Mathew Westhorpe.net

New Eden: Just how big is it?

I know - how long's a piece of string, right?

I was recently asked 'how long does it take to cross New Eden' for a project and I endeavoured to find something approaching a scientific answer.

If any experienced travellers, master mathematicians or general EVE savants can provide more clarification, I would be grateful.

Until then, here's my workings:

The Route

3KNA-N (Branch) to MVUO-F (Period Basis)

My first hurdle was determining the route. It makes sense to find the most direct, but most distant routes from edge to edge.

By using the in-game map to pick visibly remote peripheral systems and setting the autopilot to find the shortest route.

The best I've come up with is:

North to South: 3KNA-N (Branch) to MVUO-F (Period Basis) = 96 jumps.
East to West: 1M7-RK (Cobalt Edge) to A2V6-6 (Outer Ring) = 79 jumps.

I think these two routes exemplify the farthest expanses of New Eden, but if anyone find a longer direct route I'd be happy to update this post to include it.

The Time

Red wunz go fasta: A Caldari Crow interceptor-class frigate.

Presumably a T2 Interceptor would be the most suitable vehicle for the job, with its high warp speed, quick alignment time and warp bubble immunity, it'd be both the quickest and the safest.

Having not attempted the journey in practice (yet), I'm going to make a guestimation based on the following facts:

According to this old forum post, the average distance between gates is 28.0023280160161 AU.
A few tests on the Singularity test server showed that a Crow Interceptor with a standard 8AU/s warp speed takes approximately 35 seconds to warp across this distance, jump through to the next system and be ready for the next warp.

So my chosen 96-jump route from 3KNA-N in Branch to MVUO-F in Period Basis should take just under an hour (96 jumps x 35 seconds = 56 minutes).

Of course something slower and less agile would take significantly longer. The biggest sub-capital ships' standard warp speeds of 2AU/s and their much slower align and acceleration times would make the same journey take upwards of 6 hours. That is assuming the unlikely event that they didn't get caught up in some local colour.

Edit: In further support of the above approximation, it turns out a far more thorough blogger, in the form of Marlona Sky, has put in the required effort to actually fly these kinds of journeys. Read more about The Cancers of EVE Online: Teleportation at the Reversal of Fortune blog.

And Now For Something Completely Stupid

Why? Because it's there! Watch out for that pothole Pierre.

Perhaps it's because of the Winter Olympics, but I think it would be interesting to attempt to set some time-trial records along pre-set routes under specific conditions. For example: Tranquility only, verifiable run by stream/FRAPS etc, records held by ship class.

I can imagine that many attempts will be marked up as a 'Did Not Finish', but imagine the accolades that might come from being able to claim you hold the record for crossing New Eden in a battlecruiser - it didn't do Han Solo's rep any harm (even if he didn't really understand what a parsec is). I would imagine it would develop into an alliance-dominated event requiring Tour de France-like peloton required protect the lead pilot.

Maybe it'd make an interesting in-game event. Just a thought.

Conclusion

Back to the matter of answering the titular question, so if someone asks how long it takes to cross New Eden, are we happy that the answer is basically, 'about an hour if you're lucky, longer if you're lucky and stupid, or never if you're just stupid'?

As a final thought, I recall Brendan Drain's EVE Evolved Massively column which made the claim that EVE possesses the 'World's Largest MMO game map'.

That claim is undoubtedly true in terms of the sheer amount of space represented by the game universe, but in real, playable terms (and sidestepping the whole 'empty space' argument), I wonder if in other MMOs, using the quickest available in-game means of transportation would reveal that it takes longer to cross those game worlds.

I suppose EVE's T2 interceptors might be the equivalent of the quickest mount in a fantasy MMO, a flying vehicle in something like Planetside 2 or a fast car in DayZ.

Anyone care to crunch the numbers for other gameworlds?

Unplanned Bonus Round

Fake Edit: Just as I was about to publish this post, I stumbled across this great forum post from 2010 at MMORPG.com, in which MMO.Maverick uses similar methodology (although he uses standard rather than fastest travel speeds) to measure the relative sizes of various MMO universes.

Here is a summary of his findings:

World of Warcraft: From Kalimdor North to South Coast = 42 minutes.
Lord of the Rings Online: From Celondim to Rivendell = 45 minutes.
Guild Wars 2: Tyria East to West = 46 minutes.
Rift: Crossing world map East to West = 30.5 minutes.

As a final thought (I mean it this time), Guild Wars 2's world of Tyria, as shown in the map below, is apparently 13 miles (21 kilometres) from east to west, which is only a fraction longer than a single Titan (the 18km Leviathan and Ragnarok) in EVE.

Just sayin'.

Real edit: Mark726 tweeted this great Memebase link at me, detailing the following very relevant image:

Tengus: Spewing missiles with style since 2009

There are times when I know I should be doing something constructive, but the last few days have been challenging at Fort Freebooted, with an ill wife and baby both requiring my frequent attention (not to mention the endless laundry as a result of countless biological explosions).

The demands of providing this temporary 24-7 care cover meant that my attempts at establishing any kind of meaningful workflow were in vain. Instead, my bedside vigil was powered by coffee and EVE. Of course, given that I was repeatedly required to step away from the keyboard at a moment's notice, I didn't want to get drawn into any gameplay which would end in catastrophe as a result.

Instead, I needed to set myself a new, suitably casual and achievable solo goal.

Choosing An Achievable Goal

An Astero looking cool

I wouldn't mind getting my hands on one of those fancy new Sisters of EVE exploration ships, but just buying one would be a bit of an empty experience and would blow a big whole in my funds. Besides, earning my shiny new prize the old-fashioned way would be exactly the pick-up-and-play entertainment which would suit my circumstances.

This would mean earning Loyalty Points (30,000 for the Astero frigate or 120,000 for the Stratios cruiser) by undertaking missions from Sisters of EVE agents. A quick look at the state of my current standings showed that I was not particularly well-liked by the Servant Sisters of EVE faction. In fact, the only reason any of their agents above entry level would deal with me at all was because at some point in the past I'd been forced to learn the standings-boosting Connections skill in order to avoid getting chased out of Gallente and Minmatar space by the faction police. I can't even remember what I did to make them all hate me.

So it looked like I was going to be grinding through level 2 and 3 missions in order to get to the more lucrative level 4s which would yield LPs at a much higher rate. Some quick research on the Agent Finder tool showed me that the star systems containing agents of the appropriate calibre were scarce, scattered and distant. I was going to need to take something which was adaptable and capable enough to deal with varying mission levels, target types and was durable enough to cope if I suddenly disappeared to deal with another exploding baby emergency.

Sounds like a job for a Strategic Cruiser.

Bring Me the Holy Capacitor of Antioch

I dusted off my Tengu, the SSS Blackrun (named after my first and last skiing holiday in 2009) did a quick review of my various saved loadouts on the Fitting Management screen and gathered up all the modules and sub-systems I might need. Despite the Tengu's versatility, I'd never really used it for intermediate level missions before and realised there was an opportunity for some idle loadout-tweaking, especially with the new Rapid Light Missile Launchers, which could be perfect for blatting the frigate- and cruiser-sized targets I would be encountering in the level 2 and 3 missions.

Arriving in the Genesis region, where the Sisters of EVE enclaves live so they might bask in the divine glow of the EVE Gate in the nearby system of New Eden, I set about churning through the necessary missions whilst experimenting with a variety of low-maintenance PvE loadouts for my Tengu.

Unstable stability

This took my on an interesting and mildly embarrassing journey which saw me eating humble pie after insisting both on Twitter and the EVE-O forums that the capacitor management section of the Fitting screen was lying about my fit being cap stable. Eventually I realised by rookie error: offlining a Microwarp Drive in order to see if the remainder of the loadout was cap stable /also/ offlines the negative impact of MWD has on total capacitor penalty.

Rest assured, palm has been applied to face.

The Swiss Army Spaceship

Minor capacitor-based brainfarts aside, I settled on a basic sub-system and loadout arrangement which would offer durable and forgiving platform and also allow for some ongoing tweaks. It looked something like this:

The module arrangement I opted for included five launcher high-slots accommodate Heavy, Heavy Assault or Light Rapid Launchers and one utility slot which, for purposes of being an incredibly lazy PvE-er, will contain an Auto Targeting System II - a wonderful device I'd never bothered with before, but automatically acquires all targets in range, saving me the bother.

Tengu is Japanese for 'too expensive for PvP'. Maybe.

Thanks to the three Capacitor Control Circuit rigs (and, depending on variant, occasional help from a Cap Recharger II and/or Power Diagnostic System II) I was able to use a permanently-running large shield booster. This complemented the outrageously high damage resistances provided by combining the Adaptive Shielding subsystem, a Damage Control II and an Adaptive Invulnerability Field II (there's a bit of an EM hole, but these are just dumb NPCs I'm dealing with so I'm counting on them not noticing). To give me some margin for error, I included a Large Shield Extender to buy me some reaction time if something unexpected happens (which it did on a couple of occasions before I had my capacitor stability epiphany).

Along with the ubiquitous DCII, the low slots were filled with three Ballistic Control System IIs to increase damage output and speed mission completion along. The final low slot would vary according to other needs.

With this basic missioning platform, I took the opportunity to conduct a quick study comparing the utility of the different launcher types available. This was the result:

The 'LazyBoy' Heavy Missile Tengu

This loadout was explicitly designed for me to be a terrible, inattentive EVE player. But with a missile range of 94km, auto-targeting and an incredibly solid, cap-stable perma-boosted shield tank, I could be comfortably absent-minded and work my way into the Sisters of EVE's good books whilst simultaneously keeping an eye on my puke-sniper daughter.

Heavy Missile Launcher Profile

MISSILE TYPE / DPS (all/kin) / Range

HM Standard 291/363 94,331
HM Faction (G) 321/401 94,331
HM Faction (CN) 334/417 94,331
HM Faction (DG) 349/436 94,331
HM High Precision 291/363 47,165
HM High Damage 392/490 70,748

The poor explosion velocity and large explosion radius of heavy missiles made fitting a Target Painter a necessity, especially given that I was dealing with frigate- and cruiser-heavy missions. Standard heavy missiles did the trick admirably, the Tech II variants either caused range issues slowing the process down in the case of High Precision, or just being ill-suited for small targets in the case of the High Damage type. I'm cheap anyway, so I didn't bother with the Faction ammo option, which would probably be optimal.

This fit was the safest pair of hands I could find, but sometimes it was just a little slow, both in damage application and flight speed, so I looked at other options...

The 'Vomit Monsoon' Heavy Assault Missile Tengu

When you absolutely, positively need to smash things really hard in the face, heavy assault missiles are the go-to option for the aggressive Tengu pilot. It was satisfying to see most things melt much more quickly, but first I had to get there. No problem with targets who obligingly close you down, but those irritating Guristas and their like have a habit of hanging around just outside maximum range. The Microwarpdrive was a necessity, but soon undermines the safety net afforded by the permaboost tank.

Heavy Assault Missile Launcher Profile

MISSILE TYPE / DPS (all/kin) / Range

HAM Standard 404/505 30,361
HAM Faction (G) 444/555 30,361
HAM Faction (CN) 464/580 30,361
HAM Faction (DG) 484/605 30,361
HAM Adv. Long-Range 363/454 45,562
HAM Adv. Anti-Ship 545/681 25,212

Despite Heavy Assault Missiles performing better against smaller and faster targets, a Target Painter still helped speed up the destruction of enemy frigates. Unlike the fire-and-forget nature of the Heavy Missile loadout above, the restrictive range of the HAMs made piloting a much more hands-on experience and with a slightly less reliable tank-capacitor relationship, being suddenly called away resulted in a couple of near misses.

The 'Captain Capped-Out' Rapid Light Missile Tengu

Named for my ridiculous earlier capacitor woes, the preferred ordnance of Rapid Light Missile Launchers meant using a Target Painter was fairly redundant, freeing up a mid-slot. The addition of a Cap Recharger II put paid to any further concerns about running out of juice without compromising on the rest of the fit.

Rapid Light Missile Launcher Profile

MISSILE TYPE / DPS (all/kin) / Range

LM Standard 344/430 42,187
LM Faction (G) 373/466 42,187
LM Faction (CN) 393/492 42,187
LM Faction (DG) 410/512 42,187
LM High Precision 344/430 21,093
LM High Damage 480/600 31,640

I kept the Microwarpdrive for the utility of closing down distant targets quickly because, although Rapid Light Missiles provide a bit of an increase to range without too much loss of damage, often some mobility was still required. The real advantage of RLMLs is in the assurance that damage is almost certainly applied to a far more effective degree than with their larger cousins. They offer great balance and no need to fear frigates. On the down side, I'm not sure I'll ever get used to the 35 second reload time. It just leaves you feeling mute and naked.

Missile Performance and You

I wanted to be able to look at my options depending on the performance I needed and so arranged the above DPS and range stats in on list for reference.

MISSILE TYPES BY DAMAGE

TYPE / DPS (all/kin) / Range

HA Adv. Anti-Ship 545/681 25,212
HA Faction (DG) 484/605 30,361
LM High Damage 480/600 31,640
HA Faction (CN) 464/580 30,361
HA Faction (G) 444/555 30,361
LM Faction (DG) 410/512 42,187
HA Standard    404/505 30,361
LM Faction (CN) 393/492 42,187
HM High Damage 392/490 70,748
LM Faction (G) 373/466 42,187
HA Adv. Long-Range 363/454 45,562
HM Faction (DG) 349/436 94,331
LM High Precision 344/430 21,093
LM Standard    344/430 42,187
HM Faction (CN) 334/417 94,331
HM Faction (G) 321/401 94,331
HM Standard 91/363 94,331
HM High Precision 291/363 47,165

MISSILE TYPES BY RANGE

TYPE / DPS (all/kin) / Range

HM Faction (DG) 349/436 94,331
HM Faction (CN) 334/417 94,331
HM Faction (G) 321/401 94,331
HM Standard 291/363 94,331
HM High Damage 392/490 70,748
HM High Precision 291/363 47,165
HA Adv. Long-Range 363/454 45,562
LM Faction (DG) 410/512 42,187
LM Faction (CN) 393/492 42,187
LM Faction (G) 373/466 42,187
LM Standard 344/430        42,187
LM High Damage 480/600 31,640
HA Faction (DG) 484/605 30,361
HA Faction (CN) 464/580 30,361
HA Faction (G) 444/555 30,361
HA Standard    404/505 30,361
HA Adv. Anti-Ship 545/681 25,212
LM High Precision 344/430 21,093

Doing it For the Sisters

To wrap up, whilst continuing to tinker and juggle with the vomit monsoon at home, I managed to all but reach my target standing of 5.0 with Sisters of EVE, meaning I was nearly set to get in touch with one of the three high-sec level 4 agents. As a bonus, I'd already earned enough Loyalty Points to spring for an Astero. However, a brief comparison to existing Tech II Covert Ops ships led me to realise it didn't really offer much that was new. It was the Stratios that I coveted and that was going to need a whole lot more LPs.

It was perhaps fortuitous then that in the Old Pond Pub chat channel a familiar name appeared with a timely warning. Merinne, a long-time chat channel buddy, told tale of the endless shenanigans which are constantly taking place in the areas around these SoE missioning systems. She had experienced it herself and alerted me to the mission invading, baiting, suicide-ganking activities of the local colour.

This final part of my self-set goal should be far more interesting.

Although, given that I've just announced my destination and probable fits, perhaps it'd be wise not to take anything as expensive as the Tengu, especially one fitting with an Auto Targeting System, or I'll never get into a Stratios.

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 53rd edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.

* * * * *

Today's topic comes from a tweet from @erlendur (aka EVE Online's Development Director, CCP Explorer) in a conversation he was having with a pilot about having multiple overview tabs open in separate windows:

@rellecon Is the overview really the best way to be aware of what is around you and where it is?
— Erlendur (@erlendur) February 9, 2014

So that is the topic this month: The Overview. Is it sufficient? If not how can it be improved? Is there some way to replace it? Does it give too much information, or not enough? Please be creative and specific as the overview currently is the heartbeat of the GUI.

The Overview: EVE on Easy Mode

Important gameplay here

Let's be clear: I hate the overview.

It think it is ruinous to EVE's gameplay, turning what would have been a sci-fi experience requiring spatial awareness, keen observation and good co-ordination into an interactive shopping list for the obsessive-compulsive.

The overview short-cuts the entire spaceship experience, replacing it with a table of words and numbers. In times of action, rarely will a player need to look elsewhere on the screen, instead sifting through rows of text-based data. It is the overview which is responsible for EVE's reputation as a spreadsheet in space.

Furthermore, without the ability to understand and customise this spreadsheet, your gameplay experience will be impaired and you will be laughed out of fleets.

Sadly, it is so good at what it does, the overview is Pandora's spreadsheet - it cannot be removed from the game without instigating an epic tantrum from those who have become dependent on it, and that is enough of the core playerbase to leave CCP's development brains paralysed with fear, stifling any possible UX revolution.

Does this mean EVE is forever condemned to be stuck in the past, a niche video-game curio one level up from a text adventure and beloved only by masochists, obsessives, and apparently 'narcists'.

Maybe not. Let's get emergent.

An Overview-Free Future?

EVE without the spreadsheet is pretty. If only it were functional too.

EVE can be played without the overview. Shocking I know, but you should try it at least once. Actually, make it twice because your first time* will probably get you killed.

*okay, every time.

There are plenty of other tools at the player's disposal to enable overview-free piloting: the brackets, the tracking camera, the contextual radial menu and the tactical overlay. I've tried it (in PvE - I ain't that stupid) and in many ways it's really fun.

Once you get past the sensation of having a limb missing, you actually get a sense of engaging with your environment, of interacting with the world around you. You start to notice things and enjoy the sci-fi universe. It evokes a sense of heightened immersion.

But in other ways, playing without the overview is incredibly frustrating (perversely, this is probably how new players feel as they struggle with the overview). When you know that there's an easier way to lock targets or find a warp destination, actually having to look for them in the three-dimensional world around you is a chore. It's much easier to pick from a list.

In fact, the properly prepared overview is so effective that it renders the visual element of EVE almost entirely pointless. Try having the main screen set to the galactic map and see how little impact it has on your overview-led gameplay. It raises a question over why CCP even bother to employ artists or have a 3D game engine at all.

Ouch, who was that? Aha!

I say EVE's visuals are almost entirely pointless, because recent UI improvements have given the main 3D view some relevance, with the HUD providing providing target threat indicators, interaction tracer lines and e-war effect warnings. Developmentally, this is an encouraging step, but to make overview-free combat gameplay a challenging prospect without leaving players wanting to smash themselves in the face with the mouse, there would need to be many more improvements.

But the truth is, there will never be as effective a target management tool as that godawful spreadsheet.

However, what if using the overview was a fitting choice?

The Overview Module

A fitting screen, yesterday.

Imagine if the overview was not available by default, instead only becoming available if the appropriate module is fitted. This module would have fitting demands that would require loadout compromises to be made (primarily the loss of the module slot, but other drawbacks could be considered too).

Shifting the overview to a module would preserve overview-led gameplay for the spreadsheet purists, but give rise to a new kind of instinctive pilot who has other uses for the module slot and would instead learn to read his environment rather than his instruments.

Sound too hard? I think the common response to that is HTFU.

This new overview paradigm would create new inter-player dependencies, with benefits to overview-free and overview-enabled pilots flying together. The overview would become a valuable leadership and intel tool. Fleet Commanders and scouts might favour overview module use, whilst the 'gut pilot' would be loaded for maximum military effectiveness.

If overview-free PvP combat became a thing, it could attract a new kind of player to EVE and would create a play-style bridge between EVE, DUST and the upcoming Valkyrie.

It would also mean that pilots would have to pay attention and stop playing EVE on easy mode. Take your spreadsheet stabilisers off, you wussies. ;)

Emergent gameplay, needing to adapt, inventive brutality: that's what EVE is all about, isn't it?

EVE Online has been publicly playable for 11 years, but its development began in the final years of the previous century. Few games can boast a lifespan equal to half that. But, despite EVE's continued growth, it is a victim of its own success.

In such a lengthy time period, unsurprisingly much has changed. Not only in terms of EVE's content and gameplay, but in the technology behind it, industry trends, the tastes and expectations of the customer base and the CCP staff who are tasked with keeping all the balls in the air.

Overall, CCP must be doing something right or I wouldn't be writing this and you wouldn't be reading it. We'd all be playing (or developing) something else.

However, sometimes they seem to have the uncanny ability to hit avoidable bumps in the road.

The Threadnaught Cometh

As CCP developers work to continually reinvigorate their elderly MMO, a fascinating relationship with the playerbase has developed. The lines between service provider and customer have become so blurred, that we frequently see players becoming employees, customers becoming partners, developers becoming friends, and gameplay becoming work.

Whether this is by design or just a sign that CCP learned to make hay while the sun shines is a discussion for another time, and it is by no means a perfect symbiosis, but it works. It allows for the effective communication of ideas in both directions, with CCP able to enjoy the kind of consistent customer feedback which most businesses would have to pay for. They enjoy a loyal playerbase who are ferociously active communicators at meet-ups, on forums, podcasts, blogs and assorted social media. Many of the same players take the time to test features on the Singularity public test server and provide feedback.

But, like any relationship, familiarity breeds contempt and in with a gameplay environment which allows anonymity and encourages aggression, it doesn't take much to incite sections of the community to take up arms and march on the forums.

Tipping the Balance

While it is true that you cannot please all the people all the time - especially when attempting to curate a free-form open-world MMO which encourages players to find their own way - CCP developers occasionally seem to shoot themselves in the foot by forcing through changes which impact on player's habits and enjoyment of an experience they are invested in.

The latest such triggerpoint has been the introduction of tooltips to large portions of the EVE client. It seems unlikely that something so innocuous could solicit much angry feedback, but that's what CCP is currently getting, and not without cause.

EVE has long suffered the accusation of being inaccessible to new players and is unkindly described as 'spreadsheets in space'. In recent years, a lot of excellent progress has been made toward addressing these criticisms. Most relevant to the current issue was the introduction of contextual tooltips in the Inferno expansion of April 2012. Specific to new player tutorials, they provided an excellent way of direction the rookie's attention by encircling the relevant in-space object and a 'rubberbanded' line linking to a text box containing pertinent information.

The design and implementation of this feature was spot on and it showed there were certainly other possible applications. Sadly, nothing more developed.

Move on the Rubicon 1.4, released a few days ago, and suddenly players found their clients awash with tooltips. In many cases, especially with the more cryptic UI elements, these are enlightening and useful.

But unlike the thoughtful and constructive tooltips introduced in 2012, many of the new tooltips simply replicated information already present on-screen, even replacing previously, more useful, tooltip information. Worse still, the in-space tooltips often conflicted with the existing UI, obscuring vital information and negatively impacting the user experience.

Few would disgree that the EVE UI needs improvement, but according to many forum users, this change doesn't qualify, with the majority calling for the ability to switch the tooltips off entirely. Others pointed out that to do so would leave the UI in a worse state that before, now the old tooltip information has been over-written.

As with numerous other changes, the consumers seem unhappy and in response, the developers a touch defensive and belligerent.

Duplication of Frustration

I can understand both sides of the issue:

The developers have been tasked with pushing on with improving on EVE's weaker elements and put a lot of time and effort into doing so to the best of their ability. When the fruits of their labour are met with such vociferous opposition, it must be a bitter pill to swallow. Even if they do manage to take a step back in an effort to understand the poor reception, their pride and their professional status is unlikely to allow them the flexibility to accept that they may have made mistakes.

Conversely, the players have been encouraged by the unique relationship CCP has with its customers to believe their opinion is of value, that CCP will listen and respond to their input. That they are so invested in EVE and their gameplay habits so entrenched by the longevity of their tenure as EVE players shortens the pathway to intolerance and righteous indignation (ridiculously, some even calling for sackings). When a feature removes or detracts from their choice of gameplay, they feel entitled to be angry.

From the perspective of both parties, it seems that there is a loss of respect for the other. Once again, there is a situation where players are unhappy with their game experience and developers are determined to make their efforts worthwhile.

Groundhog Development

The main thing that continues to bemuse me, is how this continues to happen. Surely after so many years, CCP's development culture would have learned how to avoid these kinds of face-offs.

We've seen similar frustrations with numerous other changes which were released onto the live Tranquility server to a widely negative reception, all of which would have been avoided with a little nous. Forcing players to use Captain's Quarters will forever remain CCP's greatest folly, but the lack of foresight which resulted in Incarnagate (and eventually saw the hangar view reinstated) could in some ways be compared to the poorly-handled changes such as the unified inventory which, at time of release, caused problems for many playstyles and vital development was required post-deployment.

I'm not a game developer, so perhaps this is how game development is meant to work. Maybe CCP views player rage as a necessary evil or even a fringe benefit. CEO Hilmar's famously flippant 'don't worry about what players say...' comment at the height of Incarnagate certainly suggests how developers might react when feeling besieged, and a former CCP employee once described the EVE playerbase as 'toxic'. I wonder if that's the general perception behind closed doors? Have CCP developers become indifferent to player angst as a result of the endless dissatisfaction and intolerable abuse?

Do EVE players demand too much and abuse too readily? Or are some CCP development decisions arrogant and short-sighted, expecting players to endure?

I'm not really offering any tips and I'm not calling anyone a tool, but is this 'unique relationship' really working as intended?

Edit: For further reading, Drackarn of Sand, Cider & Spaceships discusses good forum etiquette (via CCP Greyscale) in Stolen - Greyscale's Guide to Good Forum Posts...

Art imitates life they say. In many ways, EVE too imitates life with its long history of virtual cultures evolving to compete, collude and conquer. It strikes me that New Eden's accelerated process of simulating reality's rise and fall of dynasties and cultural trends seems to be coming full circle and spilling back into the real world.

I speak mainly of the nascent media empires that are charging out from the folds of New Eden's digital space and gaining purchase on the very real interwebs that ordinary, non-EVE folk might frequent. Staffed by capsuleers who are fuelled by ISK and a desire to be part of something greater than the sum of their individual contributions, EVE players are spoilt for choice when it comes to EVE webzines/news sites/consolidated blogs, or whatever you want to call them.

Just as early EVE social structures aped civilisation by banding together in ever larger groups for protection, power and community, we are seeing a growing trend of EVE's vociferous but disparate wordsmiths finding new ways to unionise. Early writing groups and communities saw enduring forum tribes develop such as Scrapheap Challenge (now Failheap), Kugutsumen, Reddit's /r/Eve, EVE-Inspiracy and others.

If they represent the developing world, then surely the rise of the EVE blogosphere reflects the more communist all-are-equal Second World. Initially disparate bloggers became woven together by a network of web-links and lists, occasionally uniting in shared Blog Banter discussions now ably run by Kirith Kodachi of Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah. It's notable that of the hundreds of bloggers who have come, gone, or stayed; some burning short and bright, others still standing like lighthouses on an ever-changing coastline, perhaps the most successful, Ripard Teg of Jester's Trek, has just switched the lights off. Whether to you he was Lenin or Stalin, his community presence and contribution has left an indelible mark on the EVE blogosphere. But there are many more who will take his place (and, let's be honest, it'll probably take more than one, unless another cybernetically-altered robo-blogger drops out of a time vortex from the future).

Then came the more focused, editorially-led conglomerates of EVE's media First World, literary powerhouses marshalling the talents of of multitude of writers under a single banner. It's magnificent to watch as the rich community-sourced EVE content continues to adapt and evolve. Little wonder the likes of EON Magazine eventually fell on hard times and sadly faded.

Of course, the EVE webzine format is not a new phenomenon. Riverini laid down the template years ago with EVE News 24, delivering an independent source of EVE-centric news, gossip and controversy. His template saw little competition (we can't really count the well-meaning but under-served EVE Tribune) until the more recent TheMittani.com exploded onto the scene and shook up the status quo. It was a shot in the arm the EVE News 24, which has certainly upped its game since TMC's arrival. In recent months we now see the Crossing Zebras brand growing from a well-regarded podcast into a third player in the EVE media mogul arena.

The future of internet spaceship discussion is bright.

The Internet Spaceship Echo Chamber

Out of curiosity, I wondered how each of these sites was doing in terms of impact, reach and audience. I fed them into Alexa, a website analytics service, to see how they were getting along. Here's a brief overview of an assortment of EVE sites arranged in order of the global rank of all webpages in existence (with interesting factoids where applicable):

reddit.com [/r/Eve*]
Global Rank: 58
Interesting factoid: *Alexa wouldn't accept a sub-Reddit as a valid URL, which is a shame, so this is fairly meaningless and just included for completeness (but somebody should tell Reddit they're not the front page of the internet any more, just page 58 apparently).

eveonline.com
Global Rank: 10,318
Interesting factoids: Unsurprisingly, according to Alexa, '[r]elative to the general internet population, Females are under-represented at this site', US, Russia, Norway, Germany and UK are the top 5 visiting nations, most visitors head to the forums from here.

TheMittani.com
Global Rank: 82,610
Interesting factoids: Significant graduate school level readership, 2nd highest referring site is EN24, 3rd most popular search keyword is 'derptron'.

dust514.com
Global Rank: 115,152
Interesting factoid: More popular in Russia (43.7%) than US (13.0%).

EveNews24.com
Global Rank: 133,537
Interesting factoids: Popular with college-level readers, EN24 is more popular in Germany than the US, lowest bounce rate of the EVE media empires (33%).

failheap-challenge.com
Global Rank: 290,823
Interesting factoids: No data showing for anyone outside the US, top search keyword is 'noobmeter'.

evevalkyrie.com
Global Rank: 500,443
Interesting factoids: 4th most popular keyword search term is 'eve valkyrie release date'.

jestertrek.blogspot.com
Global Rank: 1,426,524
Interesting factoids: Average reader time on site is 34 seconds, popular in Serbia.

CrossingZebras.com
Global Rank: 1,688,410
Interesting factoids: 3 of the 5 top keywords are looking for podcasts (and one is looking for zebras), search visits are up 879%, Alexa is a bit shy on data for such a young enterprise so there's not much more to tell.

kugutsumen.com
Global Rank: 1,867,802

eveoganda.blogspot.com
Global Rank: 4,850,298

ninveah.com
Global Rank: 7,499,266

eve-tribune.com
Global Rank: 8,681,399

evebloggers.com
Global Rank: 9,162,627

freebooted.blogspot.co.uk
Global Rank: 12,672,781

eve-inspiracy.com
Global Rank: 18,435,356

[Edit: Due to a request, I looked into including a couple of prominent Twitch streamers for comparison. However, like sub-Reddits, Twitch subdomains aren't accepted by Alexa, which instead simply outputs the data for Twitch as a whole. Sorry, video dudes. If you were wondering, Twitch has a global ranking of 252.]

I've long had a hankering to return to podcasting after my overly ambitious attempt at a lore-based audio drama faded into antiquity in 2012. After some procrastination, technical issues and - to be quite honest, nerves - I finally managed to get my spaceships in a row to produce episode one of Something, Something, Spaceships.

At 1 hour and 20 minutes, the debut episode came out a little longer than I'd planned, but I'm relatively pleased with the result and hope to keep things a little tighter for future episodes. All constructive feedback would be gratefully received. I hope you enjoy it.

I hope to be able to deliver a series of episodes looking at the broader aspects of EVE and other sci-fi games from the past, present and future. I'll be looking to ensnare an eclectic mix of individuals to co-host an episode with me as I did with this episode's victim, freelance journalist Petter Martensson of CSICON podcasting network and A Tale of Internet Spaceships documentary fame.

Here's a breakdown of what's in this episode.

Episode #1: Communities, Documentaries & Spaceships

Introductions (00:38)

Mat introduces the Something, Something, Spaceships podcast and his guest co-host Petter Martensson.

All About EVE (02:06)

Mat and Petter try to give a broad overview of what kind of game EVE Online is, discussing its idiosyncrasies, appeal and what sets it apart from other MMOs.

EVE Headlines (13:04)

The hosts chew over two of the recent EVE-related events; the new 'release', Kronos: The Rise of Pirates and the sad news of the 49 layoffs recently made by CCP Games. They ponder what portent this might hold for the future of New Eden.

Webbed (29:15)

Mat gets Petter to spill the beans on the progress and content of his soon-to-be released documentary, A Tale of Internet Spaceships, which gets under the skin of EVE's community, the player-dev relationship and lifts the lid on Incarna and the 'Summer of Rage' with exclusive interviews with lots of important folk.

Transneural Burning Quiz (38:50)

Not content with Petter's interview answers, Mat decides to subject him to 10 questions on an array of related topics. The results are interesting. David who? Richard what?

Flash Fiction Competition (51:50)

Mat announces a competition, inviting submissions of 500 words or less of EVE-related fiction. One selected submission will be made into an audio piece to be played on the next episode of Something, Something, Spaceships. The top three will win 100m ISK. Submissions should be sent to seismic[dot]stan[at]gmail[dot]com. All submissions will be published on Freebooted (no exclusivity required for those with their own blogs, authors retain all rights). Closing date: Sunday 22nd June.

Beyond New Eden (55:01)

Mat gives Petter the floor to wax lyrical about his favourite MMO, Star Wars Galaxies. Petter explains what was so great about it, why it's a tragedy it's no longer around and what other MMO developers - especially CCP Games - might learn from it.

Elin films Petter's interview of Hilmar whilst the power of my frown forces another journalist to his knees.

It's been an exciting year (and a bit) for Swedish media students Petter Martensson, Philip Raivander and Elin Thedin. Since attending EVE Online's 10th anniversary celebration at the 2013 Fanfest convention in Reykjavik, Iceland, they've been hard at work reviewing and editing footage, capturing supporting material and adding polish in order to make their documentary, A Tale of Internet Spaceships.

Now they've announced they're almost ready to go public with their finished film, with an exclusive premiere on July 11 in Malmö, Sweden and subsequent general release on YouTube, Vimeo and other sources.

EVE Online is famous for its deep and involving virtual society and its record-shattering epic spaceship combat. The gaming media often reports on such occurrences. But what makes such phenomena occur and how has this community thrived for over a decade? What kind of people invest so much of their lives into 'internet spaceships' and why?

Petter, Philip and Elin, only one of whom has had any experience of EVE Online in the past, hoped to find out.

A Tale of Internet Spaceships was crowdfunded and independently made with no guidance from CCP, giving the film-makers the freedom to present the stories as they found them - and they found plenty.

The result is refreshing, honest and surprisingly powerful. It will almost certainly rattle a few cages and I hope it becomes a parable for the development of EVE (and indeed other MMOs) and community management in the future.

The documentary comprises an hour of passionate, entertaining and candid interviews and discussion with key CCP developers and leading players from the community. When I interviewed Petter on my podcast, Something, Something, Spaceships, we joked that most of the 36 hours of footage was of former CSM representative Hans Jagerblitzen, whose ability to talk without ever taking a breath or finishing a sentence is a thing to behold. But don't worry, there's also plenty of great material from CEO Hilmar Petursson and former CCP devs Kris 'CCP Soundwave' Touborg, Arnar 'CCP Zulu' Gylfason amongst others, as well as a number of leading journalists and EVE celebrities.

As a long-time member of the EVE community and someone who has had the opportunity to help the AToIS team throughout their investigative journey, I can say I am very proud to have played a part in this production and am glad that those Indiegogo backers saw value in the project. I'm certain they won't be disappointed, Petter and co. have done a fantastic job.

I can't wait for A Tale of Internet Spaceships to hit the interwebs next month.

[For further info, check out the press release or listen to Petter discuss AToIS on the Something, Something Spaceships podcast.]

"A vodka, if you'd be so kind. And some... some of those little sausage things. On sticks."

"Coming right up, ma'am. How was your day?"

"Oh. Was it a day? I know we keep day and night on the station, but when you're out in the belts... the light never changes. It's as bright when you warp in as when you warp out."

"As you say, ma'am. How was your period of time in the belts?"

"Same as always. Mostly dull, with occasional moments of terror, and the constant beauty of my lasers playing over the surface of the rocks. I did choose to be a miner, I suppose. Do... do you ever wonder why you exist? What purpose you serve?"

"Rarely. ma'am. Here is your drink, and your cocktail sausages."

"I do. Thank you. I wonder. I wonder what became of the little girl who just wanted to get off the surface of Mies IV and out into space."

"She is a capsuleer, I observe, ma'am. Fabulously wealthy, envied by the masses."

"That's true, I suppose. But what did I give up to get it? Do you know what it means to be a capsuleer?"

"Not exactly, ma'am."

"The training changes you. Physically and mentally. They put implants into you, interfacing with your neural system. So that you communicate with the ship. No... so that you are the ship. When I'm in pod, I forget about arms and legs and eyes. I just have engines and a tritanium skin. I reach out with my lasers and my tractor beams, and I never blink. And there's the implants in your brain. The ones that help you learn, that help you think. There's even one that makes you more likeable. And then... then there's
the remaps."

"The remaps, ma'am?"

"They... change your brain. Make you more intelligent, or less. Improve your ability to process sensory information... or make it worse. Another vodka, please."

"Of course, ma'am."

"The remaps change your personality. They change who you are. Only you don't notice it. Don't really believe it. But I've watched holos I recorded before the last remap, and I don't recognise myself. Oh, I don't mean physically. It's my face. But it's a different person behind it."

"I can't imagine what that's like, ma'am. Your vodka."

"Thank you. I... I don't know who I am. I've lost the story of my life. It doesn't make sense to me. Most people can construct some kind of tale, where they grow up and have experiences that change them, and that results in the person they are now. Mine is just shattered into incoherent shards. With all the changes, all the implants and remaps, I'm not sure I'm even a real human anymore."

"That must be hard, ma'am. Another vodka?"

"No, I think I'll go get some sleep. I guess you don't understand what I'm saying, do you?"

"Not really, ma'am. Sleep well."

"System, shut down."

"Shutting down. Good night, ma'am."

Written by Laria Raven. Check out her blog, All Alone in the Night.
Title image courtesy of The Jester's Corner.

Jefferson rubbed his brow wearily. This conversation was doing nothing for his headache.

“Look, there’s nothing wrong with the ship. It’s a very nice ship. Shiny, made of metal, a decent size. If I accidentally find myself in a belt in Molden Heath, I can well imagine the Angels who ambush me are going to be regretting that day’s choices as they run their own corpses through the refinery to try and clean the Pyerite off their bones.”

Jefferson could sense the woman at the other end of the line nodding absent-mindedly as she replied: “We’re glad you’re happy with your purchase, Mr Trent. The Brutor Tribe Treasury are proud of our customer satisfaction record. So I can close the ticket?”

“I would be delighted with your service, and in particular with the three complimentary 280mm Howitzers that have arrived in a crate marked ‘Amarrian Wheat’, if what I’d got was what I’d ordered. This would all be wonderful if what I’d ordered was a Bellicose with an odd selection of pop guns, target painters and one single, lonely Hobgoblin I. That, however, is not what I bloody well ordered.”

Jefferson heard a sigh. He could picture the Treasury employee filing her nails, half listening to his complaint and half listening to a joke being cracked by the office sex pest in her call centre in Rens.

“Mr Trent, I have the order in front of me. It very clearly says you ordered a standard Bellicose with three-“

“If I might stop you there.” The blood was pumping fiercely through Jefferson’s temples as he attempted to keep his anger in check. “If you look at my profile you’ll see I’m a freelance Civire front-line war journalist, specialising in reporting from the space around the Pool of Radiance. What I ordered was a stabbed-up Cheetah with neutral markings, to give me a half-decent chance of catching stories before those lucky bastards at Interstellar Correspondents.” The headache was getting worse.

“What I plainly didn’t order was a massive two-wheeled clown car which may as well have come painted with “Your mum” on the side. I have a hard enough time trying to avoid getting my limbs handed to me by members of the Stain Empire without flying about in a ship so laughable it’d make a Badger look like a bloody speed-fit Claw.”

“Obviously I didn’t order a sodding Bellicose. It’s quite simple: I want a Cheetah or a refund. And no more excuses, please. The only thing that hurts me more than this conversation is my head after that bloody Hobgoblin fell out of the drone bay just as I walked under it.”

The line was silent for a moment, but for the overenthusiastic laughter in the background as the office monster reached his punchline. Finally, the Treasury employee broke the deadlock.

“OK Mr Trent, I’m happy to say that on behalf of the Brutor Tribe Treasury I’m authorised to release an exceptional vessel for your use, free of charge, while we investigate what’s happened: a superb special edition ship that puts a great many Empire vehicles to shame.”

Jefferson exhaled slowly.

“It’s an Echelon isn’t it?”

“Yes, Mr Trent, with our compliments.”

Jefferson’s skull throbbed. His week stretched out endlessly ahead of him like a courier mission pointlessly carting a thousand crates of Scordite from deepest Lonetrek to Khanid Prime. He closed his eyes, searching for his happy place.

“What holoreels does it come with?”

Written by Adam Reed

In the first episode of my new Something, Something, Spaceships podcast, I announced an EVE flash fiction competition, the main prize being the production of an audio short based on the best entry. The top three entries would also get 100m ISK each.

Only two entries were received by the closing date, fortunately they were both excellent and will be published on this blog shortly. As a result, I'll be dividing the prize money equally between the two authors and working with both to bring their words to life as 'radio plays'.

I'm aiming to produce the second episode of Something, Something, Spaceships in the next week or so and hope to include at least one of the audio pieces with the episode.

Thanks to both authors for sharing their fine work and I look forward to producing the audio material.

The links below will take you to the two written entries in all their glory. Enjoy.

'What We Are' by Laria Raven

'With Our Compliments' by Adam Reed

The indie documentary examining the MMO EVE Online that began in early 2013 as an ambitious but underfunded Indiegogo crowdfunded project was finally released over the weekend. The team of Swedish media students behind it are still reeling with surprise at gaining over 30,000 views in its first 48 hours.

Petter Mårtensson, Philip Raivander and Elin Thedin wanted to find an interesting take on the unique relationship between CCP and and the EVE playerbase during a visit to the 10th anniversary celebrations at Fanfest in Iceland last year. When the team interviewed folk about the so-called 'Summer of Rage', the topic invariably drew impassioned responses and opinion, moreso than any other subject - in no small part because events surrounding it had a more significant impact on CCP employees and players than any other event in EVE's history.

It was evident that it was a story that wanted to be told and, despite some recent negative comments regarding the the decision to focus on the events surrounding the Incarna release, I think it was entirely the right choice as The Tale to reflect the highs and lows of CCP's relationship with their Internet Spaceship community.

Supporting the ATOIS Team

Interview in progress (L-R): Elin Thedin, Mat Westhorpe, Petter Mårtensson, curious journalist, Hilmar Petursson.

Of course, I'm a bit biased given that I've been a quasi-team member throughout much of the production, although I've been clear in my mind that it was entirely their project. I was just grateful for the opportunity to help out.

My involvement has been an enjoyable, slow-burning experience which started some time before Fanfest 2013. It was an exciting and ambitious concept led by the three Swedes including my sometime fellow EVE player and journalist friend Petter Mårtensson.

Somehow, I became charged with bugging various Fanfest-bound EVE personalities until they agreed to be interviewed by the team and I recall Fanfest 2013 being an exhausting experience. The entire time in Reykjavik I rushed around like a man possessed trying to make things happen, not only for the ATOIS team, but also for another documentary team lead by Keza MacDonald (then of IGN, now Editor-in-Chief of Kotaku UK) and also fulfilling my obligations as a correspondent for GameSkinny. Somewhere in all that I was trying to be an enthusiastic EVE player and catch up with friends too.

ATOIS narrator Breki Tomasson.

With the prerequisite Fanfest hangover and 36 hours of footage in the can, I parted ways with the ATOIS team. I returned to the UK and they headed back to Sweden to embark on their mammoth task of reviewing footage and moulding a coherent story from the endless talking heads. From afar, I provided moral support and rough copy reviews as well as research and writing services as required. I wrote the narration ably delivered by CSICON podcasting mogul Breki Tomasson (who previously starred in an EVE audio drama I wrote a few years ago) and am particularly proud of the (admittedly slightly cheesy) ‘...like Wall Street, when Jita sneezes, all of New Eden catches a cold and when Jita burns, everyone feels the heat.’

An Ambitious Challenge

Philip and Elin interviewing in the Harpa Centre.

The original hope was to have the finalised film ready for an exclusive premiere at Fanfest 2014, however the team's ambition proved to be one that required countless man-hours which needed to be squeezed in around their study and work duties. It became clear that to do an hour-long film justice, the Fanfest deadline was going to have to slip.

Further challenges arose from the fact that the $3000 raised had meant that equipment sacrifices had to be made, especially with the echoing background acoustics of a space-nerd filled Harpa centre often polluting the interview audio.

Alex 'look into my eyes' Gianturco.

But there were some great moments and it’s been killing me not being able to reveal them for so long; Mark ‘Seleene’ Heard’s tone-changing ‘giant mistake’ line, ‘Crazy Uncle Unifex’ Jon Lander’s stage dive, Alex ‘The Mittani’ Gianturco’s unsettling habit of looking down the barrel of the camera, the hilariously 80s A-Team CSM montage and many more.

Sweden Bound

However, the team persevered and on the 11th July 2014, they held their premiere in their home city of Malmö. I was fortunate enough to attend and unfortunate enough to have been press-ganged into their last-minute frantic preparations.

On the morning of the premiere, final touches were still being added to the film. I joined my host Petter on a cross-town trek to Philip's apartment where the glassy-eyed video editor had been working on the film through most of the night.

Brendan Drain's technically challenging beard. ;)

As Petter and Philip reviewed his latest amendments, it was amusing to note the familiarity and fondness with which they discussed their interviewees. 'Brendan [Drain of Massively] is a lovely guy, but his beard is a bitch to colour-balance,' he told me. Philip explained that he had spent so much time working with images of the featured individuals that he feels as if he knows them and he's worried that if he ever met them again he'd freak them out by being over-familiar whilst they wouldn't have a clue who he was.

The final cut seemed to take an age to render and compress, with hours of progress-bar watching leading me to make the unkind remark that it was starting to feel like EVE gameplay. Eventually we headed out to the venue of the premiere to set up.

The Premiere

The crowd files into the STPLN premiere venue.

Things were going so well, all the technical hurdles seemed to have been anticipated and we were merrily decorating the STPLN auditorium as A Tale of Internet Spaceships played in the background in all its dress-rehearsal glory.

No you fool, it's 'break a leg'.

Suddenly, a minor technical hiccup interrupted our preparations and Petter rushed to the stage wing where the business end of the tech was set up and he leapt up to address the issue. Well he tried. With all the athleticism of a crooked coathanger, he caught his shin on the stage and went down with a crash, rendering his right arm unusable. The venue's first-aid box was appallingly under-equipped, so a quick trip to the local pharmacy later and we filled Petter with pain-killers and strapped the arm up (a trip to hospital later that weekend revealed a fracture just below the elbow).

But the show must go on.

As the clock ticked down, the audience started to arrive. Petter was distracted by pain and Philip was resolving the last-minute technical issues. With minutes to go and no film to play, further pressure was applied when we discovered the father of CCP's Senior Producer, Andie Nordgren, was in the gathering crowd, who were now taking their seats expectantly. Nerves mounted.

In hindsight, I wish we'd decorated the place like a launch tube.

At 2 minutes past 8, just as I was considering jumping on the stage to perform some kind of impromptu comedy routine, things suddenly came together. Petter and Philip took to the stage for a brief introduction, then the lights were dimmed and the go button was pressed. We watched with bated breath to how the film would be received.

When the film was over and the audience launched into unprompted applause, we breathed a sigh of relief. Many had even laughed aloud at one interviewee's quip about French monarchs. They had enjoyed the fruits of our labour (or were being terribly polite) and there was cause for celebration. There was of course an after party, sadly CCP Seagull's Dad didn't stick around, but she has since assured me on Twitter that he and her brother enjoyed the film.

Epilogue

The next day, as I was flying home to the UK, Philip was working feverishly to release the film online while Petter was presumably laying around in pain.

Philip's humble expectations had been to get a some thumbs-up on YouTube and a few hundred views, but only two days later more than 30,000 people had seen and (mostly) enjoyed A Tale of Internet Spaceships. Comments across many sites have been fascinating to read, invoking a broad spectrum of opinion.

You can't please all the people all the time, but I genuinely think the ATOIS team have every reason to be proud of their achievement in capturing a story which can serve as a cautionary tale and an industry fable for a long time to come. I'm personally very proud to have had the opportunity to assist three talented media students manage to make a pretty professional first-time documentary on a shoestring budget.

Now we just need to teach Petter how to use stairs.

As the latest revision of EVE Online's labyrinthine game mechanics sees the complexities of industry and production given a facelift in the latest release, Crius, PR guy Ned 'CCP Manifest' Coker flexes his social media arm on Reddit to provide a selection of industry-flavoured fiction from the pen of Hjalti 'CCP Abraxus' Danielsson and his fellow scribes.

Unsurprisingly, the response to his Facebook link prompted a predictable challenge to the relevance of EVE's lore, with claims that it is unnecessary to EVE because 'the players are the plot'. The official EVE Online response (presumably also CCP Manifest) was as amusing as it was cryptic:

Whether those of us who enjoy EVE's lore have just been officially labeled as the vegetarians to the carnivorous PvPers, I'm not sure, but I'd like to think of myself as more of an omnivore with the hunting instincts of an angry daffodil.

Besides, if EVE stripped out all the fiction, you couldn't even have spaceships, warp drives, clones and so on. So like it or not, everyone has to accept the lore to some degree. It certainly doesn't do any harm to flesh out the universe with inspiring and thought-provoking stories for those who enjoy that sort of thing. The recent Dark Horse comic series proved that the player-driven stuff doesn't necessarily make for an engaging or coherent narrative anyway (although I think that was just a matter of presentation). The idea of weaving player actions into the background story is certainly a good one and New Eden has the best possible platform to do it.

In any case, the industrial overhaul is live and I'm very tempted to see if the manufacturing experience has been made any more accessible to mathematically-challenged casual players like me. That may or may not be the case after spending an evening reading the discussions on the EVE-O forums. It has certainly been an education (at least those parts I understood), with a lot of veteran (vegetarian?) industrialists raging about the loss of 'BPO plumage' (bragging rights derived from the negligible benefit of researching blueprints to a ridiculously high level, a process which takes months).

I note that EVE's cleverest blogger, Noizygamer, plans to defiantly hold his industrial ground in low-sec despite his claims that all evidence says that's a silly idea. What's he not telling us, eh? Maybe he's sitting on a secret recipe for Caesar salad down there? Is that what Rubicon was all about?

I suppose I'd better go mine some croutons.

EVE is changing, and quite rapidly it seems. Whether this is always for the better is a subject of much debate.

The new, more frequent releases have been belt-fed out of CCP's doors at a rate which I've found almost unsettling as a veteran player used to the old, bi-annual schedule. I remain uncertain as to whether I prefer the new process, which barely leaves time for the traditional cycle of anticipation and investigation of the new features before adapting accordingly.

However, the approximately 6-weekly releases, of which we've seen 3 thus far: Kronos, Crius and Hyperion, have each targeted a particular area of gameplay alongside the grab-bag of rebalances and quality of life tweaks. In a way, this means that it's unlikely that every release will directly impact any given player in a major way. That said, everything in EVE is linked organically, and each ripple in the pond is likely to have some overall impact.

Over these release periods, I've watched with a mix of trepidation and schadenfreude as the much vaunted close relationship between EVE's developers and players has been put to the test. It's quite clear that not everyone is happy.

Observing largely from the sidelines means I don't have a dog in this fight, other than hoping for EVE's continued success. I certainly wouldn't want to see invested players become disenfranchised, however, after reading through the release specific feedback threads and various other places, some of the changes have certainly left some players disgruntled.

Kronos(3rd June 2014)
[30 pages of issues and feedback in 13 weeks.]

Highlights:

New Ships: Mordu's Legion Command Garmur, Orthrus, Barghest & ORE Prospect expedition frigate
Customisable sound levels
New exploration content
Removal of loot spew mechanic
Previously useless drones revitalised.
New station skins individual to each NPC corporation.

Pain points:

Freighter/jump freighter rebalancing/nerfs.

Judging by the EVE-O forums and elsewhere, Kronos seemed to be relatively well-received despite the originally planned industry revamp being bumped to the subsequent Crius release. The remaining content included the fleshing out of the Mordu's Legion faction lore and the introduction of new ships alongside new and revised content contained something of interest to many current players as well as having enough verve to perhaps catch the eye of some passing trade too.

Crius (22 July 2014)
[96 pages of issues and feedback in 6 weeks.]

Highlights:

Revamped industry UI and mechanics [1]

Pain points:

Buggy release (much of which has been subsequently addressed). [1]
Lack of ability to scale industry UI window, which occupies 80% of the screen at 1080p (although the bottom 1/3 can be reduced and double-clicking the top bar minimises the window in-situ). [1] [2]
Loss of invested time in researched blueprint originals. [1] [2]
Loss of invested time in grinding faction standings to allow high-sec starbase deployment (although high standings still contribute to reduced costs).
Taxing industry jobs at player-owned starbases. [1] [2] [3]
Inflated costs for industry gameplay due to blueprint revisions. [1] [2]

Long-time industrialists who had invested time and effort to hone their blueprints to a incredibly high ('perfect') levels of time and material efficiency, taking months or even years, found their efforts cast aside by the new capped system introduced in Crius. Where previously blueprint originals could be researched ad infinitum (despite ever diminishing benefit), the new system maxes out at 10 levels of research, meaning those months (or sometimes years) of blueprint research beyond 10 levels which some players had undertaken had been summarily disregarded by CCP's revisions (early discussion saw CCP considering some kind of compensation, but they eventually decided otherwise).

That's not to say the reception of Crius' industry revision has been entirely poorly received, the feedback thread is also dotted with positive comments about various quality of life changes, as well as responses to the disgruntled, inciting them to 'adapt or die'.

Hyperion(26 August 2014)
[24 pages of issues and feedback in 1 week]

Highlights:

Challenging 'burner' missions against single, powerful NPC ships.
Shareable overview settings.
Wormhole gameplay changes, including environments exclusive to small ships.

Pain points:

Disruption of the wormhole playstyle status quo/ignoring player feedback. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Loss of previously stored overview data. [1]
Mass-based spawn distance for wormhole travellers. [1] [2]

Mirroring Crius' industry shake-up, Hyperion dropped a boulder into the tranquil pond of wormhole life, delivering changes to the dynamic generation of transient wormhole connections, purportedly rendering some established playstyle habits extinct (although possibly creating others). In Hyperion's case, a significant amount of player feedback was received prior to release (including this 91-page threadnaught), and although CCP devs amended their original designs, wormhole player dissatisfaction has apparently remained high enough for many to reiterate their concerns in the post-release thread.

Brendan Drain offered an interesting counterpoint to the complainants in his recent Massively article, Wormholes Should Be More Dangerous, citing 'blatant self-interest' as the motivation for most of the objections to recent changes with a disregard for what might be good for the game at large.

Damned if they do...

While work on the content of each expansion presumably runs concurrently, with dev teams having individual schedules aimed at different releases, Kronos evidently benefited from starting out as a traditional expansion and had more meat on its bones. Comparatively, Both Crius and Hyperion seem to have had a much more troubled start in life, delivering seismic changes to industry and wormhole environments respectively, each leading to vocal dissent from a proportion of the veteran players representative of those playstyles. Sindel Pellion's A Tale of Internet Spaceships metaphor of CCP shaking the ant farm springs vividly to mind.

In neither case can I claim to be an expert, having simply taken the pulse of the forum communities where invested players have voiced their concerns both during the pre-release test phases and subsequently after the changes have gone live. There's no shortage of disenfranchised and frustrated comments from players claiming that they have lost the will to continue pursuing their internet spaceship hobby.

Without access to hard numbers, it's impossible to say whether CCP's new, aggressive and frequent ant-farm shaking policy is having an impact on player subscriptions with either a positive or negative trajectory. Certainly the best external source is Chribba's EVE Offline server monitoring website, but any indication of a player response to the new development regime is obfuscated by the traditional Summer slump and the fact that unrenewed subscriptions may take some months to expire.

The following graph shows the average weekly concurrent users since 2006, with this year's Summer high being 26,458 on July 24th.

According to that graph, high points from previous Summer periods are as follows:

31,849 on 8th August 2013
30,251 on 9th August 2012
30,957 on 21 July 2011
33,695 on 1 July 2010 (or 31,961 on the 22nd July if you want a more similar date).
29,861 on 3 September 2009
24,947 on 17 July 2008
21,539 on 3 July 2007
17,507 on 24 August 2006

So we have to go back to 2008 to find comparable Summer numbers to this year's (although admittedly, this Summer isn't over yet). This would suggest to me that, at the very least, there are some teething problems with the new release process. It is possible that the releases are either not addressing an expected decline or are perhaps even contributing to it. In any case, the average user count is down by about 20% on the previous 5 Summers.

However, also worth considering, as CSM member Mynnna pointed out on Twitter, is that the Summer period also has an impact on CCP's development resources as many devs flee the spaceships (and the volcano) for more relaxing vacational pursuits. This might go some way toward explaining why some release features may have been delivered with less polish than would have been optimal, perhaps also compounded by a degree of low morale due to the recent lay-offs. But if that's the case, does this expose the lack of wiggle room in the new rapid release strategy? Mynnna also offered some other insight into the presentation of the recent releases:

Admittedly, it's easy to become negatively influenced by the famously demanding and "toxic" EVE-O forum culture, and I should perhaps take the acrimony to be found there with a pinch of salt. But in doing so, would I be falling into the same trap as CCP developers who have been accused recently of ignoring feedback?

In any case, in true EVE player form, I figure that one player's broken game experience is another player's opportunity. If industry veterans are really throwing in the towel en-masse, it may be a good time to revisit manufacturing to exploit any void they might leave. Also, first-hand experience will be informative in ways that forums full of rage, trolls and apathy can never be. I've recently been flirting with the new industry experience in the hope I might be able to exploit the dissent (more on this in a subsequent post).

I'll reserve drawing any conclusions for now, as it would be premature based solely on some nebulous numbers and a few forum threads. In the meantime, what's been your experience of CCP's bold new release strategy? Has it shaken up your gameplay experience in a good or bad way? Are you finding the constant changes exciting, daunting, or tiresome? It'd be very interesting to hear from those who've got the good sense to avoid the EVE-O forums.

TL;DR - I'm dabbling with EVE's revised industry gameplay. The result will likely be a glorious failure due to my spreadsheet allergy, but as Henry Ford never said, "It's always worth taking the time to point and laugh at the clueless."

I enjoy repetitive tasks and fondling spreadsheets.

EVE's complex economy is undoubtedly one of the shining achievements of modern game design. Daily, New Eden sees tens of thousands of players routinely harvesting, manufacturing, buying, selling, and consuming as they contribute to an (almost) entirely self-governing simulcrum of meatspace's capitalist markets. In gameplay terms, industry has always been the less glamorous side of CCP's internet spaceship MMO and as a result tends to play second fiddle to the more popular spaceship combat experience.

However, in the recent Crius release, the whole system has been given an unprecedented overhaul. The archaic interface of nested windows and endless clicking was reborn as a new shiny sci-fi looking thing, and significant changes were made to the underlying mechanics which look to shake up industry gameplay in its entirety.

I watched with interest during the deployment of the Kronos and Crius releases as the changes were announced, tested, implemented and fixed. I read through assorted discussions as players were variously impressed or frustrated with EVE industry redux. To be perfectly honest, I found most of it baffling, with the frequent discussion of impenetrable algorithms and the kind of mathematical jiu-jitsu that wears out my mouse scroll wheel. But the UI screenshots were certainly pretty (an example can be found below).

In any case, I like the idea that CCP is attempting to make industry more accessible and its appeal more broad, so I thought I'd give it a go. I don't expect to be particularly successful; my brain can spot a spelling mistake from across a room but anything more than basic arithmetic tends to induce a form a glassy-eyed catatonia. I hoped to find some engaging gameplay that is no longer the sole domain of spreadsheet egg-heads. I figure I'm the perfect test subject: if I can get into industry, anyone can.

Where the Hell Do I Begin?

It begins with rocks. And patience.

Luckily for me, I've been knocking around in EVE for long enough to have collected sufficient stuff to speed up my entry into industry, so this is unlikely to be an accurate account of a rookie starting from scratch. But fear not, whatever advantage would be gained from my veteran status will undoubtedly be squandered by my lack of attention to detail and my slapdash, casual approach.

Over the years I've variously tinkered with running a low-sec arms depot on the doorstep of the Providence (I single-handedly ruined this operation by losing all our blueprints due to a poorly-managed overview), operating a corp starbase in null-sec to provide members with a source of ships and equipment (we were eventually pushed out of null by a then rampant Russian alliance [in truth, our landlords sent us home to high-sec like naughty schoolchildren who hadn't done their homework] ) and I've been a contributing, if junior, member of an ultra-organised high-sec industry corp (which I wrote about in my GameSkinny column).

Since then, I'd consolidated whatever assets remained from my adventures into one high-sec location from where I would occasionally pop out to roam, explore, mine or whatever took my fancy. Most of my kit has gathered dust for years. I'm a bit of a hoarder, so I already had a number of blueprints - both unresearched originals and highly researched copies (I can't remember how I got these). I also had a stockpile of minerals and station containers full of mission loot which I could probably melt down if I needed to.

I just needed to decide what to manufacture and start building stock to sell.

Coming Up With a Strategy

After sifting through stuff and admiring my blueprints in the new industry interface, one thing became apparent - in most cases, there was bugger all profit to be made. For example, if I was understanding the numbers helpfully presented by the interface, the estimated cost of production of a Stabber was roughly 9.9m ISK and a quick look at the local market showed they were on sale for just over 10m ISK. So I'd be going to all the effort of mining and building for the sake of a few hundred thousand ISK. Even more depressingly, a quick look at EVE Central showed me that Stabber hulls were available in trade hubs for over a million ISK less than I'd be apparently making them for. If I sold them there, it would be at a price lower than I could sell the raw materials locally for.

A hundred ways of saying, 'you can't afford to do this.'

Clearly I needed to find a way to optimise my production process to improve margins. Most of my manufacturing skills were pretty high as a legacy of my time with Aideron Robotics, so the only other fat to trim was improving my material acquisition and reprocessing and to set up a starbase (POS) which apparently provides a more efficient production process. Of course, any savings made would be offset by the cost of buying and running the POS, but my hoard included most of the POS assets I'd need and I'd been idly running my planetary interaction setup to produce POS fuel for months, so this would cushion the blow to an extent.

At this point, I found myself slipping into maths coma mode and decided I'd just build an assortment of stuff to see what I could shift - I could speculate and procrastinate for days and I just wanted to get on with actually doing something.

I wanted to experience every aspect of the industry process, so my strategy was to acquire raw resources by traditional means (mining etc.), whilst researching my blueprint originals and building from my more efficient blueprint copies. Any sales income would go into my corp account, but I'd float the venture with my private assets to see how quickly I could generate a respectable revenue.

Despite my asset hoard, I managed to burn through nearly 200m ISK buying a small starbase control tower (the large one I already owned would be expensive to run and was overkill for my needs), a reprocessing array (I'd been mining throughout my planning and wanted to get the best return on my ore), and an assortment of skills to improve my mining, reprocessing and sales.

My First Week in Industry: Bankruptcy in a Thousand Tiny Slices

Bloody capitalism!

I actually started this process a week ago and although I enjoyed the process of setting everything up and turning space-rocks into spaceships, I was finding it to be a bottomless pit of hidden charges. Everything I did, from recovering POS fuel from planetary colonies to improving my blueprints in my POS-based research array incurred tax charges, which meant I had to pump some cash into the corp wallet to keep things moving along.

After a few days, this all seemed to suggest that I was putting in a lot of effort only to be spending a lot more than I was making. I built an assortment of frigates and destroyers in batches of 10, despite the likelihood that, in order to be competitive, my low prices would make replenishing depleted coffers a glacially slow process.

That said, I got a genuine buzz when I logged on one day to find that I'd sold a couple of Catalysts and an assortment of frigates. The idea that somewhere out there, players were zipping around in ships of my creation gave me a genuine dopamine hit. To hell with profit, there was reward to be had in other ways.

I looked again at my resources to see what else I could throw out into the local market. Rigs seemed to fetch a fairly high price and I already had a stockpile of salvage. After some confusion over which POS module produces these (it's the equipment assembly array if you were wondering), I found I had one gathering dust in the hangar and some appropriate blueprint originals too. After a bit of material efficiency research, I produced a few and they sold quickly for a sum which far outstripped my hull sales. Lovely.

Now, after a week, I've sold roughly 20m ISK in hulls and rigs, so I've got a long way to go before I break even. Although I've cheated a bit by building some Gnosis battlecruisers from my 10th Anniversary Collector's Edition blueprint at 1 tritanium apiece, so when they sell for ~80m ISK each, that should address the shortfall.

In Conclusion: Effort Versus Engagement

Stuff in space making stuff for space.

This entire venture may be folly, as I'm probably being far too haphazard to properly analyse profit and opportunity and be a proper EVE industrialist. But is that - or should that be - a barrier? After all the effort of setting my operation up, I certainly won't be moving systems if things get even more expensive, as seems to be the thinking behind the System cost index mechanic. But can I just trundle on regardless without running out of resources or content?

I am enjoying the experiment so far, it's been relatively painless and the industry window is very helpful for the most part. There are a few pain points, largely relating to UI inconsistencies, especially when it comes to POS use. But I appreciate that the POS UI is a different and far larger challenge for CCP to address, with the tendrils of convoluted starbase legacy code entangling various other gameplay aspects. Despite this, the setup and use of a POS is certainly far smoother than it used to be. No longer are there pointlessly long waiting times for module deployment and onlining/offlining, making the juggling act of running multiple modules from the inadequate power plant of a small POS more of a sliding block management mini-game than an act of self-harm, especially with the removal of (most of) the irritatingly restrictive interaction ranges.

If nothing else, industry has given purpose to my gameplay. Prior to setting up my operation, I'd log on, ship spin and maybe undock with no real goals in mind. Now I am constantly on the lookout for potential local anomalies to exploit for resources through mining, hacking or archaeology. I'm starting to see trends in what sells and how much effort is involved in acquiring the resources for that product and how I should action that.

For instance, the rig market seems quite lively. However, I'd sooner avoid having to grind missions, but to my knowledge level 4 missions are probably the most accessible source of raw salvage materials. I foresee the need for me to branch out to find more valuable resources, perhaps using an expedition frigate to go wormhole spelunking or trawling in low-sec for rare minerals like megacyte.

It's early days, but I think something just clicked.

Check back next week for a progress report.

TL;DR - In my foolhardy quest to participate in EVE's industry gameplay without getting bogged down in endless calculations and spreadsheets, I accidentally made a profit and encountered something unexpected: fun.

When I began my 'playtesting' of the new-fangled industry in EVE, I expected it to be a fairly dry affair more akin to running a business than playing a game. To a degree this is still true and, as I detailed last week, a not insignificant amount of effort was required to set things up.

However, once things were ticking over and I was able to research blueprints and manufacture ships and equipment as I fancied, EVE's universe suddenly came into focus.

No longer was my EVE experience aimless, with occasionally roams or content grinding just because. Goals began to present themselves to me, be they of a pecuniary nature or just a desire to 'find the materials to build that thing'. Every game session becomes a treasure hunt or a mystery.

A Quick Recap

In my first week, I was able to manufacture enough to fill most of the sell orders my mediocre Trade and Retail skill levels allowed: a handful of frigates and destroyers, assorted modules and some rigs. Those few sell orders I couldn't fill with manufactured goods I filled with some of the endless stacks of mission loot I'd been sitting on. Some helpful reader comments last week gave me some pointers, including the fact that modules recovered from missions can no longer provide much in the way of reprocessed material, so their use to me was limited.

A single tritanium unit like you've never seen it before.

By the end of week 1, I'd spent approximately 200m ISK and sold goods to the value of 20m ISK, so things seemed a little fruitless. However, with a full stack of 30-odd sell orders which I monitored and modified on a regular basis in the event that someone nearby undercut me, by midway through week 2 I'd turned over 300m ISK. I was back in the black!

Granted, a significant percentage of that was from the sale of 3 Gnosis battlecruisers I'd built for 1 tritanium each, so it's a bit of an artificial achievement - there's unlikely to be such easy money to be made in subsequent weeks. But after getting a bit of a buzz from seeing my coffers fill so quickly, I hungered for more high value items to sell. What else did I have stashed in my treasure trove of goodies gathered over my years of play?

The Quest for the Random Items

Talocan? More like Talo-can't!

After some sifting through various loot containers, I found some COSMOS storyline blueprints for modules which I recall being pretty underwhelming at first glance. However, a quick market check showed the items to be of potentially quite high sale value, so I figured I'd see what I needed to do to get them built. That's when I hit a snag; it wasn't just your standard raw materials that were required. Lots of parts with 'Talocan' in their name were needed. Oh well, I was sick of mining anyway, maybe these gubbins were found through exploration - I often recover odd and apparently useless materials from sites found at cosmic signatures.

I was keen to discover content rather than be spoonfed by player guides, so I only allowed myself a quick look on EVElopedia before departing. My research indicated that Talocan sites were found in the Okkelen region of Caldari space twenty-odd jumps away. Just in case combat sites were involved, I decided against my exploration ship of choice - the effective but flimsy (and unarmed) Buzzard - and fitted out my recently acquired but still unused Astero frigate, which can deliver just as well on the exploration front, but has more teeth.

Some time later I was busy scouring space for juicy signatures to plunder. I found plenty of archaeology and hacking sites as well as the more visible combat sites (and one combat signature site which was a bit scarier - I left that to a pilot in a Cerberus who turned up shortly after I did). But none were delivering on these mysterious Talocan items. Hmmm.

Eventually, I relented on my 'no heavy research' resolution and dug further. Well, I say 'dug', my misguided assumptions were pretty much corrected on Twitter by Steve Ronuken and Noizygamer, but I confirmed their advice with my 'digging'. It seemed I needed to be looking for my elusive bounty in a static 'COSMOS' exploration location called the Devil's Dig Site. However, the detailed information provided by EVElopedia and supplemented by research from the Arek'Jaalan project (an innovative, slow-burning live community event from a couple of years ago) indicated that my poor little Astero would likely be chewed up by the rogue drones in the area.

I needed something tougher.

Raiders of the Lost COSMOS

One round trip back to my distant HQ later saw me return the the Okkelen constellation in a purpose-fit Tengu strategic cruiser. The configuration I'd opted for was low on damage output (only three heavy missile launchers), but it focused on having a solid permaboosting shield tank so I could ignore incoming fire and get on with ransacking the relic containers while letting my drones chip away at the hostiles.

The Infested Excavation Site

The entry deadspace area for the Devil's Dig Site plays host to a number of NPCs who offer missions to recover the loot found beyond the acceleration gate. I ignored them. I have other uses for those relics. The COSMOS sites are home to what more traditional MMOs call public quests and I expected to see other pilots passing through, all with their own reasons for scouring the area.

On entering the Devil's Dig Site proper, the Infested Excavation Site, I was confronted by a vast stalagmite-like asteroid, around which were scattered numerous relics to point my Relic Analyzer module at. A couple of other pilots were present (also in Tengus I noted) and going about their business.

Each time I interacted with a relic node, I was required to play through the hacking minigame which I'd encountered so frequently in more standard exploration sites. The slight difference here was that they offered more of a challenge - I even failed a few times. This was certainly a more engaging way to gather resources than mining and I spent a number of hours slowly gathering some of the materials I needed. Before long I'd built a stockpile of Talocan Mechanical Gears, Reflective Plates, Info Shards and Solid Atomizers. However, a number of parts just didn't seem to be available here.

Another acceleration gate sat at the bottom of the site. Hoping the second site beyond would yield the rarer parts, I activated it, but it just taunted me with demands of an Ancient Cipher Totem key, hinting that it must be around here somewhere. I presumed it to be a rare drop, perhaps like some of the other as yet undiscovered Talocan items, and continued the grind.

Scifi minesweeper: sometimes repeated clicking can be entertaining.

Over the week, I did a half-hour here and there, mindful that I needed to get back to my nascent industrial empire soon; this little field trip was taking too much time. With no variation on the loot I was obtaining, I was about to give up hope and head back to HQ when I finally accessed a relic containing an Ancient Cipher Totem key. Frustratingly, my real life schedule was about to get busy for a few days, so I didn't have the luxury of planning an extended session to make best use of the single-use key any time soon.

I waited until I had a couple of free hours and took the plunge. It was a similar setup in the Ancient Temple beyond the gate, with clusters of relic nodes protected by frigate- and cruiser-sized drones. I went about accessing them, but was forced to keep half an eye on my drones and my shield - these hostiles had a bit more about them and when enough of them concentrated fire, they strained my shields. I also lost a few drones to them. My time was brought to an end by the server shutdown (irritating that on logging back in I'd be back in the starting area with no means of returning to the restricted area) and my spoils were disappointing - I'd gathered a couple of new items on my list, but it was mostly the same stuff as the previous deadspace area.

Unexpected Dividends

Nice chap, bad photographer.

Fortunately, in a stroke of random luck, I did get some contributions from elsewhere. I was still on the Arek'Jaalan mailing list (which is mostly dormant these days) but it had recently seen an enquiry regarding technology sites. I'd chimed in about my quest and before long, Mike Azariah piped up that he had a few bits laying around that I could have. He contracted them over and further bolstered my Talocan artifact collection. He didn't even want anything for his stash, nice chap that he is.

Despite all that, as I headed back to my industrial HQ, a quick assessment of the storyline blueprints that had started this little quest showed that I'd be able to build precisely none of modules I'd hoped to. Bugger, perhaps I should've stuck with mining. Still, it wasn't a total loss - according to the EVE client, the value of the artifacts I'd collected exceeded 150m ISK. In any case, I probably shouldn't focus too much on these blueprints as it's about to change, with news that named modules are going to get a rebalance starting in the upcoming Oceanus release on September 30.

Now back in the comforts of my usual system, I've not yet had much of a chance to kickstart the next batch of industry jobs yet, but I will. As I review and reflect on the growth of my industrial empire, even though in terms of efficiency and profit I essentially wasted most of this week on a jolly to far-off systems, it was refreshing. Rather than rinse-and-repeat the same manufacturing cycles, I experienced a variety of gameplay, tweaked a few ship fits, read some lore and socialised with other EVE players.

It was fun.

"As the evolutionary march of the MMO continues and the gaming climate changes, it is becoming evident that many of EVE Online's traits have held it in good stead to survive an economic ice age and outlast its more prehistoric rivals with their Gygaxian DNA. Envious eyes from other evolutionary branches are showing more and more respect for emergent gameplay principles that have seen EVE Online thrive when others have fallen."

~ Mat Westhorpe, EVE: Into the Second Decade Collector's Edition (p.99), 2013

When EVE Online celebrated 10 years of commercial success and growth in 2013, it stood almost alone in the kind of MMO experience it delivered. The freeform, player-driven science-fiction universe quietly expanded to fill - and define - its PvP sandbox niche. Meanwhile, developers of the vast majority of massively multiplayer games looked hungrily at the more obvious successes of the undisputed giant of MMOs, World of Warcraft.

Itself essentially a clone, World of Warcraft borrowed heavily from other IPs, polishing MMO design concepts popularised by Everquest as well as replicating much of the tone of the Games Workshop's Warhammer universe. Looking back over the evolution of gaming, both of those IPs owe their existence to Gary Gygax's pen-and-paper RPG, Dungeons & Dragons, which in turn was the gamification of medieval fantasy as created by J.R.R. Tolkien in 1937 with his genre-defining The Hobbit and its follow-up, Lord of the Rings (and if we dig even further, you end up in Northern European folklore).

WoW's absolute domination of the MMO genre was of course going to leave other developers wanting a slice of the WoW pie and, as a result, we've since seen dozens of variations on the level-grinding swords-and-sorcery trope (the 'Gygaxian' model as I refer to it in the quote at the top of this post). But the overheads of building and maintaining such content-heavy game experiences make them endeavours of incredibly high stakes and the MMO battlefield of the last 15 years is filled with the smoking remains or barely-twitching emaciated survivors of the desperate search for a WoW-beater.

The Evolution of Sci-Fi Gaming

Elite: Dangerous

In the modern development scene, as MMO developers look for a more efficient and sustainable MMO model, I believe we're seeing the beginnings of a similar phenomenon occurring within EVE Online's sci-fi sandbox niche. After all, few other MMOs can boast such robust progress over such a long period and still show so much potential to continue moving forward. That's an intoxicating aspiration for any MMO studio - or apparently for start-up developers brave enough to try.

The renaissance of sci-fi gaming and its charge into the open-world MMO genre is spearheaded by the more immediate gaming experiences of the well-documented Star Citizen (current public alpha, release ~2015) and Elite: Dangerous (current premium beta, release Q4 2014). Both of which, while appealing to a similar demographic, offer very different game experiences to that offered by EVE Online.

No Man's Sky (2015 release) became the darling of this year's E3 expo, offering spaceships and the exploration of a vast open universe. Indeed, even Wildstar, while ostensibly being a sci-fi WoW, lifted EVE's successful PLEX payment system as an alternative to standard subscriptions, providing another indication that CCP Games was doing things right in the eyes of its peers/competitors.

Perpetuum Online

Recently, more obvious clones of EVE seem to be becoming increasingly prevalent. In the past, Avatar Creations'Perpetuum Online (2010) essentially gave us EVE Online with robots and at the time was the only EVE facsimile which met with any real (if marginal) success. Yet the last few months have seen the announcement of no less than three games which are quite clearly looking to find themselves a space in EVE's niche, each hoping to deliver a freeform science-fiction MMO experience.

The internet spaceship plate that EVE Online kept spinning for so long has suddenly become one from which everyone seems to want to eat.

Let's take a quick look at these new pretenders to EVE's crown.

Seldon Crisis

An ambitious project from an unblooded development team which apparently includes former EVE Online staff, Seldon Crisis hopes to take EVE's player-driven sandbox template and improve upon it (no stargates, minimal UI), delivering an emergent gameplay environment based on Isaac Asimov's peerless Foundation novels. Or, as Chaos Interactive would prefer to phrase it, 'Seldon Crisis is a video game based on an original story written by Scifi novelist and huge Isaac Asimov fan, Riccardo Simone.'

In their own words:

'Seldon Crisis As a sandbox MMO that allows you to freely travel the galaxy without stargates dictating your movement. You will start your journey with a small fighter craft and some money, starting to work your way towards bigger ships, wealth and influence over other players.

'It is completely up to you how you will achieve this: Through diplomacy, intelligence, military strength or economical power. Have an impact on thousands of other players in a seamless single shard universe. Write your own story, forge a great empire or cause the next Seldon Crisis.

'The game is completely player driven. The economy, politics and even theinfrastructure is in the hand of the the users. You are unbound from preset paths and there is no linear progression to go through.'

At time of writing, a Kickstarter campaign was in progress, with a $8,058 of a $250,000 target currently pledged. Taking a leaf out of Cloud Imperium Games' book with their outrageously successful rolling Star Citizen crowdfunding programme ($54m and rising), Chaos Interactive are also hosting a pledge system on their own site, with a more relaxed end date. Notwithstanding any cease and desist orders from the Asimov estate, it will be interesting to see how this project progresses.

Transverse

The recent announcement of Piranha Games'Transverse has been beset with some less than favourable coverage from many quarters, including the playerbase of their own free-to-play shooter, Mechwarrior Online. Offering their own take on a brutal universe of spaceship combat and exploration, early dev videos have hinted at an interesting variation on EVE's character progression, with skillpoints acquired whilst undocked at risk of being lost (and looted) in the event of player destruction.

In their own words:

'Synthetic physical forms allow humans to pursue an existence in space and have opened the door to immortality.

'This future is not without danger and the very substance of humanity will be tested in the distant regions of space known as the fringe. Out in the Fringe, factions of humanity race to explore space, claim resources, and create new technologies to tip the balance of power; with this race for new power, all of humanity is plagued by conflict with the remnants.

'Out in the lawlessness of the Fringe humanity faces its greatest enemy: itself.

'In ship to ship battles, your precision maneuvering and sharpshooting skills are the difference between victory and defeat. The physically-inspired close range combat will require strategic management of your ship's systems. With each burst of weapons fire, high speed turn, and shield deflection, your ship will expend power and build heat. Find holes in your enemy’s defenses and go in for the kill. Every battle you engage in will play out differently.'

The crowdfunding model is once again the resource acquisition method of choice for Transverse (although notably not via Kickstarter), with development milestones at $500,000 intervals stretching up to $2,500,000 as detailed on their website. At time of writing, current funds amount to $7,820.

Dual Universe

From a 10-man indie company called Novaquark led by Jean-Chrisophe Baillie, a man who previously ran a robotics company, Dual Universe is gunning for a more immersive first-person experience in a procedurally-generated sandbox PvP universe. While the concept shares much of EVE's DNA, notable differences (aside from the first-person emphasis) include multiplayer ship crews, editable environments and scriptable ship control.

In their own words:

'The Dual Universe is a gigantic multi-planet world where players are free to invent their collective destiny: civilizations will rise and fall, player-driven events will shape the course of History, because everything you do matters in a persistent single-shard universe. We are pushing the limits of what is technically possible today to open the door to what we believe is the next generation of MMO games. Welcome to Dual Universe!

'Dual Universe is about true massively multiplayer experience. There are no boundaries, instances, or zones. You can experience real cooperation and competition, forge intergalactic empires or giant cities, gather thousands of players in alliance events and tilt the balance of power with epic battles, or diplomacy.'

As far as I can tell, there's no current crowdfunding campaign in progress, so this seems to be a privately-funded enterprise at present. That said, the website contains only concept art and some grand aspirations, so the project appears to be very much in its infancy. In any case, it's certainly an engaging concept and I hope to see more from Novaquark.

Healthy Competition

In many ways, it's surprising that EVE was able to exist for so long without much competition. In EVE's early years there was Westwood Studio's Earth & Beyond, which launched in 2002 some six months before EVE. However, EVE emerged victorious from that particular clash, absorbing much of the losing game's playerbase when Electronic Arts closed Earth & Beyond down in September 2004.

Since then, EVE has pretty much existed alone in its niche and has flourished as a result. However, this new generation of internet spaceship games seems to indicate some believe EVE's success is ripe for exploitation. Whether this is because EVE's playerbase is considered to be fair game, filled with folks prepared to jump ship for a fresh experience, or that the niche itself is wider than previously believed with a demographic of sci-fi gaming enthusiasts currently underserved by existing games, only time will tell.

CCP should be both flattered and threatened by the imitations. EVE Online has had the advantage of a decade-and-a-half of development, both of the core game and the growth of the community, giving it unprecedented depth but also troublesome legacy code and ancient design concepts. This headstart is both EVE's strength and its weakness and there are interesting times ahead.

Watch this space. And that one. And the one over there...

TL;DR - As I attempt to stabilise my newly-established industry venture, I come to realise that significant time and effort is required to keep all the plates spinning; everything depends on keeping my fuel-hungry starbase online.

Three weeks into my adventure as an EVE industrialist sees me hitting something approaching a plateau.

Week one was very much about setting things up and getting a feel for the process (The Industrial Odyssey of an Idiot). Last week saw me undertake a failed wild goose chase to find the artifacts which would have enabled the building of some unusual named modules (Raiders of the Lost Artifacts), So this week I returned to the more basic task of producing stock for which I already had the raw materials and keeping the machinery of my industrial efforts in good working order.

With my current skills (Retail 3 & Trade 4) allowing 45 market orders, I had been doing my best to make sure they were filled. My blueprint portfolio currently enables me to build frigates, destroyers, cruisers, a few modules and some rigs. After putting everything I'd built on the market, I filled the remaining orders with surplus mission loot modules from my stockpile. The ISK has continued to flow steadily into my corporation wallet, with in excess of 150m ISK of goods selling over the course of the week, making my gross income a shade under 400m ISK after 3 weeks.

Interspersed through my usual routine of managing my sell orders and gathering more materials (mining, exploring, etc.) I would occasionally fly out to my starbase to research some more blueprints to increase their efficiency, reprocess some more materials (the yield is better at a starbase reprocessor than in NPC station facilities), or get another batch of goods building at one of my assembly arrays.

However, it suddenly came to my attention that I'd not checked my starbase's fuel reserves for a while. When I'd set it up, I'd filled it to capacity, which would give it some 3+ weeks of life. That time was running out. Sure enough, I had a little under a week left and no significant fuel reserves back at station. If I let the fuel run out, the protective shield would drop and leave my entire enterprise exposed to looters.

Suddenly, acquiring more starbase fuel jumped to the top of my priority list.

Appetite for Construction

Being both a hoarder and someone who likes to dabble with every aspect of gameplay, for some time (years on and off) I had been maintaining by planetary interaction [PI] production chain in my local system and I had built quite a stockpile of the component materials required in POS fuel.

Well, most of them. Of the eight component materials, I had an adequate supply of the PI-sourced ones: mechanical parts, oxygen, enriched uranium, coolant and robotics. However, the remaining three materials; isotopes, liquid ozone and heavy water were all the product of ice mining, something of which I had done very little.

To make matters more inconvenient, my starbase control tower was of Minmatar design, meaning that the type of ice I needed to harvest was not available locally. All ice yields the generic liquid ozone and heavy water, but isotope type is linked to region-specific ice types and I was sitting on a hoard of the wrong kind, harvested from a local ice belt.

When the starbase fuel blocks had been introduced in 2011's Crucible expansion to reduce the complexity of trying to fit a balanced amount of the 8 required fuel components into the starbase's fuel bay (they were all consumed at different rates), I'd had the foresight to pick up a Minmatar Fuel Block blueprint, which I'd recently researched to maximum material efficiency.

After assessing where my stocks were short, it became clear I'd either have to eat into my profits to purchase some expensive ice products or go ice mining. Given that I wanted to sample every element of industry, I opted for the latter, hopped into my Mackinaw exhumer and headed for the Minmatar Republic.

Ice Chasers

In the past week, I'd already spent a bit of time cruising through Minmatar space trying in vain to locate the Data Interfaces required for my future plans to experiment with the Tech 2 manufacturing process and had noted the Glacial Mass cosmic anomalies which appeared on my scanner from time to time. These were apparently the sites I sought.

Little did I understand how transient they were.

What experience I'd previously had of ice mining involved looking on DOTLAN Evemaps for the nearest static ice belt and just having at it until I got bored. This apparently was no longer how it worked. Instead, ice belt sites would occasionally appear as anomalies anywhere within the region, so a certain amount of roaming was required to find one, something for which a sluggish mining vessel is ill-suited.

[Correction: After a bit more research, it turns out this is quite wrong - ice still only appears in designated systems as shown on DOTLAN. However when the site is exhausted, it despawns and a new site reappears elsewhere in the same system 4 hours later. Thanks to Mara Rinn for the steer.]

My first rookie mistake was to fly to my chosen mining region in an exploration frigate; in hindsight, As cosmic anomalies show up on the scanner automatically (unlike cosmic signatures which need to be scanned down with probes), I should have just purchased a shuttle or similar to conduct searches once I'd arrived in the area in my mining vessel. Or better, I should have loaded an exploration frigate and my mining ship into an Orca industrial command ship so I would have avoided my second rookie mistake - ice is massive and needs something a hell of a lot more roomy than a mining barge to ferry any substantial amount home.

Cold Rush

Most surprising for me was the change in player behaviours as a result of this new, dynamic ice belt location process. Whereas previously, any static belt with seemingly limitless supplies of ice would just be mined at a leisurely rate by folk, now there was something of a gold rush with every appearance of an ice belt.

Having been fortunate enough to stumble upon one not long after it had spawned, I warped into the collection of silently glistening blue-white chunks to find that my Mackinaw exhumer was the only ship present. Assuming this to be the norm, much like exploration sites, I casually went about settling in to consume as much ice as I could, safe in the knowledge that there would be more than enough for my needs.

However, within minutes my screen was filled with the criss-crossing of ice harvesting lasers of dozens of other mining vessels supported by Orcas, the odd combat vessel and even a freighter. These folks meant business.

In the time it took for me to fill my ore hold twice, departing briefly to deposit my gains at the local station for later transfer, the ice asteroids started to disappear as they were depleted by the horde. The mining activity became a slow-motion scramble for the last icy dregs. It was then I saw the benefit of using the more appropriate Skiff-class exhumers, their faster Ice Harvester cycle time, undoubtedly further boosted by their Orca fleet-mates, meant that the mining fleets sucked up the final asteroids whilst my slower harvesters invariably came away empty-handed. These guys were the pro miners. I was just an interloper on their patch as they presumably swarmed from site to site like locusts, with everything set to optimal.

Still, I'd managed to gather a little ice over a couple of sessions. Now to get it home for reprocessing to see how much longer I can keep my hungry starbase alive. I'll update here once I see how much more time I've bought my starbase. I'm hoping at least a month.

[Update: I got the ice home and refined it, enabling me to build enough fuel blocks for 19 days. Not too bad for roughly 5 hours of ice mining and a couple of hours of haulage. Interestingly, it's liquid ozone that I ran out of first.]

Can One Player 'Do Industry'?

In my mission to embrace the entirety of EVE's industry gameplay, I'm starting to see that cooperation among multiple players would pay dividends and is almost certainly a requirement if you're taking things seriously. Attempting to single-handedly take on every aspect of running a manufacturing operation (resource gathering, starbase maintenance, research, construction, sales, and so many more contributing elements) is probably folly, at least if you want to keep time spent in game to a reasonable level (or support PvP) which, for me is a few hours a week.

I certainly can't dedicate too much time to ice-chasing on a regular basis, so if it becomes too much of a chore or an expense to keep the starbase fuelled, that will likely spell the end of this venture. It's unlikely that my high-sec PI operation will be able to keep up with demand and my reserves won't last forever. Of course, I could always buy the fuel blocks or the components I'm lacking, but at over 20m ISK per week just to support a small starbase, that'd eat into my slim profits and make the whole project even more of an ISK sink than it may already turn out to be.

That's not necessarily a damning indictment of industry gameplay and I still hope to find low-maintenance way to enjoy it whilst making a profit. My knowledge of the behaviours and needs of industrialists is certainly increasing through the experience and perhaps I can use that to find a more casual gameplay niche, perhaps sourcing materials for sale rather than manufacturing myself. It would probably pay to specialise in a single aspect of the gameplay which makes up the many-headed beast which is EVE's industry and I certainly enjoy the variety and challenges of tracking down the bewildering array of items and materials required.

The last thing I'd want to do is end up getting stuck in an endless, time-consuming cycle where it starts to feel like the game is playing me.

It's hard to keep track of all the EVE blogging that goes on out on the interwebs and there's plenty still out there despite the rise of popular aggregate sites like EVENews24, TheMittani.com and Crossing Zebras. But it's hard to keep track of the scattered individual blogs even though I occasionally stumble across new and interesting writers and posts. It makes me I wonder how many I'm missing.

Sometimes I remember to add them to my 'recommended reading' list over in the sidebar of this blog, but in truth, much of my casual reading material is sourced from Twitter. I follow so many tweeters, writers, sites and individuals of interest, EVE blog links tend to get lost in the noise.

I don't know how common this behaviour is amongst my fellow bloggers, but I reckon in this age of social media, a shared EVE blog-specific hashtag might be useful, so I've fielded a suggestion to the general #tweetfleet Twitter community that we could use #EVEblogs on any tweets linking to a new blogpost.

How do my fellow #EVEonline bloggers in #tweetfleet feel about adopting an #EVEblogs hashtag for ease of reference to linked blogposts?
— Mat Westhorpe (@Freebooted) September 23, 2014

So far, several bloggers have already agreed to participate, so this could be a good thing.

I appreciate that it's still not a perfect solution and will require new bloggers to discover it, but #tweetfleet does pretty well as a general EVE community and chatter hashtag. Perhaps #EVEblogs might provide a kind of library resource if it's adopted widely enough.

Of course, there'll still be some noise - once it's out in the public domain there's little that can be done about that - but with any luck #EVEblogs might become a self-maintaining repository of fresh EVE reading material which nobody needs to curate or police and which we can all dip into.

I'll certainly be appending #EVEblogs to any tweeted posts I publish in the future and I hope you might consider it too.

The thrum of my ship's engines subsides as it drops out of warp and my viewscreen is filled with asteroids silently floating in the void beneath the silvery disc of a distant moon. A quick glance at my instruments warns me of the presence of other ships. Compelled by my curiosity to explore every facet of this vast and bewildering spacescape, I guide my lowly vessel closer to investigate, wary of possible hostile action...

It's a scenario which could describe my early days in EVE Online circa May 2003, or my more recent first steps in the modern re-imagining of the game that started the digital space race in 1984, Elite.

In both cases, the sense of being a tiny denizen of a vast and undiscovered universe tangibly permeates the game experience, injecting an austere sci-fi concept with possibility and wonder.

Of course, in EVE Online, that promise which was made by such a broad, open universe built around emergent gameplay concepts evolved into the peerless, player-driven experience which has seen it enjoy 11 years of success and counting.

On the other hand, Elite: Dangerous is still in beta for another few weeks and unsurprisingly has plenty of bugs and missing content. But despite that, I've had the opportunity to spend some hours playing what is already a polished and sometimes awe-inducing first-person spaceship piloting experience. The audioscape in particular is entrancing.

Rekindling a Love for the Unknown

Hyperspace jumping through 'witch space' in Elite: Dangerous

As I took control of my light multi-role Sidewinder and participated in the variety of activities Elite: Dangerous already has to offer, I quickly found myself falling back in love with the game which defined my youth and arguably played as big a role as Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and Asimov/Clarke in making me a lifelong science-fiction enthusiast.

After all, for me, the whole lure of EVE Online was its intention to provide an online game which delivered the Elite experience of an open universe filled with opportunity and discovery. CCP Games delivered this in spades over the last decade, adding depth and breadth to the early, feature-light gameplay which captured my heart.

EVE Online's skyboxes are stunning.

Witnessing the growth of EVE Online from within as a long-time player has been has been unique journey through online gaming. Well ahead of its time and undisputed master of the emergent gameplay niche, few can doubt that CCP stands atop the industry when it comes to delivering the massively component of massively multiplayer gaming.

Yet as I delve deeper into this brave new (yet wonderfully familiar) universe offered by Frontier Developments'Elite: Dangerous, I already sense it offers something which has always eluded EVE Online. There is a connection, a feeling of being immersed directly into a future world of technology and spaceships, which I've always sought in EVE, but has always been supplanted by CCP's insistence that New Eden's best experiences are found in large crowds.

'Join a player corp as soon as possible,' players would be told, with the aim of projecting the rookie EVE capsuleer into the player-fuelled socio-political centrepiece of the EVE experience where the hook of social investment counterbalances its still problematic and bewildering new player experience.

The Needs of The Many

When they say EVE is big, they mean it. Big spaceships (10km+), big battles (2000 players+), big stories.

EVE is unmatched in providing a platform for vast player organisations to compete and cooperate, but the individual player experiences at the fringes are lacklustre and showing their age. The universe of New Eden is mapped, endlessly documented and no longer a frontier, more a vast, battle-worn arena given texture only by its residents. CCPs man-hours are largely devoted to refining this combat dynamic as they well know it's EVE's strongest gameplay card. But the rest of the experience may be forever playing catch-up.

That's not to say that I don't enjoy the asymmetric PvP element EVE provides - the ever present risk is exhilarating and the adrenaline shakes EVE can stimulate has yet to be replicated in any other gaming experience I've had. But those moments are fleeting (haha!) and a lot of gristle has to be chewed to find those sweet morsels. Even then, the disconnected and uneven gameplay that permeates EVE remains unaddressed.

The lost connection of EVE.

It's a challenge CCP continually works to overcome, and have been slowly making ground, but their greatest opportunity was squandered with the poorly executed Incarna expansion of 2011. Incarna aimed to provide human avatars and related content, but succeeded only in fomenting unprecedented player backlash and set EVE's development firmly on the remote spaceship path.

Admittedly, I am one of the pro-Incarna minority crowd, because EVE's abandoned 'walking in stations' gameplay promised to fulfil my hopes for the kind of immersion I had long hoped for from my EVE adventures. Indeed, my preferred spaceship experience is one far more insular, one which encourages me (and perhaps a small group of friends) to believe the surrounding environment, providing immersive escapism.

The Desires of the Few

The surface of a Coriolis space station in Elite: Dangerous.

As perhaps a more selfish player, Elite: Dangerous has already convinced me that it will deliver the experience I've been waiting for. It is still far from feature complete and certainly doesn't include any avatar gameplay, but as Frontier CEO David Braben has explained in recent interviews, they've built the foundations and the house, now they've got to move the furniture in.

And the empty house is already glorious.

The empty co-pilot's chair in a Cobra Mk. III

Even with sparse content and limited ability to interact with fellow players, I've enjoyed some great personal moments that have impressed upon me the potential that Elite: Dangerous offers; a hair-raising escape from a dogfight that saw me outmatched and praying for my hull to hold out as my Frame Shift Drive spooled up, the dawning realisation that each star system's terrain is unique and in motion with gravity wells for slingshotting, surfing and providing navigational challenges, the satisfaction of using my eyes to spot the parallax effect leading to the discovery of new astronomical bodies. My ability to interact with and be a success in this universe isn't defined by how many corpmates I have, but how I choose to interact with the world around me, alone or with a couple of wingmates (once the buggy instance matching is fixed).

That said, Elite will likely never be able to scratch the empire-building, strategic itch that is EVE's oeuvre. It offers a far more modest, but intimate and personal story. They are very different games, and I am thankful for that. The two titles can co-exist on my hard drive without much overlap; Elite provides sit-forward 'moment-to-moment' gameplay, while EVE is a more cerebral, calculated, sitting-back experience.

In fact, from my perspective, Frontier has probably done CCP a huge favour: I can now enjoy EVE for what it is rather than what I'd like it to be, and the two games can comfortably co-exist on my hard drive, ripe for comparison but rarely competing, and perhaps even learning a little from each other.

To be honest, I'm relieved.

After cutting my teeth on the spry but limited Sidewinder, I wanted to try out other ships but lacked the capital to do it. The quick solution seemed to be to use what little I had earned to upgrade to a hauler, facilitating more lucrative cargo runs and courier missions. This would be my stepping stone to something more glamorous.

Sadly, the bargain basement hauler, the Zorgon Peterson, is a comical embarrassment to self-respecting spaceships everywhere. It's a testament to Frontier's craftsmanship that they can make the various ship hulls feel so different just by tweaking handling parameters and changing some audio and visual material. The Zorgon Peterson experience was certainly a far cry from the Sidewinder starter ship.

The moment I laid eyes on the cheap plastic interior, I knew I'd never bond with this ship. The dashboard and air-vents look like they're taken straight from a 1990s Japanese minivan. On launching, my heart sank further as the feeble engine noise became audible. Was this thing powered by an elastic band?

Having made my purchase and accepted a charter, I had little choice but to launch and drift forlornly into space, a hold full of cargo that someone wanted moved somewhere pronto. the little crapheap wheezed its way out of mass lock range and I engaged hyperspace.

Nothing happened.

I was informed by my HUD that something was deployed, preventing the jump. I checked and double checked: I'd definitely withdrawn the landing gear, I hadn't accidentally activated to cargo scoop, nor had I done anything involving hardpoints or discovery scanners (causing a known bug). I repeatedly pressed several buttons, but to no avail. I had no choice but to turn around and dock up. Maybe I could demand my money back.

The only problem was, despite my landing showing as deployed, I couldn't touch down. Clearly this hauler was a duffer. Zorgon Peterson are apparently the Skodas of the Elite universe.

Eventually I resolved the issue by shutting down the client and restarting, but by this time I was up against the clock with regard to my delivery. Despite my best efforts thereafter, I missed the deadline and got a hefty fine for my troubles.

So much for hauling being a moneyspinner, but part of me hopes they keep this bug in as long as it's specific to the Zorgon Peterson. It adds character.

[NEXT PAGE] - [Back to Moments in Elite: Dangerous]

How Long Does It Take to Cross New Eden?

Tangling with the Tengu: Missiles Are the Best Medicine

The Overview: EVE On Easy Mode (BB53)

Tips for Tools

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Coming Next Month: A Tale of Internet Spaceships - A Parable for the MMO Age

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Behind the Scenes of A Tale of Internet Spaceships

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Begun the Clone Wars Have: EVE's Niche is Getting Crowd(fund)ed

All the Gear and No Idea (Week 3): Feeding the Beast

Twitter Community Proposal: An #EVEblogs Hashtag

Can EVE Online and Elite: Dangerous Co-exist (on my Hard Drive)?

Moments in Elite: Dangerous - The Dodgy Hauler