Round 31
Dates and Times
Signups opened at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 17th April
Ticks started at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 24th April
Ticks ended at 20:00 GMT on Friday, 12th June
Round Summary
Round 31 began with Ascendancy (playing under the tag name TOOT THE ALLIANCE), and as the victor of the previous three rounds they went in perceived as heavy favourites. On top of this they had continued their recruitment despite having more members than the tag limit, giving themselves a much wider pool than other alliances. The only other full alliance tag to start the round was xVx. xVx had recruited heavily as well after Round 30. Cardinal, who had been one of Ascendancy's key members in the previous round, had left the alliance and with a number of other ex-LDK members had joined xVx. This strengthened xVx immensely and provided a further boost as many players, believing that Ascendancy and xVx were on friendly terms, joined them to avoid fighting Ascendancy that round. xVx, Ascendancy and ROCK all did in fact go into the round on relatively friendly terms, although not NAPed as some believed.
The other main development in the round concerned the impact of Ascendancy's dominance on the opposing alliances from the previous round. Both Conspiracy Theory, VGN and NewDawn lost a number of members and Omen disbanded. After the success of DLR the previous round many people decided to start up their own smaller "BG"-style alliances. These included Evolution, largely based around a Denial core, WAFHH, started by ex-Omen HC Wishmaster, a returning Insomnia, EC and SPOON, the tag name under which Saints played. These alliances all entered the round on friendly terms, sharing an IRC channel and holding a common agreement to work together to oppose any attempt to run them over individually. This round was marked by the dominance of a few particular ship types, primarily Cathaar fighters and Xandathrii fighter/corvette fleets, with frigate and destroyer anti-cr/bs def fleets. Ascendancy and xVx were almost entirely fi/co to start off. Other alliances specialised even further with SPOON going totally Xan fi/co and DLR being almost purely Cath fi.
As the round got under way Ascendancy, as expected, moved out to an early lead, on the back of both a larger memberbase and a better average roid count. xVx were the next closest alliance, with the rest lagging further behind. Ascendancy and xVx were at this stage both avoiding each other's core galaxies, a tactic which made sense for both alliances given the number of shared galaxies they possessed. Without any concentrated targeting against them Ascendancy began to stretch the gap between themselves and xVx. At this point, with some 10 days of the round gone, the BGs, fearing the worst, decided they needed to at least make an attempt to prevent Ascendancy from running away with the round. This led to most of them hitting Ascendancy but this initial attempt did not hold together well. Although Ascendancy's growth stalled somewhat, particularly over the first couple of days, they were still holding onto the #1 position comfortably. With a little less than 3 weeks gone in the round the attempt to bring Ascendancy down was renewed in strength. Most of the BGs, along with ND, CT and VGN, as well as other smaller alliances on rare occasions, targeted Ascendancy heavily. While the earlier problems concerning keeping everyone involved and contented still existed, and some alliances did not participate on certain nights, enough did to severely hamper Ascendancy's growth. The next few days then saw xVx overtake Ascendancy in terms of total roids.
Despite the appearance that only Ascendancy and xVx were competitors for the #1 spot xVx declined the repeated invitations from the anti-Ascendancy block to become involved in targeting them. However as Ascendancy began to gain roids again, some 3 weeks into the round, they attacked a number of big xVx planets. xVx, both concerned for their top planets and seeing a chance of a #1 alliance ranking joined the block. With the lack of formal agreements between xVx and Ascendancy this occurred in the space of one night. Ascendancy, now under attack by almost every active alliance in the universe bar ROCK, lost 25% of their roids over the space of the next 5 days. Ascendancy were not helped by the extremely offensive nature of the stats and game mechanics this round in their attempt to fight off the overwhelming numbers opposing them. With salvage being halved since the previous round, and Cath fi fleets being virtually impossible to stop efficiently, the sheer number of fleets attacking Ascendancy made good defensive coverage extremely difficult.
With the situation looking very bad for Ascendancy JBG, who had been heavily involved in strategic decision making in Asc for the previous number of rounds but had been uninvolved for this one, stepped back in and offered a deal to xVx. This deal consisted of Ascendancy proposing that they and xVx ally until the end of the round, thereby breaking the opposing block. In exchange Ascendancy offered to kick members from their own tag at the end of the round, ensuring that xVx finish as #1 alliance. xVx accepted this proposal, spurred on by the previous existence of friendly relations between the two and the number of shared galaxies. However they decided to turn down the second half of the proposal, leaving the race for #1 alliance to be run out in conventional fashion between the two.
When the remainder of the block became aware of the new developments between the two alliances the situation began to break down. It prompted such an outcry from the community that it actually led to an official xVx Statement on Alliance Discussions. Some of the other involved alliances in the block, notably DLR and Evolution, moved on to target xVx in revenge, and others, such as VGN and SPOON, simply backed out, with some claiming to have been willing to work with Asc versus xVx at a later stage in the round. Ascendancy and xVx hit out together at the BGs, roiding first DLR and then Evolution, with Evolution suffering particularly heavy losses losing half of their roids in 3 days. Evolution decided to use all of their fleets to fleetcatch Cardinal when he landed on them as an attempt to gain some level of personal revenge, believing that he had convinced xVx to leave the block to favour Ascendancy and help his galaxy. This led to them landing a hugely unfavourable attack, with Evo losing some 20+ million value to xVx's ~10 million.
As the round moved on xVx and Ascendancy progressively roided at will until they were far ahead of the other alliances in terms of both score and average roids. xVx, on the back of their roid lead, had overtaken Ascendancy shortly after they had joined the block attacking them. After the agreement was made though Ascendancy were able to roid faster than xVx and regained their roid and score lead with a week left in the round. While they received criticism from some quarters for giving up on their chance to win, their members and HC were satisfied with their performance throughout the round and their #2 spot represented a highest ever ranking for xVx.
The race for top galaxy had been decided from a very early stage. With the core Ascendancy galaxies being hit hard early on Cardinal's xVx/Ascendancy galaxy, 10.4, had established a comfortable lead on the back of receiving far fewer incs. In the end they finished well clear of the #2 galaxy, a xVx stronghold in 9.1, who were in turn ahead of the Ascendancy galaxies, with all other galaxies pretty much dead by the end of the round. The top planet this round was SantaCruz of xVx who finished ahead of Achi of Ascendancy, despite crashing almost 1 million earlier on in the round. This contest was rather bitterly fought, with both planets unable to attack each other and willing to let their friends help them out. The race for last place was won by Cooling of Ascendancy, who played the entire round without initiating an asteroid. In spite of this the round had proven to be one dominated by xVx and Ascendancy in a shared fashion, with Ascendancy passing out xVx in the final days to take their fourth #1 alliance spot in a row.
