Meanwhile, in Outer Space, life goes on. Since our Corp's recent brush with War, which turned out to be a narrow escape and something of an anticlimax, we're all a bit more concerned about our somewhat rusty and/or non-existent PvP Prowess; not so much in the capacity of lone-wolf deep 0.0 solo survivalists, or massive Alliance Zerg Fleet Wings but our ability to hold our own in Empire space against a finite and known aggressor, as in the form of the typical Inter-Corporate War Declaration.

To this end, last night was our first organised Civil War event. It consisted of a limited engagement in which our corp was split into two teams. Each team was given three deployable 'targets' to place in it's designated 'home' system, some jumps apart near our usual stomping grounds. The objective was pretty simple - trash their targets while protecting our own. First set of targets destroyed wins. I must admit, these extra objectives were a bit secondary to me, as for me, the point of the exercise was merely to get involved in a firefight with another player ship - something I've never done in over three years of EVE.

Sure, I've been shot at a few times, but have either fled or died without much of a struggle. I've never had the opportunity to fit out a ship for PvP, and go at it, hammer and tongs, with the intention of actually blowing someone else up. Quite liberating, and in this case, guilt-free, as all the participants of the exercise were in stuff they knew they'd probably lose, and there were no ill-feelings involved at all, which is how PvP gaming should be, but rarely ever is. That's not to say it was all hug and back-slapping.

My own preparations mostly consisted of buying in three (to me) very disposable Frigate class ships, and kitting them out for close-range melee survivability. Frigates are EVE's equivalent to the smaller kind of dogfighting ship, the 'X-Wings' of the piece, although even the smallest are notionally objects the size of the Statue of Liberty, with dozens, or hundreds of crew-members each. It's all relative though! They're very cheap, typically fast, and not very robust, but due to the elegant maths behind EVE, use their speed as a kind of 'Agility AC'. They don't do a huge amount of damage though. I spent between one and two million ISK on three of these, all fitted out for the event, and parked them in our 'Home System' beforehand, ready for last night.

Weight limits had been imposed on the event, to prevent things getting too out of hand, and as well as Frigates, Destroyers and Cruisers were allowed, and on the whole, the Enemy Team chose to use Cruisers, much bigger, much slower craft, usually with longer ranged weapons that hit harder, against which, the Frigates best defence is to go too fast for the bigger guns to be able to hit properly, if at all. These bigger ships cost more however, and a decently fitted top-end Cruiser can cost 10-20 million ISK a piece, something my paranoia about losing imaginary money, or more importantly, the very real time that money represents, won't cover.

The appointed hour arrived and away we went. The first task was to actually find the enemy's targets, deployed at one of dozens of possible locations within the target system. We split our force into a defence (to guard our own targets) and scout-recon squad (of which I was a part). Cunningly sidestepping any possible gate-camps along the most obvious route through the constellation, our little Frigate squad quickly gathered in a pre-mapped 'safespot' in the target system, and then dispersed to each planet and moon in turn while our Sqaud Leader coordinated from the safespot, ticking possible locations off the list. This took a fair while, as even with the limitation of only putting the targets at warp-in points of planets or moons, there was still a lot of ground to cover. At length the targets were found, along with the entire enemy team, in Crusiers, who had clearly elected to play a defensive game, and just wait for us.

Our scout  fled back to our safespot, and we waited for our Defender players to join us. With a full fleet of long range ships waiting for us, we'd need all our ships to hit it at once. Once assembled, we opened with a classic 'Charge of the Light Brigade' type of gambit, during which things became very confused indeed. I survived for quite a long time, and although our lighter force managed to still take down an enemy Cruiser, we were pretty quickly beaten off, or in my case, destroyed.

I saw the relevant kill mail, and there were seven involved parties to my demise - I guess it doesn't really matter what you're flying when that happens - it's goodnight Vienna! I was warp-scrambled too, so fleeing was impossible, although so fired up with Red Mist was I, that it didn't occur to me to try warping out until it was far too late. Ho hum!

We were working under 'No Podkilling' Rules, so I quickly flew my capsule back to our home base to pick up ship number two, and regroup with the others at our own target area, ready for the inevitable counter-offensive, and sure enough, not long after, one of their Cruisers popped out of warp, and then fled right away. We'd been discovered, and once they'd all assembled, they'd attack.

However, as soon as we saw the scout vanish, I warped out in roughly his direction of departure, to a planet on that path, and then back to the targets, but using the 'Warp To 70km' menu option. This put me back at our base, but 70km nearer their anticipated point of entry. Given that they were all in longer ranged ships, it favours them if they use the Warp To 70km option - which will place them more or less exactly where they need to be to start firing for maximum effect and minimal danger. On the other hand, I'm more effective at almost point blank range, being better at doing damage, and evading their larger guns. Sure enough, then next enemy ship in popped in at about 30km from me, and 100km or so from the targets. I'd misjudged it a bit, but was far nearer than they were expecting, and forced them all to attack me instead of the targets and the rest of our group, 100km away.

Once they'd all engaged a bit, I warped out again, starting to understand about hit-n-fade attacks, and diversions. While the enemy gang had been chasing me about, our team were moving into position, and by the time I got back, a right old furball was underway. For the remainder of the fight, I was mostly doing quick distance-and-heading sums in my head, warping away, and warping back into combat at various ranges other than 0km, often appearing less than 3km from my chosen Cruiser target, and able to start attacking right away, catching the bigger ship off guard somewhat. My ship, in addition to a much larger number of armour HP than was typical of that class, was also equipped with a number of modules intended to slow, snare, drain and tangle the enemy, and prevent him from being able to warp to safety, but lacked somewhat on raw damage. For that I was relying on the other bigger ships on my team.

A lot of hectic charging about through warp, and a lot of fun, but in the end, the enemy prevailed, largely because although ISK for ISK, Frigates are better than Crusiers, with a typical Crusier costing over ten times a typical Frigate to replace, Frigates vs Cruisers on a one-to-one team basis, is a different matter, and in the end, they just outgunned and out-survived us. A number of people needing to drop out during the event - either RL AFK moments, or simply being run out of spare ships to get back into the fighting didn't help.

Still, it was quite astonishing to see what a decent showing a well kitted out top-end Tech 1 Frigate can put in against a supposedly much bigger and more powerful enemy. It's one thing to be theoretically aware of the maths behind Signature Radius and Tracking Speed, and the like, but quite another to feel it and see it firsthand. Frigates are by no means useless in EVE PvP, but you do need to measure them ISK for ISK, rather than Ship for Ship. 32 Merlins can make very short work of one Moa, and cost about the same.

And best of all, I got my first ever Kill Mail - a Caracal, taken down by two of us in Frigates, with some minor ECM support from one of our few Cruisers, and I got the killing blow. A number of other beefy Cruisers felt my close range scramble/web/nosferatu/autocannon fangs, but that was the only one where I got the last shot in. Remarkably effective considering how little I spent on the affair. Final tally: One Killing Blow, One Ship Lost, and as yet untallyed number of Assists. Perhaps next time, I'll try a Cruiser myself, given that I only lost one out of the three ships I'd set up for the event, and that one was insured on Platinum Cover (100% payback) anyway!

There is going to be a next time of course, as the event seemed to meet with universal approval; all of us missioning, mining, trading and production carebears enjoying ourselves immensely, although I'm not sure we're quite ready to throw ourselves at Real People in a Proper War just yet. The whole thing has certainly demystified EVE PvP a little for me though, and removed some of the perceived futility of it all for me. Seems that fighting back isn't nearly the hopeless exercise I'd imagined.