I have always been fond of my old Ford Escort. Sure, it was creepy old, slow, bulky, cumbersome and remained some sort of unwanted ancestral legacy passed away from generation to generation in my family, but it was doing what is was supposed to do: leading me where I wanted to go with no "electronics" or any other fancy stuff they put in our cars today just to make them light up like fragile Christmas trees and costing a spleen to replace when they eventually break up.
However due to its decaying age, it wasn't keeping on par with modern standards anymore, especially with their so-called "security", so I sadly had to get away from it before they would start taxing me extra for driving a car that was morally painted as a hearse. You know who I am referring to.
Unfortunately, trying to escape this obsolescence principle by playing EVE Online instead of this "In Real Life" MMORPG doesn't work as well, since four-wheeled cars are replaced with pod-piloted space vessels and no analogy is deseperately more suiting than faction ships in the first place.
When they were first designed, it was believed they would be high in the food chain as they boasted improved performance over standard hulls at that time. However, as expansions passed, new vessels were introduced, mostly tech 2, but also higher tiers in the case of battleships, all of this turning faction ships into vessels nobody wants to fly because of their antiquited attributes next to their acquistion tag.
However here, we don't want you to upgrade to other ships or pay taxes by flying them (you are already going to do that by staying in some rookie corporations, remember?). We want you to keep using them, to reverse that obsolescence course, and that is why, with Dominion's release, most of your faction ships are going back to the factory for an instant, free-delivery-under-warranty upgrade package (batteries not included).
I just wish they would have done the same for my Ford Escort; scammers, all of them.
Generalities
Since the general attributes of these ships are already available on the Test Server Feedback forum channel, it would be redundant to list them here again; instead this blog will focus on explaining the reasoning implied to balance faction ships and provide answers for questions asked during the feedback process.
Before we go any further, it is good to explain that faction ships are sorted into two separate sub-categories with different roles and capabilities:
Navy ships
Individual attribute changes are available here.
Enhanced for military duties, navy ships are improved combat platforms over their base tech 1 hull versions; they are meant to keep the same role (with some exceptions) than their regular versions when they have any, and only require their base race spaceship command skill set to be flown. Due to their acquisition method and general availability, we determined they should have attributes located between tech 1 and tech 2, mainly designed to be versatile in the functions they can accomplish. Which led us to the following:
1. Navy frigates: the goal was to revamp them into a relatively cheap mix of interceptor and assault frigates, with neither the speed of the former or the firepower of the latter.
2. Navy cruisers: already boosted for Empyrean Age and thus were not looked into for Dominion. We do not dismiss the possibility of having another pass at them in the future, but this is not planned at the time being.
3. Navy battleships: we first boosted tier 2 navy battleships to justify their price tag, which means increasing their versatility a bit with extra fittings, drone bay and maneuverability when necessary. We also created tier 1 navy versions only obtainable through Factional Warfare LP stores in an effort to boost their rewards for participating players.
Pirate ships
Individual attribute changes are available here.
Pirate ships have focused, niche role they excel to. Due to their high acquisition cost and rarity, it was decided they should either be on par with Tech 2 ships of the same class or even slightly above them.
1. Angel Cartel: the embodiment of speed, hit and run tactics.
2. Blood Raiders: this pirate organization was always supposed to excel at capacitor warfare and movement impairing capabilities, while keeping a decent damage output.
3. Guristas: a controversial change if there is one, the new Guristas ship line-up focuses on drones, excellent shield tank with some missile abilities.
4. Sansha's Nation: combine energy weapons and shield tank in an mean-XL package
5. Serpentis: deliver close range face melting damage at the expense of defense.
To end with
Remember that due to the magnitude and nature of this change, you may fly a ship that has its slot layout changed during Dominion. If that is the case we highly recommend you to dock before the expansion downtime to minimize any issue that could possible arise after. For example, we don't want you to engage an opponent without realizing you have your microwarpdrive or turret moved into your cargohold, as this would have nasty consequences on your vessel life expectancy.
- CCP Ytterbium
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By now, we hope you have had a chance to read Greyscale and Abathur's blogs introducing the driving goals behind the sovereignty changes in Dominion as they both introduce what we want to talk about more in this blog and shed some more light and detail on some changes we are looking at to help us towards achieving our goals for null sec.
The focus of this blog is on streams, not the wet kind, but the revenue kind and how each of you, whether the alliance member exploring the depths of space for rich bounties, the alliance leader looking to fund your next big outpost/capital ship program or the empire dweller looking for a piece of the null sec pie will each be affected by Dominion.
Broadly, the revenue streams you will know are of two types: diffuse or point. They can be further categorized into Active or Passive.
A Diffuse Active source is the corporation taxes many of you may be used to in your own corporation. Here you are providing your corp with income from something you are actively doing, like hunting NPC pirates or reprocessing loot and ores in their stations.
A Diffuse Passive source would be the assembly line fees in a station, profits on manufacturing, for example, where it is a largely passive or low input activity providing diffuse income over a typically longer period.
Point Active sources in days gone by would have been things like the static 10/10 complexes. Point Passive are the moon mineral incomes or T2 production in pre-invention times.
As many of you know, and history has shown us, point source revenue streams have been a constant issue and one that plagues us today. Still, they end up being many magnitudes larger than the potential profit of the diffuse income streams, especially where the effort or cost is minimal and fixed.
Point sources do act as geographical conflict drivers, true, but in both cases the issues arose because they were infinite sources, but, more importantly, they required very few people to operate them proportional to the benefit they bestowed.
In a game where the focus is on the sandbox and social interaction, this is generally bad as you have proverbial gold mines held by the few who no longer need the diffuse income streams of the many to fund themselves with and a cost/benefit ratio which redefines strategic assets as practically disposable items.
The ripple effects here are the most devastating in our eyes as it redefines how our precious playground is ruled and we need to ensure a stage where the props are fair and fun and anyone who tries can have a chance for great glory or astounding defeat.
The diffuse income sources are dependent upon things you cannot change currently. Things like the true security class of your space and the number of celestial belts in the system besides the additional chance of exploration sites being present or proximity to pirate NPC regions and agents.
This currently puts a limit on the amount of potential diffuse income as a function of the systems you occupy and the quality of those systems. You must either hold a lot of space or have alliance members fund themselves in various other ways beyond the lifeblood of the belts and the pirates which infest them.
With Dominion, we will allow you to increase the potential diffuse income sources in your space by allowing you to upgrade it. This will be explained in a far more detailed blog in the near future, but I can give an overview of it now.
You will be able to purchase and install upgrades in an infrastructure hub. These upgrades will unlock and add additional resources into your system, such as new hidden belts or encounters to complexes or escalation sites for you to find, thus increasing your potential diffuse income streams and theoretical member resource capacity of each system as a result.
Each upgrade will have a build cost in creating the upgrade and the resource upgrades themselves will have different pre-requisites, some of which will be activity-based, such as NPCs killed or ore mined within the system itself, which will add to the development index of the system. So in this instance, the more the solar system's resources are actively used, the faster your resource development will be, which in turn promotes you to properly invest in the space in terms of active pilots (whether concentrating your existing member base and allies, recruiting new members or making treaties with new allies) and make sure it is used to full benefit, depending on which upgrade level you are seeking or looking to maintain.
In the future, we envision that you will also be able to unlock more exotic types of resources. The system outlined above allows us to easily do this in the future as a great foundation of traditional bread-and-butter income streams combined later with, perhaps, some more exotic resource upgrades. We are sure many of you can imagine the possibilities we are thinking about, too (comets, dark matter, wormholes, space whales, etc.).
We quickly discovered the next bottleneck with Tech II production after invention was introduced was the static supply of moon minerals against a growing playerbase and a dynamic demand. The effect of this system has reared its ugly head with rapidly increasing prices and, therefore, moon values for the limiting factor materials. It is something we looked to tackle previously with the introduction of alchemy reactions. This was partially successful, but missed the mark in achieving the desired effect we were looking for.
The value of the moon minerals is based on two components: supply and demand. We can change either of these to affect the value to a greater or lesser degree, and many of you have made excellent suggestions in the past on the forums covering core issues, ranging from the infinite supply in each moon. to alternative build routes, for example, to new sources of moon materials.
The core issue is the very high value of the promethium and dysprosium moon materials which create a massive point source passive income and, to some extent, uneven demand with the other relatively cheap moon materials. Our proposed changes, therefore, target the distribution of this demand in a more direct way than alchemy achieved.
As mentioned during the recent alliance tournament interviews, our initial focus and fixes focused around the quantities of construction components required in Tech II ships. The original values are holdovers from days gone by when agents used to hand out components as rewards. The exact quantities were very similar, however, this has played the largest part in determining the moon mineral values we see today and is something we can fix relatively easily and look to reducing the value of some moon materials whilst increasing others.
The approach being taken is to reduce the quantity of construction components such as reactors, shield emitters and thrusters derived from dysprosium and promethium moon materials, for example, whilst increasing the quantities required of the more common and very cheap materials such as armor plates.
An example of the approach of this change is below, demonstrating a quantity change to our friend the enyo. (Note the numbers are only as a demonstration of the change and are not final!).
The effect ripples down from here to the simple and raw moon materials as a result of the change in advanced materials when applied to all the ships.
There will be more changes to come which build upon the core changes outlined here, such as adjustments to component build times and some adjustment to the armor plate materials to ensure that the system can cope with the increased demand for the most common materials without them becoming the new bottlneck. These changes will be detailed further in the test server forum and here in the comments to this blog later on.
The profitability of alchemy and the initial values are all determined from current market value in reality (it is either profitable or not). With the above changes, alchemy reactions become unprofitable. The output will be changed, although this will need further tweaks to ensure there is an effective overflow pipe to respond to future market changes.
Beyond Dominion, we are looking towards adding new sources of moon materials so that we will have a dynamic supply which can respond to the changing needs of the marketplace and help resolve the static supply issues we currently see. Some potential routes we have already mentioned previously here and are common suggestions on the forums. We are definitely looking hard at doing something cool here in the future along these lines.
We hope you better understand that our goal is to allow each solar system in null sec to have the potential to hold many more people per system in material resource terms (perhaps 50-100 when fully upgraded). As a result this will lead to the formation of micro-communities and diversity of life in each colony in effect and null sec being able to hold many more people which leads to a much more interesting political scene and ensuing drama.
Coupled with this focus on allowing you to upgrade the solar systems material resources, we are looking to reduce the value of in particular dysprosium and promethium moons through changes to Tech II production so alliances are once more reliant on more traditional income diffuse revenue streams and encouraged to recruit members and form treaties or hold less space.
Constructive feedback is welcome as ever on the proposals and overview of our goals for revenue streams in null sec.
Ave - Chronotis
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Your story, next year:
I woke up excited to go to work this morning; never thought I‘d say that before this job. I get in a bit early to the office. My team needs me and the pressure is on. We‘ve busted our butts these last couple of sprints to get our baby fine-tuned and ready for Sisi, and the deadline for the new build looms. Just a few more tweaks and tests and we are there, and the team is pounding away, working together like a fine-tuned machine...
A whirr reminiscent of a gatling gun and the booming laughter of a large German fills the air just as the polystyrene projectile strikes my head, another following it to the chest. Injured but not down, I push forward with my team‘s single-minded goal, of course after defending my honor with a few choice words for the crazed gunman.
Chatter in the team: we‘re looking at a fringe test case that seems a bit odd, the only hurdle left on this steeplechase. We all gather around, talking about the issue, being critical and proving to ourselves that our work is rock solid. All agree, we are Done.
I look at my team. Back home, I was always ahead of the pack, but then so was every one of them as well. Here I am surrounded by the best and brightest from all over the world, and I am one of them. The button is pushed, our final submission for this sprint. Now just to wait for the build to complete and see our work on the public server, get tons of awesome feedback from our players and volunteers, and perhaps bask in a bit of glory (or flames) on the forums. But no time for basking now, the next challenge awaits as we get to do it all over again. But first, lunch (I heard rumors of lamb steaks and cake today) and maybe a match or two in the game room. I may even sign up for a massage this afternoon. And then tonight there‘s that party, or I might just play some games with the guys here at the office, or join some others at the gym, or all of the above...
But what I am most looking forward to is seeing our work go live. And after a few more iterations, I want to hand this awesomeness over to the guys downstairs that keep the universe running - to see it up on Tranquility. I want to see our mark on New Eden and the hundreds of thousands that inhabit it, to hear the shock of the players months later when they realize that some of our absolutely insane ideas were actually brilliant in ways that they had never even imagined.
And I want to do all of it with this collection of nerds, freaks and geeks and flat-out geniuses that is CCP.
Are you one of the best and brightest in your field of expertise? Do you have what it takes to join CCP? Are you fearless?
Apply for the biggest adventure of your life. I dare ya.
- CCP Heimdall
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Is it that time once more?
Yes it is!
Soon we will open the candidate applications page for the fourth term of the CSM (details of dates below). Like the three terms before, the full name and location of the candidate will be published, along with the candidate's character name, URL and campaign message. All candidates have to submit a scan of their valid passport in order to be considered eligible candidates and be 21 years of age or more. Furthermore, it is very important to have 100% correct and up to date ownership information on all of your user accounts, as all of them will be checked.
Why should you run for the CSM?
Because you affect EVE, both in the short term and in the long run. The best example of that is the upcoming changes to 0.0 sovereignty (here and here)-- the first two CSMs have laid the groundwork for a complete overhaul of that mechanic and is now showing the fruits of that labor. The third CSM was directly involved in a brainstorming session regarding the current ideas and possible future additions to the mechanics of 0.0.
Furthermore it needs to be noted that roughly 60% of all issues brought up by the CSM have either been already added to the game or are on the horizon; changes to the UI and Factional Warfare being the largest groups of items not yet slated for release while having been injected to the backlog where they are ready to be processed when the resources are directed to those venues.
What has the CSM done so far?
· The skill queue. The CSM convinced us to just do it.
· The new probing system. It has been fine-tuned based largely on CSM's comments.
· The new ship fitting tool. Where would we be without it?
The unique approach of democratic elections as a selection process for a player council is unheard of -- together we can make history and make EVE a better place for all.
The CSM white paper and the summary of it can be found if you chase these links.
Following are the important dates for the fourth CSM:
October, 5th. Opening for candidacy runs for the fourth CSM.
October, 19th. Closing for the candidacy applications.
November, 12th. Voting for the fourth CSM opens.
November, 26th. Voting for the fourth CSM closes.
December, 2nd. A permanent announcement made about the results of the fourth CSM elections.
December, 5th 2009, Saturday. The fourth CSM will meet online for the first time.
February, 24th - 28th 2010, Wednesday to Sunday. The fourth CSM arrives in Iceland to speak with CCP.
Throw your hat in the ring - make history.
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COSMOS is an ambitious project and as such is many things to many people. Though the description "social networking tool" is fitting, "EVE away from EVE" is much closer to our long-term vision. In order to be a bit more concrete, I thought I'd give you a quick run-down of what exactly we expect COSMOS will be in its first of many incarnations, and how the pieces fit into the bigger picture.
On the core feature list we have: home, profiles, improved contact list and an improved mail system. Both the improved contact list and the mail system will also be made available in-game, finally giving a much needed overhaul to the arcane and archaic in-game mail system.
Before I go into more detail on the features themselves I wanted to tell you about our revised release plan.
RELEASE PLAN
Dominion: The first iteration of the all new in-game mail system along with all the back-end wizardry to make it work.
Post-Dominion (Likely early in 2010): The first iteration of the COSMOS web application, with all the features outlined below plus the Calendar.
We think that this delay for the web application is the right move because we have always had our sights set on the long game for COSMOS. The first release, while crammed with good stuff, was always intended to lay the basis for the ground-breaking innovations to come. Rushing COSMOS out with less polish didn´t make sense in this context, we want to impress from day one. CCPOveur will have a lot more to say about this in his FanFest presentation and there will be chance for discussion and feedback in the COSMOS roundtable also planned for FanFest.
Another positive of this approach is that we now expect to be able to get the Calendar into the first COSMOS web release. Personally this is one of the COSMOS features I am most excited about, it´s going to make scheduling corp and alliance ops a lot easier. Add to that the new mail system, corp status updates and the future release of integrated corp and alliance forums and COSMOS will significantly reduce management overheads for all corps and alliances.
The asynchronous release is made possible because COSMOS is a web application and is not as interwoven with the EVE Client as most of our other features. This will make it possible for us to continue to release smaller batches of COSMOS features outside of major TQ releases in the future, when it makes sense to do so.
Now onto the features themselves:
HOME
Initially COSMOS will have a status update system similar to that in Facebook for sharing messages with your friends. The feeds section of COSMOS aggregates all the status updates of your friends and colleagues and allows you to organize the feeds. Later extensions of COSMOS will hook into this system for other types of feeds you can subscribe to, such as news and blogs. All these feeds will be displayed in Home.
PROFILES
Profiles in COSMOS are the equivalent of character show info in-game, including bio, corporation history and other relevant information. Additionally, the profile includes the status update feed for the character. When viewing your own profile, you will also have access to limited character sheet info. Initially this will only include trained skills and the training queue, but it will expand in the future.
CONTACTS
Contacts is an extension of the current in-game buddy list that supports two-way friendship connections. When adding a person to the contact list, you have the option whether to silently add the person to a ''Watchlist'' (which has no relation to the fleet Watchlist!), or send a friend request. In addition to formally recognizing each other, adding someone as a friend gives them access to more information about you than would otherwise be accessible, such as status updates and what friends you have.
In order to keep the current functionality from the in-game buddy list, enemies or neutral acquaintances can be silently added to the "Watchlist" section of the contact list. Doing so does not require the added person's permission nor does it notify the added person - as with the in-game buddy list, anyone can be added to the Watchlist regardless of whether they want to or not. The Watchlist functions just like the buddy list, i.e. it allows you to see the online status of the person, but it does not grant any permissions you would not otherwise have.
The notion of ''labels'' (private tags) is used throughout COSMOS to classify and control content. In a sense, labels are your view of the content. In the contact section of COSMOS, contacts can be assigned labels, allowing you to group your contacts. Each label is represented Gmail style with a corresponding folder, containing all contacts with that label. Creating a new label and assigning it to one or more contacts creates a new folder in the contact list. Contacts can be moved between folders by swapping one label for another.
The privacy settings define what information and how much of it you expose and to whom. In the initial release of COSMOS, the privacy settings are most likely going to be hardwired, but the intention is to implement a system that gives you full control. The privacy settings will be implemented as a role based access control system, using labels for assigning roles to persons in your contact list. Every permission in the privacy settings (e.g. "may view my profile") has an associated list of labels that define who are granted that permission: The permission is granted to a given user if the user has any of the listed labels.
Access to labeled content that you own (such as, in future releases, videos) can also be granted based on the label. The general access policy, which applies to all content of that type, can be extended with clauses for content with specific labels. For instance, if you have uploaded some videos labeled "awesome", then you can change your privacy settings to only allow your "awesome" contacts to view the "awesome" videos, while in general allowing everyone to view the rest of your videos.
Down the line, the plan is to use a similar system for security settings for corporations and alliances. The policies would be augmented with optional side conditions for their use, e.g. requiring a vote within some member group or approval of higher ranking members, such that separation of duties can be implemented for sensitive permissions.
The mail system is implemented similarly to Gmail, using labels to organize mail just as for contacts. The first release will have simple hardcoded rules for labeling corporation mail etc. With later releases, the functionality will be extended to custom mail rules and archiving.
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With the release of EVE Online: Dominion this winter the minimum system requirements needed to run the EVE client will become Windows XP Service Pack 2. We will at the same time officially support Windows 7.
The history of EVE is the history of continuous enhancements, updates, upgrades, and new and improved technology; both client and server software updates as well as hardware upgrades. When writing this dev blog I compiled a list of technical dev blogs since 2007 that relate to new or improved technology:
Why do we constantly update EVE? "Why can't you just keep it the way it is?"
We update EVE because EVE needs to be fresh, vibrant and cutting-edge. EVE should be immortal, just as you, the pod pilot.
With the release of EVE Online: Dominion this winter we are yet again adding more new technology. Dominion will be the third graphics update and then, as CCP Pleognost detailed in his dev blog on the new in-game browser, we are updating the IGB in Dominion using the Chromium browser toolkit.
Introducing new technology has at times required that we update the minimum system requirements needed to run the EVE client. Adding new technology sometimes entails that old technology must be left behind.
Currently the minimum system requirements are Windows XP but with Dominion they will become Windows XP Service Pack 2. This is due to Chromium's dependence on Windows HTTP Services version 5.1 (winhttp.dll).
The increased minimum requirements will affect 0.4% of our Windows XP users. There is a direct update path for these users: To update to the latest Service Pack, currently Service Pack 3, at the Microsoft Update website. This update is free of charge for Windows XP users.
Other options include upgrading to Windows Vista or Windows 7.
With Dominion we will be officially supporting Windows 7. We have been testing Windows 7 since December last year and our bi-weekly platform tests are run on several Windows 7 configurations.
Microsoft has announced Windows 7's general retail availability on 22 October but already about 8.8% of our Windows users use Windows 7. The majority of our Windows users are still using Windows XP, or 49.5%, with 41.7% using Windows Vista but the increased Windows 7 usage has been at the expense of Windows XP.
Here is an overall breakdown of all operating systems in September 2009:
- CCP Explorer
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I'm CCP Ginger, Volunteer Manager for EVE Online.
Last weekend external resources related to the Interstellar Services Department (ISD), EVE's volunteer program, were compromised which led to the theft of some volunteer program related data but also information about specific volunteers. As a result, we are being extra careful here, as this first and foremost pertains to the volunteer program and has no effect on our EVE Online operations or any customer data whatsoever.
It is important to highlight for the avoidance of any doubt that this information was stolen from areas operated outside CCP´s infrastructure and is therefore not related to anyone's EVE player account data. Player billing information, personal information, and character/game information all remain completely secure and unaffected, as well as CCP corporate pathways and e-mail, Tranquility, databases, etc.
All players, particularly those who are or have been in the EVE Online volunteer program, should be aware that any e-mails sent from the @eve-crc.net domain are bogus and have been sent from someone pretending to be an official representative of CCP.
We are taking this issue extremely seriously and have launched a full investigation. In the meantime, to be on the safe side, we have shut down all ISD servers and services to protect our volunteers and the integrity of the program and are now working diligently toward strengthening and improving our practices and policies pertaining to the volunteer program to ensure its ongoing success and valuable contribution to the EVE Online experience.
Thanks,
Ginger
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Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
As some of you have noticed, NPC corporations on Singularity are now being taxed at 11%. This corporation tax functions in the exact same way you know them from player corporations; a certain part of your hard earned income disappears and you probably never see it again. Now that I think about it, it functions a lot like taxes in real life do... oh well. The tax applies to mission rewards, bounties and the likes, so if you're worried that your corporation will suddenly take a large chunk out of your wallet, don't be; that is not how it works. If you are in Faction Warfare, you do not need to worry either, the militias will not be taxed. Service guarantees citizenship and all that, so keep on trucking.
So why this change?
So why 11%?
So you are in a NPC corporation, what now?
- CCP Soundwave
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Hello, everyone! I am CCP WeirdFish, one of the new additions to CCP’s QA department. I’m sure most have you have seen me on Singularity where I am usually causing trouble and responding to player issues. I have the opportunity to talk to you about my current task, which is to work with the Bug Hunters and QA to run some public test events and to monitor the test server and the forums for player feedback and issues. With the release of Dominion approaching, it's my task and privilege to introduce you to some of the new features we've introduced for public testing. The goal of these tests is to give you all the opportunity to try out some of the new features and changes that our hard working scrum teams have been developing and also to gauge how well they will work once exposed to large scale use.
So you want to play with Dominion?
It is true what many of you have heard; we are working on the next EVE expansion. You may also be aware that there will be rogue packs of orcas roaming through space decimating all in their path, until one day they disappear to their strange mating grounds. That last part is actually unconfirmed, but stranger things have happened. There are a few aspects however that I am able to confirm because we will be running public testing on these features on Singularity, our public test server, over the coming weeks. Information on how to connect to Singularity can be found here.
So what can we test ?
There will be three tests. The first will be to test changes made to faction ships resulting from feedback we gained as a result of our last public test event. A wide array of faction ships will be provided and you will have an opportunity to give us your opinions on the changes. It is important to remember these changes are not final.
The second test:
Also you may have heard rumors of changes to super capitals. These rumors are true. As detailed in CCP Abathur’s latest devblog, we have changed some aspects of these massive ships. Supercapitals will be provided for you all to go mad and get a feeling for them. Your feedback will be collected and taken onboard, as the rebalance of super capitals is also subject to change.
That’s all well and good but I can’t fly them
This is indeed an issue that will limit how many of you are able to test the changes. So, we have decided to give you all every skill at level 5.
I left a few lines to let it sink in. This is strictly on the test server and is of itself not a regular occurrence. The elevated skills will only be in effect for the duration of the supercapital test, estimated to be a 48 hour period. I hope you can all find time to come along and give us your opinions on some of the features of Dominion.
The third test :
As detailed in CCP Abathur’s devblog and CCP Grayscale's devblog, changes are being made to how claiming and holding sovereignty works. These changes are also not finalized and the mechanics are not complete. So here is a brief overview of how the first test of sovereignty works.
Two alliances (Red and Blue) will be created on Singularity and players will be invited to join them and duke it out for control of a small area of space. Your opinions will be gathered on this part of the new sovereignty system and will be relayed to the team responsible.
When, Where and How?
The faction ships test will take place on Friday the 18th of September at 18:00
The supercapitals test will take place on Friday the 25th of September at 18:00
And the sovereignty test will take place on the week of the 5th to the 11th of October (subject to change)
More information will be made available regarding the tests on the test server feedback forum. And now, my wall of text is over. Go forth, tell your friends and I will see you all at the first test!
- CCP WeirdFish
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"If I have an unstoppable super weapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve." - Evil Overlord Rule #40
It began over four years ago with the Dreadnaughts; massive engines of destruction designed to engage the starbases released in the Exodus expansion and the Outposts of Cold War. Then came Red Moon Rising and the advent of Carriers, Motherships and Titans.
When capital ships were first introduced, the Alliances of EVE were just beginning to expand into nullsec. The sight of more than a few capital ships in one place was a newsworthy event. The first Motherships were near-mythical beasts, used by ruthless pirate corporations and powerful PvP alliances, able to stand against and destroy entire fleets nearly single handedly. The mere suspicion of an alliance even building a Titan was enough to spawn epic battles and wars whose legends live on to this day.
How times change!
Over the last couple of years, both the size of capital fleets and the use of capital warships has grown at an exponential rate. "Hot Dropping" has shifted from being something done to decide the fate of a war to becoming a blood sport that major alliances play with each other, with dozens of capital wrecks littering the battlefield after such engagements. Factional Warfare even sees regular use of Carriers and Dreadnaughts.
With the current number of active capital ships on Tranquility, they can no longer be looked upon as tools of the elite. This evolution of warfare has made it apparent that capital engagements are not some random occurrence anymore but simply another level of combat in EVE. Some of these ships have withstood the test of time better than others. So, now we're going to walk through the various classes of PvP capital ships and explain how we see them fitting into Dominion and beyond. Traditionally, we would start from the bottom and go up, but I'm not traditional.
Titans
The most dramatic change to Titans will be the removal of the current area of effect, grid smashing, lag generating, fun killing, fleet destroying super weapon. It's gone, folks! In its place will be the first of what we hope to be a new line of mutually exclusive super weapons, usable only by Titans. The first of these will debut in Dominion and will keep the names of their grid-wide predecessors but will now focus their destructive energies upon single targets. (Insert Admiral Ackbar quotes as you please!)
To illustrate what we are talking about here, let me share the early concept art for the new Amarr super weapon:
There is nothing fancy about this. You will have to warp your titan on grid and actually target an enemy ship to ruin his day. You won't be killing other supercapitals in one shot, but very little else is going to survive. The weapon has drawbacks that are designed to prevent the Doomsday drive-bys of the present, but you'll find a couple more changes which might encourage you to stick around a bit longer than before.
First up is that the current weapon bonuses on Titans will get just a tiny bit of an enhancement so that the turret locators actually might get used. This damage will vary with fittings, just as with any other ship, but will certainly enable a Titan to make its presence felt if the pilot so chooses.
Second, to ensure that you don't instantly melt and can survive more than a minute on the modern EVE capital battlefield, we will be giving Titans a respectable hit point increase. This will not render Titans invulnerable to assault, but it should allow allied forces time to properly assist them after someone says, "Hey, watch this!" on voice comms and gets in trouble.
The future of this ship class is not set in stone and as EVE continues to evolve they may find even more roles to play. For now, we consider these changes to be a step forward in bringing Titans closer to being an actual ship instead of the giant nano-smart bombs they have become. However, Titans won't be alone in dealing with the capital fleets of EVE...
Motherships no more...
Perhaps no ships in EVE symbolize the majesty of the game more than the Nyx, Wyvern, Aeon and Hel. Featured in dozens of player-made movies, official trailers and screenshots, it is a sad testimony that their presence has not been a factor on the capital battlefields of EVE for quite some time. The simple fact is that this class of ship now stays mostly parked on trained alts and is rarely used as they are nothing more than expensive targets for hungry legions of Dread pilots.
No more.
Motherships are being reclassified as Supercarriers. The name of ‘Mothership' has long caused confusion as to what the intended role of these ships was supposed to be but we are finally putting that to rest. This refocusing will see these ships go through a few changes. Gone will be:
· The ability for Supercarriers to fit Triage modules.
· The ability for Supercarriers to fit Clone Vat Bays.
· The ability for Supercarriers to fit one additional Warfare Link per level.
One side effect of this change is that the build cost for Supercarriers will go down slightly as they will no longer require the Capital Clone Vat Bay components.
What are they getting? In addition to receiving their own hit point boost, Supercarriers are going to get new teeth in the form of the deadly new Fighter Bombers they can launch. Fighter Bombers have exactly one purpose: to destroy capital ships and look very cool while doing so. Here is the Gallente version:
Fighter Bombers will be unique to the Supercarrier class, launching specialized torpedoes capable of inflicting immense damage against other capital ships. We are still looking at a few other ideas that will help Supercarriers do their jobs more effectively and you may see those popping up on SiSi in the coming weeks.
One more thing - the Hel is getting rid of its current repair bonuses and trading them in for bonuses that enhance the endurance of its Fighters and Fighter Bombers. I guess the Flight Deck Chiefs on Hels like duct taping spare bits of armor onto their strike craft or something...
Carriers
While we are still looking for possible ways to tweak them, Carriers as a class will remain unchanged in Dominion. We have however reduced both the duration and fuel consumption of the Triage module by half in order to allow a bit more tactical flexibility in their usage.
Dreadnaughts
The heavy hitters of New Eden will continue in their role as the primary anti-structure and anti-capital ship in EVE. Since my blog last week, many have expressed worry that their beloved Dreads would have a reduced purpose in Dominion. This is not true. If anything, Dreads will be used more than ever against not only each other, but new challenges which will require the mentality to "Siege green!"
Dreads will remain unchanged with one small exception - the Moros will only receive its drone damage bonus if it is in siege mode.
‘Bays' Again
We are also working hard to bring the next iteration of our ‘bay' concept into Dominion in the form of Fighter / Fighter Bomber bays for Carriers and Supercarriers. This will allow you to better organize and separate your primary strike craft from your regular drones. In addition to allowing us to better balance the numbers of drones that these classes of ships carry around with them, we are also doing this for performance reasons. The server does not like it when Supercarriers have 1500 spare Hobgoblin II's in their drone bays and making the server happy is always a good thing.
Will there ever be more capital ships?
Not in Dominion. The biggest issues with creating new capital ships involve both finding a defined role for them to fill and then devoting the considerable art and design resources needed to bring such massive ships to life. As EVE continues to evolve, we will be on the lookout for ways to possibly expand the capital ship lineup. After all, something has to wear the tag of Mothership again at some point!
To close, please be aware that we are planning some special events on SiSi in the near future to live test all of this stuff, so be on the lookout for announcements in the Test Server Feedback forum!
- CCP Abathur
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