Week nine of World War Bee was by far the slowest week in terms of battles and major killmails. Major actions have more than halved since week five, the highest action since week one, and down from 68 to 33 battle reports and major killmails. Last week’s action, at the time the lowest in the war to date, slowed significantly as PandaFam and TEST/Legacy repositioned supercapital assets to Fountain in order to finish the two remaining Imperium Keepstars in the region. While they successfully accomplished those goals, intelligence reports suggest that those supercap assets are already being withdrawn again to potentially mount an invasion into Delve.
The ISK divide in the war-torn Southwest is about 64% to 36% in favor of the attackers. The war has created losses of nearly 18 trillion ISK in assets and destroyed 179k ships. Across New Eden, since July 1, the ISK divide is about 51% to 49% in favor of the attackers with nearly 24 trillion ISK in assets lost and 216k ships destroyed. The war populations are still about 53k Imperium pilots versus 145k PandaFam and TEST/Legacy pilots. The average ship lost was worth 110.7 million ISK. A rough estimate of the real world value of the war’s losses is no less than 332,000 USD/250,000 GBP/280,000 EUR.
Week nine’s action included only three battles with total losses in excess of 20 billion ISK, where the Imperium achieved their strategic objectives twice, and TEST/Legacy achieved their strategic objective once. All three battles were supercapital-related ganks or counter-ganks. Additionally, PandaFam destroyed the last two Imperium Keepstars in Fountain, neither of which were defended by the Imperium.
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
Week nine began in the North with more structure bashes. The Bastion had a Sotiyo and a Tatara destroyed in Fountain. The Initiative later out-duelled Feroxes in Nagas, killing 1.8 billion for 100 million ISK in losses, then an Imperium response fleet wiped Cormorants in North Delve, killing 1.3 billion for 300 million in losses. Structure bashes continued Monday as Goons lost two Fortizars in Fountain, then the combined PandaFam and TEST/Legacy supercapital fleets finished off the KVN-36 Keepstar. Later action on Monday included a trio of Imperium capitals getting baited and dropped by a PandaFam Cormorant gang, losing 12.9 billion ISK for 2.3 billion ISK in kills.
Tuesday was another day of structure bashes in the North, with the Imperium losing a pair of faction Fortizars. The highlight of the week in the North was certainly a small gang ganking an NC. Erebus in Cloud Ring. The Titan was killed with minimal losses to the hunters, with the fight costing NC. 98 billion ISK for 1 billion in kills. Wednesday was only two structure bashes, with Goons losing two more faction Fortizars in Fountain.
Thursday saw a Ferox fleet fighting a Machariel fleet to a standstill, with the Imperium losing 2.8 billion for 2 billion in kills. On Friday, the PandaFam and TEST/Legacy supercapital fleet finished off the Y-2ANO Keepstar at the gates of Delve in Fountain. Saturday finished the week off with a busier day, as Goons only lost a Tatara in Fountain, while the Y-2ANO faction Fortizar repaired in its hull timer, resetting all progress. An Imperium Tornado fleet took a fleet of PandaFam supercaps to the face, losing 4.7 billion ISK to kill 560 million. Also on Saturday, there was a Cormorant slap fight in Northern Delve, as well as an Imperium ambush on a PandaFam move-op, killing 8.7 billion for 406 million ISK in losses.
THE SOUTHERN THEATER
Week nine in the South began with a few skirmishes – an Ansiblex assault with Goons killing 2.4 billion and losing 1.3 billion in Catch, Goon Muninns blapping PandaFam Cormorants in the Imperium primary staging of 1DQ1-A and killing 3.2 billion for 1.1 billion in losses, as well as an Imperium Muninn fleet getting jumped by TEST/Legacy Eagles in Catch killing 1.8 billion while losing 7.2 billion. Monday saw the Imperium online three more Keepstars in Delve, two of which are in 1DQ1-A, in preparation for the presumed assault on Delve. Additionally, Goon Feroxes out-duelled the TEST/Legacy Feroxes attacking an Imperium Fortizar in Stain, killing 12.2 billion for 5.9 billion ISK in losses. Imperium FC John Hartley also posted a video of the action. On Tuesday, a Goon Naglfar was ganked in Stain, costing the Imperium 5.7 billion ISK, while killing 817 million.
Wednesday saw the Imperium trade a mining Rorqual for a hostile Nyx after dropping a capital response gang, killing 27.8 billion ISK for 4.7 billion ISK lost. Imperium FC Cauldronb0rn said, “I heard over global that there were some supers attacking a Rorqual around the corner from our 49-U6U Karmafleet gatemap, near the TCAG-3 gatecamp. I had a bunch of our guys switch to Sabres and a few probing ships and head down that way via the Ansiblex network. When we arrived, we joined the ASCEE gatecamp fleet and got filled in on what happened and where the hostile supers were supposedly cloaked up. We ended up burning around the area for a few kilometers, in an an attempt to decloak them. Eventually, one of the supers decloaked and warped off and then back, at which point we had the spot probed down and warped a Sabre there. All of the other Sabres warped over and we proceeded to drop 50 km of bubbles in each direction, then [Imperium director] Kun’mi dropped some dreadnoughts on them to kill it. The other two supers extracted safely somehow, not sure where they were as we thought they were both on grid with the first one. We then located their cyno via the in-game map and killed it as well.”
Later in the day, the Imperium dropped super carriers on top of a Legacy Ferox fleet coming into Period Basis from Stain, killing 7.7 billion for 2.3 billion in losses. To round out Wednesday, Brave welped a kitchen sink fleet, while a combined Imperium Baltec and Siege fleet took down a Fortizar in Querious, with the Imperium killing 19.2 billion for 202 million ISK in losses.
Thursday saw an Imperium Muninn fleet bait TEST/Legacy HACs into a smartbomb trap, killing 11.4 billion for 1.6 billion in losses. Imperium FC John Hartley also uploaded footage of the fight to his YouTube channel. Later in the day, the Imperium mounted a few entosis assault and response fleets to take down a Brave iHub in Querious. The 3-FCKZ iHub was destroyed and a new Imperium iHub was put down, although the replacement iHub was reinforced. To close out the day, PandaFam welped another Cormorant fleet in Delve, losing 1 billion ISK for 424 million killed.
Friday effectively closed out the week in the South, with the Imperium receiving intel on some vulnerable TEST supercapitals in G-M4GK. In response, the Imperium deployed a dreadbomb to TCAG-3 and had it take the regional gate. Unfortunately for the Imperium, TEST/Legacy escalated their super fleet quickly, killing most of the dreads on field. The Imperium lost 310.2 billion for 131.2 billion killed. “This wasn’t like a big trap or anything, they just showed terrible numbers in their cap fleet and we decided to fight,” said Imperium Sky Marshal Asher Elias on Reddit. “Attacking Test in their own space has a lot of morale value for us and replacing dreads is easy, we’d talked about it a few times before. We were winning pretty hard early, our subs were stomping their Nightmares, we were vaporizing their dreads but we eventually got overwhelmed by the weight of supers/titans. Was a fun fight for us, but other than the cost of the ships nothing too much more interesting.”
He later responded to another Reddit message “I made a VERY long post about this a week ago about how we aren’t the ‘blueballs or helldunk’ guys. Vily was on Talking in Stations the other day talking about (how) they would wait months for the perfect fight. Good for them, that’s a strategy I have never agreed with. We are going to try and win but since I’ve been in charge of Goons’ military, I’ve taken fights that we had a chance at winning but weren’t the perfect fight. If it doesn’t work out it’s okay but that’s the kind of FC and leader I’m going to be. If you want to wait months for the perfect fight that’s cool. I’m going to keep taking swings when it looks like we have a shot, they won’t always work out ISK-wise, but I get to hear our guys on comms being grateful we took the shot and that has value beyond ISK. I have always thought it’s better to fight hard and make your guys happy than to wait months for the best helldunk.”
