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 (164 pages)
Winners: AXI (7% of all points), Lavigny's Legion, The Fuel Rats
The recent presence of invasions isn't enough to stop a further fall in AX activity, though it remains noticeably above pre-war levels, and the drop is mostly in the top 10 so may reflect reprioritisation of activity rather than a reduction of fighting as such. Regular winners take Gold and Silver, though it's a new entrant at Bronze.
Combat (724 pages)
Winners: The Buur Pit (3% of all points), Artemis Corporation, Celestial Light Brigade
The Buur Pit improve on last season's total to take the Gold this time round. For the other two trophy places, a bit of interesting trivia: while these are their first Combat trophies, both of the other squadrons have previously won CQC Silver - Artemis in seasons 12 and 13, Celestial in season 29. A slight decrease in overall activity.
CQC (22 pages)
Winners: We Rock You Roll (33% of all points), Lunar Rising, Black Swans
Another drop in overall activity - though not quite to the level when it had critical bugs - sees We Rock You Roll and Black Swans maintain their leaderboard presence, while a new group takes the Silver.
Exploration (755 pages)
Winners: Intergalactic Astronomical Union (3% of all points), Stellanebula Project, Canonn
Gold and Silver are the same as last season, while regular medallists Canonn take Bronze for their first exploration trophy since season 27. As somewhat expected, overall activity falls slightly further, to a recorded low (though it's likely that other seasons would have been lower if the leaderboard bug had been known then)
Powerplay (22 pages)
Winners: Lavigny's Legion (11% of all points), Madmen of the Mojongo, Federal Liberal Command
The same top 3 again - the ninth time and the sixth in a row. Their ordering is a rarer one only seen once before in season 28, so no final permutation this time.
A bit of a drop in total activity from last season, but the estimate remains slightly above season 30's, so no trend there.
Trade (626 pages)
Winners: Pilots Booze Network Squadron (4% of all points), Stellanebula Project, Kisel's Squadron
PBNS get their sixth consecutive Trade Gold (and eight consecutive Trade trophy), while Kisel's Squadron return for their first trophy since Season 24. The big difference of course, is that unlike all other boards which are slightly down, the Trade board is marginally up on participation, and approximately four times higher on volume than the previous season, which allowing for bugs means it is likely the third highest Trade season of all-time, beaten only by the mining rushes leading up to the Fleet Carriers release.
The additional trade profit this season is estimated at around 16 trillion credits, likely due to the substantial profits available from the Statues CG at the end of August. Assuming roughly 335k profit per tonne on Gold for that CG, this gap would be around 48 million tonnes of cargo.
The CG had 57 million tonnes delivered in the end - not everyone is in a squadron, of course, but this does suggest that "deliver without signing up" wasn't all that major a contributor that week in terms of tonnage.
Other comments
Season 32 has quite nicely lined up with Update 16, which brought relatively few surprises in the areas covered by the leaderboards, except for that one particular CG. Given the often large impact of CGs on the leaderboards, it's interesting to speculate how much of the recent low-ish totals are related to CGs happening much less frequently than before.
Season 33 will see Update 17, though with few hints as to what it will contain, whether that materially affects the activities considered here remains to be seen.
