Thursday, 2 September 2010
TwitterI’ve spent a good bit of time pondering the latest EVE Chronicle, Xenocracy, by CCP Headfirst. It gives a bit of fictional flavor to “Planetville”, the planetary management feature CCP introduced alongside Spacebook in the latest expansion. If you haven’t read it, you should really do so before continuing past the jump here…
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NB: For context, see parts 1, 2, 3, and 4. This concludes this particular arc, but a subsequent arc detailing the next chapter in Casiella’s life will launch next week.
The gate shimmered with energy for a moment before firing. A pod appeared a few seconds later, scant kilometers away. Without hesitation, it aligned towards the fourth planet and warped away. The local customs officers paid it no particular mind, as capsuleer pods couldn’t carry any cargo and this particular pilot had no outstanding warrants or other legal problems.
As it drew close to the Tribal Liberation Force station and requested docking, the militia command tried to hail the pilot. Casiella chose not to respond immediately. The docking systems drew her pod into the labyrinthine corridors that led to hangars. Her pod remained suspended by electromagnetic forces, far above the light pits in the hangar floor. She made no move to exit the pod.
She did, however, finally open a communication channel with TLF command.
“Pilot Truza, please report in. We have data that indicate—”
“I respectfully decline to submit a report.”
“We require a report, pilot. TLF SOP 5.3.12 specifies reports must be provided upon instruction.”
“On behalf of my corporation, I hereby submit my resignation from the Tribal Liberation Force, effective immediately.”
A pause, then: “Please confirm that. We still have need of pilots, simply requiring a minimum of order and discipline.”
“Confirmed. Truza out.”
With that, she signaled the dock control systems to release and relaunch her pod into Abudban space. Once she had cleared the docking rings, the pod aligned to a nearby stargate and accelerated quickly into warp.
The space around the Brutor Tribe Treasury station looked nearly solid with traffic. Ships streamed in and out of the station, one of the busiest in the entire cluster. Freighters and industrials carried equipment, resources, and passengers in and out: the lifeblood of the economy, or at least the capsuleer economy. Combat ships docked to take on ammunition and refit, or undocked to engage other ships. Autocannon fire aimed carefully between neutral vessels, and thick beams of powerful energy streamed through space from one ship to another.
Amongst this silent cacophony, a pod slipped quietly into a docking bay. Casiella chose again not to leave the pod, interfacing through the world purely through her implant. A coded report came in from a contact inside the Republic Security Service, labeled simply “Arzad”.
Her ocular implant and general disengagement of her glands and other physical processes kept her from weeping into the ectoplasm. Inside her mind, though, she squared her jaw and drew further resolve. Her crew enslaved and remaining ships confiscated, all in the name of that harlot empress. The report had little information on individuals or casualties, but they’d confirmed her aide Jorunn had not appeared in any of the infirmary rosters on the station.
The time had come. Casiella would fight, not on someone else’s terms, but her own.
NB: For context, see parts 1, 2, and 3.
Flames trailed from the Vigil-class frigate’s engine nacelles as the docking bag tractor beams nudged it into the right inbound vector.
A cold, hostile voice spoke over the traffic control frequency. “Arzad 8 24IC station to TLF Vigil… prepare for magnetic clamps… engaged.”
Inside her control suit, submerged in her capsule, Casiella shuddered involuntarily. After this fourth try to capture a facility in Devoid, she’d not managed anything beyond three destroyed Vigils and what would probably turn into a repair bill. Outrunning the large battleships while she tried to take over the local mainframe infrastructure came naturally, but when they deployed their Executioner-class frigates, the Vigil just couldn’t dodge the pulse lasers well enough. For once, she’d gotten away without ending up in her pod, but that didn’t mean much, really.
As the gantry lifted her pod, she reflected on her next steps. Maybe she should try to gather a small militia squadron for help? At a minimum, she could use one other capsuleer to provide a diversion, distracting the response forces while she got in close for a few minutes and worked over the control systems. That would have to wait, though, while she disengaged from the hydrostatic capsule itself.
Goo dripped off her suit as she looked around for directions to the pilot showers. She could hear shouting down the corridor, but shrugged it off. Capsuleers had free run of all stations in CONCORD-controlled space, even if the station owners held their own corporations in a state of war. This didn’t work so well out in nullsec, but here, even though her corp had officially registered with the Tribal Liberation Front, the 24th Imperial Crusade would leave her alone.
A small blinking light caught her attention. “Blasted meatsuits. Never quite work correctly…” For a moment, she swore to have this clone biomassed rather than go see a medical tech about the eyes.
The blinking light expanded into a full warning symbol and a voice spoke in her ear. “Emergency: please return to your capsule immediately.” Her clone didn’t have a biological defect at all. No, the sensory implants tied directly to her visual cortex notified her of an impending…
CRASH!
A doorway at the end of the hall burst open. Grim-faced 24IC marines aimed their weapons at her. “Station security! Get down on the ground immediately! NOW NOW NOW!”
Casiella ducked instinctively back around the corner into the small bay where her capsule waited. She slammed the control panel and a set of blast doors closed behind her, forming a small iris as they did so. Stomping boots and angry voices convinced her that she didn’t have much time. She pointed at a medical drone. “Get me hooked up.”
“Right away, captain.”
The door sizzled as the security guards prepared to breach it. As soon as the medical drone connected the neural interface to the socket at the base of her skull, she immediately brought up her pod’s navigation systems and laid in a course.
She skipped the preflight checklist and held her breath for a single heartbeat. As soon as the guards forced open the blast doors, she engaged the pod’s impulse engines. Fire and noise bathed the small docking bay. Could she hear screams as the pod lifted back into the traffic pattern?
Probably just her imagination. She’d check the recordings once she reached Abudban.
Her facial expression alone could have cleared the way through a battalion of Kameiras.
Casiella stormed down a corridor, following a small projected arrow on the walls back to her hangar. Pools of shadows and light blended together, obscuring the worn and corroded texture of the walls and floors. At one junction, Jorunn waited for her. The two women looked into each other’s eyes for a moment and their countenances blazed. After the moment passed, they began to walk together towards the hangar.
Finally, the Krusual woman spoke. “You could have handled that a bit better.”
Casiella flared her nostrils but said nothing in response.
“Really, you’ve brought this upon us. But I have an idea to save our relationship with the TLF, and I’ve already drafted an order for six Vigil-class frigates in Rens…”
At this, the petite capsuleer whirled and glared with white-hot anger at the scarred woman towering over her. She kept her voice low and restrained despite the look on her face. “Should you be doing that?”
Jorunn drew herself to her full height and bunched her eyebrows together, with a concomitant effect on the scars and birthmarks across her face and around her head. “If you want the Republic to work with you, you’ll need to work with them. And those military complexes out in Devoid and the Bleak Lands won’t capture themselves.”
The two stood in stark silence for several minutes before Casiella turned again, leaving Jorunn standing behind her. The taller woman waited for several moments before a flickering indicator on her datapad drew her out of angered reverie.
“Flight plan laid in for Rens… she does listen. Sometimes.”
Lyncyne leans into the spanner as she fastens two panels together. Small conduits to protect control lines and transport coolant run across the engine she has started to cover. The roar of impulse engines firing up echo through the hangar as hefty Brutors wrestle machinery into place, but the noise doesn’t appear to distract her in the slightest. The capsuleer who flew this Claw had quietly explained the goals of his next sortie, and so the mechanic felt she owed it to him to ensure that the polycarbon engine housing didn’t come apart during maneuvers.
That had happened to somebody else in their wing last week, actually, when an overheated microwarp drive had come apart on the pilot. A Wolf assault frigate in the same squadron had managed to finish off the enemy Retribution from the 24th Imperial Crusade before it could take full advantage of the mishap. The mechanic responsible took a very long walk out the airlock the next day, and everybody else in the maintenance hangar worked well into the next shift in order to check and double-check the equipment.
Of course, Lyncyne hates the hours and feels like she’ll never get the grease completely off her hands. But she has listened to the pilots or space traffic controllers as they told ale-fueled stories of Amarrian industrial transports and starbase reactors exploding. She knows of the Crusade pilots and commanders introduced to their vengeful god earlier than they’d anticipated. Every day, at mess, she sees the dull eyes of the Starkmanir busboys and cooks working in the cafeteria as part of the Tribal Republic’s re-integration program. Sometimes at night, she thinks back to the girl in her second-year mechanics class who’d taken an assignment to an agricultural world somewhere in the low-security Hed constellation. Her transport never arrived, and while the Tribal Liberation Force had little to say about it, everyone assumed that one of the raiding parties had destroyed it — or, worse, captured it.
So now, in the hangar, perched on the cowling of a pod-pilot’s interceptor, she focuses tightly on rigging the bolts, the housing, and the conduits. Everyone does their part.
NB: While not required, you might want to read Part 1 first.
“No.”
“Again?”
“I don’t like it. What else do you have?”
The TLF agent slammed the table. “I have had it with you. Get out of my office.”
Casiella arched an eyebrow, stretching a facial tattoo slightly. “Perhaps you don’t remember who I am…”
“I know damn well who you are. Now move your ass out of here. If I can still see you in thirty seconds, Security will fix that. One.”
“You just haven’t given me an assignm–”
“Two.”
“–ent that works for me.”
“Twenty-one.”
“What about, you know, three?”
“I counted fast. Get out.”
The diminutive Sebiestor pulled herself up with what dignity she could muster and ripped the patch off her flight suit, throwing it in the agent’s face.
“I’m damn tired of fighting on someone else’s terms. You can keep your fake little war.”
The agent’s face turned red and he began to spout obscure obscenities that even Casiella hadn’t heard before. So, instead, she just smirked and turned to leave. As she exited through the door, she heard something whistling through the air and ducked slightly. An ancient Lustrevik vase shattered on the door frame next to her head.
The militia didn’t really suit somebody like her. Which meant that her handlers in the RSS — and, worse, her attaché Jorunn — turned out to have been right.
She hated it when things worked out like that.
to be continued…
The massive battlecruiser finally slid back into its hangar after its return voyage. The magnetic clamps engaged to hold it in place and prevent it from accidentally crushing any of the small maintenance drones that now swarmed over it for inspection and fueling. A gantry lifted out the piloting capsule through a small recess and hauled it to a disembarkation chamber for the captain to exit with at least a small bit of dignity.
Casiella hated this part: gasping for air as her lungs switched back to oxygen from the ambiotic fluid of the pod gave her a brief sensation of drowning. She knew, of course, that she wouldn’t drown and that the systems always worked. But something deep in the reptilian hindbrain just refused to learn the lesson. She didn’t enjoy the sensation of entering the pod and swallowing the fluid, either. Leaving the pod, though, felt much worse because it came accompanied by the disengaging of the neural connection to her ship.
Moments before, she could navigate among the stars as easily as any other human might turn their heads. She could see millions of kilometers to focus on a specific object. With the same effort usually required to gesture with a hand, she could sweep away enemies (or competitors, which amounted to the same thing) via volleys of missiles. Her drones acted to accomplish her whims. That structure there? Demolish it? She just needed to want it to happen, and it did. Back on her own two feet, in her “meatspace body,” all those advantages went away.
But flesh has its own advantages.
She quickly ducked into the nearby shower to rinse off the remaining fluid and don a dry jumpsuit. A light above the door turned green and one of her senior staff assistants entered: a Krusual woman whose splotchy facial birthmarks made her an outcast in most of Minmatar society.
Casiella addressed her assistant while the cosmetibots attended to her hair. “That part of the plan went well, Jorunn. The RSS agent seemed very pleased.”
Jorunn focused on her datapad for a moment before speaking. “Yes, the intel dataflows have already engaged. Nearly all their agents have requested your attention. I suppose those Angel Diamond tags went over well.”
Before responding, Casiella selected a facial tattoo type for the night and the cosmetibots went to work. “He didn’t even ask where I’d got them. I think he just assumed I’d gone out and found them myself. Enough ISK can get you anything, though.”
“These days, that’s true enough. The Republic has warmed to you somewhat since you returned from Syndicate space. By now, they’ve chosen to overlook some of the work we did out there.”
The hint of a cruel smile curled across Casiella’s lips. “So much the better for them. The RSS knows the value of a good informant when it finds one, and they’d rather have me working for them than against them.” Now that the cosmetibots finished their tasks and buzzed rapidly back into their receptacles, she stood and looked up at Jorunn, waiting for the inevitable.
“You’ll have a tough time balancing the internal factions, though. Outwardly, of course, they’ll have nothing for praise for you now that you’ve joined the Tribal Liberation Force, but internally they will prefer that you work with them.” Jorunn turned around the datapad and presented a few dossiers before explaining that her employer would need to choose an agent or two.
Casiella pondered for a few moments before tapping a thin finger against her chin. “So you just assumed I’d go right for contract work rather than patrolling or ‘plex security?”
This time, Jorunn smiled cruelly in an echo of her employer’s expression a few moments ago. “You wanted that starbase in high-security space. I told you that the TLF would put you on the fast track to it, and agent contracts will get you there fastest.”
“Fine, then.” The petite Sebiestor sighed. “But let’s get this done quickly. I’ve better things to do than fight this war on someone else’s terms.”
We frequently see corp or alliance identities in EVE revolving around larger factions. The Amarr have CVA, the Minmatar have Electus Matari and Ushra’khan, not to mention innumerable militias in factional warfare for all four of the primary factions. Smaller, interesting factions (Angels, Thukkers, Intaki, Sansha etc) also inspire a number of corporations and even alliances.
I know, we already have the NPC corporation, but nearly everybody in EVE knows why NPC corps stink. I don’t know whether bloodline NPC corps obviate any need for (or interest in) player-managed bloodline corps, and that could present an issue. But what would a player Sebiestor tribe corp look like? First, the bloodline description:
Widely respected as being among the most innovative thinkers of the cluster, the Sebiestor are an ingenious people with a natural fondness for engineering. For the last millennium, they have been pioneering advances in applied sciences despite laboring under chronic material shortages. Sebiestor engineers believe they can build anything, with anything, out of anything. Veritable masters of deriving solutions from impossible circumstances, they are most commonly found working in shipyards, assembly lines, terraforming projects, outpost construction, and aboard starships.
So maybe this hypothetical group could take the form of an industrial corp, based near Eram (the tribal HQ system)? Manufacturing and invention, in particular, make sense for Sebiestor pilots, and perhaps reverse engineering to support strategic cruiser production. Pilots could also participate in mission running, especially with the aim of gaining high standings with the tribe and perhaps the Minmatar Republic itself. The corp’s industrial focus could even turn to supporting the war effort by providing supplies and equipment to militia corps working with the Tribal Liberation Force in Metropolis. Alternately, salvaging, trading, and smuggling seem to fit the feel of a hard-scrabble, inventive group that turns junk into the most advances devices humanity has ever known…
This thinking doesn’t necessarily mean I’d leave the Back Alley Trading Company, of course. Right now, I’m just thinking out loud and musing on ideas, since I have always loved planning corp or guild concepts and organization in every MMOG I’ve ever played or even closely examined. This particular concept has a lot appeal for me, no doubt, but I have to weigh that against all the other concepts and game play that interest me. On the other hand, I wouldn’t quite rule it out, either.
Also, this marks my 200th post on Ecliptic Rift. My geek identity means I really look forward to the 256th post more, though…
Since I joined factional warfare with my alt Ghost Outrider, I’ve had a few enjoyable fights, made a good bit of ISK, and jumped up the standings ladder. For roleplay purposes and access to nice faction goodies, the militia has really served well.
Unfortunately, at this point, all the incentives related to FW really get driven by running missions for the TLF (and the other militia NPC corps). When comparing missions versus running plexes (contesting and decontesting systems), the former generate lots of easy loyalty points, ISK, and much more standing increase than plexing.
At the same time, though, missions create far less PVP opportunity because of the ability to complete a mission in less than two or three minutes. By the time the enemy realizes you’re in a beacon, finds out what ship you have, and gets a ship that can pass through the gate but still beat yours, you often have finished the mission. So the PVP opportunities all come on gates.
Another game mechanic makes plexing more difficult. The system only shuffles plexes when one is conquered or defended and at downtime, moving them into a random system elsewhere in-theater. Originally, players believed that this happened within constellations, but subsequent comments from CCP and other testing have not tended to support this theory. So defending systems tends to push beacons into uncontested systems. Defenders get tired of scanning contested systems only to find no plexes at all, as they can only find them with any frequency shortly after downtime. Pilots can do offensive plexing at all times, although the problems listed above make it less likely that people will do anything but sit on gates or run missions.
So what can CCP do to fix this? First, balance rewards (standing increases and loyalty points) between plexes and missions. When I can get 2% increase from a level 3 mission and 0.5% from a major complex, something has gone terribly wrong. This at least gives incentives for players to stay at the beacons, pulling PVP off gates, driving small-ship warfare, and matching general hull sizes.
The downtime mechanic presents a thornier problem. CCP Explorer (the software director) has explained that they don’t like it, either, but that the other solutions generate too much server load. So perhaps they should create a different scaled-down version of the new sovereignty mechanics coming in Dominion. The design in the winter expansion clearly has its roots in FW but improves upon it (as it should, given the stakes), so let’s learn from the additional iterations and push those improvements back down.
Or perhaps beacon announcements could show up in militia chat or the Battlefield Intelligence window when the enemy starts to run a plex or mission (e.g. “a listening post in Ezzara has detected an enemy fleet assaulting a minor stronghold”). This would give pilots the ability to go defend systems and generally have the benefits described for giving more incentives in plexing versus missioning.
Faction warfare has a lot of potential in it. Originally, players complained about rewards, and CCP has addressed that. Now they need to work on driving more PVP for the pilots that join up.
