EVE clone with a hint of MechWarrior on the horizon

In the world of gaming (and not only) you know you're doing something right when others start copying your concepts.

There are tons of more or less successful Command and Conquer clones, tons of WoW clones (even if I have a deep dislike of everything WoW represents, I have to give Blizzard credit for giving the people what they want)

Now there's a game on the horizon that so closely resembles EVE game design that my only reaction when I saw it was "Damn...". The name of the game is...

Perpetuum Online (website)

The creators are a Hungarian company called Avatar Creations. The theme of the game - piloting mechanized vehicles (Mechs) in a sandbox environment very much like EVE.

At the time of this writing, it is in closed Beta, with release scheduled for 2010.

The Basics of the Game

The player is an Agent of one of the three Megacorporations of Earth (reunited in what is called the Syndicate) some 200 years in the future. The plot takes players through an artificial wormhole (sound familiar?) to planet Nia, a life-supporting world some 87000 lightyears from Earth.

Each Megacorp has its own agenda for the exploration and exploitation of Nia... and then there's the locals. Split into 3 factions, the locals are to be NPC's as far as I can tell.

Mechs and Combat

Here it all gets very, VERY familiar. The Mechs in Perpetuum have attributes quite similar to ships in Eve. Here's a short list of attributes in EVE, and their counterparts in Perpetuum:

• Maximum targets (same meaning in both)
• Targetting range (same meaning in both)
• Sensor strength (same meaning in both)
• Capacitor (EVE) = Accumulator (Perpetuum)
• Signature size (EVE) = Surface hit radius (Perpetuum)
• CPU and Powergrid = CPU and Reactor Performance

Weapon classes are the same as in EVE - Firearms (Projectile weapons in EVE), Magnetic weapons (Hybrids in EVE), Lasers and Missiles. Hit and miss are determined by the target's speed, by your guns' tracking and by the target's surface hit radius.

One thing however is different in Perpetuum, and that's WASD control of your craft. EVE doesn't have it, possibly because it creates very high  server loads. Since Perpetuum promises to be a single sharded universe just like EVE, we'll see how the developers handle that.

By the looks of it, well-versed EVE players should have no problems adapting to Perpetuum. Simply jump in, fit a mech and it's business as usual.

Here's a trailer I managed to find, featuring what the game would look like:



Decent graphics, given the fact that this trailer is from February, and since then the GFX engine has received an update, they say.



Industry, Manufacturing and Commerce

Again, this part will look pretty familiar to the knowledgeable EVE industrialist. Gathering resources is done in more-or-less specialized mechs, manufacturing requires a factory slot, blueprint (called patent, off which  manufacturing licenses are obtained) and a set quantity of minerals.

The market however will probably be more limited than in Eve. One will not (atleast for now) be able to sell items for prices differing by more than 25% from the average price. This is a severe limitation, but I hope it gets revisited.

So... what's different?


Well, as I said before from what I've noticed, this game will have WASD controls, the lack of which seems to be extremely frustrating for newer players of EVE which come from other MMO's.

The designers also promise destructible environments. There's even a video of that:



 
There is a Game Guide on the website, a work in progress by the looks of it, but it can certainly allow you to form a better view of what this game is about.

Summing up

At first glance, Perpetuum looks promising. Probably not so much to the hardened, bitter EVE veteran (myself included, but hey, I'll try everything once... I might like it) for which Eve is like a religion, but it certainly will look attractive to the people for whom EVE was a bit much. On the other hand, to be fair, EVE was a much simpler game at its beginnings... It is only fair to assume that Perpetuum could evolve into a game of comparative complexity, given enough tim

I for one would be quite pleased if Perpetuum would also adopt the cold, dark "shoot you in the face if you make a wrong turn" atmosphere we are so used to in Eve.

I signed up for beta testing whenever it comes out of closed beta (which should be "Soon", heheh...), so when/if I manage to get my mitts on Perpetuum I'll certainly give it a thorough look and report what I found.

JINX.COM Releases Brand New EVE Online T-shirt Collection

Yep, just saw the new EVE shirts today while browsing to see what's new on Jinx (and afterwards also noticed the news item about this).

Jinx has released 4 EVE t-shirts, featuring each race's Tier 2 battlecruiser (Harbinger, Hurricane, Myrmidon and Drake) in sizes S to 3XL (Minmatar gets 4XL too... wonder what that's all about) for guys and S - 2XL for gals - and they're awesome! I would want to own several of each, but will have to settle for the Minmatar one for starters (Alliance leaders would have my head if I got the Amarr one first, heheh)

Here are the other three as well. Enjoy:

 

 

Image source: Jinx.com

Supercarrier pilots rejoice!

In a presentation done about the Dominion expansion (linky - check at 13:00) by CCP Torfi at Fanfest there's a little nugget of information specifically interesting for would-be Supercarrier pilots. In a list of possible solar system upgrades after the change in Sov mechanics, one item reads as follows: "Supercarrier Docking Facilities - Perhaps... allow players to dock in player built outposts" (pic below, last item on the list):

Click For Larger Pic

It would seem my greatest Supercarrier-related wish (expressed in this article at their announcement) has a chance to materialize:


"One thing I would like to see given to Supercarriers though is the ability to dock. Yes, regular carriers can dock, and now that they had their Cloning Vat removed,. their bigger cousins should be able to do this as well. Not having a character stuck at all times in what seems to be a very expensive coffin with big bad drones would make a big difference towards making the ship class more popular and seen more often on the battlefield - otherwise people are simply going to do what they've been doing until now - BRING MORE DREADS"

Other System Upgrades include better rats, better ores, better exploration content, system cyno jammer, cyno generator, the ability to anchor starbases and many more... do watch the presentation, it's quite interesting.


Epic Win! Please excuse me, I need to go rethink my skill queue :)

New Stargate series premiere - Stargate Universe

[Warning, here may lie spoilers]

So I finally got round to watching the first (two-part) episode last night. A preview:



The tone seems to be rather gloomy, much more so than the other two series in the franchise, with a pinch of BSG thrown in. The main plot catalyst is the Icarus Project, something the SGC has set up in order to determine the use of a 9 chevron stargate they found on a planet with an unstable, radioactive core. Turns out its destination is an ancient ship "billions of light-years away", on which a rag-tag group of SGC personnel and civillians get stuck. Now they have to find a way to get back home, which might be hard, since the ship runs on autopilot and they have no way of dialling out from it on such a distance either.

This all reaked of Star Trek Voyager to me at first, but after watching it I concluded I will enjoy this show a good deal. The screenwriters seem to have taken a good long look at BSG and have concocted a complex system of interactions between the characters - personal agendas, prejudice, fear, the will to sacrifice others in order to survive - these are all elements that convinced me to put Stargate: Universe in my "To watch" pile, at the top.

Raised fist and all that...

So the wanderlust finally caught up with me, after many months of being lazy in empire. Brutus finally cracked and went back to 0.0 - mind you, his little cousin Max had been scouting the path ahead for about a few weeks.

The corp I joined is [WEDIE] - The Littlest Hobos, part of the Ushra'Khan Alliance. To be honest, one couldn't have hoped for a better bunch of guys to fly around punching holes in stuff.

The leadership has the right attitude and that really pays off. No forced ops, no taxes, no "be there or we'll slap you" crap. And of course, there's the corp's neverending source of everything bad and at the same time hilarious - Butter Dog.

I'm not one to favor role playing,  but that's optional here... heck, everything is pretty much optional here, but some things are too much fun to miss.

So far, the preferred pastimes in corp are:

• Ripping on Provibloc and shooting their toys, then cloaking, decloaking and shooting more of their toys
  
• Ripping on Redpaw Israel in alliance chat
  
• Reading Butter's latest CAOD drivel
• Reading other CAOD drivel
• Shooting more of provi's toys
  
• RP'ing hobos squatting in provibloc's space
  
• etc.

These past few days I've been busy bringing down some instruments of destruction and haven't had time to  X up for much, just a bit of pos bashing in Curse, which actually took longer to get to than actually shoot. Too bad nobody came to defend it...