Battle of B-R5RB | Hacker News Reader

Battle of B-R5RB

en.wikipedia.org

72 pointsbelter27 comments

I played eve as an undergraduate student, in the holidays. I loved it, particularly when I got to a point when the game paid for itself. I loved the nerdy community, the fact that the people I interacted with on 'ratting' runs in lowsec were, by day, doing cool things like writing Linux kernel code for a living, or mathematically modelling fisheries for the EU. I loved the fact that they had an ODE fluid model of space; that guns had tracking speeds measured in radians per second; and that I could import market data and try to understand it in terms of martingales.

Then, two things happened. One -- it became a job, bordering on an addiction. My corp-mates wanted my mobile number in case our station got sieged. And then, finally, two, we got scammed. Badly. Our CEO basically stole a lot of stuff, and got us all to help carrying it to Jita so he could sell our own equipment and take the cash (long story). That hurt. I knew him -- I thought -- and I just felt stupidly upset that everything we had collaboratively worked on was....gone. I think my inactive character is somewhere without a scanner in wormhole space, and boy, am I pissed.

I now stick to games with stories; games where you can just be the prophesied hero and save the expansive, virtual world you inhibit. It's a lot nicer than being reminded in your escapist, necessary down-time that people, wherever the come from and whatever they do, are people -- and that includes sometimes being an arsehole too

I began playing 4-5 years ago, mostly with my old time friends but in the last 2 years I joined an alliance that shares the premise "life fist" and I could do casual gaming always, if I have to be months without playing there is no problem, and when I could I do some PI and exploration to earn money and do some roams with the alliance guys. Its adaptable to the free time for videogames you have also.

That sounds good. What's the alliance called?

I last played EVE circa 2005, but I have kept friends from those days who still play and so I hear a lot about it still.

Jumping a fleet of thousands into a system with already thousands in waiting, seeing nothing but a black screen for 20 minutes, then finally you're back in your clone station.

Yeah, so much fun.

"Massive fleet battles" became "Massive fleets waiting either side of a gate smacktalking each other into jumping first"

I was there for the first Titan launch (and loss, ASCN v BOB) and the corp I was a member of launched the first Mothership.

Both losses were down to meta-gaming - the titan was lost because a BOB pilot had infiltrated ASCN's teamspeak server, and the mothership loss was because the pilot desync'd. We even had video proof of the pilot being "safely in another system" still receiving damage from enemy pilots that were 4 jumps away but CCP said the incident was "too important to reverse" which was bullshit, they just didn't have the capability to do so.

EVE:Online is a tale of selling meta-gaming and "You can be a cunt"-ship, with a side-game of spaceships.

Yeah.

"...the fight started after a single player controlling a space station in the N3/PL-controlled star system B-R5RB accidentally failed to make a scheduled in-game routine maintenance payment, which made the star system open to capture."

Both losses were down to meta-gaming - the titan was lost because a BOB pilot had infiltrated ASCN's teamspeak server

I've never played, so I could be completely misunderstanding, but how is this different from the countless spies and double agents in the real world? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_spies

Was what happened against some "rules"?

Cyvok wasn't even logged in when the titan was lost. The teamspeak infiltration played the part of listening to when he was going to logout of the game, then just as his titan warped off someone (undercover as an ASCN pilot) used a smartbomb to trigger his aggression timeout.

So yeah, it's definitely meta gaming and morally a gray area.

I tried playing EVE once but realized quickly that I like reading about EVE much more than playing it.

I play eve and generally it's still more fun to talk about than play.:)

It's a game where preparation is basically how you avoid getting stomped on. That leads to a bunch of time spent doing things like moving ships around and messing about to fight the exact right way to set them up and arguing mercilessly about important space business

This isn’t even the largest battle so far; the battle of M2- in 2020 December happened in the current galactic ongoing war where 257 titans were destroyed. Since then, GoonSwarm (formerly the alliance of CFC with NC) is now cornered in a single constellation that’s essentially a fortified Minas Tirith, and PAPI (alliance of NC with PL) seemingly gunshy about committing to another bloodbath to take it. It could happen any day, and we’ll see another battle destroying years worth of industrial production.

I can understand World War 1 but these alliances of alliances with new names I find impossible to follow.

i would love to fly under the "Test Alliance Please Ignore" banner :)

That is one of Reddit's corps, the largest and oldest. Well, I guess to be accurate, the corporation itself is Dreddit, they started TEST. The other big one being Brave Newbies.

Best resume ever :D

Ah, this was shortly after the 2012 Benghazi Attacks.

It is still extremely wild to me that one of Goonswarm's head diplomats was an actual US State Department diplomat stationed in Benghazi and died in the 2012 Benghazi attack. Rest in Peace, Vile Rat

I was addicted to EVE for several years. It was one of the grandest things I've ever been a part of. It was both a curse and a blessing when the developers legitimized the exchange of real money for in-game money (through the buying and selling of game time) because it destroyed any sense of value for all the things I was doing and hence freed me from my addiction.

I wouldn't trade those memories for anything, though.

Going out on a mission in a fleet of 1500+ in a Mumble server against a similar sized enemy was indeed grand. Shame you end up sitting in TiDi where it takes 30minutes for your modules to activate.

> developers legitimized the exchange of real money for in-game money (through the buying and selling of game time)

Are there people making a living by earning in-game currency and exchanging it for a real-world currency?

If nothing has changed, they legitimised the transfer of money --> ISK, but not the other way around. So, I think it's unlikely...but not impossible.

There seems to be plenty of online, non legitimate, markets to exchange Isk for cash.

https://iskmarket.com/en/Sell-Eve-ISK

I'm guessing not a few people are earning a living from Eve.

> the developers legitimized the exchange of real money for in-game money (through the buying and selling of game time)

To those unfamiliar- EVE has the deepest player-driven economy of any game. All in-game items are crafted by players, out of materials mined by players. Money (ISK) is created in a small number of ways: NPC mission running results in ISK rewards, as does killing NPC ships among the systems, and insurance payouts. Items are destroyed when a ship is destroyed, and ISK is destroyed via trading taxes, insurance contracts, etc. CCP attempts to tweak knobs to keep the money supply at a reasonable rate so inflation doesn't get rampant, etc.

CCP (the company behind EVE) sells an in-game item called a "Pilots License Extension" (PLEX) for cash on their web site. Your EVE subscription can either be paid for in cash, or by redeeming a PLEX in-game. Like everything else in the game, a PLEX can be traded in the game. So, many people will pay cash on CCP's site to get a PLEX item for their player, and list it on the in-game market for PLEX. Eventually, a player in the game will purchase a PLEX from the in-game market with ISK they earned while playing the game, and this don't pay CCP real money to pay for their subscription.

Exactly. When a ship or resource is destroyed in EVE it's gone, so losing a fight means losing the time you invested into that resource. That gives real significance to the grinding. That significance is destroyed when you can open a calculator and see that you're grinding for the equivalent of 72 cents an hour. Instead of playing the game to replace your losses you just start buying them back. It's like retail: the only people having fun with the economy are the ones with big spreadsheets and even bigger corporate industries.

The Battle of B-R was surpassed recently by the Battle of M2-XFE, the largest (by ISK value destroyed) battle of the ongoing world war. While B-R saw a total of ~80 Titans die, in M2 each side lost more than that.

Interesting summary from the developers: https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/the-massacre-of-m2-xfe

One small past related thread:

The Bloodbath of B-R5RB, Gaming's Most Destructive Battle Ever - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8964221 - Jan 2015 (2 comments)

> Total forces involved 7,548 participants. Damages amounted to an approximate real-currency value of $300,000-330,000 USD.

About $45/player. Sounds pretty reasonable to have been in attendance.

We were there ;)

The fact that is considered worth of having an article, while other issues in the real world don't, shows everything that's wrong with wikipedia.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com