EVE Online

A long time ago, probably at least 20 years in fact I purchased my first computer. It was an Acorn Electron, a cut down version of the BBC Model B, and one of the first home computers. Along with the machine I bought a game called Elite. It was a space trading/combat game in which you started as the pilot of a small space craft fitted with a single laser weapon and a small cargo hold. The idea of the game was to buy various goods from planets where supply was plentiful and cheap and transport them to where the prices was high. With the profits you could upgrade your ship with more powerful weapons, bigger cargo space and other goodies. The best prices could only be obtained from the more lawless planets where pirates guarded the warp routes into them. By disposing of these pirates you gained status, eventually becoming an Elite pilot. Although it was wire frame graphics in black and white it was the best game I ever played.

Years later a group of Icelandic chaps released EVE Online into the world and at it's core EVE is Elite, updated and transformed into a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). And now EVE is the best game ever.

At it's core the concept of the game is the same as Elite; you start as the pilot of a small vulnerable craft fitted with the most basic of equipment and a few skills with which to fly it. In order to progress you need to make money, or isk as it's known in the game, and then spend that isk on new skills, ships and equipment. Unlike Elite however EVE has a depth and complexity which for a new player must be fairly daunting.

I could write pages about the game but I will resist that temptation. Just to give you a flavour of some of what the game is all about what I will do is describe briefly the career of one of the characters that I play in the game, B'Ellana Torres.

B'Ellana began her career as a lowly Gallente pilot. There are four races in EVE, Gallente being one of them. After completing the tutorial agent missions B'Ellana went on to complete some more missions for another agent. Each race supports a number of corporations run by Non Player Characters (NPC's). These corporations buy and sell commodities, ships and other items useful to the Player Characters (PC's). Each corporation has agents which can give out missions of various sorts which can be undertaken by the player to earn isk and other rewards. This is a good way for new players to earn isk.

Whilst conducting these missions B'Ellana used the isk that she earned to buy new skills. Skills are at the heart of a character, without them little can be achieved. Skills are trained in real time and some can take months to learn to the highest levels. Each skill has a rank, the higher the rank the longer the skill takes to train. Each skill can be trained to a maximum of 5 levels with each level taking longer than the last. Skills are needed to fly better ships, kit those ships out with better weapons and fittings as well as to be able to mine, manufacture, trade or do scientific research. At first B'Ellana concentrated on skills which enabled her to fly her spacecraft better and fit it with slightly more powerful weapons. Soon however it became apparent that simply learning skills on an ad hoc basis was unproductive. What she needed to do was concentrate on an area and learn the skills to do that well.

After a few weeks playing the game by herself B'Ellana began looking for a player run corporation to join. These corporations are different from the NPC ones in that they are run by real players. They can range from small one man corporations to ones with hundreds of players in them. There are many advantages for new players in joining a corporation but I would say that the biggest one is that you have a group of more experienced players who can help guide you through the game. After looking around B'Ellana applied to join and was accepted into a corporation called Solstice System Development Concourse (SSDC). SSDC was a small corporation with players mainly from the UK and the USA.

At this point I should explain that the EVE universe is spread over around 5,000 solar systems. Many of these are controlled by the four main races and collectively these systems are referred to as Empire space. In those systems there are NPC policemen who patrol the stations and jump gates to other systems. Any aggression or transport of illegal material is seized upon by the custodians of the law and such pilots are dealt with severely. However there are vast areas of space where there is no policemen, no sentry guns at the gates; in effect no law. These areas are ruled by players; corporations or alliances of corporations claim these places for their own, guarding jealously the resources that these systems produce against any and all intruders.

SSDC was at the time B'Ellana joined mainly an Empire based mining and manufacturing corporation. Most systems in EVE contain a number of asteroid fields. There are various kinds of asteroid each of which produce an ore which in turn can be refined into minerals. The minerals, combined with the right blueprint can be used to build almost anything in the game, from simple ship fittings to huge battleships. Most systems have asteroid fields, but those with the rarest and so most valuable ores can only be found outside Empire space. So it was that B'Ellana became a miner, refiner and manufacturer gradually learning a myriad of skills so that she could maximise the yield from the ore she mined and used as little of the minerals so gained to build ships and fittings as possible. SSDC, however, wasn't content to stay just in Empire - the lure of the riches in unsafe space was just too much - and one day it joined an alliance of corporations who controlled an area of lawless territory.

There is a real sense of vast emptiness in unsafe space. Most systems don't even have station where you can dock and the NPC pirates move around in battleships aggressively attacking miners who dare to mine the rich ores. The greatest danger of all though is other players. EVE, you see, is essentially a Player vs Player (PvP) game. In almost every aspect of the game players compete with other players, whether it is for resources or territory or for the best price to sell manufactured goods at. The competition is however most intense in unsafe space. There is almost a constant state of war, declared or undeclared, amongst the alliances in unsafe space. There are some who simply fly around causing trouble just because they can.

For a few months B'Ellana joined in mining operations around one of the few systems with a station where the ore could be refined. This she transported back into Empire and combined with the ore mined there built many ships making a much greater profit on the sales. It all however came to a sudden and violent end. Political intrigue, a falling out amongst certain players and the alliance which SSDC became part of came under attack. War was declared meaning that players could be attacked even in Empire space without the police intervening. As an industrial player B'Ellana wasn't equipped to handle attacks on this scale. With Empire too dangerous to travel through and mercenary groups hired by our enemies patrolling everywhere B'Ellana effectively could do nothing. She decided that the only solution was to leave SSDC and form her own corporation

And so Solstice Systems Development Industries (SSDI) was formed out of that chaotic time. That was over a year ago now and since then SSDI has continued it's path of mining, manufacturing and mission running in safe space. B'Ellana has continued to increase her skills, branching into science with the research and development of new technologies and improvements to old ones as well as finally learning to be a reasonably competent pilot. At heart however she is an industrialist - not an hugely rich one - but a happy one.

Finally here's the other main characters I play in the game.

"Zacchaeus."	"Mhairi".	"Arilyn Moonblade".