How accurate is the data?
The data is a mix between raw data from Frontier, grabbed at an unknown time shortly before the cycle turn over, combined with my tweaking the data to make it match the game results.
This means that I've gone through and set fortification and undermining progress to hit triggers, if the game data said this is what happened. As such this is not a 100% accurate analysis of the outcome of the cycle, but it's fairly close.
Where is it?
You can find it all here, including the raw numbers for each system. I am a fan of open data, and I see no reason to withhold this data from those who are interested.
Where are the tables and graphs?
Well, there aren't any graphs in this analysis. You have to look at the spreadsheet for that. There are a few tables here to show some of the things I found interesting.
Did you do all this yourself?
Crickey, no! I had a lot of help from others. Frontier for providing the raw data (though I'd very much like to see the final end result raw numbers released on Thursdays at 07:20 AM UTC) and CMDR Addler for help with the graphs and a lot of the ideas for analysis.
Enough chit that - on with the show!
Just two caveats before I start. "*Effective merits*" are merits that reached their target and didn't overshoot. If a system has a trigger of 5,000 and it gets 4,999, those 4,999 merits are wasted. If that system gets 5,001 merits, 1 merit is wasted. "*Grinder systems*" are systems that hit 150+% of their trigger values.
Fortification
Hudson generated the largest amount of effective merits, which resulted in him hitting the fortification trigger in 41 out of 54 systems - the highest count on the board this week.
The three most effective fortifiers are Antal (87.6%), Delaine (87.4%) and Winters (86.5%).
Top ten over-fortified systems:
Arissa sits heavily on the throne of fortification grinders with 4 out of the 10 system, followed by Aisling and Hudson with 2 each.
Undermining
Hudson was hit with the highest number of effective undermining merits this week, which is why 41 out of 54 of his systems hit their undermining triggers - the highest count this week. The most effective undermining was targeted at Arissa, with 70.1% efficiency, whereas Sirius was hit with the least effective undermining with only 20.5% efficiency
Top ten most superfluously undermined systems:
Mahon sits heavily on the throne of wasteful undermining, with 4 out of the top 10 systems, followed by Delaine with 3 and Hudson with 2.
Conclusions
Fortification
The fortifications aren't that bad. With 34.7% waste, and 65.3% of the waste is concentrated in 22 grinder systems, and 87.9% of that is concentrated in the top ten grinder systems. This is one of the clear proofs that grinders are abound.
Undermining
As usual, we're seeing what can best be described as a metric ton of undermining, the vast majority of which is wasted. 6.4 million merits worth of undermining, 3.4 million of it in 107 grinder systems (52.8% of all merits dumped into 21.3% of all control systems), 1.4 million (41.2%) of the undermining grinder merits dumped into only 10 systems (22.1% of all merits dumped into 2% of all control systems), and a massive 4,095,639 (63.6%) of all undermining merits are completely wasted.
Overall
Let's put these grinder numbers into perspective. To maintain rank 5, you need 5,334 merits/week. Let's say 6,000 just to be on the safe side. The fortification grinder systems' waste account for 524,542 merits. This is the equivalent of 87 rank 5 players fed through waste alone. The undermining grinder systems' waste account for 3,405,349. This is the equivalent of 567 rank 5 players fed through waste.
All told that's upwards of 32,700,000,000 (32.7 BILLION) credits pumped into the economy every single week, just to feed the grinders. That's the equivalent of pumping out 222 Anacodas worth of credits for complete wasted effort.
I don't know what economic advisers the various powerplay figureheads have hired, but personally I don't think they're fit for their jobs. They should be sent out and airlock, feet first into the nearest brown dwarf. Why would anyone in their right mind pay you 50 million credits for being this wasteful? These 10 people are supposed to be the best and the brightest, but to my mind they seem more like complete dimwits, handing out blank cheques to any Tom, and Harry who says they've been helpful.
It's insane, and honestly it should be stopped.
The data is a mix between raw data from Frontier, grabbed at an unknown time shortly before the cycle turn over, combined with my tweaking the data to make it match the game results.
This means that I've gone through and set fortification and undermining progress to hit triggers, if the game data said this is what happened. As such this is not a 100% accurate analysis of the outcome of the cycle, but it's fairly close.
Where is it?
You can find it all here, including the raw numbers for each system. I am a fan of open data, and I see no reason to withhold this data from those who are interested.
Where are the tables and graphs?
Well, there aren't any graphs in this analysis. You have to look at the spreadsheet for that. There are a few tables here to show some of the things I found interesting.
Did you do all this yourself?
Crickey, no! I had a lot of help from others. Frontier for providing the raw data (though I'd very much like to see the final end result raw numbers released on Thursdays at 07:20 AM UTC) and CMDR Addler for help with the graphs and a lot of the ideas for analysis.
Enough chit that - on with the show!
Just two caveats before I start. "*Effective merits*" are merits that reached their target and didn't overshoot. If a system has a trigger of 5,000 and it gets 4,999, those 4,999 merits are wasted. If that system gets 5,001 merits, 1 merit is wasted. "*Grinder systems*" are systems that hit 150+% of their trigger values.
Fortification
| Power | Effective Merits | Effectiveness |
| Zachary Hudson | 266,359 | 72.9% |
| Aisling Duval | 210,535 | 48.0% |
| Arissa Lavigny-Duval | 195,398 | 44.3% |
| Felicia Winters | 190,397 | 86.5% |
| Edmund Mahon | 167,248 | 74.1% |
| Li Yong-Rui | 140,296 | 68.0% |
| Zemina Torval | 102,162 | 80.6% |
| Pranav Antal | 82,996 | 87.6% |
| Denton Patreus | 80,222 | 73.4% |
| Archon Delaine | 73,308 | 87.4% |
| Total | 1,508,921 | 65.26% |
Hudson generated the largest amount of effective merits, which resulted in him hitting the fortification trigger in 41 out of 54 systems - the highest count on the board this week.
The three most effective fortifiers are Antal (87.6%), Delaine (87.4%) and Winters (86.5%).
Top ten over-fortified systems:
| System | Power | Merits | Percent |
| Guathiti | A Lavigny-Duval | 164,601 | 6,516% |
| Lambda-1 Tucanae | Aisling Duval | 95,375 | 1,893% |
| Groombridge 1618 | Zachary Hudson | 62,365 | 1,238% |
| Karsuki Ti | Aisling Duval | 58,456 | 1,159% |
| Kalak | Li Yong-Rui | 44,425 | 879% |
| Ugrivirii | A Lavigny-Duval | 18,796 | 731% |
| Phracani | A Lavigny-Duval | 16,779 | 664% |
| Anum | A Lavigny-Duval | 9,347 | 351% |
| Neche | Felicia Winters | 16,117 | 318% |
| Anlave | Zachary Hudson | 15,472 | 303% |
| Total | 501,733 | 1,235% |
Arissa sits heavily on the throne of fortification grinders with 4 out of the 10 system, followed by Aisling and Hudson with 2 each.
Undermining
| Power | Effective Merits | Effectiveness |
| Zachary Hudson | 422,716 | 43.0% |
| Felicia Winters | 379,167 | 34.3% |
| Zemina Torval | 334,637 | 58.7% |
| Edmund Mahon | 322,598 | 24.0% |
| Archon Delaine | 320,577 | 29.6% |
| Arissa Lavigny-Duval | 262,97 | 70.1% |
| Li Yong-Rui | 132,079 | 20.5% |
| Denton Patreus | 125,568 | 50.9% |
| Pranav Antal | 31,006 | 44.5% |
| Aisling Duval | 12,939 | 64.6% |
| Total | 2,344,257 | 36.4% |
Hudson was hit with the highest number of effective undermining merits this week, which is why 41 out of 54 of his systems hit their undermining triggers - the highest count this week. The most effective undermining was targeted at Arissa, with 70.1% efficiency, whereas Sirius was hit with the least effective undermining with only 20.5% efficiency
Top ten most superfluously undermined systems:
| System | Power | Effective Merits | Effectiveness |
| Lugh | Edmund Mahon | 310,44 | 4,095% |
| Heverduduna | Li Yong-Rui | 265,41 | 3,510% |
| Ngbato | Archon Delaine | 189,03 | 2,323% |
| Huichi | Archon Delaine | 161,065 | 1,925% |
| WW Piscis Austrini | Zachary Hudson | 115,68 | 1,504% |
| Kokoimudji | Edmund Mahon | 78,48 | 1,181% |
| Atropos | Zachary Hudson | 99,3 | 1,083% |
| Lusonda | Archon Delaine | 88,38 | 977% |
| Quan Gurus | Edmund Mahon | 54,87 | 803% |
| Leesti | Edmund Mahon | 58,56 | 801% |
| Total | 1,421,215 | 1,814% |
Mahon sits heavily on the throne of wasteful undermining, with 4 out of the top 10 systems, followed by Delaine with 3 and Hudson with 2.
Conclusions
Fortification
The fortifications aren't that bad. With 34.7% waste, and 65.3% of the waste is concentrated in 22 grinder systems, and 87.9% of that is concentrated in the top ten grinder systems. This is one of the clear proofs that grinders are abound.
Undermining
As usual, we're seeing what can best be described as a metric ton of undermining, the vast majority of which is wasted. 6.4 million merits worth of undermining, 3.4 million of it in 107 grinder systems (52.8% of all merits dumped into 21.3% of all control systems), 1.4 million (41.2%) of the undermining grinder merits dumped into only 10 systems (22.1% of all merits dumped into 2% of all control systems), and a massive 4,095,639 (63.6%) of all undermining merits are completely wasted.
Overall
Let's put these grinder numbers into perspective. To maintain rank 5, you need 5,334 merits/week. Let's say 6,000 just to be on the safe side. The fortification grinder systems' waste account for 524,542 merits. This is the equivalent of 87 rank 5 players fed through waste alone. The undermining grinder systems' waste account for 3,405,349. This is the equivalent of 567 rank 5 players fed through waste.
All told that's upwards of 32,700,000,000 (32.7 BILLION) credits pumped into the economy every single week, just to feed the grinders. That's the equivalent of pumping out 222 Anacodas worth of credits for complete wasted effort.
I don't know what economic advisers the various powerplay figureheads have hired, but personally I don't think they're fit for their jobs. They should be sent out and airlock, feet first into the nearest brown dwarf. Why would anyone in their right mind pay you 50 million credits for being this wasteful? These 10 people are supposed to be the best and the brightest, but to my mind they seem more like complete dimwits, handing out blank cheques to any Tom, and Harry who says they've been helpful.
It's insane, and honestly it should be stopped.
