Late on January 7, following fierce fighting in the SPNZ-Z and NJU-QV constellations, the Pandemic Legion iHub located in D-W7F0 was destroyed. Across a number of hours, Imperium forces secured enough nodes to successfully win the entosis tug of war for D-W7F0 and many other systems, including the recent battle hub of M2-XFE, and the ZXB-VC side of Delve’s connection to Fountain.
According to this fleetcom.space battle report, a total of 1476 players on the Imperium side clashed with the 1766 members of PAPI, including a total of 21 monitors used across both sides. The D-W entosis tug of war lasted for over three hours. During this time, a total of 24 node captures took place, with the biggest shift taking place in the last hour. The full graph of the D-W7F0 node contest can be seen here.
Following the D-W7F0 iHub reclamation, it was very quickly pushed above ADM level three. This has no immediate impacts, but if the rate of ADM increase is maintained, it will very quickly be impossible for PAPI to anchor new medium Upwell structures in the system. This also sets back any PAPI attempts to cyno jam and then assault the D-W7F0 “Gaarastar”, as an iHub must be held for 35 continuous days before a cyno jammer can be anchored. This is yet another wrench in PAPI war progress, following the two major battles in M2-XFE earlier this week, which have resulted in large numbers of PAPI supercapitals being logged off and hellcamped within the system.
In the coming weeks, we will see if PAPI wants to continue their current tactic of attempting to jam Keepstar systems before assaulting them. With the Imperium eliminating the risk to a number of Keepstar systems for jammers to be placed by PAPI forces, this could very well be the start of an uphill grind for the attacking coalition.
