this will give a better idea of how much fortifying the Mahonites can actually do when they need to (I imagine quite a bit, perhaps the most ever)
Until then, Mahon should avoid Turmoil again this week, and will again be number 1 at the end of the week.
Winters 75%
The shadow president moves up one position to 2nd, although its not really clear why, since Hudson had such a huge week.
As mentioned above, there are tensions with the Alliance over DR Crucis, and in general there are just less system to expand to, and since the federation and alliance share a massive border, this sort of thing should become more common.
Winters ended the week with a large CC surplus, which means they will need to spend many credits pushing the loss making systems from their prep list.
Winters has only one expansion this week, and it had been listed by ALD as a priority to oppose.
With only a 1% lead over Hudson, its anyone guess if they will be 2nd or 3rd at the end of the week.
Hudson 74%
Hudson won 3 out of 4 expansions, and did a large amount of fortifying, but this wasn't enough to hold onto the 2nd place.
A massive amount of expansion merits were expended cutting into ALDs income, but to ensure they weren't put into Turmoil Hudson over fortified, and now can afford to prepare 9 or 10 systems.
This will make it all but impossible to have all expansions next week go into systems they will want, but perhaps a new record level of preparation merits will be expended.
One of his expansions contests 8 systems of Winters, and is already winning by over 2000%, his second expansion is also profitable.
Hudson may move up to 2nd, but probably won't drop to 4th, even if he hits Turmoil.
ALD 58%
The Emperor had maybe one of her worst weeks, but she was in a terrible position with 6 dangerous expansions to stop, and she was able to stop 2 of them from succeeding, a much better result than could have happened.
The outcome was all the worse because ALD had finally gotten rid of enough loss making systems to have a positive starting CC balance, which means her players could avoid Turmoil if they fortify enough.
Now another 5 or more systems will need to be lost to move back into positives, which would leave only Antal, Patreus and Delaine with less systems.
This week ALD has 2 profitable systems to expand to, and they should win easily, which will begin the slow effort to fix her CC issues.
If ALD is put into Turmoil, she will probably be 7th again, if she avoids Turmoil, she will have 2 new systems, but will probably remain in 4th place.
Sirius 55%
While all the attacks on ALD were happening, Sirius quietly won expansion number 56 into a profitable system, slightly improving their position, and moving 1 system in front of Torval.
This week Sirius has another profitable system to be expanded into, and its likely he will have more systems than Aisling in a few weeks, and depending on what happens with ALD, its possible Sirius will be the 4th largest Power in the Galaxy, something I didn't think I would be writing.
Until then, both Aisling and ALD should be ahead of Sirius, but with Aisling having no expansion this week, should he win his expansion, he should remain in the top 5.
Aisling 55%
Aisling dropped out of the top 5 this week, although she is actually equal 5th with Sirius, the way the weekly scores are calculated there are no decimal points being rounded up or down, they are both exactly on 55%.
Aisling saw the most undermining she had had for quite a while, and with no Power publicly claiming any of it, and the evidence showing piracy had to have been involved in most systems, its obvious that Aisling players dropped their fortification merits for other pledged Imperial players to "pirate" to push them into the brink of turmoil so they would lose their 2 expansions, one of which was in the system of Chnumar, which they have fought very hard to remove from their prep list.
Aisling also unfortunately lost the profitable system of Conii in the process, but there was no way for her to keep that system and lose the expansion, with the massive undermining trigger Chnumar has.
This week she doesn't have enough cc to prep Chnumar, so there will be no prep war with her own pledged players over it this cycle.
With Sirius sneaking in more systems it might be time for Aisling to directly oppose them to help maintain her position, but this probably wont happen.
If Sirius wins his expansion he will probably be above Aisling again, but Aisling did just lose a system, so her score may improve on its own.
Torval 44%
Torval slipped down to 7th at the end of last cycle.
Her number 1 prep right now is DR Crucis, but it is likely a massive amount of merits will be needed to beat the Alliance and the Federation, and maybe ALD for this system.
With Sirius having 1 more system than her, she will more than likely be ranked 7th each week, and as I said for Aisling, Torval should start directly opposing Sirius to help maintain a higher position than him, but there is an extremely low chance of this happening.
Hudson has listed Torval as one of their targets this week, so a moderate to high amount of fortification will be needed to avoid Turmoil, and this could be used to shed a few more bad systems.
Antal 39%
Antal had no expansions last cycle, after losing one prep race to Mahon, and having this others disallowed with the extra CC that was added mid week.
The system of Sukree is one of Antals expansions again this week.
This system is up near Hudson and Mahon, but both of these powers may be too busy to notice (or care) and the expansion should have a good chance of winning this time.
Antal is still on the steep part of the overhead curve though, so if he wins one or both expansions, he will need to do much fortifying to be able to afford the actual expansions.
He still has 2 more systems than Patreus, and with Patreus having no expansions this week he should still be in the 8th position, but their scores have been getting closer and closer.
As with Sirius and Aisling / Torval, Antal and Patreus really should start directly opposing each other to move ahead of each other in the standings, but this also will not happen.
Patreus 32%
Patreus had 3 expansions last cycle, the one in federation space took up most of his players efforts, and with one of the 3 winning he moved slightly closer to Antals number of systems.
The discrepancy in how the scores are calculated were highlighted again, with him falling down to equal 9th with Delaine, even though he won 1 expansion, and Delaine won 0.
The score does seem to penalize losing expansions (Patreus lost 2 expansions to Delaine losing 1) more than rewarding winning expansions.
He lost his prep battle so had no expansions this week, which ironically should improve his score, and should Antal lose both of his expansions, Patreus could move back up to 8th.
With the news that his rating 5 bonus is now being patched, he may get an influx of new players from Mahon and Sirius, the kind of players who are always looking for a discount.
Most of his players efforts will probably be focused on stopping the Delaine expansion at HIP 111880 which contests some of his systems.
Delaine 32%
The Pirate Lord had a quiet week, with some of the lowest total merits seen in PP.
Evidence suggests some of the merits were moved into GTA V.
His preparations were hit with the same bug that has plagued many of the Powers, the CC cost reported for preparing systems is inaccurate, and instead of being able to afford 2 systems, only one is available for expansion.
ALD has listed his expansion as a priority to oppose, and 2 weeks ago his expansions were also listed by ALD as a priority to stop, which prompted his preparation into ALD territory, and the same will probably happen again this cycle.
With only one expansion that will be heavily opposed by Imperial players, Delaine will probably not win this expansion and move down to 10th (from equal 9th) at the end of the cycle.
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