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The Unpaid Bill that Launched a Thousand Starships
Interesting story on that big EVE battle from last week. Talks with a lot of the involved parties.
- yincrash 13y agoHis friend sent him a text that said "[laughs]"?? that seems improbable
- sukuriant 13y agoDifferent people use different characters for actions. Asterisk, colon, dash, angle-bracket, bracket are all common enough to be heard about. It could have equally been "xD" "lol" And I would consider those among many others to be laughter.
- sp332 13y agoSquare brackets indicate that an editor has modified a quote. http://askville.amazon.com/purpose-square-brackets-sentence/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=11214678 http://askville.amazon.com/purpose-square-brackets-sentence/...
- lnanek2 13y agosince it is in square brackets, it is pretty clear the journalist translated an emoticon or acronym.
- sp332 13y agoThis is much less dry than the last version of this article that showed up on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7136603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7136603
- rosser 13y agoYeah, it's chock-full of the testosterone I'd have expected to see from something like this. To wit: “They put their dick on the table, and we chopped it off,” said Gianturco.
- pyrocat 13y agoI prefer the version that appeared on The Mittani: http://themittani.com/features/largest-virtual-battle-ever http://themittani.com/features/largest-virtual-battle-ever a bit longer and more in-depth, but gives a great sense of scale.
- sp332 13y agoOh I meant this version. http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/the-bloodbath-of-b-r5rb/ http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/the-bloodbath-...
- tumes 13y agoWow, posted by Dave himself. Hi Dave!
- snide 13y ago/waves
- thedudemabry 13y agoYay!
- quadfour 13y agoHello Dave!
- mr_spothawk 13y agoit's a sign of the awesomeness of our times that we create such profound and significant fantasies in real time, and that people who've never played Eve (me) can read about this and be enthralled.
- pyrocat 13y agoEve has always been about the fascinating politics and stories that come out of them. Most of what kept me playing for years was the political intrigue and being a part of it.
- transfire 13y ago"such profound and significant" and meaningless
- jvanenk 13y agoas meaningless as most works of science fiction.
- lifeformed 13y agoJust like all works of fiction, art, and ultimately everything.
- benched 13y agoMm. As meaningless as what most believe (without all that much justification) is the 'top level' reality - life.
- exhilaration 13y agoI'm with you on that, I've never played the game nor do I plan to, but I love reading accounts of these enormous battles.
- 650REDHAIR 13y agoReading about these battles after the fact is almost always better than actually sitting at your computer for 20+ hours dealing with unbearable sluggishness. I stopped playing after awhile because it started to feel more like a job and less like a game.
- erbo 13y agoJust to point out something about this whole battle that may not be readily apparent... The article quotes the figure that a titan (the largest type of ship in EVE Online ) costs the equivalent of $1500 to produce. But that doesn't mean you can just walk into EVE, plunk down $1500 to buy ISK, and walk off with a titan. Far from it. A titan has to be assembled out of over 7,000 individual components, each of which must be bought or (more frequently) manufactured, and, if you build them, you have to have the raw materials and blueprints for them. Assuming you have all that, it would take a single player two and a half months just to assemble all the components. Then you can start building the titan's hull, which takes 40 days. But it has to be built inside a Capital Ship Assembly Array (itself a very expensive structure), which has to be anchored with a structure in player-controlled space. And then that structure has to be defended, because if someone comes along and blows up your structure, you lose the titan hull that's under construction. And even after you have a hull, that hull has to be fitted with appropriate modules, such as the Doomsday weapon, jump bridge, and any other modules that suit the pilot's fancy. That can easily run to as much cost as for the hull alone, especially if you fit the kind of modules that can only be found in-world by defeating high-ranking NPCs (or buying them on the market from someone else that has). Hell, just learning to fly one of those monsters can take months of training time, and skill books that themselves carry price tags in the billions of ISK. Only the largest and most powerful organizations in the game, alliances, can actually build or fly titans, and they tend to jealously guard them. That really underscores just how big a loss 75 of them is. Such losses cause tectonic shifts in the balance of power.
- 650REDHAIR 13y agoAnother point to mention is that 1 titan loss is generally reported and talked about for weeks/months after the fact. 75 titans were destroyed in one engagement. edit Also, Titans are mostly around as a deterrent. Both sides are aware the other has them, but I can't think of many engagements (other than a single, usually drunk, titan pilot doing a "drive by" on an unsuspecting target) that escalate to the point of people "dropping" titans on grid.
- erbo 13y ago
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- BlackDeath3 13y agoIt depends on what you expect to find on and get out of this site, I suppose. If you're looking for "Hacker News", you're here. It's still here. It's still stuff that interests hackers and techies in general. Maybe I'm not a "real hacker", but both articles you've highlighted (MS CEO and EVE) are interesting to me. If you're looking for "Startup News", I don't really know what to tell you. Perhaps that's what this place once was (and a lot of it still does cater in that direction), but there's a lot more interesting stuff out there than just that.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- BlackDeath3 13y agoI didn't downvote you. Even if I had the capacity to downvote on HN (and I don't) I probably wouldn't have. I cannot say that your post doesn't warrant downvoting, but I am personally very strict when it comes to downvoting. It's not something that I do lightly. But hey, thanks for the unwarranted assumption. I think that your criticisms are fair, but I don't particularly appreciate the implication that those who vote differently than you don't belong here. Perhaps the type of content being posted here lately is indicative of a trend to you, but the fact remains that a lot of people on this site found the stories to be worthy of a front page spot. That's why they're there, and in the end they're really just a couple of "general news" articles amidst a sea of stuff I wouldn't expect to see on many other sites. I won't tell you not to voice criticism - I think that's the wrong way to go about this. But do something other than compare HN to Site X and make snide remarks about downvotes. I see that you haven't made your own submission lately. Why not start there?
- redthrowaway 13y agoIf you're not interested, don't read it. If you really think it shouldn't be on HN, flag it. Four other people feeling the same way will send it careening off the front page. The least appropriate thing to do is come into the comments and bitch about how HN is turning into x.
- 650REDHAIR 13y agoAs always, Mittani overplays his role in the situation and tries to capture all of the spotlight. It was another "FC" (fleet commander) that decided to go "all in". Here are a couple of Reddit AMAs with the commanders from either side. http://bit.ly/1jcPJfp http://bit.ly/1jcPJfp http://bit.ly/1c0M2Bq http://bit.ly/1c0M2Bq
- jimktrains2 13y agoWhy would you use a URL shortener for reddit links? If you don't like the long ones (don't know why you'd care, but..) you can use reddit's short links. /me hates url shorteners except for exceptional circumstances and feels they miss the entire purpose of a link
- swang 13y agoReread the article. His "all-in" is referring to N3PLs move of bringing in their supercaps/titans. > A big reason N3 has been able to throw its weight around recently is its enormous fleet of titans and super capital ships. When faced with its B-R5RB problem, N3 decided to bring out the Wrecking Ball, the pet name of its extremely powerful fleet. Manny and N3 were hoping CFC would blink. then > "It's like shoving all-in in poker," said Gianturco. "You're shoving all your chips into the middle of the table and hoping the other guy doesn't have better cards than you. Most of the time, the other guy will fold. Except in this case, we came across over the top and took all their shit away."
- Someone 13y agoWeird simulation. You own a starship, have shown to be willing to use it in battle, and somehow lose it to the police once you are behind one payment, even if, presumably, you are guarding it at that moment? Do these things come with a kill switch that the government can operate? Even if it does, how does the government take control of the ship? Remote control? Also, if this game has one faction controlling half the universe, isn't the game effectively over, just like Monopoly often is long over before the last losing player gets eliminated?
- lordCarbonFiber 13y agoTo clear up your points: the missed payment in question was not for a single starship but for the structure that designates control over a system. Simplified, the mechanics are such that so long as this structure exists taking the system is a difficult affair that favors the defender (structures have huge amounts of hp and then a invulnerability timer that gives defenders hours to realize they are being attacked and mount a retaliation). However, fail to put the resources into it and the time consuming step of removing sovereignty from a system is removed and the battle is more equal for both parties. The way EvE is structured lends itself to shifts in the balance of power. Just because one faction is on top today doesn't mean they will hold their position indefinitely. The victors here, for example, come from much humbler roots and, when they entered the game, played a crucial part is annihilating the current ruling power.
- Someone 13y agoAll thanks for the replies. Makes more sense, but I would have put it in as "this defense system needs X amounts of this rare fuel Y each Z" (or, maybe, bring a statistical aspect into it: "the Foo in your bar are wearing out faster than usual. Please make sure you have spare parts"), not as "yes, you have a zillion extremely powerful guns, but if you don't pay rent in time, we, will take your guns away from you.". This, to me, makes this universe feel like some toy system with some all-powerful entity who really is in control (a bit like Q, but less disinterested). Also, what would an all-powerful entity need that money for? It would have to be some accountant-deity to enjoy such regular payments. Or was that apparent glitch that showed the bill as paid to some part of the fun?
- ck2 13y agoISK cannot be legally exported to real-world money, however. It would mean CCP could be treated like a bank and be subject to financial regulations um... isn't every crypto-currency a bank then?
- forgottenpass 13y agoYup. BitCoin is actually the currency, but companies conducting banking operations with it are subject to financial regulation of banks. Look at BitInstant. Dudes didn't follow financial regulations written for traditional currencies when conducting transactions, so Charlie Shrem and Robert Faiella got arrested.
- DerpDerpDerp 13y agoDidn't the BitInstant guys get busted for specific allegations of money laundering? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25919482 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25919482
- daemin 13y agoThat's what a lot of the money handling regulations are about. Hence why you need to declare when you're going through an airport with more than 10k of currency (USD, AUD, etc).
- pyre 13y agoA crypto currency isn't a bank, but people that exchange crypto-currencies for money and back again are subject to financial regulations in most countries. For example, in the US I don't think that they would be considered 'banks,' but they would still be subject to Federal regulations. The point being that if you can convert back and forth you can use it as a way to launder money, so the government forces the exchange to have some sort of 'know your client' procedures in place.
- throwaway_yy2Di 13y agoIceland (where CCP is) treats Bitcoin as a foreign currency, actually. Which the means they've outlawed buying/selling BTC entirely, since all foreign currencies are restricted under the capital controls. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_Bitcoin#Iceland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_Bitcoin#Icelan...
- NDizzle 13y agoEve is probably the best game around to read about rather than play.
- nyrina 13y agoPerhaps. I feel EVE is a bit like reading about politics. In the same way that SC2/LoL is a bit like reading about sports
- Natsu 13y agoEvery story I've seen said this was a 'bug'. How do we know there wasn't a spy who did this deliberately? It's hard for an outsider to tell, but some of the factors behind this appear to be a bit too convenient.
- brazzy 13y agoUnless you postulate a spy within the game company, I don't see how a payment that wasn't made even though multiple people checked it and thought it had been made could be the work of a spy.
- Natsu 13y agoSomeone could've turned off the setting after they checked it or any number of similar things.
- cajuntrep 13y agoThought it said startups... Starships?
- anthracis417 13y agoThe face that launched one thousand shits