Local Blackout Coming after Downtime on Friday

CCP has given its promised 48 hours of notice.  Last Friday the company said they would give warning before this happened, and here it is.

Notice has been served

Come Friday after downtime, the local channel in null sec will change from showing everybody in the system to what CCP calls “delayed mode local,” which will work the way local channel do in wormhole space, where people only appear in the channel list if they broadcast in that channel.

This has caused quite a stir, and the forum thread on the topic is closing in on 5,000 posts.

Those very much in favor of this idea see a happy time of uninterrupted destruction in their future.  Skeptics wonder if the change will simply make targets more scarce.  And, of course, the hunted have their own view, some threatening to unsubscribe with the change.

We shall see come Friday and over the weekend I suppose.  I am sure there will be a surge in kills pretty quickly, as those who don’t pay attention to the news find out about the change the hard way.  After that things will likely settle down.

The duration of the blackout is listed as “undetermined.”  It could be short.  It could be the new reality in null sec.

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.

The Invasion Expansion Arrives in EVE Online

Today is the day, the Invasion expansion for EVE Online is here.

The Invasion is now

The Triglavian theme is right up front as the expansion features three new Triglavian ships.  They are:

• Nergal – Assault Frigate
• Ikitursa – Heavy Assault Cruiser
• Draugur – Command Destroyer

These are tech II ships, which means that there must also be the related skills, Triglavian Encryption Methods and ,Triglavian Encryption Methods as well as Triglavian Quantum Engineering datacores and Triglavian tech II components, so that players can go through the invention process to build these new ships.

There will also now be Mutaplasmids for modifying Damage Control and Assault Damage Controls modules.

In addition, there is this item in the patch notes:

The Triglavian Collective have begun to exert influence on systems within of the Hi-Security regions of New Eden. Escalating System-wide effects have been observed and Triglavian forces are roaming these systems in varied fleet sizes and compositions. Rumors spreading from capsuleer expeditions into abyssal deadspace indicate that these first waves of Triglavian vessels may be the vanguard of a larger invasion force yet to reveal itself.

This is no doubt the “invasion” to which the expansion refers, but as to what it means and how intrusive it will be in high sec space is left to be seen.  The trailer for the expansion is clearly focused on something happening as well.

However, we don’t know what it all really means, whether these will be like incursions or pirate faction FOBs or something completely new, though I am sure the whole thing will make somebody angry.

The expansion also brings round four of the War Declaration revamp.  With the expansion any aggressive war will now require the attacker to declare an Upwell structure as their HQ.  Destruction or removal of the HQ will end the war and the attacking party will not be able to declare war on the same target until a two week cool-down has passed.

The cost of wars has now been simplified.  They are a straight up 100 million ISK per week.

Mutual wars have also been simplified and do not have a weekly charge to maintain.

There is also a big revamp of The Agency as part of the expansion.

The New Agency?

The old user interface of The Agency represented the conflict between good intentions and poor execution, so we will see if CCP has been able to act on the many complaints about their all-in-one PvE content finder.

Other highlights from the expansion:

• Faction, storyline, and office weapons can now use tech II ammunition
• There is now a button to get a rookie ship, a corvette, rather than just handing you one automatically when you dock up in an NPC station in a pod and have no ship in your hangar
• A new pointer tool has been added to help you explain the arcane EVE Online interface to friends you rope into playing
• You can opt-in for the 64-bit client beta

There are lots of other details in the Patch Notes and on the Updates Page for the expansion.  Word is that the expansion has been deployed successfully.  Now we’ll just have to see what those Triglavians are up to.