Why can't Eve after 20 years support large scale battles?

[Spark0]

Every video for a long time (I played back in 2003 on and off since then), the 'largest fleet battle in history' looks to be the most boring snoozefest ever.

There's no manoeuvring (like in the trailers). No real tactics. Its a blob of ships that are awkwardly positioned vs another blob of ships going for hours and hours.

Time Dilation was a needed thing way back in the day when we had large fleets going at it, but now in 2023 its the same thing?

Sheesh.. Thats so boring guys.

[Kodokuro]

You dont even own the game, Why do you care? You probably wouldnt understand it anyway even if someone drops technical stuff.

[Spark0]

Originally posted by Kodokuro:

You dont even own the game, Why do you care? You probably wouldnt understand it anyway even if someone drops technical stuff.

I dont play off of steam you dumb dumb. And been on/off since 2003.

Why do I care.. hmm I dunno cause we want epic space/fleet battles and what they actually look like due to time dilatation is a snorefest.

[NrSeven]

Then don't play large battles? Problem fixed!
7o

[Nenne.]

Originally posted by Kodokuro:

You dont even own the game, Why do you care? You probably wouldnt understand it anyway even if someone drops technical stuff.

(Facepalm.)

[Lactose the Intolerant]

Originally posted by Spark0:

Every video for a long time (I played back in 2003 on and off since then), the 'largest fleet battle in history' looks to be the most boring snoozefest ever.

There's no manoeuvring (like in the trailers). No real tactics. Its a blob of ships that are awkwardly positioned vs another blob of ships going for hours and hours.

Time Dilation was a needed thing way back in the day when we had large fleets going at it, but now in 2023 its the same thing?

Sheesh.. Thats so boring guys.

Your experience of fleet fights is watching things off of YouTube, so unsurprisingly you have absolutely no idea of any of the tactics that go into fights of this size. You are pontificating from a place of absolute ignorance. So why waste everyone's time by speaking at all?

But since you have anyway I may as well set you straight. Fleets are capped at 250 people, so when there is a fight of 3000+ people you will have 12+ fleets of pilots, each fleet will usually be a different doctrine with different ways of fighting, engagement ranges, etc. This necessitates that fleets are in constant motion, either repositioning on the field with their sublight engines or warping in and out of the battlefield for positional advantage or to escape a disadvantage position.

On top of subcapital fleets, there will be capital ships which will be used in specific ways, carriers and supercarriers typically to deploy their fighters and attack from relative safety, while dreadnoughts are kind of in a strange place right now but can be used in different ways and various gambits. Titans are also sometimes utilised to use their guns at range or their doomsdays in other situations.

There are also specific jobs that smaller fleets (<50 people) will perform such as bombing runs, where covert ops frigates will ambush groups of battleships with bombs to destroy them (or capital ships with void bombs to drain their capacitor). There are also ECM burst frigates, who will fly through enemy fleets and drop ECM bursts to break their target locks to reduce incoming damage and their logistics' ability to repair their ships. There will also sometimes be fleets running wildcard tactics, such as using Hecate destroyers to warp in directly on top of long range ships and use their immense point blank damage to quickly take down battleships and overwhelm enemy logistics ships.

On top of that there are interdiction fleets of 10~ people who will operate in the surrounding systems whose job it is to pick off stragglers and reinforcements or use warp bubbles to "waterboard" a fleet whereby they follow the fleet and use bubbles to prevent their retreat. And the list goes on. If someone ever at all tried to fight in the way you are describing they would be immediately destroyed.

As to time dilation, any time that CCP make the game more able to handle more people, the sides will just bring more people to the fights. Back in the day 100-200 people was enough to literally crash the node. Today you can have 800 pilots fighting before time dilation even starts to kick in. The game still functions perfectly fine albeit at max time dilation with 2000-3000 people fighting. And only really struggles with 5000-6000 player battles.

Tell me, what other game could even manage the first benchmark of 800 people at all? There literally isn't one. CCP runs I am pretty sure the most advanced game server in the world for EVE. The reason why time dilation exists is not a fault of the developers but rather a physical limit of what technology in the early 21st century is capable of.

[Spark0]

Originally posted by Lactose the Intolerant:

Originally posted by Spark0:

Every video for a long time (I played back in 2003 on and off since then), the 'largest fleet battle in history' looks to be the most boring snoozefest ever.

There's no manoeuvring (like in the trailers). No real tactics. Its a blob of ships that are awkwardly positioned vs another blob of ships going for hours and hours.

Time Dilation was a needed thing way back in the day when we had large fleets going at it, but now in 2023 its the same thing?

Sheesh.. Thats so boring guys.

Your experience of fleet fights is watching things off of YouTube, so unsurprisingly you have absolutely no idea of any of the tactics that go into fights of this size. You are pontificating from a place of absolute ignorance. So why waste everyone's time by speaking at all?

But since you have anyway I may as well set you straight. Fleets are capped at 250 people, so when there is a fight of 3000+ people you will have 12+ fleets of pilots, each fleet will usually be a different doctrine with different ways of fighting, engagement ranges, etc. This necessitates that fleets are in constant motion, either repositioning on the field with their sublight engines or warping in and out of the battlefield for positional advantage or to escape a disadvantage position.

On top of subcapital fleets, there will be capital ships which will be used in specific ways, carriers and supercarriers typically to deploy their fighters and attack from relative safety, while dreadnoughts are kind of in a strange place right now but can be used in different ways and various gambits. Titans are also sometimes utilised to use their guns at range or their doomsdays in other situations.

There are also specific jobs that smaller fleets (<50 people) will perform such as bombing runs, where covert ops frigates will ambush groups of battleships with bombs to destroy them (or capital ships with void bombs to drain their capacitor). There are also ECM burst frigates, who will fly through enemy fleets and drop ECM bursts to break their target locks to reduce incoming damage and their logistics' ability to repair their ships. There will also sometimes be fleets running wildcard tactics, such as using Hecate destroyers to warp in directly on top of long range ships and use their immense point blank damage to quickly take down battleships and overwhelm enemy logistics ships.

On top of that there are interdiction fleets of 10~ people who will operate in the surrounding systems whose job it is to pick off stragglers and reinforcements or use warp bubbles to "waterboard" a fleet whereby they follow the fleet and use bubbles to prevent their retreat. And the list goes on. If someone ever at all tried to fight in the way you are describing they would be immediately destroyed.

As to time dilation, any time that CCP make the game more able to handle more people, the sides will just bring more people to the fights. Back in the day 100-200 people was enough to literally crash the node. Today you can have 800 pilots fighting before time dilation even starts to kick in. The game still functions perfectly fine albeit at max time dilation with 2000-3000 people fighting. And only really struggles with 5000-6000 player battles.

Tell me, what other game could even manage the first benchmark of 800 people at all? There literally isn't one. CCP runs I am pretty sure the most advanced game server in the world for EVE. The reason why time dilation exists is not a fault of the developers but rather a physical limit of what technology in the early 21st century is capable of.

You took a long time to write what I already know.
Its a blob vs another blob.

Theres no fleet manoeuvring. Your example of 1-2 pilots going into the blob isn't really a great example.

Ive been part of fleet battles years ago. Part of Ascendant Frontier vs BoB and all the other Mercs. Those days capitals were just coming out and being a thing.

An indie developer that made Foxhole that is making Anvil Empires is on the verge of releasing an MMO that has at least 1000 players in one area battling with avatars. Not spaceships that work off of spreadsheets and UI, but avatars that are performing actions.

As far as I know for a lot of the time dilation stuff, CCP also reduces what visually the game can do to better performance.

So the game for many years hypes people up with having 2k-3k in a system or 5k-6k (many of these people using alts). And still the game has to rely on nerfing.. the actual game for it to function at all.

You settled for less and think you're somehow better off when CCP (didnt they get bought out?) should be doing way better with what new hardware is on the horizon..

[Lactose the Intolerant]

Originally posted by Spark0:

You took a long time to write what I already know.

No, you clearly know nothing and you have demonstrated as much repeatedly in your posts. If you actually did know anything then you'd know how these battles are conducted and you would not hold this opinion.

Originally posted by Spark0:

Ive been part of fleet battles years ago. Part of Ascendant Frontier vs BoB and all the other Mercs. Those days capitals were just coming out and being a thing.

I fought in that same war, on the side of Lotka Volterra. So even if you're telling the truth about that why would you think that your 18 year old information is still relevant to today? While things were not static then either, nowadays things are much more sophisticated.

Originally posted by Spark0:

Theres no fleet manoeuvring. Your example of 1-2 pilots going into the blob isn't really a great example.

There is fleet manoeuvring, and the examples I gave consists of thousands of pilots in motion not to mention the auxiliary forces running interdiction on the surrounding systems. There are so many moving parts in these types of engagements both on grid and off and your ignorance of them is not an argument. If anyone tried to fight a battle in the way you're describing by just blobbing up close to the enemy and sitting stationary they would just lose immediately to the force which is willing and able to stay mobile and use that mobility to dictate the engagement. There's a reason no one uses 250km sniper BS's anymore but everyone runs around in T2 cruisers and micro-warpdrive battlecruisers, and that's because mobility is king.

Any subcap fleet is in constant motion and is using pings to warp around the battlefield. It is rare for a fleet to not initiate a tactical on-grid warp before you can expend one magazine of ammunition. And with so many fleets in play in a large engagement there is a lot going on with many moving pieces.

Originally posted by Spark0:

An indie developer that made Foxhole that is making Anvil Empires is on the verge of releasing an MMO that has at least 1000 players in one area battling with avatars. Not spaceships that work off of spreadsheets and UI, but avatars that are performing actions.

Foxhole has a region limit of iirc 170 players per hex lmao. Anvil Empires will be about the same and you are kidding yourself if you think otherwise.

Originally posted by Spark0:

You settled for less and think you're somehow better off when CCP (didnt they get bought out?) should be doing way better with what new hardware is on the horizon..

The hardware and capacity is constantly improving. Fights which would brick the server in the past (such as in the ASCN vs BoB war) now run with no ti-di whatsoever. If you are of the opinion that the technology exists to do better (it doesn't) then you have once again demonstrated that you have no idea what you're talking about.

And yes CCP as a studio were purchased by Pearl Abyss. This is in the same way that Microsoft has bought studios like Rare, Bethesda etc.

[Spark0]

Originally posted by Lactose the Intolerant:

Originally posted by Spark0:

You took a long time to write what I already know.

No, you clearly know nothing and you have demonstrated as much repeatedly in your posts. If you actually did know anything then you'd know how these battles are conducted and you would not hold this opinion.

Originally posted by Spark0:

Ive been part of fleet battles years ago. Part of Ascendant Frontier vs BoB and all the other Mercs. Those days capitals were just coming out and being a thing.

I fought in that same war, on the side of Lotka Volterra. So even if you're telling the truth about that why would you think that your 18 year old information is still relevant to today? While things were not static then either, nowadays things are much more sophisticated.

Originally posted by Spark0:

Theres no fleet manoeuvring. Your example of 1-2 pilots going into the blob isn't really a great example.

There is fleet manoeuvring, and the examples I gave consists of thousands of pilots in motion not to mention the auxiliary forces running interdiction on the surrounding systems. There are so many moving parts in these types of engagements both on grid and off and your ignorance of them is not an argument. If anyone tried to fight a battle in the way you're describing by just blobbing up close to the enemy and sitting stationary they would just lose immediately to the force which is willing and able to stay mobile and use that mobility to dictate the engagement. There's a reason no one uses 250km sniper BS's anymore but everyone runs around in T2 cruisers and micro-warpdrive battlecruisers, and that's because mobility is king.

Any subcap fleet is in constant motion and is using pings to warp around the battlefield. It is rare for a fleet to not initiate a tactical on-grid warp before you can expend one magazine of ammunition. And with so many fleets in play in a large engagement there is a lot going on with many moving pieces.

Originally posted by Spark0:

An indie developer that made Foxhole that is making Anvil Empires is on the verge of releasing an MMO that has at least 1000 players in one area battling with avatars. Not spaceships that work off of spreadsheets and UI, but avatars that are performing actions.

Foxhole has a region limit of iirc 170 players per hex lmao. Anvil Empires will be about the same and you are kidding yourself if you think otherwise.

Originally posted by Spark0:

You settled for less and think you're somehow better off when CCP (didnt they get bought out?) should be doing way better with what new hardware is on the horizon..

The hardware and capacity is constantly improving. Fights which would brick the server in the past (such as in the ASCN vs BoB war) now run with no ti-di whatsoever. If you are of the opinion that the technology exists to do better (it doesn't) then you have once again demonstrated that you have no idea what you're talking about.

And yes CCP as a studio were purchased by Pearl Abyss. This is in the same way that Microsoft has bought studios like Rare, Bethesda etc.

You haven't proven anything and want to make this personal yet if I search big fleet battles from last year or this year they largely resemble the same ♥♥♥♥ I experienced years ago..

So I dont know wtf you're on about.

As for Anvil, I guess you're not up to date on the information because they did some playtests and had many more avatars going at it (much more than Foxhole because thats technically on an older version of their engine).

So if an indie dev team can accomplish that... Id say Eve is struggling with old times.

Ti-Di is still a thing, so what are you trying to prove? That we didn't try to have more than 1000 pilots back in the day trying to do a massive fleet battle?

When you see a blob of capitals, its simply that a blob. Its been a thing in the game.. part of the nomenclature 'blob' because thats what it is.

Its a snorefest.

[Lactose the Intolerant]

Originally posted by Spark0:

You haven't proven anything and want to make this personal yet if I search big fleet battles from last year or this year they largely resemble the same ♥♥♥♥ I experienced years ago..

Because you are watching maybe 5 minutes of the fight with none of the context of what's going on (which would be about 30 seconds after ti-di). If you don't even play the game why would you be fooled into thinking you have an opinion worth listening to?

I do these fights every single week, and I promise you, constant movement and repositioning is a part of it. Movement is such an important factor that almost every ship flies with a microwarpdrive despite the massive downsides they impose.

Originally posted by Spark0:

Ti-Di is still a thing, so what are you trying to prove? That we didn't try to have more than 1000 pilots back in the day trying to do a massive fleet battle?

Ti-di wasn't introduced until 2011 but you claimed to have played around the time of ASCN-BoB. So which is it? And before Ti-Di there were less players actually and people would limit their attendees to a degree so that the server didn't brick.

Originally posted by Spark0:

As for Anvil, I guess you're not up to date on the information because they did some playtests and had many more avatars going at it (much more than Foxhole because thats technically on an older version of their engine).

This was not achieved all in the same hex. I am willing to be proven wrong, so please do so if you can.

Originally posted by Spark0:

When you see a blob of capitals, its simply that a blob. Its been a thing in the game.. part of the nomenclature 'blob' because thats what it is.

Its a snorefest.

Anyone who is flying a capital is doing so on an alt, and has their main in a sub-capital fighting in a fleet. The sub-cap fleet is considered so important that most groups will not permit you to fly a capital unless you have a sub-capital ship in a fleet first. And in any event if you find flying capitals boring you can just... not fly a capital. I don't usually bother as I don't find that sort of gameplay engaging either.

[Spark0]

Originally posted by Lactose the Intolerant:

Originally posted by Spark0:

You haven't proven anything and want to make this personal yet if I search big fleet battles from last year or this year they largely resemble the same ♥♥♥♥ I experienced years ago..

Because you are watching maybe 5 minutes of the fight with none of the context of what's going on (which would be about 30 seconds after ti-di). If you don't even play the game why would you be fooled into thinking you have an opinion worth listening to?

I do these fights every single week, and I promise you, constant movement and repositioning is a part of it. Movement is such an important factor that almost every ship flies with a microwarpdrive despite the massive downsides they impose.

Originally posted by Spark0:

Ti-Di is still a thing, so what are you trying to prove? That we didn't try to have more than 1000 pilots back in the day trying to do a massive fleet battle?

Ti-di wasn't introduced until 2011 but you claimed to have played around the time of ASCN-BoB. So which is it? And before Ti-Di there were less players actually and people would limit their attendees to a degree so that the server didn't brick.

Originally posted by Spark0:

As for Anvil, I guess you're not up to date on the information because they did some playtests and had many more avatars going at it (much more than Foxhole because thats technically on an older version of their engine).

This was not achieved all in the same hex. I am willing to be proven wrong, so please do so if you can.

Originally posted by Spark0:

When you see a blob of capitals, its simply that a blob. Its been a thing in the game.. part of the nomenclature 'blob' because thats what it is.

Its a snorefest.

Anyone who is flying a capital is doing so on an alt, and has their main in a sub-capital fighting in a fleet. The sub-cap fleet is considered so important that most groups will not permit you to fly a capital unless you have a sub-capital ship in a fleet first. And in any event if you find flying capitals boring you can just... not fly a capital. I don't usually bother as I don't find that sort of gameplay engaging either.

Lol so you come to the conclusion to.. not play part of the game if it is boring and you also find it boring..

Sheesh.. What are you even trying to prove?

[Lactose the Intolerant]

Originally posted by Spark0:

Lol so you come to the conclusion to.. not play part of the game if it is boring and you also find it boring..

Sheesh.. What are you even trying to prove?

My point is that the only people sitting still not manoeuvring, the thing that you have said is boring, are people in capital ships, 100% of whom are multiboxed and also flying a ship that is flying around and engaging in positional warfare. I don't tend to fly my capitals at all as I would rather have all my alts in subcaps as I find that more fun.

There are lots of parts of the game that I find boring, I don't understand how people can have fun doing missions or mining or spending any time at all shooting NPCs really, for example, but the game is so expansive that it allows me to pick and choose the activities that I do find enjoyable.

[n.]

In a 1000-v-1000 battle, each player's status is needing to be sent to 1999 other players, and that player receives the status of the 1999 other players.
Assume it's 1kB to transmit a player's status, thats 2MB/s to transmit the status of all players to just one player, meaning that player would need a 16Mbit/s connection. To send the same information to all 2000 players, thats 4GB. The server would require a 32Gbit/s connection to transmit that.
In eve's largest battle with 7500 players, that'd need a 460Gbit/s connection for real-time.

[Heathy]

yeah the problem just compounds itself, it wouldn't even matter if everyone had a god tier pc its the fundamental limit to the speed of light.

[MegaKootz]

I cannot tell if the opp is complaining about the game still being popular or not.

Because by his logic if a game ever breaks in any way it sucks, how can that be because if THAT many people all show up for a battle, the game would be considered amazing and mega popular, even more so after over 20 years, no matter how the servers behaved.

So how can the game both suck, yet draw those server breaking numbers so reliably year after year?

Either its a broken game that cannot handle its own player base,

or its a fully functional game that can and has been for the last 20 years with super solid player numbers to back it up.

pick one please, lets keep the nonsense to a minimum.

[Zen]

Originally posted by Spark0:

You took a long time to write what I already know.
Its a blob vs another blob.

Hardly, if you knew it, you wouldn't have been this ignorant.

Originally posted by Spark0:

Theres no fleet manoeuvring. Your example of 1-2 pilots going into the blob isn't really a great example.

You are like a blind person trying to explain to others that there is no such thing as colours. Where to even start any discussion? Based on what? How to persuade someone that colours exist?

Originally posted by Spark0:

Ive been part of fleet battles years ago. Part of Ascendant Frontier vs BoB and all the other Mercs. Those days capitals were just coming out and being a thing.

Sure.

Originally posted by Spark0:

An indie developer that made Foxhole that is making Anvil Empires is on the verge of releasing an MMO that has at least 1000 players in one area battling with avatars. Not spaceships that work off of spreadsheets and UI, but avatars that are performing actions.

Good for them.
...how is that relevant to your rant?

Originally posted by Spark0:

As far as I know for a lot of the time dilation stuff, CCP also reduces what visually the game can do to better performance.

Scuse me, I thought you've been in BoB here and ASF there and Lotka Volterra there and whoever, so it shouldn't be "as far as I know", more like "I have witnessed".

Originally posted by Spark0:

So the game for many years hypes people up with having 2k-3k in a system or 5k-6k (many of these people using alts). And still the game has to rely on nerfing.. the actual game for it to function at all.

Sure it does. And so far it's the only game that is capable of having fights of 5-6k people in the game. Not sure how important do you think is whether they are alts or not, it's a moving object.
Speaking of which, most of the ships are not 1 moving object, but rather 6. Do you know why?

Originally posted by Spark0:

You settled for less and think you're somehow better off when CCP (didnt they get bought out?) should be doing way better with what new hardware is on the horizon..

Sure we did. When there will be a game most EVE players decide is better than EVE, we will move there. So far there isn't.

So, what's your actual problem?