The ancient NPC race in EVE Online known as the Sleepers will soon come into conflict with EVE's capsuleers in the Apocrypha expansion, only a few weeks from now. Explorers willing to discover wormholes and take the risk of engaging the Sleepers within will be able to obtain some of their technology, provided they manage to survive the encounter. This could bring wealth by selling the tech outright, or reverse engineering it to create EVE's strategic "Tech III" cruisers -- modular ship designs based in part off of Sleeper technology.
CCP Games has said that the Sleepers will be unlike any NPC type that pilots in the game have ever faced, and that was no exaggeration. Their AI makes fighting these particular NPCs more like fighting other players. That is to say, they react to immediate threats and change their tactics to counter what's thrown at them, to some degree. The video embedded below (captured on the Singularity test server) shows what the Sleepers are capable of against a mixed fleet of players -- with capital ships no less -- that had great difficulty withstanding the ancients.
Check out the raw power of the Sleepers in fullscreen HD, with their sizzling blue beams and warheads absolutely melting battleships and any other threat that demands their attention:
The video was put up by kodath2 and is comprised entirely of footage taken from the Singularity test server. As such the graphical effects shown will likely differ from how they'll appear in the game when Apocrypha launches, and of course the strength of the Sleepers themselves will vary from encounter to encounter.
The music this footage is set to is performed by God is an Astronaut. The songs used are "All is Violent, All is Bright" and "Fall from the Stars".
[Via A Misguided Adventurer]
