EVE Online - RIP VileRat

[Eanae]

I saw your name in Zulu and was wondering if it's the same person.

Most of the supers got out because we were focusing on Titans but I think we killed 15ish supers. Insurance on one of my dreads ran out mid fight and I was really hoping he wouldn't die. Got lucky that we (BL) only lost like 3 or 4 dreads and a carrier.

I hang around Zulu because I'm friends with Bob and Doublestep. Bob is who has my account at the moment. Would probably try and get into PL if I came back.

[Tekki]

Test is boring.

I think I need a new home

[Cantih]

http://cdn1.eveonline.com/www/newssy...itanomachy.png

And CCP's ARR
http://community.eveonline.com/news/...ath-of-b-r5rb/

[The Stig]

That article does sure make it sound fun, especially I just love the fact people are called up similar to campers in FFXI calling their tanks to get to Tiamat for example to fight it (though on a completely different scale). I just like all the logistics behind it and the "corporation" feel

Anyways, how does piloting a titan feel? Watching some videos doesn't give me a good feel for the gameplay. I was wondering whether piloting one (given its capabilities) is any similar (if on a tiny scale) to piloting a ship on FTL (Faster than Light) game where you have to micromanage a lot of sub systems, but as it's a Titan, the scale is several times multiplied.

I just love the idea of everyone knowing the fact building one is such hard work and that not everyone has one (if I understand correctly), and being called into a war while offline knowing you're one of the few that possesses a Titan must feel exciting and good (and probably the excitement/depression of losing one).

Wiki's description seems to make it sound they are more for support (logistical) than an all out dps, but I presume it's possible to gear them to be somewhat destructive.

And is it right to assume that it's rare for a Titan owner to use one as a "main" ship for travelling around? If it's out in the wild, surely people will try to destroy it? Just curious, given the PvP nature of the game lol

[Tekki]

If you own a titan, then you own a character devoted to flying the titan and doing nothing else. They are typically logged off in POS structures. These are player owned, and are basically a a structure anchored near a moon that allows you to have a small sort of "base". There is a protective sphere that your assets sit in. You log off in the structure and disappear essentially.

I can imagine that combat with a titan is rare. Super rare. As in, you might see combat once or twice a year unless you happen to be in one of these coalitions at war. Then maybe 3-4 times a year. Mostly what Titans are used for are bridging fleets to other locations. So essentially your time with your titan is "right click" "bridge" and thats about it.

As a Black Ops pilot, I have similar traits as a titan, and similar play style. For 90% of my operations I am bridging covert ops pilots to destinations and taking them home. Even though I have a massive arsenal to my disposal, I don't get to fight with it as often as I like.

Its a well appreciated position though. Everyone loves you for doing something that is rather selfish. Training into, spending the isk on an expensive ship, and doing something that a lot of people consider boring. I can only imagine that a titan feels the same way, on a much grander scale.

I also own a dread, which is also a capital ship. And literally flying capital ships is like watching a gimp turtle move around in molasses. But dat firepower..zomg

Seeing as my main is dedicated to capital/blops I also have an alt for regular cruiser sized pew pew. Frees up my main for whenever its needed. I'm not locked into "omg my clone is here and in this ship"

[Daemonxel]

Tekki I know make a BG corp..then get tht corp in a nice null alliance to some gfs. I would come back faster for that

[The Stig]

Thanks for that insight. I have a perculiar habit of building/levelling (etc...) a powerful asset to do mundane things with in any game I play, and knowing that I'm rather powerful in my own right I can hold my own against whatever threat that might come upon me, hence my interest in a titan as silly as it sounds despite not being a player of EVE. Before you posted that I was imagining using one to go mining/gathering with and basically either randomly killing anyone who attempts to shoot me, or maybe actually arrive in area and scaring off anyone else. At the same time, I just think it'd be funny to randomly interrupt someone's PvP battle using one by picking a side and obliterating them.

God mode complex somewhat, I guess... Chaotic Neutral.

So essentially your time with your titan is "right click" "bridge" and thats about it.

Aye, sounds very supportish. And isn't this very action, if a misclick, brought about the big war last year? Someone's Titan warped accidentally into enemy space "due to misclick" erupting a fight.

[Synbios]

As mundane as bridging is, it's such vital part of the game. It allows alliances to project themselves all over the map and become much more useful.

While I don't own a titan myself, I have had the privilege of flying and DDing with one (account sharing is bad mkay?). I can say when you're flying it, there is a lot of ass puckering going on. At the same time, the first time you fire that doomsday and watch a carrier or dread just melt, there is a sign of relief.

Personally, I don't get too ass puckered anymore in my super carrier and normal class of capitals (dreads and carriers) are just the norm now.

The Stig you are right, a miss click started the big fight last year (Asakai). Interestingly enough, this most recent big fight was exactly 1 year ago to that fight.

[Tekki]

Ya the ass kissing amongst my blops bros is great. I would put it on the same token as the RDM in XI. Everyone fucking loves your support.
Daemonxel I'm actually a Director in a corp of Test already. Its funny, I told my wife I would avoid leadership roles but its in my blood apparently. I'm really proud of my small corp.

Ironically, as I posted that bored post, things have been picking up. The red doughnut is complete so we have unlimited targets. I've finally gotten action on both my Nag and Widow.

[Daemonxel]

Well I will be returning shortly and will be looking for a home. ..let the wooing commence lol

[Eanae]

Considering taking my character back but I'm still on the fence.

[Cantih]

https://twitter.com/CCP_Fozzie/statu...52471252070400

Glad I started and got all twelve of them done before B-R.
I should move all my Civ ABs asap though, market's about to get flooded.

[The Stig]

Sorry to keep reeling back to the fight but on the official news site it linked to this cool video:



Aside from the cool music, I got a few noob questions:

1. Was this video sped up to account for the TiDi? Or was it because it's still early and it hasn't kicked in yet; so what we saw there was real time

2. About 10 secs in several large ships warp in on the top bit. Although we're quite zoomed out, I can only assume they be the Titans. Is it right to assume those larger pew pews beams to be the doomsday weapons?

3. Are most fleet-level fights similar to this? Everyone in a cluster ball of fuck together and then trading lasers. I can't understand it from that perspective but I always imagined it to be fleet fights (like in the video) AND mini little (if invisible/unnoticed by camera man) skirmishes between smaller ships; just trying to understand the space that is used; i.e. the distance/gap maintained in the video - is there any reason to it?

4. If anyone did watch it all, can a mini statement of stuff happening be broken down into time bits? i.e. 00:30 X fired, 00:50 X shield deployed ... lol. Just curious.

5. What's that giant ball in the background? A moon? A planet? A station?

6. Assuming I was of a neutral corp, and I turned up to watch them fight (kinda like watching HNMs or Ballista in FFXI?) do I flag up as hostile anyway? I saw a tweet about how a camera ship/neutral party got wiped and I wondered if it was cross fire or was either side firing at anything not on the same alliance. At the same time I wanted to know if friendly fire is enabled on the game lol

It's depressing to see comments around the internet about how stupid this is, because of the money/time/the fact it's a MMO and the fact people are cheering, etc, when in any interest the same more or less applies given the circumstances (by their logic, people cheering for superbowl are losers and should get out more). On the otherhand despite not playing and reading various statements/interviews, I can somewhat feel the excitement of all this especially behind the scenes; can't imagine how fun/mad it must've been like on voice chat/text chat. Although someone described it as "entering a command and then going back to watch your movie/book" (due to TiDi) I wish to find recordings of the actual fleet conversation in general for this particular fight lol

[BaneTheBrawler]

lol friendly fire. er, yeah, it's "turned on" if anything. you can shoot anyone you want at any time, even in high-sec. the main thing sec status does is affect how NPC authorities respond to that. In high-sec, unless you followed the RoE, you get blown up at varying speeds. In low-sec, gate-guns shoot at you (but they're weak). in null sec, there are no neutral NPCs to react. only hostile. the resident players enforce their own shit. in most cases, that means that if they don't know you're friendly, they'll kill you on sight, before you get the chance to do anything they might not like. Sometimes they'll kill you even if they know you're friendly.

anyway, for tidi, it's hard to say. the guy's UI is hidden. it's possible there wasn't any yet at that point.

Yes, those are the Titans and the green and yellow fat beams are their Doomsdays. Also, the only visible missiles at that range are from Doomsdays. The pencil thin beams you see are just regular lasers, though "regular" could still mean capital beams, which are the size of cruisers.

No, most fleet fights don't escalate this much. Usually what happens is one side gets caught with their pants down and tries to escape, while the other side tries to prevent them. But other than the general strategy of the fight, yes this is how all large fights are. Two giant masses shooting at each other. This is because you don't actually have direct control of your ship. You can tell it "fly in that direction" or "orbit that thing" but you're not actually operating the controls like in a flight sim. You want to stay with your fleet so that you're in range of the Logistics gangs. The only ships that will fly in among the opposing fleet are the expendable ships that NEED to to fill their role- tacklers, interdictors. Small ships are tasked with killing other small ships- the Tacklers and Interdictors.

The giant ball in the background is a planet. The smaller blue balls are interdiction fields. One of them might be a starbase, idk. I don't see any.

In nullsec there are no flags, like what you're thinking. There are only relationships. You'd show up as neutral because your corp's relationship with the combatants is neutral. If anyone took an interest in you they'd kill you. You could be a previously unknown hostile cyno pilot. The tweet you saw was likely someone from the News corporation, which has a special arrangement to film events like this.

[Daemonxel]

Dont forget squadrons of stealth bombers hitting the opposing side

[BaneTheBrawler]

ah yes, good catch. stealth bombers work by uncloaking, launching a bomb (which flies forward about 30km and then explodes, damaging everything in a 15km radius) and then lobbing missiles at anyone in range until the bomb explodes, then warping off. they line it up so that the target is between them and their warp point, so they're already aligned. the tricky part is not going so fast that you end up in that 15km range, but going fast enough that no one swats you down like the fragile little gnat you are. Swarms of stealth bombers can decimate much more "powerful" fleets, but they also have to be careful not to decloak each other (unless they changed that? i remember hearing something to that effect, but i'm not sure if it was implemented) by getting too close. In large fleet battles, they will do runs on the enemy blob, trying to rack up enough fast damage that they overwhelmed the fleet's logistics gang.

When I fought in nullsec, my character's skills were pretty mediocre, so I was in the sub-cap support fleet with my Harbinger. My task was to shoot any interdictors or tacklers that got in my limited range. As such, I never saw much of the stealth bombers. Even in the small-gang stuff and gate-camping I did, we only encountered one gang of bombers and we caught them in a trap and ate them for breakfast. The rest were all solo bombers out for easy kills, like people ratting and not paying attention. We did get hotdropped by a Blops gang once, though. That was very fun, even on the receiving end. One second we're excited about getting a nice Recon kill, the next BATTLESHIPS EVERYWHERE RETREAT RETREAT!

[Cantih]

3. Are most fleet-level fights similar to this? Everyone in a cluster ball of fuck together and then trading lasers. I can't understand it from that perspective but I always imagined it to be fleet fights (like in the video) AND mini little (if invisible/unnoticed by camera man) skirmishes between smaller ships; just trying to understand the space that is used; i.e. the distance/gap maintained in the video - is there any reason to it?

Eve does have "status effect" causing modules, but for the most part, their range doesn't match that of the longest range damage weapons. So, if you don't want to deal with the effects, you use a doctrine that simply can't be hit by them. As such, you generally see fleet fights happening at range, short range stuff is for solo or small gangs.
(Though ever since they introduced it, I've been curious about the capability of a flight of MJD blaster ships to surprise jump to 0 on enemy logistics and fuck them up.)

And besides being in range of your own Logistics, trying to cross that gap, before the MJD anyways, singles you out and pmuch paints a gigantic "SHOOT ME" sign on your ass.

[Ghost_Wheel22]

Makes me insanely jelly of Chribba's Veldnaught and his supercap mining fleet. Hisec newbie miners regularly shit pants when suddenly their Skiff is blotted out by a Dreadnaught.

[Tekki]

Dont forget squadrons of stealth bombers hitting the opposing side

You mean the legions of KM whores

[Daemonxel]

You mean the legions of KM whores

That I do..that I do. My main will be back online in a few hours. Hit me up ingame.