EVE Online will erect a memorial to the 21-hour, all-out space battle that spanned Monday and Tuesday, commemorating the loss of 75 Titans — the largest ship in the spacefaring MMO. The total damage done may translate to more than $US300,000 in real money, but it is the loss of the Titans that defines the Battle of B-R5RB.
To put it in perspective, the previous record for most Titans lost in a battle was 12, which had happened twice. “The winning side alone had lost more Titans that in any battle seen before,” CCP writes in this official recap of the battle and its aftermath. “The losing side had lost more Titans than anyone had previously thought possible.”
Why are Titans such a big deal, aside from being, well, big? They “take thousands of man hours to produce, take months to train to fly, and are capable of fitting massive doomsday weapons that obliterate lesser ships with a single volley.” The defeat of a Titan is a major event in an EVE battle, and a significant setback to the alliance that loses one. In this case, Clusterfuck Coalition and its Russian Coalition allies lost 16 and won. The N3 Coalition and Pandemic Legion lost 59.
Thus the plans for “Titanomachy.” Work already has begun on the memorial by CCP designers using Titan wreck models introduced in the game’s most recent update. Titanomachy “will be placed around the seventh planet in the B-R5RB solar system and be ‘off grid’ from the station. Thereafter, any player who plays EVE can make the dangerous pilgrimage there and marvel at the scope of destruction.”
The attention given to the size of the battle and the financial losses incurred have almost obscured a key detail about any battle: who the hell won. In this case, CFC and the Russian Coalition prevailed decisively, massive payback for the stinging defeat N3 and Pandemic handed them a little more than a week ago.
The battle raged for so long it was stopped by daily server maintenance downtime, but by then Pandemic and N3 were limping out of the system in retreat.
In sum, 7,548 different characters involved with the two coalitions participated in the battle. 50-five different player alliances were fighting under one of the larger banners. Let’s not forget the losses of other huge capital ships, like 13 Supercarriers and 370 Dreadnaughts. The Doomsday lasers that the Titans carry were fired 775 times. CCP says that accounts for 24 per cent of all Doomsday firings in the past two years in the game.
And the final bill: 11 Trillion ISK (EVE’s currency) in damage and losses. According to some conversion sites, the value of the ships lost is between $US300,000 and $US330,000.
“The lost momentum in the Southern conflict due to the B-R fight is a far greater loss than the ISK assets,” writes Elise Randolph, a Pandemic Legion fleet commander. “Because try as you might, you cannot buy swagger.”
Loads more details, statistics and images at CCP’s writeup below.
The Bloodbath of B-R5RB, Gaming’s Most Destructive Battle Ever [EVE Online]
Comments
9 responses to “EVE’s Giant Space Battle Is Getting A Memorial: ‘Titanomachy’”
Pardon my dumb-arsedness, and EVE ignorance, but do you actually get to see these battles in-game in real-time or something, with epic camera angles and such, or is it more like D&D paper battles with a bunch of reports appearing stating damages?
Apparently with all the latency it was more like a slideshow set on 30 minute frame changes!
The video in the article was taken from the battle. Mind you, thats going in real time. In big battles like this, the servers make the solar system, and ones around the system, go in to whats called a Time Dilation (TiDi) state. The battle, for the 21 or so hours, was being fought at 1 tenth the normal speed of the game. This is basically to make sure there even fights. Instead a everyone lagging erratically, CCP came up with this, where everyone is ‘laging’ and the same speed for the fight.
I mite also add that the main fight was not the only fight. The solar systems surrounding B-R5RB where also hosting smaller skirmishis, with both sides trying to stop reinforcements from getting in to the system.
I’m still really disappointed by all this. It’d be great if some fast past action footage was cut and created out of this. Instead we have a lot of numbers, distant footage of a million lasers being fired simultaneously.
It’d be great if it played out like some sort of massive Freelancer battle (ie more action-ish)
God I loved freelancer! missing the days of quality space flight & Battles 🙁
Yeah, it’s a shame it aged so horrifically.
I hear there’s this little thing called EVE Valkyrie that is built for the Oculus Rift. That could be an awesome experience.
http://evevalkyrie.com/
I too loved freelancer. I’m looking forward to playing this.
Oh and Star Citizen could have some potential to revive this genre.
It is real time, but due to the servers that run the Eve Universe not being able to handle that amount of action, they introduced time dilation across the Eve Universe when battles like this occur, at its maximum it means that 1 second game time is equal to 10 seconds real time, so if you watch any of the videos of it, it will appear quite slow, but it is real time.