Huge battle in EVE online
January 27, 2013 3:37 PM   Subscribe

What started out as a few EVE Online alliances forming up PvP fleets last night rapidly evolved into one of the largest PvP battles in the game's history. Reports indicate that a total of over 3,000 players may have been involved in the colossal battle. The video is insane. More on Reddit.
posted by seanmpuckett (189 comments total) 60 users marked this as a favorite
 
Thanks for the heads up! I will be following this. GO GOONSQUAD!

Edit: the second link in this post is amazing.
posted by Our Ship Of The Imagination! at 3:41 PM on January 27, 2013 [2 favorites]


Many machines on Ix... New machines.
posted by Artw at 3:43 PM on January 27, 2013 [17 favorites]


Well, anything against Reddit, GO GOONSWARM!
posted by Samizdata at 3:46 PM on January 27, 2013


The Goons got their assess handed to them in a high hat, if the Reddit thread is to be believed.
posted by Grimgrin at 3:54 PM on January 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


Here's another explanation that puts this war into context. (May well be heavily biased in favour of one of the teams involved)
posted by litleozy at 3:54 PM on January 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


Sadly, crushing Redditors will not crush Redditry.

Nonetheless, GET TO CRUSHIN'.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:55 PM on January 27, 2013 [7 favorites]


Reddit's honey badger coalition won.

Interestingly, some people have been saying that if the goons had not lost Vile Rat last September, this might have been avoided.

Wonder if the Herf Derf Moon Eaters got in on it.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:11 PM on January 27, 2013


So in historical terms this is most like A) Camlann B) Thermopylae C) the Somme D) Pearl Harbor E) 7-Day War?
posted by infinitewindow at 4:16 PM on January 27, 2013 [6 favorites]


midway: an accident that turned into a huge battle
posted by cupcake1337 at 4:17 PM on January 27, 2013 [9 favorites]


The YouTube comments seem to be written in a language I do not speak.

This seems to be exactly the kind of thing Neal Stephenson predicted in Reamde.
posted by TheDorkReport at 4:17 PM on January 27, 2013 [9 favorites]


From the Reddit link litleozy posted, it sounds most like a mix of Kursk (huge!) and Carrhae (based on a leader's incompetence).

On preview, what cupcake said.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:18 PM on January 27, 2013


I see things happening and I hear people saying words. I don't know what any of those things or words are, but it's fascinating. So, my normal reaction to EVE news.
posted by cmoj at 4:23 PM on January 27, 2013 [36 favorites]


If I didn't have a toddler and a full load of classes I would love to be an EVE addict..
posted by sacrifix at 4:24 PM on January 27, 2013 [5 favorites]


The writeup on The Mittani is pretty good and has pretty pictures. Also, a link to the kill board. Estimates of losses are in the 500B to 700B ISK range. That's worth about $20,000 at current semi-official exchange rates. Boom!
posted by Nelson at 4:24 PM on January 27, 2013 [2 favorites]


I have no idea what most of the comments in this thread are saying.

Speaking as a person who has never played an online game, this seems like it might be an interesting story. Maybe the basement-dweller stereotype isn't accurate, but I sure wish somebody involved with this "battle" had taken an expository-writing class. From what I can gather (huge number of people playing together, slowed the servers to 10% speed) it seems like this would be neat to understand, although I don't find that in these links. The video makes no sense to me.
posted by cribcage at 4:25 PM on January 27, 2013 [6 favorites]


In addition, The Mittani has an Analysis of the aftermath.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:26 PM on January 27, 2013 [3 favorites]


If I'm reading litleozy's link correctly:
  • A titan can be built for about $3500 in out of game money if you don't want to farm it.
  • The clusterfuck coalition (who seems to have been the loser) lost 44 titans and a bunch of other ships.
  • At least $154,000 of in-game value was vaporized last night.
And I'm ashamed I've spent $15-$20 total on hats in TF2...
posted by Mick at 4:27 PM on January 27, 2013 [12 favorites]


Is there any long form Eve writing out there, blogs or what have you that someone interested in knowing about (but not necessarily playing) Eve should be reading?
posted by adamdschneider at 4:29 PM on January 27, 2013 [3 favorites]


The writeup on The Mittani is pretty good...

Is that serious or sarcastic? The first sentence reads, "A Goonswarm op led by Dabigredboat went haywire in Asakai in Black Rise tonight when the titan jumped instead of bridged, and was promptly pounced by a PL supercap group." Maybe I'm old, but that sentence is incomprehensible to me.
posted by cribcage at 4:29 PM on January 27, 2013 [50 favorites]




I was serious, cribcage. The Mittani is awfully jargony but if you understand the game it's a good writeup. Goonswarm is a group of players. Dabigreadboat is one of their fleet commanders. Asakai in Black Rise is a place, a specific solar system in the game. A titan is a big expensive spaceship. Jumping instead of bridging means the titan moved where he shouldn't have. PL is a rival space faction, and a "supercap group" is a fleet of spaceships that kills titans. OK, so that's a lot of jargon; the Joystiq writeup linked in the OP is more accessible but also more limited.

You're off by a factor of 10, Mick. Only 3 (or 4?) Titans down, not 44. Adding up all the ships you get to $15,000 to $20,000 depending on whose numbers you follow.

BTW, this accidental giant battle is taking place at a time when a lot of people think Eve has gotten boring because there's too much peace, not enough combat between the nullsec factions. Lots of folks play the game solely for fights like this, so everyone's excited when there is one.
posted by Nelson at 4:35 PM on January 27, 2013 [3 favorites]


Two bonus links about Eve in China that really deserve their own MeFi post but heck, here they are. New Eden behind the great firewall and CCP's story of bringing Eve to China. There's a whole parallel Eve universe for Chinese customers, same game rules and totally different culture and society. It's interesting how the parallel evolution is playing out.
posted by Nelson at 4:35 PM on January 27, 2013 [10 favorites]


All mimsy were ye borogoves; And ye mome raths outgrabe.
posted by cjorgensen at 4:35 PM on January 27, 2013 [39 favorites]


As someone who tried out EVE and ditched it after a week as what seemed to me to be possibly the worst imaginable investment of time, I must ask: how many years of stultifying accountancy do you have to live through in order to experience moments like this?
posted by George_Spiggott at 4:36 PM on January 27, 2013 [13 favorites]


"I am a leaf on the wind; watch how I soar."
posted by wolfdreams01 at 4:39 PM on January 27, 2013 [13 favorites]


I'm just an observer of the game but the kicker here is that by "jumped instead of bridged" they mean that the Titan, instead of warping a fleet and staying put, jumped itself. It was literally a misclick that sent the Titan in alone, leaving the rest of the fleet behind.

PL is Pandemic Legion, the main ally of Reddit's TEST corporation.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:40 PM on January 27, 2013 [2 favorites]


This game sounds stressing as hell if you really play it and not just dither around. Fascinating to read about, however, almost like news from a parallel universe.
posted by Iosephus at 4:41 PM on January 27, 2013 [3 favorites]


Thanks for the link, Nelson. Interesting that a big business among the alliances there is killing computer-controlled pirates. I associated low-security space in Tranquility with player-controlled piracy.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:44 PM on January 27, 2013


"I have seen things you would not believe: Goonswarms gone haywire off Asakai in Black Rise ..."
posted by octobersurprise at 4:50 PM on January 27, 2013 [73 favorites]


Did anyone at least have chicken?
posted by Dr. Zira at 4:51 PM on January 27, 2013 [8 favorites]


Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:54 PM on January 27, 2013 [29 favorites]


Did anyone at least have chicken?

Shame the Goons didn't have an awesome battle cry.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:56 PM on January 27, 2013 [2 favorites]


It's stuff like this that makes me want to come back to EVE.

Totally explains this cryptic tweet by the Mittani last night, too:
@TheMittani
CFC STRATEGIC GENIUS AT WORK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t0mkeB9TCA … #tweetfleet #eveonline
EVE Online is really a study in extremes. It has the grind-iest grinds and the highest highs simultaneously. On the one hand, there's incredibly boring and time-consuming stuff like setting up player-owned stations, which can take hours to do (or at least it used to, I haven't played in years), or mining, which is basically, "push button, drag thing, repeat" until you have acquired enough minerals to refine into a hull or whatever.

On the other hand, full-on fleet combats on this scale are a rush unlike any other. There is nothing like jumping with a fleet of a couple hundred players with no idea of what you're going to see on the other side, or blowing up some corporate mining array that will wipe out their infrastructure. And the drama/intrigue...
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 4:58 PM on January 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


Way back when I played EVE, these kinds of fights were technically impossible. Servers would just overload and shut down. What's made these massive battles possible, apparently, is a pretty new feature called Time Dilation, or TiDi for short, which is very clever indeed.

Basically, when the servers start to struggle, they just run the game slower. Apparently during this fight the TiDi went all the way down to 10% - so 10 real seconds for each game second. It's funny because in scifi lit this is often a desired functionality - by slowing down the subject's perception of time, they can actually perform much better in enormously complicated battles.
posted by mek at 5:03 PM on January 27, 2013 [28 favorites]


The desire to stack things up for the sheer joy of knocking them over is probably woven very deeply in human beings.
posted by benito.strauss at 5:04 PM on January 27, 2013 [31 favorites]


Short version, as far as I can understand:

1) The leader of a big important space fleet hit the wrong button, and as a result teleported his massively big expensive powerful spaceship to an area alone, instead of having the rest of his fleet come with him.

2) The people in that region had been expecting some kind of raid and were on the alert, so instead of charging into a standard battle, big spaceship leader guy ended up going alone into an ambush.

3) When the people in the region realized the big expensive powerful spaceship was alone, they realized they had a chance of taking it out and called in all their buddies.

4) Their buddies then called all their buddies, who then called in all their buddies. As various alliances got activated and people saw a chance to settle old grudges, it became a massive pile-on.

5) Meanwhile, the big expensive powerful spaceship guy had called for reinforcements. By the time they showed up, however, they were outnumbered by the growing pile-on.

6) Big expensive spaceship guy, instead of giving up the battle as lost and taking a hurtful but survivable drubbing, said, "CALL IN OUR ENTIRE FLEET! TAKE IT TO THE LIMIT!"

7) For various reasons, this was a tactically poor choice. Their fleet got mashed and they lost a whole lot of big ships.
posted by kyrademon at 5:09 PM on January 27, 2013 [69 favorites]


benito.strauss: Well, if it's cocked at an arrogant angle....
posted by rainy at 5:10 PM on January 27, 2013


Sounds like someone needed Clippy: "It looks like you're trying to jump. Did you really want to do this?"
posted by maxwelton at 5:11 PM on January 27, 2013 [46 favorites]


EVE continues to be my favorite game to read and my least favorite to play.

This looks video looks like more fun than I have ever had on a mmo but I know the endless hours are just not worth it. Like, I am sure heroin is a great high high but no way is it worth playing with.
posted by munchingzombie at 5:14 PM on January 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


The eve dev blog has some cool posts about task scheduling and time dilation. This is really my main interest in the game, professional curiosity about massively scalable task queuing systems.
posted by Ad hominem at 5:14 PM on January 27, 2013 [5 favorites]


EVE posts are the best fucking posts. BEST.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS HAPPENING I AM JUST HAPPY TO BE HERE
posted by elizardbits at 5:17 PM on January 27, 2013 [70 favorites]


As someone who tried out EVE and ditched it after a week as what seemed to me to be possibly the worst imaginable investment of time, I must ask: how many years of stultifying accountancy do you have to live through in order to experience moments like this?

Probably three to four months of daily playing and you'll be able to roll along into big battles if you're friends with the right people. I say this as someone who spent 3 years on EVE. I wish I still had the time, amazing game...
posted by wrok at 5:17 PM on January 27, 2013


Gather ye under the satellite dish, and listen to tales of war from distant stars...
posted by Kevin Street at 5:22 PM on January 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


Sounds like someone needed Clippy: "It looks like you're trying to jump. Did you really want to do this?"

THIS. IS. EVE.

how many years of stultifying accountancy do you have to live through in order to experience moments like this?

After playing EVE for about nine months a few years back, I caught myself setting up a monthly revenue sheet as I prepared to launch a corporation with some friends. Then it hit me: what the fuck am I doing? This isn't a game, this is a job! Only I'm paying them.

I logged out and canceled my account. Never looked back. But I have a friend who spends an inordinate amount of time jetting around in nullsec hunting other players. He'll go after anyone that you pay him enough to go after. Barring that, he just hunts Russians for the hell of it. I wonder if he was involved...
posted by valkyryn at 5:25 PM on January 27, 2013 [13 favorites]


I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time to die.
posted by localroger at 5:27 PM on January 27, 2013 [6 favorites]


This looks video looks like more fun than I have ever had on a mmo but I know the endless hours are just not worth it. Like, I am sure heroin is a great high high but no way is it worth playing with.

See, from what I hear, heroin is supposed to be fun pretty much right away. That's why it gets you hooked.

If we're comparing EVE to an addictive substance, it's more like you're forced to try to get high by huffing paint for upwards of six months to two years and then, maybe, if you spend enough time hanging around with the other people in the drunk tank down at the local precinct, you'll finally meet someone who can hook you up with the good stuff.

But if you know someone with a connection to the good stuff, you can get that hit right away. And you'll either immediately OD and never play again, or you'll get hooked.

Me? I got tired of huffing paint.
posted by valkyryn at 5:34 PM on January 27, 2013 [6 favorites]


wolfdreams01: ""I am a leaf on the wind; watch how I soar.""

Gackaggggggggggggghkkkk... FTFY.
posted by Samizdata at 5:35 PM on January 27, 2013


In this analogy does EVE make you constipated and itchy though
posted by elizardbits at 5:35 PM on January 27, 2013 [2 favorites]


In this analogy does EVE make you constipated and itchy though

Depends on how often you go to the bathroom.
posted by valkyryn at 5:37 PM on January 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: I got tired of huffing paint.
posted by localroger at 5:38 PM on January 27, 2013 [7 favorites]


This game sounds stressing as hell if you really play it and not just dither around. Fascinating to read about, however, almost like news from a parallel universe.
posted by Iosephus


My thoughts exactly. I also like how much lag seems to have been a factor in how things played out -- like real war, where the one thing you can never fully account for is the weather. The Spanish Armada got taken out by a few big storms more than any other factor. Hitler's assault on Russia in WW2 came up against first insane levels of mud, and then a particularly cold winter. And then another.

Also, leadership mistakes. The more military history I read, the more I realize that no two battles are ever the same, thus no preparation for battle can ever be perfect, thus there are ALWAYS mistakes made by leaders on both sides as they endeavor to manoeuvre their armies in the chaos of the moment. So the winner ends up being not the side with the genius strategy so much as the side that makes the fewest, least disastrous mistakes.
posted by philip-random at 5:39 PM on January 27, 2013 [7 favorites]


"So the winner ends up being not the side with the genius strategy so much as the side that makes the fewest, least disastrous mistakes."

That's a pretty good description of life, and not just war.
posted by Kevin Street at 5:50 PM on January 27, 2013 [16 favorites]


i'd like to go on record and refute any rumours regarding any GHSC foul play. (A)

furthermore, if you need balancesheets, you're playing it wrong. Havent done anything but use the android app to keep my training queue going for two years and well, due to some lucky events i pay for my gametime in isk and will probably be doing so for years to come.
posted by xcasex at 5:51 PM on January 27, 2013


fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit: "It's stuff like this that makes me want to come back to EVE.

Totally explains this cryptic tweet by the Mittani last night, too:
@TheMittani
CFC STRATEGIC GENIUS AT WORK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t0mkeB9TCA … #tweetfleet #eveonline
On the other hand, full-on fleet combats on this scale are a rush unlike any other. There is nothing like jumping with a fleet of a couple hundred players with no idea of what you're going to see on the other side, or blowing up some corporate mining array that will wipe out their infrastructure. And the drama/intrigue...
"

This reminds me of some of the Freespace online fights I would get into. It reminds me once of skimming fast over a Vasudan ubership trying to draw some of the defenders into chasing me so some wingmen could pick them up. They were bagging our bombers way to effectively for us to get any real good torpedo runs in...

(And, I do mean skimming. As in dodging structural elements of the ubership.)
posted by Samizdata at 5:51 PM on January 27, 2013 [2 favorites]


"So the winner ends up being not the side with the genius strategy so much as the side that makes the fewest, least disastrous mistakes."

or, well. this.

dunno why everyone's so up in arms about fleet engagements when they're so boring.
posted by xcasex at 5:54 PM on January 27, 2013


For various reasons, this was a tactically poor choice. Their fleet got mashed and they lost a whole lot of big ships.

Somewhat, but your explanation reads as overdetermined. A couple of lucky breaks went HBC's way (such as a related alliance having a heavy fleet op in the area, completely separate but ready to throw in); a couple of unlucky breaks went against CFC. It was a gamble for DBRB to call "ALL HANDS", but it wasn't crazy or vain. A lot of what's fun about these events is just the randomness of what the sum of events will be.
posted by fatbird at 5:57 PM on January 27, 2013


I'm glad I don't play EVE, because causing $150,000 worth of damage to a bunch of bored SomethingAwful users just because I clicked the wrong button and panicked? That seems like it might have worrying IRL repercussions.
posted by Riki tiki at 5:58 PM on January 27, 2013 [6 favorites]


I sometimes hope that my carebear, high sec mining ways, somehow supplied the ore that made the ships that exploded on that screen.
posted by Stynxno at 5:59 PM on January 27, 2013 [4 favorites]


I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time to die.


Ahem..

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Ushra'khan titans on fire off the shoulder of Providence.
I watched pulse-lasers glitter in the dark near the EVE gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
Time to die.

fixed it.
posted by xcasex at 6:02 PM on January 27, 2013 [2 favorites]


"This reminds me of some of the Freespace online fights I would get into. It reminds me once of skimming fast over a Vasudan ubership trying to draw some of the defenders into chasing me so some wingmen could pick them up. They were bagging our bombers way to effectively for us to get any real good torpedo runs in..."

kinda like stealthbombers? *GRIN*
posted by xcasex at 6:06 PM on January 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


This cleared things up for me. Via reddit user kiresays at this comment

Edit: HERE is a pretty awesome view of the beginning of the fight with comms included. Even if you don't know eve, it's well worth checking out. The flashing whiteish/red circles that keep popping in are new super capitals and capitals exiting jump portals
Essentially, there are two "Mega" coalitions in the game right now, the Clusterfuck Coalition (CFC) and the Honeybadger Coalition (HBC). A coalition is a group of alliances that band together. There are also 3-4 other smaller coalitions (Russian Bloc, N3), as well as some independent notable alliances (Black Legion in this case).
These are all Nullsec powers. The HBC's core alliance is TEST; an alliance that is based from and recruits out of your favorite website, Reddit (Shameless plug: go to /r/evedreddit to check out Reddit's corporation/alliance, and click this for a free 21 day trial)! The CFC's core alliance is Goonswarm, which is based in and recruits out of your least favorite website, SomethingAwful!
Now, it would appear that these two alliances were born to be rivals, but it was not always this way. When the reddit corporation (alliances are composed over individual corporations) first joined EVE, they were attacked by the SA corporation, goonswarm; who were already very established in the EVE universe. Instead of becoming enemies, the Goons were taken aback by the adorableness of our attitude towards the game, and we became allies and soon to be best friends. They nurtured us, tought us, fought for us. Our current leader, Montolio, decided that he wanted to take a path of independence.
We met another group of players in an alliance called Pandemic Legion. They are considered the big bad guys of EVE. They posses hundreds of the Super Carriers and Titans; the most powerful ships in the game and which the pictures in the OP are mostly comprised of. Basically, these guys have a public mumble channel called OG mumble. Mumble is a program like teamspeak, if you didn't know. This was when Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was popular, and some of our guys joined their channel to play with them. They befriended them, and more people joined to play and more and more. Soon, their EVE alliance had invited us to go on campaign with them; and it was hella fun. They were a bunch of old players, and our raw enthusiasm of the game seemed to make it more fun for them, and their wealth, power and experience taught us a lot.
The problem is, that our new PL friends are direct enemies with our Goonswarm bros. These tensions were drawn down, and we eventually got both of them fighting for us to attack a new threat to us in the South. But that's another story.
What's important to last night is that we chose to go with PL instead of goons, and we formed our own coalition; the HBC. Between PL's ability to drop many of the most powerful ships in the game, and our ability to rush in with hundreds of support ships to back them up, it's a potent force.
Last night, a relatively small pirate alliance that controls a good bit of territory nearby Goon-land thought that the goons may try to attack them over a local moon; which holds mineral resources. They informed a fleet commander in Pandemic Legion that this may be happening, and PL set up to ambush goons.
The goonswarm Fleet commander (FC), Dabigredboat, is a prettty interesting character, who is loved or hated throughout the game, but that's another story. Anyways, he is flying a titan. These are the most powerful ships in the game, they do a lot of damage, can take a LOT of damage, and are ridiculously expensive. Additionally, they can move across the universe rapidly with a jump drive; but they can also move OTHER SHIPS across the universe rapidly by "bridging" them.
Sidebar: EVE has an interesting feature where people can buy game time cards (30/60 day) and sell them in game for in game money; allowing wealthy people to essentially play the game for free, and allowing people who are wealthy out of game to have the money to do what they want. This provides a rare insight to the actual value of in game item. And a titan, like dabigredboat's, would cost something like $3500 dollars to buy with out of game money.
Back to the story. So basically, boat is in his titan getting ready to bridge a full fleet (~250 dudes) onto this small pirate alliance. Except he makes a mistake; he clicks JUMP instead of BRIDGE. That sends his $3,500 ship right into the middle of this pirate corporation with nobody nearby to support him. And then all hell breaks loose.
If you'll remember, PL was aware that something might be going down, and when the pirates inform them that a titan has jumped in, and not only a titan but Dabigredboat's titan, they jump in 3-4 supercarriers. Supercarriers do more damage than a titan, but don't take quite as much and aren't quite as expensive. Boat orders Goon and CFC supers to log in, and they drop a few more supers in to help boat. PL goes into hyperdrive and goes all in; they drop every supercarrier they have available, and are frantically calling everyone they know to get there as well.
And then Boat makes a crucial mistake. He should have realized that his titan and the few supers he called in to support him were going to die, and cut his losses. But instead he panics, and calls in EVERYTHING the CFC has to help get him out of there. At this point, the battle transcends hell and goes into every god damn layer of Dante's Inferno. The CFC commits every supercarrier, titan, dreadnought (basically floating gun platforms that do a ton of damage) and regular carrier (which are basically "healers") that they can. PL does the same, and the rest of the HBC is in right behind them. My fleet, and the rest of the TEST fleet burned across the universe at best speed to get into the fight, and all of our capitals (dreads/carriers) and supercapitals jumped in ahead of us.
Also, goons are not well liked in the universe of EVE. They have fought against (and won against) pretty much every major player in the game. So the rest of the smaller coalitions also jump into the fray. And even though we're technically "unfriendly", they join ourside and the whole universe of EVE piles onto the CFC. My poor laptop crashed when there were 2800 people in the solar system (And there were hundreds more in surrounding systems), but it was epic.
The CFC lost a lot of shit. ~44 Dreads, 29 Carriers, 5 Supercarriers and 3 Titans. The HBC and the rest of EVE lost 10 Carriers, 6 Dreads, and one Supercarrier. It's a mind boggling amount of damage done, and money lost. But that's EVE.
posted by Khazk at 6:16 PM on January 27, 2013 [21 favorites]


mining, which is basically, "push button, drag thing, repeat" until you have acquired enough minerals to refine into a hull or whatever.

Man, I loved mining. Mining was like my childhood dream of space in its purest form. Drifting out in the cold black hostile void, only the clicks and hisses of my ventilation system running, I and my tiny cohort of robots slowly destroyed rocks. And then there would come strange alien aggressions from which I would run or fight, depending on their strength. Then, if I won, I would send my little mechanical friends to scavenge the corpse of the other ship, sorrowing that, yet again, someone had failed to see all mankind should be united against the indifferent horror of the cosmos.

It was basically all I did. I could do that and study at the same time!

But I had to stop playing because they kept loading on the system requirements and I am too poor to buy a blazing new game system every damn year.
posted by winna at 6:19 PM on January 27, 2013 [12 favorites]


Holy shit! I just watched the video.

I kept expecting to hear The Operative shouting "Target everything! Somebody FIRE!"
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:28 PM on January 27, 2013 [6 favorites]


The nice thing about EVE is you don't *have* to grind, unless you really want to tweak out your isk/hour and grind anyway. But I'm a dirty space hippy who gets his jollies from trespassing in cheap ships to see the story-related Easter Eggs ccp planted in high-risk systems. With the recent expansion, the cheap ships are more interesting and diverse than they were a few months ago.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:33 PM on January 27, 2013 [2 favorites]


As I just explained this to my husband, basically, "World War 1 just happened in EVE last night."
posted by strixus at 6:36 PM on January 27, 2013 [10 favorites]


If I was still playing this game I would have been the little flash of light on the screen. Over and over again. In a Rifter. Over and over again.
posted by Splunge at 6:52 PM on January 27, 2013


God-dammit Leeroy!
posted by Flashman at 6:52 PM on January 27, 2013 [12 favorites]


Is there any long form Eve writing out there, blogs or what have you that someone interested in knowing about (but not necessarily playing) Eve should be reading?
posted by adamdschneider at 7:29 PM on January 27


You can start with "Sins of a Solar Spymaster", a series written by The Mittani (mentioned multiple times in this thread), on tentonhammer. One of my favorite pieces of his, "Bad Crazy in Internet Space", is a couple years old, but gives a really good sense of the lengths these players go to. Myself, I couldn't get out of the tutorial.
posted by The Nutmeg of Consolation at 6:55 PM on January 27, 2013 [4 favorites]


xcasex: ""This reminds me of some of the Freespace online fights I would get into. It reminds me once of skimming fast over a Vasudan ubership trying to draw some of the defenders into chasing me so some wingmen could pick them up. They were bagging our bombers way to effectively for us to get any real good torpedo runs in..."

kinda like stealthbombers ? *GRIN*
"

Trust you me, if I had had stealth, that mission would have been SOOO much easier.
posted by Samizdata at 7:00 PM on January 27, 2013


I do not understand EVE, will almost certainly never play it, but I adore stories about EVE.
posted by BungaDunga at 7:03 PM on January 27, 2013 [7 favorites]


Never has such a battle been seen since the Accounts Payable thugs took down the late, lamented Herbert Kornfeld.
posted by bonehead at 7:12 PM on January 27, 2013 [13 favorites]


As a former hardcore mudder, all I can say is, thank you Jesus, for allowing me to reach adulthood before letting man develop and release this game.
posted by phaedon at 7:17 PM on January 27, 2013 [38 favorites]


In a Rifter.

At one point, I considered getting a license plate frame that said "My other car is a Rifter." It's like the AK-47 of EVE. Cheap to make. Deadly in the right hands.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 7:17 PM on January 27, 2013 [2 favorites]


Eve's that thing I keep wishing I could do while being glad that I don't do it. Like heroin!
posted by Chutzler at 7:20 PM on January 27, 2013 [4 favorites]


I played for a couple of hours with the demo, and soon realized I would have to make a choice between the game and being married.
posted by Brocktoon at 7:21 PM on January 27, 2013 [4 favorites]


Does any other game out there offer this kind of scope while not requiring the massive time investment?

I'd love to play the space battles, but the months of minding the shop...not so much.
posted by underflow at 7:26 PM on January 27, 2013


Ignorant question: What prevents someone in Boat's position (after the jump that should have been a bridge) from immediately jumping back where they came from and trying again?
posted by stebulus at 7:32 PM on January 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


stebulus; not sure about the specifics of Titans, but in general the game has various timers that prevent you from smurfing around too much. Ie: if you jump through a gate (in a normal ship) you can't jump back through for something like 60 seconds. And if you attack someone you can't log off immediately, you have to wait for 15 minutes for your aggression timer to expire. (Which is how the very first Titan kill happened; the pilot logged out while still under the aggression timer.) I've never flown a bridge-capable ship so I don't know what the specific mechanic is there; you may need other ships present to help make the jump, or maybe there's a timeout somewhere.
posted by Nelson at 7:39 PM on January 27, 2013 [2 favorites]


There are ship modules that are "warp disrupters" which prevents a ship from going to warp, or jumping away. So normally a Titan would have to wait a bit for its space-batteries to recharge before jumping away. But before that could happen, it was "tackled" and prevented from jumping out.
posted by cschneid at 7:39 PM on January 27, 2013 [2 favorites]


Does anyone have a video of this that has the air-traffic-control-y voicechat throughout, instead of dropping into epic battle music after a few minutes?

I kinda want to hear the reaction when those big ships suddenly appear.
posted by cosmic.osmo at 7:53 PM on January 27, 2013 [3 favorites]


"midway: an accident that turned into a huge battle"

Nah, US intelligence did a nice job of spoofing the Japanese navy into a full commitment.

Now Gettysburg, that was a complete accident. Neither side really wanted the full-on battle that ensued, Lee made his first and only huge mistake of the war, and it was basically all over but the shouting for the Union.
posted by bardic at 7:59 PM on January 27, 2013 [3 favorites]


"soon realized I would have to make a choice between the game and being married"

Well, marriage is over-rated anyways.
posted by bardic at 8:01 PM on January 27, 2013 [3 favorites]


How do they prevent hacking in Eve Online?
posted by KokuRyu at 8:19 PM on January 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


This amazes me on many levels, not least of which is that CCP developed a game engine that can handle a battle of this magnitude. Seriously, that's some pretty awesome programming.
posted by SpacemanStix at 8:33 PM on January 27, 2013


Also, that they developed the game that is as awesome (if not moreso) from the emergent details that surface from playing the game, than features inherent in the game itself. I had a really hard time playing EVE and enjoying it, but I'm endlessly fascinated by this type of scenario that emerges on top of the gameplay.
posted by SpacemanStix at 8:38 PM on January 27, 2013


KokoRyu; what kind of hacking do you mean? In general it's a client/server game where the server is secure and enforces game rules. People find exploits sometimes, CCP is pretty heavy-handed at punishing people who abuse them.

SpacemanStix: the emergent gameplay nature of Eve is what makes it so fun. Most MMOs have gone the other way, to programmed experiences where you play through the game designers' content. Warcraft and Star Wars: the Old Republic, for instance, both feature amazing company-designed content. But there's another offshoot of the old MUDs, player-created content, where the folks playing the game make their own fun. That side of gaming is mostly gone now in online games but Eve is somewhat the exception. Most of the company-generated content is pretty dull; mining asteroids, exploring wormholes, shooting NPC pirates, it's pretty simplistic and repetitive. But the player corporations, the politics and fleet actions and sovereignty battles between people.. Those are magnificent. And Eve Online is unique in allowing that kind of gameplay on a scale of thousands of people.

Eve is also unique in having a single game server that supports hundreds of thousands of people playing at the same time. Most games like Warcraft partition it so that each "world" only has about 5000 people. Eve's game, both the political battles and the robust economics that underpin it, really do work across hundreds of thousands. OTOH fleet battles like being discussed here don't work so well; the game is really pretty laggy and all those pretty graphics go out the window while you dial everything down just to try to stay logged in. The time dilation mechanic seems to work pretty well though. (In the past CCP also asked fleet commanders for 24 hours notice for big battles, so they could bring more CPU resources to bear on the affected systems. This battle is interesting in that it wasn't exactly planned; I wonder if they are more adaptive now).

I played a lot of Eve a few years ago and made a niche for myself as a small courier, running high value implants from empire to nullsec. It was fun. But the game was alarmingly like a job in the amount of time and planning it requires, so I quit.
posted by Nelson at 8:48 PM on January 27, 2013 [3 favorites]


KokoRyu; what kind of hacking do you mean? In general it's a client/server game where the server is secure and enforces game rules. People find exploits sometimes, CCP is pretty heavy-handed at punishing people who abuse them.

That's really interesting, because couldn't someone (or some group) decide to really try to compromise the system on an ongoing basis?
posted by KokuRyu at 8:51 PM on January 27, 2013


BRING ME EVERYONE.

EVERYONE.
posted by Soliloquy at 8:55 PM on January 27, 2013 [7 favorites]


I would love to watch this with H-to-the-Usky Husky doing a play by play. The Venttillo feed is complete gibberish to me, but obviously something massively awesome is happening. I just need someone to talk me through it with all of its attendant pants-crapping excitement.
posted by ShutterBun at 9:00 PM on January 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


One of the cooler parts of these big battles is the amount of out-of-game coordination that goes into them. I belong to the reddit alliance, and we have forums, voice comms (handling hundreds at a time), jabber for chat and announcements, web-apps of maps that run in the browser to calculate shortest paths, reimbursement webapps so the rich alliance can payback ships lost on official fleets, and more.
posted by cschneid at 9:01 PM on January 27, 2013


Explain to me again why we need real wars?

[impressed]
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 9:08 PM on January 27, 2013 [5 favorites]


By the way, the only drawback I can see to games like these is that I have an actual life. Future developers, just plug me in as a baby and use my body heat to power your super machines.
posted by phaedon at 9:11 PM on January 27, 2013


strixus: "As I just explained this to my husband, basically, 'World War 1 just happened in EVE last night.'"

Yes, as I was watching the video, the little I could understand was this: some players tried to annihilate one other ship, whose player called in their allies, and the other players called in their allies, until the whole thing snowballed into the massive mess we see. Much like WWI. Someone in the know please disabuse me of any wrong interpretations.
posted by jiawen at 9:12 PM on January 27, 2013 [2 favorites]


Adding "Buying my way to Superpower status in EVE Online" to my Things to Do After You Have Made Your Billions list.
posted by Gin and Comics at 9:20 PM on January 27, 2013 [5 favorites]


TWIST: The leviathan was piloted by Leeroy Jenkins.
posted by Skwirl at 9:21 PM on January 27, 2013 [4 favorites]


Also, that they developed the game that is as awesome (if not moreso) from the emergent details that surface from playing the game

What's remarkable is that they stuck with the player generated content, rather than trying to take the more controlled, newbie-friendly path that so many other MMOs try to exploit. They willingly pigeonholed themselves for a unique game.

couldn't someone (or some group) decide to really try to compromise the system on an ongoing basis

That's the meta-game that becomes so fascinating. This happens on a large and a small scale, and CCP is willing to tolerate hacking the mechanics for in-game effects, as long as the overall universe isn't threatened.

There's a great example from several years ago that's embodied in a document created by Goonswarm as a tactical manual. I'll make a hash of explaining it, but it'll give you an idea of what lengths players can go to.

The universe is made up of around 6,000 star systems, connected by jump gates. You have limited visibility of other entities within your system, so you can see that other players are in the same system, but you don't know where they are. To know where they are, you need to be within a certain range that's around 15 km. That range corresponds to what the server stores as the local environment for a spaceship; anything outside of it and you can't see it for purposes of targeting it. However...

The server, to accommodate non-warped movement in the system, has a way of overlapping local zones as you move, so effectively you can extend that range at which you can perceive and target another spaceship by moving. Importantly, the other spaceship can target you as well--you share the local environment, and can stretch it out.

Here's the hack: You could drop things like cargo containers at certain intervals that would create a chain of local zones hundreds of kilometers long. Someone could be hundreds of kilometers away from you, yet still visible to your scanners and targeting. More importantly, knowing where the opposite end of your chain was, you would know when someone entered the local environment, but they wouldn't see you one screen.

How did this affect gameplay? You could sit hundreds of km away from a jump gate or station, and have local environment access to players at that location, without them knowing you were there. So, huge spying advantage, among other things.

CCP never cared about this hack, AFAIK. It became standard (advanced) fleet operations, and got written up in a frickin' tactical manual that was circulated. I believe that it got superseded by game mechanic changes down the line. But for a while, being an alliance fleet commander required understanding and using such things.
posted by fatbird at 9:24 PM on January 27, 2013 [6 favorites]


Okay, here's the document. As I predicted, I made a hash of the details, but I was basically right: by exploiting how the server handles local environments, you could create a chain of them that allowed you to see/target/scan much farther away than naive play would permit. Open it up just to look at the diagrams and you'll get the flavour of it.
posted by fatbird at 9:33 PM on January 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


Allright fuck it I want the following questions answered. NOW. Just kidding. Based on watching the second link.

1. What are the bright explosions in the beginning of the clip?
2. Is the guy with the slavic accent translating/broadcasting the commands to other players?
3. What type of information is included in the running list on the right?
4. Why would somebody "leave the fleet" in the middle of a fight?
5. What is the small ship in the middle of the screen doing, the one just slowly spinning around?
6. How many people control a titan class ship?
posted by phaedon at 9:36 PM on January 27, 2013


Most of the company-generated content is pretty dull; mining asteroids, exploring wormholes, shooting NPC pirates, it's pretty simplistic and repetitive.

The fun of wormholes isn't so much with the PvE, which is slightly more difficult than regular mission running, it's the PvP. It's not knowing whether you're going to be jumping into something uninhabited, the backyard of a recuse, or a collaborative city of people who zealously hunt down and kill any interlopers. You don't know who else might be poaching in the space, or who might be poaching the poachers, and who might be poaching them.

I've taken up ninja gas mining, which is ridiculously cheap to set up, and not very profitable for me. But the profit is gravy. Getting away with trespassing is the real reward there.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:40 PM on January 27, 2013


"5. What is the small ship in the middle of the screen doing, the one just slowly spinning around?"

I think the player controlling that ship is just recording the battle, using FRAPS. He doesn't have a big enough gun to make a difference in the fight, so he became the dude with the video camera instead.
posted by Kevin Street at 9:45 PM on January 27, 2013


1. What are the bright explosions in the beginning of the clip?
2. Is the guy with the slavic accent translating/broadcasting the commands to other players?
3. What type of information is included in the running list on the right?
4. Why would somebody "leave the fleet" in the middle of a fight?
5. What is the small ship in the middle of the screen doing, the one just slowly spinning around?
6. How many people control a titan class ship?


1) More ships jumping in
2) He's part of the fleet reporting, doing part of the command, not clear exactly what, he's not the Fleet Commander of the particular group we are listening to.
3) It's a list of ships in the area, their ship type, distance/speed, and what Corp/Alliance they belong to.
4) Possibly to join another fleet to cyno others in? Not clear.
5) That is the ship of the person that recording the video, he's likely shooting and warp scrambling other ships.
6) One.

As an Onyx Heavy Interdictor pilot, I very much wish I could have been in this fight.
posted by Argyle at 9:51 PM on January 27, 2013 [2 favorites]


1. What are the bright explosions in the beginning of the clip?

EVE consists of lots of star systems connected by fixed-location stargates, so you might have to travel through 10 stargates to get from A to B. However, particularly large and powerful spaceships have the capability to jump independently a certain number of light-years through Euclidean space as they wish, without using stargates. Each bright light is a large ship jumping in from somewhere nearby.

2. Is the guy with the slavic accent translating/broadcasting the commands to other players?

Could well be, or maybe independently instructing a foreign-language group.

3. What type of information is included in the running list on the right?

That list is basically the Big List of All Visible Things Nearby Your Spaceship. It's very customizable, and can show a great deal of information (type of object or model of ship, velocity, acceleration, distance, reputation, political affiliation, human pilot, etc.) The player in question is flying a ship that specializes in incapacitating and immobilizing large ships, so he has it filtering to show him only enemy ships, and only the particular types of ships he's interested in, along with their pilot name and distance.

4. Why would somebody "leave the fleet" in the middle of a fight?

Some bureaucratic accident, likely. Fleet organization doesn't just determine who's on comms together; squad and fleet commanders with sufficient skill also confer special bonuses and abilities to the ships under their command, and can command a limited amount of ships at once, so it's tricky to get things set up just so when people are entering and leaving a fight.

5. What is the small ship in the middle of the screen doing, the one just slowly spinning around?

The ship in the middle of the screen is the player's ship, and he's (for a while) orbiting in range of the enemy Titan that jumped in to start the battle, coordinating with others to keep him incapacitated.

The ship icons below the middle represent enemy ships that the player has targeted; he can easily switch between them and use different weaponry against any one or a combination of them.

6. How many people control a titan class ship?

Just one. All ships have a single pilot, although some ships can dispatch small automated drones that they also can control independently.
posted by value of information at 9:53 PM on January 27, 2013 [3 favorites]


From here on out, I'm going to go ahead and believe that stories about EVE online are actual dispatches from our remotely controlled space mining operation. They might as well be.
posted by redsparkler at 9:58 PM on January 27, 2013 [12 favorites]


Damn you bastards are great at answering questions. Ok, I have one more. I notice the majority of the ships are standing still. Is this as an optical illusion, or is everyone really not moving? Is there any tactical maneuvering happening in the game, i.e. can you dodge weapons, a la Wing Commander? Or is the gameplay more strategic, a la Dungeons and Dragons?

I guess I'm curious at what point does a guy flying a titan, surrounded by thousands of shitty little ships firing on him, know his ship is about to go down. At what point does he embrace the inevitable. I'm so curious.
posted by phaedon at 10:07 PM on January 27, 2013


There's no tactical movement. While you're under fire, you're watching your shields go down, followed by your hull, followed by your structure. There are modules you can activate to repair, and sometimes surviving a fight depends upon having more repair or regeneration capacity than your opponent has damage to deal. When you're talking capital ships, you can also have fleet support ships repairing you or strengthening your shields. And of course, the enemy can do things like jam your support ship's targeting so they can't target you to repair...

It's all strategy. Aside from dealing with lag and time dilation, there's really no twitch to it.
posted by fatbird at 10:17 PM on January 27, 2013 [2 favorites]


Just one. All ships have a single pilot, although some ships can dispatch small automated drones that they also can control independently.

So it's fair to say not just any donkey with real world money can pilot a titan, that that sort of ship has a lot more offensive controls and security/recuperating measures to deal with and employ?
posted by phaedon at 10:25 PM on January 27, 2013


And what is 'Hicks'?
posted by ursus_comiter at 10:26 PM on January 27, 2013


A "hick" is a HIC or a Heavy Interdictor, being brought in to disrupt warp
posted by anateus at 10:29 PM on January 27, 2013


There's quite some tactical movement, but mostly in smaller ships and smaller fights. Weapon effectiveness is determined by target range, target size, and target angular velocity relative to you; if someone is moving quickly around you or keeping an appropriate distance from you, they're harder to hit with many weapons. However, if you're attacking a large ship, they'll likely be easy to hit regardless of your positioning, and in large fights, it's extremely hard to try to use tactical movement to survive, since you can't optimize your position with respect to every possible enemy threat -- someone will have a good shot at you.

So it's fair to say not just any donkey with real world money can pilot a titan, that that sort of ship has a lot more offensive controls and security/recuperating measures to deal with and employ?

Well, in addition to the ship and fitting, you also need a character in-game which has a specific elaborate set of in-game skills, but people buy and sell characters for real money too.

So any donkey can pilot a titan, but as you surmise, there's a fair amount of subtlety to piloting it well. A lot of thought goes into customizing a titan for particular situations and into using a titan effectively without making yourself overly vulnerable to enemies (e.g. not doing what this guy did and jumping into an ambush.)

And what is 'Hicks'?

HICs are heavy interdictors, a class of ships that are uniquely able to prevent large ships from jumping away (there are other ways of preventing them, but having a HIC locked onto them is the easiest.)
posted by value of information at 10:34 PM on January 27, 2013


There is some tactical movement. If your angular velocity relative to a ship is faster than that ship's guns' tracking speed, it will have trouble hitting you. Bigger guns have slower tracking speeds, so a dreadnought gun is only useful for hitting stationary targets. A good interceptor pilot can spiral toward an enemy fleet, keeping a high angular velocity for several ships at once. But when you're being fired at from 100 directions all around you, there's little point trying to dodge.
posted by Phssthpok at 10:35 PM on January 27, 2013


Specifically, fights on the scale of 2-30 people have a lot more tactical movement going on, e.g. the small group EVE tournament championships.
posted by value of information at 10:39 PM on January 27, 2013


This amazes me on many levels, not least of which is that CCP developed a game engine that can handle a battle of this magnitude. Seriously, that's some pretty awesome programming.

Implemented in Stackless Python!
posted by JHarris at 10:41 PM on January 27, 2013 [3 favorites]


Okay, to be clear: there's no twitch gameplay. There's no jerking the joystick to dodge incoming blaster fire. There's a ton of tactical gameplay, but it's entirely about intelligently exploiting your ship's characteristics against your opponent. As Phssthpok mentions, angular velocity matters: Guns have a speed at which they track across their target area, and bigger guns track slower; a small, fast ship in close enough can move across the target area faster than the gun can track, so there's a plausible attack vector where a frigate gets "inside" a larger ship's guns. That's one consideration of many.
posted by fatbird at 10:48 PM on January 27, 2013


So it's fair to say not just any donkey with real world money can pilot a titan, that that sort of ship has a lot more offensive controls and security/recuperating measures to deal with and employ?

Well sorta. On one hand building supercaps like Titans is a massive undertaking requiring cooperation: they require vast resources and even the facilities required to build one can only be anchored in systems with a certain level of player alliance control. Even buying one is difficult to impossible without alliance backing due to game mechanics and the fact that there really isn't an open market for these ships in EVE -- any sales happen through an in-game contract system and require a stupid amount of trust or a trusted third party broker. (Let's see if this works here: Chribba Chribba Chribba)

That said EVE being EVE, there have been thefts in-game involving supercaps. It's an alliance-level asset where controls, ultimately, rests in the hands of a signal individual. A lot like Cold War era pilots defecting in MIGs, players have swiped supercaps and transferred their allegiance to another alliance -- for a price. Heck some people have trained characters for the sole purpose of being trusted with an opposing alliance's supercap only to steal them when strategically convenient.

This is the fun part about EVE: as long as it happens entirely in-game and doesn't exploit a bug or involve illicit real money transactions, the developer doesn't care. Hell they encourage it.
posted by nathan_teske at 10:51 PM on January 27, 2013 [2 favorites]


It's things like this that made me wish I had the patience for EVE.
posted by ob1quixote at 11:09 PM on January 27, 2013


While you're under fire, you're watching your shields go down, followed by your hull, followed by your structure. There are modules you can activate to repair, and sometimes surviving a fight depends upon having more repair or regeneration capacity than your opponent has damage to deal.

It actually sounds kind of FTL like.
posted by Artw at 11:14 PM on January 27, 2013


Aaaaaaah, damn, Firefox just reloaded this page, and I realized I meant SHIVAN, not Vasudan. It's been a while since I played.
posted by Samizdata at 11:16 PM on January 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


This all sorts of raises the question... cough where's our clan cough cough.
posted by phaedon at 11:42 PM on January 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'll be some kind of information officer. Poet laureate, perhaps.
posted by philip-random at 11:45 PM on January 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


I imagine it's not so much about hacking as it is about botting and exploits. I don't know about EvE, but WoW and GW2 both suffer from rampant botting in PvP, as well as win trading and any number of game mechanic exploits. Blizzard so far this PvP season has done nothing about botting, and very little about win trading. However, when a PvE exploit is exposed, it is usually patched within 24 hours. A lot of us straight PvPers are pretty disenchanted at the moment.
posted by Brocktoon at 11:48 PM on January 27, 2013


This all sorts of raises the question... cough where's our clan cough cough.

Seriously, seems like there are enough folks in the know in this thread alone. Or do we just have a large number of Mefi EVE-watchers?

This sort of thing reminds me of some of my early experiences in WoW. Leveling with a more advanced friend, we'd often find ourselves targeted by gankers, and there would be a cycle of escalation where my friend would call her guildies, the gankers would do the same after being slaughtered in turn, guildies on both sides would call up friends they knew in other guilds, who would call up their friends in turn...massive scrimmages ensuing across whole zones, with NPCs and mobs mixing it up as well when the fighting wandered into their field of fire.

There's just such joy in mass mayhem. It's why I'm hoping to get in on Planetside 2, at some point after I upgrade my hardware.
posted by AdamCSnider at 12:27 AM on January 28, 2013


This all sorts of raises the question... cough where's our clan cough cough.
What happened dude, you outnumbered them?

Well, Sonascope spun us a yarn about the time he worked for the Mitani Corporation and even before we had stopped crying Frowner was pointing out why ISK is a tool of the patriarchy so after defections the fleet was reduced by 75% before it started.

Then Smedleyman showed up.

Sweet Lord the horror
posted by fullerine at 1:09 AM on January 28, 2013 [10 favorites]


a couple of MeFites joined up a while back to build a small corporation and play together, an experienced player tutored us newbies for a while and we went mining... unfortunately we got hit by some griefers who decided to declare war on us, they shot me down every time I entered the game so I stopped playing.
Was a very frustrating experience all in all.
posted by ts;dr at 1:34 AM on January 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


I would also love to see a documentary or series about EVE. Seriously, it's got everything that makes for dramatic stories. Spying. Theft. Subterfuge. Violence. Intrigue. The real risk of losing virtual spaceships that cost thousands of dollars and hours to acquire.

But I've talked about this with mefi's own ryanrs who has been playing for a while and he's brought up some valid points why the idea is a no-go.

One of the main difficulties is that the people who play at the higher levels take their internet spaceships and the corporations and alliances that they form very, very seriously. The last thing they want is some documentary nerd and noob watching and recording over their collective shoulders while they conducting secret business and organization, not to mention getting in the way during the heat of battle.

From what he's told me a lot of the major orgs/players actually have internal security/intelligences structures that extend beyond just the game itself, because the spying that goes on in game is very much real as far as the game is concerned. To advance in higher security privileges and ranks it sounds like you have to essentially go through interviews, background checks and expose real world personal information just like you would getting a security clearance for a job or military assignment.

Basically you'd have a really hard time getting a team or coalition to allow for enough access to get the whole story, because they really don't want to just hand out information about their internal structures and goings on to their enemies and competitors, because the "whole story" is essentially the detailed blueprint of their operations.

The other point he brings up is that EVE isn't usually flashy, dramatic or epic space battles like this. It's mainly spreadsheets and finances and organizational tasks. If spectators had a clear view of the game as it is played it would likely be about as interesting as watching a large corporation do business.

But I remain unconvinced it wouldn't be interesting. Heck, I can watch videos of machines making springs all day long. I think it would be possible to extract amazing story about the drama and lulz that go on in EVE, because a lot of it already resembles SF stuff like Asimov's foundation books, or Ian Banks Culture novels.

*Especially* the Culture novels, where giant spaceships sometimes have rude, malicious, quirky or outright dangerous AI personalities running them.

But it may just be one of those things you have to experience and interact with directly to enjoy those stories.
posted by loquacious at 1:42 AM on January 28, 2013 [8 favorites]


The other point he brings up is that EVE isn't usually flashy, dramatic or epic space battles like this. It's mainly spreadsheets and finances and organizational tasks. If spectators had a clear view of the game as it is played it would likely be about as interesting as watching a large corporation do business.

... is that WAR isn't usually flashy, dramatic, or epic battles like this. It's mainly logistics, supply lines, more logistics ... about as interesting as watching a large corporation do business.
posted by philip-random at 1:59 AM on January 28, 2013


Hi! I'm in the CFC and I was in that battle. There was stupid amounts of lag and it wasn't really "fun". The fight happened because Boat, a Goon fleet commander, accidentally jumped his titan into a hostile system. Then he kept escalating the fight with more and more supercapital ships, which was also a mistake. While Goons lost the battle, it had no strategic importance, so there aren't really any long term consequences.
posted by ryanrs at 2:13 AM on January 28, 2013 [6 favorites]


To give you an idea of how slow the fight was, I logged in with a second account to buy replacement ships while still fighting on my main account. I was expecting dreadnought prices to spike after the fight, so I wanted to buy replacements early (price spike didn't happen though).

to hbc: already replaced!
posted by ryanrs at 2:17 AM on January 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


Jabber logs from a key moment in the fight:

8:18:59 PM Ryan Rs: ahhhh, fuck this lag, trying SO HARD to get on boat's titan km.
8:19:09 PM kippig: https://example.com/local/18218A7F2CC6BF6F9C43D9CB537AE
8:19:45 PM Ryan Rs: YES YES YES
8:19:48 PM Ryan Rs: got on boat's titan
8:19:58 PM Ryan Rs: OP SUCCESS
8:20:11 PM kippig: hahaha
8:20:12 PM Ryan Rs: BOOOOOM!

I was fighting on Boat's side, but he was going down and I'll take any supercap kill I can get, friendly or not.

titan killmail
posted by ryanrs at 2:25 AM on January 28, 2013 [4 favorites]


Like many others here, I wanted to taste something EVE-ish without having to commit to a subscription and to the vagaries of online play. I settled on the X series of games, particularly X3: Reunion and X3: Terran Conflict. They've been described as "single-player EVE" and rightly so - Space Spreadsheets, lots of spaceships to command and blow up, big open galaxy with plenty of economic opportunity, and a toe-curling learning curve.

Fun stuff if this line of gaming appeals to you. I've had single games last over a month.
posted by vanar sena at 2:35 AM on January 28, 2013 [5 favorites]


Also if anyone has specific questions, I can maybe tell you about some of the internal stuff in the CFC. I'm a mildly important space bureaucrat in Gentlemen's Agreement, a mid-size alliance in the CFC.
posted by ryanrs at 3:02 AM on January 28, 2013


That's really interesting, because couldn't someone (or some group) decide to really try to compromise the system on an ongoing basis?

There's a difference between "exploits" and "hacks."

"Exploits" are getting the system to do something which it is technically programmed to do but which wasn't the intention of the programmers. The aforementioned expansion of "local" environments with dropped objects would be an exploit. And there was one a while back which would let you warp to an arbitrary point in a system, something normally impossible. CCP cleans these things up periodically when they discover them, but the people employing them are generally not punished. They figure that it's their responsibility to make the game work they way they want it to, and players exploiting their mistakes is all part of the game and metagame.

"Hacks" involve getting the system to do something which it isn't programmed to do, and which the programmers explicitly tried to prevent. Now we're not talking about exploiting dodgy mechanics which are still technically part of the game, we're talking about avoiding or ignoring the mechanics by the use of third-party programs. CCP takes an extraordinarily dim view of this. If you suspect someone of cheating, you can report them to CCP in-game. CCP will investigate. If they do discover a hack--and doing so is normally trivial, because if there wasn't something hinky going on, it wouldn't be much of a hack--they will normally (1) return things to the state before the hack, and (2) ban the account. The first means that there's only a temporary advantage to cheating, because CCP will revoke any goods acquired by cheating and restore any goods destroyed by cheating. The second means that cheating is expensive. Sure, you can try, but each attempt will probably involve spending real money.

So no, like most other MMOs, there isn't a well established tradition of actual cheating. Even if you could do it, it's not a sensible strategy.
posted by valkyryn at 3:15 AM on January 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!
posted by krinklyfig at 3:19 AM on January 28, 2013 [10 favorites]


Also if anyone has specific questions, I can maybe tell you about some of the internal stuff in the CFC. I'm a mildly important space bureaucrat in Gentlemen's Agreement, a mid-size alliance in the CFC.

Was it an inside job? A lot of the comments I've been reading have expressed doubt that the pilot of a Titan and an accidentally un-bridged fleet would simply mis-click right into an ambush all alone.
posted by loquacious at 3:23 AM on January 28, 2013


A corp in my alliance recently discovered one of our members was using a bot. We hunted him down and turned over the logs to CCP.

EVE is one of those rare online games that rewards knowledge and cunning far more than simple grinding. Perhaps because of this, most players take a very dim view of botters.
posted by ryanrs at 3:25 AM on January 28, 2013


Was it an inside job?

Ha ha, no. I've personally flown with Boat on over 100 ops over the last few years. This was definitely an accident.


doubt that the pilot of a Titan and an accidentally un-bridged fleet would simply mis-click right into an ambush all alone

Most titan pilots make this mistake at some point. I've seen it happen in front of me a couple times. Usually they don't end up in the middle of a hostile PL gang though.

In this particular case, Boat was trying to ambush a group of low sec players trying to repair their tower that was attacked earlier. PL was also trying to ambush the same group. Since tower reinforcements are easily scouted and tracked, this was not that big of a coincidence. So the fact that there was a big PL gang ready to capitalize on Boat's mistake is not hard to believe.
posted by ryanrs at 3:31 AM on January 28, 2013 [3 favorites]


6) Big expensive spaceship guy, instead of giving up the battle as lost and taking a hurtful but survivable drubbing, said, "CALL IN OUR ENTIRE FLEET! TAKE IT TO THE LIMIT!"

This, of course, breached the oldest rule of tactics:

"Never reinforce failure."
posted by Skeptic at 4:34 AM on January 28, 2013 [6 favorites]


Well it's not quite that simple. As one of the largest, if not THE largest super capital fleet in the game, escalation is common and successful tactic for the CFC. The particulars of this fight may have made it a poor choice, but in general calling in the capitals and super capitals is the right choice after derping a titan. It really is the default response.
posted by ryanrs at 4:42 AM on January 28, 2013


So Goons herped their derp again? Well at least they didn't disband BOB and then forget to pay their sov bill again. I guess in their defense they have always claimed to be terrible at this game.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 5:08 AM on January 28, 2013 [2 favorites]


Part of the problem was the lag. But "lag" doesn't adequately convey what was going on. The servers were shitting themselves under the load. A lot of things stopped working as the servers failed to process events in the game. For example, guns stopped working reliably. The CFC could have saved more of our super caps if our guns were working.

I counted my ammo after the fight. My ship can normally shoot about 1 round per second (or 1 every 10 seconds under 10% TiDi). But I only managed to shoot 26 rounds during the entire 3+ hour fight.

The 10% time dilation itself was another factor. Looking at it from the other side, 10% time dilation means the rest of the universe was running at 10x speed, as were out-of-game communications like jabber pings and phone calls. This allowed reinforcements to pile into the system much, much faster than they would in a normal-speed fight. At its height, something like 8-9% of the logged in EVE population piled into that system. Of course this made the server problems that much greater.
posted by ryanrs at 5:12 AM on January 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


The other point he brings up is that EVE isn't usually flashy, dramatic or epic space battles like this. It's mainly spreadsheets and finances and organizational tasks. If spectators had a clear view of the game as it is played it would likely be about as interesting as watching a large corporation do business.

Only if you want to play it that way. A fair number of players and corporations don't. One of the more beautiful player-created structures in EVE is RvB, two alliances who exist only to wage small-gang warfare against each other, usually using the smallest combat ships in the game. They'll even loan people to each other in order to set up a more balanced fight. There are multiple other corporations that are just complex enough to set up a daily fight, whether that's done through small-gang roams, gate camping, various forms of piracy, or wardecs in highsec.

The big nullsec alliances make the headlines because they occasionally result in the biggest battles and/or power-shifts in the game. But the majority of players don't play in those alliances.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 5:42 AM on January 28, 2013 [5 favorites]


ryanrs: I'm curious, what percentage of CFC's war fleet was committed to this fight? What percentage destroyed? I know specific numbers are protected info, but I don't even have a sense of it within an order of magnitude. 1%? 0.1%? 10%?
posted by 256 at 6:05 AM on January 28, 2013


After listening to the video and hearing the FC call out action, I have to say, I'm tempted to play again.

Flying in a Basilisk squad and literally being the guys saving folks in the sub-cap battles was some of the best times. Of course, when the eye of the enemy FC turned upon us, it was not pretty.

The issue I could never resolve while playing was even when I had 3-4 hours to play, that often wasn't enough time to participate in the ops and battles. To be seriously involved, is a big time commitment. After I tried a couple 'wake a 2AM, play til dawn' sessions for some Euro timezone target, I decided that was not for me.
posted by Argyle at 6:27 AM on January 28, 2013


Kevin Street: He doesn't have a big enough gun to make a difference in the fight, so he became the dude with the video camera instead.

That is increasingly an important dude to be.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:44 AM on January 28, 2013


I also suspect that few people in those coalitions are involved in the Game of Nullsec Spreadsheet Thrones either. If it's anything like my corp, they're out mining, roaming, or ratting.

The great thing about EVE as a sandbox game is that you can pick your metric of succes: ISK/hour, PvP efficiency, sov systems occupied, loyalty points, members recruited, things built, or markets cornered. And you can choose to aggressively game that metric or ignore it for maximum slack.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:00 AM on January 28, 2013


I'm a mildly important space bureaucrat

I would find it very difficult not to put this on my business card, tbh.
posted by elizardbits at 7:09 AM on January 28, 2013 [15 favorites]


The CFC lost a lot of shit. ~44 Dreads, 29 Carriers, 5 Supercarriers and 3 Titans. The HBC and the rest of EVE lost 10 Carriers, 6 Dreads, and one Supercarrier.
How many such ships were in the battle?

And how many such ships are available to each coalition in total (i.e. whether they went to this battle or not)?
posted by Flunkie at 7:18 AM on January 28, 2013


Titans are the ones that are comparable in size to the entire island of Manhattan, correct? I seem to recall a helpful infographic posted in another EVE thread.
posted by elizardbits at 7:22 AM on January 28, 2013


I was rather taken by the big mushroomy ships in the video. Mushroom, or maybe nail. Anyway, big. At one point one of those big mushrooms just seemed to shrug and say "fuck it" and then sort of pulled away from the furball like some kind of Shelby Cobra going boots down in a parking lot full of Ford Fiestas. I mean, yeah, the flashing red warp signatures were pretty in a kind of man-i-wish-i-was-on-E sort of way, but that one dude just suddenly off an hauling ass in normal space was quite the thing.

I guess I am disappointed that EVE doesn't really follow real physics rules of space combat, though I can understand for game balance reasons why. No massive fusion detonations. No near-c kinetic weapons. And come-on, turrets that can't track targets at more than a few degrees a second? But honestly the reality doesn't matter -- it's a game, and whatever the rules specifically is unimportant, the prime directive is it has to be fun, and it's clear these folks are having fun!
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:39 AM on January 28, 2013


Here are the majority of the ships in EVE.

The titans are the big ones. The tiny specks in the top right corner are frigates, which are between five and ten times as large as a 747.
posted by 256 at 7:40 AM on January 28, 2013 [7 favorites]


A bit more on hacks and Eve.. There's all sorts of client-side exploits of game mechanics people have done, like cargo container trails and manipulated bookmarks and stuff. These are frowned upon and occasionally punished but are all sort of in good fun and mostly don't make a big difference in the game.

Then there's the spectre of a server-side hack, of someone breaking in to CCP's Tranquility cluster itself and manipulating the game. I'm not aware of this ever happening in a big way, although if it did I'm not sure CCP would tell anyone. There was at least one incident back in 2007, there may have been others.

However Eve did have a problem with CCP employees cheating. The company encourages its employees to play the game and so they join corporations and get involved in all the politics. Sometimes the temptation to use inside access / knowledge to help their friends out proves too strong. There were a couple of big scandals about this a few years back but I think CCP has mostly gotten control over the problem. This is not unique to Eve; every MMO I know has cases of developers or support folks cheating to help friends. But in Eve the stakes seem higher.

One other kind of hacking which is a grey zone: alliances hacking each others' web infrastructure: forums, voice chat servers, etc. It's de rigeur for one alliance to have spies in the other alliance of course, and sometimes people hack PHPBB logins sand the like to be able to read each others supposedly private forums. To some extent this kind of stuff is considered OK, the metagame extends outside the Eve client. I haven't heard of PvP hacking being used for much more than intelligence. But you could imagine someone hacking the PC of a Titan pilot and causing Eve to crash at the wrong moment and no one the wiser.
posted by Nelson at 7:42 AM on January 28, 2013


Actually, to be entirely truthful, that's not even close to being the majority of the ships in EVE. That image actually shows all of the player-flyable ships in the game as of about 6 years ago. There are about twice as many player-flyable ships now, and probably at least as many NPC-only models.
posted by 256 at 7:43 AM on January 28, 2013


BTW, if the technology of games like Eve interests you make a point of following the CCP dev blog. They talk quite openly about hardware infrastructure, software designs, etc. For instance, a post on the effects of time dilation or a post on their crazy dynamic BGP for better network performance. As mentioned above the game server is mostly written in Stackless Python, an interesting choice of environment that presages Go and Node.js.
posted by Nelson at 7:46 AM on January 28, 2013 [2 favorites]


Here are the majority of the ships in EVE.

omg space boner
posted by elizardbits at 7:51 AM on January 28, 2013 [2 favorites]


I love EVE stories. My creaky old laptop can't run it, thank goodness - I played it for two weeks solid when recovering from an operation in 2006 and man, I looked into the abyss there. It could have eaten my life.
posted by Happy Dave at 7:56 AM on January 28, 2013


If you like that, check out this much more up-to-date and much higher-res labelled image showing only sub-capital ships.

For scale reference, the "Apocalypse" near the top right in this image can be found in the middle top of the second band (labelled "Amarr") in that first image I linked.

Also, randomly stumbling upon that first image five years ago was the single thing that made me try out this game.
posted by 256 at 7:58 AM on January 28, 2013 [4 favorites]




After reading this thread I decided to finally try EVE. I found out about the buddy program, easily got a buddy which meant some money to start with and logged on.

I've played a lot of games and my favorites are MMOS. I have to say that this one makes me feel like the worst stupid newb. The learning curve is steep and it seems really slow compared to other games, but damn I can see the attraction. I completed overwhelmed myself with reading info and finally decided to just slow down and take it one step at a time. At one time I played MUD/Mushes and absolutely loved play really good politics and all the meta intrigue so this part of the game is very appealing. That part is sorely lacking in other games. Right now that part just seems so far off as I'm learning how everything works. lol

The game scares me though. I stated it around 11pm last night and in what seemed like a short amount of time I started feeling really tired. Must be getting late I thought and when I looked at the clock it was 5:30 am!! It's been a long time since I've played a game where I was that absorbed and lost complete track of real time. The whole spreadsheet thing does seem intimidating right now because of general cluelessness but it's something I can see like once I understand it.

I'm seriously debating getting a full account and just going for it. The game actually feels challenging and it might be good to play something where more brain is needed.

Anyways if anyone could recommend a corporation that is friendlish to a newb that wants to learn and has a lot of the meta political intrigue stuff going on that would be cool. Would love to at least be surrounded by that stuff as a I work my way through this learning process, even if I'm not directly participating in it yet.
posted by Jalliah at 12:59 PM on January 28, 2013


Anyways if anyone could recommend a corporation that is friendlish to a newb

Try eve university to learn the basics of pvp.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 2:02 PM on January 28, 2013


I need to relearn the basics of PVP. :)
posted by Cathedral at 2:45 PM on January 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'm curious, what percentage of CFC's war fleet was committed to this fight? What percentage destroyed? I know specific numbers are protected info, but I don't even have a sense of it within an order of magnitude. 1%? 0.1%? 10%?

For other readers who maybe don't know this, the vast majority of the CFC fleet is privately owned. That is to say, the ships are bought and held by individual pilots, not stored in a communal ship hangar. Mostly this is because theft is a constant risk in EVE. So instead of having a pool of ships that could be stolen, people fly their own ships and are paid alliance reimbursement if they die.

So because of private ownership, you really can't blow up the majority of the war fleet in a single fight. You can at best blow up a couple ships for each person that happens to be awake and willing to play EVE at that time. For this fight, there was a one to two hour window where people were jumping in.

Gentlemen's Agreement operates several titans and quite a few super carriers. But I think we only committed a single super carrier to this fight. There just weren't that many super capital pilots online for this completely unexpected, unscheduled battle. During a real war the fights are placed on the calendar in advance and more people are available.

Capital ships - carriers and dreadnoughts - are a lot more common than titans. I think we sent maybe a dozen capitals to the fight? I wasn't in the capital fleet, so I don't have an exact number. Looking at our reimbursement spreadsheet, it looks like we lost 7 dreadnoughts. That comes out to about 18 billion isk or $600. That is a large loss for us, but not a significant loss. That is to say, we rarely lose this much, but we'll have no trouble paying it.

Most of our pilots in that fight were flying subcapitals (because most pilots can't fly caps and supercaps). Our subcap losses were insignificant.

To answer your question, I think Gentlemen's Agreement committed 1% of our total war fleet to this fight and lost 10% of our immediate reimbursement capability.

(Note that our home system was a very long way from the fight. CFC alliances closer to the action probably lost more.)
posted by ryanrs at 3:03 PM on January 28, 2013 [4 favorites]


Anyways if anyone could recommend a corporation that is friendlish to a newb...

Well, on the first part, I liked OUCH. But they're one of those special-purpose PvP corporations I referred to above and explicitly not interested in participating in the politics of sov (controlling solar systems in nullsec.) Agony is another "small-gang" PvP corp that has more advanced classes.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 3:20 PM on January 28, 2013


Well, anything against Reddit, GO GOONSWARM!

a century ago we were making improvised landmines to take out unionbusters

this is what we're doing now
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 4:39 PM on January 28, 2013 [2 favorites]


You're older than you look!
posted by Sebmojo at 5:09 PM on January 28, 2013 [3 favorites]


Anyways if anyone could recommend a corporation that is friendlish to a newb that wants to learn and has a lot of the meta political intrigue stuff going on that would be cool. Would love to at least be surrounded by that stuff as a I work my way through this learning process, even if I'm not directly participating in it yet.

I'm certainly not involved in the political intrigue stuff, but I'd be happy to provide some guidance. You can even join my two-man corporation if you want. I'm "Machagon" in game.
posted by 256 at 6:16 PM on January 28, 2013


Oh, and I wrote a handful of blog entries a couple of years back with the goal of introducing new players to the less obvious aspects of EVE life: Eve Essays

The good news is that you can ignore the "Ways to Learn Faster" entry more or less, because they finally did away with learning skills. Long overdue.
posted by 256 at 6:19 PM on January 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


The very worst thing you can do in EVE is stay in hisec "until you're ready for null." Don't do that. Get out as fast as you can. Do the tutorials, train some basic skills, then join a corp and get the hell out. I got out to nullsec in six weeks. Definitely don't stay more than three months. Nothing interesting ever happens in hisec.
posted by ryanrs at 7:13 PM on January 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


But plenty of interesting stuff happens in lowsec!
posted by 256 at 7:15 PM on January 28, 2013


Often by accident!
posted by ryanrs at 7:16 PM on January 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


Yeah, if there's one enduring lesson Goonswarm taught to the entire Eve universe, it's that dying often and enthusiastically in nullsec is the best teacher in the known universe.
posted by fatbird at 7:28 PM on January 28, 2013


Some of the best fun I have had in EVE has been being blown up!
posted by 256 at 7:30 PM on January 28, 2013


You know what wasn't lost that night in EVE?

Anybody's virginity.
posted by bardic at 9:12 PM on January 28, 2013


You know what wasn't lost that night in EVE?

Anybody's virginity.


Neeeeerds
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:17 PM on January 28, 2013


Exile in the freindsec.
posted by Artw at 10:16 PM on January 28, 2013 [2 favorites]


god who even made the friendsec a thing
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:20 PM on January 28, 2013



Thanks everyone for the info! I played some more today and some things seemed to click. I'm starting to know what I'm doing more and better have figured out how to more easily find out info when I'm not sure what to do. It's going a lot smoother and I'm having fun.

I agree with getting out of the starting area sooner rather then later. My plan is to finish up the first level of agent career missions and then wander out into the wider universe. The buddy system is really great if people want to start it. There's a thread on the forums with people giving buddy offers. Each one is different and offers different things. The buddy I got starts you off with a bunch of links to helpful info and 5 million ISK. I got that within 15 mins of creating my character. Most seem to offer several hundred million and sometimes a ship if you sign up for a full account and in game help. It's totally worth it. Having that much starting money is great and takes off the pressure of earning lots right from the start to get things you need.

I haven't been blown up yet but came really close in an npc battle. It was exciting. Can't wait for some PVP.

I also figured out that while mining (at least in the secure zones) I can get a lot of reading done so I don't have to feel as guilty playing so much. lol

I also like how you can train skills and manufacture whether you're online or not so on busy days things are still progressing whether you're there or not. That's really cool.

So far I'm pretty impressed with it.
posted by Jalliah at 11:10 PM on January 28, 2013


If you sign up for a full account, your buddy gets 550M. If he's only giving you 5M, you just got scammed.

(Welcome to EVE)
posted by ryanrs at 11:14 PM on January 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


Are there any write-ups out there about the post Goon vs. BoB political landscape? I remember following a link from here to a discussion board where a guy was giving daily updates while it was happening and during the aftermath, and it was totally fascinating... so I'm just wondering What Happened Next? Was it an interesting story, or was it just kind of meet the new boss, same as the old boss?
posted by team lowkey at 12:25 AM on January 29, 2013



No if I sign up I get 275 million plus a destroyer. The 5 million was given right at the start of the trial. :)
posted by Jalliah at 12:30 AM on January 29, 2013 [2 favorites]


So the buddy guys are actually giving out a bit of isk at the beginning to improve their conversion rate, heh. That wasn't common when I started.
posted by ryanrs at 12:53 AM on January 29, 2013


What Happened Next?

Sov Map | Politcal Blocs
posted by ryanrs at 12:59 AM on January 29, 2013


"Test Alliance Please Ignore" has to be the best name ever invented for a galactic coalition. Closely followed by "SQUEE." though.

What the... whose ships are those? OMG SQUEE!"
posted by vanar sena at 2:01 AM on January 29, 2013 [7 favorites]


@sebmojo

what you don't know is that my profile picture is far closer to the truth than it seems
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 3:03 AM on January 29, 2013


CCP has written up a couple of posts about the battle: an overview of the action with lots of links and some economics-oriented numbers and what got shot. Last weekend there was a second big event too, a Red-vs-Blue planned fight with 28,000 ships blown up. Good fun all around.
posted by Nelson at 12:23 PM on January 29, 2013 [2 favorites]


I got over my fear and EVE is downloading... there's not a MeFi corp is there?
posted by cmoj at 3:35 PM on January 29, 2013


cmoj, no MeFi corp, nor one for Giantbomb, which is the only other community I'd join one in. Not interested in anything associated with reddit or SA.

Anyone interested in starting one for MeFi?
posted by InsanePenguin at 3:59 PM on January 29, 2013


Mefi used to have one. I have an empty corp that we can use. Message me in game (Machagon).
posted by 256 at 8:01 PM on January 29, 2013


I briefly thought about joining/starting a mefi corp when I began playing EVE. But I wanted to play EVE for the politics and intrigue, which isn't something that I could do in a tiny empire corp. That kind of corp isn't the type that does things that find their way to the Metafilter front page.
posted by ryanrs at 3:06 AM on January 30, 2013


I like the bit in the vid at about 14 minutes where about fifty players are all "I am getting the fuck OUTTA HERE" and jump away. So amazeballs.
posted by turgid dahlia 2 at 5:22 AM on January 30, 2013


You should play Eve with us, they say.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:39 PM on February 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


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