Thursday 24 October 2013

EVE: A different kind of war.



Well it finally happened (no, not the moved to nullsec) the corporation that I joined ended up in a war. It came about through a rather convoluted series of events, many of which I am still trying to understand, culminating in a member of our corp going rogue and attacking someone in order to provoke a war. The long and short of that is that the individual concerned is no longer part of our corporation and their frozen corpse occupies one of our storage hangers.

All that to one side it was interesting to see how the war played out. EVE Online gives a 24 hour countdown to war during which time neither side can attack the other without CONCORD (the space police being called) and so I eagerly awaited guidance from the upper echelons as to what our battle plan was.

Warp gate
Somehow I get the feeling my Heron was not designed for interstellar combat

When it came through I was slightly surprised to find that we were relocating to the other side of space, to be honest it felt a bit like running away until the CEO took time to explain exactly why we were doing this. A big part of EVE is profit, in fact it costs ISK (money) to declare war and an increasing amount to sustain the war, therefore there is more than one way to fight them. As all new and industrial players were being directed to a system very far away the combat division were fitting themselves up and positioning near the trade hubs and our old base to scout out the enemy.

The goal was simple; don’t let them get any kills, so that the money they spent declaring war was effectively wasted. Combat division were ordered only to attack with superior odds and in relatively cheap ships.

General advice was also given to the new players on safe war-time practices, always be facing a station, keep your eyes on local chat to see who’s about and run at the first sign of trouble. In fact during this time I learned a lot of the behaviours that are now a staple part of my EVE play-style and it’s going to be pretty good for our venture in to NullSec where you are always under threat of attack.

The biggest down-side to being at war for an up-and-coming explorer like me is that the corp asks us to stay within our wartime system or at most go one jump out. Believe me it gets dull trying to find sights in the same 3 systems. I may have gone a few jumps further out to find sights, but I most definitely did not fly 9/10 jumps to the universal trade hub that is Jita, honest.

 Yet More Ruins
Theses ruins were definitely found in our wartime system, honest!

With the war over and 0 kills on the board we declare ourselves the victors and go back to preparing for our move to null sec. However apparently there is a big war going on there at the moment which could shift a balance of power, which could impact the price of…………….. There are moments when I wish EVE was a bit simpler. However those a fleeting, fly safe pilots!

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