After the big Ascension expansion in EVE Online last month, we’re back to smaller updates with just fixes and a few features showing up for a while.
But this update, called YC118.10, also heralds the end of an era in null sec. Starting today, players may no longer deploy outposts or outpost upgrades in sovereign null sec. Outposts are the official term for what we generally call stations, which is where most people make their homes.
No more bubbles on the station undock to camp people once they’re gone
In the age of citadels though the plan is to remove outposts, stationary permanent structures that can be captured but never destroyed. Out in the wilds of null we shall eventually all live in and work and produce and sell in structures that can be blown up. It will be like wormhole space, only with gates and local. And player owned star bases, POSes, will go the same way as well some day. Though not any day soon, as mining/drilling platforms seem to be at least a year away at this point.
Of course, this change has long been on CCP’s road map, so you have to wonder what sort of people would even bother with the expense of a new outpost these days.
Oh, yeah…
Actually, that latest one pushed another GSF deployment off the list. But we still need outposts for now. You still cannot insure your ship in a citadel yet, finding assets in them is still imperfect, and transactions in them seem to make EVEMon crash for me.
As for features with this release, the big one seems to revolve around defender missiles. As revealed at EVE Vegas, defender missiles are finally getting a rework in order to make them useful, so those skill points I put into them back in 2007 may now pay off!
A CCP graphic that is supposed to be a defender missile battery
Defender missiles have been pretending to be useful since I started playing EVE Online over a decade back. Now, finally, they will have a place in the combat meta, at least in null sec, destroying incoming bombs launched from stealth bombers. Null sec battleship fleets, long the primary victim of such bombing runs, can now defend themselves.
According to the details in the forums, defender missiles will also require a special defender launcher which can only be fitted on destroyer class vessels. To make sure they are not completely over powered, the launchers will have a two minute cycle time (one minute when fit to command destroyers) and will randomly target bombs in flight, so launching for maximum fleet defense effect may take some finesse.
Other than that, there are some new reasonably priced SKINs for the Yoiul Festival and another set just for Sisters of EVE ships.
Everything else seems to be fixes or tuning. Excavator drone yields have been reduced 32%, probably because, according to the November economic report, we’re strip mining Delve. The new player experience is getting some tuning, and NPC mining fleets got some changes.
Stations, which got citadel-like traffic lanes previously, are getting more of the same along with billboards running the same ads you see at gates or when docked. Probably the most real-life change in this update, more pervasive advertising.
There are other items in the Patch Notes and on the EVE Updates page, but that is meat of the update for me. The update is already live, so it is all there to see.
Of course, there has to be a theme song for every update. This time we get the thumping theme “Into the Light.”
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