The interstellar MMO EVE Online has received its biggest update of 2015 in the form of Operation Frostline, which sees the mercenary faction Mordu's Legion continuing its military actions against the stumbling Serpentis Corporation.

Operation Frostline adds 13 new ships to the game, which developer CCP says is the largest single introduction of new ships that it's had in years. Among them are the Command Destroyer, which can use "Micro Field Generators" to pull all nearby sub-capital ships with them on short, 100-kilometer jumps that enable formations to move quickly into and out of combat, and the Endurance, a deep-space ice-mining frigate designed to work in "the most lucrative null-security regions." The update also brings into play a number of major graphical improvements including kill tallies on each ship, rust and dust accumulation on hulls, new damage and engine effects, and quite a bit more.

Possibly even more important than what it adds to the game is that it readies it for the Citadel expansion that's set to come out in the spring of 2016. CCP says the "massive" expansion "will reconstruct the very foundations of the famous sci-fi universe and transform the sandbox game design it is built on." Sounds big.

More information about Operation Frostline can be found on the EVE Online site, or in the far more detailed patch notes. For more fun (and a bit of insight into why EVE players are so fiercely dedicated to it), don't miss Murder Incorporated, our retelling of the 2005 assassination of Ubiqua Seraph CEO Mirial, a hit that took ten months to set up and one word to execute.

This article was originally published in the September 2005 issue of PC Gamer UK.

5 AM, April the 18th, 2005. Mirial, CEO of the giant Ubiqua Seraph corporation, warped into the Haras solar system with her most trusted lieutenant. And at that moment, a single word was sent silently, secretly and simultaneously to operatives of the Guiding Hand Social Club across the galaxy: "Nicole". Mirial would not leave alive.

She was piloting her prize ship, a Navy Apocalypse worth billions of ISK, Eve's currency. Her lieutenant, Arenis Xemdal, flew an Imperial Apocalypse, of which only two were known to exist in the entire game universe.

"Nicole" was the go-code for a hit that took ten months of infiltration to set up, and by 6am it was over. Every Ubiqua Seraph office in the galaxy was raided, the contents of every shared hangar - not to mention their corporate coffers - gone. Mirial's prize ship was annihilated, her escape pod nuked and her vacuum-frozen corpse sucked into the cargo bay of a Guiding Hand Social Club vessel.

The simultaneous ambush and galaxy-wide hangar theft inflicted financial damage upwards of 30 billion ISK - $16,500 US dollars at IGE.com's prices at the time. The value of the stolen assets utterly dwarfed the original fee for the job. And yet the only item the Guiding Hand's anonymous client requested for himself was the cold, dead body of the target. It's safe to say this was personal.

"At the time of the contract's signing, we requested one billion ISK," says Guiding Hand CEO Istvaan Shogaatsu, "which was quite a sum so many months ago. We could never have foreseen, however, the gains upon its execution... we found ourselves staring at Fort Knox with the key in our hands."

Not that there was any question of the spoils distracting Guiding Hand's operatives from their objective. "The contract above all" is their philosophy. "The financial compensation becomes secondary to the recognition we garnered for our strike."

Et Tu, Arenis

By April 18th, the Guiding Hand had operatives in every level of Ubiqua Seraph's organisation. Several were on the board of directors, and primary agent Arenis Xemdal "rose to a rank sufficient to challenge the CEO's decisions."

"Multiple vector infiltration is a trademark of GHSC," Shogaatsu adds. "We feel one spy is rarely enough."

It took extraordinary effort, meticulous planning, and one moment of spectacularly orchestrated treachery. Xemdal had convinced Mirial - referred to as 'the objective' by Guiding Hand operatives - to fly her ridiculously valuable Navy Apocalypse alongside his even more ridiculously valuable Imperial Apocalypse "as a show of UQS (Ubiqua Seraph) might".

"The early-morning strike against Mirial's battleship was fraught with concern." Shogaatsu recalls. "One tense moment occurred when a pilot belonging to an unaffiliated third party hostile to UQS entered the system where our operatives' trap for Mirial lay. Another came soon after, when Guiding Hand operative Uuve Savisaalo - tasked with assisting the kill on Mirial - was spotted arriving in system by an Ubiqua Seraph pilot. These events spooked the objective, who made a short jump before being set upon by Uuve and - in a moment of 'Et tu, Brute' if ever there was one - Arenis Xemdal's Imperial Apocalypse."

The ambush was an unprecedented clash of the titans. A Navy Apocalypse is one of the most powerful and valuable ships in the galaxy, but even so, an Imperial Apocalypse is overkill - a few cheap Battleships would suffice. To use an even more valuable ship was an act of absurd bravado, and one with enormous risks. It's also typical of the Guiding Hand's flair for theatrical excess.

But the hard part, according to Shogaatsu, was to then 'pod' Mirial. Podding is the usually spiteful, some say dishonourable act of destroying a victim's escape pod when you've already destroyed their ship. The pod is no threat, and if it's destroyed the victim has to revert to an earlier clone of themselves - sometimes losing skills that take weeks to learn, and in this case losing an incredibly valuable set of cybernetic implants. For this reason some players log out on ship-death in an attempt to avoid being podded - Mirial included, the Guiding Hand say. Successful podding was the only way to attain the physical body of the victim, however, and Arenis pulled it off.

Thievery Corporation

The moment the go-code was uttered, every Guiding Hand double-agent within Ubiqua Seraph unloaded the contents of their assigned Corp hangar - a communal storage area for trusted corporation members - into their own cargo holds and left. The assets were replaced by a note in each, stating simply that this was an act of the Guiding Hand Social Club.

That afternoon, Istvaan Shogaatsu posted on the Intergalactic Summit - a section of the official Eve forums in which posters are required to stay in-character, and content is monitored by CONCORD, the in-game police.

Posted 2005.04.18

Istvaan Shogaatsu

Greetings, everyone - it has been some time since I last stood behind a podium and made a public announcement, so you'll have to forgive me if I'm somewhat out of form. The reason I stand here before you is to announce that my mercenary outfit, the Guiding Hand Social Club, has completed its most ambitious contract to date.

Our target was assigned to us many months ago - Mirial of Ubiqua Seraph. Our task was to carry out that which the GHSC has now become known for - to utterly demolish Mirial and bring all who followed her to their knees in one fell swoop. For those many months, we toiled, secreting our operatives among her ranks, steering her organization through a number of insidiously engineered events meant to engender trust and divert their attention from where it should have been.

Early this morning, our hard work bore fruit. Executing a meticulously planned, thoroughly flawless concerto of simultaneous corp-hangar heists, attacks in open space and facility invasions, the Ubiqua Seraph came to know the wrath of the GHSC first-hand. The result shatters any previous records for sheer scale of such an endeavour:

Hostile assets acquired:

• Modulated Deep Core Miner II BPO
• Covert Ops Cloak II BPO
• Armageddon BPO
• Prophecy BPO
• Malediction BPO
• Arkonor Crystal II BPO
• Scordite Crystal II BPO
• Numerous lesser tech II BPOs
• A few billion ISK in minerals.
• 717 million taken from corporate wallet.
• Two billion taken under the guise of a loan from the executor.

Our net gain from this massive heist is roughly estimated at over 20 billion ISK.

Hostile assets destroyed:

• One Amarr Navy Apocalypse.
• One capsule, belonging to Mirial, known to possess a head full of +4s.
• One dream.

Total damages inflicted are estimated at close to 30 billion ISK.

Further information pending - stay tuned. Thank you all for your time.

Terms Of Endearment

The same forum thread contains a curious post from fellow Guiding Hand operative Zeraph Dregamon, saying simply "What have we here?" and linking a screenshot which is no longer online. According to Shogaatsu, the shot was of Mirial's personal info page, and showed it to contain the sentence: "Friends of the Guiding Hand Social Club."

Gaining a corporation's trust enough to rise to a the upper echelons of its hierarchy is hard enough, but this seemed to be evidence of Guiding Hand operatives actually altering the Ubiqua policy even in the eyes of its own CEO. The name Guiding Hand was starting to make sense. But how could a double-agent exert so much influence over a corporation's political stance?

"Arenis Xemdal is what we call a Valentine Operative." Shogaatsu explains. "Essentially his job is to seduce and entice an objective into a state of trust and confidence. As such, we'd call Mirial's relationship to him moments before the strike... 'endeared'."

Of course, we only have the Guiding Hand's word for this; at time of going to press, Mirial had not responded to our attempts to contact her for comment. It should be noted, too, that Ubiqua Seraph members role-play. While it's certain that players belonging to Ubiqua Seraph genuinely trusted the Guided Hand double-agents, claims of a relationship beyond that are likely to be attributable to role-playing fun. Still, it's a hell of a job title.

Proportional Response

Naturally the forum thread exploded with reactions. This was one of the single most devastating acts ever performed in Eve - in fact, it was at the time the largest monetary value of any in-game theft we'd heard of. It was an act of such staggering audacity and duplicity that it calls into question the very distinction between gaming and reality. Is it really still just a game when you inflict this kind of damage? At what point does an in-game act become morally wrong in real life?

Opinion was divided between the impressed, the disgusted, and the impressed but disgusted. But a few commenters hint that Mirial herself has engaged in scams similar to those perpetrated against her - a few even express satisfaction at what they see as deserved revenge. For the Guiding Hand's part, they've heard similar stories but aren't concerned as to their veracity. "Allegedly, she is herself a corp thief, and escrow scammer. This is a large part of why we were hired, although I have not personally verified it - it is simply not my business to."

The personal nature of the contract - particularly the request for Mirial's frozen corpse - would certainly be consistent with the client having fallen afoul of Mirial's actions in some way.

"The client requested Pearl Harbor," says Shogaatsu. "Specifically a single, surprise strike designed to cause as much pain to a heavily fortified target in as little time as possible. The contract was the result of a vendetta between the primary target and our client, who, while certainly satisfied with the outcome, never expected the utter destruction we wrought."

"While Ubiqua Seraph was our way of getting at Mirial, and their reliance on shared assets meant that each member likely lost a fair share of hard earned possessions, we do not believe they sustained any irrecoverable damage - save for, perhaps, their sense of security."

The Intergalactic Summit Responds

Khaldorn Murino, Freelance Unincorporated I am but a simple warrior, and the great galactic game of espionage and politics are but a closed book to me.

But even I have heard of the mercenaries that are the guiding hand social club. I have no doubt that Istvaan Shogaatsu's ego will be boosted to an even greater size as a result of his actions.

I have no pity for the slavers, they deserve no mercy. But the guiding hands? I wonder if they are any better. For enough money I am sure they themselves would become slavers and attempt to destroy any opposition to it.

Be careful what you feed, for it is a dangerous person who will do anything for isk. Even the slavers have their moral code, as wrong as screwed as it is.

Ak Gara I can't help but wonder about what they did that asked for so much wrath.

I also can't help but wonder if the person who hired the GH-SC is having regrets, not knowing just how much wrath he paid for.

RageChild, Rona Paratwa I can attest that Mirial is well known for robbing hangers and using escrow scams. Karma.

bonesy19uk, Stormriders Whoever the target maybe, whatever moral or political standing towards them may be, I have to say that no-one deserves that.

Viqer Fell, The Peoples Front of Minmatar Quite quite pathetic. Podding someone is one thing robbing the entire corps assets thereby stealing from every pilot member is the act of losers. Contemptible.

Zhou Yu, Yu Excavations Ltd People work very hard for months to save up to buy things like battleship BPO's. A lot of personal time and effort is put into things like that.

By all means, lead a sustained empire war against them, hassle thier mining ops, gank them everywhere, but don't be *****. To infiltrate a corp for months with the sole intent to steal its BPOs is the most disgusting act that could ever be commited.

Nanus Parkite, BoB0 MONKIES INSURANCE VENDORS I see theres a number of people congratulating them on a such a good operation, why? Is it tought to earn someones trust over a matter of months? I don't think so. Once you've gained someones trust in this game is it hard to get hangar access? Not normally. So so far I don't see an awful lot to be proud of. Bob0's fight wars all the time but we fight them within the bounds of the game mechanics. We don't cheat people out of the effort they put in like this. You my friend are the kind of person I would happily face a court for beating 7 multi-coloured kinds of **** out of. To me the original post is on a par with gloating about having worked in a concentration camp, or how it was so funny when you stole an old ladies savings. I hope you rot in your own filth.

Zaridin, V I R I I I can't help but express my awe at the precision and completness for which this operation occured having read about it.

Eddie Gordo, Masuat'aa Matari It seems you have achieved a near fatal blow to UQS and for that I applaud you. You have done the minmatar rebels a tremendous favour.

Ashley Sky As a small-time thief and villain, this kind of thing could happen only in my evil dreams.

I kneel in awe at this incredible story of deception. I stand in the cool shadows of giants.

Invite Only

For other corporation CEOs suddenly feeling vulnerable, Shogaatsu let us in on how his corporation avoids being penetrated itself.

"The Guiding Hand relies on distributed assets, rendering us impervious to theft. Since every module and warship belongs to someone, nothing is shared and thus nothing can be taken. As for infiltration with the intent to gather information, we are almost neurotic regarding the compartmentalization of any knowledge we have. The identity of clients is usually kept to the contractor who signed them, with the rest of GHSC never knowing who they're working for. Regarding new members, we rarely recruit, doing so strictly on an invitational basis and preferring to rely on an old guard of players who know each other well."

This is exactly the kind of extraordinary player politics that you can't find anywhere else.

"Beyond common sense," he adds, "I'm afraid sharing any other 'tricks of the trade' would be counter-productive for my corporation."

For my money, the Ubiqua Seraph infiltration was an act of despicable brilliance. An operation as cruel as it is astonishing, it serves as a simultaneous testament to both the virtues and the evils of a truly open-ended massively multiplayer game. Players crying for developers CCP to step in and redress the balance miss the point - this is exactly the kind of extraordinary player politics that you can't find anywhere else. CCP been very vocal in the past about their intention to simply create a world - a galaxy, in fact - and let people do what they may within it. If you stop people from doing horrible things to each other in it, you lose the full scope of what a game can be.

Shogaatsu confirms that many of the Guided Hand Social Club's operations have caused players to leave Eve Online for good. But there will be many more - myself included - who get an irrepressible urge to play it when they read about the dark machinations of this extraordinary universe. If there's another game in which 'Valentine Operative' is a viable occupation, I've yet to play it.

The new Parallax update for Eve Online brings big changes to the systems that governs how players fight over nullsec space, where the AI police have no jurisdiction and ships can attack each other at will.

The Sovereignty system revolves around stations. These act as footholds in nullsec for the alliances that hold them. Capturing a station from an opposing reliance requires following a series of steps over several days, and usually the cooperation of hundreds or thousands of allies. I'll pop CCP's handy video that explains how it worked before the update below.

With Parallax, stations can now self-destruct, allowing 'diplomatic exchanges of territory'  to happen more fluidly. Offering to destroy your own stations sounds like a promise that can be easily broken to me. The other major change is a massive reduction to 'jump fatigue', which previously stopped ships from using jump drives and portals for 30 days if they used them to travel too far too quickly. It's now only 5 days. According to the press release, this "should allow more frequent use of EVE s mightiest ships while still maintaining a proper amount of strategy during deployment."

Every time I hear about Eve happenings I convince myself that the community must be having more fun than anyone else playing computer games. Then I remember all the stories about people stealing thousands of dollars of ISK from each other and hiring in-game contract killers that befriend and then betray their targets. Still, I'll happily watch from the side-lines.

You can read the full patch notes for the Parallax update on the official Eve site..

Earlier this week, Eve Online was host to another of its famously massive battles, this time destroying 1165 ships (over $13K) and involving over 1600 players. It all started because of a moon. In Eve, the majority of an alliance's income comes from mining moons, and as moons go this one wasn't very worthwhile. Composed of hafnium, it produces enough money per month to cover one to three advanced ships. This moon orbits a planet in system within a region currently at war, where the Triumvirate alliance and friends are fighting the Red Menace Coalition (RMC) over the Insmother region.

In the last war in that area of New Eden, Triumvirate was allied with RMC while fighting another group of Russians called the Geminate Coalition. Despite being allied, RMC never helped Triumvirate in their efforts. Once the war ended and Triumvirate became allied with the Geminate Coalition, Triumvirate wanted revenge. And so they went to war for Insmother.

The RMC has its reasons to fight, too. The original Red Alliance s ancestral homeland was Insmother for years, and since then they've either wanted, held, or been fighting for it. When the alliance previously holding Insmother fell apart last year, Red Alliance and friends swooped in to reclaim their property. To RMC, Insmother is not just a place for fights but a place of history and emotion.

Now we come to the meat of the matter, the Battle of YPW-M4. To mine a moon you must erect a starbase in orbit around it. When this starbase is initially attacked it goes into a reinforcement state, a condition of invulnerability for a set amount of time. Triumvirate set their timer to spark a fight with its opponents, and RMC delivered. Initially RMC deployed a fleet of dreadnaughts, huge damage output capital ships, alongside its subcapital Machariel-class battleship fleet. The dreadnaughts quickly destroyed the starbase and exited, RMC extracting them in favor of deploying Archon-class carriers, capital-sized repair platforms designed to keep the battleships alive.

Above: Part of the battle as seen from the perspective of an Interdictor.

In response, Triumvirate and its friends the Geminate Coalition deployed its own fleets of Machariel-class battleships and strategic cruisers along with dreadnoughts. The superior numbers quickly decimated the RMC Machariels and destroyed all of its carriers.

In Eve Online, when the enemy has superior subcapital and capital numbers you are in a precarious position. You have two options: concede and leave, or use your supercapital fleets, consisting of massive and expensive supercarriers and Titans, of which so many died in the storied Bloodbath of B-R5RB. RMC consists of many very old and experienced alliances with equally old and experienced players who are equipped with many supercapitals. So, rather than give up here, they chose to use them.

Triumvirate and the Geminate Coalition had been expecting this, as RMC has a history of flippantly using supercapitals. The pair deployed mass amounts of interdictors, ships that can generate energy fields preventing warp within them, thereby holding the supercapitals in place, or tackling them. They also deployed their own supercapitals and batphoned, or requested assistance from, the Northern Coalition alliance, another supercapital power. They then began moving their supercapital fleet (a long and arduous process) and also began moving a subcapital fleet of Proteus-, Legion-, and Loki-class strategic cruisers roughly 100 strong.

In response, RMC deployed another twenty or so dreadnaughts to try and defeat the Triumvirate/Geminate Coalition supercapitals with superior damage output. However, Triumvirate and friends were using unified armor supercapitals and dreadnoughts that easily held up against the onslaught through remote repairs (think of every ship as a priest from other games while still putting out damage—there are shield and armor 'priests'). In contrast, the RMC supercapitals were both armor and shield, making remote repairs much less effective, and their supercapitals began dying. Throughout all this RMC had been constantly returning in new ships only to be destroyed yet again, roughly three times in all. Another group of Russians known as the Stainwagon Coalition arrived in Cerberus-class heavy assault cruisers and attempted to help its friends in RMC but deployed with bad positioning, soon succumbing to Triumvirate/Geminate Coalition subcapitals.

Remember the Northern Coalition alliance supercapital fleet that began moving towards the fight? As it approached, it was tackled in the system of U-QVWD in Catch region by the Providence coalition and another group of players from Stainwagon Coalition. Its commander kept his cool, but one player did not. He warped his Aeon-class supercarrier away from everyone else and was a sitting duck. He died soon afterwards, as Northern Coalition alliance, Stainwagon Coalition, and the Providence Coalition all fought it out around the trapped supercapitals, no more of which perished. Rumor has it that Stainwagon supercapitals were on their way to kill the Northern Coalition capitals but bailed due to the possibility of the arrival of Northern Coalition-allied Pandemic Legion alliance supercapitals.

Above: A lengthier video of the battle from within Triumvirate-allied Russian comms.

Around this same time, a Pandemic Legion Ishtar-class heavy assault cruiser fleet arrived to help Triumvirate and friends. However, due to a miscommunication, Pandemic Legion began shooting Triumvirate. In response Triumvirate killed the Pandemic Legion commander, an action known as headshotting. In response, Pandemic Legion headshoted the Triumvirate commander. After this mishap cooperation was achieved and they worked together to kill RMC supercapitals. This happened as the fighting in Insmother was winding down and RMC had nearly extracted its remaining supercapitals, having lost two titans and eight supercarriers.

Final extraction, however, does not mean the final shots. As the fighting ended in Insmother, Triumvirate and friends rushed to the aid of the trapped Northern Coalition. They arrived just as the last Titan made it out and fought the players still there, resulting in a good but not nearly as big brawl that spilled over into the adjacent system of 0SHT-A (yes, o sht) in the Curse region that ended fairly quickly.

All in all, the fighting involved 1694 players and resulted in 729.38 billion Interstellar Kredits destroyed, or $13,250 if converted to real money. 1165 ships were destroyed in three regions. All of this happened in just four and a half hours, long enough to fit into just one evening. While this battle was bloody, the war is far from over.

The author would like to thank Cpt. Patrick Archer of Triumvirate for his help in giving information for this article.

The first ever PC Gaming Show happened Tuesday night at E3! With host Sean 'Day9' Plott at the helm, we looked at a great variety of games, big and small. You can watch the archived steam on our Twitch channel, and the whole thing is broken up by segment on our YouTube channel—you can watch it all above.

The highlights

• Tripwire announces Rising Storm 2: Vietnam
• Creative Assembly teases Total War: Warhammer
• Phil Spencer says Microsoft "lost our way with PC gaming"
• Gears of War Ultimate Edition is coming to PC
• Dean Hall says, "I stayed on DayZ for longer than I intended"
• Dean Hall's Ion has organ simulation, Diablo-like camera
• Frontier announces Planet Coaster with trailer
• Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns trailer shows guild halls
• Pillars of Eternity's first expansion is The White March
• Tanoa is Arma 3's new jungle terrain - first video and screens
• Watch the full Dirty Bomb E3 trailer, and get a free mercenary
• DayZ single-player mode and server hosting planned
• The Monk from Diablo 3 is coming to Heroes of the Storm
• StarCraft 2 Whispers of Oblivion prologue missions revealed
• No Man's Sky will release on PC at the same time as PS4

The trailers

No Man's Sky

Dirty Bomb

Arma 3

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

American Truck Simulator

Planet Coaster

Total War: Warhammer

Rising Storm 2: Vietnam

StarCraft 2

Heroes of the Storm

SOMA

EVE Online studio CCP Games has committed to supporting the Icelandic Red Cross' relief efforts in Nepal with $15 for each Plex donated to the cause by EVE players.

Anyone who wants to kick in to the cause must contract one or more Plex to the "CCP Plex for Good" character on a 14-day item exchange contract. CCP emphasized that donors should double-check to ensure that the offer is going to the correct character, who is a member of the C C P Corporation, because it cannot guarantee the return of Plex donated to the wrong person.

This isn't CCP's first such program: Plex for Good campaigns have raised more than $340,000 in aid funding following natural disasters around the world, most recently in the Philippines in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan. Nor is it the only game-related relief effort for Nepal: Last week, Ubisoft's Far Cry development team pledged to match donations to the Canadian Red Cross, up to $100,000; that effort currently stands at just shy of $60,000.

Along with the warm feeling that comes from doing a solid for a good cause, donors will also get a pair of in-game t-shirts for their EVE avatars. (The shirts are still being designed, and will be distributed when they're ready.) It's also worth noting that in spite of CCP's famously lax attitude toward in-game shenanigans, it will tolerate no horsing around with legitimate charitable efforts. "Please note that CCP regards any scamming attempts surrounding PLEX for GOOD to be morally reprehensible," it warned, "and any attempts at scamming relating to this program will be met with the harshest and swiftest action at our disposal."

The Plex for Good: Nepal Earthquake Relief program is live now and runs until 15.