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Comment by mattmanser | Hacker News Reader

It's nothing like elite.

The combat involved in this battle is sorting a list by name, double clicking a square and then pressing F1. Once that square disappears, double click another square and then press F1.

Oh, I forgot, you might align your camera in a direction of a different square, which represents a local planet, and double click.

Occasionally, and especially if your name starts with an a, the whole screen will start flashing indicating you're the square the enemy is targeting. Then, unless you have spent an extremely unhealthy amount of time playing the game and are in a titan, you will die instantly.

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I've heard it described as excel with a 3D engine bolted on the front of it.

Maybe one could market a tool that turns mundane corporate data entry into an exciting battle for galactic domination, and make your white collar peon employees battle each other mercilessly to increase shareholder value. If you die in the game, you get fired.

EDIT: actually, please don't do that. unless you do this first: http://www.richardkmorgan.com/novels/market-forces/

The irony is that for all Morgan's anti-corporatism, the privatization of war for profit has greatly served to reduce violence, from England's Glorious Revolution onwards. Corporations are better at avoiding war than monarchs, not because they particularly care about people per se but because war is just so wasteful.

The books are good though. Hopefully someday somebody will have the stomach to film Altered Carbon.

Large fleet battles in a nutshell, yeah. That's the downside of allowing >2000-man fights, both the server and the clients have a lot of trouble displaying all of it, and an up-close view is pretty much useless. I wouldn't be surprised if CCP introduces a 'headless' client that just shows the overview without the 3D view and the brackets overlays for instances like this.

When I used to play it was exactly the same with or without the lag and this describes any battle with more than 50 or so combatants, the firepower is so overwhelming.

Small scale combat is more skilful, but it's almost impossible to find balanced fights.

Yep, that's EVE's biggest weakness. It's a well-designed game, and the player interactions, politics, and general sandbox gameplay are fantastic, but the combat is absolutely terrible and unfathomably boring.

There are actually some games out there that have EVE's sandbox features, but with combat that takes significant skill (usually in the style of a first-person shooter/slasher). Unfortunately, few of them have become very popular due to poor funding and the inclination of the general public to avoid very "hardcore" games.

Would you care to share the names of some of these games? I think people would check them out.

Age of Wushu is a Chinese-developed MMO where you take the role of a hero from wuxia fiction. Think of it sorta like Street Fighter meets WoW. PvP fights are very lively, you need to counter the moves your opponent is using. PvP is a huge aspect; in fact, every time you log in it reminds you that the game is Open PvP and asks if you want to continue :)

It's poorly translated but that only adds to the charm. And, as with Eve, goons are among the best players.

I've played with goons in multiple MMOs, including a few sandbox /heavily open PvP ones. It's always a very fun experience.

Darkfall Online and Mortal Online are two that were released in the past few years. Both have been plagued by poor development and serious bugs, especially the latter. However, when played with a group of people you trust and like, both can be extremely fun.

Here's a decently up-to-date list of EVE-like MMOs: http://sandboxt.net/sandboxt/page/SandboxMMOGamesList

That's not exactly true.

As a titan pilot, there is more to do than just clicking broadcasts / sorting your overview / aligning. That's the kind of stuff that happens when everything is going well or you are shooting an inanimate object. As a titan pilot on the losing side last night, there was a lot of refitting, repositioning, and co-ordination. Fleet and sub-channel commanders are constantly relaying information over Skype or mumble channels. I personally spent a lot of time trying to get out of bubbles once the call was made to try to extract if possible. This was after two hours of staring at a black screen, praying that my ship wasn't dying without a chance of me fighting back.

There is also an incredible amount of micro that one can do in small gang or solo PvP, but that kind of stuff doesn't make for fancy headlines.

This was after two hours of staring at a black screen

Only those still afflicted by eve-addiction can believe that not playing a game for 2 hours is playing a game.

Luckily, I have a nice enough computer to alt-tab and play some Dota 2.

I thought it sounded interesting so I tried it and came away with exactly the same conclusion. Like another one of these click-click-click games only you look out a spaceship instead of looking down on a bunch of dwarves or whatever. It didn't do it for me at all.

Depends how you play it. I played for a couple of years just doing the missions and a bit of trading. My "multi-player" was occasionally chatting to other people in-system. No corp, no ISK, no spreadsheets (apart from trading - very similar to Elite), no lag. Eventually stopped when the missions ramped up too quickly - you were supposed to complete them with other people.

You're forgetting the singsongs and guitar playing on TeamSpeak. But other than that, spot on!

I was part of the BoB Goonswarm war, back when we were fucking up Lotka Volterra. It must have been what, 5-6 years ago now?

Suas forever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfv1QtZDirY

Aka Tolon, right? He was a neat guy, I met him in London. Too bad I was an utter twat then.

Always face your exit. Hauling tactics. :)

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