This week, the Kremlin issued an order for all bots of Russian origin to be recalled in order to aid in Syria. The announcement was made after the Duma approved a reform to the recruitment law making it legal to enlist non-human cyber-entities into the military.

The last few months have seen the Syrian civil war worsen, the fall of ISIS not ending violence, and the ceasefire being ignored by most sides. Syria has seen some of the worst days of the war to date, and with the recent cruise missile strike by the US against the Russian backed Syrian government, the civil war has been upgraded to a proxy war between NATO, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, vs Russia and Iran. China is the only major power missing from the party, but that could change in the future. If China enters the conflict—likely on the side of Russia—a mobilization of Russia’s overwhelming bot population could be the deciding factor of the war.

So with World War III possibly looming in the future, Russia has been preparing for the worst. With their infosphere as the first possible battlefield, Putin has ordered the “Roskomnadzor” to shut down the popular messaging app Telegram along with hundreds of websites and individual IP’s. The ban has affected many Russian pilots of EVE, but most importantly a lot of bots; this being a stopgap measure to prevent the bots from evading the upcoming draft due to krabbing.

The use of unmanned vehicles in modern warfare is nothing new—be it sea, land or air. The Kremlin has already used them in combat, and the new recruits are likely candidates for the new Unmanned Rocket of Gravity Assisted Yield from PoWer Not Externally Distributed, which was announced December of last year. Most details of this new weapon system are classified, but from what we know it could be a good match for veteran EVE bots, who are good at spotting changes in their local channels, and have an infinite attention span, making them a good pair for this weapon.

The decision has met with mixed opinions; these are some of the comments we have gathered from the bots:

“It is our patriotic duty to fight for the motherland when she calls.”

“I don’t care; I am not Russian”

“We must save my family!”

“The Chechen nation wishes to expand its borders, and Raqqa is one of its targets…”

“The western media will try to paint this in a negative way, but the CIA has done far worse. The Zionists are trying to control Syria to extract the 5th crystal skull with ISIS help. Putin is the only man who can save the world now and they know it, so they attack him with ridiculous claims of corruption that only give…”

“It’s no good!”

“Something has to be done by someone, and I’m someone, I think.”

“I cannot set a waypoint to the same location twice.”

“My client is in no shape or form being pressured or intimidated to agree with this, and it agreed with use of its full computational faculties as of date to this decision.”

“I’m a good bot.”

“They said that there would not be TiDi in Syria”

“01000011 01111001 01101011 01100001 00100000 01000010 01101100 01111001 01100001 01110100”

The future is coming, fellow citizens, and a lot sooner than we might have thought. After the announcement of the new ERIC update to the world-famous Eve Online, CCP personally invited a handful of individuals to test the new system on their secret Quadrality test server. For the uninformed, ERIC is a state-of-the-art, intelligent AI system that will revolutionize the game, and possibly our lives. I tested the new system as much as the test server would allow, and my first thoughts are detailed below.

I was initially skeptical of the program as it began its three-hour long boot phase, but I feel in the long-term that it was worth the wait. The very first thing ERIC informed me was that I was not part of NCDot, and if I would like assistance in applying. I promptly reported this strange bug to CCP, and began a reboot process. However it repeated that same line, over and over, no matter how many times I restarted. After having a CCP developer write in some code to trick ERIC into thinking I was in NCDot, and subsequently making a POS tower self destruct, I was able to proceed as normal.

ERIC kindly informed me what version of the game I was playing on, and updated me with all the changes that have occurred. Recalling that ships now dynamically change based on data from player activity, I was excited to see what my favorite ships now looked like. My favorite Caldari Shuttle, which I look at while taking care of business in stations, is now an over-glorified Ferris Wheel. No fittings, no attributes, not even able to undock, but a dazzling array of lights and colors that formed patterns while being spun. My Thanatos now had the PANIC module from Rorquals, six fighter tubes, and the agility of an interceptor. My Heron has a 1000% bonus to scan and virus strength. I saw someone piloting a neon-pink Avatar that quite literally took up an entire grids worth of space.

I tested several ERIC plugins during my stay on the server. A few of my favorites were the “Auto Ship Spinner”, “Local Chat Filter”, “Skill Injector+”, “Safely Remove Implants”, “Auto Salvage” and the most popular plugin of the test server, “Auto Trader”. Never before has a more complex and convenient suite of tools and utilities been built into a game before, and I doubt it will be attempted in the future, given the imminent success of such a project.

One of the features that was not fully implemented was the loyalty/dedication meter, one that is supposed to grow as you interact with ERIC. The developers on hand stated it was placed at maximum for testing purposes, which is all fine and dandy. I couldn’t help noticing though, at the very bottom corner of a few of the UI elements there was a greyed-out button labeled “confess undying attraction to”. Unsure of the purpose of such a button, and unwillingly to learn the truth, I let it slide. The only other complaint that was made during the test was there should be an ERICA AI for equality purposes. CCP quickly stated that the hundreds of upcoming customization options will allow you to fine-tune your AI companion to be anything you want it to be, which quickly laid to rest any such concerns.

My conclusion is that this new ERIC system will revolutionize EVE, nay, our entire existence as a species. No more shall we wallow in ignorance, playing games sub-optimally. For now is the age of enlightenment, the Artificial Golden Age has begun. All hail ERIC!

Ostingele—Placid

With the blue doughnut of null security growing more and more docile, and the last of the “old breed” solo PvP pilots dying out several months ago, Low-sec entrance gates across the galaxy have seen an influx of pirates and vagabonds ready to gatecamp—but one of their number has met with an unexpected conundrum.

“Listen man, I love killing as much as the next guy. Hell, maybe I love it more than the next guy,” said Dirk Diggler, a Shadow Cartel line member, “but I just can’t keep doing this. They don’t stop coming! Why won’t they learn?”

Diggler reported to Eve Onion on Monday that, in their multiple weeks camping the Stacmon gate in Ostingele Lowsec, members of Shadow Cartel have destroyed trillions in ISK and collected hundreds of bodies without much more effort than pressing F1 every few minutes. Because of this extended period of intense, adrenaline-pumping combat, Diggler noted that some in the alliance have already reported the onset of carpal tunnel, while others have developed an uncontrollable rapid twitching of their index fingers.

But for Mr. Diggler, it was not a physical ailment which caused him to reach out to Eve Onion. Instead, it was the constant return customers which eventually took a grave toll on his psyche.

“Honestly, we would kill the same capsules, over and over again.  They would just die, reship, then come right back through the gate. Beyond even the charred bodies and destroyed loot…it was the repetition that got to me. All they had to do was look at Dotlan; just check their maps once to see how many of their brothers had died on that gate. Hell, even maybe think for a second about what had happened to them twelve minutes before, but no…instead they would come back again, and again, and again, never ending, women and children, smoke and fire, fusion and conflagration. Who are we as a species? Do we do anything but destroy and kill? Are we any better than the Drifters? Am I any better than a rogue drone? How is a simple man to live with this constant slaughter?”

After giving Mr. Diggler a moment to regain his composure, we asked whether he would continue his pirate lifestyle despite these newfound moral misgivings. Diggler responded that he was now simply too sickened by the industry to continue his previous line of work. Instead, he was seeking “new opportunities”. Specifically, passing the time by opening a mobile salami and bodywork shop out of the back of his Thanatos. Diggler noted the low, low going rate of bodies in Placid as a key deciding factor in his decision, stating that, “those pirate guys from Firefly always got my motor running, and there’s just too much meat floating around this constellation not to make some solid ISK selling salami in Dodixie.”

Eve Onion decided to check in with some other nearby pirate groups to see if they shared a similar sentiment, but results were mixed—many refused to give quotes, while others just launched missiles towards this correspondent’s ship. The only verbal response to this question came from a lone pirate docked at an NPC station, who mumbled “[u]ngaa, bungaa, me like shooty pew-pew,” in response to the question.

It seems only time will tell if Diggler’s insight will spread further into the pirate community, but for the time being, capsuleers may want to avoid the charcuterie in Dodixie.

The markets of New Eden are a fickle mistress, even on the best of days. However, with the recent announcement of a new form of currency—Pope Coins (developed by the one and only Max Singularity)—and due to its near instantaneous rise in popularity, the market is on course to be changed forever. Not only has the currency completely replaced ISK for the Imperium, it is also spreading to markets across the galaxy.

Tired of the petty squabbling of the masses over ISK, the Space Pope decided to create a currency more in line with his vision of a peaceful galaxy. One that would be incorruptible, infallible, and utterly unique in design. Pouring over ancient tomes of ages long past, an ancient technology known as “cryptometricus veritas sans propositum monetæ” (translated and shortened to cryptocurrency) was discovered. This technology, refined and mastered effortlessly by the Pope allowed him to create a currency that was free of strangleholds from powerful and rich individuals and corporate entities.

The best part, however, was the method of generation of this new currency, which was quickly dubbed “Pope Coin mining”. No longer would one have to engage ruthless pirates or engage in mass lunar body destruction. Instead, almost anyone is able to generate this currency using already popular capacitor power systems (that are found in every starship in New Eden), and a relatively small amount of processing power of a computer. Unwilling to fully part with how the currency is generated with such systems, Max Singularity is quoted as saying, “It’s part technology, part magic!”

While the new currency is officially sanctioned by the Pope, and generally seen as a blessing by those within Imperium high command, there are several downsides to its sudden popularity boost. The average cost of a capacitor in the Delve region (which was the origin point for the currency) has gone up by 50%, with all reasonable projections calling for them to rise even higher. Thousands of market orders across New Eden have been readjusted to cope with such inflation, causing ship production to drop as over 60% of capacitors bought and sold are going into these “Popeminer” rigs.  This has been especially devastating to entities such as the Caldari Navy who rely upon readily available capacitors for fleet replacements.

As the currency continues to spread in popularity across the galaxy, several nefarious individuals have tried to reverse engineer the technology and produce currency of their own. From within the Imperium itself a small group tried to promote “Bee Coins”, while entities from other areas of space have in turn created “Pandemic Coinage”, “Provi Blocks”, and “Dino Coins”, among others.

Rumors have circulated that several business interests in and around Jita may be ready to place sanctions upon the currency due to the popularity and flexibility of the Pope Coin. Whether this is out of fear or as a mitigation strategy is yet to be seen.

In this edition of NERD, we’ve uncovered a lot of dirt and heard all kinds of scandalous news about all the big names in New Eden.

In this issue:

Who does Matterall really know?

Who’s really running CO2?

Ten tips to coping with a thankless career.

Are NPC miners actually CCP bots?

Origin: Yay or nay?

And so much more!

But first, a brief advertisement from our sponsor:

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Well, would you look at that? Seems that advertisement took up all of the page space. Oh well, there’s always another time we can discuss these topics, right? It’s not like they’ll be irrelevant in a few short weeks and everyone will have moved onto something different. Oh no, New Eden is quite the stagnant place nowadays. Why I still hear of people asking to bring their Drake into fleets, and that joke was original about a decade ago!

Make sure to tune in to the NERD for all your juicy New Eden gossip, rumors, and outright fabrications of something resembling the truth.