Gameplay of Eve Online
To (partially or fully) mitigate the loss of an expensive vessel, ships can be insured against destruction. These components can be used to build ship enhancement modules known as rigs .Players, through the use of blueprints and in-game skills, can gain the ability to build items ranging from basic ammunition to cutting-edge capital ship hulls, and manufacture them for personal use or for sale. CCP did attempt to implement a closed economy (that is an economy where there is a fixed amount of currency and therefore materials) early on in the game s existence; however, it proved too difficult to balance the effects of new players entering the game with the capabilities of older players able to earn more ISK or obtain more materials.
In a similar way selling and buying characters for in game currency is allowed. On 27 June 2007 CCP announced that an economist had been employed Combat in Eve is a mixture of both tactical intelligence and spontaneous decision-making using a point-and-click interface. There is a basic ability to freely direct your ships flight by double clicking empty areas of space, but it is cumbersome at best, so most movement is conducted by selecting objects in space (player or NPC ships, asteroids, structures etc.) and telling the ship to approach ,orbit or warp if the distance is greater than 150 km. Eve s combat system allows ships of all sizes to be useful in combat.
Such weapons however do not have the accuracy to effectively damage smaller, faster ships like frigates. Usually formed when several player-owned-and-operated corporations (similar to guilds, in other MMORPGs) band together, these alliances can vary widely in size and strength.
Each POS requires substantial logistical support to remain in operation, but once an alliance mounts and maintains such facilities at the majority of moons in a system, it achieves the status of sovereignty and remains so until an enemy destroys enough POSs and replaces them with its own. Agents in Eve are NPCs from which the player receives a variety of assignments, depending on the type of NPC: Internal Security gives more pirate hunting missions, and Personnel Agents give more delivery and trade route missions. Occasionally a player may even stumble across a historic site, e.g.
Players may even place a bounty on another player s head, providing work for bounty hunters. At the strategic level, the rich resources available in low security space reward large co-operative groups. In some solar systems a player might be alone.
Pirates risk being branded criminals by CONCORD and thus becoming open targets to all other players, as well as being unable to access high security systems. The current Open economy is automatically balanced by introducing extra materials in underpopulated areas to encourage an even spread of players. Eve s End User Licence Agreement forbids the exchange of ISK for real currency; however there is a secure in-game system for trading Game Time Codes (GTC) in exchange for in game currency.
Asteroids contain far more valuable ore and NPC pirates in lawless space carry far higher bounties. In the event that a player s ship is destroyed, a wreck is left behind. In some cases, this represents more than a month s worth of training time.
Small ships such as frigates may be unable to do significant damage to larger ships on their own, but can greatly affect the outcome of small group battles by employing tactics such as tackling (disrupting the engines or guidance computers of enemies thus reducing mobility or chance to escape), jamming enemy sensors, or attacking a larger ship as a pack. The open player versus player combat system, and the tendency for ships to drop some of their cargo and equipment when destroyed, provides incentive for player piracy. for a fleet battle or to use a trading hub.
Insurance payouts are based strictly on material build costs; the market value of the ship is not taken into account. Player corporations (the Eve equivalent of guilds) rise and fall as they struggle for market dominance as well as territorial control. From a technical point of view, the economy in Eve is known as an open economy, that is there is no fixed amount of money or materials in the universe.
Planets themselves are currently not explorable; however, players can use moons to anchor their parent corporation s structures for production and research or for moon mining. The Eve Online universe consists of several thousand interconnected solar systems. The game s developer CCP Games continuously adds expansions free of charge that change game mechanics and add features.
When the player dies and is revived in his or her clone, if this clone holds a number of skill points lower than the number the player had at the time of death, then the player will lose a varying amount of skill points. Low-rank skills trained to a low level may represent a few minutes of training whereas high levels of high-rank skills may represent several months of training. Since training time is directly related to a character s attributes, a player can lower the training time of skills by training Learning skills, as well as by using Implants to boost attributes. Due to the sheer number of skills available to characters, it is not realistic for a character to acquire perfect skills with all ships and weapons systems.
Raising standing in a corporation allows the player to access more valuable and dangerous missions through higher level Agents, up to Level 5, the most difficult, which are nearly impossible to be completed by a solo player if the mission requires combat. The highest end of the scale provides protection to players in the form of sentry guns and CONCORD, the NPC police . Players committing illegal actions within empire systems (security status between 0.1 and 1.0) lose personal security standings with CONCORD.
Corporations band together into alliances in order to defend a region of space which they claim. The time it takes to train a skill varies depending upon an attribute known as its rank .
To balance this free aggression , Eve has implemented a security status system . Each skill has a primary and secondary attribute, thus the higher these attributes, the faster skills that use them are trained.
The original body (complete with its cybernetic implants) remains stored in the original station and may be returned to via another clone jump (after a 24-hour waiting period). The economy is closely tied with the (also player driven) political aspect of the game.
However on the other end of the scale players will often find that in pvp they are required to play a massive role in their ships operation, as they will be giving/ following orders, switching targets, maintaing locks/ dps or tackle while repairing damage and controlling speed, range and any other number of ships functions. Therefore, players who value their skill points purchase upgraded clones sufficient to hold all their skill points.
The skill training system is connected with five attributes: Intelligence, Perception, Charisma, Willpower and Memory. Each skill has 5 steps, or levels and the time required to train a skill to a particular level is determined by the player s attributes and how many skill points a certain skill requires, determined by a skill s rank.
Asteroid fields can be mined for minerals. As a result, new players are generally unable to gain more skillpoints than existing players who continue to train but this is reduced somewhat by a diminishing returns policy for training higher skill levels.
In others more than 600 players might gather, e.g. Implants cannot be insured. Players may purchase an upgraded clone which is used in the event of pod death.
one where another player s Titan-class ship was destroyed and the wreck now floats in space. In addition, an area of the galaxy is occupied by the Jovian Empire, and is currently not accessible by players. Eve Online is different from MMOGs such as World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and EverQuest II because the player characters do not gain experience points through actions or by completing tasks. This pod may be destroyed as well, if another player chooses to open fire on it.
Pricing and availability of goods varies from region to region within the Eve universe. Large ships such as battleships are typically outfitted with heavy weapons allowing them to battle other ships of their size.
Since the game s release in 2003 the expansions have added gameplay elements such as more ship classes and advanced missions for players to master. Eve Online runs on a supercomputing cluster known as Tranquility . The playing environment in Eve Online consists of about 7,500 star systems, almost all of which can be visited by the player. This is known as keeping your clone up-to-date .
Any cargo hold contents, ship modules, drones and ammunition that were not destroyed in the explosion can be recovered by any player, and additional components of the structure of the ship can be retrieved by a player with the correct salvaging modules and skills. Outside of decisions involving targeting and selection of weaponry, combat is, to a certain degree a hands off affair, the player decides on the targets, distance they want to keep their target at, the speed of their ship and the weapons and modules to use, and once activated the computer runs these tasks until the player intervenes.
There are also skills and implants that can increase attributes. Training within the game occurs in real time whether the user is logged in or not. Different systems contain different types of celestial objects, making them more or less suitable for different kinds of operations.
The cost of a clone depends on how many skill points it can hold - the more skill points, the more expensive the clone becomes. In a typical solar system the player will find asteroid fields, stations, and moons, the latter two most often orbiting planets.
Modules, rigs and cargo cannot be insured at all; any of these items may also have a market value equal to, or much higher than, the ship itself. While a large ship can equip smaller weapons designed for attacking smaller targets, this leaves them at a disadvantage against other large ships.
These alliances often fight wars for contested systems and send gangs to raid each other. (See section Security status system for more information).
Loss of Security status varies depending on the crime. The player can also pay Agents to provide manufacturing and research services. Eve features an open PvP system where combat between players can occur anywhere within the Eve Universe.
The lowest end of the scale is lawless space, and rules are set and enforced by player-run alliances. Clones are single-use items; when a character dies and is resurrected via a clone, they are also awarded the basic, 900,000-point Alpha clone.
This method offers a way for developed characters to use expensive implants for skill training or economic pursuits, while still having the option to engage in dangerous combat operations without the risk of losing them or by creating jump clones with different groups of implants that control other aspects of the game such as shield support, enhanced damage capabilities or better targeting abilities. . Moreover, corporations and alliances have the ability to manufacture Player-Operated Starbases (POS) that mine resources from moons in a system.
The network of jumpgates, which allows travel between star systems, includes a multitude of choke points, which careful alliances can garrison to restrict access to claimed 0.0 systems. Any implants installed on a player will be irrevocably lost when he or she is pod-killed.
As each skill level takes over five times longer than the previous (a geometric progression) while the bonus it provides almost always scales linearly, a new player has the option to either acquire acceptable skills in many fields, or perfect skills in a relative few. There is a single currency unit in Eve Online, the Interstellar Kredit (ISK), which takes its name from the Icelandic króna, whose ISO code is ISK. The Loyalty Points systems allows one to use non-transferable Loyalty Points in combination with other assets to purchase standard items at a reduced rate or to acquire otherwise unattainable items. A large proportion of the in-game economy is player driven; Non-player character merchants supply some basic blueprints, items and trade goods. Some ships (e.g.
Completing Agent missions also raises the player s standing in the corporation or group the Agent represents, while lowering his standing among the Agent s competitors. Drones can also be used against smaller ships, or in a support role such as providing extra shield for a gang mate or in a utility role such as electronic warfare.
Non-player characters will not attack a pod. This player death is known as pod killing or podding .
Other objects that can be found in systems are the aforementioned stargates, complexes or static dungeons (known ingame as complexes or plexes) for exploration. Players have no possibility for indemnification with regard to losses sustained in this way. When a ship is destroyed, the player is ejected in a pod.
Every solar system in the Eve universe has a public security status which ranges from 0.0 to 1.0. Therefore, it is imperative that, as soon as possible after death, players purchase a replacement clone of a level appropriate to their character s skill points. Expanding the cloning system further, Jump Clones were added in Red Moon Rising, and enhanced in Revelations to allow advanced players to mitigate risking their cybernetic implants by using the Infomorph Psychology skill to jump into a cloned body in another station, without requiring their existing body to die to achieve this.
Completion awards the player with ISK and various material goods. Instead, the player learns skills by training a specific skill over time, a passive process that occurs in real world time so that the learning process will continue even if the player is not logged in.
Agents also give various personal gifts for completing missions within certain bonus criteria, and award Loyalty Points from the Agent, which can be redeemed for other goods. Showing aggression will only result in a minor loss of standings, while the act of killing a ship that has not defended itself will result in a further drop in standings, and the largest loss of standings occurs with the intentional destruction of a player s pod . While breaking the law in high-security systems (that is, those with a security of 0.5 to 1.0) means certain death (surviving a CONCORD attack is considered an exploit) for the offender, this does not guarantee the absolute safety of the victim: a well-planned suicide attack can still successfully destroy a ship before CONCORD and sentry guns can neutralize the aggressor. In lawless space (0.0), CONCORD has no influence and the dynamics for player interactions change.
These aspects contribute to an economic environment influenced by factors like scarcity of resources, specialization of labor and supply/demand dynamics. Eve Online is a player-driven persistent-world massively multiplayer online game set in a science fiction space setting.
While every race has certain tendencies for different battle tactics, a character s combat capabilities are determined by skill levels, the ship being piloted and various hardware modules fitted into it. T2 hulls) have a market value that is dozens, if not hundreds of times as much as the ship s build cost.
In this case, the podded player character will die and be revived as a clone at a pre-determined cloning facility. Although lawless space is dangerous and difficult to defend the rewards are much higher.
An extreme example of this is that a ship set to repair itself without running its capacitor out, with a strong tank and drones set to aggressive can perform entire missions without any intervention from the player at all, past initial deployment to the battlefield.
