Spotlight On - Eve Online and Tyrannis

Eve Online has been up and running for close to seven years and remains a hardcore online game for dedicated players looking to "play each other." While a quick glance at screenshots of the game suggests that it's all about deep-space combat and exploration, the real meat of the game is the in-game economy and the alliances that players build with each other to control the economy. And Eve is once again set to expand with Tyrannis, a new expansion that will add "EveGate," a Facebook-like social networking site for Eve players that will let players more immediately call for help with status updates. It will also add "planetary interaction," which is planet-based gameplay that will set the stage for Dust 514, developer CCP's console shooter that will be tied directly to Eve.

The planetary interaction will let you colonize one of about 67,000 planets by establishing mining colonies composed of different modules (such as extractors and storage modules) on eight different types of planets (ice planet, desert, and so on) to extract one of 15 different types of resources. These raw materials can then be either sold on the open market or built into intermediate ship parts for sale on the open market, including the highly sought-after nanite paste item, which is used to repair ships that have been overloaded with additional weapon modules (a popular practice in the game's player-versus-player battles).

CCP assures us that Tyrannis won't be a big land grab where players see how quickly they can grab the "best" resources first. For starters, each planet is planned to support multiple colonies belonging to many players, and in addition, individual player accounts may maintain only a single colony at a time. Plus, resources will run out over time, which means that getting to a resource-rich planet "first" will become less important over time; instead, the most efficient mining operations will be the ones that can quickly colonize a planet, extract the resources, and then quickly move on to the next.

The pinnacle of resource extraction equipment will be the expensive space elevator, which will quickly extract and transfer resources, but will also be a tempting target for mercenary companies. As we mentioned earlier, Tyrannis will help set the stage for Dust 514, CCP's console shooter that will let players play as planet-side mercenaries under contract to the most well-paying Eve players to either guard or sabotage this or that priority mining operation. CCP expects that the majority of Dust mercenaries will end up being standing armies for the wealthiest player corporations, but because Dust will use a similarly open-ended, player-driven economy, there won't be anything stopping corporations from getting into bidding wars over the services of specific merc outfits.

While this is all intriguing, unfortunately details on Dust are still sparse, and the release date for the console game remains unannounced. However, Tyrannis will launch next month, on May 18.