AD: Cycle 258: Quarantining Abraxas

**Singing Winds, Crying Beasts**

A combined Imperial effort over the last three weeks has successfully obliterated months of work by Felicia Winters and her allies. Informally dubbed "Operation Upper Decker," player groups and independent commanders from AD joined with a flotilla of Patreus commanders to attack the Shadow President. In the three week combined Imperial operation, Felicia Winters saw her fortification bonus reduced, her CC drop deeply negative as a result of undermining, and her systems 'revolt' in the resulting turmoil. Winters is not just the 11th ranked power in the game, again. She is also the smallest she has ever been. Her furthest control system is a mere 48 light years from her HQ in Rhea.

In an interesting development, the FUC commanders pledged to AD for "module shopping" purposes were spotted along side some Kumo Crew and Grom pledged FUC commanders undermining Winters. While it was clear they were attempting to influence the Turmoil into benefiting Winters, their lack of coordination and leadership's poor understanding of Powerplay's mechanics meant they unwittingly aided the Empire's attack. The Princess thanks them for their service, I'm sure.

The Empire regained more than 300cc following the cessation of Federal control over the revolting systems. Crucially, this CC makes Zemina Torval and Aisling Duval significantly harder to attack. In our view, *we've set back the Federations plans by several months* as any attack on the Empire must now be reworked to account for these developments. As I noted in my last post, the Empire retains a viable and organized offensive capability and will deploy it strategically.

**Incident at Neshabur**

Powerplay is not all triumphant battles fought at a breakneck pace to achieve decisive victories. Today I want to again highlight the ZYADA Loyalists working to keep Yuri Grom from succumbing to Federal control. Last cycle Grom had 4 expansions dealing damage widely to several powers. While communication lines are stretched thin and often enemy actions preclude open discussion of strategy, The Loyalists appear to have once again fought our enemies to a stalemate. Not content to allow expansions through to damage the Empire, The Loyalists also launched expansions back into Hudson, making it clear that Imperial pain will be met with equal Federal pain. The resulting turmoil is a clear indication that the Federation is unwilling to accept true losses in order to win a war of attrition, and *The Loyalists will stop at nothing in defense of their home*. In my opinion, the ongoing civil war within Grom is one of the most consequential battles being fought. A fully weaponized Grom would be a fearsome and dangerous force in Powerplay, and that is something The Loyalists are working constantly to prevent. I hope that one day their efforts can be properly acknowledged.

**Samba Pa Ti**

Another important development over the last two weeks has been the successful return of voting control to the organized players at Aisling Duval. We've seen more than a dozen new players join AD Slack and several hail from squadrons operating inside AD space, albeit disconnected from our command and control operations. With this added coordination, AD has managed to organize additional power, enough to put us back over the consolidation threshold and save our commanders from having to race the HIP 1572 sabotage prep. This literally *saved AD commanders 4 billion credits* in the last two weeks.

Moreover, the time and effort freed up by no longer preparing a blocking system meant more players could devote effort to attacking the Federation and fortifying AD's systems. Truly, a nightmare scenario for the Federation. Over the last two weeks, AD has successfully fortified every system on Trello. This means we are significantly stronger in the face of any attack, even before accounting for the CC we regained after Operation Upper Decker. Any operation against the Princess must contend with both of these strengths.

## Article Source

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/quarantining-abraxas.544250/