Massive EVE Online Superbattle Blocks The Stars

MercurySteam

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Apr 11, 2008
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Hahaha look at that massive cone shaped battle going on in there. A clusterfuck if I ever saw one.
 

Lt. Rocky

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Jan 4, 2012
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For a space battle, that sure didn't look very spacious. Can I assume it's because of the limits on the size of the field? Or do EVE players just enjoy a good metallic cuddlefest hoedown now and then?
 

Tireseas_v1legacy

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Sep 28, 2009
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For those who need a sense of scale: at about 17:05, there is a zoom out of the battle. The smallest visible ships are the battleships. When you're flying as a standard fleet member (i.e. the rifleman of the fleet as opposed to a medic/logistics, scout, or commander, who often use smaller craft with faster lock-on times) you're usually flying in a cruiser or battleship-sized ship.

So everything else you could see were carriers, supercarriers, dreadnoughts, and titans. You couldn't even see the frigate and cruiser-sized craft that likely made up the majority of the fleets.
 

Scytail

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Lt. Rocky said:
For a space battle, that sure didn't look very spacious. Can I assume it's because of the limits on the size of the field? Or do EVE players just enjoy a good metallic cuddlefest hoedown now and then?
Those ships are huge. Also with the way movement works, there isn't really any reason to fly around if you're a huge sized ship.
 

rcs619

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tangoprime said:
You speak the truth. Most fun I ever had in the game was back in the spring/summer 2010 during the big NC war, running with a small recon group. Deep in Red Alliance turf, we ganked a Tempest that apparently belonged to the captain of the team that won 2nd place in that year's alliance tournament. We cloaked and faded, but stayed in local, and the rest of his alliance team showed up a few minutes later, and we got to see them bitching to each other in local (in russian of course) and linking all our character names. That was good stuff. When he showed up again, this time in a hurricane, we pursued, and pushed him right into a second recon team that were bracketing with us and they got his ship and pod :)
http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=10438510

That was a good day, small fleet ops are fun as hell, especially when you can step up your game and start rolling t3 cloakies.
Yeah, that last war with the NC was kind of the beginning of the end of the old-EVE, in my opinion. Before that, null-sec was a lot more fractured. BoB was basically dead (for like third time) back before they reformed into Raiden. The Goons were basically dead, until they cut a deal with Tau Ceti and basically pitched a tent in the NC's back yard. It was an interesting time. Yeah, the North was getting stagnant, but there was a lot going on down south and in NPC space. Northern Coaliton. (the alliance) was just forming, and the big conflict was trying to push the last former BoB allies (RED Overlord, NC., EvOkE and such) out of the north now that the previous BoB war was winding down.

Then Dominion hit, the supercarriers got buffed into the most powerful ships in the game, and the sov mechanics were changed to encourage even more blobs to make the structure-grinds go quicker. Then the russian alliances really started to cooperate, and you had White Noise, XxDeathxX, RED and Solar, all of whom had turned their drone-wealth into a huge supercap fleet. Once EvOkE, NC., Raiden and Pandemic Legion all joined up with them, you basically had the largest capital/supercapital fleet in the history of EVE, all aimed at the Northern Coalition. This was really the first time anyone had seen such massive supercarrier fleets, and the titan buffs meant insane numbers of them got dropped too. Then the NC died, the goons looted its corpse to scoop up most of their former allies and they formed their own super-coalition to fight off the remaining russian aggression before that war finally leveled off and ended.

Now all of 0.0 is basically just four super-coalitions. The goons and friends up north, the SOLAR lead russians in the east, the Honey Badger Coalition (Test Alliance, Pandemic Legion and friends) in the southwest and N3 (NC. and buddies) in the mid-south). And even those latter three have been known to cooperate at times, so in some ways it's almost like EVE is divided up between goons and anti-goons at the moment, and unless you want to irk out an existence in high-sec, low-sec or NPC 0.0, you *have* to join up with one of those groups. Conquerable null-sec has basically been closed off to everyone else at the moment.

If I had to list what I think the main issues with EVE are right now... it'd probably be three things. The main ones are the current sov and moon mechanics. No one wants to fight a sov-war any more. Sovereingty warfare is not fun, and is just grind after grind as you kill structures. Honestly, there is just no incentive to go out and take sovereignty since ALL the real money in 0.0 comes from moons. The moons are the other issue. Moon minerals are too much risk-free isk. Like, all the owners of technetium in the game (the rarest, most valuable moon mineral in EVE) are literally part of a cartel, with an active agreement not to try and take each other's moons, so that they can all manipulate the market to raise prices. Moons, especially tech-moons are the only thing worth fighting over, and the major powers have all agreed not to while they rake in crazy sums of isk for free. This kind of leads to the third problem, the blob and supercap proliferation. Sov mechanics and structure-grinds like killing POS towers encourage blob warfare to kill them as quickly as possible, or to defend against the blob trying to kill them. When combined with the previous moon issue and the overwhelming strength of supercaps and capital ships in general, you've got people tossing around supercarriers in groups of 50+ regularly now. Titans travel in groups of 20 or more and the *only* real answer against a blob of titans, supercarriers and carriers is an equally larger blob of them. The other problem is that the supercaps just don't die. I mean, look at this fight. Well over 100 supercarriers were used in the fight, and at least 20 titans (probably more but I haven't counted). At the end of the fight only 3 titans and 6 supercarriers died. They just don't die off often enough to offset the massive stockpile of them that the major alliances build up.

I'm not even sure how you fix EVE's current problems, really. Not without making huge, drastic changes. That's part of the reason I'd stopped playing. I'd already flown all the sub-caps I wanted (I love battlecruisers and cloaky ships :D ) and while I would love to fly a carrier, the only things they are good for are ratting, hauling or fighting in high-lag fleet fights where they are basically expendable compared to the supers and titans involved. I've been in a few of those big fights as a sub-cap pilot and they just aren't fun. They were barely even playable before time-dilation, and only marginally better even after that. EVE just got to the point for me where it was much more interesting to follow the politics and news than it was to actually play. I love the game's potential, but I just don't like the current gameplay climate.
 

Lt. Rocky

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Scytail said:
Those ships are huge. Also with the way movement works, there isn't really any reason to fly around if you're a huge sized ship.
I'll take that as a yes to the latter question, if there's no reason why the ships would want to distance themselves given their lack of movement.
 

Hagi

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Apr 10, 2011
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Orbot_Vectorman said:
My god, I can only imagine how that mistake went down,

Pilot 1: Alright I'm gonna scan that ship

The ships main cannon goes off and slams into target ship,

Pilot 2: What the? Oh no you didn't!

Pilot 2 calls in reinforcements, upon arrival

Pilot 1: CRAP! *Getting on com* HELP! I'M GETTING ATTACKED!

Pilot 1's reinforcements rush in and battle starts.
It went a bit more like this:

Pilot 1: WOO! I'm in the most expensive ship in the game and it's got a warp drive! Button on the left warps off my allies and button on the right warps off my own huge multiple billion ISK ship incapable of defending itself against smaller ships!

Pilot 2: Hey mate! Think you could warp us off to this system Asakai, there's a few smaller ships there that we want to ambush and kill.

Pilot 1: No problem! Let me just press this button on the right here for you!

Pilot 2: WAIT! .... Ugh... Calling for reinforcements, Pilot 1 just warped our most expensive ship on it's own into enemy territory... If we rush we can get there before the enemy does... maybe...
 

Hagi

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Apr 10, 2011
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Gilhelmi said:
Titans were in the battle.

How many times did a Doomsday Device get used?
Zero :p

Took place in low-sec. Can't use Doomsday Devices there.
 

UltraXan

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Mar 1, 2011
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I remember playing EVE a while back during some free play period... I must admit, I didn't really get into that much. Seems to have a rather steep learning curve, but I'm sure it's rewarding for those willing to climb it. All that aside, though, I love hearing about these news breaking things that happen in MMOs, and it seems like a lot of them happen in EVE. And this whole thing is just unbelievable. A massive fight of 2800-3000 people, $24 000 US in damages, fleets that stack up massive ships to have super powered space tanks... This whole thing is just... so... AWESOME!!! I'm sharing this story with so many people when I get the chance.
 

Aggieknight

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Dec 6, 2009
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EVE Players, I salute you.

I don't have the time to participate in your amazing universe, but love to hear the stories of your conflicts, whether they are thefts, blackmail, revenge or epic freakin space battles.

You guys rock.
 

rickynumber24

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Feb 25, 2011
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rcs619 said:
jollybarracuda said:
Wow...it doesnt even look like a space battle in those images, just a giant spider's web composed of space ships and lasers...Frakkin' awesome.
spectrenihlus said:
This is what all MMOs should strive to become. Don't try to direct the player let the players direct themselves.
The one real downside of EVE is that the major fleet battles aren't actually fun. The game's architecture literally can't handle it.

Basically, when a bunch of players all pile into the same system, a mechanic called "time-dilation" kicks in. It slows the game down so that everyone's individual commands reach the servers in order. In the big battle, the game bogs down to unbearable levels. For example, in this battle, the time-dilation was up to the maximum of 90%. The game was only running at 10% speed the entire time. 1 minute of gameplay took 10 minutes of real-time, for example.

It's better than it used to be, when the server would just lag out or crash completely, and it certainly *is* an interesting story to read about and catch screenshots of. It just isn't fun to actually be in it, attempting to play the game in a situation the hardware just can't support. Which is something CCP always seems to neglect when they advertise EVE's huge, "epic" battles.

I always enjoyed black-ops stuff myself. Sneaking around with a dozen or so guys in stealth-bombers and recon-cruisers, ganking anyone unlucky enough to bumble into our path, before fading back into the shadows as he raged in local chat about what cowards we were >:)

Really any of the small-gang PVP is a lot of fun. 10-20 dudes rolling around in cruisers, battlecruisers and whatever else, shooting the shit in Teamspeak while you shoot people in EVE. Goodtimes.

But yeah, if EVE's endgame content (sovereignty wars, huge fleet fights, capital/super-capital ship engagements) were actually playable and/or fun, then I really think it would be one of the best MMO's around easily. In its current state though, it is an extremely interesting, if currently flawed, experiment in player-driven content and sandbox gameplay.
Speaking as someone who took a frigate there, we were not only pinned at 10% time dilation, but we were experiencing old-school lag, too. Not only did everything take 10x as long, which I could live with, but module activations were sometimes delayed by entire minutes.
For that matter, when the alliance message says, "Log everything in; bring what you want" and you're slightly behind the main fleet, you bring a fast ship to catch up... and then spend half an hour trying to get through the final two jump gates. Actually, half an hour trying to get through each of the final two jump gates.
 

health-bar

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Nov 13, 2009
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I wish I was that pilot.
Then I could claim sole responsibility for causing a multi billion isk super-incident.
 

Failsafe Operator

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Mar 25, 2012
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The writer of the article is off base by implying that only once in a while pvp happens in eve. PVP happens all the time, just not on this scale. Eve is for the hardcore and is certainly not the, "I'll die and then repair my armor" game. Kudos to the players who threw their crazy expensive ships on the line.
 

lacktheknack

Je suis joined jewels.
Jan 19, 2009
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Beffudled Sheep said:
Ed130 said:
Meestor Pickle said:
That cluster just reminds me of the messy battles in Sins of a Solar Empire matches.
To put it into perspective, the 700,000,000,000 ISK (the early estimate of losses) converted to real world currency is 24,308.31 USD.

So that little light show burnt through allot of money.

Source: http://isk.thealphacompany.net/?isk=700000000000&conversion=isktousd&Submit=Convert
...
Wat.
That is.. the amount of.... so much...

That is a lot of goddamn money! Oh man I bet their legions of accountants are crapping themselves over this!
Not the EVE developers, though. That's $24,000 of ruined stuff that people have to re-buy.

So while the server crunch probably scared them, they're in for a bit of a windfall here.
 
Oct 2, 2012
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lacktheknack said:
Beffudled Sheep said:
Ed130 said:
Meestor Pickle said:
That cluster just reminds me of the messy battles in Sins of a Solar Empire matches.
To put it into perspective, the 700,000,000,000 ISK (the early estimate of losses) converted to real world currency is 24,308.31 USD.

So that little light show burnt through allot of money.

Source: http://isk.thealphacompany.net/?isk=700000000000&conversion=isktousd&Submit=Convert
...
Wat.
That is.. the amount of.... so much...

That is a lot of goddamn money! Oh man I bet their legions of accountants are crapping themselves over this!
Not the EVE developers, though. That's $24,000 of ruined stuff that people have to re-buy.

So while the server crunch probably scared them, they're in for a bit of a windfall here.
I was talking about the legions of accountants in the employ of the corporations and groups that got hammered in this battle.
 

lacktheknack

Je suis joined jewels.
Jan 19, 2009
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Beffudled Sheep said:
lacktheknack said:
Beffudled Sheep said:
Ed130 said:
Meestor Pickle said:
That cluster just reminds me of the messy battles in Sins of a Solar Empire matches.
To put it into perspective, the 700,000,000,000 ISK (the early estimate of losses) converted to real world currency is 24,308.31 USD.

So that little light show burnt through allot of money.

Source: http://isk.thealphacompany.net/?isk=700000000000&conversion=isktousd&Submit=Convert
...
Wat.
That is.. the amount of.... so much...

That is a lot of goddamn money! Oh man I bet their legions of accountants are crapping themselves over this!
Not the EVE developers, though. That's $24,000 of ruined stuff that people have to re-buy.

So while the server crunch probably scared them, they're in for a bit of a windfall here.
I was talking about the legions of accountants in the employ of the corporations and groups that got hammered in this battle.
Fair enough.

It's surreal to talk about accountants accounting in-game corporations...
 
Oct 2, 2012
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lacktheknack said:
Beffudled Sheep said:
lacktheknack said:
Beffudled Sheep said:
Ed130 said:
Meestor Pickle said:
That cluster just reminds me of the messy battles in Sins of a Solar Empire matches.
To put it into perspective, the 700,000,000,000 ISK (the early estimate of losses) converted to real world currency is 24,308.31 USD.

So that little light show burnt through allot of money.

Source: http://isk.thealphacompany.net/?isk=700000000000&conversion=isktousd&Submit=Convert
...
Wat.
That is.. the amount of.... so much...

That is a lot of goddamn money! Oh man I bet their legions of accountants are crapping themselves over this!
Not the EVE developers, though. That's $24,000 of ruined stuff that people have to re-buy.

So while the server crunch probably scared them, they're in for a bit of a windfall here.
I was talking about the legions of accountants in the employ of the corporations and groups that got hammered in this battle.
Fair enough.

It's surreal to talk about accountants accounting in-game corporations...
Yeah... Makes me feel like we're talking about apple V. Microsoft instead of an mmo.
And for some reason I think thats pretty cool.