Cycle 40
Another cycle down, this one was a bit strange.
Known Merits
Hudson and ALD again both had expansions, but as in recent weeks, Hudson players have put around twice as many merits into their expansions as ALD.
Hudson, ALD and Aisling were the top 3 for total meris as usual.
Torval had a large increase in total merits, much of if from her 2 expansions.
On the effective chart that isn't an error (I went back and checked the data when I first saw it)
Torval did the most number of effective merits, with 3rd most in fortification over all, and the most effective amount of expansion merits for last cycle.
More than 2.5 billion cr (if it was all rushed) was put into her two expansions by her players.
ALD and Aisling are close together in the 2nd and 3rd most effective merits, with Hudson down to Winters steadily decreasing, and Delaine in last position with a tiny amount of effective merits.
Opposition
Total opposition was down, with no power being over 1 million merits.
Winters, Torval (yes Torval) and Hudson were all very close together with the most total opposition, which would normally be described as a medium to high amount.
Opposition from Mahon down to Antal steadily reduces, with most powers (except Torval) seeing much reduced opposition.
On the effective opposition chart, Torval had the most merits thrown at her, with a high amount of effective opposition.
Mahon and Hudson also had a high amount of effective opposition, in the 2nd and 3rd positions.
Delaine moved down to a medium amount of opposition from his usual high amounts, and Aisling, Patreus and Antal had virtually no effective opposition.
This Week in Slavery with Archon Delaine
Torval expanded to the Federal Democracy of Gacrux, which now has legalized Imperial Slavery for its 4.5 billion residents.
Antals expansions were to systems that already banned Slavery, so no change there.
Patreus expanded to an Imperial and a Patronage system, so they already had legal Imperial Slavery, so no change there either.
Aisling lost 6 Control Systems, the majority of the systems lost were Imperial, which means they now have Imperial Slavery legalized there again.
All in all, a very good week for galactic slavery.
Population
In the charts above you can see the lead Mahon has over everyone else in number of Control Systems and number of Exploited systems, but Hudson has a larger total population than Mahon.
Although Aisling occupies the worst part of the Empire in terms of system density and population, you can see on the bottom chart how much better it is than the area occupied by Antal and Delaine.
Speculation and Commentary
Mahon 88%
The Prime Minister increased his lead over the rest of the galaxy, with a whopping 88% to 68% gap opened between 1st and 2nd.
With his latest Expansion, Mahon now has 92 control systems, 12 more than Hudson has.
Mahon has 4 expansions this week, all of which are fairly ordinary, although should they all win they will not make much of a difference to his huge 1366CC starting Balance.
With such a commanding lead, there is no reason to think Mahon wont still be ranked number 1 at the end of this week.
ALD 68%
ALD moved back up into second position, partially due to her expansions, and partially due to Winters and Hudson going into Turmoil.
3 of her expansions won, with one of them being successfully opposed, which is very rare for an expansion of ALD or Hudson.
She now has 65 Control systems, a long way off Mahons 92, but getting closer to Winters total of 69 Control Systems.
This week she only has one expansion, which should easily win unless she is pushed into Turmoil.
ALD has a large amount of CC to prepare with, which will make it difficult to keep bad systems from the list, or systems which Aisling just lost, which will probably increase tensions between the two Imperial Powers.
AF Leporius (Also known as AF Preparius) is one of the Hudson systems in Turmoil, so the focus for ALD this week may be undermining Hudson.
With Hudson and Winters likely to come out of Turmoil, ALD will probably drop from 2nd to 4th, but she is slowly making progress, and may reach Winters number of systems in a few cycles.
Winters 66%
Winters went into Turmoil at the end of the cycle, probably to avoid her bad expansion that was winning, and has dropped back down to 3rd.
She has one profitable expansion this week, and should that system expand, she will have 70 control system.
Publicly Winters has targeted ALDs expansion, which was a system Winters just tried to expand into, and one which ALD lost a while ago.
Should she get out of Turmoil, Winters should be ranked above ALD, but may or may not be above Hudson.
Hudson 64%
The President lost 2 systems to Turmoil and has another 3 systems on the chopping block this week.
One of these systems is AF Leporis, the scene of several extremely large preparation and expansions wars between Hudson and ALD.
This may motivate ALD to try to keep Hudson in Turmoil, so most, if not all of Hudsons systems will need to be fortified.
This will probably give Hudson a huge CC surplus, and he may get another large amount of bad expansions, which will make his players want to hit Turmoil, and the current situation will be repeated.
Recent news speaks of the previous President being alive and rescued, will this bring in a 3rd Federal power, or will there be a new election that will hopefully be more contested by the Federation powers than the "contest" for the Imperial throne.
With no Preparations or expansions this week, should Hudson get out of Turmoil he will probably only go back up to 3rd, and not overtake Winters.
Sirius 59%
The CEO had another week under the radar maintaining his position in the top 5.
Things are tightening up though, with Torval only being 1 system behind, and Antal 3 systems behind.
Sirius, Torval, Aisling and Antal are playing a strange game of who can look the meekest (even though they probably don't realise it), instead of directly attacking each other with undermining, or opposing expansions, they are currently ranked based on who the other powers decide to pick on.
At the moment Sirius is winning, with none of his preparations or expansions being in an area other powers care about.
Should no-one continue to attack Sirius, there is no reason to think he wont stay in the 5th position next week, but all 4 of these powers are very close together.
Torval 54%
What can you say about Torval? The old Lady Senator has burst back onto the PP scene in the last 2 cycles, and as seen in the above charts, had both the most effective merits for and against her last cycle.
Torval was able to win her expansion in the DR Crucis bubble, which was an area ALD lost, and Winters, Hudson and Mahon were all interested in.
Part of this victory is probably due to everyone underestimating Torvals players, and it adds a new dynamic to the galaxy over the current, Feds Attack ALD, Kumo Crew attacks Patreus, Patreus and ALD attack Feds and Kumo Crew, Mahon gobbles up all the profitable systems while he once again points and says "look over there, its a distraction", and the other 4 powers hope they don't get undermined by someone that week.
Torval is currently in a prep war with Patreus for a system Aisling just lost, and with enough CC for 2 good systems, 2 ex-Aisling areas may be taken.
Torval probably wont be underestimated in the coming weeks, but should she be allowed to continue, she will remain the number 2 Imperial power, ahead of Aisling.
Antal 47%
The Utopian moved up to 7th (for the 3rd time I think) and is 1% ahead of Aisling this week.
Antal won 2 more expansions, one was in a system the Kumo Crew lost over a month ago.
He is now excruciatingly close to the 55 system overhead cost flattening out, but to get here he has crippled his CC economy to start each week on -495, which is the second worst (after Aisling) that any power has been on.
If he wins his current expansion, he will get to 55 systems, and have a starting CC balance of around -620, which is getting close to the terrible position Aisling is in.
Because he isn't really opposed, like Aisling, its possible his players can fortify enough each week to avoid turmoil, and with the overhead cost flattening out to 62.1, there is no reason to think he couldn't get more than 60 systems.
It's more likely that his players will not want to do nothing but fortify each week though, and some sort of system sheddign may be undertaken soon, but with the very real prospect of Antal getting into the top 5, his players may be willing to hang on for a few more weeks before trying to lose systems.
Aislings score will probably go above Antals at the end of the cycle, but with Sirius, Aisling and Torval being very close to his number of systems, its difficult to know where he will be ranked.
Aisling 46%
The Peoples Princess lost 6 systems, but kept one and is now out of Turmoil.
Her starting CC balance is now -785, which means around 30 of her systems need to be fortified each week, before she has to counteract any undermining.
It is still very unclear if she is under deliberate sabotage from a coordinated group of players each week, of if the majority of her problems comes from uncaring and ignorant players.
If it is a coordinated group, this group would consist of over 1/3 of all the Aisling pledged players, or if these players were broken off into a separate Power, perhaps called the Peoples Partisans, they could be the 4th larges power in PP.
Finding this groups true allegiance is not that straight forward.
Aisling losing profitable systems benifits any Power who could take those systems, and any power ranked under her, because they may move past her in the ranking.
ALD, Patreus and Torval are the 3 main winners from a weakened Aisling, they are the only powers who can realistically take her systems that she has been losing.
Sirus has been ranked above her because of this action, so also has a good motive.
Antal is above Aisling this week, so may also be responsible.
Delaine is not currently above Aisling, but she is looking like the easiest Power to push down to 10th rather than Paterus, so his players also have motive.
Mahon, Winters and Hudson wouldn't want a weakened Aisling, because this only strengthens their only rival, ALD, but they would also benifit if this caused Aisling to be hostile with ALD, so one of these powers could also be responsible.
Personally I think if there is a coordinated group of players sabotaging Aisling, they are doing this to strengthen ALD, but it could be anyone.
At the moment Patreus and Torval are preparing some systems Aisling just lost, and with ALDs large amount of CC, its likely many of her old systems will be prepared this week, before her players have a chance to get them back.
Aisling shouldn't drop into the bottom 2, but could be as high as 5th at the end of the week.
Patreus 35%
Patreus players had an eventful week full of drama.
The week before a system Aisling lost a while ago was prepped by Patreus, and discussions were underway with Aisling players about compensation for not expanding to the system.
At the same time Patreus players were pushing the system, and as always making any kind of deal between 2 powers is impossible to enforce since every pledged player can do as they wish, there is no real leadership to enforce anything.
The Federation offered to help Aisling, since her players are probably unused to pirating (real pirating, not collusion piracy) to oppose expansions.
In the end, the deal fell through and Patreus won the expansion.
At the moment Patreus players and Torval players are in a prep war for another system Aisling has just lost, and even if some of the Players don't want to cause issues with Aisling, this will be difficult to stop, since it is a profitable system and they can afford 4 or more systems.
The current situation with Aisling is one which could push Patreus into the top 5, but at the moment his vocal players are talking more about imperial solidarity, than stopping his ideological enemy, the freedom for slaves lunatic.
With no expansions this week, Patreus won't move up to 8th, and even when he was put into Turmoil 2 cycles ago he didn't drop to 10th, so he will be in 9th place again at the end of the week.
Delaine 23%
The Kumo Crew had what might be the laziest week for a power .
News broke that the ALD player group, The White Templars, are leaving the Pegasi Sector (Although Antal seems to occupy more of the Pegasi Sector than Delaine, and I've always thought it a strange way to describe his area of space) due to the technological plague they unleashed upon it.
The commodities markets at all 5 of the known UA bombed stations in his space were also reopened, and meta alloys are now able to be delivered in hopes of curing these stations, and once again allowing fuel to be sold to the pirates.
Unfortunately the black markets are still offline, so all meta alloys need to be "honestly" collected.
No official targets have yet been listed for the Kumo Crew, and this may turn out to be a Barnacle Milking week.
Another cycle down, this one was a bit strange.
Known Merits
Hudson and ALD again both had expansions, but as in recent weeks, Hudson players have put around twice as many merits into their expansions as ALD.
Hudson, ALD and Aisling were the top 3 for total meris as usual.
Torval had a large increase in total merits, much of if from her 2 expansions.
On the effective chart that isn't an error (I went back and checked the data when I first saw it)
Torval did the most number of effective merits, with 3rd most in fortification over all, and the most effective amount of expansion merits for last cycle.
More than 2.5 billion cr (if it was all rushed) was put into her two expansions by her players.
ALD and Aisling are close together in the 2nd and 3rd most effective merits, with Hudson down to Winters steadily decreasing, and Delaine in last position with a tiny amount of effective merits.
Opposition
Total opposition was down, with no power being over 1 million merits.
Winters, Torval (yes Torval) and Hudson were all very close together with the most total opposition, which would normally be described as a medium to high amount.
Opposition from Mahon down to Antal steadily reduces, with most powers (except Torval) seeing much reduced opposition.
On the effective opposition chart, Torval had the most merits thrown at her, with a high amount of effective opposition.
Mahon and Hudson also had a high amount of effective opposition, in the 2nd and 3rd positions.
Delaine moved down to a medium amount of opposition from his usual high amounts, and Aisling, Patreus and Antal had virtually no effective opposition.
This Week in Slavery with Archon Delaine
Torval expanded to the Federal Democracy of Gacrux, which now has legalized Imperial Slavery for its 4.5 billion residents.
Antals expansions were to systems that already banned Slavery, so no change there.
Patreus expanded to an Imperial and a Patronage system, so they already had legal Imperial Slavery, so no change there either.
Aisling lost 6 Control Systems, the majority of the systems lost were Imperial, which means they now have Imperial Slavery legalized there again.
All in all, a very good week for galactic slavery.
Population
In the charts above you can see the lead Mahon has over everyone else in number of Control Systems and number of Exploited systems, but Hudson has a larger total population than Mahon.
Although Aisling occupies the worst part of the Empire in terms of system density and population, you can see on the bottom chart how much better it is than the area occupied by Antal and Delaine.
Speculation and Commentary
Mahon 88%
The Prime Minister increased his lead over the rest of the galaxy, with a whopping 88% to 68% gap opened between 1st and 2nd.
With his latest Expansion, Mahon now has 92 control systems, 12 more than Hudson has.
Mahon has 4 expansions this week, all of which are fairly ordinary, although should they all win they will not make much of a difference to his huge 1366CC starting Balance.
With such a commanding lead, there is no reason to think Mahon wont still be ranked number 1 at the end of this week.
ALD 68%
ALD moved back up into second position, partially due to her expansions, and partially due to Winters and Hudson going into Turmoil.
3 of her expansions won, with one of them being successfully opposed, which is very rare for an expansion of ALD or Hudson.
She now has 65 Control systems, a long way off Mahons 92, but getting closer to Winters total of 69 Control Systems.
This week she only has one expansion, which should easily win unless she is pushed into Turmoil.
ALD has a large amount of CC to prepare with, which will make it difficult to keep bad systems from the list, or systems which Aisling just lost, which will probably increase tensions between the two Imperial Powers.
AF Leporius (Also known as AF Preparius) is one of the Hudson systems in Turmoil, so the focus for ALD this week may be undermining Hudson.
With Hudson and Winters likely to come out of Turmoil, ALD will probably drop from 2nd to 4th, but she is slowly making progress, and may reach Winters number of systems in a few cycles.
Winters 66%
Winters went into Turmoil at the end of the cycle, probably to avoid her bad expansion that was winning, and has dropped back down to 3rd.
She has one profitable expansion this week, and should that system expand, she will have 70 control system.
Publicly Winters has targeted ALDs expansion, which was a system Winters just tried to expand into, and one which ALD lost a while ago.
Should she get out of Turmoil, Winters should be ranked above ALD, but may or may not be above Hudson.
Hudson 64%
The President lost 2 systems to Turmoil and has another 3 systems on the chopping block this week.
One of these systems is AF Leporis, the scene of several extremely large preparation and expansions wars between Hudson and ALD.
This may motivate ALD to try to keep Hudson in Turmoil, so most, if not all of Hudsons systems will need to be fortified.
This will probably give Hudson a huge CC surplus, and he may get another large amount of bad expansions, which will make his players want to hit Turmoil, and the current situation will be repeated.
Recent news speaks of the previous President being alive and rescued, will this bring in a 3rd Federal power, or will there be a new election that will hopefully be more contested by the Federation powers than the "contest" for the Imperial throne.
With no Preparations or expansions this week, should Hudson get out of Turmoil he will probably only go back up to 3rd, and not overtake Winters.
Sirius 59%
The CEO had another week under the radar maintaining his position in the top 5.
Things are tightening up though, with Torval only being 1 system behind, and Antal 3 systems behind.
Sirius, Torval, Aisling and Antal are playing a strange game of who can look the meekest (even though they probably don't realise it), instead of directly attacking each other with undermining, or opposing expansions, they are currently ranked based on who the other powers decide to pick on.
At the moment Sirius is winning, with none of his preparations or expansions being in an area other powers care about.
Should no-one continue to attack Sirius, there is no reason to think he wont stay in the 5th position next week, but all 4 of these powers are very close together.
Torval 54%
What can you say about Torval? The old Lady Senator has burst back onto the PP scene in the last 2 cycles, and as seen in the above charts, had both the most effective merits for and against her last cycle.
Torval was able to win her expansion in the DR Crucis bubble, which was an area ALD lost, and Winters, Hudson and Mahon were all interested in.
Part of this victory is probably due to everyone underestimating Torvals players, and it adds a new dynamic to the galaxy over the current, Feds Attack ALD, Kumo Crew attacks Patreus, Patreus and ALD attack Feds and Kumo Crew, Mahon gobbles up all the profitable systems while he once again points and says "look over there, its a distraction", and the other 4 powers hope they don't get undermined by someone that week.
Torval is currently in a prep war with Patreus for a system Aisling just lost, and with enough CC for 2 good systems, 2 ex-Aisling areas may be taken.
Torval probably wont be underestimated in the coming weeks, but should she be allowed to continue, she will remain the number 2 Imperial power, ahead of Aisling.
Antal 47%
The Utopian moved up to 7th (for the 3rd time I think) and is 1% ahead of Aisling this week.
Antal won 2 more expansions, one was in a system the Kumo Crew lost over a month ago.
He is now excruciatingly close to the 55 system overhead cost flattening out, but to get here he has crippled his CC economy to start each week on -495, which is the second worst (after Aisling) that any power has been on.
If he wins his current expansion, he will get to 55 systems, and have a starting CC balance of around -620, which is getting close to the terrible position Aisling is in.
Because he isn't really opposed, like Aisling, its possible his players can fortify enough each week to avoid turmoil, and with the overhead cost flattening out to 62.1, there is no reason to think he couldn't get more than 60 systems.
It's more likely that his players will not want to do nothing but fortify each week though, and some sort of system sheddign may be undertaken soon, but with the very real prospect of Antal getting into the top 5, his players may be willing to hang on for a few more weeks before trying to lose systems.
Aislings score will probably go above Antals at the end of the cycle, but with Sirius, Aisling and Torval being very close to his number of systems, its difficult to know where he will be ranked.
Aisling 46%
The Peoples Princess lost 6 systems, but kept one and is now out of Turmoil.
Her starting CC balance is now -785, which means around 30 of her systems need to be fortified each week, before she has to counteract any undermining.
It is still very unclear if she is under deliberate sabotage from a coordinated group of players each week, of if the majority of her problems comes from uncaring and ignorant players.
If it is a coordinated group, this group would consist of over 1/3 of all the Aisling pledged players, or if these players were broken off into a separate Power, perhaps called the Peoples Partisans, they could be the 4th larges power in PP.
Finding this groups true allegiance is not that straight forward.
Aisling losing profitable systems benifits any Power who could take those systems, and any power ranked under her, because they may move past her in the ranking.
ALD, Patreus and Torval are the 3 main winners from a weakened Aisling, they are the only powers who can realistically take her systems that she has been losing.
Sirus has been ranked above her because of this action, so also has a good motive.
Antal is above Aisling this week, so may also be responsible.
Delaine is not currently above Aisling, but she is looking like the easiest Power to push down to 10th rather than Paterus, so his players also have motive.
Mahon, Winters and Hudson wouldn't want a weakened Aisling, because this only strengthens their only rival, ALD, but they would also benifit if this caused Aisling to be hostile with ALD, so one of these powers could also be responsible.
Personally I think if there is a coordinated group of players sabotaging Aisling, they are doing this to strengthen ALD, but it could be anyone.
At the moment Patreus and Torval are preparing some systems Aisling just lost, and with ALDs large amount of CC, its likely many of her old systems will be prepared this week, before her players have a chance to get them back.
Aisling shouldn't drop into the bottom 2, but could be as high as 5th at the end of the week.
Patreus 35%
Patreus players had an eventful week full of drama.
The week before a system Aisling lost a while ago was prepped by Patreus, and discussions were underway with Aisling players about compensation for not expanding to the system.
At the same time Patreus players were pushing the system, and as always making any kind of deal between 2 powers is impossible to enforce since every pledged player can do as they wish, there is no real leadership to enforce anything.
The Federation offered to help Aisling, since her players are probably unused to pirating (real pirating, not collusion piracy) to oppose expansions.
In the end, the deal fell through and Patreus won the expansion.
At the moment Patreus players and Torval players are in a prep war for another system Aisling has just lost, and even if some of the Players don't want to cause issues with Aisling, this will be difficult to stop, since it is a profitable system and they can afford 4 or more systems.
The current situation with Aisling is one which could push Patreus into the top 5, but at the moment his vocal players are talking more about imperial solidarity, than stopping his ideological enemy, the freedom for slaves lunatic.
With no expansions this week, Patreus won't move up to 8th, and even when he was put into Turmoil 2 cycles ago he didn't drop to 10th, so he will be in 9th place again at the end of the week.
Delaine 23%
The Kumo Crew had what might be the laziest week for a power .
News broke that the ALD player group, The White Templars, are leaving the Pegasi Sector (Although Antal seems to occupy more of the Pegasi Sector than Delaine, and I've always thought it a strange way to describe his area of space) due to the technological plague they unleashed upon it.
The commodities markets at all 5 of the known UA bombed stations in his space were also reopened, and meta alloys are now able to be delivered in hopes of curing these stations, and once again allowing fuel to be sold to the pirates.
Unfortunately the black markets are still offline, so all meta alloys need to be "honestly" collected.
No official targets have yet been listed for the Kumo Crew, and this may turn out to be a Barnacle Milking week.
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