Round 23
Dates and Times
Signups opened at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 24th August 2007
Round began at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 31st August 2007
Round ended at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 19th October 2007
Round Summary
The main change from r22 to 23 concerned the return of one of the most dominant alliances in planetarion history, eXilition. eXilition allied pre-round with Volkstaat (or VS) and quickly assembled a large roid and score lead over the other alliances. Due to the power of their name the vast majority of the top players remaining in the game either applied to join eX or joined VS, who were widely perceived as eX-friendly even before the full nature of their deal was revealed. eX also went for a Xan/Cath/Zik racial mix in the alliance, which proved extremely successful. Despite a widespread consensus that eXilition were the alliance to beat no sufficiently large and competent block was assembled that was able to take them down. The initial conflict was between eX and the returning Ministry. However this proved to be a very brief war, Ministry lacked the quality and the numbers to take on eX one on one.
An attempt to form a block with Destiny, VGN and Jenova to prevent eX from running away with the round suffered problems from the very beginning. Ministry, disgruntled with the organisation of the block, pulled out initially and the block was slow to get going properly. There were only a few days of proper targeting of eX before activity began to drop off in the opposing alliances. eX's power was far ahead of any other alliance's and, together with VS, they targeted each opposing alliance in turn, taking 20% of their roids off them each night.
As the block failed to make any significant headway into eXilition NewDawn realised that something had to be done to prevent the round ending in record time and joined in with the others. Unfortunately the lack of genuine co-operation and eXilition's superior activity levels meant that nobody matched up well against eX. Within ten days of the initial block the war was pretty much done and dusted. Another fact that helped eXilition was that they had kept as many planets as possible out of tag early on. This meant that the size of their lead was difficult to accurately see, with the ingame alliance rankings being practically useless. Equally as important was the benefit of bringing these planets into tag on the rare occasions when eX lost roids when they were being targeted, both making eXilition look stronger than they were in reality and demotivating the opposing alliances. One late and noteworthy occurrence was when ToF, by now ranked #2 after remaining neutral during the war, hit eX. With most other alliances dead or inactive ToF could find no allies and eX were again able to take over 20% of their roids off them in one night.
At this stage the round was effectively over and the remainder of it was largely a contest for galaxy and planet ranks. The two main contending galaxies that round were 2.3, an eXi dominated ex-SiN gal, and 2.4, a gosu galaxy. From very early on Fenix, who was in 2.4, was the leading planet. Initially in VGN, he was kicked for defending another gosu planet versus a VGN attack, and ended up joining VS, where he was followed by the other gosu members in VGN. He had accumulated a huge lead over the rest of the universe by mid-round but when he came under heavy incoming from the remnants of the block he left his fleet at base, losing a massive chunk of it and his lead. As the round seemed destined to tail off without any excitement bwtmc, eXi HC and 2.3 member, organised a huge attack on 2.4, resulting in all non-NAPed, and even some friendly PNAPed planets being roided.
This however sparked off an internal power struggle within eXi. With long-time leader Kaifux relatively inactive, and unwilling to pick sides, ricka left the alliance, and was followed by most of the LDK core within eX. The gosu group, who had all worked as part of eX for the round, pnapped from pre-round and attacking with them, were understandably annoyed by the perceived backstab and over the final days of the round left the eX tag as well. The final gosu planets, those actually in 2.4, left with 2 nights left in the round. A number of them then launched on toot, eXi's biggest planet in 2.3. He, and his galaxy, suicide defended this attack, dropping Tearz out of a top ten planet spot but boosting toot to #1, through salvage, and the galaxy ahead of 2.4. Planet-wise the VS planets such as FeniX had dropped out of the picture after repeatedly losing roids. The top three planets at the end of the round were all eXilition ones, and despite the score loss from a large number of LDK and gosu planets leaving tag eX were still comfortable winners.
