It’s been over a week since the battles in M2-XFE, battles which were called on to be a massive turning point in the war. A large portion of the PAPI supercapital fleet lay beneath hundreds of warp disruption bubbles with hundreds of Imperium pilots standing guard 23/7, waiting to introduce any logged in pilots to the teeth of the hellcamp’s woodchipper. This has, without a doubt, produced the largest quantity of memes I’ve ever seen in a week’s time. But what has it done for the war?
Let’s have a look at the primary battleground region: Delve. Here, I’ve got a side-by-side map of what the region looked like (as far as infrastructure hubs are concerned) before M2- and after.
As you can see, some infrastructure hubs (IHUBs) have been traded back to the Imperium. This was expected as, in the first few days after the M2-XFE final timer, a large portion of PAPI subcapital pilots were still trapped as well, waiting for extraction fleets to get them out of the camp. This direction has been changed now as most, if not all, of PAPI’s participating alliances have given the call for their subcapitals to submit themselves to Valhalla and then submit for SRP. This has given PAPI the ability to continue to form sizable subcapital resistance to the Imperium’s counterattacks.
There have been a fair few large battles in the last week over these key IHUBs. The first of these battles took place in the constellation of SPNZ-Z, over the IHUB in D-W7F0, the previous Pandemic Legion capital system. Over time, this back and forth battle resulted in the IHUB being destroyed and replaced by the Imperium, resetting the progress that had been made in the system by PAPI. Another constellation-wide battle took place over the system of UEXO-Z, another key IHUB in the PAPI offensive. Again, the Imperium was able to destroy the IHUB and replace it, resetting PAPI’s progress.
More fighting happened over the IHUB in 1-SMEB where PAPI was able to not only successfully defend the IHUB from being taken but also won the ISK war. Finally, the IHUB battles (thus far) culminated with a cheeky headshot attempt on the PAPI staging system of T5ZI-S which resulted in 1800 players in the system duking it out over control of the grid. In this fight, PAPI won control of the battlefield, prevented the IHUB reinforcement, and won the ISK war. It seems in this week of regrouping that PAPI has started to gain their confidence back on the battlefield.
These fights are far from finished. Over the next 48 hours, another 16 IHUB timers will come out of reinforcement, 13 belonging to the Imperium, and 3 to the PAPI coalition. Even though the battles of M2-XFE greatly favored the defending parties, World War Bee 2 is far from over.
