Last night, a long-awaited battle took place in EVE Online. However, it turned out to be a disappointment. But it wasn’t due to cowardly players, as previously suspected.
Yesterday, we reported on the supposed “1 million dollar” battle that was brewing in EVE Online. The conflict had been building over years, and a war had broken out. People thought: Two massive fleets would face off as the Imperium tried to destroy a Keepstar. That’s a huge space citadel, kind of like a Death Star.
In the lead-up, players thought: Well, with so much at stake for both sides, no one would go all in, and the battle would turn out to be a flop. They were partially right.
Because there was indeed an attack from the Imperium on the citadel. However, it wasn’t the gigantic battle that some had hoped for. Such a battle seems to be hardly possible in EVE at the moment.
A player on reddit explains the problem.
Time Dilation Prevents Epic Battle
The battle took place last night and lasted into the night. In the end over 6000 ships participated in the battle.
The problem is: When so many ships are in one area, a game mechanic in EVE activates called “Time Dilation.” It’s a sort of “intentional lag” – the time slows down for pilots in EVE, and everything takes much longer. 1 second of gameplay turns into 20 seconds of real time. This is meant to give the server a chance to handle all the input.
Death Star Almost Invulnerable Under These Conditions
This has a catch in this specific case: While for players the game speed drops to one-twentieth of the original time, the citadel itself follows different rules. The game mechanics continue in real time for it. It gets repaired again if not enough damage was dealt within a certain timeframe.
To destroy a citadel with the extreme time delay would practically require perfect gameplay under incredibly difficult conditions. This seems almost theoretically possible.
The attackers therefore abandoned the attack after about 6 hours and withdrew. Both sides incurred only relatively minor losses.
Players Struggle with Developer CCP
Currently, a big discussion has erupted that the changes to EVE in recent years have made fantastic space battles impossible. Many players are somewhat disappointed. It is said: We told CCP that all these safety nets are ruining our game, but they haven’t listened to us.
The general consensus is: Defenders of citadels are so favored in the current situation in EVE Online that a battle is pointless.
The English-speaking site PcGamesN learned from CCP that the mechanics actually operate as described here. Whether this will be changed is still unknown in Iceland.
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