The Casino War: Post-TISHU

I'll admit I am not an expert on null sec sovereignty warfare. In my limited understanding, two items are critical in waging war in the Aegis sov system: the activity defense modifier and infrastructure hubs, which impact the ADM.

Unfortunately, neither of New Eden's two major news websites are unbiased reporters of events. TheMittani.com, often referred to as TMC, originated from Goonswarm Federation and is run by the head of The Imperium, The Mittani. With the posting of The Imperium's black eagle on the website, TMC has declared its bias. The other, Eve News 24, receives a large part of its operating budget from two sponsors involved on the other side of the conflict, the gambling site IWANTISK.com and the Twitch streamer 1ronBank. The editor-in-chief of EN24, Bobmon, in an interview with CSM Watch revealed that he personally intervened with CCP on behalf of IWANTISK.com when Team Security blacklisted the gambling website from EVE Online's in-game browser. I'd say that EN24's coverage leans toward the anti-Imperium forces.

So what's a blogger to do when all information is shaded one way or the other? Let's go to the maps.

As far as I can tell, the map above shows the situation in Fade right before Psychotic Tendencies. [TISHU] departed the region. In partnership with Pandemic Horde, TISHU helped drive down the activity defense modifiers across the region. IWI wanted to hurt SpaceMonkey's Alliance and in addition to driving down the ADMs, TISHU also helped kick SMA out of Cloud Ring as well as make conducting PvE in Fade extremely hazardous. On 6 March, TISHU announced their contract against SMA ended and they would depart the region after receiving 1.2 trillion ISK.

So what happened since then? Looking at Dotlan, I'd say that SMA and The Imperium bounced back, at least a bit.

SpaceMonkey's Alliance's membership is still down over 30% from the beginning of the conflict, but Fade now appears relatively safe for ratters and anomaly runners. The amount of NPC's dying and lining the pockets of SMA's line members is up several times over the figure recorded in the second half of February and the first week of March. During that time, SMA held the sov structures, but could not protect its line members trying to earn ISK. If an alliance can't protect its ratters, does it really control the space? The situation has turned in SMA's favor since TISHU left the region.

Perhaps the situation is about to get worse for SMA again. The anti-Imperium forces managed to freeport the station in C8-CHY before The Imperium regained control yesterday. Also, several attacks on iHubs over the weekend have, at the very least, affected the ADM benefiting defending forces.

I should add that another front in the war opened in the Vale of the Silent, this time against The Bastion. Six iHubs come out of reinforce Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.

I realize that I don't have any links to the fighting occurring in null sec right now. Quite frankly, I am probably the wrong person to try to analyze the actual fighting. I think I can conduct a map exercise such as the one above and not get too much wrong, however. Now, if the war just doesn't become so massive that I can't keep up. But that's what everyone is hoping for, right?