EVE Online is defined by war. Men and women live and breath for these fights, dying (virtual) deaths over and over to achieve some goal. But whether it be massive fleets firing at each other from great distances, bomber wings diving in on a helpless foe, small gangs flying from place to place to take down targets of opportunity, or even taking on Incursions or Sleepers, every fleet needs someone in charge.

The people who take up the duty to command these fleets are known as fleet commanders. A good fleet commander can turn the tide of a battle, bring an underdog to victory, and extract their allies from lost causes. The best fleet commands are known throughout EVE for their skills and command high positions in the strongest alliances in the game.

But being an FC is not a task taken lightly.

 

Becoming an FC

An almost universal sentiment among FCs is that you sort of fall into the role. “I never intended to become an FC,” said Jayne Fillon, an FC for the popular Spectre Fleets, summarizing what many others said. “I joined a bomber fleet that was going to attend a fight over a station in deep nullsec. When we arrived, things went very wrong, very fast. Our primary Fleet Commander rage quit after being killed and left the fleet without a leader, deep in nullsec, with no bridge back to high. [...] So I stepped up and took command.”

Others didn't have so much drama involved in their rise to FC, but simply saw a need and took action. “I just saw the need for someone to FC and did it,” says Sir Squeebles, a popular streamer. “My experience has always been that no new FCs will be born if there's always a more respected, more experienced FC around.”

Greygal, an FC for Redemption Road and a former Agony Unleashed instructor, relates a similar story. “When I was still in my first corporation, I found myself organizing a lot of different things because no one else would. When you organize events, you often end up leading those events, including FCing.”

One of Nulli Secunda's primary FCs, Canaris Roshaak, agrees. “I was typically playing after all our alliance FC's had gone to bed, so we had no one to lead us. So one night I put a fleet up, got our guys to join, and led them out to fight the roamers.”

 

Motivation

Of course, there are always roles to be filled, but not everyone steps up to take the reigns. But why they chose to make the leap varies from person to person. “I've always liked to lead, to be someone others are willing to follow” says Mangala Solaris, a leader of Red vs Blue and CSM representative. Being a leader, and helping others get fights in EVE, is a large motivator for him. “I love knowing that my actions are causing other people to enjoy and get the most out of their game time.”

Ivanrus, the CEO of Wormhole Holders, had similar reasons. “I find it interesting to analyze a situation and implement my own ideas. Also, it was good practice to improve my leadership skills.”

Others just live for the thrill and knowing they're the best. “I would say the main reason I FC is purely competitive,” says Canaris. “I love to compete and I love to win.”

“There's something special about being responsible for the fate of dozens or even hundreds of people who trusted you with their ships,” says Professor Clio from RvB. “It gives me a rush like no other to know that if I do my job right my fleet has fun and if I mess up they lose all their ships.”

A lot of people echoed the words of Mangala and Clio, loving that they help people have fun. “It's immensely rewarding to know that my fleets have reduced boredom-based thumb twiddling in EVE by some margin,” says Squeebles.

And once they started FCing, it became hard to stop. “There is a lot left in the sandbox for me to discover,” said Jayne, “but for now I'm just having too much fun.”

Greygal concurs, saying, “To me, when I FC, I am throwing a party.”

While Zwo Sateki, an FC for the RAISA Incusion community, said, “It became an obsession of sorts (once an FC, always an FC).”

 

Growing Into the Role

Of course, simply leading a fleet doesn't mean you're an expert FC. Every FC I spoke to said their first ventures into the role had their ups and downs, though it didn't dissuade them. “We promptly got slaughtered,” Canaris said of his first try at FCing. “But I was hooked.”

Failure is a sure thing, no matter how natural you are at it. “Like anybody else, I started slow and made mistakes,” said Professor Clio. However, many find themselves quickly becoming acclimated and growing to greater and greater heights. “Pretty soon I moved on from FCing 10 man frigate fleets to large and large fleets.”

Some took longer than others, of course. Greygal, even after several years, still doesn't consider herself “a really good FC”. But the important thing, as she puts it, is “People keep X'ing up for my roams, so I must be doing something right.”

 

Hardships and Difficulties

Of course, the role of FC isn't for everyone. Squeebles puts it best when he explains why some people don't step into the shoes. “There are a lot of people in EVE who either don't have the experience of have convinced themselves they don't. They don't want to be responsible for the potential failure of a roam and the loss of ships.”

Those that do have the fortitude experience many difficulties and the nature of these difficulties are what they disagree with the most. As Squeebles says, “The most difficult part of being an FC depends [partly] on the individual FC.”

For him, it depends largely on the nature of the fleet. “Some objective-based fleets want to accomplish the goal with minimal losses,” he says. “The majority, however, are a bit more general and the only objective is to get a fight. In that scenario, the most difficult part is finding a fight to justify everyone's time.”

Greygal's primary concern isn't wasting people's time, it's making sure people show up. “When nobody shows up for a roam you scheduled, it's heartbreaking,” she says. She doesn't face that problem often, so she does have other concerns. “The most difficult part is managing expectations. Some people expect epic, glorious battles like they see on EVE videos, others are very risk-adverse and want us to only take fights we can win, and then the rest understand the fleets I lead are social in nature, about fun and explosions and exploding.”

Others take a look at it on a more tactical level. “Situational awareness is key and takes a long time to develop,” Professor Clio says. “It's very easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of information you need to process in order to give the right order to your fleet.”

This wealth of information is emphasized by Jayne. “The most difficult part of becoming an FC is learning what each and every ship does, how they are usually fit and flown, and how you can counter them,” he says. “You need to be smarter on either a technical or a tactical level in order to defeat your opponent and because of this there exists no steeper learning curve than becoming a Fleet Commander.”

Others don't have such concerns. “Keeping yourself from getting an ego […] after a string of wins,” is what Canaris jokes about his biggest challenge.

Ivanrus keeps it simple, saying, “There is nothing difficult at all. All you need is motivation and the wish to learn.”

 

Doctrines

Many who hear about fleets in EVE are regaled with stories about fleet doctrines like Hellcats, Sentry Domis, AHACs, and the like. But in actuality, not all FCs are quite so strict.

“I generally will declare a preferred hull size and often a preferred ship type,” says Greygal, “but I try to keep my doctrines as open to a wide a pilot skill range as possible.” This makes sense for her, since she runs a lot of open fleets.

Squeebles is the same, believing that it helps with participation. “I generally find that doctrines discourage or limit participation,” he says. “I find that more people are willing to join a fleet for 'Kitey Shield Cruisers with Scythes' than if I list specific fits with T2 mods that they might not be able to use. So for me, 'doctrines' are more often replaced with just simple themes.” He

Even so, he does “have a few specific doctrines to fly on streams. We use 'Poor Man's T3s' which is an armor cruiser fleet using T1 hulls. We occasionally fly nano shield Dragoons. We sometimes fly combat Blackbirds. There have only been a few occasions in the past year or so where we've fun anything that could be considered a genuine doctrine.”

Kutris, an EVE Flight School FC, says that it really depends on the objective. “If it's ordinary roaming, then the setup doesn't matter. The most important part is that your pilots love to fly their ships. If it's a serious operation and your enemy is known, then the requirements are strict and usually it's an old, good setup tested by time.”

The time-tested doctrines are important to many FCs. “The larger Incursion community has developed custom-tailored solutions over time,” Zwo says. “There are very specific guidelines for Incursion fittings; kitchen sink fleets just cannot do Incursions effectively.”

This is especially true in large nullsec warfare. “I try to strictly enforce fleet doctrines for any strategic operation,” says Caranis. “A tight fleet composition can be the sole difference between victory and defeat while facing skilled opposition.”

When devising these doctrines, Caranis and Progodlegend “spend hours theory-crafting fleet concepts based on what our enemies typically use or what we want to do with the fleet. We try to base the concept around a core function, such as maneuverability, and incorporate everything from our main-line DPS ships, logistics, and newbie-friendly support ships.”

 

Discipline

No matter if a doctrine is enforced or a kitchen sink fleet is being flown, a fleet cannot be successful unless people follow orders and don't go off running on their own. Chaos has rarely been advantageous for a fighting force to succumb to.

“Those who are not willing [to listen] but prefer to slack get kicked from fleets in a fairly short order,” says Zwo.

Ivanrus follows the same thought process. “I make the rules public and ask people to uphold them. I kick those who don't.”

But to keep people discipline and in fleet, there are many different methods. “You make your fleet self-managing,” Squeebles says. “The only truly effective way to maintain discipline is to have part of your gang trained and able to enforce discipline on the other part. More often than not questions asked in fleet chat or comms are answered by someone without me needing to address it. That, in my opinion, is the ideal of fleet discipline.”

Jayne and Kutris prefer to use their method of speaking to enforce it. Kutris says he keeps discipline “By my words (sometimes bad words).”

Jayne has what he calls “FC voices”. Most of the time, he is relaxed and encourages banter. But when things get serious, he does too. “When people aren't doing what I want, I break out my 'annoyed' voice that tells people that I'm disappointed in them, guilting them into doing what I want. Finally, if all else fails, the 'angry' voice does wonders, but I reserve that one for special occasions. The key is to never yell, though. Always be calm and your calmness will trickle down to the fleet.”

Others, though, don't worry too much about it. “Keeping discipline in a fleet usually isn't very difficult,” says Greygal. “Those that are experienced are generally well-behaved. Those that are inexperienced are usually so afraid that they will make a mistake that they pay attention and follow every order to the letter. The most important thing an FC can do to main discipline is to explain their comms and fleet movement preferences, what the goals of the fleet are, and what their expectations are in advance.”

Canaris, meanwhile, relies on “my reputation in my alliance and coalition. After years of FCing, my guys know who I am and how I FC, and for the most I would say they trust my decision making. A lot of poor fleet discipline stems from people second-guessing new or inexperienced FCs.” But, much like Jayne, he knows tone of voice can go a long way. “A change in tone is typically enough to reestablish discipline in a fleet.”

 

Picking Your Battles

Deciding whether to engage or not is a big choice. Many inexperienced FCs can become frozen with indecision. Do we fight this or do we back off?

A lot can go into taking the plunge into battle. “Mostly I look at our fleet composition and theirs, who their FC is if I know, and how important whatever objective we're going after is,” says Canaris.

The point of objectives is echoed by Squeebles, who responds by first asking a question of his own. “What is your fleet aiming to do? Ultimately, I think the good FC starts analyzing a fight by asking 'What's good about this fleet comp? What advantages does it offer?' and then crossing those off when considering the enemy fleet. If too many things are crossed off, you must seriously consider avoiding the fight.”

“This is an impossible question to answer explicitly without considering the near infinite amount of variables that can occur during EVE combat,” adds Jayne. “When choosing to engage, remember that it's not just 'if' you engage, it's 'when', 'where', and 'how' that really makes the difference.”

Kutris specifically looks for weaknesses. “If the enemy is weaker or somewhat equal to ours in quality and quantity we engage. If we are outnumbered, we wait to kill someone who was slow enough to be cut from the main fleet.”

Others, however, are simply out for fights, no matter what. “If I think there's even a chance that I might win or even just have an entertaining battle, I'll charge right in,” says Clio. “I only refuse to engage if I know for a fact I'll get crushed.”

Greygal takes it even further than that, saying she just asks “'Can I kill ONE of them?' That's how I decide whether or not to engage an opponent fleet.” And when a fight turns sour? “I usually retreat when half or more of our fleet are in pods.”

As one of the leaders of RvB, it should be no surprise what Mangala's mindset is. “It's more a case of 'Will I inflict enough pain for them to bail before we have to?'”

 

Tactics

Everyone favors their own tactics in EVE and the FCs are no different. Each of them has a favorite way to take a battle.

A lot of them agree with what Squeebles says, “Outright aggression. There's no real counter to the all-in by an enemy fleet other than just outright tanking it.”

The in-your-face brawling style is also favored by Greygal, who says her favored tactic is “rush in and start shooting”, though she will adapt when needed. “Tere are times when I will use hit-and-run tactics to pick off a weak target in a fleet I otherwise might not engage, and I am really good at GTFO tactics either to save the remnants of my fleet or to avoid significantly larger fleets.”

Mangala also answers “drop down dirty brawling is what I really, really favor. It helps that I often have the larger fleet, so I can brute force a win if need be without it being too much of a pyrrhic victory.”

Of course, not everyone prefers the go-in-swinging approach. For an RvB FC, Clio differentiates himself by preferring tactical fights. “I prefer fights where positioning and fleet movement are important.”

So too does Canaris, for practical reasons. “You can take a ton of fights if you can mitigate the enemy's damage either through field position and EWAR.”

Being able to take a lot of different fights is why Jayne prefers sniping. “It allows for a wide variety of targets that can be engaged effectively and teaches people about tracking, transversal, signature radius, sensor resolution, and other very important facets of EVE combat. Making a mistake in a sniping doctrine is unforgiving and punished with heavy losses.”

 

Command Shakes

Most people who have engaged in PvP have gotten the combat shakes. Even experienced PvPers can have these happen when they're put into a command role. “I used to get the shakes bad when FCing,” says Mangala. He has overcome them, however. “I am considerably calmer,” he says, which helps him out quite significantly. “I am continually evaluating the field for the best targets to call at a given time, focusing on the status of my fleet, and ensuring that my calls/broadcasts and other orders are followed as smoothly as possible.”

Clio has a hard time describing the mindset. “It feels like the game becomes my entire universe and 100% of my brain power goes into trying to process all the information the game throws at me. Instinct takes over and I call targets by their threat/tank ratio, meaning I try to get as much threat off the field as quickly as possible.”

The nearly-overwhelming flow of information is a big part of what gives many FCs their greatest thrills. “There exists no greater adrenaline spike than the start of a large fleet engagement,” says Jayne. “The experience elicits an incredible range of emotions: excitement, anticipation, fear, hope, and panic to name a few.”

Greygal says there are rare fights where “you are in a kind of zone and everything falls into place just so perfectly. You feel connected to everyone in your fleet, nothing exists except for you, your fleet, your targets, and it's just so smooth, so surreal. It's magical.”

For some, though, the process of FCing is old hat. “At this point, I would say it's mostly muscle memory,” says Canaris. “I know what enemy ships need to die first and how to position my fleet.”

Kutris keeps it simple. “The only thought is to not miss the time when we need to retreat if the battle turns bad.”

Kpekep, the CXBATKA anti-pirate channel FC, actually says thinking can be harmful. “There is nothing going on in my mind during the fight. If that happens, the fight is lost. You have to think before the fight. The fight itself is a time of constant action. Your mind switches off and wakes up only if the battle conditions are changed greatly. You don't need your mind, you need your instinct.”

 

Advice for New FCs

It may seem daunting for new FCs, but there is plenty of advice to go around. Everyone makes mistakes and Canaris says, “Don't be afraid to lose, but learn from your losses.”

And, even in the face of failure, follow Clio's advice. “Just do it, over and over and over again. It gets easier with practice. In the beginning, we were all rubbish. Even the best FC in the game made dumb mistakes when he first stepped up. And even if you do make mistakes, the simple fact that you're willing to put yourself out there makes you a hero in my book.”

To help get through these rough times, Jayne suggests you “find a community, a corporation, or an alliance that will allow you to experience [failure] without any pressure or obligation. The best place to learn is somewhere that experienced players and fleet commands can help you, let you know what you did wrong, and coach you how to do better.”

Having a friendly group is one of Squeeble's pieces of advice as well. “Don't set out to FC tfor your entire 200-man mining alliance if you have no experience. You'll make plenty of mistakes, but there are people who won't forgive your inexperience and their confidence in you as an FC is very, very difficult to regain. Find a friend or 2 or 5 and form a fleet. This is a group you can truly learn with.”

He adds in a couple of pointers to learning, suggesting you “FRAPs the fight! Watching/listening to the playback of your fight is amazingly fun and a huge educational tool. Fights get so much simpler when they're not happening to you.”

Greygal offers some additional advice, saying “Keep it simple. Delegate everything possible. Ask for advice, but make the decisions yourself. You don't need to know all the ships, tricks, systems, and opponents in EVE to FC well, all you need to do is get out there and do it.”

Kpekep suggests a broader view. “Find your own way. Read some classics about warfare. This will help you understand the reasons for your actions and will keep you safe from doing some mistakes.”

 

Final Thoughts

A thought echoed by all of the FCs was that being a fleet commander is one of the most challenging and rewarding things to do in EVE. It may seem difficult to do, or too risky, or too nerve-wracking. But if you have confidence and want to make a mark in EVE, jump in and do it!

And thanks to all the FCs who agreed to answer questions for us: Canaris Roshaak, Greygal, Ivanrus, Jayne Fillon, Kpekep, Kutris, Mangala, Professor Clio, Sir Squeebles, and Zwo Zateki.

Making sure the game doesn't break before our expansions or patches is released is important! If we don't do this right, something INSANE might happen, like an important system file accidentally being deleted. Luckily, we have a hard-working Quality Assurance team that hunts down bugs and squashes them before they escape into the wild. Or at least that's the plan. The man in charge of this team is CCP Goliath, a giant Scottish man. I tore him away from his days of reinacting the Battle of Stirling Bridge to talk to him about his job, path to CCP, and more!

 

What is your official job title with CCP?

I’m the QA Director for EVE Online. Unofficially, I also administrate our Jira server, and coordinate the Agile Community of Practice.

What does the job actual entail?

I’m accountable for the overall output of the QA discipline. I represent the discipline internally and to external partners like our outsourcers Pole to Win. A large part of the role is creating, reviewing and maintaining processes, both collaboratively and independently. Within the discipline I offer technical and professional leadership to our QA staff. I also need to keep the awareness level of risk and concern high throughout the project. Awesome corporate buzzwords aside, I guess I would describe myself as the sword in the darkness, the watcher on the walls, the shield that guards the realms of men.

 

What’s the craziest defect you’ve ever squashed (in EVE or any other project you’ve worked on)?

While testing the very awesome and fun Joe Danger, by Hello Games, if you crashed your bike, you would flop around ragdoll style.  I managed to reach critical mass on (precise) button bashing to make the title character animate in such a way that he could fly.  After much unnecessary perseverance, I got a beautiful bird’s eye view of the entire map, and racked up a high score orders of magnitude above what could be achieved in the level, causing a bonus bug of high score truncation!  They wiped my score before the game went live though L

 

What did you do/where did you work before you got the job with CCP?

I worked in outsourced QA for over six years with the same company (formerly Absolute Quality, then e4e, now Pole to Win). Starting as an uncontracted tester, I worked my way up to lead on several projects. I was selected to lead the outsourcing team for EVE Online, after which I was invited to Iceland to see how the other half live. Two years and change later, here I am.

 

Did you play EVE before you joined CCP? If so, what did you do in the game?

I started playing about 6 months before I started as an outsourcer for CCP, for the purpose of preparing for the pitch! My colleagues and I quickly got sucked in far beyond mere preparation however. I have 3 characters – one pure fighter specializing in Amarr vessels, one trade/industry/corp management Gallente character who also has perfect drone skills, and my main, a Matari all-rounder with a predilection for exploration. I love living in wormhole space, but I don’t do it all the time.

 

What’s your favorite part about working for CCP?

This wildly fluctuates depending on what I’m doing at the time. I love that I am afforded a lot of freedom to try out crazy ideas. I love that my colleagues are so incredibly invested in the product that even the most minor things can draw in anyone in earshot to get involved in a pitched debate. I love that the company hasn’t stopped having fun despite growing substantially. Probably the thing I love most though is the sense of family that exists here. I’m very grateful for this as moving to such a unique country as Iceland, with no support network, was very daunting and I have had nothing but advice, assistance and care from everyone here.

 

What’s the biggest misconception players have about what you do that you’d like to clear up?

Perhaps not directly me, but the QA discipline as a whole. I get a distinct impression that at least a section of the players think that we have an “old school” QA department, who sit separately from the developers and churn through build after build to ensure core functionality, as well as every possible edge case. Our QA are part of development teams, who are responsible for the features they develop, and our outsourcing partners run a massive suite of tests every two weeks to tick the “core functionality” box and make sure the new features don’t break the old. Needless to say, bugs do manage to escape to TQ, and we are eternally grateful to the players who take their time to send us well written bug reports so we can get these fixed. Please don’t give our QA staff a hard time on the forums – particularly when they are trying to work out issues with others in a thread. With a game as complex as EVE, and players as intelligent and devious as all of you, there are going to be issues that slip through the cracks.

 

If there was one thing you’d be doing outside of your current job, what would it be?

Well, my youthful ambition was to go into television or film production/direction. I don’t know if that’s still so high on my priority list, so I think I would go for my current favourite hobby – designing board games!

 

What sort of board games do you enjoy and take inspiration from when designing your own?

I am a huge fan of Euro style worker placement games.  My old favourite is Agricola, but I am eager to try Caverna, which I hear is a superior successor.  There’s a ton of exciting things happening with worker placement right now – Archipelago mixes classic Euro strategy with a finely balanced semi-cooperative loss condition, and Lords of Waterdeep was a massive revelation in how these types of games can actually be fun as well as strategically rewarding!  I basically try and shoehorn some level of worker placement into almost all the projects I’ve worked on, with varying degrees of success.  I also adore deck building games, stemming from my deep love of Magic: The Gathering.  Dominion is probably my favourite of these, and Donald X. Vaccarino is a major inspiration to me (in that he also loves stealing ideas from M:TG).  Other honorable game mentions go to: Resistance, Coup, Netrunner, Robo Rally, Bohnanza, Betrayal at House on the Hill, all of which are engaging and mechanically fantastic.

 

Do you have any of your board games you think are good enough to share with our players?

The furthest along one is close to being ready to show people, but we really dropped the ball on applying the finishing touches.  Would have been very cool to relax in the game room at Fanfest and play it, but it’s just not there yet.  All I will say about it is that it’s themed around rock band management.

 

When you’re not on the job, what do you enjoy doing?

I love cooking, home brewing, gaming of all flavours but particularly board, and can usually be found doing these with CCPers Sledgehammer, Lebowski and Antiquarian. Following the CCP Game Jam, I have also been getting my teeth into Visionaire Studio and working on a couple of old school point and click adventure games in that, which scratches my writing itch. Oh yeah, and I’m a huge Magic: The Gathering nerd.

 

What’s something that people don’t know about you?

I co-presented the movie and game review section of a Scottish children’s television “magazine” program. I was around 12 at the time, and had a style preference for quiffs and Hawaiian shirts. Not my finest hour…

 

Do video clips of this appearance exist anywhere?

They exist in an arcane format known as VHS, and there are some theatrical performances from back in the day on Super-8mm.  Those coming to light would basically destroy any credibility I have managed to acquire.  Basically they are the only thing holding me back from running for public office.  In fact I should probably just destroy them…

 

Your dev name is CCP Goliath, but you’re just about average size compared to a lot of other CCPers. Do you ever consider changing your name to something like CCP NotThatGoliath?

Keeping with CCP Tallest’s tradition, names aren’t always what they seem! When I arrived, I knew the Dev Name was going to be a big decision and I deliberated over it as long as I possibly could. Then I found out that offensive names weren’t allowed, so that shortened the list to three. Since there was already a CCP Heimdall and a CCP Ginger (and Gingerdude, for that matter), I opted for Goliath. My real name is David, and while I’d love to retcon some grand representation of the duality of man into the name, I just free associated until I found something that I thought was cool…

How often do other CCPers find your accent incomprehensible?

Only when they try to talk to me after I have recently talked to RedDawn, Sledgehammer, Terrorshark or Necrogoat. Then I’m usually in full ‘Weegie’ twang. E.g. “That plank’s pure jaggy man, I almost got a crackin’ skelf aff it.” (Note: None of us actually talk like that). CCP Explorer usually asks me for clarification on English idioms, so I can’t be too bad!

 

If someone were to cut off your ginger mane, would you be sent back to your home dimension?

We come from the space between dimensions. The Void. The Nether. The Nameless Place. The place you tell your children isn’t real, just so that you’ll almost believe it yourself. The place where your socks end up after a drying cycle. We only project ourselves onto this plane, which is why we’re so pale.

Making sure the game doesn't break before our expansions or patches is released is important! If we don't do this right, something INSANE might happen, like an important system file accidentally being deleted. Luckily, we have a hard-working Quality Assurance team that hunts down bugs and squashes them before they escape into the wild. Or at least that's the plan. The man in charge of this team is CCP Goliath, a giant Scottish man. I tore him away from his days of reinacting the Battle of Stirling Bridge to talk to him about his job, path to CCP, and more!

 

What is your official job title with CCP?

I’m the QA Director for EVE Online. Unofficially, I also administrate our Jira server, and coordinate the Agile Community of Practice.

What does the job actual entail?

I’m accountable for the overall output of the QA discipline. I represent the discipline internally and to external partners like our outsourcers Pole to Win. A large part of the role is creating, reviewing and maintaining processes, both collaboratively and independently. Within the discipline I offer technical and professional leadership to our QA staff. I also need to keep the awareness level of risk and concern high throughout the project. Awesome corporate buzzwords aside, I guess I would describe myself as the sword in the darkness, the watcher on the walls, the shield that guards the realms of men.

 

What’s the craziest defect you’ve ever squashed (in EVE or any other project you’ve worked on)?

While testing the very awesome and fun Joe Danger, by Hello Games, if you crashed your bike, you would flop around ragdoll style.  I managed to reach critical mass on (precise) button bashing to make the title character animate in such a way that he could fly.  After much unnecessary perseverance, I got a beautiful bird’s eye view of the entire map, and racked up a high score orders of magnitude above what could be achieved in the level, causing a bonus bug of high score truncation!  They wiped my score before the game went live though L

 

What did you do/where did you work before you got the job with CCP?

I worked in outsourced QA for over six years with the same company (formerly Absolute Quality, then e4e, now Pole to Win). Starting as an uncontracted tester, I worked my way up to lead on several projects. I was selected to lead the outsourcing team for EVE Online, after which I was invited to Iceland to see how the other half live. Two years and change later, here I am.

 

Did you play EVE before you joined CCP? If so, what did you do in the game?

I started playing about 6 months before I started as an outsourcer for CCP, for the purpose of preparing for the pitch! My colleagues and I quickly got sucked in far beyond mere preparation however. I have 3 characters – one pure fighter specializing in Amarr vessels, one trade/industry/corp management Gallente character who also has perfect drone skills, and my main, a Matari all-rounder with a predilection for exploration. I love living in wormhole space, but I don’t do it all the time.

 

What’s your favorite part about working for CCP?

This wildly fluctuates depending on what I’m doing at the time. I love that I am afforded a lot of freedom to try out crazy ideas. I love that my colleagues are so incredibly invested in the product that even the most minor things can draw in anyone in earshot to get involved in a pitched debate. I love that the company hasn’t stopped having fun despite growing substantially. Probably the thing I love most though is the sense of family that exists here. I’m very grateful for this as moving to such a unique country as Iceland, with no support network, was very daunting and I have had nothing but advice, assistance and care from everyone here.

 

What’s the biggest misconception players have about what you do that you’d like to clear up?

Perhaps not directly me, but the QA discipline as a whole. I get a distinct impression that at least a section of the players think that we have an “old school” QA department, who sit separately from the developers and churn through build after build to ensure core functionality, as well as every possible edge case. Our QA are part of development teams, who are responsible for the features they develop, and our outsourcing partners run a massive suite of tests every two weeks to tick the “core functionality” box and make sure the new features don’t break the old. Needless to say, bugs do manage to escape to TQ, and we are eternally grateful to the players who take their time to send us well written bug reports so we can get these fixed. Please don’t give our QA staff a hard time on the forums – particularly when they are trying to work out issues with others in a thread. With a game as complex as EVE, and players as intelligent and devious as all of you, there are going to be issues that slip through the cracks.

 

If there was one thing you’d be doing outside of your current job, what would it be?

Well, my youthful ambition was to go into television or film production/direction. I don’t know if that’s still so high on my priority list, so I think I would go for my current favourite hobby – designing board games!

 

What sort of board games do you enjoy and take inspiration from when designing your own?

I am a huge fan of Euro style worker placement games.  My old favourite is Agricola, but I am eager to try Caverna, which I hear is a superior successor.  There’s a ton of exciting things happening with worker placement right now – Archipelago mixes classic Euro strategy with a finely balanced semi-cooperative loss condition, and Lords of Waterdeep was a massive revelation in how these types of games can actually be fun as well as strategically rewarding!  I basically try and shoehorn some level of worker placement into almost all the projects I’ve worked on, with varying degrees of success.  I also adore deck building games, stemming from my deep love of Magic: The Gathering.  Dominion is probably my favourite of these, and Donald X. Vaccarino is a major inspiration to me (in that he also loves stealing ideas from M:TG).  Other honorable game mentions go to: Resistance, Coup, Netrunner, Robo Rally, Bohnanza, Betrayal at House on the Hill, all of which are engaging and mechanically fantastic.

 

Do you have any of your board games you think are good enough to share with our players?

The furthest along one is close to being ready to show people, but we really dropped the ball on applying the finishing touches.  Would have been very cool to relax in the game room at Fanfest and play it, but it’s just not there yet.  All I will say about it is that it’s themed around rock band management.

 

When you’re not on the job, what do you enjoy doing?

I love cooking, home brewing, gaming of all flavours but particularly board, and can usually be found doing these with CCPers Sledgehammer, Lebowski and Antiquarian. Following the CCP Game Jam, I have also been getting my teeth into Visionaire Studio and working on a couple of old school point and click adventure games in that, which scratches my writing itch. Oh yeah, and I’m a huge Magic: The Gathering nerd.

 

What’s something that people don’t know about you?

I co-presented the movie and game review section of a Scottish children’s television “magazine” program. I was around 12 at the time, and had a style preference for quiffs and Hawaiian shirts. Not my finest hour…

 

Do video clips of this appearance exist anywhere?

They exist in an arcane format known as VHS, and there are some theatrical performances from back in the day on Super-8mm.  Those coming to light would basically destroy any credibility I have managed to acquire.  Basically they are the only thing holding me back from running for public office.  In fact I should probably just destroy them…

 

Your dev name is CCP Goliath, but you’re just about average size compared to a lot of other CCPers. Do you ever consider changing your name to something like CCP NotThatGoliath?

Keeping with CCP Tallest’s tradition, names aren’t always what they seem! When I arrived, I knew the Dev Name was going to be a big decision and I deliberated over it as long as I possibly could. Then I found out that offensive names weren’t allowed, so that shortened the list to three. Since there was already a CCP Heimdall and a CCP Ginger (and Gingerdude, for that matter), I opted for Goliath. My real name is David, and while I’d love to retcon some grand representation of the duality of man into the name, I just free associated until I found something that I thought was cool…

How often do other CCPers find your accent incomprehensible?

Only when they try to talk to me after I have recently talked to RedDawn, Sledgehammer, Terrorshark or Necrogoat. Then I’m usually in full ‘Weegie’ twang. E.g. “That plank’s pure jaggy man, I almost got a crackin’ skelf aff it.” (Note: None of us actually talk like that). CCP Explorer usually asks me for clarification on English idioms, so I can’t be too bad!

 

If someone were to cut off your ginger mane, would you be sent back to your home dimension?

We come from the space between dimensions. The Void. The Nether. The Nameless Place. The place you tell your children isn’t real, just so that you’ll almost believe it yourself. The place where your socks end up after a drying cycle. We only project ourselves onto this plane, which is why we’re so pale.

There are many useful 3^rd party tools that help players make their lives easier. They range from market sorters, skill planners, and ship fitters. GARPA, a team of players who are part of Goonfleet, have produced two such tools, the Garpa Topographical Survey mapping program and the GarpaUI settings backup and sync program. Together, they are both amazing tools for players.

 

Garpa Topographical Survey

GTS is a highly flexible route planner for both capital and sub-capital ships. It allows the user to get from point A to point B according to any number of conditions they choose. The head of the project, pmchem, says, “For example, avoiding incursions, lowsec, and systems with recent kill activity while visiting 20 waypoints in an optimized order for a trip from Rens to Jita.”

While some of its features are replicated by the in-game autopilot, GTS has many more features. These include handling jump bridges, beacons, cyno jammers, incursions, cyno alts, corporate offices, multiple safe routing options, standings, stations, waypoint optimization for very large numbers of waypoints, calculation of actual in-game travel time, save/favorite routes for quick reference, clipboard sharing of routes, the ability to record notes for specific systems, calculation and sharing of systems in jump range, weighted routing, and much more.

GTS is not merely a route planner, however. It also acts as a galactic database. This allows the user to set up complex queries to discover parts of the galaxy that have certain properties. For example, the user can find the nearest corporate office with medical services for pod jumping.

These two features can be combined to make a powerful planner. You can, for example, find all the highsec level 4 agents for a specific corporation in a neighboring set of regions, then plot an optimal round trip to visit all those systems.

And the best thing about it is that it can be used (via the browser) in game for maximum efficiency.

As pmchem puts it, “The in-game autopilot is fine for getting from A to B with no stops in-between. But when a user wishes to navigate in dangerous territory, make a complicated series of visits, […] or just plain use capital ships at all: a better tool is needed.”

 

GarpaUI

GarpaUI is a tool to take one character's settings and overwrite other characters' settings with it. It supports a variety of copy options: you don't have to copy "from one, to all." You can copy "from one, to various" using the 'selected folder and server' and 'specific accounts' options. This gives flexibility to a player who, say, has 14 mining alts, 3 PVP characters, and a supercap. In short, it's a tool designed to make life easier for multiboxers and other highly involved EVE players.

GarpaUI should also be a dream tool for anyone who is performing a clean reinstall of EVE. You can backup your settings to the Cloud or a USB stick, reinstall Windows, reinstall EVE, and then import your settings. You can propagate your pvp settings to other pvp chars, and mining settings to mining characters.

GarpaUI was initially designed by pmchem and implemented by Psykzz, and is currently maintained by Postal Dude, who implemented the improved UI and feature set for version 2.0.

 

Development History

GTS was originally created by Lhyda Souljacker as a basic navigation tool. It was an excellent gate router and supported Goonfleet's needs in routing through jump bridges and using capital ships. When pmchem came on board, it had the basic filter interface as well. Over the years, he and his team have acted to implement user-requested features and react to the structural changes from EVE expansions.

A perfect example of this is the introduction of incursions. “Being able to gracefully handle avoidance of incursioned constellations for both sub-caps and capital ships was an important new feature required by an expansion,” he says.

“Other features, such as optimization of a large number of waypoints or being able to quickly load complicated favorite routes, were user requests.” He estimates a significant new version is released every 3 to 6 months.

In the future, the team plans to implement features such as hybrid jump/gate routes for Black Ops, Titan Bridges, and Jump Bridge planning. Other upcoming plans include further polishing of the in-game browser interface and map coloring for sovereignty, standings, and jump ranges. Those are all many months down the road, however, with the current public release of 2.2.1 intended to be stable, long-lived, and bug free.

Because the project has had so many contributors over the years, and the core application was originally developed for Windows XP and an early release of .NET while using the static data export in a format provided by CCP half a decade ago, one of the largest challenges has been management of the project. “When someone else on the developer team – who lives on another continent and who you've never met – is having trouble reproducing a problem,” pmchem says, “and it involves legacy code from someone who no longer plays EVE, it can be some effort to resolve the issue.”

It's important to keep current developers on the same page in terms of feature roadmap and quality assurance. Using distributed version control and issue tracking software has helped things go more smoothly.

 

Usage

The GARPA programs have spread across all areas of EVE with thousands of dedicated users who have been enjoying them for years. When a new version is posted, the team often finds the post and files are quickly mirrored by other null sec groups. People use it to find hostile ratters to kill, do complex multi-waypoint routes with capitals, and basically anything you can imagine.

“It's remarkable,” pmchem says. “Our users are the sorts of players who really enjoy logging in and playing EVE. That's part of the user base that we enjoy seeing smile. When we're not shooting them.”

 

The Team

A large team is behind GARPA, led by pmchem. In EVE, aside from leading GARPA, he has managed to become very ISK-rich from patch speculation and nullsec PVE. “Hint to players still in highsec,” he says, “the game becomes more lucrative and fun once you leave, even if you occasionally lose a ship to another player.” He's hit on the trifecta of getting on killmails at Asakai, 6VDT, and B-R5RB, even having his Titan survive Asakai. He started playing by flying Rifters and destroyers in Syndicate back when Goonswarm lost Delve due to forgetting to pay its sov bills.

In real life, he's a computational chemist and has to deal with a variety of programming and scripting languages. The background helped with learning C#/.NET and problem solving for GTS. His work involves high-performance computing, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and thermodynamics.

GARPA has many professionals on its roster. Bittey Blackmoon, the main programmer for recent GTS releases, works in electrical engineering and communications technology. Postal Dude, the man behind GarpaUI 2.0, is an OpenGL developer working on flight simulators and avionics. Van Solanum, part of the Australian computer science & IT contingent, has also contributed to design and implementation of those projects. GARPA includes other talented people, such as Luigi Thirty, “The King of Internet Hats”, and Chickenwing, who uses GARPA for homework help. Some members of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal, such as Aryth, are also members of GARPA. Weaselior, a white-collar professional by day, pokes at EVE for fun and profit by night. Overall, it's a diverse group in both ages and careers.

 

Final Thoughts

If you want a powerful set of tools, both GTS and GarpaUI are incredibly useful to players in all segments of EVE.

You can find the latest version of GTS for Windows here (md5sum for those who want to check if a mirrored version has been modified or not: ec166cb37dc4f32f964c890edcb85de7). If you prefer the archive version, you can get that here (md5sum: 5dba5ec078ca6901f1d3cb6a99674144). The Linux archive is here (md5sum: 17ceae85114f366323f2f7fb7f7b4508), while the OS X disk image can be found here (md5sum: 7255d0f30f790639fcaf12dba06d8132). The manual can be found here.

Meanwhile, the Windows archiva for GarpaUI can be found here (md5sum: 499c577533e568668d87d545a0f4d619). The manual can be found here.

There are many useful 3^rd party tools that help players make their lives easier. They range from market sorters, skill planners, and ship fitters. GARPA, a team of players who are part of Goonfleet, have produced two such tools, the Garpa Topographical Survey mapping program and the GarpaUI settings backup and sync program. Together, they are both amazing tools for players.

 

Garpa Topographical Survey

GTS is a highly flexible route planner for both capital and sub-capital ships. It allows the user to get from point A to point B according to any number of conditions they choose. The head of the project, pmchem, says, “For example, avoiding incursions, lowsec, and systems with recent kill activity while visiting 20 waypoints in an optimized order for a trip from Rens to Jita.”

While some of its features are replicated by the in-game autopilot, GTS has many more features. These include handling jump bridges, beacons, cyno jammers, incursions, cyno alts, corporate offices, multiple safe routing options, standings, stations, waypoint optimization for very large numbers of waypoints, calculation of actual in-game travel time, save/favorite routes for quick reference, clipboard sharing of routes, the ability to record notes for specific systems, calculation and sharing of systems in jump range, weighted routing, and much more.

GTS is not merely a route planner, however. It also acts as a galactic database. This allows the user to set up complex queries to discover parts of the galaxy that have certain properties. For example, the user can find the nearest corporate office with medical services for pod jumping.

These two features can be combined to make a powerful planner. You can, for example, find all the highsec level 4 agents for a specific corporation in a neighboring set of regions, then plot an optimal round trip to visit all those systems.

And the best thing about it is that it can be used (via the browser) in game for maximum efficiency.

As pmchem puts it, “The in-game autopilot is fine for getting from A to B with no stops in-between. But when a user wishes to navigate in dangerous territory, make a complicated series of visits, […] or just plain use capital ships at all: a better tool is needed.”

 

GarpaUI

GarpaUI is a tool to take one character's settings and overwrite other characters' settings with it. It supports a variety of copy options: you don't have to copy "from one, to all." You can copy "from one, to various" using the 'selected folder and server' and 'specific accounts' options. This gives flexibility to a player who, say, has 14 mining alts, 3 PVP characters, and a supercap. In short, it's a tool designed to make life easier for multiboxers and other highly involved EVE players.

GarpaUI should also be a dream tool for anyone who is performing a clean reinstall of EVE. You can backup your settings to the Cloud or a USB stick, reinstall Windows, reinstall EVE, and then import your settings. You can propagate your pvp settings to other pvp chars, and mining settings to mining characters.

GarpaUI was initially designed by pmchem and implemented by Psykzz, and is currently maintained by Postal Dude, who implemented the improved UI and feature set for version 2.0.

 

Development History

GTS was originally created by Lhyda Souljacker as a basic navigation tool. It was an excellent gate router and supported Goonfleet's needs in routing through jump bridges and using capital ships. When pmchem came on board, it had the basic filter interface as well. Over the years, he and his team have acted to implement user-requested features and react to the structural changes from EVE expansions.

A perfect example of this is the introduction of incursions. “Being able to gracefully handle avoidance of incursioned constellations for both sub-caps and capital ships was an important new feature required by an expansion,” he says.

“Other features, such as optimization of a large number of waypoints or being able to quickly load complicated favorite routes, were user requests.” He estimates a significant new version is released every 3 to 6 months.

In the future, the team plans to implement features such as hybrid jump/gate routes for Black Ops, Titan Bridges, and Jump Bridge planning. Other upcoming plans include further polishing of the in-game browser interface and map coloring for sovereignty, standings, and jump ranges. Those are all many months down the road, however, with the current public release of 2.2.1 intended to be stable, long-lived, and bug free.

Because the project has had so many contributors over the years, and the core application was originally developed for Windows XP and an early release of .NET while using the static data export in a format provided by CCP half a decade ago, one of the largest challenges has been management of the project. “When someone else on the developer team – who lives on another continent and who you've never met – is having trouble reproducing a problem,” pmchem says, “and it involves legacy code from someone who no longer plays EVE, it can be some effort to resolve the issue.”

It's important to keep current developers on the same page in terms of feature roadmap and quality assurance. Using distributed version control and issue tracking software has helped things go more smoothly.

 

Usage

The GARPA programs have spread across all areas of EVE with thousands of dedicated users who have been enjoying them for years. When a new version is posted, the team often finds the post and files are quickly mirrored by other null sec groups. People use it to find hostile ratters to kill, do complex multi-waypoint routes with capitals, and basically anything you can imagine.

“It's remarkable,” pmchem says. “Our users are the sorts of players who really enjoy logging in and playing EVE. That's part of the user base that we enjoy seeing smile. When we're not shooting them.”

 

The Team

A large team is behind GARPA, led by pmchem. In EVE, aside from leading GARPA, he has managed to become very ISK-rich from patch speculation and nullsec PVE. “Hint to players still in highsec,” he says, “the game becomes more lucrative and fun once you leave, even if you occasionally lose a ship to another player.” He's hit on the trifecta of getting on killmails at Asakai, 6VDT, and B-R5RB, even having his Titan survive Asakai. He started playing by flying Rifters and destroyers in Syndicate back when Goonswarm lost Delve due to forgetting to pay its sov bills.

In real life, he's a computational chemist and has to deal with a variety of programming and scripting languages. The background helped with learning C#/.NET and problem solving for GTS. His work involves high-performance computing, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and thermodynamics.

GARPA has many professionals on its roster. Bittey Blackmoon, the main programmer for recent GTS releases, works in electrical engineering and communications technology. Postal Dude, the man behind GarpaUI 2.0, is an OpenGL developer working on flight simulators and avionics. Van Solanum, part of the Australian computer science & IT contingent, has also contributed to design and implementation of those projects. GARPA includes other talented people, such as Luigi Thirty, “The King of Internet Hats”, and Chickenwing, who uses GARPA for homework help. Some members of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal, such as Aryth, are also members of GARPA. Weaselior, a white-collar professional by day, pokes at EVE for fun and profit by night. Overall, it's a diverse group in both ages and careers.

 

Final Thoughts

If you want a powerful set of tools, both GTS and GarpaUI are incredibly useful to players in all segments of EVE.

You can find the latest version of GTS for Windows here (md5sum for those who want to check if a mirrored version has been modified or not: ec166cb37dc4f32f964c890edcb85de7). If you prefer the archive version, you can get that here (md5sum: 5dba5ec078ca6901f1d3cb6a99674144). The Linux archive is here (md5sum: 17ceae85114f366323f2f7fb7f7b4508), while the OS X disk image can be found here (md5sum: 7255d0f30f790639fcaf12dba06d8132). The manual can be found here.

Meanwhile, the Windows archiva for GarpaUI can be found here (md5sum: 499c577533e568668d87d545a0f4d619). The manual can be found here.

There are many useful 3^rd party tools that help players make their lives easier. They range from market sorters, skill planners, and ship fitters. GARPA, a team of players who are part of Goonfleet, have produced two such tools, the Garpa Topographical Survey mapping program and the GarpaUI settings backup and sync program. Together, they are both amazing tools for players.

 

Garpa Topographical Survey

GTS is a highly flexible route planner for both capital and sub-capital ships. It allows the user to get from point A to point B according to any number of conditions they choose. The head of the project, pmchem, says, “For example, avoiding incursions, lowsec, and systems with recent kill activity while visiting 20 waypoints in an optimized order for a trip from Rens to Jita.”

While some of its features are replicated by the in-game autopilot, GTS has many more features. These include handling jump bridges, beacons, cyno jammers, incursions, cyno alts, corporate offices, multiple safe routing options, standings, stations, waypoint optimization for very large numbers of waypoints, calculation of actual in-game travel time, save/favorite routes for quick reference, clipboard sharing of routes, the ability to record notes for specific systems, calculation and sharing of systems in jump range, weighted routing, and much more.

GTS is not merely a route planner, however. It also acts as a galactic database. This allows the user to set up complex queries to discover parts of the galaxy that have certain properties. For example, the user can find the nearest corporate office with medical services for pod jumping.

These two features can be combined to make a powerful planner. You can, for example, find all the highsec level 4 agents for a specific corporation in a neighboring set of regions, then plot an optimal round trip to visit all those systems.

And the best thing about it is that it can be used (via the browser) in game for maximum efficiency.

As pmchem puts it, “The in-game autopilot is fine for getting from A to B with no stops in-between. But when a user wishes to navigate in dangerous territory, make a complicated series of visits, […] or just plain use capital ships at all: a better tool is needed.”

 

GarpaUI

GarpaUI is a tool to take one character's settings and overwrite other characters' settings with it. It supports a variety of copy options: you don't have to copy "from one, to all." You can copy "from one, to various" using the 'selected folder and server' and 'specific accounts' options. This gives flexibility to a player who, say, has 14 mining alts, 3 PVP characters, and a supercap. In short, it's a tool designed to make life easier for multiboxers and other highly involved EVE players.

GarpaUI should also be a dream tool for anyone who is performing a clean reinstall of EVE. You can backup your settings to the Cloud or a USB stick, reinstall Windows, reinstall EVE, and then import your settings. You can propagate your pvp settings to other pvp chars, and mining settings to mining characters.

GarpaUI was initially designed by pmchem and implemented by Psykzz, and is currently maintained by Postal Dude, who implemented the improved UI and feature set for version 2.0.

 

Development History

GTS was originally created by Lhyda Souljacker as a basic navigation tool. It was an excellent gate router and supported Goonfleet's needs in routing through jump bridges and using capital ships. When pmchem came on board, it had the basic filter interface as well. Over the years, he and his team have acted to implement user-requested features and react to the structural changes from EVE expansions.

A perfect example of this is the introduction of incursions. “Being able to gracefully handle avoidance of incursioned constellations for both sub-caps and capital ships was an important new feature required by an expansion,” he says.

“Other features, such as optimization of a large number of waypoints or being able to quickly load complicated favorite routes, were user requests.” He estimates a significant new version is released every 3 to 6 months.

In the future, the team plans to implement features such as hybrid jump/gate routes for Black Ops, Titan Bridges, and Jump Bridge planning. Other upcoming plans include further polishing of the in-game browser interface and map coloring for sovereignty, standings, and jump ranges. Those are all many months down the road, however, with the current public release of 2.2.1 intended to be stable, long-lived, and bug free.

Because the project has had so many contributors over the years, and the core application was originally developed for Windows XP and an early release of .NET while using the static data export in a format provided by CCP half a decade ago, one of the largest challenges has been management of the project. “When someone else on the developer team – who lives on another continent and who you've never met – is having trouble reproducing a problem,” pmchem says, “and it involves legacy code from someone who no longer plays EVE, it can be some effort to resolve the issue.”

It's important to keep current developers on the same page in terms of feature roadmap and quality assurance. Using distributed version control and issue tracking software has helped things go more smoothly.

 

Usage

The GARPA programs have spread across all areas of EVE with thousands of dedicated users who have been enjoying them for years. When a new version is posted, the team often finds the post and files are quickly mirrored by other null sec groups. People use it to find hostile ratters to kill, do complex multi-waypoint routes with capitals, and basically anything you can imagine.

“It's remarkable,” pmchem says. “Our users are the sorts of players who really enjoy logging in and playing EVE. That's part of the user base that we enjoy seeing smile. When we're not shooting them.”

 

The Team

A large team is behind GARPA, led by pmchem. In EVE, aside from leading GARPA, he has managed to become very ISK-rich from patch speculation and nullsec PVE. “Hint to players still in highsec,” he says, “the game becomes more lucrative and fun once you leave, even if you occasionally lose a ship to another player.” He's hit on the trifecta of getting on killmails at Asakai, 6VDT, and B-R5RB, even having his Titan survive Asakai. He started playing by flying Rifters and destroyers in Syndicate back when Goonswarm lost Delve due to forgetting to pay its sov bills.

In real life, he's a computational chemist and has to deal with a variety of programming and scripting languages. The background helped with learning C#/.NET and problem solving for GTS. His work involves high-performance computing, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and thermodynamics.

GARPA has many professionals on its roster. Bittey Blackmoon, the main programmer for recent GTS releases, works in electrical engineering and communications technology. Postal Dude, the man behind GarpaUI 2.0, is an OpenGL developer working on flight simulators and avionics. Van Solanum, part of the Australian computer science & IT contingent, has also contributed to design and implementation of those projects. GARPA includes other talented people, such as Luigi Thirty, “The King of Internet Hats”, and Chickenwing, who uses GARPA for homework help. Some members of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal, such as Aryth, are also members of GARPA. Weaselior, a white-collar professional by day, pokes at EVE for fun and profit by night. Overall, it's a diverse group in both ages and careers.

 

Final Thoughts

If you want a powerful set of tools, both GTS and GarpaUI are incredibly useful to players in all segments of EVE.

You can find the latest version of GTS for Windows here (md5sum for those who want to check if a mirrored version has been modified or not: ec166cb37dc4f32f964c890edcb85de7). If you prefer the archive version, you can get that here (md5sum: 5dba5ec078ca6901f1d3cb6a99674144). The Linux archive is here (md5sum: 17ceae85114f366323f2f7fb7f7b4508), while the OS X disk image can be found here (md5sum: 7255d0f30f790639fcaf12dba06d8132). The manual can be found here.

Meanwhile, the Windows archiva for GarpaUI can be found here (md5sum: 499c577533e568668d87d545a0f4d619). The manual can be found here.

We're happy to announce that from April 13 to 19, capsuleers will have the opportunity to participate in the Caldari Navy Manhunt. If you've been following the recent game world news, you'll know that the remains of the Provists, the fanatic secret police of deposed Caldari dictator Tibus Heth, participated in an attack on the Caldari Navy and stole several capital ships, including a Wyvern. In response, the Caldari Navy has placed PLEX bounties on the leaders of the heist.

Each day over the course of the week, players will have the opportunity to hunt down the Provists and kill them to claim parts of the bounties. The events will be held in both low-sec and high-sec systems in Caldari space. There will be multiple ways to claim the bounties, so even if you can only bring a frigate to the event, you'll still get a shot at earning a reward.

Please see this thread for further details on how you can take part.

News and propaganda are a vital part of the EVE metagame. Not only are there numerous blogs giving their opinions about the happenings and politics in the game, but also several sites dedicated to delivering news in a journalistic format. It is, as an old meme goes, serious business.

But when there are people that take something seriously, there are those that just have to lampoon it. EVE does not escape this truth. Inspired by the classic satirical news site the Onion, the similarly-named EVE Onion aims to skewer the personalities and politics of the EVE universe in hysterical fashion.

 

EVE's Finest News Source

One day, Tubrug1 was browsing his favorite EVE news site and happened to open a browser window to the world's premiere satire news site, the Onion, in another tab. He was suddenly struck by inspiration. “I thought it would be a great idea to combine the two,” he puts it plainly. “So I did.”

He began coming up with ideas for articles, which he describes as the hardest process. “Once I have a title, writing them is usually straightforward,” he says. His first article was published on June 27, 2013, titled “Exclusive: Why the CFC Invaded Fountain”, referring to the then-recently begun war between the CFC and HBC.

The article, satirically stating that the CFC had grown bored of shooting other people and instead “would rather shoot structures and take hundreds of screenshots of Dreads shooting a POS”, quickly began to spread around the community, being reposted on Reddit and the official EVE Online forums.

More articles followed, some of them drawn from Tubrug's own creativity, others proposed by third parties. One of the site's most popular articles, for instance, was proposed by Angry Mustache and Hendrick Talladar. He also occasionally has casual writers who contribute articles from time to time.

 

No Holds Barred

Like any good satirist, no one is free from being lampooned by the EVE Onion. Tubrug has a wide scope when it comes for topics to skewer. “I keep an eye on politics and wars in null-sec and other events throughout EVE,” he says. “I'll also look at news regarding upcoming features from CCP.”

The articles cover everything from the light-heartedness of a wardec'd corporation being station camped for 11 months, to the nonsensical idea of EVE merging with another MMO, to the prophetic declaration that the CFC was opening a rental program. Even CCP is not spared, with articles such as CCP Announces PLEX for CSM Minutes Campaign mocking the missteps the company has made.

 

Final Thoughts

In EVE, Tubrug is a member of Zebra Corp (who are recruiting!) in Gentlemen's Agreement. Together with Crossing Zebras, the EVE Onion forms the Zebra Corp Media Empire. He thoroughly enjoys AFK ratting in his Vexor Navy Issue, except when it gets killed by rats, and loves both solo PVP and large fleet fights. He was present in some of the largest battles in the recent Halloween war, including HED-GP and B-R5RB.

In addition to writing the EVE Onion, he is also a contributor for themittani.com. In real life, he is a 16 year old who has been playing EVE since the age of 9 during the Trinity expansion, though he could not play beyond the trial because of his then-lack of a debit card. He enjoys playing and watching football and rugby.

News and propaganda are a vital part of the EVE metagame. Not only are there numerous blogs giving their opinions about the happenings and politics in the game, but also several sites dedicated to delivering news in a journalistic format. It is, as an old meme goes, serious business.

But when there are people that take something seriously, there are those that just have to lampoon it. EVE does not escape this truth. Inspired by the classic satirical news site the Onion, the similarly-named EVE Onion aims to skewer the personalities and politics of the EVE universe in hysterical fashion.

 

EVE's Finest News Source

One day, Tubrug1 was browsing his favorite EVE news site and happened to open a browser window to the world's premiere satire news site, the Onion, in another tab. He was suddenly struck by inspiration. “I thought it would be a great idea to combine the two,” he puts it plainly. “So I did.”

He began coming up with ideas for articles, which he describes as the hardest process. “Once I have a title, writing them is usually straightforward,” he says. His first article was published on June 27, 2013, titled “Exclusive: Why the CFC Invaded Fountain”, referring to the then-recently begun war between the CFC and HBC.

The article, satirically stating that the CFC had grown bored of shooting other people and instead “would rather shoot structures and take hundreds of screenshots of Dreads shooting a POS”, quickly began to spread around the community, being reposted on Reddit and the official EVE Online forums.

More articles followed, some of them drawn from Tubrug's own creativity, others proposed by third parties. One of the site's most popular articles, for instance, was proposed by Angry Mustache and Hendrick Talladar. He also occasionally has casual writers who contribute articles from time to time.

 

No Holds Barred

Like any good satirist, no one is free from being lampooned by the EVE Onion. Tubrug has a wide scope when it comes for topics to skewer. “I keep an eye on politics and wars in null-sec and other events throughout EVE,” he says. “I'll also look at news regarding upcoming features from CCP.”

The articles cover everything from the light-heartedness of a wardec'd corporation being station camped for 11 months, to the nonsensical idea of EVE merging with another MMO, to the prophetic declaration that the CFC was opening a rental program. Even CCP is not spared, with articles such as CCP Announces PLEX for CSM Minutes Campaign mocking the missteps the company has made.

 

Final Thoughts

In EVE, Tubrug is a member of Zebra Corp (who are recruiting!) in Gentlemen's Agreement. Together with Crossing Zebras, the EVE Onion forms the Zebra Corp Media Empire. He thoroughly enjoys AFK ratting in his Vexor Navy Issue, except when it gets killed by rats, and loves both solo PVP and large fleet fights. He was present in some of the largest battles in the recent Halloween war, including HED-GP and B-R5RB.

In addition to writing the EVE Onion, he is also a contributor for themittani.com. In real life, he is a 16 year old who has been playing EVE since the age of 9 during the Trinity expansion, though he could not play beyond the trial because of his then-lack of a debit card. He enjoys playing and watching football and rugby.

There are many people who work behind the scenes at CCP who players don't get to hear about on a regular basis. Not everyone is a game designer who posts extensively on the forums, after all! One of the most important people in making sure EVE isn't just a text-based adventure is CCP BasementBen. As EVE's Art Manager, he is responsible for our extensive art team, which produces everything from the 3D models of the ships you fly to the concept art that adorns our chronicles. He took the time to answer some questions about his job and himself!

What is your official job title with CCP?

Art Manager for EVE Development.

 

What does the job actual entail?

People often ask me: “How can one manage art?!” Well, I don’t manage art. There is an Art Director that makes the calls and set the direction for all visual aspects of EVE, working directly with the artists. My job is to ensure that we have a team that is operational, trained, capable, functional and well balanced. All that in the context of the project needs. That goes for concept artists, 3D artists, VFX, Technical Art, animation if needed, and so on. In order to achieve that I act both as a facilitator and a shield for the Art Team. I need to make sure that their work environment is optimal, both on the soft side (information, human factor, training, etc) as well as on the hard side (equipment, systems, space, etc). It’s very focused and very wide spread at the same time. Lot of collaboration with our Human Resources specialists, with Producers, Directors, etc.

 

What did you do/where did you work before you got the job with CCP?

In a first life I studied mechanical engineering. In a second life I did a Masters in journalism and then worked for some years as a journalist, mostly for the French National Radio network. In a third life I worked for many years for a studio making games for children based on famous licenses (Disney, Marvel, Nickelodeon, etc). That was my point of entry in the industry, first developing content for the games, and then quickly moving into a production role. My game development adventure has been going on for close to 15 years now.

 

Did you play EVE before you joined CCP? If so, what did you do in the game?

I did! But to be honest I started playing about a month before starting at CCP, and I have had active accounts since then. I am not big on large scale operations so I have mostly played with a small group of friends or alone. I would define my “persona” as a random opportunist enjoying the wilderness. Rules number 1, 2 and 3: let’s see what’s on the other side of that gate!

 

How did you get a job with CCP? Can you talk about the process?

Already living in Iceland, I knew the CCP crew since 1999 and had a few very (blurry) memories of tequila parties when the whole company could fit in a single room. I always kept an eye on this crazy bunch and by 2006 I got in touch more formally. There was a position that was spot-on for me (Art Producer) and I just went all in. In retrospective I think that honesty and like-mindedness (or like-madness?...) made things happen. That first interview with people who soon became very good friends is still a very vivid moment in my head. I also remember walking in the new CCP office that day thinking “that’s the corridor you’ll walk down every day from now-on”. I was right!

 

What’s your favorite part about working for CCP?

The people I work with, definitely. The project is one thing, and working on a legend that is a paradigm of virtual worlds is a tremendous adventure. But at the end of the day it’s the mixed bunch that I collaborate with every day that matters. We have a lot of nationalities at the office and CCP mirrors in many ways the variety of the EVE community. All that combined makes it the perfect mix. And I don’t even mention looking out the window at the harbor, the mountains and downtown Reykjavik. I wake up every morning eager to get to the studio. Every single day for now over 7 years.

 

Did you purposefully make it so that you could make an exact replica of yourself in the EVE character creator?

Yes of course. What’s the point of being a manager otherwise? I blackmailed the Art Director using pictures taken in one of those CCP parties and retained the salary of all artists involved until it was spot-on me.

 

What’s the biggest misconception players have about what you do that you’d like to clear up?

I spend my day writing emails and talking to people. I use Office much more than any graphic suite and I can have entire days not looking at anything that qualify as art. I am not an artist.

 

If there was one thing you’d be doing outside of your current job, what would it be?

Publishing nice books, producing movies, designing products, acting. As long as it is inspiring for others and make life richer and fuller. That’s what drives me.

 

When you’re not on the job, what do you enjoy doing?

I actually enjoy being lazy, but I get restless. It’s a constant battle! I have nothing that I can call THE hobby, but if I have nothing planned, I’d love spending the weekend with family and friends in the Icelandic countryside. There is something about sitting in a hot-tub all night under the northern lights in good company.

What’s something that people don’t know about you?

In the mid-nineties I played a French officer in a multiple award winning Turkish movie, but a few people already know that. Something that people really don’t know… hmmm… I have a few things, but there is a reason why people don’t know about them!

 

Have you ever accidentally caught your nose in something in a comical fashion?

Yes I have. Babies love to grab it as a handle when I get too close. And it also got stuck a few times where they come from. (ed note: He means the stork)

 

What’s the one thing you wish you could add to EVE’s art that you know no one would let you?

Nipples on corpses. But we have clearly been instructed not to.