Tournaments. Ever since CCP began promoting the e-sports side of the game with its first official tournament in 2005, various player run tournaments have sprung into life. Where the alliance tournaments serve as the soccer world cup of EVE Online, where contestants can win prizes worth so much that they serve as alliance income at the risk of losing equally expensive assets, smaller tournaments give other players a much similar experience at far lower risk. Later today will mark the beginning of the Imperium’s first internal tournament. Nine teams of seven players each will clash on CCP’s tournament server Thunderdome and engage in battle for fame and prizes (but mostly fame). You can follow them on Twitch from 1845 EVE-Time onwards.
The appeal of these tournaments is easily understood. Most PVP engagements in this game are non-consensual and consist either of large fleets clashing over strategic objectives, or are small gangs that seek out to hunt other players on an uneven playing field. This is by design; most battles in EVE are pitched and to fight in this environment makes open PVP unique. Yet, sometimes it is nice to meet with each other in a friendly contest, where stakes exist, but not to the degree that you would need to invest several months of practice. Whether the battle is friendly or in earnest, in EVE tournaments, it is sometimes difficult to make sense of what is happening on the screen. I doubt that outsiders, or for that matter most established players, understand much of what is going on from the output on the screen alone. Yet, much of the entertainment of sports comes from having a decent idea of what is going on – so consider this your companion guide to the fights and the commentary later on.
To recap what’s going on:
Who is fighting?
- [Reavers] – Captain: Asher Elias
- [Buttes Inc] – Captain: Jay Amazingness
- [Asian Squad] – Captain: Alice homoloes
- [Wyldly Innappropriate] – Captain: Wyld
- [Space Violence] – Captain: Zazad Antollare
- [THUNDERSTRUCK!] – Captain: Industrial Oblitorator
- [V4DER] – Captain: Blade Gondolin
- [13 legs and 65 Toes] – Captain: Killjoy Doc
- [Bomberwaffe] – Captain: Dabigredboat
Who are the commentators?
- Moomin Amatin,
- Gommel Nox
- Erick Asmock
- Kyalla Ahashion
- Chiimera
- Asher Elias
- Jay Amazingness
- Buff Fresh
What are the rules?
- 7 players on each team
- No more than one of any given ship in a team
- No more than 1 logistics cruiser, or 1 tech one support cruiser, or 2 T1/T2 logistics/support frigates in each match.
- Special edition ships are banned
- Each Match lasts 10 minutes
- During a match, a team scores points for each enemy ship it kills, equal to the tournament points value of that ship. The team that has scored the most points at the conclusion of the match, or that destroys the entire opposing team, is the winner. See below for points value for each ship type.
What do I need to know?
Every team is composed of a core and a support wing. Core ships cost many points and do a lot of damage. They are mostly battleships and battlecruisers and as such are mostly effective against other battleships and similar-sized targets. The support wing provides logistics support (healing), kills drones, tackles (slows down the juicy targets), and applied EWAR to the opposing team, as well as dealing some damage. Both teams maneuver to disable each other before the opponent does the same to them. You can measure a team in terms of its damage potential, its defense (hitpoints), and its control – helpfully displayed in the tournament overview on the bottom of the screen.
Whether you’re an Alpha, or an Omega – if you’re not into the tournament scene, you will likely not understand much without the help of a commentator. I’ve asked Suitonia of Eve is Easy, a seasoned guru of solo PVP and AT commentating, to walk us through the process of “making sense of all this”.
First, look at the bars on the screen under both team names. There is a Defense, Offensive and Control bar. The Blue part of the defense bar indicates how much Raw HP the team as a whole has, while the purple part represents active tank potential. The attack bar is useful to gauge a team’s maximum potential DPS, and how full it is represents how much of it is applying at the moment. The green control bar fills in a similar way: Control represents EWAR, neuts, scrams, webs, and so on. [The degree to which it is filled] I think just means ‘attempts’ for ECM, and for neuts it just means it has been activated. It’ll fill regardless if the neut is in optimal and neuting full amount, or if it’s in falloff and neuting only a little. [That is] true for damps/TDs in falloff too – also the icons in the battlefeed for ECM just mean an attempt is being made, rather than the jam is successful. [As for navigation] it is hard to see from the bars alone. You can see how fast someone is going on the SPEED column, and you can guess by looking at webs/scrams on the ships. The map [in the bottom right] be can useful, speed, if anything is tackled or not and the feed above.
Another thing you should consider is that tournaments are not only a display of technical piloting ability. The teams need to come up with their own fittings and need to assume what the other teams might bring, and how their own composition fares. EVE tournaments are part e-sports, part chess, and there is quite a few around. This weekend will not be as busy as the AT, so you’re most welcome to join us on Twitch and bring your questions – if there is time, the commentators will be glad to answer them.
