"[Small gang PvP in EVE] wasn't relevant the moment a trapped 20-man gang was jumped out of a dead end system by their pet titan."
So says Jim Rossignol, famed EVE Online evangelist and a corp mate of mine in the game for nigh on five years, after a discussion on the state of EVE on our old corporations private forum. He's not wrong. EVE's player population has grown and grown over the last seven years - the record for most EVE players online at any one time was a scant10, 744 in September '04, not long before I started playing, but that figure was dwarfed by the 60, 453 in June 2010. Similarly, within that melting pot of ever increasing player groups has come a concommitant increase in the size of what we call "the small gang". When I were a lad, and StateCorp was at its peak we could perhaps manage as manage as many as 20 people in the corporation chat channel at any one time, although you had to bear in mind that 10 of those would be alt characters.
Our gangs were small, our tactics tried and tested and our pilots ever willing to lose ships in the name getting some killmails. We ran with our tails between our legs on many occasions, either after defeat or to avoid it, but we won more than our fair share of battles, sometimes outnumbered, sometimes outgunned and sometimes both. Our secret was simple - good intelligence. Knowing your enemy and outfitting your own ships to counter him is the best way to win. Or, as Sun Tzu probably would have said "The bastards are flying auto-canes, get me a Falcon with a full rack of Minnie jammers."
Getting good intel is one rule of EVE that has never changed, but these days it's becoming less important for the small gang. Actually, that's a lie. It's not that it's less important at all, it's more that you don't need as much intelligence before you can decide whether or not to commit to a fight. These days there are two main things you need to know: 1) Do they outnumber us and, if so, can we get enough people so we outnumber them and 2) Are they known to hot-drop with capital ships at the first sign of angry shuttle pilots?
EVE has become a numbers game, more or less. Back in the day a twenty- or thirty-man gang usually meant there was something really momentous going on, like a sovereignty battle. Nowadays a twenty-man gang is what you get on a rainy Tuesday evening. There's an alliance known as Rooks & Kings that are notorious for baiting with what, these days, is called a "small" gang of twenty or so ships and then using their Titan pilots to portal in another thirty or so ships as backup once they've engaged. They're not an isolated case. The tactics that used to drive PvP and make it a subtle, pliable beast have been replaced with sheer blunt trauma and excessive force. Ganking is now de rigeur, but it's no longer just pirate gangs sitting on a low-sec entrance gate, it's virtually the only way to guarantee PvP, non-consensual or otherwise.
The backbone of PvP in EVE has always been The Fear - the fear of losing your ship, the fear of losing a head full of expensive implants, basically the fear of losing all the assets you've worked your ass off to gain. It's something that has been absolutely integral to the games appeal, and those combat shakes are why I've played it so long and why, after all this time, I've had to try and find other ways to spark the same flame. It seems, however, that for many The Fear doesn't exist.
Perhaps it's another symptom of EVE's growing playerbase. All these new pilots need more and more ships to fly, more and more modules to fit to them. They mine more ore, they build more items, they expand the economy naturally and progressively and this is A Good Thing. But the flip side of that comes from CCP's desire to rid EVE of the problem of Real Money Trading that plagues other MMOs. The Game Time Card and its ingame equivalent, the Plex, have allowed players to legitimately use real world cash to buy in game money. No longer does the average EVE peon need to grind his way from nothing to afford his first cruiser or battleship - now you can just throw a credit card at Shattered Crystal and become an instant billionaire, able to afford a hangar full of replacements, neatly sidestepping the worry and stress and sheer adrenaline that PvP should create.
This proliferation of easy money - along with all the other ways CCP have made it easier to make ISK ingame, like wormholes and invention - has led to a potentially game-killing infestation of capital ships and jump capable sub-caps. It makes PvP a minefield. You may think your gang of twelve can have a good fight with that fifteen-strong mob of bad-guys, but when a cyno is lit within seconds of engagement you know it's time to run, cos here comes the backup. I'm not shy about admitting that I've used the same tactic myself but you know it's become a real problem when you have to gauge every single fight on the likelihood of enemy reinforcements coming in from 5-, 10- or even 20-jumps away.
Some will say it's the natural order of things, a reflection of combat in the real world. After all, why bring a knife to a gun fight when you can pack a rocket launcher? With more players come bigger gangs, harder fights, needing better fleet commanders and more committed players. Except fights are harder to get because it's harder to find a cluster of hostiles who'll commit to any battle when they're not sure they'll win easily. Ten-versus-ten, twenty-v-twenty, fifty-v-fifty even... they're all the basis of a good fight to me but the tide in EVE has turned and it seems that you'll only get a guaranteed fight when you're on the short side of ten-v-twenty or twenty-v-thirty or... you get my drift.
Combat in EVE, the PvP that kept me playing for so long, is gone. It's a different animal now, and I feel like a middle-aged Dad trying to understand why his son likes that god awful noise they call music these days. The game has moved on, partly due to the designs and desires of the developers, and partly due to the pressures created by a player base who all want to be the toughest kid on the block.
I never wanted to be the alpha dog. I would have grinned like a madman if someone told me that seeing my name in local worried them, I would have laughed like a maniac if I was told that people avoided my fleets if they knew I was leading them... but that's speculation and hope and daydreams. I would love EVE to still be the EVE of 2005, or 2006, or even 2007, before the capital age took over, but it's not to be. It's like wishing your ex-girlfriend dropped all the habits that always annoyed you and came back into your arms as the perfect woman you always imagined she could be. EVE wasn't a casual fling for me, like my dalliances with WoW and WAR, EVE was a relationship, almost a marriage. But my lover has changed, and it's time to move on.
Showing posts with label EVE Online. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EVE Online. Show all posts
Friday, October 01, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
The Hot Seat
Being Fleet Commander in EVE Online has become, for me, what the game is all about.
It's a very grand title: Fleet Commander! Look at me! I am Fleet Commander! I am Hero! I am Great Leader! Well no, you're just a guy who plays a game and talks more than the rest of the players. From the outside looking in it must sound very pompous and self-important, something that the geeks have made up to make themselves feel less sad. Well fuck that opinion. Internet spaceships are serious business.
That's a phrase that's bandied about by the EVE community all day, every day, and it's most often said ironically, but the truth is that the players who have put years into the game do treat it seriously. Yes, it's a game, for all that that entails, all the stigma that it brings. Looking at it sideways, away from the stigma of being a (say it) videogame, it's just part of the twenty-first century's new wave of entertainments. We're not just playing a game, we're inhabiting a persistent world, we're creating and evolving and destroying something wonderful. And we all treat it very, very seriously.
The Fleet Commander isn't just the geek with the loudest voice - although sometimes that's all he is - mainly he's the guy who helps other players have fun and that's a great responsibility; a duty, almost. Internet spaceships are serious business. When we get a fleet of players together to go on a PvP op, I'll decide what ships they've to bring, I'll decide which way we're flying. If we find a fight I'll give the fleet orders, call primary targets, give the call to run away. If at all possible we'll come out of the fight with more kills than losses but if not I then have to get the fleet to safety. And it's hard. If things go wrong, it's the FC who gets the blame and all of a sudden you're the person who has ruined other folks' fun. That's when it becomes serious business.
When it all goes right, though... that's when the shakes come in, the adrenalin, the unbeatable feeling of being on top. That's why people FC in EVE. After five-and-a-half years of playing it's hard to find situations where The Fear is still there. Launching your ship into overwhelming odds, hoping for one kill and then getting out is one. Taking a fleet of other players into a battle and coming out victorious is another. It's (probably) the closest thing us armchair warriors are ever going to get to being heroes... being men in the romantic sense.
I think it's something that only EVE can produce. I imagine that in the good ol' days of World of Warcraft, when forty-player raids took hours to complete, that there was one guy calling the shots all or most of the time, but those raids were static and the experiences wouldn't really change on repetition. Every fight in EVE is different - different gang, different targets, different ships, different location. You're asking two or five or ten or seventy people to listen to your words and react, to do as you say and follow your commands, to make their internet spaceships shoot other internet spaceships; you're asking all these players of this game to listen to you and do as they are damn well told. And, most of time time, they do. Because you're the fleet commander, and you are in charge. And that is amazing.
It's a very grand title: Fleet Commander! Look at me! I am Fleet Commander! I am Hero! I am Great Leader! Well no, you're just a guy who plays a game and talks more than the rest of the players. From the outside looking in it must sound very pompous and self-important, something that the geeks have made up to make themselves feel less sad. Well fuck that opinion. Internet spaceships are serious business.
That's a phrase that's bandied about by the EVE community all day, every day, and it's most often said ironically, but the truth is that the players who have put years into the game do treat it seriously. Yes, it's a game, for all that that entails, all the stigma that it brings. Looking at it sideways, away from the stigma of being a (say it) videogame, it's just part of the twenty-first century's new wave of entertainments. We're not just playing a game, we're inhabiting a persistent world, we're creating and evolving and destroying something wonderful. And we all treat it very, very seriously.
The Fleet Commander isn't just the geek with the loudest voice - although sometimes that's all he is - mainly he's the guy who helps other players have fun and that's a great responsibility; a duty, almost. Internet spaceships are serious business. When we get a fleet of players together to go on a PvP op, I'll decide what ships they've to bring, I'll decide which way we're flying. If we find a fight I'll give the fleet orders, call primary targets, give the call to run away. If at all possible we'll come out of the fight with more kills than losses but if not I then have to get the fleet to safety. And it's hard. If things go wrong, it's the FC who gets the blame and all of a sudden you're the person who has ruined other folks' fun. That's when it becomes serious business.
When it all goes right, though... that's when the shakes come in, the adrenalin, the unbeatable feeling of being on top. That's why people FC in EVE. After five-and-a-half years of playing it's hard to find situations where The Fear is still there. Launching your ship into overwhelming odds, hoping for one kill and then getting out is one. Taking a fleet of other players into a battle and coming out victorious is another. It's (probably) the closest thing us armchair warriors are ever going to get to being heroes... being men in the romantic sense.
I think it's something that only EVE can produce. I imagine that in the good ol' days of World of Warcraft, when forty-player raids took hours to complete, that there was one guy calling the shots all or most of the time, but those raids were static and the experiences wouldn't really change on repetition. Every fight in EVE is different - different gang, different targets, different ships, different location. You're asking two or five or ten or seventy people to listen to your words and react, to do as you say and follow your commands, to make their internet spaceships shoot other internet spaceships; you're asking all these players of this game to listen to you and do as they are damn well told. And, most of time time, they do. Because you're the fleet commander, and you are in charge. And that is amazing.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Drunkfleet!: The Battle Reportening
Dramatis Personae: RPS Holdings (Gesadt, Nimloth Valinor, Captain Beardface, Zekk Pacus, Mezgorod, Stoffl, M Piquet, TehMuffinMan, ry ry, Alim Thek, Eben Rochelle, Duckslayer, Han Chang), Huzzah Federation (Eaglecrys, Sashenka, Tiberius Funk, ihisly, rhialto, Laurea, Soraji, Meshfori) Gunshi Kuroi Doragon (Sprinkles, Bashius), Mustache Twirling Space Cads (Jim DiGriz), Solar Revenue Service (April7, Renegade, Tin Tong, Keanez)
PROLOGUE
Drunkfleet is something I used to do semi-regularly with Huzzah - to be honest it's really no different from any other long roam, it's just that we call it drunkfleet and expect everyone to get drunk, rather than wondering why, an hour into the roam, everyone has to safe up at a planet for their third pee in four jumps. You're forewarned when the fleet is called Drunkfleet.
PART 1
I'd set the form up time ridiculously early because I wanted people to start thinking about being available earlier than usual; I knew for a fact we wouldn't have a gang ready for 7.30pm on a Friday night, but at least they would be getting ready to get ready. So bang on time, 8pm, we were good to go. And lo! it was with a glad heart and a full beer that we set off on our quest to rid EVE of stupid by getting pished up and entering consensual PvP. Our destination: Pure Blind, then Tribute, or an early fiery death.
The first part of the night was a bit, well, boring. No kills, barely even a target between 2X- and our first pit stop in A-S, but that wasn't the problem. Boring I could have dealt with.
We knew through channels that the typical Rooks & Kings 20-man T3/logistics gang (with cyno-bridge backup) was floating about, and we were fully intending on staying the fuck away, but they managed to flush out a Soldiers of Thunderstorm sniping-gang that was death incarnate to our frigate blob. As we tried to probe out some NPCers in QXW SoT came in, closely followed by R&K. We got our first kill of the night - an Imicus - and then we hid, to give them some space to go at it. They were both on our direct route for the roam, but in our ships we, theoretically, could just have ran right through them and then detoured past for the win.
Our next port of call was XZH, one of the most lucrative NPCing systems in all EVE. As we burst through the system's belts, looking for a tasty ratter, intel came of a Controlled Chaos fleet entering 9-4, the system next door. 100 of them. Shitting myself, I quickly ordered a fast retreat. Manoeuvring around 2 cruiser heavy fleets we could manage, but this was ridiculous. We burned back to A-S for a quick break and I had a good hard think about where to go next.
INTERLUDE: SOME MUSIC PLAYS
PART 2
So then I thought, "Sod it, we can make Pure Blind". Yeah, so the SoT gang was still in the vicinity, yeah so the Controlled Chaos gang was still there too. Intel filtered in to say R&K had pulled out after suffering a beating at the hands of Soldiers of Thunderstorm, but we soldiered on. Our excellent scout squad, already depleted after the loss of Duckslayer (poor Duck) got eyes on the Controlled Chaos as they faced off against SoT on different sides of the same stargate. We burned past them, losing another scout, Eben, in the process, and ran through another couple of intervening systems before brutally violating an unsuspecting Myrmidon pilot who obviously wasn't watching his intel channels.
While we finished him off our local began to rise dramatically. It was the CC enormo-gang. We couldn't jump through as we had aggression timers so I made the call to warp off and then back in, jump through and run another couple of systems down. Amazingly we managed get out without losing any more ships. Things calmed down a little after this and we caught our breaths and moved back towards our ultimate destination. The next hurdle was always going to be P-2, a busy outpost system. Our scouts, once again moving ahead of us, spotted some battlecruisers on the in-gate to P-2, which turned out to be... Controlled Chaos. They'd used a jump bridge network to get ahead of us, which Soraji found out by jumping into them and then exploding. Abandoning all hope, we again found a side route and ran, we ran as only frigate pilots with a great big gang o'doom chasing us can run. And then we stopped, reapproached the gate and killed a Taranis. This proved to be something of a bad call, however, as the main body of their fleet moved a lot fast than I had anticipated and caught up with us, taking out Jim DiGriz, Renegade, TehMuffinMan and Alim.
We got away, again, and docked up in ROIR. Phew. That was close.
INTERLUDE 2: INTERLUDE HARDER
PART THE THIRD
Things soon began to brighten up. From ROIR we moved to 5ZXX whereupon the locals undocked seven battleships and a carrier to chase us of. This is, historically, how every corp who has ever lived in this system has always reacted to intruders. Like a little prickly hedgehog making itself look big to scare away maruading foxes. And, like a space fox, we took our spaceships and flew away.
In EC-P8R we didn't find any hedgehogs, but we did find kills. Lots of them. In a spectacular display of sheer, unadulterated fail, two covert ops ships managed to decloak each other, and die while two other stealth bombers managed to do no damage to us and die. Much drinking and celebrating did commence.
Since high-sec space was next door several pilots took the opportunity to leave the fleet and go home. Do not consider these people cowards, for they have lived to run away another day. We, The Few, The Strong, The Incredibly Masculine And Brave moved on regardless. The fleet was depleted, but not dead.
Moving back through Pure Blind and towards Tribute, heavily infested Morsus Mihi space, we heard a strange croaking on comms. It was Zekk, our scout, reporting something that hadn't been seen in EVE since at least 2007. An unscouted, ratting Raven. It was with tears of joy in my eyes that I called to kill that silly fucker in the face. When would we next see something so rare and special? It was a wonderful moment, and I gave the order for all fleet members to quickly interfere with their bikini regions.
Morsus Mihi space would prove to be rich with idiots, it seemed, and idiots who did not share intel about us, as we quickly cooked and ate an Ishtar a few jumps later. I had planned our next break to be in H-W (mistaking it for H-P which was only 15 more jumps away, rather than two) and as we burned, Sashenka told us he had managed to tackle a Helios pilot. We quickly turned back and I ordered Sash to stop shooting so that we could all whore the killmail, like the proper gentlemen were were. We also killed a Prophecy and then, in a moment of sheer magic, we saw and destroyed a second ratting Raven. Two in one night? It was like finally seeing your mating pair of Giant Pandas screw all night long and then shooting them in the head with a high powered rifle.
Things went a bit hairy at this point, as a Morsus gang arrived and killed Zekk and Meshfori. We ran away again and then, in a moment of classy FCing, went to a safe spot so that I could pee.
INTERLUDE 3: INTERLUDE WITH A RETRIBUTION (cos they're better than the Vengeance)
PART THE FINAL
Things began to wind down as we got drunker. Our last kill of the night came when a Helios jumped into us and then complained that it was his first flight in the ship and we shouldn't kill him. Lrn2cloak fule.
We eventually reached Empire some jumps later, having killed our final scout - Sashenka's alt - in a hilarious Broadsword related incident.
EPILOGUE
And they all lived happily ever after...
PROLOGUE
Drunkfleet is something I used to do semi-regularly with Huzzah - to be honest it's really no different from any other long roam, it's just that we call it drunkfleet and expect everyone to get drunk, rather than wondering why, an hour into the roam, everyone has to safe up at a planet for their third pee in four jumps. You're forewarned when the fleet is called Drunkfleet.
PART 1
I'd set the form up time ridiculously early because I wanted people to start thinking about being available earlier than usual; I knew for a fact we wouldn't have a gang ready for 7.30pm on a Friday night, but at least they would be getting ready to get ready. So bang on time, 8pm, we were good to go. And lo! it was with a glad heart and a full beer that we set off on our quest to rid EVE of stupid by getting pished up and entering consensual PvP. Our destination: Pure Blind, then Tribute, or an early fiery death.
The first part of the night was a bit, well, boring. No kills, barely even a target between 2X- and our first pit stop in A-S, but that wasn't the problem. Boring I could have dealt with.
We knew through channels that the typical Rooks & Kings 20-man T3/logistics gang (with cyno-bridge backup) was floating about, and we were fully intending on staying the fuck away, but they managed to flush out a Soldiers of Thunderstorm sniping-gang that was death incarnate to our frigate blob. As we tried to probe out some NPCers in QXW SoT came in, closely followed by R&K. We got our first kill of the night - an Imicus - and then we hid, to give them some space to go at it. They were both on our direct route for the roam, but in our ships we, theoretically, could just have ran right through them and then detoured past for the win.
Our next port of call was XZH, one of the most lucrative NPCing systems in all EVE. As we burst through the system's belts, looking for a tasty ratter, intel came of a Controlled Chaos fleet entering 9-4, the system next door. 100 of them. Shitting myself, I quickly ordered a fast retreat. Manoeuvring around 2 cruiser heavy fleets we could manage, but this was ridiculous. We burned back to A-S for a quick break and I had a good hard think about where to go next.
INTERLUDE: SOME MUSIC PLAYS
PART 2
So then I thought, "Sod it, we can make Pure Blind". Yeah, so the SoT gang was still in the vicinity, yeah so the Controlled Chaos gang was still there too. Intel filtered in to say R&K had pulled out after suffering a beating at the hands of Soldiers of Thunderstorm, but we soldiered on. Our excellent scout squad, already depleted after the loss of Duckslayer (poor Duck) got eyes on the Controlled Chaos as they faced off against SoT on different sides of the same stargate. We burned past them, losing another scout, Eben, in the process, and ran through another couple of intervening systems before brutally violating an unsuspecting Myrmidon pilot who obviously wasn't watching his intel channels.
While we finished him off our local began to rise dramatically. It was the CC enormo-gang. We couldn't jump through as we had aggression timers so I made the call to warp off and then back in, jump through and run another couple of systems down. Amazingly we managed get out without losing any more ships. Things calmed down a little after this and we caught our breaths and moved back towards our ultimate destination. The next hurdle was always going to be P-2, a busy outpost system. Our scouts, once again moving ahead of us, spotted some battlecruisers on the in-gate to P-2, which turned out to be... Controlled Chaos. They'd used a jump bridge network to get ahead of us, which Soraji found out by jumping into them and then exploding. Abandoning all hope, we again found a side route and ran, we ran as only frigate pilots with a great big gang o'doom chasing us can run. And then we stopped, reapproached the gate and killed a Taranis. This proved to be something of a bad call, however, as the main body of their fleet moved a lot fast than I had anticipated and caught up with us, taking out Jim DiGriz, Renegade, TehMuffinMan and Alim.
We got away, again, and docked up in ROIR. Phew. That was close.
INTERLUDE 2: INTERLUDE HARDER
PART THE THIRD
Things soon began to brighten up. From ROIR we moved to 5ZXX whereupon the locals undocked seven battleships and a carrier to chase us of. This is, historically, how every corp who has ever lived in this system has always reacted to intruders. Like a little prickly hedgehog making itself look big to scare away maruading foxes. And, like a space fox, we took our spaceships and flew away.
In EC-P8R we didn't find any hedgehogs, but we did find kills. Lots of them. In a spectacular display of sheer, unadulterated fail, two covert ops ships managed to decloak each other, and die while two other stealth bombers managed to do no damage to us and die. Much drinking and celebrating did commence.
Since high-sec space was next door several pilots took the opportunity to leave the fleet and go home. Do not consider these people cowards, for they have lived to run away another day. We, The Few, The Strong, The Incredibly Masculine And Brave moved on regardless. The fleet was depleted, but not dead.
Moving back through Pure Blind and towards Tribute, heavily infested Morsus Mihi space, we heard a strange croaking on comms. It was Zekk, our scout, reporting something that hadn't been seen in EVE since at least 2007. An unscouted, ratting Raven. It was with tears of joy in my eyes that I called to kill that silly fucker in the face. When would we next see something so rare and special? It was a wonderful moment, and I gave the order for all fleet members to quickly interfere with their bikini regions.
Morsus Mihi space would prove to be rich with idiots, it seemed, and idiots who did not share intel about us, as we quickly cooked and ate an Ishtar a few jumps later. I had planned our next break to be in H-W (mistaking it for H-P which was only 15 more jumps away, rather than two) and as we burned, Sashenka told us he had managed to tackle a Helios pilot. We quickly turned back and I ordered Sash to stop shooting so that we could all whore the killmail, like the proper gentlemen were were. We also killed a Prophecy and then, in a moment of sheer magic, we saw and destroyed a second ratting Raven. Two in one night? It was like finally seeing your mating pair of Giant Pandas screw all night long and then shooting them in the head with a high powered rifle.
Things went a bit hairy at this point, as a Morsus gang arrived and killed Zekk and Meshfori. We ran away again and then, in a moment of classy FCing, went to a safe spot so that I could pee.
INTERLUDE 3: INTERLUDE WITH A RETRIBUTION (cos they're better than the Vengeance)
PART THE FINAL
Things began to wind down as we got drunker. Our last kill of the night came when a Helios jumped into us and then complained that it was his first flight in the ship and we shouldn't kill him. Lrn2cloak fule.
We eventually reached Empire some jumps later, having killed our final scout - Sashenka's alt - in a hilarious Broadsword related incident.
EPILOGUE
And they all lived happily ever after...
Friday, June 11, 2010
The Battle of Vaajiata
There are two ways to talk about a battle in EVE Online. They're both hard, for different reasons. The first way, the easier way you would think, would be to weave a story around the events, set up the players and their motivations, give a little backstory and then blow-by-blow describe the eventual coming together of the two parties. It's hard because you first of all have to be good at telling a story, and you also have to be aware enough of all the events to make that story coherent.
The second way involves being dispassionate, analytical. This method is less attractive to the average reader, but for the hardcore EVE player, one more au fait with the technicalities of a PvP encounter, it can be a real learning experience.
So how to tell the tale of the Battle of Vaajiata? Well, bearing in mind that the raison d'etre of RPSH, one of the two protagonists, is to introduce new people to EVE as fast and as hard as we can, let's try a little of both.
Firstly, the roll call. On one side we have RPS Holdings (RPSH), a corp of over 100 players, dedicated to introducing new people to the world of EVE. At the core of the corp is a kernel of jaded EVE vets, some with over five years of playtime, and surrounded on all sides by a warm, fuzzy meatshield of players with only weeks or months under their belt. In the other corner is Allied Tactical Squadron and their friends (ATSQ), a conglomerate of experienced players with their fair share of newbies - although it has to be said that the ratio of vets to new players was higher with ATSQ, and that their new players were older than ours.
As we found out, it was common practise for ATSQ to declare war on other Empire only corporations as they revelled in cheap kills and easy ganks. No different to any other PvP corp, it must be said, but there are crucial differences in tactics between high-sec and null-sec combat - the obvious one being the ability to dock in far more stations, in busier systems with more stargates to run away through. You also don't have to worry about interdictors and anyone, absolutely anyone could be an alt.
Looking at the cold hard (alltime) stats of RPSH vs ATSQ, it's easy to wonder how we managed to win the war. 111 losses overall to them, compared with only 58 kills. Strip the stats down, ignore the 21 shuttle, noob ship and pod kills, and you find that 56 of the remaining losses are all tech 1 frigates, the cheapest ship type in the game. That's because we demanded that all our new players learn to fly disposable tackling frigates as early as possible and then throw them into the fray. Ridding yourself of The Fear as quickly as possible is essential for PvP in EVE where everything you own is earned through blood, sweat and tears and once it's gone, it's gone.
The War began, as they often do, with one innocuous action. RPSH's home system of Vaajiata, was sandwiched between ATSQ's home of Akonoinen and a low security system called Aurohunen. In Aurohunen it was possible to attack other players without repercussions from CONCORD, the ingame NPC police force, although anyone doing so would then be globally flagged as a criminal. I'd been a good boy for a long time, never really pirated in low sec systems, but living in high-sec space with RPSH was leaving me aching for the kind of PvP I was used to. When I spotted a lone Drake ratting in an asteroid belt in Aurohunen, I decided to go in for the kill... and what a kill it was, as thirteen of his friends piled in and took out my ship from under me.
The following demands then appeared in local chat:
[ 2009.10.16 01:30:17 ] Dozofprom > rps WILL DIE
[ 2009.10.16 01:30:34 ] Dozofprom > check your mail, u choose poorly
[ 2009.10.16 01:31:02 ] Dozofprom > pay us 2 bil in 24hrs or you all die
[ 2009.10.16 01:33:47 ] Dozofprom > including any poses anywhere
To which I answered:
[ 2009.10.16 01:35:41 ] M PIquet > I am authorised to say: "ROFL"
That didn't go down well. A few minutes later the declaration of war arrived, which was all very exciting.
The same can't be said of the war itself, however. ATSQ excelled in hugging stations and only ever engaged with greater numbers. Apart from the Battle of Vaajiata itself there were no gang engagements during the war, only a collection of ganks and solo wins. ATSQ also had a nice line in smack, telling us that we blobbed and had too many ships to contemplate fighting, neatly forgetting that they did, of course, war dec a corp three times their size. But such is the mindset of average EVE player: the game had to be set in space to contain all the incredibly large egos.
Tit for tat kills, although more tit than that, followed. They lost some ships, we lost some more ships. We tended to hide when their mainly US timezone gangs got together and similiarly they hid from us during European prime time. It all came to a head one Sunday night in October.
Our gang was bulked up and as heavy as it could get. Even though the majority of our corp members were merely months old we still numbered a several battleships and battlecruisers in amongsth our numbers, but our intelligence was that ATSQ were massing a sniper battleship gang on the Vaajiata gate in Akonoinen - our scout had seen them warping to the gate at range and then warping back out to a safe spot, clearly making tactical sniper spots around the gate. My inital thought, as fleet commander, was to get our gang out of Vaajiata and away from prying eyes and try to circle round behind the ATSQ home system and come at them from another angle, hopefully catching them either at their safe spot or at their sniper positions. We jumped into a neighbouring system to consider options, and waited, leaving one BS behind as bait. ATSQ took that bait, and the fight was on.
The decision of where to fight was basically taken out of our hands when two ATSQ battleships, including their own fleet commander Dozofprom, jumped through the Vaajiata stargate. Dozofprom had not endeared himself to RPSH with his incessant smacktalk in local chat but his apparent niavete in combat did ensure that I enjoyed going up against him. ATSQ were obviously used to empire combat and their first response in any engagement where they were overwhelmed was usually to deaggress and dock or jump out and run.
The ATSQ ships engaged in Vaajiata and we jumped back in, quickly warping in. ATSQ's numbers also rose in local and the fight was joined. We outnumbered them, although they had Falcons, jamming ships that were force multipliers and could potentially take at least four of our five battleships out of the battle, but our frigate pilots responded well and took the first one out as it uncloaked. Our BS and BCs quickly took out the first ATSQ BS - a Raven - and switched targets to the next. Two enemy Dominix went down as we lost a Typhoon, while an ATSQ Hyperion and Abaddon pair followed type and jumped back out. That left only two hostile battleships - Dozofprom himself, still futilely shooting away until his hull imploded, and a last Dominix which went down in no time. We'd lost one battleship, they'd lost five and two more had run away. We'd won.
My first instincts proved false as the ATSQ gang turned out not to be sniper fit, but were instead a remote-repair gang. That meant that they sacrificed overall firepower by fitting remote armour repair mods in their high slots. Used well this type of battleship gang is utterly devestating and can sometimes need capital support to kill. ATSQ forgot the first rule of combat in an RR gang, however - stick together. Fitted onto non-logistics craft, ships without bonuses to module range, the repair modules were only of use within ten kilometres, meaning all the BS would have to stay in a battle ball. Jumping into combat instantly means that ships within the gang can be up to thirty kilometres apart. In a triple-plated trimarked BS that could take anything up to a minute to travel. It was a bad decision, and the killmails only highlighted the terrible fits to go with them - a good RR gang has RR on every ship, not on half of them. If this sounds like arrogance, that's because it is, but it's the arrogance gained from total victory. Not all my fights have went this well, before or after, but this is one win I'll always remember, as much for the fight as for the immediate result...
Mere minutes later the entire corp received a notificaton by EVE-mail: ATSQ were retracting the war. We'd not only won, we'd defeated them so completely they withdrew all hostilities. The field was ours, the victory was ours, the enemy so defeated they knelt in supplication. This, surely, is what EVE is all about.
The second way involves being dispassionate, analytical. This method is less attractive to the average reader, but for the hardcore EVE player, one more au fait with the technicalities of a PvP encounter, it can be a real learning experience.
So how to tell the tale of the Battle of Vaajiata? Well, bearing in mind that the raison d'etre of RPSH, one of the two protagonists, is to introduce new people to EVE as fast and as hard as we can, let's try a little of both.
Firstly, the roll call. On one side we have RPS Holdings (RPSH), a corp of over 100 players, dedicated to introducing new people to the world of EVE. At the core of the corp is a kernel of jaded EVE vets, some with over five years of playtime, and surrounded on all sides by a warm, fuzzy meatshield of players with only weeks or months under their belt. In the other corner is Allied Tactical Squadron and their friends (ATSQ), a conglomerate of experienced players with their fair share of newbies - although it has to be said that the ratio of vets to new players was higher with ATSQ, and that their new players were older than ours.
As we found out, it was common practise for ATSQ to declare war on other Empire only corporations as they revelled in cheap kills and easy ganks. No different to any other PvP corp, it must be said, but there are crucial differences in tactics between high-sec and null-sec combat - the obvious one being the ability to dock in far more stations, in busier systems with more stargates to run away through. You also don't have to worry about interdictors and anyone, absolutely anyone could be an alt.
Looking at the cold hard (alltime) stats of RPSH vs ATSQ, it's easy to wonder how we managed to win the war. 111 losses overall to them, compared with only 58 kills. Strip the stats down, ignore the 21 shuttle, noob ship and pod kills, and you find that 56 of the remaining losses are all tech 1 frigates, the cheapest ship type in the game. That's because we demanded that all our new players learn to fly disposable tackling frigates as early as possible and then throw them into the fray. Ridding yourself of The Fear as quickly as possible is essential for PvP in EVE where everything you own is earned through blood, sweat and tears and once it's gone, it's gone.
The War began, as they often do, with one innocuous action. RPSH's home system of Vaajiata, was sandwiched between ATSQ's home of Akonoinen and a low security system called Aurohunen. In Aurohunen it was possible to attack other players without repercussions from CONCORD, the ingame NPC police force, although anyone doing so would then be globally flagged as a criminal. I'd been a good boy for a long time, never really pirated in low sec systems, but living in high-sec space with RPSH was leaving me aching for the kind of PvP I was used to. When I spotted a lone Drake ratting in an asteroid belt in Aurohunen, I decided to go in for the kill... and what a kill it was, as thirteen of his friends piled in and took out my ship from under me.
The following demands then appeared in local chat:
[ 2009.10.16 01:30:17 ] Dozofprom > rps WILL DIE
[ 2009.10.16 01:30:34 ] Dozofprom > check your mail, u choose poorly
[ 2009.10.16 01:31:02 ] Dozofprom > pay us 2 bil in 24hrs or you all die
[ 2009.10.16 01:33:47 ] Dozofprom > including any poses anywhere
To which I answered:
[ 2009.10.16 01:35:41 ] M PIquet > I am authorised to say: "ROFL"
That didn't go down well. A few minutes later the declaration of war arrived, which was all very exciting.
The same can't be said of the war itself, however. ATSQ excelled in hugging stations and only ever engaged with greater numbers. Apart from the Battle of Vaajiata itself there were no gang engagements during the war, only a collection of ganks and solo wins. ATSQ also had a nice line in smack, telling us that we blobbed and had too many ships to contemplate fighting, neatly forgetting that they did, of course, war dec a corp three times their size. But such is the mindset of average EVE player: the game had to be set in space to contain all the incredibly large egos.
Tit for tat kills, although more tit than that, followed. They lost some ships, we lost some more ships. We tended to hide when their mainly US timezone gangs got together and similiarly they hid from us during European prime time. It all came to a head one Sunday night in October.
Our gang was bulked up and as heavy as it could get. Even though the majority of our corp members were merely months old we still numbered a several battleships and battlecruisers in amongsth our numbers, but our intelligence was that ATSQ were massing a sniper battleship gang on the Vaajiata gate in Akonoinen - our scout had seen them warping to the gate at range and then warping back out to a safe spot, clearly making tactical sniper spots around the gate. My inital thought, as fleet commander, was to get our gang out of Vaajiata and away from prying eyes and try to circle round behind the ATSQ home system and come at them from another angle, hopefully catching them either at their safe spot or at their sniper positions. We jumped into a neighbouring system to consider options, and waited, leaving one BS behind as bait. ATSQ took that bait, and the fight was on.
The decision of where to fight was basically taken out of our hands when two ATSQ battleships, including their own fleet commander Dozofprom, jumped through the Vaajiata stargate. Dozofprom had not endeared himself to RPSH with his incessant smacktalk in local chat but his apparent niavete in combat did ensure that I enjoyed going up against him. ATSQ were obviously used to empire combat and their first response in any engagement where they were overwhelmed was usually to deaggress and dock or jump out and run.
The ATSQ ships engaged in Vaajiata and we jumped back in, quickly warping in. ATSQ's numbers also rose in local and the fight was joined. We outnumbered them, although they had Falcons, jamming ships that were force multipliers and could potentially take at least four of our five battleships out of the battle, but our frigate pilots responded well and took the first one out as it uncloaked. Our BS and BCs quickly took out the first ATSQ BS - a Raven - and switched targets to the next. Two enemy Dominix went down as we lost a Typhoon, while an ATSQ Hyperion and Abaddon pair followed type and jumped back out. That left only two hostile battleships - Dozofprom himself, still futilely shooting away until his hull imploded, and a last Dominix which went down in no time. We'd lost one battleship, they'd lost five and two more had run away. We'd won.
My first instincts proved false as the ATSQ gang turned out not to be sniper fit, but were instead a remote-repair gang. That meant that they sacrificed overall firepower by fitting remote armour repair mods in their high slots. Used well this type of battleship gang is utterly devestating and can sometimes need capital support to kill. ATSQ forgot the first rule of combat in an RR gang, however - stick together. Fitted onto non-logistics craft, ships without bonuses to module range, the repair modules were only of use within ten kilometres, meaning all the BS would have to stay in a battle ball. Jumping into combat instantly means that ships within the gang can be up to thirty kilometres apart. In a triple-plated trimarked BS that could take anything up to a minute to travel. It was a bad decision, and the killmails only highlighted the terrible fits to go with them - a good RR gang has RR on every ship, not on half of them. If this sounds like arrogance, that's because it is, but it's the arrogance gained from total victory. Not all my fights have went this well, before or after, but this is one win I'll always remember, as much for the fight as for the immediate result...
Mere minutes later the entire corp received a notificaton by EVE-mail: ATSQ were retracting the war. We'd not only won, we'd defeated them so completely they withdrew all hostilities. The field was ours, the victory was ours, the enemy so defeated they knelt in supplication. This, surely, is what EVE is all about.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Monday, July 06, 2009
EVE: Even virtual banks are in trouble...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8132547.stm - EVE player steals 2 billion ISK of invested ingame cash and sells it through Real Money Traders to finance medical bills and a new house
The most surprising thing about this story is that it's reported in a fairly straight laced manner, giving it more credibility and importance than it may have received eighteen months ago or so. As virtual worlds become more prevelant and more important to more and more people I suppose that this change in opinions was inevitable. It just seems to have started sooner than I thought.
I wonder how long it will be before game developers like CCP start to pursue legal action against people who exploit RMT sites. If this guy had managed to steal more ISK from the 2.3trillion fund, could have had sold it for £10, 000? £20, 000? Even thirty thousand? At what point to developers say enough is enough and call their lawyers? Is there even a case for them outwith the terms and conditions of the game, or is permabanning accounts their only available solution?
I think it's inevitable that there will be a test case sooner rather than later... but I wonder how many subscriptions will end up being cancelled if RMT is made illegal by the courts and not just by the developers. Could they end up cutting off their nose to spite their face? Only time will tell.
The most surprising thing about this story is that it's reported in a fairly straight laced manner, giving it more credibility and importance than it may have received eighteen months ago or so. As virtual worlds become more prevelant and more important to more and more people I suppose that this change in opinions was inevitable. It just seems to have started sooner than I thought.
I wonder how long it will be before game developers like CCP start to pursue legal action against people who exploit RMT sites. If this guy had managed to steal more ISK from the 2.3trillion fund, could have had sold it for £10, 000? £20, 000? Even thirty thousand? At what point to developers say enough is enough and call their lawyers? Is there even a case for them outwith the terms and conditions of the game, or is permabanning accounts their only available solution?
I think it's inevitable that there will be a test case sooner rather than later... but I wonder how many subscriptions will end up being cancelled if RMT is made illegal by the courts and not just by the developers. Could they end up cutting off their nose to spite their face? Only time will tell.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
The Statecorp story
It's been a while since I thought about my EVE Diary but recent discussions with members of my EVE Online corporation have brought them to my attention again, purely becuase it looks like the corp will dissolve soon after nearly five years together. We've lost a few key players in the last few months - including myself - and it's nearly time to wind things down and move on.
The EVE Diaries where to be a play diary displayed in a library within Second Life by fellow former State forumite Always Black, but I stopped after some pretty negative feedback for the fifth entry. It wasn't uncalled for to be honest - I'd tried to relate something that we all found pretty momentous within the game but didn't do it very well.
Now, over three years since that last entry into the EVE diary I'm thinking of writing some more, retrospectively, filling in the history of StateCorp as I remember it. Obviously with myself as the hero. Obviously.
The EVE Diaries where to be a play diary displayed in a library within Second Life by fellow former State forumite Always Black, but I stopped after some pretty negative feedback for the fifth entry. It wasn't uncalled for to be honest - I'd tried to relate something that we all found pretty momentous within the game but didn't do it very well.
Now, over three years since that last entry into the EVE diary I'm thinking of writing some more, retrospectively, filling in the history of StateCorp as I remember it. Obviously with myself as the hero. Obviously.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Moving On
I came back into EVE last November, with six months training time wasted, and a whole lot of experiences missed. My corp had grown and advanced, and guys who started playing after me were now multi-millionaires, doing their own thing for God and glory.
I'd missed so much...even before I'd never really seen one thing in EVE that I wanted to do. By that I mean I didn't want to be an industrialist, I didn't want to a trader or a miner or a fighter. I just wanted to play along and see how things went. Now things are changing again: StateCorp is moving again, almost halfway across the world map. This new area is ripe with prospects - the mining may not be as good, the fighting may not be as hard, but all in all we have a chance to make our own space now, big fishes in a little alliance, as opposed to tadpoles in the Forsaken Empire.
But I'm stuck with an empty wallet, my own overriding ignorance and stupidity (the one that always leads to me losing ships I can't afford to lose) and one ship. Lose this and it's pretty much all over for M Piquet.
I guess it's bite the bullet time.
I'd missed so much...even before I'd never really seen one thing in EVE that I wanted to do. By that I mean I didn't want to be an industrialist, I didn't want to a trader or a miner or a fighter. I just wanted to play along and see how things went. Now things are changing again: StateCorp is moving again, almost halfway across the world map. This new area is ripe with prospects - the mining may not be as good, the fighting may not be as hard, but all in all we have a chance to make our own space now, big fishes in a little alliance, as opposed to tadpoles in the Forsaken Empire.
But I'm stuck with an empty wallet, my own overriding ignorance and stupidity (the one that always leads to me losing ships I can't afford to lose) and one ship. Lose this and it's pretty much all over for M Piquet.
I guess it's bite the bullet time.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Fallen Empire
Tensions are rising within the Forsaken Empire, the alliance my EVE corporation belongs to. A recent end to the hostilities with The Five and a breakdown of diplomacy with PA and NBSI...our enemies are our friends, and our friends now our enemies.
It's a complete turnaround of opinion, basically from nowhere (as far as the grunts on the front lines are concerned), and has set in motion a chain of events that look like they'll tear the games' second biggest alliance apart.
The biggest question StateCorp has to face is...what do we do?
It's a complete turnaround of opinion, basically from nowhere (as far as the grunts on the front lines are concerned), and has set in motion a chain of events that look like they'll tear the games' second biggest alliance apart.
The biggest question StateCorp has to face is...what do we do?
Sunday, January 22, 2006
PvP 4tw!
Last Thursday in EVE was my first real exposure to PvP. An organised StateCorp fleet, with Zwiss as fleet command, went roaming and got five kills. Not a lot, given that there where twelve of us, but enough to give myself and the other PvP noobs a sense of what's involved in decent fleet combat.
I say decent because one of the recurring themes in corp chat is the lack of good fleet commanders in the alliance. Last night I saw the difference between the two. Not that Kirin incapable, but the level of communication was far lower, and the rush to combat more impulsive and, ultimately, more destructive.
For the sake of getting on two kill mails last night (both for the same guy, funnily enough), I lost a Hawk and a Moa. Losing the Hawk was my own fault - an assault frigate and two interceptors taking on an inty, a missile boat and a droneboat was always going to be close - but I can't help feeling aggrieved about the Moa. It was easy to see who was jamming the fleet, but we all kept pounding on the wrong ship...ah well. The insurance money bought another Hawk, so it's off to 0.0 to try some ratting.
I say decent because one of the recurring themes in corp chat is the lack of good fleet commanders in the alliance. Last night I saw the difference between the two. Not that Kirin incapable, but the level of communication was far lower, and the rush to combat more impulsive and, ultimately, more destructive.
For the sake of getting on two kill mails last night (both for the same guy, funnily enough), I lost a Hawk and a Moa. Losing the Hawk was my own fault - an assault frigate and two interceptors taking on an inty, a missile boat and a droneboat was always going to be close - but I can't help feeling aggrieved about the Moa. It was easy to see who was jamming the fleet, but we all kept pounding on the wrong ship...ah well. The insurance money bought another Hawk, so it's off to 0.0 to try some ratting.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Good EVE
Finally, EVE has come back to life.
The ongoing war with The Five, my lack of (ingame) money, my lack of skills...it was getting me down. A few weeks of training and I can fly a Hawk, which is perhaps the most fun I've ever had in EVE. It's fast, it's hard, it's not as powerful as its big brother the Harpy...but it'll do. It'll do until I can afford something better, anyway.
While EVE is coming back into focus, WoW is fading away. It was fun, for a while, but the continual grinding is boring, dull, monotonous, and a thousand similar terms. My Paladin is nearly level 40 (and gaining a mount will probably change things in WoW in the same way the Hawk did for EVE), but it's came to my attention that he's not the character I wanted him to be. A mid-range damage class, a mid-range healer and a mid-range tanker. Neither one nor t'other. Jack of all trades ad master of none, and all that. Frankly, it's boring. I have a lower level Warlock as well, but the games' novelty is wearing off.
Give me the stars anyday.
And on that note:
EVE Diary 1: First Frontier
EVE Diary 2: Learning Curves
EVE Diary 3: How We Won The West And Where It Got Us
EVE Diary 4: All Alone In The Night
My semi-regular series of EVE Online play diaries continues over at alwaysblack.com
The ongoing war with The Five, my lack of (ingame) money, my lack of skills...it was getting me down. A few weeks of training and I can fly a Hawk, which is perhaps the most fun I've ever had in EVE. It's fast, it's hard, it's not as powerful as its big brother the Harpy...but it'll do. It'll do until I can afford something better, anyway.
While EVE is coming back into focus, WoW is fading away. It was fun, for a while, but the continual grinding is boring, dull, monotonous, and a thousand similar terms. My Paladin is nearly level 40 (and gaining a mount will probably change things in WoW in the same way the Hawk did for EVE), but it's came to my attention that he's not the character I wanted him to be. A mid-range damage class, a mid-range healer and a mid-range tanker. Neither one nor t'other. Jack of all trades ad master of none, and all that. Frankly, it's boring. I have a lower level Warlock as well, but the games' novelty is wearing off.
Give me the stars anyday.
And on that note:
EVE Diary 1: First Frontier
EVE Diary 2: Learning Curves
EVE Diary 3: How We Won The West And Where It Got Us
EVE Diary 4: All Alone In The Night
My semi-regular series of EVE Online play diaries continues over at alwaysblack.com
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