I recently participated in the single largest "battle" in the history of Eve.
A grand coalition of alliances gathered more than 1000 players to assault a single system, within which the Lotka Voltera alliance was defending a capital shipyard. That shipyard was in the process of building a Titan, the largest most expensive ship in the game, costing several times more than a player built outpost, and worth several thousand US dollars of minerals and components.
Lotka Volterra was defending with a fleet of more than 250 players, as well as several hundred drones, controlled by the players as separate entities. They had taken a defensive position around the one and only jumpgate leading into their system, and were awaiting our assault.
Unfortunately that's where the story gets dull. Upon jumping several hundred of our fleet into the beseiged system, the server node crashes. For the next several hours, the node crashes repeatedly, in spite of the services provided by one of CCP's server administrators in moving the system to one of their most powerful server nodes.
In the end, the battle was won through sheer stubbornness, when the coalition was willing to out-wait the Lotka volterra alliance. Eventually a few dozen ships were able to take control of the system for long enough to allow capital dreadnoughts to jump in and destroy the Titan in its construction bay.
So in closing, Eve has the largest PvP engagements of any game that I know of, but it still cannot actually _handle_ the scale of fight that the players are willing to engage in. I have been involved in non-lagged fleet activity with numbers of 100 on a side, but usually battles of that size are fairly laggy.
This is an opionion piece and is not touted as news. It could have been labelled better (I had to read to the bottom to prove this) but I presume you would have to pass through an Editorial portal to get to this from the foxnews homepage.
I visited it but did not join in. The "challenge" consisted primarily of determining what size wheels to use (of 3) and how much other weight-adding stuff you could duct-tape or wire-tie to it.
All in all, it's not really worth the trouble unless you have kids who want to try it. it was targetted primarily at children and teens.
My group of friends just ended up watching for a few minutes and then going to the bookstore and the Electronics Boutique.
It was an amazing view from the top of stone mountain. The state park was open charging $7 at the door, but it was worth every penny. After a 1.5 mile hike up the mountain, the view was probably the best you could get within a 100 mile radius of Atlanta. The mountain got us above the worst of the light pollution but you couldn't catch much near the bright orange horizon (on all sides)
I probably saw at least 200 separate meteors and saw 2 simultaneous several times and during one 5 second period saw 5 or 6. The predictions seemed right on target with the shower peaking 5am EST and trailing off near twilight (but still getting one every minute or so). There wasn't a cloud in the sky but the horizon was layered in well lit smog dimming out a few really low ones.
There was one in particular that glowed bright blue-green and travelled at an amazingly slow speed for about 1 second before dying. It reminded me of a dud Roman candle firework, just sputtering its way across the sky instead of flying.
I've gone my entire life (24 years) without ever seeing a meteor until tonight. I was always the unlucky one that was looking away when they happened by chance. I've now marked one more item off of the things to do in my lifetime. Thanks to the slashdot folk for all the details (peak time, etc) that allowed me to see this wonderful event.
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I recently participated in the single largest "battle" in the history of Eve.
A grand coalition of alliances gathered more than 1000 players to assault a single system, within which the Lotka Voltera alliance was defending a capital shipyard. That shipyard was in the process of building a Titan, the largest most expensive ship in the game, costing several times more than a player built outpost, and worth several thousand US dollars of minerals and components.
Lotka Volterra was defending with a fleet of more than 250 players, as well as several hundred drones, controlled by the players as separate entities. They had taken a defensive position around the one and only jumpgate leading into their system, and were awaiting our assault.
Unfortunately that's where the story gets dull. Upon jumping several hundred of our fleet into the beseiged system, the server node crashes. For the next several hours, the node crashes repeatedly, in spite of the services provided by one of CCP's server administrators in moving the system to one of their most powerful server nodes.
In the end, the battle was won through sheer stubbornness, when the coalition was willing to out-wait the Lotka volterra alliance. Eventually a few dozen ships were able to take control of the system for long enough to allow capital dreadnoughts to jump in and destroy the Titan in its construction bay.
So in closing, Eve has the largest PvP engagements of any game that I know of, but it still cannot actually _handle_ the scale of fight that the players are willing to engage in. I have been involved in non-lagged fleet activity with numbers of 100 on a side, but usually battles of that size are fairly laggy.
This is an opionion piece and is not touted as news. It could have been labelled better (I had to read to the bottom to prove this) but I presume you would have to pass through an Editorial portal to get to this from the foxnews homepage.
Examine the Computer Science principle of Big O.
If you have an exponential function any constant multiplier or addition is thrown out of the equation as unimportant.
O(2n) = O(n + k) = O(n)
and so
O((2x)^y) = O(x^y)
The point is that the exponent is so important as to nullify the constant multiplier.
I visited it but did not join in. The "challenge" consisted primarily of determining what size wheels to use (of 3) and how much other weight-adding stuff you could duct-tape or wire-tie to it.
All in all, it's not really worth the trouble unless you have kids who want to try it. it was targetted primarily at children and teens.
My group of friends just ended up watching for a few minutes and then going to the bookstore and the Electronics Boutique.
It was an amazing view from the top of stone mountain. The state park was open charging $7 at the door, but it was worth every penny. After a 1.5 mile hike up the mountain, the view was probably the best you could get within a 100 mile radius of Atlanta. The mountain got us above the worst of the light pollution but you couldn't catch much near the bright orange horizon (on all sides)
I probably saw at least 200 separate meteors and saw 2 simultaneous several times and during one 5 second period saw 5 or 6. The predictions seemed right on target with the shower peaking 5am EST and trailing off near twilight (but still getting one every minute or so). There wasn't a cloud in the sky but the horizon was layered in well lit smog dimming out a few really low ones.
There was one in particular that glowed bright blue-green and travelled at an amazingly slow speed for about 1 second before dying. It reminded me of a dud Roman candle firework, just sputtering its way across the sky instead of flying.
I've gone my entire life (24 years) without ever seeing a meteor until tonight. I was always the unlucky one that was looking away when they happened by chance. I've now marked one more item off of the things to do in my lifetime. Thanks to the slashdot folk for all the details (peak time, etc) that allowed me to see this wonderful event.