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Another huge EVE online battle between the 2 largest coalitions

Milennia

Member
This game continues to amaze me.. The money and thought that goes into this is still unmatched.

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Here is a detailed reddit post, explaining (roughly) what exactly is going on in the picture above,
Though I was not personally involved in this particular engagement (thank god), I play EVE and I am actually a member of one of the coalitions pictured here (Clusterfuck Coalition, or CFC). What you see here is a combination of small ships (too small to matter, in this case), Dominix-class battleships, which serve as drone platforms, as well as a mix of carriers, dreadnoughts, and titans. I can't seem to spot any supercarriers, but I would not be surprised if they were involved.
I'll try to explain this as best I can. In EVE, combat happens on "grids," which are usually around 300km across, but can be longer depending on the size of the action. This one was likely much longer. Ships can travel at sub-warp speeds (almost always under 4km/s, generally <500m/s for most of the ships you see here), or they can warp away at very high speeds. Normally, to escape an engagement, a ship attempts to warp or jump away; jumping is a little different, but also can serve as a method of escape. Those huge blue bubbles you see here are interdiction spheres; ships inside those spheres cannot warp or jump to escape. These spheres are also very very large, and since the max sub-warp speed of many of the ships on the field is below 500m/s, their only method of escape is to "slow-boat" out of the bubbles, which takes too long to be considered a viable option for most of the ships seen.
I'll skip past most of the ships, but you'll notice in the center a blob of large, mushroom-shaped ships, and a few other blobby ships roughly the same size. These are called Titans, and they are the largest, most expensive ships in EVE. By my calculations, each of these is worth ~$3,333. That giant yellow death beam you see there is called a Doomsday, which is the most powerful weapon in EVE. It costs fuel to fire, and can only be fit to/fired from a Titan. It is so powerful that one shot can destroy some capital ships, including carriers and dreadnoughts, as seen here.
Now I'll explain why this fight was absolute hell. In EVE, when a node on the server is under a great deal of stress, the server activates "time dilation." This means for each player, the game continues running at full FPS, but the server itself runs more slowly. For example, at 10% TiDi, the game runs 1/10 of its normal speed, meaning each second in game takes 10 seconds to be processed. The Dominix class battleships I mentioned earlier serve as drone platforms, and each of the (hundreds) of them involved spewed out 5 drones. This massive number of entities, combined with each of their damage figures and the other ships being fielded, caused huge time dilation to occur. It got to the point where players jumped into the system and it took over an hour for them to load, during which players who had already loaded could open fire on them.
The end result was a battle that took likely less than an hour of game time, but was stretched out to several hours of real time, with many players getting killed before they had even loaded in. This also sheds some light on why EVE is sometimes more fun to read about than to play: though this fight looks cool, and the power struggle between the two coalitions makes great reading material, in reality the players involved in the fight were likely not paying attention to the game at all. The time dilation becomes so huge in fights like this that it's not uncommon for one to load on grid (if they're lucky), activate their attack modules on the primary target, and then do something else, whether it be reddit, making some food, cleaning their house, or some other menial task that ends up being infinitely more entertaining than watching a spaceship float by at 1/50th of its normal speed.
tl;dr Because of the number of ships involved, the server slowed time down during the fight, meaning it was extremely boring for those involved. If you want more details, read the fucking post, I worked hard on this.

In terms of money, the bigger ships, like the titans in the picture above, are generally sponsored, so its cost is usually split between either the coalition or organizations.. However I'm sure many people pay face value.

EDIT: Fellow Gaffer Pulsemyne was there, and had this to say,

I was there-ish. At the peak there was a little over 4000 people in the system, about 50+ titans, over 150 super capitals and possibly nearly 1000 capital ships. There was also hundreds upon hundreds of Dominix ships (battleships), Ishtars (Heavy assault class), Stealth bombers and intercepters. Oh and Dictors (they make the bubbles you see on the OP's picture).
This was a battle between my lot (The CFC, Clusterfuck Coalition) along with russian alliances; against the forces of N3 and Pandemic legion. Lately N3 has been using massive amounts of capital ships (in particular the archon carrier) as a sort of unbeatable blob. They deploy thousands of drones and wipe everyone out. It is proving to be a very effective tactic.
One of other benefits of this tactic is that it causes a bum load of TiDi, or at lest it does when you try to fight their blob with another blob. Whoever is on the field of battle first has a big advantage and yesterday N3 were ready and waiting.
Our forces were up for the fight and decided to jump into the system and duke it out. We cyno in a buttock load of Dreadnaughts ready to try and kill the carriers and then...TiDi hits, big time. The titans start killing the dreads with ease as people find themselves unable to do much. Lot's of pilots report their modules not working while some even find themselves dead before the system has even loaded. By the end of it hundreds of dreads are dead with little to no real loses on the N3 side.
At the moment the game really cannot support the kind of battles the super alliances want to have. We all play the game in order to just have some fun and kill spaceships. Whatever side you were on yesterday was little fun if any. TiDi maybe better than lag but it's really bloody boring to watch a spaceship battle in super slow motion.
While N3 won yesterdays battle it's a fact that both sides are so big that neither really wants to tackle each other head on. At the moment it's a proxy war of sorts. No one is really in the mood to grind soverighnty endlessly.
So it was basically a big fight over...nothing.
 

DarkFlow

Banned
Eve is fun, but fuck big ass fights like that. I got one of my guys into a battleship but because of the cost and the high chance of death, I never took it out lol. You will never feel such rage and depression as dying in eve and losing your ship.
 

Gvaz

Banned
But one of the things with EVE is that if you're going to have a big fuckin battle and you know ahead of time, you can tell the GMs and the location of the battle and they basically go "yeah we're gonna need to chain these servers together to cut down on the stress in that sector for a few hours"
 

Savitar

Member
Do the developers still try to rig the game to give the corps they're in unfair advantages?

Or have they got better at keeping that secret.
 
If the game had a more action based combat system and nothing of this time dialition bs, it would be the best game on the planet.
 

Jintor

Member
never heard of that...

CCP has an internal affairs division to make sure that devs still playing aren't leaking state secrets, lol.

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if stuff like that still happened, but it should probably happen less these days
 

KemoSabe

Member
so there are ships which you could sell for 3000$, real money?
i dont think that i would "play" with something that expensive
 

Milennia

Member
oh look another boring Eve battle that somehow is treated as interesting news

Theres nothing like this in gaming outside of EVE, its why these battles get so much attention on forums etc. its interesting, especially to people who don't understand the game and what is behind the scenes during these, what seem to be ants floating around in bubbles, screens.

You look at this and cant even think of the money thats lost in the process.
The last big battle involved 25k$ in damages.
 

pulsemyne

Member
I was there-ish. At the peak there was a little over 4000 people in the system, about 50+ titans, over 150 super capitals and possibly nearly 1000 capital ships. There was also hundreds upon hundreds of Dominix ships (battleships), Ishtars (Heavy assault class), Stealth bombers and intercepters. Oh and Dictors (they make the bubbles you see on the OP's picture).
This was a battle between my lot (The CFC, Clusterfuck Coalition) along with russian alliances; against the forces of N3 and Pandemic legion. Lately N3 has been using massive amounts of capital ships (in particular the archon carrier) as a sort of unbeatable blob. They deploy thousands of drones and wipe everyone out. It is proving to be a very effective tactic.
One of other benefits of this tactic is that it causes a bum load of TiDi, or at lest it does when you try to fight their blob with another blob. Whoever is on the field of battle first has a big advantage and yesterday N3 were ready and waiting.
Our forces were up for the fight and decided to jump into the system and duke it out. We cyno in a buttock load of Dreadnaughts ready to try and kill the carriers and then...TiDi hits, big time. The titans start killing the dreads with ease as people find themselves unable to do much. Lot's of pilots report their modules not working while some even find themselves dead before the system has even loaded. By the end of it hundreds of dreads are dead with little to no real loses on the N3 side.
At the moment the game really cannot support the kind of battles the super alliances want to have. We all play the game in order to just have some fun and kill spaceships. Whatever side you were on yesterday was little fun if any. TiDi maybe better than lag but it's really bloody boring to watch a spaceship battle in super slow motion.
While N3 won yesterdays battle it's a fact that both sides are so big that neither really wants to tackle each other head on. At the moment it's a proxy war of sorts. No one is really in the mood to grind soverighnty endlessly.
So it was basically a big fight over...nothing.
 
Everytime I see one of these stories I kinda want to get into EVE.. and then I imagine how it would consume my life and say meh, let's back off a bit xD

It's fascinating though, I would love just keeping up with all this.
 
So what's up with Dust514 while this is happening?

Absolutely nothing.

The connection between the 2 games at the moment is pretty superficial. EVE players can fly up to a system where Dust players are engaging and throw down Orbital Support (think of it like calling in an airstrike in a CoD type game) and the EVE pilots are rewarded with points for that but there's no real way for Dust mercs to significantly influence EVE space or EVE engagements. The only exception being that a planet captured by Dust mercs of a specific faction will enable the EVE equivalent faction to capture that system faster. Aside from that though there's no way for a Dust merc to say "I want to go to X system where Y battle is taking place" so even if a battle was taking place in an area of EVE space where we could actually access there'd be no way for us to ensure that we'd end up in that area.
 

eot

Banned
One of the biggest tactical fuckups in recent memory. Fortunately for them, they realized that just in time to not commit their supercapital fleet. If they hadn't, it might've been the bloodiest day of EVE ever.

Seriously though, they forgot lessons people learned five years ago.

What do those bubbles do?

They're warp interdiction bubbles. If you're inside one you can't warp to another part of the system, or use a jump drive to jump to another. It also makes any ship warping to you land on the edge of the bubbles, so it help controls space.
 

Shengar

Member
Resource scarcity combined with an upbringing which encourages competition among other things.

There are of course other ways.

Those other way just changed your weapon and replace the battlegroung to somewhere else that make it look less "bloody".
But more often than not, these "war" is still terrible.
 
They're warp interdiction bubbles. If you're inside one you can't warp to another part of the system, or use a jump drive to jump to another. It also makes any ship warping to you land on the edge of the bubbles, so it help controls space.

Oh, thanks.
 

Darklord

Banned
Eve is fun, but fuck big ass fights like that. I got one of my guys into a battleship but because of the cost and the high chance of death, I never took it out lol. You will never feel such rage and depression as dying in eve and losing your ship.

I learned to never fly anything you can afford to lose.
 

pulsemyne

Member
Seriously though, they forgot lessons people learned five years ago.
.

This times a million. The game has become what it was in 2010, capitals online. Be on grid first and with a load of caps and you win. It happened to the NC and they were thought unbeatable.
 
I bought eve a month ago on steam, I've launched it once and created a character but now my gametime has run out since it started on purchase instead of when I first logged in. I haven't played enough to determine if it's worth the rather steep subscription fee and I never will since I cba paying 15$ for that privilege
 

Ran Echelon

Neo Member
I played EVE for a couple of years. As just another guy in a battleship I found big battles like this no fun at all, but 0.0 roams with a small group were great.
Strangely the most enjoyment I got from the game was through trading; my corp had a station (somewhere in Querious IIRC) and for ages I was the only supplier/buyer for modules/ammo etc, made billions.
 
whenever there's EVE news, it's always fascinating to read I don't know why

it's like something that's so out there since I have no knowledge of the game at all (no interest in playing a mmo ever again) yet I can't look away
 

Xater

Member
Absolutely nothing.

The connection between the 2 games at the moment is pretty superficial. EVE players can fly up to a system where Dust players are engaging and throw down Orbital Support (think of it like calling in an airstrike in a CoD type game) and the EVE pilots are rewarded with points for that but there's no real way for Dust mercs to significantly influence EVE space or EVE engagements. The only exception being that a planet captured by Dust mercs of a specific faction will enable the EVE equivalent faction to capture that system faster. Aside from that though there's no way for a Dust merc to say "I want to go to X system where Y battle is taking place" so even if a battle was taking place in an area of EVE space where we could actually access there'd be no way for us to ensure that we'd end up in that area.

It's a real shame. There was a lot of potential there with combining these two games.
 

Parakeetman

No one wants a throne you've been sitting on!
Reading EVE news is like reading about actual battles happening right now in space, shit gets that intense. lol
 

HariKari

Member
whenever there's EVE news, it's always fascinating to read I don't know why

it's like something that's so out there since I have no knowledge of the game at all (no interest in playing a mmo ever again) yet I can't look away

Reading EVE news is like reading about actual battles happening right now in space, shit gets that intense. lol

EVE really isn't like a traditional MMO. It's a sandbox game, first and foremost. You push off from high security space and there's nothing protecting you. You lose your ship and it's gone forever. Scamming, spying, corporate sabotage etc... are all allowed and openly encouraged by the devs. One guy set up a bank and then one day decided it'd be more fun to just run off with the money than keep the bank going. 100% allowed by the devs.

It really shows the power of the sandbox and letting players have free reign. The core of EVE really isn't terribly exciting, but the possibilities that arise out of interacting with people with no rules makes it great in a Day Z sort of way. CCP markets the game that way now.
 

Parakeetman

No one wants a throne you've been sitting on!
EVE really isn't like a traditional MMO. It's a sandbox game, first and foremost. You push off from high security space and there's nothing protecting you. You lose your ship and it's gone forever. Scamming, spying, corporate sabotage etc... are all allowed and openly encouraged by the devs. One guy set up a bank and then one day decided it'd be more fun to just run off with the money than keep the bank going. 100% allowed by the devs.

It really shows the power of the sandbox and letting players have free reign. The core of EVE really isn't terribly exciting, but the possibilities that arise out of interacting with people with no rules makes it great in a Day Z sort of way. CCP markets the game that way now.

I used to play a long ass time ago. Still have to say though out of all the MMOs EVE by far has one of the best communities around.
 

No_Style

Member
I was told about time dialation by a coworker who plays EVE and thought it was clever. I thought everything was just in super slow motion and not delayed. This explanation makes it sound horrendous.
 

eot

Banned
I was told about time dialation by a coworker who plays EVE and thought it was clever. I thought everything was just in super slow motion and not delayed. This explanation makes it sound horrendous.

Time dilation is just slow motion, but it's capped at 10%. If you push the server enough then eventually it becomes unresponsive. There has been another 4k player fight that went better than this one, but the tactics used conspired to create lag. The game's come a long way though, back in 2010 a fight with 800 ships would be almost unplayable, the problem is just that the players' ability to organize themselves keeps increasing. (Another problem are the current sovreignity mechanics which encourage huge fights like these.)
 

Keasar

Member
Nowadays, "EVE is having a huge battle!" is as exciting as "WoW has PVP!". And they are never entertaining to actually look at, they all look the same and are repeats of Ship Blob A shooting lasers at Ship Blob B. And now there are Titans everywhere, I remember back when news of a Titan being built was actually news and when you watched a stream/video where a Titan jumped in, you knew shit was about to go down. Now there are 50 titans in a battle and the whole "spotting a unicorn" feel is completely gone. :p

I wanna hear the next big scandal where EVE players have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in in-game money, those are fun.
 

Portugeezer

Member
All I can say about this game is: what the fuck

And I don't want to learn. I heard it's very difficult for newcomers to get into it.
 

Aureon

Please do not let me serve on a jury. I am actually a crazy person.
I was told about time dialation by a coworker who plays EVE and thought it was clever. I thought everything was just in super slow motion and not delayed. This explanation makes it sound horrendous.

Basically, you take a already slow game (1sec ticks).
That allowed roughly 500-player battles with manageable lag.
Then you slow receive\sends to 10%, that is, 10sec ticks.
That allowed roughly 2000-player battles with manageable lag.
Then the players threw 4000 players on the same grid.
That means that every single of the 4000 needs to know the position of the other 3999 - more players, outside certain controlled istances (that can't be abused with that type of game), the server load is exponential.
And you can't chain more servers, because that'd just mean you'd need the same amount of data going through the two servers you're using.

One of the fundamental laws of EVE is 'Whenever CCP "Fixes" lag, players will unfix it by throwing more bodies at it'.
 
Basically, you take a already slow game (1sec ticks).
That allowed roughly 500-player battles with manageable lag.
Then you slow receive\sends to 10%, that is, 10sec ticks.
That allowed roughly 2000-player battles with manageable lag.
Then the players threw 4000 players on the same grid.
That means that every single of the 4000 needs to know the position of the other 3999 - more players, outside certain controlled istances (that can't be abused with that type of game), the server load is exponential.
And you can't chain more servers, because that'd just mean you'd need the same amount of data going through the two servers you're using.

One of the fundamental laws of EVE is 'Whenever CCP "Fixes" lag, players will unfix it by throwing more bodies at it'.

Forgot to add drones
 

Aiustis

Member
All I can say about this game is: what the fuck

And I don't want to learn. I heard it's very difficult for newcomers to get into it.

It's not that bad provided you spend some time with it, no slacking off when you first start out.

I stopped playing when the ship it took me almost a year to afford was destroyed. :(
 
This huge fight may well signal the end of this war. Just days ago a non-aggression treaty was signed, the B0TLRD Accords, between the two largest empires. All that's left is this proxy war with the Russians, which is coming to a very quick close after that massacre.
 

pulsemyne

Member
This huge fight may well signal the end of this war. Just days ago a non-aggression treaty was signed, the B0TLRD Accords, between the two largest empires. All that's left is this proxy war with the Russians, which is coming to a very quick close after that massacre.
Not quite as we can still mess about with N3...maybe. The agreement is between the CFC and PL. Even between the CFC and PL we can still have big fights so long as it's not in each others back yards. The amount of regions involved though really restricts potental conflicts between us. N3 can be clobbered or go clobbering at will though.
 
The TiDi stuff was nice when they first implemented it, but it now looks like people are exploiting it. It would be nice if there was a solution to handling that many players that didn't involve artificially slowing the send/receive rates of the servers. On demand scaling, perhaps?

Do not watch this video if you are prone to reinstalling EvE



BoB was notorious for having inside info with the devs.

Clarion Call 3 is inarguably the worst video they've done and pretty boring to boot. Solo PVP videos are always good to get the blood going.
 
I would totally play this game if the combat wasn't such garbage. Oh well.

I find the combat in EVE to be great in small scale settings. 5-10 man gangs have a lot of dynamics that offer interesting tactics to implement.

I'm just now scratching the surface of solo combat, which has its own pace.
 
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