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EVE Online: Apocrypha

Prospering in EVE

So what you can do in this massive sandbox for fun and profit? It really is up to you - there are no classes or other artificial limitations and all you have to do is to train the related skills to improve the performance of your character in your chosen activities. Ultimately almost everything boils down to in-game money, ISK. You need money to cover any losses and to upgrade your ships and equipment, and to buy skill books. Some activities also require considerable upfront investment.

You can just go and shoot some non-player pirates ("rats") that can be found in many asteroid belts. Expected challenge level is directly related to the security status of the star system. Bounties and loot for everyone. For slightly better returns, you can search for a friendly NPC agent and ask for missions that involve either shipping goods around, mining or shooting non-player ships in mission areas. Missions are randomly dished out from a large pool of potential missions but over time they do repeat themselves. Available mission difficulty level depends on your standings with the faction represented by the NPC agent and the standings can be improved by completing special missions given after completing a number of normal missions. There are also a set of non-repeatable "COSMOS" missions available in several specific constellations with some interesting storyline and rewards to go with them.

The other major way to make money is to mine. Fit some mining lasers, hop to a nearby asteroid belt and start chopping up the rocks. While in theory almost any ship can be used to mine, proper mining vessels take some training and require you to invest a bit in specialized equipment. Ore quality depends on the security status of the system - the best stuff is deep in 0.0 space where player alliances rule and uninvited miners are shot on sight. You can also mine moons for special materials used in Tech 2 production but this takes a lot of ISK up front as moons are mined by constructing a player owned starbase (POS) on the spot. In general, most truly valuable moons are already being mined and defended by player corporations and many wars are actually fought over moon resources.

Then there is the whole business side of EVE - trading, hauling goods, manufacturing goods... a whole article could be written on the subject. No other game (MMO or not) has as deep business side to explore and exploit. A lot can be done alone and basic Tech 1 manufacturing is something you could do after just a few weeks of skill training and a small nest egg. On the other end of the spectrum, capital ship production and Tech 2 ship building operations can be extremely complex and massively expensive to start up unless you build them out of prefabricated components and materials bought from the market - and give a large portion of the profits to others. It takes considerable effort to even calculate the costs of these production chains to ensure that you are selling the end result at a profit - Excel is a good "add-on" for EVE.

Then there is exploration, or "mining with missiles and lasers". You can use scan probes to hunt down hidden NPC structures, clear out the defenders and loot the place up. Some exploration sites provide blueprint copies and items needed for Tech 2 manufacturing so even combat pilots can participate in the manufacturing business by harvesting resources through exploration.

But all this is just a scratch of the surface and a set of obvious ways to earn a living in EVE. The real game is in the player interactions. Politics, backstabbing, piracy, theft, scamming, market manipulation, raids against industrial activities, armed conflicts and outright wars.

EVE "endgame"

In more traditional MMOs the ultimate goal is usually to get your character to the maximum level and then go farm maximum level content for shiny equipment. In EVE the ultimate goal is - again - what you set it to be. It is quite possible to build a massive manufacturing or trading empire without ever leaving safe space, but as you learn the game the unregulated 0.0 space is usually where you'll end up.

As NPC empires do not lay claim to these systems, they are open for player-run alliances to claim with the exception of a couple of regions commanded by NPC pirate factions with stations that are open to all. And claimed it is, as can be seen from the constantly updated 0.0 Player Influence Map that shows how the 0.0 space is divided up.

To get to the map, in the vast majority of 0.0 space players can build starbases (POS - Player Owned Starbase) to lay claim to individual systems and then build actual stations (Outposts) where the alliance actually holds sovereignty. EVE has a complex sovereignty system that gives benefits to the party that holds any given constellation(s) for extended periods - mostly savings in POS fuel and the ability to construct cynosural jammers (to prevent unauthorized capital ship movements) and jump bridges (shortcuts over long distances for friendly ships). Sovereignty also protects designated capital systems completely from attack unless other systems in the constellation are first taken over.

A Battleship-heavy fleet covering a stargate.

Big fleets + big guns = big booms.

In practice as almost all of 0.0 space is partitioned between massive player-run alliances and as the destruction of a fully armed POS normally requires a fleet of capital ships, the stage is set for a complex web of politics and warfare. In EVE major battles over the control of key star systems have sometimes involved more than a thousand players and even smaller skirmishes often involve fleets of 50-100 ships - every single one controlled by a player. Massive wars also require equally massive logistics operations - POSes require fuel that has to be mined or shipped from empire trade hubs, capital ships require jump fuel and ammo and sub-capital fleets require access to replacement ships, modules and ammo. With largest alliances involving thousands of players, things go way beyond the level seen in other MMOs. 25 man raids for some epic loot just isn't the same thing. It also means that the "endgame" of EVE can be harsh for someone who wants to slug it out alone. While it's possible to do a lot in small groups, for many activities soloing is not really supported.

Internet Spaceship Combat

Serious fleet combat also brings out the interesting combat mechanics of EVE. You might logically assume that the bigger ship and guns you have, more damage you do to any target. Not quite so. While it is true that bigger guns deal out more damage, EVE has incredibly deep combat system that allows ships of all sizes to participate and ships of all types are actually needed.

Each ship has a listed signature radius for targeting purposes that is mostly based on the physical size of the ship. Bigger the radius, faster it can be locked and easier it is to hit. Guns have a listed signature radius, indicating the spread of the hits and a tracking value, indicating the turning speed of turrets. If the target ship is smaller than the inherent spread of a big gun, vast majority of the damage output is wasted on misses or glancing hits. If the target ship moves faster in relation to the firing ship than the turn rate of turrets, all hits will miss - closer the target is or faster the target moves, harder it is to hit. Missiles, while guaranteed to explode next to the target, have a similar system related to the blast velocity of the warhead - small ships tend to outrun the warhead blast, taking little or no damage.

In practice, a frigate can be killed in close combat mostly by other frigates or cruisers or by lucky battleship shots fired from extreme ranges. Cruisers are effective against small and medium ships and while battleships can often outrange them, when multiple cruisers get close to one, it can get messy. Battleships have the advantage of range and high damage output, but often have issues hitting at anything smaller that is moving fast or gets close. Capital ships deliver devastating blows but are often unable to do much to ships smaller than battleships, requiring escort as protection against a death by thousand cuts from smaller ships. Add in a number of sub-types that fall to these major categories (small, medium, large, capital) and you have an interesting mix.

Fast-locking and speedy frigates can rapidly tie down larger ships, disrupting their warp drives and slowing them down with stasis webifiers or disrupting them with ECM systems - ready to be torn down by friendly battleships. That means the other side needs their own frigates and cruisers to take out your frigates and cruisers & disrupt your battleships. In the end, major battles tend to involve support (battlecruisers and below) assisting battleships (major anti-ship muscle) who in turn are used to protect capital ships which do the heavy lifting to destroy fixed defenses and/or other capital ships. Battles can be won or lost depending on the fleet composition even if the sheer numbers would suggest otherwise and every ship has a job even in the biggest brawls.

Tactics are further mixed up by special ships like Interdictors and Heavy Interdictors (capable of instantly deploying warp jamming bubbles that disrupt warp drives in a large area - friend or foe), Logistics ships specialized in remote repairing and boosting, cloaked Covert Ops and Recon ships used for scouting and surprise assaults, Dreadnoughts used mostly to shoot fixed installations, Carriers and Motherships used for repairing larger ships and supporting smaller ships with fighter wings... and finally massive Titans with doomsday devices capable of wiping out entire fleets in one big boom and costing almost 100 billion to build.

Those not interested in large corporations and massive fleet battles can go rogue, hunting enemy targets in fast, mobile fleets that can tear down any individual ships while avoiding big fleet engagements. As big alliances usually don't take such guerrilla warfare well, most pirates tend to prey in low security empire space, concentrating instead on empire dwellers that venture into areas not protected by CONCORD. There really is a whole universe to roam and play in, with ton of things to do and a lot of incentive to find friends and play cooperatively.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: GameplayPage 3: Gameplay, cont.Page 4: Gameplay, cont.Page 5: Apocrypha FeaturesPage 6: Visuals and PerformancePage 7: Summary, Scores

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