A few days ago, the news appeared on the Internet about the largest battle in the game EVE Online, in which ships worth $ 300,000 were destroyed . Many people found it interesting how in some battle in an online game you can lose so much money. But, most of the texts about this epic-scale battle are written in a language in which a person who does not play EVE Online can only understand prepositions and swear words. A couple of days ago I came across a very interesting article where everything that happened was described in a very simple and understandable language.

This post is a translation of this article, plus, I collected a little additional information and beautiful pictures so that I would not be bored. So, if you want to find out what happened there, who eventually lost 300 thousand dollarshow the Russians kicked everyone's asses what it is in the picture, and you are ready to spend a little of your time in the evening, go under the cat.

The biggest virtual battle of all time

EVE Online, CCP Games' main title, the game is very large. Compared with other games, where the simultaneous battle on one map of 64 players is already considered large, in EVE battles can number thousands of pilots and last several days. In July last year, more than five thousand pilots participated in the battle for 6VDT-H , of which 4070 people were maximally online in the same solar system . For comparison, this is about the same as the number of people in one regiment of the US Marine Corps.

The battle for the B-R5RB is by no means the largest in terms of the number of people online, however, the total number of players in it greatly exceeds the battle in 6VDT-H . According to official data from CPP, one way or another took part in the battles7548 pilots.

The battle for the B-R5RB will remain in memory due to the incredible amount of lost ISKs in one battle. ISK, short for Interstellar Kredits, the official currency of EVE Online is a universal measure of everything that happens in the game. For ISK, they buy ships, ammunition, materials and everything else. That is, each ship has a certain cost in ISK. The average earnings of players can fluctuate very much, but, for example, 100 million ISKs are earned quite easily in an hour of active play. The battle for the B-R5RB surpassed the previous loss record in one battle, when in the so-called St. Valentine's Day Massacre, losses amounted to 1 trillion ISK , at least 11 times .


The number of players in the system. Zero peaks - lack of data.

Zeros and sovereignty

In EVE Online, all the big battles take place in the so-called Null Security Space . Absolute anarchy reigns in Zeros - you can attack anyone for any reason, and there will be nothing for you. To survive in such an environment, players are united in groups that are called corporations in the game. When corporations began to form larger alliances, CCP introduced the concept of an alliance . And alliances, in turn, are united in coalitions , the total number of players in which amounts to thousands.

At Scratches, alliances are sovereign units(sovereign actors) in the current anarchist state. They can own space and build space stations in the systems under their control. They may declare war (formally or informally) to other alliances. These acts of sovereignty are not accessible to corporations, no matter how large they are, and coalitions do not exist in the framework of game mechanics at all, but are just an agreement within the framework of alliances. But, nevertheless, the decisions to declare war are mainly taken at the level of the coalition, and not by the leaders of the alliances.



In total, there are 2719 in Zerossystems that are available for colonization. Each of them is assigned a random alphanumeric name, for example, 6VDT-H or B-R5RB. Some regions and systems are more profitable than others. For many years, the main income of the alliances was the income from the extraction of minerals on the moons, which are used to build ships. But, recently, developers have changed the game mechanics, and made the extraction of minerals from the moons a much less profitable occupation.

This led to the emergence of a rental business. The owner of the system can rent it to someone else, who, in turn, for a fixed fee, will himself extract resources in this system. What is not game mechanics, but rather, is regulated by the military authority of the alliance leasing the system. With the rise of feudalism, every system has become valuable.

Casus belli *

* lat. casus belli is a legal term in Roman law: a formal reason for declaring war.

The current war, called Halloween War, began when Russian alliances joined forces to attack the coalition known as the N3PL . Once N3PL fought against one of the alliances in the Russian coalition, SOLAR , and ousted it from occupied territory. One of the N3PL alliances , Nulli Secunda , fought almost two years ago on the side of the alliance from the Russian coalition, Against All Authorities , and after that was left to its own devices. Needless to say, the atmosphere was saturated with hostility.

Immediately after the attack, another large coalition,The Clusterfuck Coalition (CFC) , announced that it intends to transfer forces to the galactic east, to promote the Russian bloc as a "neutral third party." Earlier this summer, the N3PL did the same when they fought with the TEST Alliance Please Ignore against the CFC . Then, one of the leaders of the N3PL coalition , Progodlegend, said that the purpose of the existence of N3 is the destruction of CFC . In addition, the N3PL has taken over the rivals of the Goonswarm Federation , which is part of the CFC . Needless to say, the atmosphere was saturated with hostility.

Mid-December, leaderCFC , The Mittani, said that CFC is fully entering the war, which means that a fleet of capitals and supercapitals is going into battle. By this point, already most of the alliances living in Zeros were completely mired in the war. Another group, Providence Bloc , will become allies of the N3PL , but will not be particularly involved in hostilities. The positional war began.

The war in the virtual space

The game mechanics of capturing the sovereignty of the system are rather complex and slow. To do this, you need to lock the system and destroy the structures in it that belong to the current owner of the system. Infrastructure Hubs (Infrastructure Hubs or I-Hubs) are tens of millions of hit points. Stations, which are the most powerful signs of sovereignty in the system, have hundreds of millions of hit points. Each of them enters the reinforcement phase after a successful attack: I-Hub for a day, station for two days. After exiting the reinforcements, they need to be attacked again to enter the armor reinforcement phase. And only on the third successful attack can they be destroyed. The I-Hub must be destroyed in order to attack the Territorial Control Unit, a sort of alliance flag hoisted in the system. After Territorial Control Unitwill be destroyed, the system becomes "defenseless", and any other alliance can put its flag. For the Territorial Control Unit to turn on, you need to wait 8 hours, which leads to fierce battles of alliances trying to destroy the alien flag while it is inoperative, while protecting its own.

Here, the construction of capital and supercapital class ships becomes an important element, since only these monsters can give out enough damage needed to quickly destroy structures that provide sovereignty. Two hundred capital ships can cause the same damage in five minutes as four hundred battleship ships in half an hour. It was capital and supercapital that dominated the battlefield in the B-R5RB.

To understand the difference between capital, supercapital and subcapital, first you need to understand the difference in their production and use.

From the translator: the relative sizes of different ships can be seen in this video.


Consider Dominix , the most used battleship in Halloween War at CFC.


It is easy to manufacture. If a player wants to collect 10 such ships, he simply extracts 10 times more minerals than they need to build one ship, and sets the production according to the drawing to 10 cycles. One player can theoretically manage ten production slots at a time, so if he has 10 Dominix drawings, he will need 35 hours to make 100 such ships.

CFC's main dreadnought class ship is Naglfar .



To build a ship of capital class, and even more so of supercapital class, it is necessary to produce a large number of different parts. To build a dreadnought you need230 parts of eleven different types . So if one player uses 10 production slots, he can build a dreadnought in about 14 days .

As you noticed, the dreadnought has an order of magnitude more hit points than Dominix. It can deal damage 8 times more at a distance of 2 times more. Also, capital class ships have jump drives with which they can jump for several light years directly to the desired system. The fleet of capitals can cover the distance, which subcapital will take more than 15 minutes to complete, in a few minutes. Nyx

super-careers have been used extensively on the battlefield since they deliver the most damage.



Just like the dreadnought, the super-hero is assembled from the details. But, to build one super-career, you need an order of magnitude more details than for the dreadnought - 2300 . To produce all these details, one player needs to spend a month , plus, another 20 days to build the ship itself. The last 20 days pose a particular risk, as supercapital can only be built in a special assembly workshop, Capital Ship Assembly Array, which can only be located near the base (starbase) in outer space, and is not protected from attacks. By analogy with hubs and stations, a successful base attack will put it into reinforcement mode for two days. If, after this, the alliance that owns the base cannot prevent its destruction, then the ship under construction will also be destroyed along with all the materials.

Unlike dreadnought and titans, for super damage, super-career use drones and fighter bombers. The damage from the turrets greatly depends on the distance to the target, since the guns do the more damage, the closer the target is to them. Drones, fighter bombers, do the same amount of damage, regardless of distance. The minus of drones is that they still need to reach the target, and they can be destroyed by the enemy.

The younger brother of the super-career, the keriere, can use the dron and ordinary drones fighter used on subcapital, which can do much less damage than the droner bomber fighter, but unlike other capitals and super-capitals, this allows Keriers to easily cope with small ships.

The Avatar- class titanium ship was actively used by both sides in the battle for the B-R5RB.



It is the largest ship in EVE Online. The 15-kilometer ship stands out clearly on the battlefield. To assemble it, you need almost 7000 components . The production of which requires such costs that one person is not able to build titanium, but if such a person were found, it would take him 2 and a half months. After all the components are ready, the ship takes 40 days to build . Like Kerier, it is built in outer space and can be destroyed.

Titan itself is a symbol of the sovereignty and power of the alliance, just like the dreadnought in the first half of the last century. The Capital Ship Assembly Array can only be installed on a base in an alliance-controlled territory; this cannot be done anywhere.

Titan on the battlefield is useful not with turret fires, the damage from which is comparable to much cheaper dreadnoughts, but with the presence of a “ doomsday weapon ”"(doomsday weapon). Each shot of it costs 30 million ISK in fuel equivalent, and you can shoot from it only every 10 minutes. But the damage of 3 million per shot is worth it. This weapon can only be shot at capital class ships, but one his shot may well kill an unprepared Keriere or dreadnought. Many titans coordinating the target of the attack can destroy another titan in seconds.



Also, the titans are useful outside the battlefield. Jump drives are installed on the capitals , which allow them to move around without the gates of the system. On titans, you can install the jump bridge module, which allows you to transfer subcapital over long distances, just like jump drives.

Battle ship equipment

The cost in pictures is just the cost of production. Before entering the battle, the player must install the necessary modules in the building. They can be divided into guns, modules that improve guns, and modules that increase ship survivability. The number of hit points in the pictures is the hit points of ships ready for battle with all the necessary modules, which can cost from several million to tens of millions for subcapital, hundreds of millions for capitals, and from billions to tens of billions for titans and super-career. Some modules are produced by analogy with ships - the player extracts the necessary minerals and produces modules in the factory using the necessary drawings. But, the best modules rarely fall out of killed even more rare NPCs.(Non-player Character), which are then sold on the market for incredible money. For example, the cost of a fully equipped titanium lost by The Kan was more than double the cost of a new ship.

Reason for the battle

As with the dreadnoughts at the beginning of the 20th century, mass battles involving a large number of titans are quite rare, but in recent times have been happening more often. But the battle of super -capitals on a B-R5RB scale has never happened before, as alliances usually try to protect their strategic assets. In previous battles between CFC / RUS (Russian alliances) and N3PL , the latter always had an advantage in the number of supercapital. For example, a previous attempt to confront the N3PL supercapital fleet in the HED-GP system led to the server being so overloaded that some players could control ships, while others sat and looked at the black screen. As a result of CFC / RUSsuffered a crushing defeat, losing 85 dreadnoughts. Proper planning N3PL paid off in full.

But, this time, the battle for the B-R5RB was not planned; rather, an accidental battle turned into a decisive battle, just as it happened at the Battle of Gettysburg. Exactly one year after another massive battle, the Battle of Asakai , one of the alliance corporations Nulli Secunda forgot to pay sovereignty tax (game mechanics of taking money from the population), and sovereignty in the B-R5RB system was reset. Someone from the Nulli Secunda alliance even claimed that the sovereignty was reset as a result of a bug in the game. Usually, nothing special would have happened, but the B-R5RB system was the main Pandemic Legion alliance system.. The station in the system was overflowed with resources for hundreds of billions of ISKs, if not more, and if CFC / RUS took over the station, these resources would become inaccessible to the Pandemic Legion. At the same time, this does not mean that the conquerors will be able to take all these resources to themselves, but the enemy will also not be able to use them.

The user forceLain writes in the comments: “After the transfer of sovereignty to the hands of this corporation, the checkbox“ automatic payment for sovereignty ”was reset (by default). After the transfer of sovereignty into the hands of the corporation, this check must be turned on so that claims are automatically debited from the wallet of the corporation at x-hour. "Was this checkbox not specially displayed or was it really a fakap of the people responsible for this? Another question."

Fight started

Nulli Secunda immediately rushed to begin the installation process of the Territorial Claim Unitto return the system (recall that it takes 8 hours). Since they controlled the I-Hub and the station in the system, if they had managed to turn on the TCU, everything would have returned back, and in order to take over the system, the enemy alliance would have to complete the entire operation described earlier with the destruction of the stations and waiting several days. But, the Russian block hastened to take advantage of the situation. Left without sovereignty, the station in the B-R5RB after the attack would not have entered the reinforcement phase, and could be captured in one approach. Around 14:00 UTC on January 27th, RUS / CFC transferred the capital fleet to the system to capture the station, so that none of the N3PL could dock with it. Which would mean that the N3PL support ships would have to fly from other systems, and they would not be able to quickly repair or change ships during the battle. After that,RAZOR of CFC, RUS focused on installing its Territorial Claim Unit and destroying the TCU, guarded by Nulli Secunda. If they had not succeeded, the station could have been reclaimed as easily as it had been conquered.

An N3PL response followed immediately. Using IRC, XMPP, and Skype, N3PL leaders quickly notified players of what had happened. As soon as a sufficient number of players entered the game, the huge N3PL fleet of capitals / supercapitals made a jump in the B-R5RB at a distance of a shot from the fleet of Russian alliances, and at 16:00 the battle began. N3PL went all-in.

EVE Online has such a feature that as soon as the battle becomes too large for it (which happens quite often) for the server to cope with it, the time in the system in which the battle takes place slows down. It is calledTime dilation(time dilation). Big fights can quickly slow down to a minimum value of 10%. That is, for players in the B-R5RB, only one second of playing time passed in 10 seconds of real time. This effect allows you to quickly pull up reinforcements from other systems, since in the battle of real time that it took to collect an additional fleet, only 6 minutes passed in the battle. Each of the parties used all communication channels so that as many people as possible logged in and flew to fight. Capital at a distance of dozens of light years began to gather in groups for transfer to the B-R5RB. Surely, some players even reactivated their accounts just to join the battle. Another feature of Time Dilation is that the 8 hours required to turn on the Territorial Claim Unit are considered in real time, not in the game room. So, at 22:20 the system would come under the control of the RAZOR alliance. At the same time, Time Dilation makes the battle even longer, because the battle was still in full swing, when players from Western Europe and then from America began to enter.



While the main battle between the capital fleets took place in the B-R5RB , the CFC hastened to block the approaches to the system. Subcapital fleets headed to I-NGI8 and GXK-7F , other major N3PL systems, to intercept reinforcements. This greatly helped RUS / CFC, as Interdictor and Heavy Interdictor class ships needed to prevent supercapital jump drives from escaping the battlefield were destroyed by CFC fleets from Dominix ships on the way to battle. Plus, the partial transfer of battles to other systems helped offload the Eve Online server.

CFC / RUS gained superiority

Around 10:00 p.m. UTC, Americans from the east coast began to enter the game and join the battle. This was a turning point in the battle, because the CFC had more players in this area than the N3PL. Battles are not always won by numerical superiority, but usually this is what happens. Having gained a numerical superiority, the RUS / CFC capital fleet stopped exchanging losses, and began to destroy more ships than lose. At 22:00 UTC, the number of lost titans was 18 for N3PL and 7 for RUS / CFC. By 23:00 UTC, the CFC / RUS capital fleet destroyed 32 more enemy titans , losing only 5 during this time.

At 3:20 UTC on January 28th, N3PL commanders issued a retreat order. Now the goal was to save as much expensive and difficult to replace supercapital as possible, donating ordinary capital, if necessary. Also, at that moment, they realized that they could no longer destroy RUS / CFC supercapitals, since they did not have the critical mass of titans needed to use doomsday weapons at the same time to destroy the ship before it was repaired, that is, “healed” . They switched to the Dreadnought, trying to carry as many enemy ships as possible with them to the grave. The last RUS / CFC titan destroyed that day was the Chango Atacama ship from the Circle-Of-Two alliance.

Thanks to the spies (and espionage is a huge part of the EVE Online meta-game), the RUS / CFC commanders learned that the N3PL were about to retreat, and ordered the pilots to transfer to Interdictor and Heavy Interdictor class ships to prevent the N3PL ships from escaping from the battlefield. The superiority of CFC in the number of players and the number of subcapital ships played a key role here, since the only capital that could easily destroy these small ships was a rather feeble Kerier. Huge turrets on dreadnought and titans are difficult to get on small and nimble boats, imagine how the battleship USS Iowa is trying to get on a fast boat from its 16-inch guns. The drone bomber fighter has the same problem. The only option for the N3PL to deal with these ships was to use keriers that can control drones of comparable size.



But, they were not enough. Salvation for the remaining N3PL capitals and supercapitals would only come at 11:00 UTC on January 28, when the EVE Online servers shut down for daily scheduled maintenance. At this point, all players will be forcibly disconnected from the server, and their ships will disappear. If the pilot does not want to log in again after turning on the servers, his ship will not appear in the game and will not be visible to other players. So, the battle lasted until the shutdown. The last supercapital lost that day was the Nyx class ship, owned by Craedda from the Kadeshi alliance, which was destroyed at 10:40 UTC. The CFC / RUS fleet continued to kill enemy capital until the last moment when everyone was disconnected from the server. As expected, the N3PL ordered their pilots not to log in again after the most expensive battle of all time the existence of EVE was so abruptly interrupted.

Losses: magnitude and consequences

CCP posted a battle post on their blog . The numbers are simply amazing. 75 titans were destroyed , of which CFC / RUS lost 16, and N3PL 59. In addition to this, 13 superkeriers, 370 dreadnoughts and 123 kerieres were killed. A CCP official said that the losses amounted to 11 trillion ISK . In comparison, the previous most expensive battle was the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, or the Battle of Uemon, in which 12 titans were destroyed and total losses amounted to 1 trillion. The battle for Uemon was a turning point in the RUS / PL war against the now defunct Northern Coalition, the group that held north Zero EVE Online for many years.

Around these losses, translated into real money, there is now a lot of hype in the news. The amounts quoted are both correct and incorrect. CCP sells cards to pay for playing time, which can be sold for ISK in the in-game market. At current prices, $ 1 is equal to 35 million ISK . To get 11 trillion ISK, you will need to buy cards somewhere in the 300-330 thousand dollars and sell them in the domestic market. However, a one-time sale of so many cards would ruin the market, just like selling a huge amount of stock on Wall Street.

Lost ships will not be easy to recover, even with the right amount of ISK. Of course, many alliances have reserve capital and supercapital on inactive accounts. But, it may take a year to replace the destroyed titans with new ones, because alliances will most likely prefer not to risk using the vulnerable Capital Ship Assembly Array during the war. After such a crushing defeat, it is obvious that the N3PL will continue to be more careful with its remaining titans.

Another problem of N3PL is the inaccessible resources that remained at the station in B-R5RB, estimated at 200 billion ISK.. This is not only the property of the alliances, but also the personal belongings of the players. Of course, the Pandemic Legion will try to get these resources from there. Of course, the most “direct” way to do this is to take over the system. The roundabout way is to use spies to infiltrate the alliance with the rights to dock with the station and quietly take everything out of there. In any case, the players responsible for logistics in the Pandemic Legion will have to work hard to organize the construction of new ships, to obtain fuel, ammunition and modules.

The consequences of such a battle are very difficult to predict. One of the rules of EVE Online sovereign wars is that morality dies first. The war in EVE Online is a test of willpower. When the will is broken, the further process of seizing sovereignty is fairly calm. CFC / RUS already plans to capture other systems, sending orders to its players. If the N3PL fails to withstand these operations, this will mean that morality is suppressed and the war will end soon. If attempts by CFC / RUS to seize other systems fail, then the positional war will continue. In any case, the battle for the B-R5RB will go down in the record books as the largest and most expensive virtual battle of all time.

From translator

To perpetuate such a large-scale event, CCP decided to erect a monument in the system in the form of destroyed titans.

You enter the Titans Cemetery, a silent monument to one of the greatest, most brutal, most catastrophic battles that the New Eden world has ever seen. Stop your ship, capsuleer, distract for a moment from the bustle of this world, and think about your imminent death.

This monument was erected on January 31st.

Figures

• Battle Duration: 21 hours
• 7548 pilots took part in the battle, of which 6058 were directly in the B-R5RB, and 2670 of them were online at the same time.
• 717 corporations, 55 alliances

And many more beautiful pictures.

Instead of a conclusion

The world of EVE Online never ceases to amaze me. It seems to be virtual ships, but the experiences and material losses are quite tangibly real. And, just as in life, no matter how huge a corporation you build, some Vasya will forget to pay his electricity bill, and you will end up with hundreds of thousands of dollars.

PS Thanks for the typo messages!