2.6. Status update

Anyone remember The Plan we posted up last round? It went something like this:

1. Organize races for options and flexibility.
2. Start raiding on day two and don't let up.
3. Raid primarily for cash, but get kills in the process.
4. Take control of the inner systems and turn at least four planets into cash producers.
5. With the cash from the raiders, the cash planets, and the traders, construct a fortress planet to give us safe docking.
6. With safe docking, ship the raiders into an expensive AI team to be able to raid any ports with ease.
7. Kill everyone.

We're about six weeks into the round now and this is our situation:

1. We control nearly half the planets in the game, including the inner corridor planets of 8k/21k/12k/22k.
2. Of those, four of those are completed cash rocks from which we're getting a solid 3.2 billion a day.
3. We've invested about 250 billion into 8002, and it's essentially complete and safe to dock at.
4. We're solidly on top of the kills, raids (for all intents and purposes) and alliance points rankings.

In other words, we're almost exactly where we'd hoped to be. Our cash flow has been specactular. When you consider that we've spent at least 250 bil on 8002, probably another 80 billion on the other rocks, and fully shipped several dozen warbirds and raiders, you can appreciate just how effective this group effort has been. For example: recently we spent 70 billion of our 72 billion AA on 8002. Two days later, we were up to 45 billion again. With z0r, DCD, Athrun and Firestorm as excellent cash traders, huge profits from our raiding so far, reliable planet money, and miscellanous contributions from everyone, we're in damn good shape.

So, the first and most difficult part of our plan is complete. Next up is to level and reship our raiders into L265 L30 busters, which will require them a week or two to trade and realign. Once we ship them, absolutely any port in the game is going to be easily hittable for us. We're going to systematically smash the most stacked ports in the game, destroy the highest level ships, and basically pick and choose whoever we want to kill.

We're also going to continue to take and build up planets. The end goal is to control all 24 planets in the game, giving us a huge income and giving the rest of the game absolutely no place safe to dock. More intermediary is to have enough rocks developed that we get the majority of our cash flow from them. If we simply developed all the ones we currently have, we'd be getting a solid 8 billion a day from them alone. Building is going at a decent pace, and it's mainly the lack of planet builders holding us back.

The only thing really needing improvement is our jump team, which is the main area we'll be focusing on. The reality is that with Aku/Imps/SH being allied, SD/XF/GoD allied, and KAOS only raiding once every two weeks (and thus pulling quite a few cover), pulling off a jump on any significant alliance/coalition is extremely hard when trying to maintain a respectable raid team. Over the next couple weeks, we're going to press people to ship and do whatever it takes to get warbirds online and available in force.

In terms of what people should be doing:

[b]RAIDERS:[/b] If you've not sold your raider and started leveling, do so now. Your end goal is to be at least L25 and +250 align. Trading is preferred since it's the easiest way to alignshift and level at the same time, but if you have difficulty trading, go ahead and resource for the levels and alignshift later. I want this all done in two weeks maximum.

[b]RCs:[/b] Since we're not going to be raiding again until the raiders are leveled, you've got some choices. You can cashtrade if you feel like it, reship into a stealth RC (combat medic) in order to help in group fights, go iteming, or planetbuild if necessary.

[b]HUNTERS[/b]: Get to level 20 ASAP and get shipped. [b]I want everyone who plans on being in a warbird anytime in the near future shipped by Monday.[/b]  Money is not an issue. We need more shipped people in the channel togive us the best chance of being able to take on some of these coalitions.

So, keep it up, guys. The hunting/jump situation is frustrating and will be fixed, but we're in excellent shape overall and it's only going to get better from here.