Gameplay
Since its release, EVE Online has claimed awards for its graphics and its game play, additionally the main server named "Tranquility" runs on what is claimed to be the most powerful supercomputer in the gaming industry. Several test servers also exist, although the one named "Singularity" where players may get a first look at new content, as well as help developers and volunteers test changes. Both servers require a daily downtime, Tranquility's is scheduled between 11:00 and 12:00 GMT.
Advancement


A Gallente-constructed "Catalyst"-class Destroyer leaving an Amarr space station.
EVE Online is different from MMOGs such as World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and EverQuest II because the player characters do not gain experience points through actions or by completing tasks. Instead, the player learns skills by training a specific skill over time, a passive process that occurs in real world time so that the learning process will continue even if the player is not logged in. As a result, new players are generally unable to gain more skillpoints than existing players who continue to train but this is reduced somewhat by a diminishing returns policy for training higher skill levels. Each skill has 5 steps, or levels and the time required to train a skill to a particular level is determined by the player's attributes and how many skill points a certain skill requires, determined by a skills rank. The skill training system is connected with five attributes: Intelligence, Perception, Charisma, Willpower and Memory. Each skill has a primary and secondary attribute, thus the higher these attributes, the faster skills that use them are trained. There are also skills and implants that can increase attributes.
All players start with a small number of core skills (depending on choices made during the character creation process) and need to buy skill books in order to acquire new skills. Each skill has a different multiplier, or "rank", that determines how long each subsequent level takes to train. For example, the basic skills, with low ranks, may take the player 10 minutes to train to the first level, while high-ranking skills like Capital Ships take months to train to the highest level. Each skill may have pre-requisites - a requirement that other skills must be trained to a specific level before it can be trained.
Training Time
Training within the game occurs in real time whether the user is logged in or not. The time it takes to train a skill varies depending upon an attribute known as its "rank." Low-rank skills trained to a low level may represent a few minutes of training whereas high levels of high-rank skills may represent several months of training.
Since training time is directly related to a character's attributes, a player can lower the training time of skills by training "Learning" skills, as well as by using Implants to boost attributes.
Due to the sheer number of skills available to characters, it is not realistic for a character to acquire perfect skills with all ships and weapons systems. As each skill level takes five times longer than the previous (a geometric progression) while the bonus it provides almost always scales linearly, a new player has the option to either acquire acceptable skills in many fields, or perfect skills in a relative few.
Economy


An example of EVE Online's in-game market screen.
There is a single currency unit in EVE Online, the Inter Stellar Kredit (ISK), which takes its name from the Icelandic króna, whose ISO code is ISK. Players can barter between themselves for items, or may use the extensive in-game market system for ISK-based transactions. A large proportion of the in-game economy is player driven; NPC merchants supply some basic equipment, as well as tech 1 blueprints, items and trade goods.
Players, through the use of blueprints and in-game skills, can gain the ability to build items ranging from basic ammunition to cutting-edge capital ship hulls, and manufacture them for personal use or for sale. Pricing and availability of goods varies from region to region within the EVE universe. These aspects contribute to an economic environment influenced by factors like scarcity of resources, specialization of labor and supply/demand dynamics. The economy is closely tied with the (also player driven) political aspect of the game. Player corporations (the EVE equivalent of guilds) rise and fall as they struggle for market dominance as well as territorial control.
From a technical point of view, the economy in EVE is known as a "Faucet/Drain" or open economy, that is there is no fixed amount of money or materials in the universe. CCP did attempt to implement a closed economy (that is an economy where there is a fixed amount of currency and therefore materials) early on in the game's existence; however, it proved too difficult to balance the effects of new players entering the game with the capabilities of older players able to earn more ISK or obtaining more materials. The current Open economy is automatically balanced by introducing extra materials in underpopulated areas to encourage an even spread of players.
There is a second, smaller market which does not operate under the same rules as the regular market. It is entirely player-driven and is called "Contracts". This system has replaced "Escrow" under the release of Revelations (formally known as Kali). The Contracts system allows trade between characters and use of an auction system for most items. Additionally, a contract can also be used in the standard manner: a financial or production agreement between two parties.
Combat
While it is perfectly possible to remain in high security star systems and engage in non-combat activities like manufacturing and commerce, some pilots turn to low-security space for its high rewards. But the trade-off for the rare minerals and high bounties of low-sec space is the constant threat of ambush that lies on the other side of every gate.
Combat in EVE is a mixture of both tactical intelligence and spontaneous decision-making using a Point-and-click interface. While every race has certain tendencies for different battle tactics (Caldari ships have bonuses for utilizing missiles and sniping turrets for long-range engagements while Gallente bonuses are weighted toward automated drones and blasters at point-blank ranges; for example), a player's combat capabilities are determined by his/her skill levels, the ship being piloted and various hardware modules fitted into it. Making a good selection out of hundreds of ships and thousands of weapons/equipment for a particular situation is as important as fighting the battle itself. Due to the huge variety of possible equipment loadouts opponents can have, adaptability in tactics is essential. Fleeing to fight another day is a common occurrence.


An example of combat in EVE. The "X"s are drones.
EVE's combat system allows ships of all sizes to be useful in combat. Large ships such as battleships are typically outfitted with heavy weapons allowing them to battle other ships of their size. Such weapons however do not have the accuracy to effectively damage smaller, faster ships like frigates. While a large ship can equip smaller weapons designed for attacking smaller targets, this leaves them at a disadvantage versus other large ships. Small ships such as frigates may be unable to do significant damage to larger ships on their own, but can greatly affect the outcome of small group battles by employing tactics such as disrupting the engines of enemies (reducing mobility or chance to escape) and jamming enemy sensors or by attacking a larger ship as a pack.
The open player versus player combat system, and the fact that ships frequently "drop" some of their cargo and equipment when destroyed, provides incentive for player piracy. There are various piracy tactics, most commonly they roam space in small gangs looking for targets. In turn, pirates risk being branded criminals by CONCORD (the equivalent of the INTERPOL) and thus becoming open targets to all other players, as well as being unable to access high security systems. Players may even place a bounty on another player's head, providing work for bounty hunters, although as of November 2006, this system is still considered to be flawed, as there is no control over who claims a bounty - in the event of a bounty payout that exceeds the amount paid for a clone (the standard method of insuring a pilot), there is little to prevent an unscrupulous pirate from claiming the bounty by killing 'himself' using an alternate character. Some players also form anti-pirate corporations, seeking out pirates to destroy them in an attempt to make a given area safe for non-combat players to mine or travel in.
At the strategic level, the rich resources available in low security space reward large cooperative groups. Usually formed when several player-owned-and-operated corporations (similar to guilds, in other MMORPGs) band together, these "alliances" can vary widely in size and strength. The network of jumpgates, which allows travel between star systems, includes a multitude of chokepoints, which careful alliances can garrison to restrict access to claimed 0.0 systems. Moreover, corporations and alliances have the ability to manufacture Player-Operated Starbases (POS) that mine resources from moons in a system. Each POS requires substantial logistical support to remain in operation, but once an alliance mounts and maintains such facilities at the majority of moons in a system, it achieves the status of sovereignty. At that point, any neutral (or "conquerable") station in the system becomes the property of the successful alliance, and remains so until an enemy destroys enough alliance POSs and replaces them with its own. The conquerable stations tend to provide a wide variety of services in a single location, and so offer considerable benefits.
Security Index System


CONCORD patrolling outside a station after an illegal incident.
EVE features an open PvP system where combat between players can occur anywhere within the Eve Universe. To balance this "free aggression", EVE has implemented a "security index system". Every solar system in the EVE universe has a public security status which ranges from 0.0 to 1.0. Systems with a rating of 0.0 are completely lawless, while 0.1 to 0.4 have absolutely no protection by NPC law enforcement (but offer a somewhat limited protection by sentry guns at stargates and stations). Zones from a 0.5 to 0.8 rating have increasing amounts of sentry gun cover as well as NPC security patrols. Systems with a 0.9 or 1.0 rating are considered extremely secure, with constant security patrols at every major point and heavy CONCORD presence. Whenever a player commits an act of aggression in a system with a security rating at or above 0.5, CONCORD ships and/or stationary weapons platforms will attack and destroy the aggressor, with escaping considered an exploit. However, in any security zone, including 1.0, a player may fire on any ship that has directly committed an illegal act such as stealing from a 'jetcan' (jettisoned cargo canister) for a period of 15 minutes or an unlimited period of time for shooting at that player.
For committing illegal actions anywhere in the game, players lose personal security standings with CONCORD, the NPC 'police'. Loss of Security status varies upon the crime. Aggressive attacks will only result in a minor loss of standings, while the act of killing a ship that has not defended itself will result in a further drop in standings, and the largest loss of standings occurs with the intentional destruction of a player's 'pod' ('pod-killing'). As a player loses security status, their ability to enter certain levels of secured space becomes more and more limited. If a player's security status drops below -5.0 they receive status of an outlaw, and if the player enters any "secure" empire space in anything other than a capsule, the NPC ships of that empire will attempt to destroy the offender's ship. Furthermore, outlaws can be freely fired upon at any time by any other players without any NPC reprisal.
It is possible to gain or regain security status by destroying NPC Pirates. Destroying pirate NPCs also yields a monetary reward.
It is worth noting that while breaking the law in high-security systems means almost certain death for the offender, this does not guarantee the absolute safety of the victim: a well-planned suicide attack can still successfully destroy a ship before CONCORD and sentry guns can neutralize the aggressor. For example, the system of Jita in Caldari space is arguably known as the most dangerous "safe" system in EVE, even though it has the second highest security rating (0.9). It's one of EVE's main trade hubs and almost always the most populated system at all hours. This dubious 'honor' is partly due to suicide attacks, where pirates will scan ships passing through Jita, looking for expensive cargo. When a ship is labelled a target, pirates will destroy them to get the cargo, even though they know CONCORD will destroy their own ship. To ensure the pirate who did the work gets the cargo, an "alt" (alternate character) will often be used. The pirate's alt will be waiting near by, ready to come in and get the loot. However, with recent changes to gameplay such as the ability to warp directly into jump range of stargates, the number of suicide attacks has gone into decline. The aggression system is also not without its loopholes; players can easily bait another player (for example, a miner in this instance) into firing on them - causing an aggression countdown - after first stealing ore from the miner's jetcan, only to return minutes later in a more powerful ship and destroy the hapless miner. Another variant of this loophole exists where instead of firing on the thief, the miner moves his own ore back to his own jetcan from the thief's jetcan (which was filled by ore stolen from the miner to begin with). This also triggers an aggression countdown, allowing the thief to destroy the unaggressive miner with no repercussions.
Warfare
While attacking another player in high security space will result in a loss of security standing and the risk of the attacker losing his ship to CONCORD there is a way to conduct warfare in high security space. A corporation or alliance can declare war on another corporation/alliance, thus allowing for combat in all regions of space without the fear of standing loss or the intervention of security services.
There is a cost of waging war for the declaring side in the form of an initial cost for the side declaring the war and an ongoing cost. Due to abuse of the system by some alliances and corporations the cost of declaring a war has changed from a flat fee per war to a sliding fee that increases the cost for each war. For example if an alliance has declared war on 5 other alliances/corporations the cost of each war is 5 times the fee for 1 war.
Warfare can be used for gaining control of lower security regions of space as there is a minimum number of starbases (POS) that must be erected before that area can be claimed by a corporation or alliance, or as a method of destroying a corporations economic base by disrupting things such as mining activities, the movement of products from their production location to the area where they may be sold (sometimes across the Eve universe from the production location) or by driving newer or non-combat players out of the corporation, reducing the tax take from mission rewards.
Death


A pod floating in space after a player's ship has been destroyed.
In the event that a player's ship is destroyed, a wreck is left behind. Any cargo hold contents, ship modules, drones and ammunition that were not destroyed in the explosion can be recovered by any player, and additional components of the structure of the ship can be retrieved by a player with the correct "salvaging" modules and skills. These components can be used to build ship enhancement modules known as 'rigs'. To (partially or fully) mitigate the loss of an expensive vessel, ships can be insured against destruction. Insurance payouts are based strictly on material build costs; the market value of the ship is not taken into account. Some ships have a market value that is dozens, if not hundreds of times as much as the ship's build cost - as a result, a player who loses such a ship will lose a large investment, with no possibility of indemnification. (Modules cannot be insured; some modules may have a market value much higher than the ship itself.)
When a ship is destroyed, the player is ejected in his or her lifepod. This pod may be destroyed as well, if a player chooses to open fire on it. In this case, the player character will die and be revived in a clone at a pre-determined cloning facility. This player death is known as "podding" or "being podded". Non-player characters will not attack a pod. Any implants installed on a player will be irrevocably lost when he or she is podded. Implants cannot be insured.
Players may purchase an upgraded clone which is used in the event of pod death. The cost of a clone depends on how many skill points it can hold - the more skill points, the more expensive the clone becomes. When the player dies and is revived in his or her clone, if this clone holds a number of skill points lower than the number the player had at the time of death, then the player will lose a varying amount of skill points. This method offers a way for developed characters to use expensive implants for skill training or economic pursuits, while still having the option to engage in dangerous combat operations without the risk of losing them or by creating jump clones with different groups of implants that control other aspects of the game such as shield support, enhanced damage capabilities or better targetting abilities.