Round 20
Dates and Times
Signups opened on Friday 19th January 2007 at 20:00 GMT
Ticks started on Friday 26th January 2007 at 20:00 GMT
Ticks ended on Friday 16th March 2007 at 20:00 GMT
Round Details
Round 20 marked the introduction of the Eitraides race, which utilised combinations of ships similar to those belonging to all the other races, as opposed to a single identifying feature itself. This round also saw the reintroduction of the in-cluster attacking travel-time bonus.
Round Summary
Round 20 was the first in nine rounds to be played without both 1up and eXilition, who announced they would not be playing the next round after their second victory in a row in round 19. Two new alliances, Destiny, with a solid core of ex-Insomnia players, and Conspiracy Theory, with a strong 1up vibe amongst its players and HC, started up prior to the round and were viewed as likely contenders based on the strength of their memberbases. The other main contender for this round was Vengeance, who were joined by the gosu BG for this round. Most DLR players, along with a few others, tagged up as h3ll's angels this round, in tribute to their friend who had passed away in October of that year. Furious Omen did not continue into Round 20 as previously hoped. Instead Omen played, albeit at a reduced capacity in comparison to their previous three rounds and Angels skipped the round. Other notables included Ascendancy, expanding on their success last round, and NewDawn, slightly weakened by a number of the players they had picked up for r19 from 1up moving on to CT.
The start of the round saw probably the two strongest alliances on paper targeting each other, although this war lacked the intensity of some of the earlier 1up versus eXi wars. CT and Destiny spent almost the entirety of the first 3 weeks of the round locked in this conflict. While Destiny maintained a slight roid lead throughout most of this period the main winners were in fact VGN, who, receiving comparatively fewer incs, were able to build up a value advantage over their two rivals. VGN and Destiny had in fact agreed on a rather loose avoidance agreement. This avoidance agreement, less formal than an actual NAP, meant that while incomings here and there from one alliance on the other were acceptable, large-scale targeting was actively avoided. This helped Destiny throughout their war by virtue of decreasing the incomings they received relative to CT. CT, and most alliances this round in fact, focused more heavily on attacking, CT not organising defence fully until the fourth week of the round for example. The absence of a highly efficient war-machine, a la eXi or 1up, the pre-round 19 improvements to the XP formula for capping roids and the extremely potent attacking capabilities of the newly introduced Eitraides, along with more attack-minded ship stats in general, meant that during round 20 offence really was the best form of defence. As the round progressed in this fashion CT, Destiny and VGN gradually moved away from the rest, with Omen and Vision sitting slightly further back from them and a larger group of alliances closely clustered, score-wise, behind them.
This situation, with VGN pulling away, obviously was in neither the best interests of CT nor Destiny. As so often happens a number of relatively minor events provided the spark to shake things up. A small number of VGN members joined in a fleetcatch on a Destiny planet just past the 3 week mark in the round. Nothing particularly unusual in itself, a similar number of Destiny members taking part in a fleetcatch on a VGN planet mere days earlier, Destiny responded to this, or more realistically VGN's roid-lead, by teaming up on VGN with CT. This led to VGN losing 18% of their roids in one night, with CT gaining the most due to VGN focusing on Destiny, thanks to their perceived "betrayal". Defence was proving problematic for many alliances, with accusations of flagshipping becoming so frequent that Destiny HC Caj responded to them on Alliance Discussions. These events led to one of Destiny's bigger members, Zaeji, being kicked from the Destiny tag.
Nonetheless despite the friction caused between VGN and Destiny the main focus shifted back once again towards CT, who had taken the #1 spot off VGN by this time, some 2 weeks before the round ended. Destiny, in particular, hit CT, with galaxy-raids of heavy CT gals being interspersed with isolated nights of planet-targeting. With friendly relations back on between VGN and Destiny CT looked for help as well, forming agreements with VisioN, as well as becoming friendly with Tides of Fire. As all this was going on the planet rankings had seen a number of Asc XP-whores climb up towards the top, alongside Caj and a number of gosu planets from VGN. With some 4 days left in the round, and the race for the #1 alliance still wide open, Caj, self-covering against CT incoming, spent his entire stockpile, leaving his planet relatively vulnerable. Ascendancy noticed this and took their opportunity to get one of their planets to #1. Co-operating with ND and Omen these 3 alliances hit caj's galaxy, 2.5, then #1 gal, taking over 50% of their roids. A number of the later attacks sent in ended up landing on caj's planet, killing much of his fleet, knocking him off first place.
The following day, prompted partially by this, Destiny attacked VGN, looking for the XP needed to boost them ahead of CT, who now had a small score lead on them. Breaking their NAP, and its agreed 72 hour terms of expiration, Destiny landed a number of attacks, notably including Caj landing on gosu member Agony, another competitor for the top planet spot. In retaliation gosu fleetcaught caj as he returned from this attack. Although this fleetcatch was largely covered gosu landed it hoping to secure agony the #1 planet, and in turn causing VGN to lose a large amount of score as well as Destiny taking a hit as well. Unfortunately for agony, who had been on the fleetcatch, as he recalled his fleet it returned to base as he had incoming landing, killing a large portion of his fleet and removing him from contention for the #1 planet spot. CT, benefiting from remaining largely uninvolved in these events, were able to push ahead and took a well deserved #1 alliance rank over Destiny, despite some last day recruiting efforts from the latter to boost their score, with VGN finishing a more distant third.
In the end the top planet ranks were dominated by Ascendancy, with the first four planets all being theirs after Caj and the gosu planets had seen their chances wiped out. The winner of the round was Delos, who actually played off a free account the entire round, becoming the first person to win with one since pay-to-play was introduced. The top galaxy was 15.6, who narrowly pipped 2.5 to the win after their heavy losses during the final few days.
