Eve Isk OnlineEve Online Daily News and Guides

" is a new EVE Chronicle written by CCP Greyscale. Published every other Monday, Chronicles are intended to examine the various aspects of life in New Eden. The entire list is contained here, and a comment thread for this particular story may be found here.

Source: www.eveonline.com

EVE Radio seeking last minute donations for PLEX for Haiti charity drive

EVE Radio has put out a last minute call to all capsuleers to get involved in the EVE PLEX for Haiti charity drive, a community initiative to help provide disaster relief funds for the Red Cross in Haiti. EVE Radio is seeking more donations before PLEX for Haiti ends tomorrow, March 3, 2010.

Source: www.eveonline.com

Are you affected by the events in this article? Do you have information regarding another event in New Eden? If so, please contact us with any information that you may have.

Want to become a news correspondent with IC? We are recruiting.

Source: www.eveonline.com

Last Call for Experts

Do you have what it takes to be a player expert for Alliance Tournament 8? After February 28, 2010 we won't be accepting applications, so don't delay in emailing evetv@ccpgames.com! More information can be found in CCP Charlie's blog.

Source: www.eveonline.com

and the format sections have been updated, so I'd like to explain some of the thought processes behind these updates.

We have seen quite a bit of evolution in the rules between tournaments five, six and seven, to the point where the rules in seven were praised so much that it kind of left me wondering where to go next. I spoke to a lot of people in-house over various ideas for changes to the way we do things, and we were kind of struggling to make a decision. Our next stop was the CSM, who were firmly of the belief that the rules are fine the way they are and that further evolution of the tournament would occur naturally with balance changes and ship changes in EVE. In the end, this made the decision; we would not completely rewrite the rules for Alliance Tournament VIII. So what did we change?

Well, the first major change is that pilots may only compete on behalf of alliances that they have been members of for a minimum of 60 days before the beginning of the tournament. Much like real life sports events, this creates a ‘transfer window' and will curtail some of the more undesirable methods of player-switching that sometimes take place in tournament teams. The second major change is that the maximum number allowed of any given ship type has gone up to three, from two. We felt that this limitation was a good thing but maybe a little too strict, and that three would still do the job of stopping complete homogeneity in team setups.

As far as points go, Heavy Assault Cruisers have gone down one point in cost, T1 cruisers drop two points, and faction cruisers go up by a point. These are the usual simple balance changes that will always occur; HACs were too expensive in AT VII, as were cruisers, partly by design as these ships had been so popular before. They should now be in line with other ships in cost vs effectiveness.

Now, on to format. The team selection procedure has been one of the toughest things to get right, so this time we're going to try a slightly different approach. 16 slots will be reserved for the top 16 finishers from Alliance Tournament VII, and 16 slots will be sold via auction. The remaining slots, however many that may be, will be allocated by random draw as in previous tournaments. The decision to use an auction method came about because it was something that we had already talked about - allowing the ‘big alliances' that have sometimes missed out on a tournament spot a way to leverage their size and make sure they get in to the tournament. The CSM brought this idea up also without it being mentioned, and since we were both on the same page it became a final decision. At this point we have not yet decided on the precise auction method; details will be announced in the alliance tournament forum soon.

We also have a slight change to the way teams score points through Intentional Handicapping. This is a system that allows teams to purposefully put themselves at a disadvantage in order to give themselves a large potential for scoring. The minimum number of points allowed per team has been reduced to 50. We don't expect this to hugely change the format, but it may allow for some interesting comebacks and does mean that teams who are happy with their setup, for example maybe somewhere in the 90-100 points range, can choose not to use any ‘filler' ships and instead aim to gain a few extra points. And now, for the grand finale…

Flagships!

"A flagship is the lead ship in a fleet of vessels, a designation given on account of being either the largest, fastest, newest, most heavily armed or, for publicity purposes, the best known. In military terms, it is a ship used by the commanding officer of a group of naval ships."

Flagships are the elite of your tournament team. They are the strongest, toughest, most damaging (and most expensive) ship you can field. Flagships must have a name, and successful flagships can become the stuff of tournament legend. The disadvantageous side of this, though, is that flagships are famous. As a tradeoff for their power, your opponents will know in advance what they are capable of when their setup is advertised for all to see. This raises the question of when you should field your flagship -if at all. Do you use it in the early rounds, and risk losing it? Do you save it for a late game where you may need some extra power? And if you do that, will your opponent predict it and counter it? And will we see some rare battleships fielded as flagships, heralding the return of the most expensive ships in Eve to the tournament? I'm excited just thinking about it.

And that, PvP lovers, brings us to the close of this summary of the changes for Alliance Tournament VIII. We hope you like the rules, both the things that have stayed the same and the things that have changed, and we hope you are looking forward to June 5^th as much as we are! We have some more announcements we will be making in the leadup to the tournament, so stay glued to the news and keep a watchful eye on the tournament forum.

Until then - fly deadly!

On second thoughts, don't fly deadly. That's the worst signoff I've ever heard.

Source: www.eveonline.com

PLEX Aid for Haiti Ends

March 3, 2010 marked the final day of the collection of PLEX to aid victims of the devastating Haiti earthquake. EVE Online players were extremely generous: 2776 PLEX were donated through 1107 contracts. An additional 9.5 billion ISK was donated, enough to purchase 37 additional PLEX from the market. 100 percent of your donations will be given to the Red Cross. Thanks again to everyone who participated.

Source: www.eveonline.com

Apocrypha 1.3 Deployed
EVE is back Online. After going down for roughly four hours, the new patch is up.CCP has let Apocrypha 1.3 out into the universe, with bug fixes and…
Source: evevault.ign.com

and the format sections have been updated, so I'd like to explain some of the thought processes behind these updates.

We have seen quite a bit of evolution in the rules between tournaments five, six and seven, to the point where the rules in seven were praised so much that it kind of left me wondering where to go next. I spoke to a lot of people in-house over various ideas for changes to the way we do things, and we were kind of struggling to make a decision. Our next stop was the CSM, who were firmly of the belief that the rules are fine the way they are and that further evolution of the tournament would occur naturally with balance changes and ship changes in EVE. In the end, this made the decision; we would not completely rewrite the rules for Alliance Tournament VIII. So what did we change?

Well, the first major change is that pilots may only compete on behalf of alliances that they have been members of for a minimum of 60 days before the beginning of the tournament. Much like real life sports events, this creates a ‘transfer window' and will curtail some of the more undesirable methods of player-switching that sometimes take place in tournament teams. The second major change is that the maximum number allowed of any given ship type has gone up to three, from two. We felt that this limitation was a good thing but maybe a little too strict, and that three would still do the job of stopping complete homogeneity in team setups.

As far as points go, Heavy Assault Cruisers have gone down one point in cost, T1 cruisers drop two points, and faction cruisers go up by a point. These are the usual simple balance changes that will always occur; HACs were too expensive in AT VII, as were cruisers, partly by design as these ships had been so popular before. They should now be in line with other ships in cost vs effectiveness.

Now, on to format. The team selection procedure has been one of the toughest things to get right, so this time we're going to try a slightly different approach. 16 slots will be reserved for the top 16 finishers from Alliance Tournament VII, and 16 slots will be sold via auction. The remaining slots, however many that may be, will be allocated by random draw as in previous tournaments. The decision to use an auction method came about because it was something that we had already talked about - allowing the ‘big alliances' that have sometimes missed out on a tournament spot a way to leverage their size and make sure they get in to the tournament. The CSM brought this idea up also without it being mentioned, and since we were both on the same page it became a final decision. At this point we have not yet decided on the precise auction method; details will be announced in the alliance tournament forum soon.

We also have a slight change to the way teams score points through Intentional Handicapping. This is a system that allows teams to purposefully put themselves at a disadvantage in order to give themselves a large potential for scoring. The minimum number of points allowed per team has been reduced to 50. We don't expect this to hugely change the format, but it may allow for some interesting comebacks and does mean that teams who are happy with their setup, for example maybe somewhere in the 90-100 points range, can choose not to use any ‘filler' ships and instead aim to gain a few extra points. And now, for the grand finale…

Flagships!

"A flagship is the lead ship in a fleet of vessels, a designation given on account of being either the largest, fastest, newest, most heavily armed or, for publicity purposes, the best known. In military terms, it is a ship used by the commanding officer of a group of naval ships."

Flagships are the elite of your tournament team. They are the strongest, toughest, most damaging (and most expensive) ship you can field. Flagships must have a name, and successful flagships can become the stuff of tournament legend. The disadvantageous side of this, though, is that flagships are famous. As a tradeoff for their power, your opponents will know in advance what they are capable of when their setup is advertised for all to see. This raises the question of when you should field your flagship -if at all. Do you use it in the early rounds, and risk losing it? Do you save it for a late game where you may need some extra power? And if you do that, will your opponent predict it and counter it? And will we see some rare battleships fielded as flagships, heralding the return of the most expensive ships in Eve to the tournament? I'm excited just thinking about it.

And that, PvP lovers, brings us to the close of this summary of the changes for Alliance Tournament VIII. We hope you like the rules, both the things that have stayed the same and the things that have changed, and we hope you are looking forward to June 5^th as much as we are! We have some more announcements we will be making in the leadup to the tournament, so stay glued to the news and keep a watchful eye on the tournament forum.

Until then - fly deadly!

On second thoughts, don't fly deadly. That's the worst signoff I've ever heard.

Source: www.eveonline.com

The circle is complete… only to start again

The circle has been completed - The Fourth Quarter, Economic Newsletter for 2009 is now available.

This issue follows the same format as previous ones, with sections on demographics, price levels, an in-depth section and finally market snapshots.

In 2010 the QEN team will be focused on improving the publication, so please feel free to comment on this issue and the year overall. We are open to all suggestions on how it can be changed to better serve your craving for numbers, graphs and pretty tables.

Enjoy,

The QEN team.

Source: www.eveonline.com

Retrospective: How was the CSM Summit in Iceland?

In short, the answer to the question is nothing less than "The CSM4 summit in Iceland has been the best summit so far." The CSM1 summit was also very good, but for a different reason. Back then we were going in blind and much of the summit, although nowhere stated specifically, was about testing the theory and establishing work methods and traditions. The CSM2 summit was mostly about polishing and getting the small nuisances out of the way when it came to having the CSM and the CCP representatives talking together. After the CSM3 summit it was clear that further enhancements had to be done to the CSM as a whole, so we made several more steps there.

So, how was the fourth CSM summit different? Several key things were changed. First of all we had two days of CCP discussing current and future design ideas while we had only one for CSM3 and none for the first two. And not just discussing but brainstorming with the CSM. And not only that, because by having the CSM in Iceland so early in the development process of Tyrannis a subtle effect is noticeable in the overall design course EVE is on. Taking a conscious step backwards and have the CSM discuss macro designs and the general heading of EVE's development was taken.

Another change is that we had a dedicated secretary taking the minutes, instead of having the Secretary of the CSM taking them. That resulted in the minutes being published six days after the CSM was in Iceland! The minutes are available here. And it left the CSM secretary free to participate in the discussions as keeping up with 11 to 13 people is doable but leaves little room for the person to express itself.

As the minutes indicate there is solid progress going on with the CSM and you should all keep an eye on this space over the next weeks when we will give you further insight into it. Some quantitative data will be given out at a later date and the changes being made to the CSM will also be detailed.

But what did the CSM members feel about the summit?

Tim, aka Sokratesz commented that "I was very skeptical initially, but the trip has convinced me that CCP has an active interest in the playerbase and is willing to listen. One of the best moments for me was when Noah [CCP Hammer] grabbed a pen to take notes during a heated debate between council members." He also noted that "The goons weren't living up to their reputation. They were actually being useful"

Asher, aka Mrs Trzzbk states that "Making the CSM an official stakeholder in the development process was extremely significant. It will be in a much better position to address the long standing concerns of the player base while still remaining a valuable sounding board for CCP. From this, to our discussion with the GM department, to the sincere debates with CCP staff on features both large and small I believe we had an extremely productive summit."

Jason, aka TeaDaze: "I wasn't sure what to expect from the summit other than further debating the issues we'd already raised with CCP. I was pleasantly surprised that whilst we did spend over a full day on those issues that a large amount of the time was spent on discussion and feedback about current and future plans. I can see improvements in the CSM process but going forward it needs to gather even more support from the player base. If the stakeholder promise works out I think the CSM is in a good position to achieve something unique in the gaming world."

John, aka Zastrow, the only reelected member of the CSM has the word: "While there has been very little communication between CCP and the CSM between summits, at the summit it is very clear that CCP takes the CSM very seriously. For 3 days straight we sit down for all day meetings with the Executive Producer, Lead Game Designer, and a senior programmer and go over their proposals for the next expansion and our summit agenda."

Until the next blog!

Source: www.eveonline.com

activities in Northern Providence by targeting Sev3rance with roaming gangs focused on lowering regional industrial and military development indices.

One month ago, SF director The Cosmopolite publically announced the start of 'Operation Black Lustrum', a campaign targeting Northern Providence spaceholder Sev3rance with a war that would use damage to overall regional operations as its criterion for success, rather than the more typical isk value of ships destroyed, using system development indices as a metric.

The Star Fraction's Executor, Jade Constantine explained that campaign operations are staged from Dital in Devoid using defensive towers as points of deployment to stage attacks on connecting Sev3rance territory through the direct gate to KBP7-G. She said that from Dital, Star Fraction "can instantly open Black Ops covert portals to anywhere in the Sev3rance and Cold Steel-controlled constellations in Providence… bring bombers and recon ships directly… to any system and target that with virtually no warning."

SF stated that they use associates inside Providence territory to locate Sev3rance shipping convoys and bring in their forces with covert cynosural fields which Black Ops vessels lock on to. "So far we have successfully flat-lined all Sev3rance mining activities in their claimed pocket of space and have rebuffed several attempts at their counter actions against our Black Ops staging towers." As a result of these activities the development indices of systems TU-O0T and E-YMCL has been significantly lowered.

Bazzed of Sev3rance claimed that "Star Fraction and allies are nonstop in KBP7-G trying to interrupt our logistics but that is nothing I am really worried about, they are hitting mostly [mission-runners] and miners." Asked to comment on the lowered development indices, bazzed added "Development indices should be low even without 'Operation Black Lustrum'. Pilots should be in ships ready to fight in South Providence or roam enemy space, not [working for local agents] and mining. Pilots that still mine in TU-O0T and E-YMCL should simply move to another system… out of the range of Black Ops cynossural fields." Bazzed went on to explain that due to Sev3rance being a NRDS Alliance enemies can always get neutral agents into a system to open up cynossural fields and that the order was given for all pilots to continue their activities in other systems out of range.

Asked to comment on recent reports of intel operations that allegedly lead to the destruction of Sev3rance assets in space, Jade Constantine informed that during this campaign SF was contacted by a disenchanted Sev3rance ex-titan pilot that off-lined a staging tower and ejected several vessels from the ship storage arrays. SF took some of the ejected vessels and destroyed the rest, claiming a total of "40-50 ships involved, mixed T1/T2 Cruiser and Battlecruiser class vessels with a sprinkling of frigates. For us it was simply an opportunity strike against enemy vessels in the warzone." Bazzed commented on the same incident, claiming "Having this great advantage on their side, SF clearly failed to do real damage. I think the biggest loss was that of a long-time member, but that's something that has to be [discussed and dealt with at corporation level]."

The SF facilities in Kamela have also been targeted by Sev3rance and the Holder alliances in a recent direct attack described as "a massive fleet battle… between a combined force of The Star Fraction, Tribal Liberation Force and Cadre Assault Force against a combined force of Cold Steel Alliance, Curatores Veritas Alliance and Sev3rance." The objective was to attempt to eliminate reinforced towers owned and operated by Star Fraction in that system. Jade Constantine reports that "the outcome was a complete loss for the Providence fleet with around 62 ships down including 39 battleships and 3 carriers."

Xina Tutor of Sev3rance reports this was a "great fight but they had heavier numbers in the end. Killed a lot but had to pull out." Sev3rance was reportedly heavily outnumbered but still fought the battle and pilots reported that they "enjoyed the fight. Every time we deploy ships on the field you have to count to lose them."

Bazzed commented on the overall Providence situation, stating "The war hit us a bit unprepared… not ship wise… but 'call to arms' wise. Not really a big problem, just some pilots did not get the information they should have to fully understand what is going on. We have addressed this as Providence Holders… the North Providence conflict is more something like our private 'party' with SF and allies… The Southern war will be the tough one, and the one I see going on for long time… I think this will be a long and bloody fight. We are not expecting this to end in 2-3 weeks. We also have experienced enemies, mainly Against ALL Authorities [AAA] leading the fights. But nothing we should fear. More learn and adapt, and we are doing pretty good so far."

Jade Constantine said that Star Fraction "currently has mutual positive standings with Ushra'Khan and have been long-term friends and allies since the earliest battles in Providence many years ago, we consider them highly respected pilots and comrades at arms and wish them well in their fight to free Providence from the slavers. We have no standings with AAA and have exchanged fire on occasion but we recognize they are the enemy of our enemy. This conflict has been coming for a long time, CVA's regime in Providence was built on… a dominant standings regime that turned neutral pilots into puppets. Ushra'Khan are the alliance that first practised free space and opened territory in Providence, before the CVA stole their outposts… so it is right that Ushra'Khan should return as the guiding power in this region and perhaps when the CVA is finally gone we can see these stars and worlds below freed from the slaver lash and collar."

Karn Mithralia of Ushra'Khan explained "It is my memory that CVA and U'K both practiced our own forms of free space… SF do not consider CVA's version free space [as such] and they have a point. CVA practices what we call 'standings enclosurism,' maintaining mutual red lists with their holders. We practice a more liberal version of free space, and grant our allies the right to manage their standings as they wish."

GalNet References

Sev3rance Killboard - Kamela, February 20th
The Star Fraction Killboard - Kamela, February 20th

System Development Indices
More on System Development Indices

Are you affected by the events in this article? Do you have information regarding another event in New Eden? If so, please contact us with any information that you may have.

Want to become a news correspondent with IC? We are recruiting.

Source: www.eveonline.com

and Part Two: Democracy.

When CCP looked at their game, they realized an overwhelming percentage of their subscribers were male and many people of both genders just could not relate to a game where people primarily identified with a spaceship, rather than a living being. As they continue to try to grow their game, they felt the need to fix the problem, but also did not want to change what made EVE Online so popular.

By design, Ambulation will not change the way people play EVE. They've gone to great lengths to ensure they don't waste their time with graphical representation of functionality already in the game, but instead create new gameplay for those who do wish to get off their ship and see the sights.

Read more after the jump.

Comment | View Article

Source: www.warcry.com

Introducing Tyrannis

Hi there.

It‘s that time of year again. CCP‘s developers have finished planning and preparing and have started work on the next expansion for EVE Online. The exact release date will be announced later, but let‘s say that it will happen before the summer solstice.

What‘s in the package?

For a long time we have had people asking us for more options to build up their own infrastructure. It‘s something that comes up frequently at Fanfest, in past CSMs and during casual conversations with players. There seems to be some deep Freudian desire to erect something monumental. To make stuff. To create something new. At last Fanfest we announced our plans to allow you, the pod-pilots of New Eden, to shift your foci away from the heavens for a moment, onto the planets. In Dominion, we gave the planets a facelift, updating the graphics with beautiful landscapes, awe inspiring deserts, peaceful Ewok-friendly green worlds and violent burning lava fields. But that was just eye candy, right? Well, not quite. In our upcoming expansion, Tyrannis, ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS.

OMG did you say all of the planets!?

That‘s right, you will finally be able to survey for juicy deposits of minerals and other goodies, build infrastructure to harvest them, store them, process them and launch them into space. Build complex networks of facilities and fine tune them for optimal production. All in a very massive single shard sandboxy way as only EVE can provide. And it‘s not just the terran planets. It‘s ALL OF THEM. The gas giants, the lava planets, the ice worlds, the water worlds and even the elusive plasma planets. Each type with their unique properties. Maintaining facilities on gruesomely hostile planets will be tougher and more demanding, but the rewards may be so much more “onturning.”

More will be revealed in upcoming blogs and on our test server, Singularity. Make note however that Singularity is a test server, primarily intended for testing of code in development and nothing is final until it hits Tranquility. All graphics, UI, balancing and mechanics are subject to change, iteration and polish…

Is there combat on planets?

No, not in this expansion. This expansion is about exploration and industry. When something goes bad or breaks it is because of the owner‘s mismanagement, and when things are awesome and perfect, it is because of skill and hard labor on part of the player that runs the facilities.

In future expansions you will be able to project military force for attack and defense of planetary installations. That will be where DUST 514 will connect with EVE. But DUST 514 will not be coming out at the same time as Tyrannis, so that is at a later date.

EVE Gate

In September last year, a devblog by CCP Caedmon introduced our new Web Frontend into EVE Communication codenamed COSMOS. It was later branded "New Eden". In the agile spirit of CCP, we have since renamed it and decided on the final name which is EVE Gate, which makes sense because it is your gate into EVE. Clever, eh?

EVE Mail, Calendar and Contacts

EVE Gate will allow you to interact with EVE through a regular web browser. At first, we are giving you communication and collaboration tools. You will be able to access your EVE Mail through a browser, we are adding a calendar both in-game and out of game and are upgrading and streamlining our contacts and standings system. There is also a system for posting updates for players, corporations and alliances. More details on those changes will follow in blogs to be released in the coming weeks. EVE Gate is a foundation which we are architecting in a way that allows us to build deeper interaction with the game itself in future iterations.

Overall improvements

We are working on other optimizations and improvements throughout the game, as usual with our expansions. A task force is working on reducing fleet fight lag, often working deep into the night chasing action around on TQ, while another team is developing an advanced simulation environment for load testing on our local servers.

There is a sense of excitement in the air here at CCP. Today our development teams finished the first of their three week sprints, ending in a demo where we saw parts of the both the planetary feature and EVE Gate already running, with mocked up UI and graphics. Our engineers, artists and designers are deeply committed to continue to deliver a compelling EVE experience to all of our players, deepening the game with exciting new functionality while iterating, polishing and improving existing systems and code. We truly look forward to delivering Tyrannis to you. Soon.

Source: www.eveonline.com

in Delve, Querious and Period Basis and their subsequent forcible dissolution by lead Goon, karttoon freed Against ALL Authorities' leading fleet commanders to return to the Catch front along with allies including Ushra’Khan, Systematic Chaos and AAA Citizens.

Several engagements took place during this period as the Providence Holders mustered to defend their new territorial claims. Galandrius Malkin, formerly of LFA reported that battles took place in SV5-BN, F9E-KX and also WD-VTV.

Lipot, a member of one of the alliances operating in conjunction with Curatores Veritatis Alliance [CVA] and LFA reported that active support in the conflict was provided by more than just the official Providence Holder alliances. "There [was] an active ‘Neut’ fleet that operated under the guidance of one of the CVA fleet commanders. The number of pilots at any given time [was] around 150 in the fights with others coming in as relief. Our corporation resides in Lower Domain and Providence, respecting CVA/LFA rules of engagement. We are termed as ‘Neuts’ to them but they are ‘Blues’ to us.” Regarding the battles in Catch and Providence, Lipot added, “It is pushing a lot of the smaller corps' and alliances' resources to the limit but we are all fighting to have a safe haven in 0.0.”

By the end of last month, LFA had been removed from its recently-claimed systems in Catch by AAA and their allies and as retaliation, Against ALL Authorities launched an attack against the D-GTMI system in Providence.

An anonymous source close to AAA reported that “D-GTMI was a scheduled ‘Call to Arms’ as far as I know, with the intention of forcing the [Providence Holders] to back off on their imperial intentions.”

TheSprite of Core Factor described his part the battles for D-GTMI. “It all looked like it was going to plan; myself and alliance Core Factor joined up with CVA and Holders to form a capital fleet of… 140+ ships." With heavy battleship and battlecruiser support, the full fleet exceeded 600 ships in his estimation.

TheSprite described the fleet he was in entering the contested system by titan-bridge and moving to a tower to engage the enemy. Infiltrators within the fleet had allegedly passed the location of the tower and its forcefield password to commanders in AAA's and their allies' fleets. The AAA capital fleet, estimated by TheSprite to consist of "13 titans and maybe 60 - 80 dreadnoughts" jumped onto the tower and deployed warp interdiction spheres (commonly known as "bubbles") around the CVA tower, catching an estimated 20 capitals outside the tower's shields.

TheSprite continued "Our Fleet Commander then made the decision to warp out of the bubble and regroup 300km from the current position so that the rest of the fleet could reform there.” This gambit did not go as planned, with pilots reporting drastic system failures heavily interfering with fleet operations - overviews were slow or failed to load entirely, with many pilots complaining of inability to exit warp, activate or deactivate modules or arriving completely sensor-blind.

TheSprite explained “The order was then given to re-enter the [tower] shield but after we did so, AAA used their advantage of having the forcefield password and warped in a large gang of Battleships which proceeded to bump some of our capital fleet members out of the shield who ultimately died at the hands of the AAA titans' new 'doomsday' weapons – by this time AAA had 10 bubbles surrounding the [structure] which made it impossible to both warp out and warp in… without getting caught in one, so the order was given to jump out of the system completely, form up and try to re-enter once again via Titan-bridge.”

“The rest of the non-capital fleet started to battle once we had regrouped with the capital fleet again, we jumped back into D-GTMI… but by this time the [system failures were affecting around] 90% of our capital fleet [which lead to the retreat order] in hopes that it might salvage some of the capital fleet and reduce the losses but… this wasn’t good enough as a majority of the pilots whilst [retreating] found their capitals had been destroyed [while affected by the system's temporo-spatial anomalies].

"The rest of the non-cap fleet did their best to try and defend the [affected] capital ships, but in the end were fought back. AAA then proceeded to attack the station and put it into its second stage of reinforced mode, thus ending the battle. I believe that, if the circumstances were different and the [spatial anomalies had not affected our fleet] we would have had the upper hand in this battle.”

Asked if he was participating actively in the on-going Providence conflict TheSprite stated “Unfortunately no, I’ve been rebuilding my capital ship after the loss in D-GTMI.”

Galandrius Malkin comments that “our fleet was well-lead on a tactical level, however, higher leadership was sorely lacking. Command took hours to make simple decisions, and often we made bad decisions such as [warping back and forth]."

Malkin cites the anomalous and unpredicatable behaviour of the afflicted ships' systems as a major factor in the loss, but states that it was aggravated by some command decisions. "However, this wasn't the only problem. AAA made very good use of spying mechanics and they gained the passwords to our capital ships’ safe [structures] and proceeded to bump the ships out into engagement range. AAA also had a commendable cap fleet and was very well organized, which was still effective [against the spatial anomalies] both sides experienced.”

By being set up within the system before the engagement began, the AAA ships may have held an advantage in that they had more time than the incoming Providence fleet to load environmental data into overloaded sensors and to get themselves into position, though they too reported problems with modules either firing up or shutting down.

An anonymous source close to former LFA affiliates reports that “There was [a severe mistake] in D-GTMI… We had a strong fleet of conventional ships in system, but were ordered to just sit in a [tower] while our capitals were getting slaughtered and the capital fleet received orders to warp off grid and then back… to die.”

Aralis, executor of CVA, was emphatic that that the battle for D-GTMI was "sabotaged" by the anomalous behaviours they experienced and expressed a belief that these unforeseen circumstances were wholly responsible for the outcome of the engagement. Sapphrine of Ushra'Khan, however, felt that Providence Command's decisions from the outset of the battle led to circumstances in which the anomalies were able to cripple the Providence fleet beyond recovery.

GalNet References

Ushra’Khan Alliance Battle Records – SV5-BN
Libertas Fidelitas Alliance Battle Records – WD-VTV
Against ALL Authorities Battle Records – D-GTMI

Are you affected by the events in this article? Do you have information regarding another event in New Eden? If so, please contact us with any information that you may have.

Want to become a news correspondent with IC? We are recruiting.

Source: www.eveonline.com

Russian Game Master Position Available at Sitel

Привет! Sitel, our support partner based in D sseldorf, Germany, has a Russian game master position available. Successful candidates should be proficient in both Russian and English, have a wide knowledge of EVE Online, and must be able to work in Germany or the EU in general. We especially encourage those with good understanding of computer technology to apply. Please send your CV to karriere.duesseldorf@sitel.com. Удачи!

Source: www.eveonline.com

Pirates of the Burning Sea Beta Key Giveaway, Claim One Now

Pirates of the Burning Sea sets sail early next year, but in the meantime, Flying Lab Software and WarCry offer you the chance to sail those seas as part of their Stress Test. We have 500 Beta Keys to give away between now and November 30, 2007 for the game that lets you live the peg-legged life on land or at seas.

For more information on PotBS, check out Pirates of the Burning Sea WarCry and check back regularly for our reoccurring Q&As every other Monday and our weekly screenshots on Thursdays.

Click below to claim a key.

View Article

Source: www.warcry.com

Are you affected by the events in this article? Do you have information regarding another event in New Eden? If so, please contact us with any information that you may have.

Want to become a news correspondent with IC? We are recruiting.

Source: www.eveonline.com

Pirates of the Burning Sea: Dev Chat on March 20th

WarCry is proud to announce that on Thursday March 20th, we'll be hosting the developers of Pirates of the Burning Sea. The event is a chance for fans to get their questions in with the guys from Flying Lab Software in real time. The chat will kick off at 8:00pm EDT (5:00pm PDT).

When: 03/20/2008 8pm EST

Where: irc.chatspike.net 6667 in #WarCouncil
General chat will be available in #warcry

Who: The following Flying Lab developers will be on hand.

• Russell Williams (FLS CEO)
• Kevin Maginn (Lead Game Designer)
• Joe Ludwig (Producer)
• David Hunt (Game Designer)
• Drew Clowery (Game Designer)
• Troy Hewitt (Director of Community Relations)
• Tom Atkinson-Edwards (Community Specialist)

Need a way in? No problem just use our Java Client or Chatspike's IRC Client.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Comment | View Article

Source: eve.warcry.com

The Providence War: Part IV - The Return of Unity

9UY4-H, Providence - "Deliverance Reclaimed" outpost in 9UY4-H system fell to Ushra'Khan [UNITY] on the 08.02.112, with system sovereignty falling into their hands the following day. Ushra'Khan have been fighting Amarr loyalists Curatores Veritatis Alliance [CVA] in Providence for half a decade; they originally held sovereignty in the system which was home to their first outpost, "Unity Station" until it was conquered by CVA.

Ushra'Khan allied with Against ALL Authorities, who currently reside in Catch adjacent to Providence, after the losing their space in Providence in the so-called "Unity War" of 109 and joined AAA in their retributive invasion of Providence following incursions by Providence Holders into AAA space in Catch.

The siege of 9UY4-H station lasted less than a week and on 08.02.112 the station fell to Ushra'Khan. UNITY are claimed by the Providence Holders as a major enemy of Amarr interests in New Eden. Sources among the Holder alliances of Providence claim 9UY4-H system is an important trade hub and of strategic value as a central location for most access routes to Empire space.

AAA was reported to have brought over 400 pilots to the siege, fielding several super-capital vessels.

Karn Mithralia of Ushra'Khan said that his alliance has waited a long time for this opportunity.

Regarding the invasion of AAA's systems in Catch, Karn expressed surprise at the turn of events. "CVA is usually cautious and skilled in strategic decision making. The timing of the war in Querious was perhaps coincidental, but regardless, it was obvious AAA would not walk over this [move] so close to [their] home systems."

"We have worked for near three years building our strength, undermining the enemy, breaking their Holders and throwing as much energy as we could into our allies wars so they would have reason to do the same for us.

"Nothing inspires Ushra'Khan to fight like the opportunity to fight slavers and their Holders. We were already fighting [alongside AAA], fully committed, are used to working together, have good [communication systems] in place, fleet discipline and knowledge of what to expect from each other. Yet even then we didn't expect to stand so soon once again in Unity Station; we knew our allies in AAA respected CVA's settlement efforts in Providence and expected some level of return to status quo, we hatched our plans to move on other weak points but then again things played to our favour."

Karn Mithralia considered ‘Amarrian hubris' to be the major factor that lead to CVA not backing down, which in turn lead to AAA and allies assaulting Providence with full strength.

AAA's other allies, Systematic Chaos were heavily involved in D-GTMI and 9UY4-H; "freespace" and transhumanist alliance Star Fraction are independently invading the space of CVA's allies Sev3rance in western Providence and ATLAS have sent roaming gangs into Providence to engage Holder forces.

Asked to comment on his alliance's plans for the conflict, Karn Mithralia first expressed his surprise at the lack of resistance when entering 9UY4-H and then added "We need to secure our hold, it's early since we have taken [only] one station. Providence is a highly-populated space. It is possible that CVA and their Holders will rally in Northern Providence about their home systems. And I have no doubt Sev3rance won't go down without a fight."

Aralis of CVA considers this capture as "more of a problem for them than for us", since the opposing forces are now left deep inside the Providence Holders territory and this exposes them to facilitated CVA offensive actions. Members of CVA continue to express confidence in public that Unity Station will return to its Amarrian name of Deliverance in due course, but Unity station provides a toe-hold not just for AAA but for Ushra'Khan's other allies in the anti-slavery and Minmatar loyalist movements. Aralis (executor of CVA) has stated that he is prepared for a long war - exactly the course it will take remains to be seen.

GalNet References

Against ALL Authorities Battle Records - 9UY4-H

Are you affected by the events in this article? Do you have information regarding another event in New Eden? If so, please contact us with any information that you may have.

Want to become a news correspondent with IC? We are recruiting.

Source: www.eveonline.com

contest ends on January 31, 2010.

Source: www.eveonline.com

, we will be holding new tests on the Singularity server on the following dates: Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 20:00 UTC, and Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 17:00 UTC. More information about how to participate in the tests can be found in this forum thread.

Source: www.eveonline.com

Singularity Unavailable Until February 18, 2010

We will be conducting extensive testing on the Singularity test server between Tuesday, February 16 and Thursday, February 18, 2010. Singularity will be unavailable to players during this time.

Source: www.eveonline.com

Keeping EVE running smooth and fun to play - How you can help!

Wow, this has turned into quite a long blog, but it's chock full of much info-goodness which hopefully addresses many of the questions and concerns people have had about public testing and how we approach large-scale performance and feature testing for EVE.

What's in our anti-lag arsenal?

As EVE grows, more features are added, more players are online at once, and the whole system becomes more complex we find that our ability to weed out sources of lag becomes increasingly difficult. Throughout EVE's development we've used various methods to identify and fix sources of lag; server performance monitoring, special task-forces to ‘seek and destroy' lag, monitoring forums and petitions, public test servers, and intensive regression tests of all new code, for example. Though these are great tools, we don't feel that it's enough. Over the years, while creating all of our expansions and the new features and changes that come with them, it became apparent that we had a problem: We had no good way to simulate high-load situations such as fleet fights, factional warfare, Jita, etc. This is a particularly difficult situation for us. In any high-load situation there are always a very wide range of actions being performed simultaneously, with many different hardware configurations on the client machines, and many small factors quickly add up. But these factors are all relatively unpredictable and almost random in practice.

Consider Jita. Think of how many people are there; now think of all the different market transactions, combat, chatting, industry, and other activities that are going on simultaneously in that system - you can see that testing this scenario is not as simple as "load up 1000 clients and let them run." We needed a way to get as many different transactions and machine configurations as possible in order to confidently say that we've gotten a valid test for high-load performance.

Over a year ago, in order to address this issue, we began exploring several different options. We looked at everything, from specially built load-testing clients (bots), to hiring many more testers, to community-supported testing, to developing specialized test suites and scripts, and everything in between. After some prototyping, tests, and wracking our brains, we finally came up with a multi-prong approach that includes community-supported testing (i.e. Mass-Testing - more on this shortly), massive test-server upgrades and changes, load-test clients (still in the early stages of development), special debugging code, and more data logging than you can shake a stick at.

Mass-Testing

The cornerstone of our approach is an initiative, dubbed "Mass-Testing." Simply put, we figured that the best way to "simulate hundreds of players all doing many different actions at the same time" was to, well, get a bunch of real players together and run through proper test scenarios. This is such a vital thing because it is the only way we can accurately gauge how the new code behaves under such extreme conditions as fleet fights with several hundred pilots. This is because of various factors which only become apparent in such highly loaded situation, such as diminishing returns, and code scalability.

At its core, Mass-Testing is a very basic framework which allows us to invite hundreds, or even thousands, of players onto the test server to hammer away at various things. This framework provides us with an excellent venue to present new features or changes to people and not only see how well it performs, but also to get critical feedback about the new changes directly from the players who've taken the time to try them out on the test servers. By running these events regularly, we also gain the ability to track empirically the performance of the client, server, and network layer over time. This all comes together to give us a much clearer picture of where we stand now, where we came from, and where we should focus our efforts moving into the future.

Can't we do this another way, like testing live on TQ?

Unfortunately, testing is never as straight-forward as it seems on the surface. Even in fairly simple programs, the number of possible combinations of inputs, raw data, transactions, and hardware can add up quickly to the point where ‘testing everything' would literally take several human lifetimes. Because EVE is constantly being updated and changed, this adds another level of complexity to the issue overall. How we choose to address this for EVE is by prioritizing areas that need more attention; based on previous history, the complexity of the system or the changes made to it, risk to the cluster/game, player feedback, and several other factors.

When dealing with testing for EVE, we must always keep one thought in the back of our heads: "how will this affect the game, the cluster, and the players?" Sure, we could test directly on TQ, add all sorts of debugging code, join in every fleet fight, etc, but at the end of the day, TQ is for players, not for testing. Adding debugging code would kill the server's performance and make laggy battles much worse. Sending testers into fleet fights could very well lead to cries of favoritism or ‘DEVH4x'. Neither of those results would be desired. We in QA feel, very strongly, that anything that would negatively impact the performance of the live servers or people's enjoyment of EVE should be avoided like the plague.

What good will all of this really do for EVE?

We have been running a pilot of this program for roughly the last year, and it's certainly done its job in helping us identify certain performance issues on the server, client, database backend, and also in our networking layers. This program also provides us with a direct line of communication between CCP and the EVE player base to find how well the expansions perform for you, and also to get some critical feedback about new features and changes in those expansions. This feedback has helped developers tweak and tune their changes in an attempt to make sure that we're providing you with a quality user experience. Some examples of changes that have come about as a result of your feedback are:

• Overview tweaks, such as the ability to toggle all brackets on/off easily
• Improvements to fleet-finder
• Fixes to improve lag in factional warfare
• Cleaning up POS code
• Fixes for EVE Voice

In addition to the feedback we've been able to gather, we've also isolated and killed several problems well before they ever made it to TQ. Some examples of these resolved are:

• Server-side memory leaks
• Runaway DB procs
• Client FPS instabilities
• Client memory leaks
• Services being called too often (kills server and client performance)

I am the great and powerful OZ!

Just as it was with Dorothy and the great Oz; an unfortunate fact about Mass-Testing is that most of what's being done is all behind the scenes, which can lead to many folks getting the wrong impression about what's actually going on. But unlike with the great Oz, there is a lot of actual work going on behind the scenes here. We have staff from our Software, Quality Assurance, Operations, and Game Design departments, plus our awesome Bug Hunters, all working in concert to collect data and feedback, analyze the information, and fix what's wrong. I'll give you a brief summary of what we look at during these tests:

DB traces

We collect full traces from our databases. This information tells us what transactions are being made, what procedures are being called and how often, and how long they take to execute. In addition, we also track overall database's load, health, and performance.

Server-side metrics

We collect detailed metrics on the servers' performance, especially detailed statistics on CPU and memory usage for discrete layers of the server code. In addition, we collect data from every piece of the game code during execution to see how well they're playing together, where bottlenecks occur, and if there are any runaway tasklets in our code.

Client-side metrics

We also collect metrics on several developer clients during these tests that collect data on the client's CPU and memory usage as well as things like FPS, response time, desync, etc. This data allows us to pinpoint pieces of the client code that need to be fixed or streamlined in order to improve the client's performance.

Network-layer metrics

In a game like EVE, which use a single server with many thousands of simultaneous users, network traffic, bandwidth, routing, and load-balancing are very important. This is why we also gather full network traces for connected clients and collect data on how well the load balancers are coping with the new expansions.

All of this data is collected and kept from one test to the next so that we can compare, analyze and find performance trends, which in turn helps us identify those areas we need to spend more time cleaning up in order to ensure that EVE runs as smoothly as possible.

Growing up a bit

Over the past year, this program has really just been in its infancy, and we're proud of our baby, but it's time for it to become a toddler and start walking on its own. We need this program to get bigger, better, and provide more value to EVE as a whole. In that spirit, we are moving into the next phase of the Mass-Testing program, where we will be making improvements across the board, but especially in scheduling, backend support, and, later, reporting and information.

Calling all alliances!

In the past, we've had problems getting enough players to show up for these tests, and we will be addressing this issue directly. Ideally, these tests should have at least 400 participants, up to 1500 pilots per test; historically, we've managed to get around 100-200 pilots per test. In an effort to improve numbers, we will do three things. First, we will try to hold these tests on the weekends to avoid work/school/real life conflicts. Second, we have setup a moderated, public mailing list, "Mass Testing Info", which anyone can join, which we will use to send out dates and information about testing. Finally, we will also invite all alliance leaders to bring their members onto the test servers to participate in these tests. The idea being that, by working with alliance leaders, we can hopefully achieve the numbers we're looking for in these tests.

How will this work?

Before each test, we will put up a sign-up thread on the forums with details and an open invitation to any alliance with more than 150 members, as well as sending an in-game EVE-mail to the "Mass Testing Info" mailing list and also direct mails to the leaders of all alliances with 500 members or more. Alliance leaders can then sign-up and indicate roughly how many pilots they are confident that they can bring; we will take the first 1800 pilots, on a first-post, first-serve basis. If we don't get enough pilots signing up, we will cancel that test run.

• Important caveats
• Players not in alliances can still join in
  • You just need to show up at the correct time and follow directions
• We will accept all alliances who sign up, until we reach a maximum of 1800 pilots
• Do not sign up if you're not confident you can bring people!

First of a new breed

You folks have been saying that you want test events that are held at more opportune times for you, and we've listened! These tests do indeed require as many players as we can get, but holding events on weekends or too late into the evenings, on a regular basis, is not as easy to coordinate as one might think. Even game developers and testers have real lives, families, and friends that they enjoy spending time with too. But, we aren't afraid of change, so we've worked out staffing and, from now and into the future, we will be holding test events on weekends, close to peak hours. There will be exceptions to this rule, if critical issues come up that require special testing, but we hope that this new schedule makes participating in these events much easier for you all.

The first event in this new series will be held on Saturday, February 20 at 20:00 GMT

This first test will be a return to our standard "fleet fight and POS siege" format, with some tweaks and slight changes, look for an official test announcement thread in the General Discussion forums in the coming days. We will post full details and goals for the test there.

Information and transparency

One thing that we feel has been a shortcoming in our previous mass-testing exercises thus far is the lack of reports and information being relayed to you, the players of EVE. To remedy this, we will begin publishing the results of each test. Over time, we will add to what is being reported and, hopefully, even get a sub-site on eveonline.com to host the results from all these tests so that anyone can view results from recent tests, as well as historical results.

And I'm spent…

Testing for EVE is an ever-evolving process, one which we strive to constantly improve. One important measure of quality, at least for us, is determining how good of a gaming experience we have delivered to the players of EVE. Though this can be difficult to quantify, or even be a bitter pill to swallow, we still find your input and feedback to be vital to making EVE better.

To that end, I'd like to invite you all to give us your input about the overall quality and performance of EVE. Tell us what areas of EVE you think could do the most good from performance tweaks, what new things you think we could add to give you better control over your user experience, what changes or additions we have made that helped you, etc.

Mass-testing is an ongoing process and is intimately tied into the community of EVE; let's use this as another way to improve EVE together.

Source: www.eveonline.com