I put together a quick video from what little footage I had of my first big battle. It shows what fleets look like, a little of how they’re organized, and you can hear the fleet commander giving orders.
Been learning to fly Stealth Bombers this weekend. Hoping to get my first real combat kills of this war the sneaky way.
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4 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.I don’t play EVE but I followed your link from reddit. I love all the politics and combat and such. To be honest I probably don’t have the discipline for this game but it’s still cool. Anyways…
Do you (or the FC) study up on old Age of Sail tactics? I know that for a time it was customary for enemy fleets to just go at each other, until the English started implementing line formations (hence the name “ship of the line”) so that the full force of a ship (its broadside) could be brought to bear. Old battles used to have large fleets in these lines, perhaps similar to your “conga lines” with the point being that you wanted your fleet to be able to get into a favorable position before the enemy fleet.
Of course, those battles had other challenges (wind speed and direction, where the guns could physically be put on a ship) that you guys may or may not have, but it’s still fascinating to consider.
Further, what thoughts do you have about this pertaining to other types of real life combat. In movies, armies are always shown just charging each other until there is a general melee, but in reality only portions of each army was engaged, and the rest of the army was just standing around, sort of like what you were doing during your first battle, lending support from a distance or maybe even just chillin.
Fascinating. I’m a total newb so feel free to smack me or learn me one. Thanks!
The big difference between EVE fleet combat and naval combat is the lack of directional weapons, plus warping. It doesn’t really matter which way your ship is facing when you shoot someone, so ships are constantly aligning to a warp-out point. Plus, ranges are relatively much higher than they are for naval ships – a long range battleship can easily hit targets 120+km away, so maneuvering within that very large range doesn’t matter much. The other issue is that naval battles are fought on a plane, and these battles are all in 3D. At first I thought people didn’t really use the 3D-ness very well, but it means that things like flanking aren’t nearly as effective because they can always warp out in another direction and it’s hard to cover a sphere. Plus, you can’t blockade at all – ships are so small relative to the radius of the battle that fleets move through each other all the time. Indeed, if your fleet is fit for close range and the enemy is fit for long range, you want to be right next to them since they won’t be able to hit you nearly as hard as you can hit them.
As for fleet organization, yeah, it’s very much like you say. Most fleets are pretty traditional – a battleship core with logistics support, a support fleet of smaller ships covering nearby gates or protecting the logistics fleet from smaller ships, and (potentially) a capital fleet on standby in case we need them to bridge in. What’s really fascinating is when there are multiple fleets out at once. There’s usually one primary fleet and a bunch of smaller fleets doing other specific tasks. In that sense, yeah, there are a lot of people who are essentially unengaged but playing different important roles.
I would like to informally recruit you to be part of the tweetfleet on twitter. I really like your work and it is a great place to introduce your blog to 200 ish Eve Online players. Plus it is a lot of fun =0)
I’ve checked out the tweetfleet a few times, and it seems like a good crowd! It’s a little weird for me, though, since my twitter account (http://twitter.com/drewwww) isn’t just an in-character account, and I talk way more about non-EVE stuff than EVE stuff. Maybe I’ll make a dedicated account to make it easier to participate in tweetfleet? Dunno yet.