

The Unpaid Bill that Launched a Thousand Starships - snide
http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/the-unpaid-bill-that-launched-a-thousand-starships/1100-4857/
Interesting story on that big EVE battle from last week. Talks with a lot of the involved parties.
======
erbo
Just to point out something about this whole battle that may not be readily
apparent...

The article quotes the figure that a titan (the largest type of ship in _EVE
Online_ ) costs the equivalent of $1500 to produce. But that doesn't mean you
can just walk into _EVE,_ plunk down $1500 to buy ISK, and walk off with a
titan. Far from it.

A titan has to be assembled out of over 7,000 individual components, each of
which must be bought or (more frequently) manufactured, and, if you build
them, you have to have the raw materials and blueprints for them. Assuming you
have all that, it would take a single player two and a half months just to
assemble all the components.

 _Then_ you can start building the titan's hull, which takes 40 days. But it
has to be built inside a Capital Ship Assembly Array (itself a very expensive
structure), which has to be anchored with a structure in player-controlled
space. And then that structure has to be _defended,_ because if someone comes
along and blows up your structure, you lose the titan hull that's under
construction.

And even after you _have_ a hull, that hull has to be fitted with appropriate
modules, such as the Doomsday weapon, jump bridge, and any other modules that
suit the pilot's fancy. That can easily run to as much cost as for the hull
alone, especially if you fit the kind of modules that can only be found in-
world by defeating high-ranking NPCs (or buying them on the market from
someone _else_ that has).

Hell, just _learning to fly_ one of those monsters can take months of training
time, and skill books that themselves carry price tags in the billions of ISK.

Only the largest and most powerful organizations in the game, alliances, can
actually build or fly titans, and they tend to jealously guard them. That
really underscores just how big a loss 75 of them is. Such losses cause
tectonic shifts in the balance of power.

~~~
ben0x539
But you can totally walk into EVE, drop down enough real money to buy gametime
coupons that you can sell for enough ingame money to buy a character (on the
offical forums) that can fly a titan and then buy an existing titan. You don't
have to bootstrap your way to your spaceship with a pickaxe and a roll of duct
tape.

~~~
csours
Right, but SOMEBODY had to.

~~~
erbo
In actual practice, no single player will construct all the components for a
titan. An alliance will spread the work of building the components around,
especially since some of the same components used in titans are used in other
capital ships and can be allocated to building whatever is necessary.

------
mr_spothawk
it's a sign of the awesomeness of our times that we create such profound and
significant fantasies in real time, and that people who've never played Eve
(me) can read about this and be enthralled.

~~~
chaz
There's also a big trend of Let's Play videos -- people watching other people
play video games on YouTube. Don't have time/money/patience/skills to play GTA
V? Just watch someone else play it, start to finish.

~~~
BlackDeath3
Even if you have all of those things, sometimes it's just a hell of a lot of
fun to watch a good Let's Play. Some of the better ones I remember for years,
and I have a feeling that one which showed a lot of promise but was
discontinued far too soon will bother me for years to come as well.

~~~
bitops
Agreed - I have to mention necroscope86 on YouTube. By far my favorite LP'er.
I think he had a snafu with his account that deleted a bunch of videos, but he
had some very funny X-COM play throughs. It was more about his commentary and
British accent that made it worth watching than the actual games themselves.

~~~
BlackDeath3
I'll have to check them out.

Some of my favorite LPs have come from LtMkilla (Dead Space and the ill-fated
Bioshock LPs come to mind). His humor probably isn't for everybody (whose
is?), but I love his videos.

~~~
_frog
If we're highlighting great LPs, I'll have to throw in a recommendation for
ChipCheezum's LPs of the Metal Gear Solid games. The humour is spot on, and
the games themselves are covered in exhaustive detail. His LPs of Mega Man
Legends and the Uncharted series are great too.

------
650REDHAIR
As always, Mittani overplays his role in the situation and tries to capture
all of the spotlight.

It was another "FC" (fleet commander) that decided to go "all in". Here are a
couple of Reddit AMAs with the commanders from either side.

[http://bit.ly/1jcPJfp](http://bit.ly/1jcPJfp)

[http://bit.ly/1c0M2Bq](http://bit.ly/1c0M2Bq)

~~~
jimktrains2
Why would you use a URL shortener for reddit links? If you don't like the long
ones (don't know why you'd care, but..) you can use reddit's short links.

/me hates url shorteners except for exceptional circumstances and feels they
miss the entire purpose of a link

------
NDizzle
Eve is probably the best game around to read about rather than play.

~~~
nyrina
Perhaps. I feel EVE is a bit like reading about politics.

In the same way that SC2/LoL is a bit like reading about sports

------
Someone
Weird simulation. You own a starship, have shown to be willing to use it in
battle, and somehow lose it to the police once you are behind one payment,
even if, presumably, you are guarding it at that moment?

Do these things come with a kill switch that the government can operate? Even
if it does, how does the government take control of the ship? Remote control?

Also, if this game has one faction controlling half the universe, isn't the
game effectively over, just like Monopoly often is long over before the last
losing player gets eliminated?

~~~
lordCarbonFiber
To clear up your points: the missed payment in question was not for a single
starship but for the structure that designates control over a system.
Simplified, the mechanics are such that so long as this structure exists
taking the system is a difficult affair that favors the defender (structures
have huge amounts of hp and then a invulnerability timer that gives defenders
hours to realize they are being attacked and mount a retaliation). However,
fail to put the resources into it and the time consuming step of removing
sovereignty from a system is removed and the battle is more equal for both
parties.

The way EvE is structured lends itself to shifts in the balance of power. Just
because one faction is on top today doesn't mean they will hold their position
indefinitely. The victors here, for example, come from much humbler roots and,
when they entered the game, played a crucial part is annihilating the current
ruling power.

~~~
Someone
All thanks for the replies. Makes more sense, but I would have put it in as
"this defense system needs X amounts of this rare fuel Y each Z" (or, maybe,
bring a statistical aspect into it: "the Foo in your bar are wearing out
faster than usual. Please make sure you have spare parts"), not as "yes, you
have a zillion extremely powerful guns, but if you don't pay rent in time, we,
will take your guns away from you.". This, to me, makes this universe feel
like some toy system with some all-powerful entity who really is in control (a
bit like Q, but less disinterested).

Also, what would an all-powerful entity need that money for? It would have to
be some accountant-deity to enjoy such regular payments. Or was that apparent
glitch that showed the bill as paid to some part of the fun?

------
Natsu
Every story I've seen said this was a 'bug'. How do we know there wasn't a spy
who did this deliberately? It's hard for an outsider to tell, but some of the
factors behind this appear to be a bit too convenient.

~~~
brazzy
Unless you postulate a spy within the game company, I don't see how a payment
that wasn't made even though multiple people checked it and thought it had
been made could be the work of a spy.

~~~
Natsu
Someone could've turned off the setting after they checked it or any number of
similar things.

------
ck2
_ISK cannot be legally exported to real-world money, however. It would mean
CCP could be treated like a bank and be subject to financial regulations_

um... isn't every crypto-currency a bank then?

~~~
forgottenpass
Yup. BitCoin is actually the currency, but companies conducting banking
operations with it are subject to financial regulation of banks. Look at
BitInstant. Dudes didn't follow financial regulations written for traditional
currencies when conducting transactions, so Charlie Shrem and Robert Faiella
got arrested.

~~~
DerpDerpDerp
Didn't the BitInstant guys get busted for specific allegations of money
laundering?

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25919482](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25919482)

~~~
daemin
That's what a lot of the money handling regulations are about. Hence why you
need to declare when you're going through an airport with more than 10k of
currency (USD, AUD, etc).

------
cajuntrep
Thought it said startups... Starships?

------
sp332
This is much less dry than the last version of this article that showed up on
HN
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7136603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7136603)

~~~
rosser
Yeah, it's chock-full of the testosterone I'd have expected to see from
something like this. To wit:

 _“They put their dick on the table, and we chopped it off,” said Gianturco._

------
tumes
Wow, posted by Dave himself. Hi Dave!

~~~
snide
/waves

~~~
quadfour
Hello Dave!

------
yincrash
His friend sent him a text that said "[laughs]"?? that seems improbable

~~~
sp332
Square brackets indicate that an editor has modified a quote.
[http://askville.amazon.com/purpose-square-brackets-
sentence/...](http://askville.amazon.com/purpose-square-brackets-
sentence/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=11214678)

------
anthracis417
The face that launched one thousand shits

