The last big update before summer vacations sap the momentum from development at CCP.
Yes, I made this myself since CCP failed me…
At least CCP has stuck with the same naming scheme two months running. I expect there will be no August update and by September they will change the naming pattern again. But on to the update.
Strategic Cruisers
The big deal for this patch, judging on the number of times CCP has posted about it alone, is the Strategic Cruiser revamp. Introduced with the Apocrypha expansion back in the first half of 2009, these were to be modular ships that could be refit with various subsystems to adapt them to different roles. Relying on materials from wormhole space to be produced, they were quite rare for a while before expanding and becoming main line doctrines for many alliances over the years.
However, they did tend to be fit and left in one configuration much of the time. Asher had us bring subsystem refits on a deployment at one point, but fitting and forgetting seemed to be the default. I have a Tengu that has been essentially the same fit for years.
Strategic Cruisers… now with skins
CCP ran a focus group and took input and at the end of the day changed these key items:
- Subsystems reduced from five to four, with the electronics subsystem abilities being folded into the others
- A subsystem bay so you can haul subsystem refits without filling up your cargo bay
- Ability to remove rigs without destroying them
- Scan Probe Launcher CPU reduction bonus moved from subsystems to hulls
- Overheating bonus
- Changes to construction materials
- Models updated to support SKINs
The details, or links to posts with the details, can be found in this dev blog.
If you have a strategic cruiser, when you log in today it should have been updated, have four subsystems installed, and a fifth one in the subsystem bay to make up for the one you lost. There is a spreadsheet detailing what you should end up with based on what you started with. There are only 1,024 possible fits per ship to sort through.
Additionally, you should get some skill points refunded for any you have used for the racial electronics subsystem skills. Since I have that trained up to 4 or 5 for all of them, I should get a nice pile of skill points back, which I plan to apply to getting Command Ships 5 trained a bit more quickly.
I expect that this will lead to some interesting results once people start playing with the fittings on the main server. They have been on the test server for a bit now.
Project Discovery
Previously Project Discovery helped the Human Protein Atlas project.
We’re talking exoplanets now
Project Discovery will now be used to help analyze data from the CoRoT telescope in order help search for exoplanets. As before, by helping with this project you can earn credits for in-game items. Details can be found in this dev blog.
Other Items
- The Rupture, Munin, and Broadsword ship models have all been revamped. They still all look like power tools.
- Battle station structures have had a graphical revamped to bring them up to the current state of the game. Expect to see high quality spikes on Sansha structures.
- The drop rate for blueprint copies for Small Ancillary Armor Repairers has been temporarily increased.
- The materials required to build pirate faction battleships has been increased. This is the second phase of the plan to make these battleships less common. In the last update the drop rate for blueprint copies was reduced.
- Back end code for The Agency event starting on July 18th deployed. Drops will include Strategic Cruiser SKINs.
And then there are the usual range of fixes and minor changes. You will now, for example, get the transition animation if you change SKINs on your ship while in a station or citadel hangar. Further details can be found in the Patch Notes and on the Updates Page.
As with the June update, no new music was included with this release. I wonder if the music production time is going to support CCP’s VR games rather than EVE Online. We did at least get a development update this week.
Anyway, the release has been deployed and is waiting for me to get home from work.
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