We have production facilities -- several of them. We have distribution facilities. Transportation units (local and long-haul). We have combat pilots to protect the transportation. And we have the final delivery points where we actually sell goods -- both retail (on the market) and bulk (contracts to buyers).
To manage all of this, we have built an ERP system. It tracks our inputs, outputs, and processes. It makes procurement decisions (build vs. buy) and submits orders to the various groups of people who actually make things happen -- the producers, researchers, haulers, marketers, etc. The game is very manual on that front, but we use an automated system to actually submit very small, easy to understand orders that people can do in a few minutes usually. In aggregate, it powers a rather complicated machine.
As an example... let's say somebody places an order for 10 Widgets out in the edge of space. We live out near the edge -- actually, look at this map:
http://go-dl1.eve-files.com/media/corp/Verite/influence.png
That's the sovereignty map. It's updated daily. My alliance is Intrepid Crossing in the top right in green. That's 0.0 space (null-security aka no police and lawless -- players own and control everything). Now, let's go through that example of a user ordering 10 widgets.
* Delivery order is submitted if we have it in stock. If so, someone will deliver it via contract. Done. * If not in stock, start the decision tree for this item. * Do we have this in stock in production/stock facilities? If so, submit a transportation order. When it gets transported, the system detects this and submits a delivery order. * If we don't have it in stock, check the market prices for the goods required to build this item as well as the cost to purchase it from a reseller. * If it's cheaper to buy, we submit an order to our procurement team. (Automatic, still.) Once they procure it, the order goes to transportation and then finally delivery. * If it needs building, we do another process of seeing if we have what we need -- or if we have to buy minerals, blueprints, etc. * If we had to buy things, those orders are submitted to procurement and transportation. * If we have it (or the minerals arrive), the production order is submitted. * When we finally have the good, then transportation and delivery happen.
The entire thing is mostly automatic. We carry out the whims of this machine and we supply (rather efficiently) a pretty large alliance. It's a really impressive system.
Yeah, it's a video game. Sort of.
I love it.
And I haven't even touched on the politics, wars, and everything else. It's a beautiful, wonderful, maddening thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to7CHVR-Mxk
There is an appeal for UNICEF donations in the beginning, so the video pauses long enough for you to read and close it.
And when you see drastic changes in color/influence? Serious crap just went down. Those are likely the events that even non-gamers read about on news sites.
While users of the game are creating distribution networks and building custom ERP solutions they would really be managing businesses (without their direct knowledge). If you were really successful in the game then you would find yourself managing the logistics of a much larger real world company.
I guess the challenge would be to create game mechanics that mapped in a way to real world business constraints that made sense.
Eventually, CCP made a deal with someone (I forget which framework they went with, I want to say it's webkit based?) and they embedded a modern browser with JavaScript support.
They've also done some modifications of the system -- when you are in-game, you can instruct your browser to "trust" the remote web site. If you do that, the browser starts sending along headers that include information like your location in-game, your character name/ID, what corporation you're in, etc. It's a rather abysmal system of authentication, but it works OK for basic things.
They also added some JavaScript APIS so you can do some things in-game from the browser. I.e., display "show info" windows, do some UI stuff, etc. This makes you able to build web sites that are slightly more interactive and useful and actually connect with the game you're playing.
The ERP we've built is, unfortunately for me, in .NET. It's an ASP.NET system (maybe C#?) and so I can't really work on it. (I'm a Perl/Python/Go guy mostly.) I have built some other systems that my corporation and alliance uses, though, that are not part of our ERP or EMC (corporation management application).
A screenshot of the production view of our ERP:
http://xb95.com/pics/eve-erp.png
Note that it has order priority, build location, item, quantity. The icons on the right allow the producer to handle the order -- "resources ordered" (turns out we didn't have it, so I had to order stuff), "build started" (it's in build, wait for it to finish), "buy instead" (turns out it's better to buy it, resubmit this to procurement), and cancel, comments, info, etc.
(Reddit is "test alliance please ignore." Also, "goonswarm federation" is the Something Awful forums. They used to absolutely run the show as well IIRC.)
For those observing: There's an in-game internet of sorts, but the real-life Internet plays the same role in EVE as it does in Real Life: it lets players chat, trash-talk, coordinate activities, steal information (hacking and "social engineering"), maintain databases and wikis, write web apps to organize their businesses and optimize their ship fit-outs, and keep track of all the info in the game through APIs (yes, APIs).
For many serious players, EVE is a huuuuuuge time-sink. It's mind-numbing at the micro-level but engaging on the macro-level, and crazy fun/euphoric at the peaks. Some people put more effort into running and expanding their corporations than they do into their real-life jobs.
It's a second job and a second social circle. Essentially a second life. I'm not saying that's a good thing, not at all - it consumes many players' lives and well-being - but the results of all this human labor unleashed in an unfettered free market are fascinating to watch.
Why center is not occupied? What do long red lines represent?
The game is definitely full of time-sink complexity: Resources used for construction in EVE only come from a few sources, all of which are directly or indirectly player-driven - if you want to get raw materials to manufacture things, you have to either get them by mining asteroids (manually), killing AI-driven pirates and melting their wreckage down for scrap (manually) or by maintaining a setup of 'planetary interaction' stations that harvest resources from in-game planets.
On the other hand, the actual space combat - which is still a cornerstone of the game even if it's very abstract and strange to the casual observer - is often extremely engaging, has lots of room for high level tactics and coordination, and can actually handle groups of thousands of players all competing for control over a single star system. There's nothing else like it.
The best way to describe it is sort of like playing chess in outer space: Every action you decide on needs to try to anticipate your opponents' reactions and you need to apply that level of tactical thinking a few steps out. Likewise, in general fleets and vessels in EVE cannot move very quickly and battles can often become very drawn out, with much of the actual victories and losses occurring in a purely tactical sense (poor decisionmaking, incorrect information from your scouts, poorly chosen positions for your fleet, etc).
One of the other interesting things about EVE is that at a high level, the design team tries to make it a game full of balances and counterbalances. Even once you've 'made it' and acquired one of the biggest, most powerful vessels in the game, you have dramatic weaknesses - a pilot in a supercarrier worth $500 USD can, despite his mighty defenses and arsenal of fighters and point-defense weapons, be undone by a single opposing player in a ship that is literally worth nothing. The way it essentially works is that the smallest, weakest vessels are dramatically more agile, which (as an extension of the game's physics model) makes it impossible for huge, slow-moving, heavy-hitting vessels and weapons to cope with them. The end result is that a viable fleet for combat in EVE needs to contain a mix of cheap, disposable vessels (to confront and 'tackle' the opposing fleet's big supercarriers and other heavy-hitters) along with a mix of larger, more expensive vessels to do the work of actually dealing damage to opponents and providing logistics support (scanning, repairs, etc) to the rest of the fleet. It creates a really nice equilibrium where, when the game is working right, new players end up being just as important as veteran players.
On the other hand, arguably EVE's biggest problem is that it is 'appointment gaming' at its worst. As an active player, you will spend probably close to 95% of your in-game time waiting for something interesting to happen. There are lots of things to do to fill that time, but none of them are particularly interesting; they're all preludes to that huge, pitched space battle that (if you're lucky) might happen every few days, if you're awake and around to participate. For people with flexible schedules it ends up being a great fit, but for me, it was hard to fit into my schedule and I ended up with few opportunities to participate in the 'fun stuff', so I ended up giving my accounts and ships away to other people who would actively use them.
EVE is nothing short of amazing in terms of what CCP is doing. They are one of the few companies actually evolving gaming and technologies involved. It is one of the very few "role playing games" where you instantly and automatically take on a role and play it both in and outside of the game - you decide to be a warrior, you play, act and talk like a warrior; if you want to produce or be a freighter pilot, you can also do that at just as much depth. There are no quirky flame-wars over what is "in character" or not, like in WoW on RP servers. In EVE, anything you do is automatically in character and perfectly suitable, at least to some degree. You can actually play a freighter pilot or a producer or miner/gatherer and nothing but that and be just as successful as a fighter, if not more! EVE really offers a lot and each route offers a lot of depth especially when compared to market-leaders like WoW. WoW's economy and crafting is quite frankly kindergarten compared to EVE's economy. Even the first, lowest items you craft in EVE have a purpose and will make you money while in WoW, you are actually just crafting to make it to the top-items and anything below is by and large useless. The battles you can find yourself in can be wild, imagine flying with a few hundred or thousand people from all over the world!
There are downsides to EVE, for me: it can be too much and get too real quickly. It has a LOT of depth and a LOT of that is happening outside of the game, so you will definitely have to invest more thought and reflection on what's going on, it can take time to learn just one thing. This outside-of-the-game is an integral part of EVE and one of the reasons it can offer so much. This can also make it very frustrating as a beginner while people in good corps and alliances have mentors or require you to spend a lot of time reading online. At the same time, anything you do is "real" and has actual consequences. Yes, you can loose days or weeks of progress if you do something very stupid. Yes, players have lost what can be estimated to be four digit real-world USD values. To really get full access to what EVE is really all about, you pretty much have to play in a corp and then special rules will apply of what you are and are not allowed to do. If you are a fighter, there will be a military-style drill of some sort. On this level, your actions can easily have even more consequences on a larger scale. To sum it up: EVE is no idle pastime and you do not just log into EVE and "zerg" through a few battleground inebriated without any consequences or danger. But if you like that, it is pretty much the best game around! Don't let the strange UI scare you off at first. Another downside might be that you will be very unimportant and expendable for quite some time; unlike in e.g. WoW where you get that satisfaction of really having killed some mob or a player, in EVE battles can be frustrating and drawn out, often without a clear 100% winner and seldomly do you get that same satisfaction of really having killed that one important enemy... you will be much more of an unimportant zerg; later on you can develop into a very highly trained and knowledgeable commando or a very well geared but strictly regulated and commanded fighting force. This might not be "fun" for everybody but it definitely offers you a lot of things that no other game can offer.
On the upside, a lot of that outside-of-EVE gaming gives TONS of fantastic opportunities for little software projects! A lot of EVE players with programming skills are developing something somewhere for themselves or their corp/alliance and CCP created a few APIs and services to openly interface with some of the game's information!