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One of the largest space battles in human history is now unfolding

Divvy

Canadians burned my passport
Twitch Feed

In less than an hour, a battle of interstellar proportions will break out in the MMORPG Eve Online, a spacefaring simulation with its own politics, economies, and wars — all controlled exclusively by players. Between three and four thousand pilots are set to do battle in one of the largest fights ever on Eve, which you can watch live below or on Twitch.tv.

The battle is expected to rival the legendary Battle of Asakai as one of the most epic battles in Eve history — which totalled equivalent to $20,000 in losses for the losing team. Today's battle doesn't yet have its own name, but is taking place in a system known as 6VDT between two of the largest player alliances in the game, TEST Alliance and the CFC. In order to keep lag to a minimum, since the battle takes place on just one server, Eve's developers will likely slow down time more than 90 percent so its server can process all player actions. This means today's battle could take several hours to reach its explosive conclusion.

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Update, 3:20PM ET: The Verge's war correspondent in Eve Online is bringing us live updates of the action about to unfold in deep space. As you can see below, the CFC is preparing to meet the TEST Alliance in battle. Intelligence suggests that the TEST Alliance force is now staging its fleet.

Today's battle could be the culmination of months of conflict, propaganda, and preparation. We'll continue to bring you live updates as the situation unfolds.

Update, 3:54PM ET: The CFC has begun attacking the TEST Alliance's space station, which sits at the main front of their war. Today's conflict is part of an effort by both alliances to establish sovereignty over planetary systems -- granting them resources, travel routes, and other assets. Since everything in Eve Online is player-produced, control of these these stations are of vital importance to an alliance's success.


Update, 3:59PM ET: Over 4,000 players are now in the local system, signaling that the battle is imminent. Eve Online's developers have slowed time to 10% of real-time to allow the fight to unfold accurately.

Reports indicate that the leaders of both the CFC and TEST Alliance have instructed their members to fight to the last ship. Grab some popcorn: it's going to be a long fight.

Update: 4:31PM ET: A view from inside the massive battle between the CFC and TEST Alliance. Here you can see warp bubbles, which prevent pilots from retreating.


Update, 4:49PM ET: Though the battle is raging on slowly, some tactics have emerged. The TEST Alliance is attempting to jam CFC's targeting capabilities, in order to cripple the CFC's logistics (it's ability to heal friendly units.) It will still be some time before the balance of power becomes clear.

Here's another view of the battle from afar, and a glimpse at the craziness of Eve Online's UI, courtesy of Twitch.tv streamer drew_qt . (Click on images to enlarge.)


http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/28/4565558/eve-online-biggest-space-battle-in-history
 

Tomat

Wanna hear a good joke? Waste your time helping me! LOL!
Can't wait for CCP to make another typo and break everything.
 
I would probably be among the first to die if I was involved in that.

Here's hoping that the new Everquest game might allow for something like this. It's not fair that EVE gets all the interesting stories.
 

Mike M

Nick N
Man, I can't even be bothered to figure out WTF is going on in Dust 514, I wouldn't last five minutes in Eve.
 

Flayer

Member
From what I can tell CFC is smashing TEST? I'm not really sure but there are loads more orange dots on the stream!
 
Yeah Eve's UI is a bit of a clusterfuck, there's just too much going on for it to be anything but that. That said it's quite simple once you understand it and know how to set it up optimally. The hard / fun part is juggling all that info.

I've never commanded a fleet but I bet they are damn good multitaskers.
 

educator

Member
How long is this battle going to take? Is it possible for the two fleets to seize fire and pause for a while, to then engage in battle later on? What caused this battle?

Would love some insight!
 
I love how they try to make it sound exciting. These battles are nothing like Star Wars or Freespace. It is staring at spreadsheets and 1FPS graphics.

I don't know how these people do it.
 

Madridy

Member
As someone who just finished reading Ender's Game, this sounds extremly interesting to me.

I hope I can be part of something like this in a future MMO.
 

Gartooth

Member
I really have to question/congratulate the players that are somehow sticking to this match as incredibly slow as it's going, I probably wouldn't last longer than 10 minutes at this before losing my mind.
 

SummitAve

Banned
I love how they try to make it sound exciting. These battles are nothing like Star Wars or Freespace. It is staring at spreadsheets and 1FPS graphics.

I don't know how these people do it.

Giant blob battles like these are pretty rare. Usual battle in eve is fast paced and intense with little room for mistakes.
 

Tomat

Wanna hear a good joke? Waste your time helping me! LOL!
The Verge just updated with some quotes (lol at LOTR quotes):

TEST Alliance speech from "BoodaBooda said:
I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of other alliances. A day will come again when the courage of Test fails, when we forsake our allies and break all nips and agreements. But it is not this day. An hour of prophecies and AHAC wrecks when the age of Test comes crashing down. But it is not this day. This day we fight. By all that you hold dear in Nullsec, I bid you, stand. Pilots of Test!

CFC speech from player "the_mittani said:
The foe is doing morale pings with LOTR quotes. We're not going to bother with a morale ping because we're in the system first, we have seven Baltecfleets, One AHAC fleet, Two Bomber wings, One FuckYouFleet, and yeah.

GSOL are heroes: after the work of our capfleet in destroying every single hostile tower in 6VDT, GSOL threw up 26 towers in 6VDT last night , blocking every single moon. The enemy has no safe towers: nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and must bridge into our force.
 
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