EVE General Discussion

I must have better luck than you do. I watch my map, scout my routes and only occasionally get eaten, now mind you it takes a long time to be cautious and it is very frustrating when eaten, but I do enjoy the challenge. You can destroy the bubbles by the way, so I don't see it as perma terrain. if your experience is that on a certain route it is perma camped, then take a different one. If EVERY route is perma camped, then sure don't go into the grinder.

I'm not entirely sure what's going on here anymore.

Are carebears complaining they can't fly solo into null-sec? Or are pvp-ers complaining they can't fly solo into null-sec?

My GOD if only there was another way to get into null-sec! If only there was a way to move multiple ships through a gate at once, like, say, a "fleet," as they would call it in the real world! If only we had the power!

CCP! Make it possible to assemble fleets of ships! Give us the tools to see how many of our brothers and sisters have died in the system within the previous hour, heck give us ships that can move unseen through these dastardly "bubbles" which are RUINING the game we all pay dearly to play!

How is a solo player supposed to SURVIVE in null-sec, constantly running into these evil creations of yours!

Our cries fall on deaf ears, and as evidenced by the abnormally high number of people screaming "wtf is your problem OP?" in this thread! The disease is clearly spreading!

Repent! The End of Eve is nigh!

Since the inception of warfare a single goal of every field commander is to defeat the enemy in detail - to, in one decisive battle, destroy an enemy's ability to fight and so conclude a war unquestionably. Oddly enough, this is the most rare occurrence in the history of warfare. It has been done so few times no serious military structure even considers limiting their plans to such an event. The problem with this is a corresponding ambition – he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day. Right along with the ambition to defeat an enemy is the primary goal of keeping one's army intact – to not lose the army.

There are basically two types of warfare. The first is by agreement. Both sides intend to confront their opponent with the intention of roundly defeating them. The U.S. Civil War is one such conflict. Wellington's pursuit of Napoleon was another. The second is called "war of aggression." One side with military advantage invades the other in hopes of conquest. The invaded party (usually militarily inferior) is thrust into a survival mode wishing primarily to stay alive and viable, then secondly to achieve a significant victory in the field. In the first instance, it's unlikely either force will cut and run. In the second, the possibility of disengagement is crucial to the defender's strategy.

Every commander that's ever taken the field against an inferior force has secretly wished for a method, or device to absolutely hold the enemy on the field. Every commander has also planned a line of retreat. Force deployment has always included an attempt to cut off the enemy's line of retreat, and every force deploys to ensure their line of retreat remains intact. In fact, this is the most significant situation all military planning faces. Strategies and tactics specifically account for this above all other factors. Any plan not accounting for this is considered by all competent military commanders as incompetent and the object of ridicule. It is the nature of warfare. All doctrine addresses it, beginning with Sun Tzu's Art of War, all the way to Sandhurst and West Point of today.

Being able to pursue, or evade the enemy in this regard defines a power's ability to conduct warfare. If a force is unable to do it, that force is not prepared to conduct warfare. It defines a weak, unviable force that is easily defeated, or one that is not yet ready to take the field, this is until EVE. In EVE you get the warp bubble. What's the warp bubble do? It does precisely what military strategists and tacticians have spent centuries trying to perfect – it holds the enemy for you. Your tactics don't. Your skills don't. Your preparation doesn't. It does. There's no need to understand how to conduct warfare. There's no need to go to the extremes required to accomplish something. A little device introduced by CCP does it. You get to pretend you've conducted warfare.

Such a device could only be dreamed up and implemented by people with no understanding of the nature of warfare. It's a ditty dropped into what has the potential to be a grand and sweeping arena to demonstrate capacities and capabilities turning it into nothing more than a "power up pill" in a child's computer game. Not surprisingly as a result it's fallen into promiscuous use. It's laughable enough the hallucination of "warp scramming" and "webbing" can be accomplished by another device, without having significantly damaged the function of a warship – you can "damage" a ship's ability to move without having damaged the ship. With the bubble, you can do this to ships in a large area, having fired not one shot.

Proud warriors would be embarrassed to use such devices. Infantile savages would use them with glee. That they exist in the game at all is testimony to the ignorance, and delusional reasoning used by CCP game developers. Want to follow the doctrine of having no choke points in your computer game? Get rid of them. Want to take what has all the potential of a majestic digital creation and turn it to an object of ridicule? Keep them. The laws of physics have spoken.

It would be interesting in a way but bubbles are a defensive tool, hics, dics and frigates are more of an offensive tool... and can be used (depending on the situation) to bolster an anchored bubbles defensive area.

It's simply a matter of using the right tool for the job.

In a situation where you don't have the manpower to keep a hic sitting on a gate for a protracted amount of time, say in a system with only a few people in it during certain timezones, bubbles also serve the purpose of buying a few seconds grace to get to cover... if the locals are alert enough to take advantage of them.

This thread is pretty silly though. Gates provide what would be passable terrain features in other games (or in RL) which server to provide points of defense (points of conflict, essential for any game that includes a combat component).

Bubbles provide the function of a defensive fortification at those points, although they in themselves provide no actual protection... they simply keep an intruder from having the ability to instantly reposition anywhere they like. Compared to defensive fortifications in other games (and most certainly in RL) they are very, very limited. In truth, they are more like an area of limited mobility... like a swamp or very rough terrain.

We probably should not get into the variety of ways to circumvent them directly, or bypass them completely, as that would inject far too much logic into the thread.

Instead let me point out that if bubbles were the only thing keeping the bulk of the population of EVE in high sec space, then low sec would be full to the brim with care bears living high off the hog without a care in the world.

But as we know, that's not true.

Yeah they are kinda like a good wall huh? I would trade'em in a heartbeat for a good minefield.

Oh. Well. I see your mistake. You think this was an argument. Though logistics has its place it's rather useless without an army to supply. That we don't really "die" is irrelevant. Guess again.

The art of cornering and trapping your prey is older than written history, man began to copy this tactic from the animals when the animals were still smarter than man. Glad to see someone lowering the curve to make the animals feel smart again.

Spiders trap their prey in a web.

Whales trap fish between their bulk and the surface.

Dolphins herd fish together with expelled air bubbles.

Polar bears wait at holes in the ice for seals to come up for a breath.

Crocodiles lie in wait at watering holes.

Lions follow known migratory routes.

Grizzly's snag salmon as they fight the swiftest waters.

Pack hunters of all types attempt to corner their prey.

Ambush hunters abound in nature.

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Don't you think you guys have trolled this subject long enough...