The expansion arrives tomorrow, and usually I would have the post go live then, but I have a post already set for tomorrow, so you’re getting this today. I’m busy this week and a year from now it won’t matter that I posted this a day early.
Anyway.
One of the recurring comments that came out of EVE Vegas was the lack of a named winter expansion for EVE Online. While there are updates pretty much every month, the tradition is to have a named update twice a year, one close to the beginning of summer, the other close to the start of winter.
However, it appears that CCP was keeping the name under wraps… or didn’t present it very clearly… or realized they forgot, I don’t really know… because the news finally came along that we would be getting EVE Online: Onslaught as our next big update.
Onslaught, with frigates!
For null sec, the biggest change is the new Upwell Consortium navigation structures that will be showing up with the patch. There is a dev blog about them here. Those will be replacing the cyno jammer, cyno beacon, and jump bridge functionalities that were previously part of the player owned starbase (POS) mechanics.
I have already written about the impact of the jump bridge replacement. And while the capital ship loophole has been closed, it will still mean the ability to bring subcap fleets across long stretches of territory without jump fatigue.
The new Ansiblex Jump Gate
But that isn’t all that will impact the null sect meta. The new Tenebrex Cyno Jammer will have a big impact as well.
Tenebrex Cyno Jammer
Back in the Keepstar War over the summer, much of the battle in the Fade region was over the cyno jammer protecting the CO2 Keepstar in DW-T2I. Cyno jammer mechanics thwarted the first Imperium assault on the Keepstar and led to a drawn out fight over ihub that took weeks to settle.
That will be all different starting tomorrow. The POS based system was subject to dynamics that made systems vulnerable to things like dropping lots of dreads on the jammer and killing it quickly. The new FLEX structure will have a damage cap and will take 27 minutes to kill whether you drop every titan in creation or a few dozen bombers on it. This will change the dynamics of these sort of fights dramatically.
And, of course, with the change tomorrow the logistical arms of all null sec entities will be scrambling to get these structures in place as the current cyno jammers and jump bridge networks go away with the expansion.
Also affecting the capital meta is a rebalance of force auxiliaries… well, a nerf to faxes if we’re being honest… to reign in their effectiveness. The changes will be:
- All capital remote repair modules duration increased by 25%
- All capital remote shield booster modules duration increased by 25%
- Capital Emergency Hull Energizer duration decreased by approximately 25%
- Capital Emergency Hull Energizer active resistance bonus reduced to 95% (was 99.9%)
- Capital Ancillary Shield Boosters limited to 1 per ship (goes for all capital ships)
- Apostle and Minokawa bonus to capacitor pool removed
- Lif and Ninazu bonus to capital cap injector amount removed
We will see if this just ends up people just bringing more faxes or not.
Abyssal deadspace is also getting an expansion with the Onslaught release. As was shown at EVE Vegas, co-op play will now be possible for Abyssal pockets as you will be able to enter them with three frigates as opposed to with just a single cruiser.
There will also be an optional PvP mode, where an extra gateway will appear offering up extra loot. However, you will have to fight anybody else who uses that same gate from their pocket. Only one can leave.
There will also be two more Triglavian ships. There is the Kikimora, a destroyer, and the Drekavac, which is a battlecruiser hull.
The Kikimora destroyer
In addition there will also be updates to loot. All of this is covered in a dev blog, which includes the spec for the new ships.
Another new feature that CCP has been talking about since EVE Fanfest is the Activity Tracker.
Activity Tracker
There is a dev blog that goes into detail about this, but essentially it will let you know what you’ve been spending your time on in New Eden. While I applaud this idea, I have to admit that my enthusiasm is somewhat tempered by the fact that tracking was only recently turned on, so most of my twelve years playing the game is unrecorded. Such is life.
There is also further changes to ECM following up the changes that went in with the October update. These are detailed in a forum thread, but sum up as:
- All ECM modules jam strength increased by 10%
- All ECM modules optimal range increased by 20%
- Signature Radius reduced for several ECM Bonused ships
** Griffin reduced to 40 (was 42)
** Kitsune reduced to 42 (was 47)
** Griffin Navy Issue reduced to 38 (was 40)
** Blackbird reduced to 135 (was 150)
** Rook reduced to 158 (was 170)
** Falcon reduced to 165 (was 175)
** Scorpion reduced to 440 (was 480)
** Widow reduced to 405 (was 432) - Fitting has been adjusted for some ECM bonused ships to allow more room for tank
** Griffin powergrid increased to 28 (was 24)
** Kitsune powergrid increased to 30 (was 26)
** Rook powergrid increased to 740 (was 680)
** Falcon powergrid increased to 760 (was 700)
** Scorpion powergrid increased 9500 (was 9000)
** Widow powergrid increased to 9800 (was 8800)
** Widow CPU increased to 800 (was 760)
Also on the list of new things are a new global search function, so you can find your shit scattered all over New Eden, a new compact Planetary Interaction view, and an update to the graphics on gates. They will show details like sovereignty, some status about the connecting system, and will have the same awesome travel effects that the Ansiblex Jump Gates are getting, which means people will be gawking at them for days I expect. I know I will. The busy gates in Jita should be fun.
a sample of the gate information graphics
And, while there are a number of the usual bug fixes, I want to highlight one in particular:
A ship’s modules will no longer be offline after it has been contracted.
This one took me by surprise and almost got me in trouble last month. I contracted a ship between alts and then undocked without checking, only to find everything offline. Glad that is fixed.
The update is planned to be deployed tomorrow, November 13th, at 11:00 UTC, which is 3am for me, so I plan to be asleep. In addition to the dev blogs I have linked to above, there are also the usual Patch Notes to go through and the EVE Updates page to explore.
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