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 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 meant that during round 20 offense really was the best form of defence. As the round progressed CT, Destiny and VGN gradually moved away, with Omen and Vision sitting slightly further back from them and in turn 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".
23rd feb caj 21 def fleets, zae dies (zae leaves/gets kicked from tag around this time)
--ct napped vgn at some point (?)--
2nd march destiny targeting ct again? (destiny nap vgn?)
10th march vgn hit by vsn
--(ct napped vsn ++, tof?)--
13th march 2.5/caj raped by asc/nd/omen (caused by caj spending stockpile) massive incs including later waves kill much of caj's fleet
destiny/caj attack agony gosu/vgn (breaking 72 hour nap expiry agreement)
15th caj fced back, gosu land for huge losses, destiny also lose considerable amounts (more spread due to ingal def), agony fced on return from pulling off fc
16th final day, destiny attempt to recruit etc, vgn dead, ct stay ahead.
