You know it's spreadsheet the game when the most important thing in the battle is how much money was lost.
I wish someone would explain actually who was fighting, over what, and why. How did they coordinate all of this with all those players at the same time? Was this all an attempt to destroy that gigantic ship which I assume is the leviathan they are talking about?
You know it's spreadsheet the game when the most important thing in the battle is how much money was lost.
I wish someone would explain actually who was fighting, over what, and why. How did they coordinate all of this with all those players at the same time? Was this all an attempt to destroy that gigantic ship which I assume is the leviathan they are talking about?
The long and short of it seems to be a top of the line ship accidentally jumped into a low security (which apparently disables much of it's power) sector rather than opening a gate or some such thing. This was noticed immediately and jumped on stating a large battle that was largely carried on for shits and giggles as neither side had much to gain. The side that had the failed jump lost a large number of ships, but neither side took damage to a degree that is unrecoverable. There's also a number of people gunning for this to escalate into a larger conflict as each side owns a large portion of the universe.
So, I'm not exactly sure what started it, but TEST (HBC) and Fatal Ascension (CFC member alliance) have had some bad blood for a long while now. With external conflicts (that were resolved by HBC and CFC working together) coming to a close, things began to stagnate.
Stagnation is bad. Stagnation leads to boredom. Boredom leads to bad decisions. Montolio, the leader of Dreddit and TEST, decided to try and kill off Fatal Ascension without breaking the No Infrastructure Pact between HBC and CFC.
See, HBC and CFC created what was called OTEC. OTEC is basically a cartel that controls the most valuable resource in the game, Technetium. Technetium is required to make all advanced ships and modules in the game. Technetium (referred to as Tech from here on out) is acquired by mining it from moons. To mine moons, you need to set up a POS on one, and to set up a POS, you need SOV. HBC and CFC control every single Tech moon in the game and fixed the price to reap massive profits. When stagnation set in, they downgraded their Non-Aggression Pact, reset standings to neutral, and put in place the Non-Infrastructure Pact. Basically, this set it up so they could shoot at each other, but neither faction would attack the infrastructure that allowed them to hold Sov in their systems.
HBC tried to exploit this situation to deal significant damage to Fatal Ascension, but with FA being a CFC member, The Mittani didn't take too kindly to this. Mittani (affectionately referred to as "Mittens" by CFC membership) is the long-standing leader of Goons and the CFC. Eventually, Montolio was talked down from actually attacking, but relationships between HBC and CFC were strained. We're talking Cold War strained, here.
Then came the battle.
Now, remember that HBC and CFC were now in agreement that they could shoot at each other, just not try to take each other's space.
Goons were setting up to bridge a fleet and hot drop on an unrelated alliance and kill their shit for funsies. Now the way bridging works is that you have to have what's called a Cynosural Field (Cyno) to lock on to to make the bridge. This is created by another ship flying to a location and activating a module. Now, all Capital ships can also jump to these Cynos.
A Goon member by the name of DaBigRedBoat (DBRB for short) was piloting the Titan that was supposed to bridge the fleet to the Cyno. He jumped instead. Seriously. The buttons are right next to each other. So basically, instead of dropping the whole fleet on these guys, he jumped in alone. This is very, very bad.
Goons scrambled together another Titan bridge to the area to get the lone Titan some support, but from another post from someone who was there at the beginning: ...as we warped out a Goon cyno popped up on field, and a Levi, several carriers of various flavors, and a few supers entered the field. We all laughed a bit at how it went down, then another cyno went up. This one was PL. This soon escalated into non stop reinforcements from various alliances and factions for about 2 hours, when the TIDI hit 10% and local hit 700. Soon afterwards, the subcap fleets arrived; and with more capitals entering the field every moment, Local soon spiked at 2800 people online. ( Full post here ) "Levi" is short for Leviathan, a Caldari (one of the races in the game) Titan. PL is Pandemic Legion. TIDI refers to Time Dilation, an anti-lag measure which basically puts the whole system in slow-motion. "TIDI hit 10%" means that time was moving at 10% of the normal rate. "Local" refers to Local Chat, a chat window that you cannot close and lets you chat with everyone in the system. "Local hit 700" means there were 700 people in the system. Basically, a fail jump by DBRB turned into Pandemic trying to gank the Titan, which escalated and kept escalating until basically everyone had brought out everything they had. I'd have to do a bit of research, but I'm pretty sure that battle is the largest ever in Eve history.
The battle was definitely won by HBC. About 99.7% of everything lost in that battle belonged to CFC. $17,000 out the window. Boom. Never to return.
So what happens now? Well, everyone is pretty unsure. Lots of people are saying that this might spark the greatest war that Eve has ever seen. True, massive Bloc Warfare. Some people are saying that Mittens and Montolio will smooth this one over and return to the No Infrastructure Pact and keep raking in ISK by the billions.
Personally, I hope it turns into all-out, gloves-off, no-holds-barred WAR. I honestly haven't logged in except to keep up my skill queue in months. Not fighting is boring. War is fun and interesting. If HBC and CFC go into all-out war, it would probably mean the destruction of OTEC, the busting-up of the cartel, and competitive pricing of Technetium, which would be good for everyone in Eve. But really, I just want to fight somebody.
For many years now, The Mittani has regaled us with tales of bombastry. Claiming to be an agent provocateur and spymaster par excellence, it was hard to miss the bloated self-adulation. While controlling a message and narrative, the impression of competence came across, even when failing to history, or taking credit for otherís work. No mention of the many failures of his aborted leadership, massive economic failures, apart from the most public of Fanfest. Sucking on the teat of moongoo, he grew fat and happy, blue-ing in the process most of 0.0 . Mittani had completed his transformation into SirMolle, a Jabba the hut of idiotic proportions.
Not in this conflict. They just threw their toys at each other in useless space for no particular reason.
Well, it was basically a CFC raid that went bad. A Titan jumped alone into hostile space instead of "bridging" his fleet with him. The HBC guys knew the raid was incoming and were waiting in ambush anyways. When a lone Titan jumped in, they called all hands to take it down. Instead of cutting their losses, the CFC called for reinforcements, which triggered a shit hurricane.
Not in this conflict. They just threw their toys at each other in useless space for no particular reason.
Well, it was basically a CFC raid that went bad. A Titan jumped alone into hostile space instead of "bridging" his fleet with him. The HBC guys knew the raid was incoming and were waiting in ambush anyways. When a lone Titan jumped in, they called all hands to take it down. Instead of cutting their losses, the CFC called for reinforcements, which triggered a shit hurricane.
What I mean is core infrastructure was not damaged.
Also... Eve needs actual capital-ship killing torpedos/nukes that cost as much as these cap ships do. Then someone needs to stockpile them till there's enough ammunition to "destroy the game, multiple times over." That would amuse me greatly.
Thanks to EVE having a fairly accessible API, it was actually possible to keep track of the worth in in-game currency of everything that was blown up during that shitstorm. Moreover, it's actually possible to buy EVE subscriptions using the in-game currency instead of real money (though it's damn expensive). So, to make nice headlines, we can use that price as a conversion factor for the amount of "real money" that the damage is worth.
In short, the value in EVE currency of everything that was destroyed during that battle could have purchased $17,000 worth of EVE game subscriptions.
Comments
Wold of Goo
I wish someone would explain actually who was fighting, over what, and why. How did they coordinate all of this with all those players at the same time? Was this all an attempt to destroy that gigantic ship which I assume is the leviathan they are talking about?
The long and short of it seems to be a top of the line ship accidentally jumped into a low security (which apparently disables much of it's power) sector rather than opening a gate or some such thing. This was noticed immediately and jumped on stating a large battle that was largely carried on for shits and giggles as neither side had much to gain. The side that had the failed jump lost a large number of ships, but neither side took damage to a degree that is unrecoverable. There's also a number of people gunning for this to escalate into a larger conflict as each side owns a large portion of the universe.
edit: yup
"Think we'll have to fight somebody, nine?"
"Oh, maaaybe"
And I'm already three klicks ahead shouting DISCO DISCO and firing all my beams and torpedos before he's finished the second word.
EVE is like another planet.
Also... Eve needs actual capital-ship killing torpedos/nukes that cost as much as these cap ships do. Then someone needs to stockpile them till there's enough ammunition to "destroy the game, multiple times over." That would amuse me greatly.
In short, the value in EVE currency of everything that was destroyed during that battle could have purchased $17,000 worth of EVE game subscriptions.
If you're talking about the source, I have no idea. EVE players I guess.
edit: T__T