Previously: seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,8, 9,10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 (plus How large are squadrons?)
On each graph, points are on the Y-axis, and squadron position on the leaderboard is on the X-axis. Both scales are logarithmic. The light grey line (diamond marker) is the numbers for the previous season, the dark grey line (triangle marker) is the numbers for the same season last year (season 14), and all stats are PC only. As in previous seasons, the approximate power-law distribution continues, allowing estimates of total activity to be made without spending too long reading the boards.
(Political is excluded, because there are well-known exploits to allow very high scores, and because it's not clear even without the exploits what it's supposed to be measuring: the in-game description of "large and happy faction" is clearly wrong - possibly this will change if they ever implement BGS happiness properly)
Anti Xeno (245 pages)
Winners: Marauder's Vanguard with ~9% of all points. Plague and The Wing of Destiny take the other trophies.
A new name taking the Silver trophy - the other two also won trophies last time. Overall activity fairly similar to last time - lower in the top 10, higher in the top 1000 - so the estimate is down a little overall.
Combat (2578 pages)
Winners: Stellanebula Project with ~1% of all points. Lavigny's Legion and New Pilots Initiative take the other trophies.
Yet another near-identical season on combat, with the same three leaders in the same order as last time, and no significant change in the overall scores.
CQC (78 pages)
Winners: We Rock You Roll with ~18% of all points. CQC Discord and The Fatherhood - Alpha take the other places.
Another normal post-Odyssey season in CQC, with The Fatherhood Alpha being a new CQC winner (and their first trophy since Season 4). The drop from the pre-Odyssey season 15 is very clear on the graph.
Exploration (2853 pages)
Winners: Canonn with ~4% of all points, Stellanebula Project and The Stellar Cartographers Guild take the other trophies.
Regular exploration winners continue to take all three trophy spots this season, and the overall activity estimate is almost completely static. Slightly down on the pre-Odyssey comparator last year, but not by very much.
Powerplay (88 pages)
Winners: Federal Liberal Command with ~12% of all points. Madmen of the Mogonjo and Lavingy's Legion take the other trophies.
Another leaderboard looking almost identical to last season - the same three winners in the same order, the same number of pages, the same sorts of scores. A drop-off in the second half of the top 10 means the overall activity is down a bit, but not by much.
Trade (2410 pages)
Winners: Stellanebula Project with ~1% of all points. Winged Hussars and New Pilots Initiative take the other trophies.
Trade activity is the only one of the leaderboards to noticeably rise this season, with strong performances throughout the top 10, and a marginally higher profit throughout. Could be related to the high-profit trade CGs in this season, or could just be coincidence. Stellanebula Project pick up their third trophy this season - and their first ever trade trophy.
Other comments
All fairly quiet in the leaderboards, mostly with very little change on the previous season, and only one first-time trophy winner (Plague, AX Silver). Perhaps Season 23 will shake things up a bit more.
Meanwhile, back to a very slight rise in the number of active squadrons on the exploration leaderboard ... though nowhere near as much as the typical pre-Odyssey rises between seasons. However there's something very weird going on here. (Readers last time might remember me saying there was something odd about the page count)
I happened to log in and check the leaderboards on Wednesday evening, and the numbers of pages displayed were much smaller.
AX: 156 rather than 245
Combat: 962 rather than 2578
CQC: 38 rather than 78
Exploration: 1010 rather than 2853
Powerplay: 37 rather than 88
Trade: 863 rather than 2410
They're mostly in the right sort of relative scale to each other - but the general purpose boards are 2/3 smaller while the specific boards are more like 1/2 (or better for AX). CQC and Powerplay swap places in the ordering. So what's going on?
I didn't really get enough data on Wednesday to have much of a guess - but I did take a few points off the exploration leaderboard. The top 10 scores seem to be basically identical - allowing for late sales! - and the top 100 aren't far off (100th was 670 million points then, is 726 million points now) - but the 1000th place is quite different: 53 million on Wednesday night, almost 100 million now. It feels very unlikely that thousands of low-ranked exploration squadrons were hanging on to their data for a last minute sale ... but where did they all come from?
My current hypothesis is that the "last season" boards are correct, but there's an issue with the "this season" boards which means that they don't show all squadrons and especially tend not to show squadrons with sporadic activity (and it's quite possible for a single part-time player to get into the top 1000 on any board) - but there are lots of other potential explanations.
In the meantime for ease of comparison I'm going to keep using the "last season" numbers to compare squadron counts from season to season.
On each graph, points are on the Y-axis, and squadron position on the leaderboard is on the X-axis. Both scales are logarithmic. The light grey line (diamond marker) is the numbers for the previous season, the dark grey line (triangle marker) is the numbers for the same season last year (season 14), and all stats are PC only. As in previous seasons, the approximate power-law distribution continues, allowing estimates of total activity to be made without spending too long reading the boards.
(Political is excluded, because there are well-known exploits to allow very high scores, and because it's not clear even without the exploits what it's supposed to be measuring: the in-game description of "large and happy faction" is clearly wrong - possibly this will change if they ever implement BGS happiness properly)
Anti Xeno (245 pages)
Winners: Marauder's Vanguard with ~9% of all points. Plague and The Wing of Destiny take the other trophies.
A new name taking the Silver trophy - the other two also won trophies last time. Overall activity fairly similar to last time - lower in the top 10, higher in the top 1000 - so the estimate is down a little overall.
Combat (2578 pages)
Winners: Stellanebula Project with ~1% of all points. Lavigny's Legion and New Pilots Initiative take the other trophies.
Yet another near-identical season on combat, with the same three leaders in the same order as last time, and no significant change in the overall scores.
CQC (78 pages)
Winners: We Rock You Roll with ~18% of all points. CQC Discord and The Fatherhood - Alpha take the other places.
Another normal post-Odyssey season in CQC, with The Fatherhood Alpha being a new CQC winner (and their first trophy since Season 4). The drop from the pre-Odyssey season 15 is very clear on the graph.
Exploration (2853 pages)
Winners: Canonn with ~4% of all points, Stellanebula Project and The Stellar Cartographers Guild take the other trophies.
Regular exploration winners continue to take all three trophy spots this season, and the overall activity estimate is almost completely static. Slightly down on the pre-Odyssey comparator last year, but not by very much.
Powerplay (88 pages)
Winners: Federal Liberal Command with ~12% of all points. Madmen of the Mogonjo and Lavingy's Legion take the other trophies.
Another leaderboard looking almost identical to last season - the same three winners in the same order, the same number of pages, the same sorts of scores. A drop-off in the second half of the top 10 means the overall activity is down a bit, but not by much.
Trade (2410 pages)
Winners: Stellanebula Project with ~1% of all points. Winged Hussars and New Pilots Initiative take the other trophies.
Trade activity is the only one of the leaderboards to noticeably rise this season, with strong performances throughout the top 10, and a marginally higher profit throughout. Could be related to the high-profit trade CGs in this season, or could just be coincidence. Stellanebula Project pick up their third trophy this season - and their first ever trade trophy.
Other comments
All fairly quiet in the leaderboards, mostly with very little change on the previous season, and only one first-time trophy winner (Plague, AX Silver). Perhaps Season 23 will shake things up a bit more.
Meanwhile, back to a very slight rise in the number of active squadrons on the exploration leaderboard ... though nowhere near as much as the typical pre-Odyssey rises between seasons. However there's something very weird going on here. (Readers last time might remember me saying there was something odd about the page count)
I happened to log in and check the leaderboards on Wednesday evening, and the numbers of pages displayed were much smaller.
AX: 156 rather than 245
Combat: 962 rather than 2578
CQC: 38 rather than 78
Exploration: 1010 rather than 2853
Powerplay: 37 rather than 88
Trade: 863 rather than 2410
They're mostly in the right sort of relative scale to each other - but the general purpose boards are 2/3 smaller while the specific boards are more like 1/2 (or better for AX). CQC and Powerplay swap places in the ordering. So what's going on?
I didn't really get enough data on Wednesday to have much of a guess - but I did take a few points off the exploration leaderboard. The top 10 scores seem to be basically identical - allowing for late sales! - and the top 100 aren't far off (100th was 670 million points then, is 726 million points now) - but the 1000th place is quite different: 53 million on Wednesday night, almost 100 million now. It feels very unlikely that thousands of low-ranked exploration squadrons were hanging on to their data for a last minute sale ... but where did they all come from?
My current hypothesis is that the "last season" boards are correct, but there's an issue with the "this season" boards which means that they don't show all squadrons and especially tend not to show squadrons with sporadic activity (and it's quite possible for a single part-time player to get into the top 1000 on any board) - but there are lots of other potential explanations.
In the meantime for ease of comparison I'm going to keep using the "last season" numbers to compare squadron counts from season to season.
