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 measured season (in this case, 27). 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 (184 pages)
Winners: The Forgotten Initiative (6% of all points), Deadspace, Galactic 911
Three all new AX winners here - though Galactic 911 have won some Political trophies before. Is The Forgotten Initiative related at all to The Forgotten, who also won some Political trophies in seasons 2-6 and 11, or is this just coincidence?
Overall pages and activity levels are down significantly on last season, falling a bit below the Season 25 benchmark which predates the Thargoid War itself (but did include the AX CGs at the end of the Azimuth storyline). This probably isn't a surprise, since there have only been any Invasions in the first two weeks of this season, compared with seven of eight weeks in Season 30, and every week of seasons 28 and 29 - AX combat has reduced in significance and opportunity recently.
Combat (734 pages)
Winners: Marauder's Vanguard (2% of all points), Anti-Xeno Initiative, The Buur Pit.
Though, it's not as if there aren't still Thargoids to shoot at, with two of the big name AX combat squadrons taking the Gold and Silver places. The Buur Pit get a Combat Bronze to go with their Season 9 Trade Gold. Overall activity and page count down slightly on last season
CQC (23 pages)
Winners: We Rock You Roll (33% of all points), Black Swans, Brotherhood of Bogans
Page count and activity is slightly down, another new name takes the Bronze, while Black Swans get their second CQC trophy and We Rock You Roll their 18th.
Exploration (773 pages)
Winners: Intergalactic Astronomical Union (3% of all points), Stellanebula Project, Radius Group
Radius Group seem to be planning to stay on the leaderboards as they pick up their third exploration trophy, while the Gold and Silver are taken by regular medallists (season 24 was the last in which neither IGAU nor SNPX got an exploration trophy, for those keeping track). Total activity continues to drop slowly, as does page count.
Powerplay (24 pages)
Winners: Lavigny's Legion (11% of all points), Federal Liberal Command, Madmen of the Mojongo
Powerplay goes against the general trend with a moderate rise in total activity. The top 3 are unchanged except in order, taking the medals for the eighth time (fifth in a row) ... but, in a never-before-seen order! Five of the six possible orders for these squadrons have now happened at least once - will Season 32 see the final permutation (MotM, FLC, LL)?
Trade (612 pages)
Winners: Pilots Booze Network Squadron (4% of all points), Winged Hussars, Aisling's Angels
As with the other general leaderboards, a slight drop in overall activity - and no change at the top as Gold and Silver keep their places from last season. Aisling's Angels get their first Trade trophy, having previously got top places in Political and Powerplay.
Other comments
Update 16 did make it narrowly into Season 31, but as expected we're likely to have to wait for Season 32 to see what difference it makes - there's no "passenger" or "rescue" leaderboard, of course, so the Scythe might be hard to spot. The lack of invasions did turn out to be persistent, and this will certainly be contributing towards the low AX scores this season. It's likely we'll see a few invasions in future - some of the recent recaptures are likely to go that way - but probably not enough to boost things back up on their own in Season 32.
Overall a fairly slow season with few CGs or other shakeups of the leaderboard sort, which looks likely to continue similarly next season too.
Bonus Legacy Report
Not going to do a full report - it takes too long - but thought I'd check in to see what was happening. Back in season 28 there was about a 13-14 to 1 ratio of pages on most leaderboards.
AX: 6 squadrons (0.6 pages). Well, why would you be in Legacy if you wanted to fight Thargoids.
Combat: 17 pages (down to about a quarter of Season 28, while Live has seen a drop of a little over 10% since then)
CQC: 5 squadrons (0.5 pages)
Exploration: 19 pages
Powerplay: 8 squadrons (0.8 pages)
Trade: 15 pages
So the generalist boards are down to about a quarter of their S28 activity, while the specialist ones are pretty much entirely gone. Since Season 28 there have been a few changes to make Live the default on Steam, which may explain the much more significant drop-off compared with the relatively small drop in Live activity. The generalist Legacy boards are now below the specialist Live boards in terms of squadron counts
(On the "it's pretty crude but it's what I have Colonia Traffic Measure", overall usage of Legacy hasn't dropped that much, so the console side still seems to be rolling along - I can't see the leaderboards for that, of course)