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On February 20 2009 03:48 IntoTheWow wrote:
I get a gist of how the game works as an alliance. But could someone explain how it works on a personal level. What does one person do?
How do you go from being a X guy to having a big ship. etc....
What you are able to do as a player is completely reliant on how many "Skillpoints" you have. Skillpoints are Eve's equivilant of a level and determine how well you do things. You acquire these through real time such that you pick what you want to train and it's set and forget, you can do other things.
I am not actually aware of how many skill point you start out with nowadays but you can expect to gain about 10-13million a year. In the beginning you'll probably want to specialize in a specific races ships and weapons so that you can actually be effective in a shorter amount of time.
Besides that you can choose to do what you want. The economy is nearly entirely player driven and you can choose to orient your skill points towards mining + production, or you can orient toward combat fighting in a specific size of ship. There are a lot of sizes of ships now but the main ones are Frigate -> Cruiser -> Battleship. Each size requires progressively more skillpoints to pilot at what one would consider an "adequate" level.
You can choose to run agent missions/kill NPC pirates for cash, play the market, or if you're more to the darkside you can go out to more dangerous systems and attack players and ransom them or just kill them and loot them. Systems get security ratings from 1.0-0.0. 1.0 is very safe and the only way to die there is through stupidity and the only NPC pirates you see there are frigate class. .9-.6 is a little bit more dangerous but generally safe from other players, belt rats spawn in larger amounts here... big enough to kill your frigate. .5 is the middle sector and while PvP is very rare here (and generall illegal if you don't die while doing it) you can occasionaly run into your first cruiser class NPC pirates.
.4-.1 is where the fun starts. PvP happens here on a regular basis. Only the stargates themselves have any sort of defenses on them and outside of that is totally free game. Attacking people here does lower your security rating but otherwise there are no reprocussions. Rat spawns are larger and the ore you find in mining belts becomes increasingly rare. This is also the first security rating where you can see the gigantic capital ship class of ship.
0.0 is free space. Gates are free, there are no reprocussions for shooting people, your alliance can take its own space and it's basically no holds bared PvP. 0.0 is home to the rarest ore, the most powerful and highest bounty NPC rats and the most aggressive players.
The game isn't what I would call new player friendly. It has a decently steep learning curve but it is a very fun game once you get past that.
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EVE seems like a very interesting game, but also waaaaaay too much of a time sink. I enjoy reading these stories a lot, but actually playing/executing things like this seem pretty difficult/time consuming. This seems to have been the goal of GS from the beginning, and they've taken 2 years to get here, and only by a stroke of luck in turning the BoB director to their side. Really cool read though, imo.
Here's a funny image about the learning curve of EVE.
One question I have is, how difficult in real terms is piloting a ship? Do you have to have high apm, strategic knowledge, etc? Or is it just investing the required time getting the skills and ship?
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On February 20 2009 04:04 Rho_ wrote:EVE seems like a very interesting game, but also waaaaaay too much of a time sink. I enjoy reading these stories a lot, but actually playing/executing things like this seem pretty difficult/time consuming. This seems to have been the goal of GS from the beginning, and they've taken 2 years to get here, and only by a stroke of luck in turning the BoB director to their side. Really cool read though, imo. Here's a funny image about the learning curve of EVE.
Eve actually isn't time consuming at all when you compare it to other MMO's. The way you statistically advance in that game is completely through real time. Now acquiring money or ships does take considerable time and losing ships in eve HURTS. I've lost a fully kitted CNR and oh my god I couldn't log on for days, that was at least a year ago though.
That's pretty common nowdays though. I think everyone agree though that as far as learning curves go it has some of the steepest requirements I have ever seen. The entire world is complex and you have to kit your ship CORRECTLY or you'll simply die.
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holy shit i just read that entire thing. That was so fucking long.
Hmm... think I may go try EVE out.. nah I'll just obs instead. Kill those BoB douchebags!
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You don't field 20 titans in a single battle, that is all sorts of stupid nor do you field 500-600 capital ships, it's a waste of time to coordinate that amount.
Yeah, I'm talking about total alliance assets, not what you'd put on the field at once. After all, a third of those capital pilots are probably sleeping at any given time. Nevertheless, those numbers are accurate.
We're supposed to be talking about reasonable fleet fielding excercises here and 20 titans + 500 capital ships would probably crash servers and stress the logistics of everyone involved even if it were "reasonable"
While 20 titans and 500 capitals from each side would probably still crash servers, lately with Stackless IO fights of up to 1000 in a systsem have been pretty reasonable. And yeah, heh, nobody is dumb enough or has big enough balls to commit all their capitals at once.
The entire alliance has been far too passive compared to how they usually are and that just screams something is up. I very much doubt they'll simply die off, because even if they lose delve they will just move somewhere else. Correct though, keeping all your ships in one system is fundamental retardation, it's probably a good thing they got caught with their pants down so that they shape up or leave.
There was significant levels of resistance from BoB before Shrike died. After that their participation fell through the floor. Its possible that something is up, but like I said last in my last post, at this rate its going to involve losing all their towers holding sovereign space.
Edit re: gameplay/new player experience
Currently new players start with around 800k skillpoints. By comparison Jayme apparently has 66 million, I have a little more than 51 million. Neither of us are true "end game" players yet; I certainly don't have the time, in-game money, or inclination to train the biggest ships in the game. If Jayme has left BoB, he likely doesn't either.
There is a new patch for EVE coming out in a couple of weeks that's going to change new players to start with only around 50k skillpoints, but they will train at double rate until they hit around 1.6 million. However, its generally recommended to train "learning skills" early on, which are skills that make you train faster, so really that double rate advantage is merely putting you on par with all the veterans who already have said learning skills trained.
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I actually just read that whole thing. I've been interested about this game for a very long time now.
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Yeah EVE is a really deep and interesting game. A lot of the gameplay features are honestly terrible though. Main reason I still play isn't because of how awesome the game is but because I've been playing with the same people for the past 2-3 years now.
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On February 20 2009 04:04 Rho_ wrote:
One question I have is, how difficult in real terms is piloting a ship? Do you have to have high apm, strategic knowledge, etc? Or is it just investing the required time getting the skills and ship?
i've played only the 14 days free trial.. but i think piloting a ship is most stragical an tactical than physically skill demanding...
in 14- days trial (2 years ago) i was able to get a much better ship and some understanding of game economics (wich are most ofert-demand)... doing quest you realize than in some system some articles are cheaper than in others and that you might get money buying here and selling there (but your actions affect the economics, so those little articles will affect price there in mid-long term)
realy good game... and you can do plenty of things while travelling with auto-pilot... (most quest are just travelling; the ones a choose anyway, so i could do other things)
character creation is very nice... as it was said before if you dia u can lose everything (and u'll surely lose something [skills, money, ships, etc])
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On February 20 2009 04:17 General Nuke Em wrote:
Currently new players start with around 800k skillpoints. By comparison Jayme apparently has 66 million, I have a little more than 51 million. Neither of us are true "end game" players yet; I certainly don't have the time, in-game money, or inclination to train the biggest ships in the game. If Jayme has left BoB, he likely doesn't either.
There is a new patch for EVE coming out in a couple of weeks that's going to change new players to start with only around 50k skillpoints, but they will train at double rate until they hit around 1.6 million. However, its generally recommended to train "learning skills" early on, which are skills that make you train faster, so really that double rate advantage is merely putting you on par with all the veterans who already have said learning skills trained.
Yea taking pot shots at a PoS in a capital ship isn't exactly fun. We've had moments where you just sit there, turn your volume up while having your crap on auto fire and go AFK or surf browsers and rush to the comp if you get engaged. That combined with what can be at times a grueling siege schedule led me to stop playing in huge fleet warfare. I miss the days of cavalier dual MWD ravens  or cruise missile intercepters, that really was the essence of dogfighting. That only worked back then though because the relative player base was tiny.
The only fun Capital ship is apparently Mom but I've never flown one nor do I have the ISK to really invest in one properly. That and my lack of a 0.0 alliance currently doesn't really lend to flying a ship you can't really get out of.
He is entirely correct though, if you start the gaming out get your learning skills (and pref the advanced one) up first. You notice no difference at all in your combat effectiveness but it DRASTICALLY decreases the training time, especially for high level skills. It's highly reccomended you just get learning skills and putz around in a low level frigate for awhile to get a feel for the game.
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is awesome32282 Posts
On February 20 2009 04:01 Jayme wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2009 03:48 IntoTheWow wrote:
I get a gist of how the game works as an alliance. But could someone explain how it works on a personal level. What does one person do?
How do you go from being a X guy to having a big ship. etc.... What you are able to do as a player is completely reliant on how many "Skillpoints" you have. Skillpoints are Eve's equivilant of a level and determine how well you do things. You acquire these through real time such that you pick what you want to train and it's set and forget, you can do other things. I am not actually aware of how many skill point you start out with nowadays but you can expect to gain about 10-13million a year. In the beginning you'll probably want to specialize in a specific races ships and weapons so that you can actually be effective in a shorter amount of time. Besides that you can choose to do what you want. The economy is nearly entirely player driven and you can choose to orient your skill points towards mining + production, or you can orient toward combat fighting in a specific size of ship. There are a lot of sizes of ships now but the main ones are Frigate -> Cruiser -> Battleship. Each size requires progressively more skillpoints to pilot at what one would consider an "adequate" level. You can choose to run agent missions/kill NPC pirates for cash, play the market, or if you're more to the darkside you can go out to more dangerous systems and attack players and ransom them or just kill them and loot them. Systems get security ratings from 1.0-0.0. 1.0 is very safe and the only way to die there is through stupidity and the only NPC pirates you see there are frigate class. .9-.6 is a little bit more dangerous but generally safe from other players, belt rats spawn in larger amounts here... big enough to kill your frigate. .5 is the middle sector and while PvP is very rare here (and generall illegal if you don't die while doing it) you can occasionaly run into your first cruiser class NPC pirates. .4-.1 is where the fun starts. PvP happens here on a regular basis. Only the stargates themselves have any sort of defenses on them and outside of that is totally free game. Attacking people here does lower your security rating but otherwise there are no reprocussions. Rat spawns are larger and the ore you find in mining belts becomes increasingly rare. This is also the first security rating where you can see the gigantic capital ship class of ship. 0.0 is free space. Gates are free, there are no reprocussions for shooting people, your alliance can take its own space and it's basically no holds bared PvP. 0.0 is home to the rarest ore, the most powerful and highest bounty NPC rats and the most aggressive players. The game isn't what I would call new player friendly. It has a decently steep learning curve but it is a very fun game once you get past that.
Thanks. Mind If i ask something else?
How do exactly do you pilot your ship?
I have googled screenshots and it seems you warp to certain areas and ocne there you move in first / third person view?
Do you just target stuff with your mouse to automatically fire? or its harder than that?
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Hmm. I think I'm actually going to give this a try...
Is it really worth getting the graphics upgraded version? I'm thinking I'm just going to download the classic version when I go to sleep tonight since I'd rather the game run smoothly.
Also someone said that you learn skills in real time. Does that mean you pick the skill you're training and then you can log off and it keeps training? Or do you have to AFK while it trains?
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On February 20 2009 04:42 IntoTheWow wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2009 04:01 Jayme wrote:On February 20 2009 03:48 IntoTheWow wrote:
I get a gist of how the game works as an alliance. But could someone explain how it works on a personal level. What does one person do?
How do you go from being a X guy to having a big ship. etc.... What you are able to do as a player is completely reliant on how many "Skillpoints" you have. Skillpoints are Eve's equivilant of a level and determine how well you do things. You acquire these through real time such that you pick what you want to train and it's set and forget, you can do other things. I am not actually aware of how many skill point you start out with nowadays but you can expect to gain about 10-13million a year. In the beginning you'll probably want to specialize in a specific races ships and weapons so that you can actually be effective in a shorter amount of time. Besides that you can choose to do what you want. The economy is nearly entirely player driven and you can choose to orient your skill points towards mining + production, or you can orient toward combat fighting in a specific size of ship. There are a lot of sizes of ships now but the main ones are Frigate -> Cruiser -> Battleship. Each size requires progressively more skillpoints to pilot at what one would consider an "adequate" level. You can choose to run agent missions/kill NPC pirates for cash, play the market, or if you're more to the darkside you can go out to more dangerous systems and attack players and ransom them or just kill them and loot them. Systems get security ratings from 1.0-0.0. 1.0 is very safe and the only way to die there is through stupidity and the only NPC pirates you see there are frigate class. .9-.6 is a little bit more dangerous but generally safe from other players, belt rats spawn in larger amounts here... big enough to kill your frigate. .5 is the middle sector and while PvP is very rare here (and generall illegal if you don't die while doing it) you can occasionaly run into your first cruiser class NPC pirates. .4-.1 is where the fun starts. PvP happens here on a regular basis. Only the stargates themselves have any sort of defenses on them and outside of that is totally free game. Attacking people here does lower your security rating but otherwise there are no reprocussions. Rat spawns are larger and the ore you find in mining belts becomes increasingly rare. This is also the first security rating where you can see the gigantic capital ship class of ship. 0.0 is free space. Gates are free, there are no reprocussions for shooting people, your alliance can take its own space and it's basically no holds bared PvP. 0.0 is home to the rarest ore, the most powerful and highest bounty NPC rats and the most aggressive players. The game isn't what I would call new player friendly. It has a decently steep learning curve but it is a very fun game once you get past that. Thanks. Mind If i ask something else? How do exactly do you pilot your ship? I have googled screenshots and it seems you warp to certain areas and ocne there you move in first / third person view? Do you just target stuff with your mouse to automatically fire? or its harder than that?
You pilot your ship through what I consider a pretty shoddy UI but it gets the job done.
The enviornment works on all axis so piloting takes place in a 3-d environment. You can control how fast you're going in your ship, which way you're going, and when exactly you warp.
Each ship comes with a predetermined energy called your capacitor. All your ship systems run off it, being shield repairing, afterburners/micro warp drive, your guns, and other assorted things. You have to manage these things properly because once you run out of capacitor (it recharges on a bell curve like system) your systems stop working and you're basically a sitting duck. So while it is as easy as targetting something and selecting what to fire, you have to keep in mind that your target is likely firing back. The best way to mitigate damage is through a form of tanking, be it using your shield or using your armor (each ship has shield, armor, and structure) and this will take up the bulk of your energy usage. Shield and Armor have resistances, but Structure does not. Once your tank breaks your ship will die pretty quickly. It's basically finding a balance of energy usage so you don't die. Shield tanking is generally considered bursty while armor tanking is generally for longer lasting encounters. In return shield ships are more controlled and can have a higher dps output if you use them correctly. Whichever way you choose, if your tank breaks then you need to warp out asap.
The bigger your ship the slower you move and turn so it's reasonably close to physics. Moving faster and being smaller also makes you harder to hit. There is also the choice of electronic warfare which does things like preventing the enemy ship from warping, making his targetting systems worse, slowing him down, or increasing his signature and making him easier to hit. There are a whole slew of things you can do really.
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is awesome32282 Posts
On February 20 2009 05:06 Jayme wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2009 04:42 IntoTheWow wrote:On February 20 2009 04:01 Jayme wrote:On February 20 2009 03:48 IntoTheWow wrote:
I get a gist of how the game works as an alliance. But could someone explain how it works on a personal level. What does one person do?
How do you go from being a X guy to having a big ship. etc.... What you are able to do as a player is completely reliant on how many "Skillpoints" you have. Skillpoints are Eve's equivilant of a level and determine how well you do things. You acquire these through real time such that you pick what you want to train and it's set and forget, you can do other things. I am not actually aware of how many skill point you start out with nowadays but you can expect to gain about 10-13million a year. In the beginning you'll probably want to specialize in a specific races ships and weapons so that you can actually be effective in a shorter amount of time. Besides that you can choose to do what you want. The economy is nearly entirely player driven and you can choose to orient your skill points towards mining + production, or you can orient toward combat fighting in a specific size of ship. There are a lot of sizes of ships now but the main ones are Frigate -> Cruiser -> Battleship. Each size requires progressively more skillpoints to pilot at what one would consider an "adequate" level. You can choose to run agent missions/kill NPC pirates for cash, play the market, or if you're more to the darkside you can go out to more dangerous systems and attack players and ransom them or just kill them and loot them. Systems get security ratings from 1.0-0.0. 1.0 is very safe and the only way to die there is through stupidity and the only NPC pirates you see there are frigate class. .9-.6 is a little bit more dangerous but generally safe from other players, belt rats spawn in larger amounts here... big enough to kill your frigate. .5 is the middle sector and while PvP is very rare here (and generall illegal if you don't die while doing it) you can occasionaly run into your first cruiser class NPC pirates. .4-.1 is where the fun starts. PvP happens here on a regular basis. Only the stargates themselves have any sort of defenses on them and outside of that is totally free game. Attacking people here does lower your security rating but otherwise there are no reprocussions. Rat spawns are larger and the ore you find in mining belts becomes increasingly rare. This is also the first security rating where you can see the gigantic capital ship class of ship. 0.0 is free space. Gates are free, there are no reprocussions for shooting people, your alliance can take its own space and it's basically no holds bared PvP. 0.0 is home to the rarest ore, the most powerful and highest bounty NPC rats and the most aggressive players. The game isn't what I would call new player friendly. It has a decently steep learning curve but it is a very fun game once you get past that. Thanks. Mind If i ask something else? How do exactly do you pilot your ship? I have googled screenshots and it seems you warp to certain areas and ocne there you move in first / third person view? Do you just target stuff with your mouse to automatically fire? or its harder than that? You pilot your ship through what I consider a pretty shoddy UI but it gets the job done. The enviornment works on all axis so piloting takes place in a 3-d environment. You can control how fast you're going in your ship, which way you're going, and when exactly you warp. Each ship comes with a predetermined energy called your capacitor. All your ship systems run off it, being shield repairing, afterburners/micro warp drive, your guns, and other assorted things. You have to manage these things properly because once you run out of capacitor (it recharges on a bell curve like system) your systems stop working and you're basically a sitting duck. So while it is as easy as targetting something and selecting what to fire, you have to keep in mind that your target is likely firing back. The best way to mitigate damage is through a form of tanking, be it using your shield or using your armor (each ship has shield, armor, and structure) and this will take up the bulk of your energy usage. Shield and Armor have resistances, but Structure does not. Once your tank breaks your ship will die pretty quickly. It's basically finding a balance of energy usage so you don't die. Shield tanking is generally considered bursty while armor tanking is generally for longer lasting encounters. In return shield ships are more controlled and can have a higher dps output if you use them correctly. Whichever way you choose, if your tank breaks then you need to warp out asap. The bigger your ship the slower you move and turn so it's reasonably close to physics. Moving faster and being smaller also makes you harder to hit. There is also the choice of electronic warfare which does things like preventing the enemy ship from warping, making his targetting systems worse, slowing him down, or increasing his signature and making him easier to hit. There are a whole slew of things you can do really.
Ah, thanks. Sounds interesting and hard to learn :p
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Its pretty easy, actually. Double click in the direction you want your ship to fly in. If you select another object in space (asteroid, another ship, whatever) you can access various other options such as "approach" "keep at X range" and "orbit at X distance"
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reading eve stories never ceases to be entertaining, 70 pages and all
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So you don't click at a region in 3D space to fly at, you click somewhere on your 2D moniter in order to go that direction? How fast could something do a 180 (say in a cheap frigate)? I have to admit that I really want to try this game, just long enough so that I can understand it better as a spectator.
Edit: If any of you haven't, I encourage you to listen to the eve radio audio interview of The Mittani, and Dianabolic that I linked in the OP (also linked here) Edit: That link is wrong, this contains the interview. Unfortunately, the actual interview is 1:00:00 into the radio show; I couldn't find an audio that was only the dual-interview. Also, I just checked the sovereignty map. A yellow dot of Goonswarm appeared in the middle of KenZoku, and it's growing. Fast.
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Just finished reading the OP and the entire thread.
Thanks for making my life at work entertaining...
MMO's, O how I love and hate thee.
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Wow, great read. This kind of reminds me of back when the text-based game Utopia used to be big and I was involved in one of the most hilarious alliance wars which my kingdom suicided itself and took out 3 of the strongest offense kingdoms on the opposition.
I read it line by line up until 2/3rds then just skimmed through the rest of the excerpts.
+ Show Spoiler +
the recruiter turned up evidence that the Alt character had been associated with a previous enemy corporation of theirs during a background check (yes I said background check)
The Goon head of intelligence, "The Mittani" aka "Mittens", later characterized this as a Cultural Victory.
the bandits heard this on the radio they executed the captive
A poster on the EVE forums uninvolved in the direct conflict said that the battle had resulted in a debris field well over 400 km in length (and that he was having a fire sale on salvaged drones if anyone was interested)
a goon operation that was supposed to go around blowing up spaceship construction facilities was dubbed “Operation coathanger”.
on two occasions, fleets of small Frigates and Cruisers from Alliances unrelated to the conflict (PuPPet Masters, Force of Evil, and Minor Threat) flew through Delve in what appears to be a joy ride. Unoccupied with anything else, the three Pandemic Legion Titans in the area obliterated them both en mass with their Doomsday weapons. The second time they did this, the PL fast attack squadrons complained that their fun was being stolen, but were countered with "even if they outnumber you they won't engage anyway". A single ship from the first frigate fleet managed to dodge all three Doomsdays, evade the GoonSwarm/Pandemic Legion support flotillas, and make it back to NPC space. Pandemic Legion invited him to put in an application .
LOL
tl;dr
I LOVE EVE ONLINE!!!
I just wish it was a bit cheaper and had a better time card system... I already feel bad wasting time on computer games and to use money to do so makes me .
But imo EVE >> WoW for sure, and although there is a pretty steep learning curve: If you have the patience and ability to stay above D- on iccup, you would easily have the capability and patience of learning how to play EVE.
I also like how everything is on one gigantic server, where there'd be thousands of people in a 1.0 busy trading system, or no one even remotely near you in most 0.3 or lower sectors.
I also like how you can "keep playing offline" so that I don't have to worry about wasting my subscription by having a life (or at least half a life...)
I'm considering getting back into it once I get a new computer that can handle above-minimum graphics.
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On February 20 2009 05:48 CDRdude wrote:So you don't click at a region in 3D space to fly at, you click somewhere on your 2D moniter in order to go that direction? How fast could something do a 180 (say in a cheap frigate)? I have to admit that I really want to try this game, just long enough so that I can understand it better as a spectator. Edit: If any of you haven't, I encourage you to listen to the eve radio audio interview of The Mittani, and Dianabolic that I linked in the OP (also linked here). Also, I just checked the sovereignty map. A yellow dot of Goonswarm appeared in the middle of KenZoku, and it's growing. Fast.
Frigates and especially intercepters turn very very quickly, they are the true dogfighters of EvE. They are also by far the fastest ship in the game, in some cases achieveing ridiculous 3.2km/s (IE not being hit by anything)
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Actually BoB's new alliance Kenzoku or whatever, managed to purge all the invaders and practically gained all thier territory back, goonswarm still holds a very small part of it at the heart though. Crazy shit.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.gamerdna.com/public/images/user_image/set39/image/39457/LearningCurve.jpg)
