Crazy Ivans and Eve is not a PVP game.

Taking a sort of break from the corporation to help out the new and returned, so doing the odd mission.  Every once in a while my ship, currently a Hyperion, while travelling in a straight line does a spin.  The ship keeps moving forward, the transverse of the target doesn't seem to change but the ship does a full three hundred and sixty degree spin.

I think my navigator quite likes The Hunt for Red October.

So Eve as a PVP game?

Quite plainly it is not a PVP game, at least in total.  People have the choice of PVP.  You can live in high security space and be mostly immune to the whims of the PVP crowd, war declarations can be dodged very easily by corporation hopping or just using an alternate character until it goes away.  Obviously corporation hopping is not an action that is recommended and apparently CCP can bring some sort of action against you for doing it but I would say, using a figure pulled from thin air, more than ninety percent of people who do it are never taken to task over it.

So you can choose your PVP, thus Eve is not a PVP game, it is optional PVP with a mostly PVE population according to the figures from CCP and the infrequently heard from Dr. K.

However, and this is where the high security folks should take notice, the PVP game, in low and zero security space, is where the game is!  High security space and PVE content is just the precursor to the tense thrills that can be bought experiencing PVP.

A simple barometer for me is the object identified by Aristotle in the fourth century B.C. as the most important organ in the body, the heart.  The only time it has started beating faster, and I mean really thumping, you know like how hard you pounded your first partners before you became all old and jaded, is during the thrill of real combat.

I'm not talking about PVE missions like Guristas Extravaganza and the like where you follow a procession of pre-determined actions to complete the mission, loot and salvage and wonder what happened to the last hour while yawning and wondering about bed and if tomorrow will be any better.  NO!  This is the excitement of not knowing what intelligent or bone headed decision your enemy is going to make, or how many, what they are flying, and if this ship will survive the night.  My first combat was in a low sec zone, I was salvaging a mission and an Arazu warped in, guy by the name of Shozo (I still have him on my contacts list) warp disrupted/jammed my Catalyst and then destroyed it, my pod escaped.  I could hardly function!  My heart was smashing some new space in my chest cavity and it was almost like a great weight had descended upon me with the sudden realisation of the might that existed in this new virtual world.

Eve is not a PVP game, but if you don't experience and embrace it you are missing the point and the game.

What could go wrong?

The war targets are in Abagawa, docked at the moment.

This exercise is to give the members some combat experience, two of them have some and the other guy has little to none.

So we form up, Battleship, Battlecruiser, ECM ship and tackle Frigate.  The two targets should be in either Battleships or Battlecruisers.  My alt sitting outside their station has a good view of their undocking bay.

As our fleet approaches their system one of them undocks in a Battleship, an Abaddon.  So I warp my Battleship to their station and engage him, I call for the rest of the fleet to enter the system and warp to me, the second enemy Battleship then undocks.

All DPS is on the first Battleship whose shields go at an acceptable rate, then we start hitting the armour, a bit slower than I would like but okay.

However the bad news starts piling up, I hear over voice chat that we've lost our ECM ship, most likely to drone agro, though I later find out it had been shot at also.  The armour on my Battleship is going down, in hindsight we probably should have switched targets to the other Battleship, but it undocked second and I was fixated on the first one, potentially a mistake.

So my Battleship dies, I call for everybody to get out, my pod warps away, at this moment I think we have failed utterly.  The tackle Frigate gets away but the Battlecruiser is caught and destroyed.

The vultures descend on the wrecks.

I have an alt on the field, via this alt I start to take stock of the situation, trying to salvage something from the disaster, but somethings wrong.  Too many wrecks are on the field, taking a minute I realise we actually did kill one of their Battleships.

Yes!! This wasn't a total waste of time after all!

We make our way back to the home system, dock up, but the counterattack is not long in coming.

While we are trying to put the best spin on the battle we could, the war targets turn up in our home system, via the alt now sitting outside our home station I can see they have a Battleship, a Tempest and also a Proteus, a tech 3 Cruiser.

We discuss the situation, one of our guys undocks and they stare at each other for a short while, then they engage him.  So the decision is made to primary the Proteus as that is the smaller ship and should go down fast.  (hindsight laugh)

The pilot of the Tech 3 Cruiser, upon reflection, was very confident in the situation, this should have been a warning.

So anyway we start hitting the Proteus, its shield goes away fairly quickly, then we start hitting the armour...well I think so, it's not moving very much.

After a bit I check to see if my guns are still working, they appear to be, but it's all going wrong.

So the end result is the enemy Battleship docks up as we had changed targets from the Proteus, he was getting hit pretty hard but just disengaged and docked up.  We lost another ECM ship, our tackle Frigate, his pod.  Our Battlecruiser and my Battleship (a backup) survived the engagement, for a while the Proteus and I just stared at each other outside the station, after a bit I also docked up.

The previous night I had destroyed an enemy Battlecruiser for no loss, we were feeling pretty good about ourselves.  Now we had destroyed a Battleship worth about 200 million but we lost a Battleship worth about the same, also a Battlecruiser, two ECM ships, one Frigate and a Pod.

However the worst knowledge is the Proteus is now on the field, we cannot kill it and they know it.

Time to think.

Welcome to Eve!

In a fleet with the new folks, using the alt corp, waiting for a wardec to go live to try and blood the returning and the new.  Sitting outside a worm hole, one of the guys, who has more experience but had a break for about 10 months decides to enter, followed by the rank newbie with only less than one month under his belt.

We tried telling him about the things you should remember about a worm hole, but couldn't cover all areas as you would expect.

Didn't really expect him to fly away from the worm hole exit while in the worm hole but it seems okay, then they use the ships directional scanner and find POS structures.

Probably populated then.

Then I hear over voice chat, "Hey here's somebody, I wonder what he wants?"

Closely followed by, "He's attacking, I'm going to die!"

So he learned lessons about worm holes, zero security space, what happens when you talk with strangers, how well a Rifter with a month old pilot goes against a Prophecy and finally the mechanics of warp jamming, podding and waking up in your clone station.

Today was a very educational day for a new character.

Welcome to Eve!

Forgetting the old stuff.

For the last couple of weeks I've been helping a couple of old eve players who quit about a year ago and also a couple of newbies.

So I've been showing them the game or reminding them of what to do as the case may be and I've been surprised at how much of the basic stuff I've forgotten, basic skills, fittings etc.

Part of the reason this blog exists, certainly I'm happy to have the regular followers, hello to all three of you (/me laughs) is to remind me of the game, some of the things I've done and how to do them, like invention, manufacturing, probing etc.  In addition I've been able to just link various articles rather than explain a whole concept I can just link and sit back.

It's good to pass on some knowledge.

Participation of the "fairer" sex

Recently CrazyKinux as part of the blog pack, of which I am not a part of, asked the numerous bloggers to come up with ideas on how to increase the participation percentage of females in Eve Online.

While it's clear they are a mystery wrapped in an enigma surrounded by barbed wire, machine guns, guard dogs....ahem anyway.

Customisation is the key.  Having observed many of these people over the years, often with permission, I've found that customisation seems to be the key.  For instance in The Sims (tm) I have seen just as much time spent on the dressing screen as in the game, whereas all I do is make hot blonds and then move them in with each other.  Taking the pool ladder away after sending them in for a swim was another favourite.

Not that I have ever played The Sims (tm) (r) (c) (wtf)

Getting back on track. Walking In Stations, or Incarna, or whatever it is called by the time you read this will be a major part of the taking back of the female gaming mind, the customisation I have seen seems to be a massive improvement on the aforementioned digital doll house game.  In addition the possibilities of interaction while moving around the stations can also help greatly, assuming everybody doesn't get assaulted by a relentless barrage of "Are you female?" and "Want to cyber?".

Another customisation option, and I believe this is not on the table at the moment, is ship appearance customisation.  What I would like to see is colour (yes colour has a u) changes to all ships, perhaps not the entire ship colour, though an entire fleet themed in Hello Kitty hot pink would be awesome.

As long as it's not my fleet.

The changes could be more subtle, perhaps a change of a highlight colour or two, which I can choose from a palette of colours.  The addition of the corporation and/or alliance logo would be another nice change and would help promote the clan feeling of your fellow pod pilots.

How much of an effect would this have on lag? I don't know.  I'm sure somebody will say it's not possible due to lag but I'm not interested in that, I give CCP a direction and they have to find out how to get there.

Finally the soon to arrive Planetary Interaction has some potential in this area, this will of course grow and mature as it reaches a merging with Dust 514 in the yet to be determined future.

What I'm wondering is the percentage of female gamers in console FPS games who, upon playing Dust 514 look up at the sky and wonder who flies those spaceships, and can I?