It’s been five hours. To some it might not seem a long time. In truth I suppose it isn’t. My team and I have just spent the last few days surveying this red planet. A dust storm kicked up of such magnitude that all instruments failed, and you couldn’t see your hand at the end of your arm. It’s saddening how much we rely on technology. Without it, it’s almost as if we’ve forgotten how to think for ourselves. All our savvy, all our expertise, and we couldn’t even find our way back to our shuttle.

We lost two men to the storm. That shouldn’t make you think poorly of these men, or their skills. They were among the best I have seen in their field. We were prepared. It just completely overwhelmed our preparations. Nature does that. You think you’re in control, and then you realize how woefully inadequate you really are.

I am still blowing dust out of my nose. Still coughing it up from my lungs. Of course I had a full respirator on. It didn’t matter.

The only respite we’ve had is stumbling upon this cave. It has provided us shelter from this storm. There doesn’t appear to be any end in sight. It gives me time to think; time to contemplate. I question if the Elders really see the things they prophecize to see. I wonder if me being here, on this infernal planet, is a complete waste of time, or if the promise of the prize will justify the cost.

Orders are orders. Duty is duty. Two men lost. It’s been five hours.

OOC – Had kidney surgery on Tuesday. It got badly infected. Was touch and go for a while. I am stable now. Heard from Apple about Capsuleer. Apparently they can’t follow instructions. It’s funny, in trying to make eve api stuff easy and secure for our users, Apple is being hard on us. If we want them to manually enter it, they will approve. If we scrape it from the site, which is 100% unsecure and basically bypasses the entire need for an api anyway, they will approve. But because we want to email it to you, totally secure, and launch it with one simple click, they get shy. So we’ve reworded our instructions a little, and have resubmitted.

No Roc’s Rule today. No short story. I need to rest. Will talk to you all again on Monday.

Just another night in a local Rens bar. War makes you thirsty, let’s leave it at that. It was well into the early hours of the morning, or the late hours of the previous night depending on your point of view. I couldn’t sleep. Wouldn’t matter anyway. I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in I can’t remember how long. At least the crew was rested. Lights out was at 2200 hours. They wouldn’t be awake for another few hours to report for our next assignment. The bar was moderately populated given the time. A thick haze made the dark corners darker, and seemed to absorb and muffle the sounds as well. One conversation caught my interest though.

“That’s right, we fly with THE Roc Wieler. scourge of the Amarr.” The shadows were engulfed in the fog, but it looked to be two males chatting up a female. Finishing my drink, I slowly walked towards them. “It was crazy. There was easily fifty ships in that Amarr fleet, and we had maybe twenty, no fifteen!” So engrossed in their pickup, they didn’t even see me until I was almost on top of them. I cleared my throat. They both turned to see who was interrupting their courting ritual. The looks on their faces held sufficient shock. Snapping to attention with a crisp salute, they said in unison “Sir, Yes sir!”.

“Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?” I asked. “I need my crew members fresh and ready at all times.” They look a little bewildered. “Did I stutter?” I barked. Their lady friend had silently vanished. “No sir. Heard you loud and clear.” one of them replied. “It’s just that, well…” I wasn’t in a patient mood. “Spit it out, son. And make it good. I don’t tolerate insubordination.” A heavy lump swallowed in his throat. “There was a memo sent out sir. Said you’d be flying this next one alone, so enjoy some RNR.” Without acknowledging him, I spun on my heel and stormed away, straight out of the bar, towards the hangar. I don’t appreciate my people knowing things before I do. There would be hell to pay for this.

Making my way to my personal hangar, I quickly let the security system verify me. The heavy, secured door withdrew on its tracks, a heavy thud marking it had finished its movement. I marched in, and nearly stopped dead in my tracks, my mouth hanging wide open. I heard a chuckle to my right. My head spun to find my chief mechanic standing there, wiping his grease govered hands on an even greasier rag. “She’s a beaut, eh C’mander? Arrived about 0100. Passed the security sweep, but I did one of my own ‘course.” I turned back to look at the Republic Fleet Issue Firetail frigate berthed before me. “Where did it come from?” He stood in front of me now, knowing my interest was fixed on this beautiful ship. “No idea. Like I said, they arrived a few hours back, and I wanted to make sure they were tip top fer ya.” He turned to admire the sleek lines of this vessel with me. My mind finally caught up to his words. “They?” He chuckled to himself, then led me to the adjacent hangar bay door controls. Hitting a few buttons, the massive partition began to part from the middle. Groaning hydraulics pulled the doors back enough for us to walk between before he stopped them. It was pitch black in the other bay. A few more switches, and gas powered lights began to flicker to life, their buzzing hum delaying my curiousity until they were fully powered. Once they were, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Berthed before me was a Republic Fleet Issue Stabber cruiser, as pristine as I had ever seen.

“Where did these come from? Command send them?”
“Wouldn’t if I know. Like I said, they just done showed up. Ah, there was a note. Whadin I do with that?” He began padding down his numerous pockets, finally pulling a sheet of paper from his back right pocket. Handing it to me, I eagerly unfolded it to unlock this mystery. A single line was written on the sheet, “Keep up the good work.” Nothing else. No signature. No trace as to who or where they were from. “That’s it?” I asked. He nodded. He began the process of closing the hangar doors. When that was finished, we walked towards the main hangar exit. “They pass my security check, and I ran them through all the usual tests. They’re fine machines, ready when you be.” He tilted his head back towards the Firetail, then walked away. It was a beautiful ship. It sorely looked in need of a test drive. I smiled at him, and was about to order him to give the crew some time off, a frigate is 100% pod controlled after all, when I remembered my initial reason for coming here. Before I could voice it, he jumped in. “I gave the crew some RNR. Figured you’d want to take the Firetail out.” With that, he waved and was gone.

There are few people with balls enough to give orders to my crew. Right now, I could care less. Right now I was going to enjoy some me time.

I have had some people from other games ask me to explain the lasting appeal of EVE Online. I’ve directed them to Crazy Kinux’s thread for WoW players, talked about comparisons with original Star Wars Galaxies (which I played for 5 years), and then found this little nugget:

Easily the most awesome lecture of the conference, CCP’s CTO explaining the code and design of the simulation system behind the EVE Online servers: DESTINY.

The key point is a chaos-theory equation system of potential spheres of influence for every actor in a space. Essentially the algorithm goes something like this:

1) Begin server frame.
2) For each ship, calculate a sphere of possible client interaction based on the ship’s dimensions, weapons systems, visual range, etc.
3) Using chaos theory equations of possible changes in a ship’s behavior before the next time slice, fractally extrude out a set of event cylinders (with hemispherical caps) of the ship’s possible influence before the next frame, within the 3D space.
4) Loop through the generated event cylinders and look for intersections. Lump intersecting masses together as “causality bubbles.” Sets of events that could potentially influence one another.
5) Rapid cache out the causality bubbles as separate sets and defer the simulation of each bubble out through microtasklets in Stackless Python.
6) Send only the information relating to a player’s intersected causality bubble/matrix to that game client. (Dump client’s simulation state from pervious frame in lieu of the server’s state if they disagree.)
7) Allow the client and server to run the simulation of that causality bubble in parallel. Continue the simulation on the client to make it appear seamless.
8) Yield to other causality bubble simulations in DESTINY and Sleep() for 1000ms.
9) Download any input changes by the ship’s pilot from the client at the end of the server frame. As ships do not respond to inputs instantaneously in EVE, this is fine.
10) Push that input into the force equations in the physics simulation for next frame.
11) Push the causality bubbles’ simulation result to TRANQUILITY, the actual server Main() process.
12) End server frame, loop while the execution context has not received a shutdown signal.

This prevents you from encountering a runaway O(n^y) algorithm of every ship in a solar system potentially acting on every other, and by only sending updates to clients based on that client’s ship’s causality bubble, it allows the game to be played on only dial-up modem speeds.

The only downside is in large space battles, in crowded spaces. In these scenarios, the intersection of extruded causality cylinders tends to encompass the entire system. This ship can influence this ship which can influence these ships which influence… etc. So the partitioning of simulation afforded by causality bubbles goes away. They tossed out some similarly awesome-sounding ways to fix this, that are in development, but I’m not allowed to talk about them.

Other really sweet things they did:

– Dynamically generated all solar systems in the universe using actual supercomputer-run disk accretion models. This means every solar system was formed the same way actual astronomical ones are, and no system is artificially held together by anything that would not work in real physics.

– Originally, the random seed to generate the EVE universe was taken from the server’s Epoch Time at the start of the universe generation. The guy in charge decided, the night before launch, to regenerate the entire universe at the last minute with the seed “42.”

– The location of solar systems relative to one another were modelled after cellular cohesion equations – the same thing that makes gold deposits form, blood vessels to grow in your body, and sets the pattern of the universe filaments as seen in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.

Yeah, this is totally geeky, but it’s also incredibly cool for anyone that understands physics, programming, science and extruding believable science fiction from it. Really, it doesn’t get more awesome than this.

EDITOR NOTE: Yeah, yeah, 42, the answer to all questions, I know. – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Some will tell you I am not easy to get along with. Those that get along with me will tell you that’s rubbish. Both are accurate.

I am not high maintenance, but neither am I low maintenance. I would describe myself as “set maintenance”. As you may have gathered from the many Roc’s Rules, I govern myself by my own set of ideals and rules. They don’t change. I don’t really change either. I have triggers just like anyone else. Live within them, and we’ll get along fine.

I am a soldier. I am used to following orders. My commanding officers say do, and I do. I have no problem letting someone else make the rules. Just make sure you follow them.

I had just returned from commanding a fleet recently. You may have read about it in one of my earlier journals (see For the Republic ). I yelled at the Tribal miltia for a good twenty minutes until I was hoarse in the throat. My CO didn’t approve. He said there is never a reason to yell at my troops to such a degree. He screamed this at me for twenty minutes. I stopped listening after two.

It’s simple for me really. Make the rule. Live by it. Do what you say. Please, feel free to call me on it when I am a hypocrite. I will definitely be calling you on it.

“Nobody is coming for you, Roc.” he says into my ear, sweetly, as a lover would. “Do you understand my friend? You’re all alone. You’ve got nobody but me.” I know his voice. We’re friends. I think we’re friends. Yes, we’re friends. It’s hard to focus. My mind is fluid, drifting aimlessly. My body is racked in pain, a constant searing numbness, if there is such an oxymoron.

“Tell me what they’re planning, Roc. Tell me the plans of the Tribes.” I am a Vorshud Major in the Tribal Liberation Force, proud to serve the Minmatar Republic. I have earned my rank with sweat, blood and tears; far too many of each. And yet I have no idea what he is talking about.

He stands in front of me, over me, his arms on my arms, his face smiling serenley at me, eternal patience shining from his eyes. “Do you understand what I am saying, Roc? Do you understand my words?”

“Just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I don’t understand.” I reply smugly through broken teeth in a bloodied mouth. He straightens at that comment, the joy washed from his face. That in and of itself gives me great satisfaction. Amateur.

“Sir? Major Wieler sir?” My attention snaps back to the present. My Science Officer is addressing me, an expectant look on his face. I totally missed what he said. I let the silence hang in the air for a few more moments, feigning thoughtful contemplation, hoping the quiet awkwardness will make him repeat himself. I am not disappointed.

“Sir, they need to know. The survey team’s report confirms Aura’s readings. Breathable, but hostile environment, day temperature in the negative fifties, no hostile lifeforms. No lifeforms at all. Next orders?”

“Alright. Get the other teams prepped. We’re going out there.” This whole thing is probably all one big wild goose chase. Who the hell chases a goose anyway? Still, if there’s even a small chance we succeed, it will be worth it for all of us.

Ever have a recurring nightmare you just can’t get rid of? It’s like a pestilence to your psyche, a debilitating virus you cannot cure.

My ship has been destroyed, my pod ejected. Hurtling through the void I see the frozen corpses of my crew floating by in slow motion, their last moment of horror forever etched across their faces. In unison, their eyes turn and look at me with blame and I am ashamed. My pod rattles as it comes under fire from the enemy that took my ship. Two of its three engines blow out, sending me into a spiralling pitch. Black, roiling smoke and flame erupt. I often wonder how there is smoke in space. There is no atmosphere, thus no oxygen, so how does smoke and flame even exist?

Aura is silent. My capsule continues its spin like a theme park attraction ride, well beyond the threshold of my gravity training. I puke. My pod fluid opens its mouth, eating it up, recycling it back into my system. Lovely.

My pod screams towards a planet I do not recognize. The system is governed by a red dwarf star which taints the nightmare red. How symbolic really. I know my pod is in this planet’s gravitational pull and will soon hit “re-entry”. Why is it still called that? Tens of thousands of years ago our ancestors took to the stars from Earth, and would return. It made sense back then. They left. They re-entered. But this is now. Shouldn’t it just be called entry?

The pod threatens to shake itself apart as I descend into a steep orbit, hurtling towards the surface of the unknown. The altimeter is dropping faster than my eyes can track. My external cameras show me in high definition the detailed surface of my impending doom. I can countdown the seconds until impact, until the cycle continues and my next life begins.

I awake, sweating, in my bunk. Reaching for a glass of water from my nightstand, my hands tremble. What do these dreams mean, if anything? I should’ve been born a Sebeistor. I am far too philosophical for a Brutor. My quarters feel very small suddenly, cramped, confining, maddening. I feel imprisoned. Maybe I am losing it? Maybe I never had it to begin with and am only now beginning to accept this fact.

I look in the mirror and see the face of the man I have come to accept as me. His visage brings me no peace today. He looks afraid. I glare at him in admonishment.

Re-entry. The word sloshes around in my brain. It is a key to some lock I cannot find. It has some hidden meaning; some unknown purpose. My intercom chirps. I press it.

“Major, all systems green. Holding steady orbit. Ready for re-entry on your command.”

Re-entry.