The June EVE Online Update Brings Better Shadows and Repair Services

The month of June is a bit ripe at this point, but CCP still has an update for us.  Of course, after the big Invasion expansion last month there wasn’t a lot of bandwidth left work on much.  Still, there are a few items of note.

First up, all NPC stations will now have repair services as one of the options they offer.

An expensive ship docked in a station

In the age of citadels, where tethering up for a couple of minutes will repair all of your damage woes for free, this feature feels like it is more than a few years late.  Like how wasn’t this on the list back in 2007 or so?

Well, at least for new players and the occasional situation where you are stuck with a burned out MWD in a system with an NPC station and no tether access to an Upwell structure, you can get yourself sorted.

Second up, there are improvements to character models, which I am going to quote directly from the patch notes:

• Refactored Character shadows to make them more performant. Refactored the character animation system, and added in new idle animations which make the characters seem more lifelike.

Part of me hates that they did this, both because it will spark the inevitable “Walking is Stations 2.0 confirmed!” and because they might be right and CCP might be dipping their toe into the colossal waste of time and resources that was the original captain’s quarters project.

On the flip side, they used the adjective “performant,” of which I heartily approve, so I’ll call it a draw.

The third item worth a mention is the addition of an attributes tab to the info window for NPCs.  This tab will show both the damage resists that a given NPC has as well as the damage types they deal.

This is in response to the most popular bio entry in New Eden, the NPC damage/resists table.  As with the repair services in NPC stations, I have to wonder why this wasn’t a thing back in 2007 rather than making its appearance half way through 2019.

However, the problem here is that having that attributes tab doesn’t really replace that damage/resists table, since it is already out there and gives you all you need to know in an easily digestible, compact format.  I honestly think CCP might have been better off if they just made every new characters bio be that table by default.

Golf clap for a nice try I guess, and at least recognizing something from within the game.

By the way, if you want that table for your own, the EVE Uni Wiki page about NPC damage/resists has a version you can paste on in, complete with ECM types as well.

Or, if you want a PDF of all the NPC information and more, somebody did a nice document that they posted to Reddit just this week.

Anyway, there are other items in the update, but that is all I felt like mentioning.

The update itself appears to have gone live.  You can read all about it in the Patch Notes or on the Updates Page.