Week 12 of World War Bee was down some in terms of raw fights from the previous week, but all of the fights that did go down were much bigger on average. Action in Querious just about dominated all of the headlines, although there were some structure bashes in Fountain and a supercapital gank in lowsec.
The ISK split in the war zone of the Southwest is still fairly lopsided at 62% to 38% for the attackers, but the Imperium clawed back some of its deficit despite a big welp on Wednesday. In theater, 23 trillion ISK has been lost, up about 3 trillion week over week, and 227,000 ships have been destroyed, an increase of 20,000 ships. Across New Eden, since July 1, the ISK divide is 50.33% to 49.67% in favor of the attackers, with 30.6 trillion ISK lost and 251,000 ships destroyed. The war populations are more or less steady with the Imperium at 53,000 pilots, and their opponents seeing a slight increase at 149,000. The average ship lost was worth 122 million ISK, a substantial increase from last week’s 108 million ISK. A rough estimate of the real world cost of the war so far is no less than 425,000 USD/319,000 GBP/357,000 EUR.
There were seven battles in week 12 which exceeded 20 billion ISK in total losses. The Imperium achieved their strategic objective three times, while PandaFam and TEST/Legacy achieved their objective four times.
The two major theaters are the North (Fountain and the border with Aridia and Cloud Ring as well as northern Delve) and the South (the rest of Delve, Paragon Soul, Querious, Stain, Period Basis, and Esoteria).
THE NORTHERN THEATER
Action in the North was quiet again this week, with only a handful of structure bashes as The Initiative (INIT) took out three PandaFam Fortizars in Fountain and an Azbel in Aridia on Monday. More surprising was when they started in on a LowSechnaya Sholupen Astrahus in Taurus, where LSH was on hand with a couple of Nyxes and a few caps with small support ships to defend. INIT’s siege gang managed to kill a dreadnought as part of the fight, trading 2.9 billion ISK in losses for 3.3 billion ISK in kills.
THE SOUTHERN THEATER
Week 12 in the South was kickstarted by an auspicious fight, as the Imperium ambushed an enemy move-op, trapping a TEST Ragnarok and dropping dreadnoughts. PandaFam then counter-dropped dreadnoughts to mop up the Goon capitals, but an Imperium Ferox fleet arrived in time to remove the bubbles from the field and extract the dreadnoughts. An Imperium pilot captured the action on YouTube. The final bill came to 44.1 billion ISK in losses for the Imperium and 145 billion ISK for PandaFam and TEST/Legacy. Later that day, a large Goon bomber gang caught a jump freighter and some Talwars in FAT-6P, killing 10 billion ISK for 421 million ISK in losses.
Monday started with TEST and their allies successfully defending the 49-U6U iHub. Later in the day, Goons lost a Tatara in Querious, and then an Imperium Ferox fleet out-dueled a PandaFam Eagle fleet, killing 9.1 billion ISK for 3.2 billion ISK in losses. Tuesday, a Ranger Regiment capital gang got the drop on some PandaFam black ops ships, killing 10.5 billion ISK worth of ships, then an Imperium fleet crushed a Red Alliance Cerberus fleet in Sakht, killing 12 billion for 2 billion ISK in losses and capturing the action on YouTube. Later in the day, a Goon dreadbomb caught a TEST Minokawa and Wyvern, trading 20.3 billion ISK in losses for 37 billion ISK in kills. The day ended with Goons losing a Tatara in P-ZMZV to a PandaFam siege fleet.
Wednesday set the table for an interesting rest of the week as the Imperium rallied to defend a Tatara in Querious. As the subcap fleets began to clash, TEST dropped dreadnoughts to wipe the Imperium FAXes from the grid. Goons counter-dropped and killed the first wave, only to have a combined PandaFam and TEST/Legacy dreadball counter-counter-drop and finish off the Imperium capitals. The final butcher’s bill settled at 164.5 billion ISK lost by the Imperium and 71.3 billion for the opposing forces.
Thursday morning, just after midnight EVE time, thousands of pilots descended on 49-U6U as the Imperium prepared to defend a Fortizar armor timer. INN covered the fight elsewhere on the site, as well as on Twitch. Roughly 3,500 players appeared on killmails in the 10% tidi slugfest as both sides elected to drop supercarriers onto the citadel to spice up the fight. Unfortunately for the Imperium, when they attempted to warp many of their supercarriers out of hostile bubbles to a safe location where they could direct their fighters, the Fortizar’s Point Defense System (PDS) glitched out during the tidi, and many supers were left behind. By the end of the night, the Imperium had lost 803.4 billion ISK to the hostiles’ 387.7 billion ISK, largely buoyed by the eye-watering costs of supercarriers as estimated by zkillboard. During the fight, Goonswarm’s ElitistOps corporation led an ambush along the pipe from enemy staging to the 49-U6U battleground, killing 10.1 billion ISK for 448.3 million ISK lost by affiliated Imperium groups (Editor’s Note: an earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed the 448.3m loss to ElitistOps, which was incorrect). Goons later lost a Tatara in the hostile staging of P-ZMZV, then closed the day out with a Sacrilege fleet taking a beating at the hands of some Nightmares and Muninns, with the Imperium losing 22 billion ISK to PandaFam and TEST/Legacy’s 5.5 billion ISK lost.
Friday had more of the same, as Goons lost a Ferox fleet trying to defend a Tatara in YF-6L1 from a PandaFam battleship and cruiser fleet, losing 22.9 billion ISK (with the Tatara included) for 2.8 billion killed. Saturday closed out the week with an Imperium fleet testing TEST sovereignty in Esoteria, trading 2.1 billion ISK in losses for 2.8 billion killed and some troll hacks completed. Ranger Regiment also dropped on some TEST capitals in Delve, killing 8 billion ISK for 4.4 billion ISK lost, and then Cormorants happened, with Goons losing 700 million ISK for 1.4 billion killed.
ELSEWHERE IN NEW EDEN
A truly odd pair of kill mails during the week came from TEST, as they lost both an Erebus and a Nyx in low security space to the Ivana Trading Federation. The supercapitals were lost a handful of systems away from one another, across the divide between Molden Heath and Metropolis.
