I'm not involved with BoB (well, unless you count being shot at occasionally) but there's a lot of truth in what you say. BoB have an awful lot of players who are well skilled, dedicated, and aware of the need for logistics and industry. I would agree with you, that BoB would be in exactly the same place. Dominating. Not because of blueprints (although I'm fairly sure BoB holds a good selection of T2 BPOs) but because they've the drive to 'push on' and get out of bed at 2 in the morning to finish a POS siege:).
When I go out PvPing, I see Minmatar and Gallente ships heavily represented. Some Caldari, but not all that many. From experience I'm crosstraining from Minmatar from Caldari because the Caldari ships are 'limited' in terms of PvP options.
They get to shoot you back? I managed to catch up with the person who podded me first time, nearly 2 years ago, quite recently. It was very satisfying to settle _that_ score. Incidentally, regaining security status is pretty difficult as far as I can tell, especially doing so 'safely' (it's a bit faster deep into 0.0, but that has it's own risks)
It's not. The major source of cash in EVE is ship insurance. Mine minerals, build a raven, insure for 30mil, explode it for 100mil. Net inflation of 70mil. There will always be buyers and sellers, but as the sources of cash are climbing, so too are the prices of stuff in EVE for the supply limited items (e.g. T2 and faction)
I started an alt some time back to test this. I spent a month or so, of training to fly a rifter and a thrasher, and proceeded to go pirating. I did very well indeed, and whilst I was _mostly_ catching people in the 1-6 month age range (6x my age) I did run into a few people who were in the 1-2 year range. And killed 'em in a thrasher. (Although to be fair, I did have to ask another 2 month old character to help me with one, as I couldn't break the tank on his ship).
If a 2yr old character goes toe to toe with a 2 month old character, in a 1v1 with the same ship/fittings, then the 2 year old character will win, due to simple maths. If however, the 2 month old character fits their Tech I brain, then they will be able to find a ship and fitting that's effective and cost effective and will beat the other player. Every ship has weaknesses. Occasionally you'll find you don't have enough power to bust through their tank, but you can almost always engineer a situation where you can attack them with impugnity.
You're absolutely spot on. Alliance politics is pretty much all in character, and... well there's a lot of people involved in that scene. There's currently a big war going on in the south, and the lines have been drawn for roleplay reasons mostly. (I know they're roleplay, because I've been to several events where EVE players from multiple different factions were present, and they weren't trying to kill each other)
I've always found staying in character in EVE to be very easy.
After all, the only place where the 'OC' part in EVE breaks from the 'IC' is the transition between pod and PC - you're controlling stuff using interfaces in the form out mouse and keyboard and monitor, rather than hardwired into your pod, but the rest might was well be in character. And from there, roleplaying can become pretty easy, since you're already 'pretty much' in character. It's not as high profile as it might otherwise appear, but it's very definitely present. You'll find there's a _lot_ of people following racial animosities as defined by the in game literature. And quite a few more 'breaking from it' but almost all are aware of it.
My initial months are now numbering 25, and I'm still not seeing that. I don't 'hardcore PvP' (although I am outin 0.0 and do fight other players) and the game's far from boring with a huge alliance war raging.
Well, the physics question's one that comes up a lot.
Did you ever play elite 2? It was a very good case for why 'realistic physics' makes bad gameplay.
As for security and investment, players can, and have built outposts out in 0.0. They're about 25billion each, and a whole lot of effort. And they do so because there's stuff there that makes it worth their time. I run a refinery outpost about 25jumps out of empire, and I can tell you for a fact that at 10% mineral tax, it takes 2-4billion a week. In 'lawless' space. Does that answer the question?
I'm also not so sure you're right about the highsec pockets - you can get almost everywhere in 'highsec empire' as far as I'm aware, safely. It's just the 'shortcuts' that are lowsec and pirate infested. Risk and reward - risk a dangerous trip for a faster journey.
PvP isn't just blowing up other people's ships. EVE is _all_ competitive. Everything you've ever bought was put there by another player. You get a fair number of empire huggers, but... well I'm sure you can see the number of '0.0 players' in various in game alliances. Alliance warfare is about logistics, finance, industry, politics, morale, and then and only then does 'killing other players' skill come into it.
0.0 is a rich plum, which is ready to be picked by whoever has the will to do so. However in order to get the best stuff, you have to compete for it. I don't see them changing, overly, how things are in 0.0, although I do hope they do something about the horrible state of warfare.
I'm involved in running an alliance. The fact you have "real" stuff going on in terms of diplomacy, politics, financial management, industry etc. is what makes EVE really great. Your alliance is deciding in terms of whether resources are better allocated towards carrier construction, a mothership or titan, or maybe aiming to grab a T2 BPO. And these decisions make a real difference to the game world.
As a participant in the war in question (in one of the 'supporting cast' alliances) I have to say I'm increasingly getting disgusted with the 'state of war' in EVE.
Alliance warfare seems to be more and more about who can effectively manage lag, logins, AFK cloakers, petitions for re-imbursement POS bugs, node crashing and a whole bunch of stuff that makes the 'acutal' conflict nearly impossible.
I'm not really wanting to point fingers at either side here, because I've seen several parties on either side doing these kinds of things. However I also know that if one side 'misbehaves' then the other pretty much has to unless they want to lose the fight
The 'don't fly in fleets if you don't want lag' is very true, but... well when a fleet's absolutely necessary as a counter to their fleet, that's not much an option. So you end up with 200+ pilots sitting a a POS getting bored.
Or maybe they realise what's important. Spawning blueprints as in the alleged incident, who cares? Cheating and corruption's only relevant in how it affects my gameplay. I don't care that the events team spawn tech 2 fitted ships to do events for example. It was naughty, and shouldn't have happened. They responded correctly in their moves to address the problem, but it's hardly the end of the world.
I like the fact that there's a 'real loss'. It means it's actually possible to defeat someone strategically. If a pirate's harassing your mining operations, kill him and he's lost his ship. He may have a spare, but there's not many who keep a larger number of spares with Tech 2 fittings.
This of course, becomes increasingly relevant in alliance warfare, or 'group' PvP - it's possible to 'win'. (and lose) which makes the PvP so much better.
Probably some corporate hack who's donated a lot of money to some political candidate in the US and doesn't really understand the total coolness of solar system wide TLDs.
DRM is the 'media industry' trying to hold on to the idea that information is a finite resource, that you buy.
It's just not true any more. You can still go and buy a CD with the lastest stuff on it, but... well, MP3s are infinitely replicatable at minimal cost to the distributor.
DRM is giving a locked box and the keys to it. You can make the key and box as complicated as you like (and lets face it, they probably have) and it's _still_ not going to work, as long as I can point a camera at my display screen, or sit a mic next to my loudspeaker.
iPOD (And their ilk) have demonstrated that there _is_ a market for easily accessible music, with a pricetag. What the 'media thugs' _should_ be doing is concentrating on implementing a new model for distribution of media, rather than trying to enforce the unenforcible. I'd be prepared to bet they'd get a _lot_ more sales if 'everything' was distributed as a function of bandwith needed to transfer + a small license fee. Price per unit down, but with negligable manufacturing and shipping costs, free publicity and 'easy access' I'd be of the opinion that it'd pay for itself.
Of course, it'd be nigh on impossible to turn back the tide once the floodgates open, so they probably never will.
Technically, TCP/IP functions at any latency. You can do asynchronous communication with any amount of latency - your FTP session (assuming the server on the end doesn't close the session) will run just fine, provided you've got big enough TCP window sizes. Of course, the initial SYN-ACK three way handshake will take an hour with 20 mins each way, but writing a download manager that copes and just gets on with it wouldn't be too hard.
You would have to configure the remote server appropriately though, since most firewalls and hosts work in seconds for establishing a TCP/IP session. If I recall correctly, the default on checkpoint firewall was 50s to establish the SYN-ACK.
And you beat me to it on posting the RFC1149 reference. So much for my attempt at cheap karmawhoring.
RFC 1149 already documents how IP can be implemented with high latency low reliability environments. You don't really need to be re-inventing the wheel. Although I'll admit, a spacegoing pigeon would present an engineering challenge, so you might just want to stick with something a little more conventional like radio. But you can probably adapt the latency part...
No OS is ever 'truly secure'. You get to a middle ground, where you can do most of the stuff you want to, without making it too easy to break into.
Thing is, all this exploit/patch cycles are just putting out the fires you get by living next to a volcano.
The real problem with Windows is that it started from a single user 'integrated' environment. Unix had the luxury of being pretty much multi-user from day one. So the design model reflects things like concurrent access, and has the security foundation that are just vital for that to happen.
Unix is fairly modular kernel shell GUI application. And when you have that sort of thing, you end up with something that's _fairly_ easy to keep straight, and you keep things that need to 'do stuff' in their sandbox.
Windows is getting better, but I still get the impression that that's more because it's covered in sticky plasters sealing up the holes.
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I'm not involved with BoB (well, unless you count being shot at occasionally) but there's a lot of truth in what you say. BoB have an awful lot of players who are well skilled, dedicated, and aware of the need for logistics and industry. I would agree with you, that BoB would be in exactly the same place. Dominating. Not because of blueprints (although I'm fairly sure BoB holds a good selection of T2 BPOs) but because they've the drive to 'push on' and get out of bed at 2 in the morning to finish a POS siege :).
When I go out PvPing, I see Minmatar and Gallente ships heavily represented. Some Caldari, but not all that many. From experience I'm crosstraining from Minmatar from Caldari because the Caldari ships are 'limited' in terms of PvP options.
They get to shoot you back? I managed to catch up with the person who podded me first time, nearly 2 years ago, quite recently. It was very satisfying to settle _that_ score. Incidentally, regaining security status is pretty difficult as far as I can tell, especially doing so 'safely' (it's a bit faster deep into 0.0, but that has it's own risks)
It's not. The major source of cash in EVE is ship insurance. Mine minerals, build a raven, insure for 30mil, explode it for 100mil. Net inflation of 70mil. There will always be buyers and sellers, but as the sources of cash are climbing, so too are the prices of stuff in EVE for the supply limited items (e.g. T2 and faction)
ASCN disbanded, ISS still numbers about 800 pilots. It's a far cry from full strength, but it's still not that sloppy.
If a 2yr old character goes toe to toe with a 2 month old character, in a 1v1 with the same ship/fittings, then the 2 year old character will win, due to simple maths. If however, the 2 month old character fits their Tech I brain, then they will be able to find a ship and fitting that's effective and cost effective and will beat the other player. Every ship has weaknesses. Occasionally you'll find you don't have enough power to bust through their tank, but you can almost always engineer a situation where you can attack them with impugnity.
You're absolutely spot on. Alliance politics is pretty much all in character, and ... well there's a lot of people involved in that scene. There's currently a big war going on in the south, and the lines have been drawn for roleplay reasons mostly. (I know they're roleplay, because I've been to several events where EVE players from multiple different factions were present, and they weren't trying to kill each other)
After all, the only place where the 'OC' part in EVE breaks from the 'IC' is the transition between pod and PC - you're controlling stuff using interfaces in the form out mouse and keyboard and monitor, rather than hardwired into your pod, but the rest might was well be in character. And from there, roleplaying can become pretty easy, since you're already 'pretty much' in character. It's not as high profile as it might otherwise appear, but it's very definitely present. You'll find there's a _lot_ of people following racial animosities as defined by the in game literature. And quite a few more 'breaking from it' but almost all are aware of it.
My initial months are now numbering 25, and I'm still not seeing that. I don't 'hardcore PvP' (although I am outin 0.0 and do fight other players) and the game's far from boring with a huge alliance war raging.
Did you ever play elite 2? It was a very good case for why 'realistic physics' makes bad gameplay.
As for security and investment, players can, and have built outposts out in 0.0. They're about 25billion each, and a whole lot of effort. And they do so because there's stuff there that makes it worth their time. I run a refinery outpost about 25jumps out of empire, and I can tell you for a fact that at 10% mineral tax, it takes 2-4billion a week. In 'lawless' space. Does that answer the question?
I'm also not so sure you're right about the highsec pockets - you can get almost everywhere in 'highsec empire' as far as I'm aware, safely. It's just the 'shortcuts' that are lowsec and pirate infested. Risk and reward - risk a dangerous trip for a faster journey.
0.0 is a rich plum, which is ready to be picked by whoever has the will to do so. However in order to get the best stuff, you have to compete for it. I don't see them changing, overly, how things are in 0.0, although I do hope they do something about the horrible state of warfare.
I'm involved in running an alliance. The fact you have "real" stuff going on in terms of diplomacy, politics, financial management, industry etc. is what makes EVE really great. Your alliance is deciding in terms of whether resources are better allocated towards carrier construction, a mothership or titan, or maybe aiming to grab a T2 BPO. And these decisions make a real difference to the game world.
If other parties are luckier with T2 BPOs, isn't that cheating again? I'm not convinced that'd redress the balance any.
Alliance warfare seems to be more and more about who can effectively manage lag, logins, AFK cloakers, petitions for re-imbursement POS bugs, node crashing and a whole bunch of stuff that makes the 'acutal' conflict nearly impossible.
I'm not really wanting to point fingers at either side here, because I've seen several parties on either side doing these kinds of things. However I also know that if one side 'misbehaves' then the other pretty much has to unless they want to lose the fight
The 'don't fly in fleets if you don't want lag' is very true, but ... well when a fleet's absolutely necessary as a counter to their fleet, that's not much an option. So you end up with 200+ pilots sitting a a POS getting bored.
Yes. They had a prototype at fanfest. Of course, it's all subject to change, but it was looking pretty good.
This of course, becomes increasingly relevant in alliance warfare, or 'group' PvP - it's possible to 'win'. (and lose) which makes the PvP so much better.
The 'which timezone' should people be quoting just got a whole lot worse though. What's the GMT offset again?
Probably some corporate hack who's donated a lot of money to some political candidate in the US and doesn't really understand the total coolness of solar system wide TLDs.
It's just not true any more. You can still go and buy a CD with the lastest stuff on it, but ... well, MP3s are infinitely replicatable at minimal cost to the distributor.
DRM is giving a locked box and the keys to it. You can make the key and box as complicated as you like (and lets face it, they probably have) and it's _still_ not going to work, as long as I can point a camera at my display screen, or sit a mic next to my loudspeaker.
iPOD (And their ilk) have demonstrated that there _is_ a market for easily accessible music, with a pricetag. What the 'media thugs' _should_ be doing is concentrating on implementing a new model for distribution of media, rather than trying to enforce the unenforcible. I'd be prepared to bet they'd get a _lot_ more sales if 'everything' was distributed as a function of bandwith needed to transfer + a small license fee. Price per unit down, but with negligable manufacturing and shipping costs, free publicity and 'easy access' I'd be of the opinion that it'd pay for itself.
Of course, it'd be nigh on impossible to turn back the tide once the floodgates open, so they probably never will.
Technically, TCP/IP functions at any latency. You can do asynchronous communication with any amount of latency - your FTP session (assuming the server on the end doesn't close the session) will run just fine, provided you've got big enough TCP window sizes. Of course, the initial SYN-ACK three way handshake will take an hour with 20 mins each way, but writing a download manager that copes and just gets on with it wouldn't be too hard. You would have to configure the remote server appropriately though, since most firewalls and hosts work in seconds for establishing a TCP/IP session. If I recall correctly, the default on checkpoint firewall was 50s to establish the SYN-ACK. And you beat me to it on posting the RFC1149 reference. So much for my attempt at cheap karmawhoring.
RFC 1149 already documents how IP can be implemented with high latency low reliability environments. You don't really need to be re-inventing the wheel. Although I'll admit, a spacegoing pigeon would present an engineering challenge, so you might just want to stick with something a little more conventional like radio. But you can probably adapt the latency part...
LAN gaming, and the live action version. Gimme my boom stick.
No OS is ever 'truly secure'. You get to a middle ground, where you can do most of the stuff you want to, without making it too easy to break into. Thing is, all this exploit/patch cycles are just putting out the fires you get by living next to a volcano. The real problem with Windows is that it started from a single user 'integrated' environment. Unix had the luxury of being pretty much multi-user from day one. So the design model reflects things like concurrent access, and has the security foundation that are just vital for that to happen. Unix is fairly modular kernel shell GUI application. And when you have that sort of thing, you end up with something that's _fairly_ easy to keep straight, and you keep things that need to 'do stuff' in their sandbox. Windows is getting better, but I still get the impression that that's more because it's covered in sticky plasters sealing up the holes.
Almost certainly not. Or at least, they've got good grounds to argue against it during their appeal.
So all they have to do, if it looks like they're going to lose, is just drag their feet.
At least it's a _step_ in the right direction.