Discussion So I built a dataset of Invasions (2013-2025 and counting)

[Jend-Ro Quill]

The Data
This is 153 Invasions and Annihilations (which are basically just big Invasions that take up similar kinds of attention/energy while meeting similar needs).

• I'm reasonably confident the dataset is complete, but one-third of Invasions don't have the Invasion tag, so some of this was manual.
• This data does not include other types of large competitive thread, like Events or Junctions. That's important for reasons discussed below.

These 153 threads saw 46,232 replies.

• At a ballpark estimate of 250 words per post, that's over 11 million words — more than the Stormlight Archive, A Song of Ice and Fire, Lord of the Rings, and Wheel of Time put together.

The most frequently invaded planet has been Empress Teta (five times).

• Nine other planets have seen at least three Invasions or Annihilation attempts: Coruscant, Alderaan, Ziost, Dromund Kaas, Dubrillion, Mon Calamari/Dac, Korriban, Muunilinst, and Tython.

It would be, frankly, a pain to figure out how many unique Major Factions were involved, so I'm not going to do that. It's a few.

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When do Invasions happen?
Or rather, when's the best time to expect them? (You could read this as 'when's the best time to launch one,' but that's more of a faction judgment call.)

Overwhelmingly, the start of the year and the middle of summer.

• You can see half the board hit fall and winter final exams on this chart. Actual board activity may not drop then, but nobody wants to be running an Invasion or Annihilation while cramming for Biochemistry 350.

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Have Invasions declined?
Replies per Invasion/Annihilation are stable. The appetite is there.

More importantly, other than spikes associated with a few specific Invasion-focused Major Factions, total Invasion/Annihilation posts have been essentially stable for a decade. Slower lately, but I'll get into some potential factors in a minute.

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So why does it look like Invasions have declined? You promised me answers!
Well, like I said, there are spikes. Some of that has to do with faction political/identity factors.

• The GA and Sith had their back-and-forth, and there certainly seems like some mess in the Core Worlds, but largely, it looks to me like Invasions have become kind of piecemeal and without much big-picture impact. I can't blame people if they're feeling like lately, Invasions don't accomplish much for the effort.
• Invasion rules tweaks could be considered by people with way more skin in the game than I have, but at the faction level, there's no Ashlan One-Maw Imperium out there raving for your head. There's no 'democratization of fear.' Shame.

Another possible factor: the aftereffects or diminishing returns of a few very large intense threads. Nobody who crawls out of a 1,200-post thread has any inclination to do it again for a minute.

Another probable factor: the rise of new thread types a few years back.

• First Reply has been a huge outlet, and Junctions and Populates get a lot of attention too. Junctions are interesting because they're diet Invasions: they gave Major Factions a popular, low-barrier, low-stakes way to do a lot of what they'd otherwise be doing through Invasions.
• I don't plan to capture post numbers or per-quarter totals on every single Junction the way I did with Invasions (EDIT: see below for The Junction Hypothesis), but just in terms of number of (often smaller) threads, a chunk of inter-faction energy that used to go into Invasions clearly goes into Junctions now:

It's up to faction members and faction leaders whether that's good, bad, or just evolution, baby.


Thanks to Arage Bao , Coren Starchaser , Aether Verd , Diarch Rellik , and anyone else within the blast radius of my spitballing and beta testing.

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UPDATE: The Junction Hypothesis

Let's take a closer look at Junctions. Everything above involved false starts and dead ends and adding Junctions was more straightforward than I expected.

The data now includes 78 Junctions for an additional 7,858 replies, equivalent to somewhere around one or two million words. (Average posts may be shorter.)

Junctions may be individually smaller than Invasions on average, but they added up to completely change the 'Invasion+' picture of the last few years. In fact, 2024 saw almost as many 'Invasion+' posts as the average of all previous full years, outlier spikes included (4230 vs 4830 for 2014-23). 2024 was an average year. 2025 is also on track to be an average year.

 

[Caltin Vanagor]

My phone won't let me give a "WOW!" react, do you get a like. Incredible work!

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

My phone won't let me give a "WOW!" react, do you get a like. Incredible work!

Thank you! I had my fun with it. All critiques and questions and scope expansions welcome.

 

[Aether Verd]

First off, thank you for the effort in putting together this data dude!

It's one thing to feel something but the numbers really put some things into context.

Here are some "old man rambling" thoughts I had while looking at this:

- One of the things I think impacts "when" invasions are launched is the Holiday armistice (assuming that's still a thing annually). There's a period around December-ish if memory serves where Invasions are turned off until after the New Year. Thus, any IC beef has to wait through the most wonderful time of the year and everyone swings as soon as the gates open.

- The impact of Junctions is something that didn't occur to me, but it makes total sense. Folks who want to butt head IC, but don't want to lose territory on the map have a thread style just for them. That's a lot of interfaction energy not going towards chunking hexes off each other's cloud. (And I don't think that's a bad thing)

 

[Valery Noble]

This is very cool! Really love the data collected and it's presented in a nice way!

As a MFO, to me, it's all "evolution baby". My staff team and I have always gone where the muse is, and that's why things are the way they are for our faction, and it's working really well. Junctions have definitely played a role in that too, but also feedback from faction members. Last year, we had 2 invasions fairly close to each other and people were so burned out we cancelled a third we were planning.

I also ran a poll in the GA to ask if members would ever be interested in having more than invasion happening at once, which wasn't all that uncommon in the past either from what I've heard. The answer was overwhelmingly no.

and I don't have a problem with the way things are. I actually really enjoy it, and judging by the activity and interest in our stories, I'd say more than enough folks feel the same

 

[Valery Noble]

- One of the things I think impacts "when" invasions are launched is the Holiday armistice (assuming that's still a thing annually). There's a period around December-ish if memory serves where Invasions are turned off until after the New Year. Thus, any IC beef has to wait through the most wonderful time of the year and everyone swings as soon as the gates open.

Also yeah, this is still a thing! The Moratorium applies to invasions, but also to Codex and Factory judgment.

 

[Tefka]

My question is when moratoriums went into effect, I know we did it early but I don't think the first few years (2013-2014) had a moratorium.

It literally wasn't until I got fed up with the community exploiting the holiday meta (I think a faction launched an invasion 3 days before Christmas or something like that) that caused moratoriums to be created.

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

My question is when moratoriums went into effect, I know we did it early but I don't think the first few years (2013-2014) had a moratorium.

It literally wasn't until I got fed up with the community exploiting the holiday meta (I think a faction launched an invasion 3 days before Christmas or something like that) that caused moratoriums to be created.

Maybe 2017? There were three invasions in December 2017, all against GA, and that kind of rings a bell.

 

[Ala Quin]

Ah. I love this sort of stuff. Just seeing the collective hours of human effort put into this hobby is astounding. Would be impossible but fascinating to know how many human lifetimes have been spent writing posts for Chaos. (Surely, at least one.)

 

[Kinley Pryse]

This is awesome. Thanks for putting it together!

 

[Azurine Varek]

Dang I wonder how long it took to put all of this together! It's really cool to see all of it like that.

So, as cool and fun as invasions can be, I gotta agree that not having them as frequently is a good thing (in my opinion at least). It takes a lot out of people to commit to such an event and a lot to plan and hold together as it unfolds, both emotionally and mentally. Also, frankly it gives more weight to them when they do happen being less frequently than if they were happening every other week or so. I, however, am more new to Chaos in general so really my opinions can be taken with a grain of salt in the long run. That said, I personally like how things are going, and I really appreciate finding and getting to be part of this community! <3

 

[Tefka]

Ah. I love this sort of stuff. Just seeing the collective hours of human effort put into this hobby is astounding. Would be impossible but fascinating to know how many human lifetimes have been spent writing posts for Chaos. (Surely, at least one.)

okay if we assume every post takes an average of 10 minutes, thats 24 million minutes, which is roughly 46 years.

So Chaos is a very loose 46 year old man.

 

[Ala Quin]

okay if we assume every post takes an average of 10 minutes, thats 24 million minutes, which is roughly 46 years.

So Chaos is a very loose 46 year old man.

Some of these novels people be giving me must be taking them a good hour or more to write and format. But I like lowballing the estimate to make me feel like I have spent my life more productively. Also, way to make the impossible seem feasible.

 

[Darth Empyrean]

Data like this is super important, especially as other said when we base half our stuff off vibes (minus Tefka, who actually uses the statistics of the board).

That said, I think its also really telling that the 'aftereffects' data only applies to Tython, Exegol, so on. I don't see that as evidence of these big threads causing everyone to want to stop writing for a bit (at least, not exclusively, don't get me wrong here) but more so that they were the end of long salt wars. They burned out writers who were artificially pumping up threads with up to 10 alts specifically for the purpose of making those threads high volume. When they burned out on that, the community just stopped moving for a while, and it still hasn't fully recovered.

We lost alot of writers to a very bad time in Chaos's OOC history, even if the post counts look good for a while.

Right now (assuming this is related to the suggestions posted recently mind), I think this is indication we need alternatives to make Invasions fill some of the same fun people have with Junctions. Why are junctions replacing invasions? Do Invasions need something different to make them actually feel important by comparison again? Do we just need to make invasions post count as low as a Junction to make it feel less like burnout, and increase the trend for it to happen? Maybe we just need to streamline invasions to be as simple as Junctions somehow. Could it all be as simple as that, as opposed to making invasions more complicated in their mechanics?

I'm not sure, but I would like to find out.

 

[Caulder Dune]

Truly it inspires in my small heart something akin to joy to see so many years of pain and suffering condensed, so elegantly, into graph format.

 

[Tefka]

That said, I think its also really telling that the 'aftereffects' data only applies to Tython, Exegol, so on. I don't see that as evidence of these big threads causing everyone to want to stop writing for a bit (at least, not exclusively, don't get me wrong here) but more so that they were the end of long salt wars. They burned out writers who were artificially pumping up threads with up to 10 alts specifically for the purpose of making those threads high volume. When they burned out on that, the community just stopped moving for a while, and it still hasn't fully recovered.

We lost alot of writers to a very bad time in Chaos's OOC history, even if the post counts look good for a while.

Right now (assuming this is related to the suggestions posted recently mind), I think this is indication we need alternatives to make Invasions fill some of the same fun people have with Junctions. Why are junctions replacing invasions? Do Invasions need something different to make them actually feel important by comparison again? Do we just need to make invasions post count as low as a Junction to make it feel less like burnout, and increase the trend for it to happen? Maybe we just need to streamline invasions to be as simple as Junctions somehow. Could it all be as simple as that, as opposed to making invasions more complicated in their mechanics?

I'm not sure, but I would like to find out.

I don't agree with any of this to be real. I don't think there's ever gonna be some magical equation to fix why humans become disinterested.

Writers don't burn out, they age out. Burn out doesn't actually exist. It's just something we say to generalize the nuances of every individual. Like take Waddles, Hiss Hiss, all the Odyssey folks, the numerous spinoffs before then. Nothing I did would retain those people, they were always going to leave.

Cultural narratives get spun after the fact, always, never before.

While a toxic environment (usually cultural) could explain why people leave, it's often not the only answer. It is A answer, especially a more believable answer because humans are driven towards conflict. People just age out or become disinterested. They've had multiple discussions, I think the game devs of Palworld had a great response when all the articles started dropping along the trend of PLAYERS ARE LEAVING PALWORLD IN DROVES.

If I recall correctly, the Palworld devs were like no, they just played enough, became disinterested, and moved on. It's perfectly natural and normal. There's literally nothing you can do. You can try, but like, hoomans gonna hooman man.

 

[Zark San Tekka]

Maybe 2017? There were three invasions in December 2017, all against GA, and that kind of rings a bell.

 

[Jasper Kai'el]

This is a pretty kick ass deep dive, fantastic work.

II have personally never written on the board in a state without junctions, having joined im 2022. so its cool to see that transition. Which is fair. Invasions can be a lot, people can lose disinterest overtime with bigger stuff like that. I'm sure Junctions have a lot more appeal being able to keep PvP elements while not having the looming threat of losing map space and all. They're easier to start, so you can get more rolling in the year. That being said, I am surprised how much they've become dominant on the board. Transition of faction leadership, change in general board interests and all are probably at work I'm sure. It's all interesting regardless.

I think, personally, its also nice to see that overall board activity has fluctuated, but has by no means dropped off to an insane degree. Just cause there aren't invasions going on doesn't mean that the board is dying, more that the factions on the board are just going through changes. We had a fair amount of Major factions quickly join and leave the board between 2024 and this year.

Anyways, no more rambling from me lol. Great work on this.

 

[Selrik Lorcas]

Dang, Jon. That's some good work. Kudos.

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

Dang I wonder how long it took to put all of this together!

A couple hours to scrape, clean, and patch the data, a couple hours to figure out the right charts, an hour to write and edit, and a couple hours to show off intermediate products to randos on Discord and then realize my mistakes. Call it six or seven hours of quality leisure time spread out over a week ish.