The EVE Online New Dawn Quadrant to Start With Mining Changes

Earlier this week we got an announcement for an announcement when CCP promised us a dev blog today.  And CCP has lived up to that promise, hitting us with the first big dev blog for the quadrant.

Prosperity Promised

The title of the dev blog is From Extraction to Production and it covers a lot of ground on the resource gathering, processing, and production front.

On the prosperity front, the post promises a doubling of many resources found in New Eden

• All ore quantities are doubled in asteroid belts
• All ore quantities are doubled in all resource anomalies
• All ice quantities are doubled (in addition to the previous 200% increase)
• All Omber, Kernite, and Crokite quantities are doubled in sov anomalies, whilst Mercoxit quantities are increased by 20% (in addition to the previous 200% increase)
• All Mykocerocin quantities are doubled, whilst spawn chance of extra sites that was added earlier this year has been reduced
• All Cytocerocin quantities are doubled
• All Fullerine quantities are doubled
• Extraction rate is doubled from moons
  • Moon Extractions will take the same time as before, but will yield 2x the quantity of ore when fractured. Extractions which are in progress (and not yet fractured) at deployment time will receive the 2x yield when they fracture

But you will need all those extra rocks to chew on because CCP is also introducing the concept of “waste” in the mining equation.  As CCP puts it, it is “a chance per cycle for resources to be turned into space dust.”  You’ll still get a full yield in your ore hold, but some of what was left to be harvested will disappear.

The amount of waste will be dictated by the type of mining module you are using to harvest, with tech I modules being considerably less efficient than tech II or faction modules.

There is also a big change coming to mining skills and crystals.  Reprocessing skills will be condensed down from 19 varieties covering each individual ore type to 6 to cover the new categories of ore that are being introduced.  They are:

• Common
• Uncommon
• Rare
• Superior
• Abyssal
• Mercoxit

Mining crystals will be reworked to cover just those six categories as well.  In addition, there will be different variants of crystals that are currently targeted as:

• Standard yield
• Higher yield, high waste, less reliable
• Lower yield, very high waste, very unreliable

I may be misunderstanding that third one, but it does not sound like a viable option, but this is just the initial dev blog and things may change.

CCP is going to add compression ability to gas and moon ore.  The Rorqual, Orca, and Porpise will all be able to compress ore, but will require new modules for the type of resources they are attempting to compress. (And the modules will require new skills, so if you got any skill points refunded from the reprocessing skill changes, you can spend them here.)

Also ore and gas compression will no longer be perfect.  Compression efficiency will be:

• Ore 90%
• Gas 90%
• Ice 79%

So, once again, CCP giveth and CCP taketh away.  You’re going to need that extra ore out there in space to make up for this.

There is also quite a bit on ship and module changes, with some ships getting new ore and gas bays, industrial cores being changed for the Rorqual and added to the Orca and Porpise, new gas harvesting modules, and some stuff that has a supporting spreadsheet to illustrate, which is how you can tell we’re really getting into nerd levels of industry.  I always mildly resent people who dismiss EVE Online as “spreadsheets in space,” unless they are specifically referencing industry.  This is where the spreadsheets come into play.

There is basically a lot in the dev blog to unpack.  But it is just a dev blog, which is generally a statement of intent by CCP.  They do, occasionally, listen to feedback on them before pushing the ideas into the live game.  CCP usually does big changes like this in stages, starting with seeding blueprints for modules and skills required in advance.  The dev blog says they expect to start that by the end of the month.

Being more than a decade distant from care much about industry and mining, I am going to sit back and listen to those immersed in the topic discuss the changes and pass judgement.  Angry Mustache who, along with Kazanir, was on the Meta Show last week for a deep dive into scarcity already has his gut reaction to the changes up on Reddit.

Related:

• CCP – Dev Blog
• CCP – Forum Thread for Dev Blog Discussion
• Reddit – The r/eve thread on the Dev Blog

Watching Week One of Alliance Tournament XVII

The Alliance Tournament has returned, having been on hiatus since 2018, with ATXVII officially kicking off this past weekend.  It came out during some of the between match discussion that this was in large part due to the efforts of CCP Aurora.

Alliance Tournament XVII

I spent some time watching the first weekend of matches, though being on the Pacific coat means that they tend to start while I am still asleep.  I do want to say that I am happy the AT is back.  While I have my reservations about it and while it has not been without controversy, it does represent an aspect of the game that a segment of the player base enjoys, and in a sandbox game we’re all better off if groups can thrive in their part of the field.

That said, in watching this I am reminded once again what an abysmal spectator game EVE Online really is.  It can work for a streamer where you can see their modules and overview, but from a third party perspective viewing a battle it is tough to get anything from what is being displayed on the screen.

Though, honestly, that might be a true reflection of being in such a battle where the visual of the game are often just so much chaos, where the brackets merge and overlap into an unreadable mess at times, and where the overview is often the only thing delivering useful information at a given moment.  At that point as a viewer the match depends a lot on the announcers, and even the best of those can be wrong or off the mark in a game as complicated as EVE Online.  Of course, when so many matches are pretty much decided in the first 30 seconds, maybe complexity isn’t the biggest issue.

As usual, there were some interesting matches and some complete wipes.  I think the second match for What Could Possibly Go Wr0ng might have been the best morale wipe.  They went in with an artillery Maelstrom core against LAZERHAWKS and just got stomped.  One of several 100 to 0 results.  But I had just been thinking about arty Maelstroms because, as I am coming up on a decade in null sec I have been looking back at some old posts, and the Maelstrom based Alpha Fleet was the first doctrine I flew in way back then.  Greetings from 2011.

Probably the most exciting match for me was the second Goonswarm match against Deepwater Hooligans.  GSF got wiped in its first match, going down 100 to 16 against Psychotic Tendencies,  so everything was on the line for the second match.

I was away from my keyboard and missed the first five minutes of the second match, only pulling it up to find GSF down 55 to 18 with only two ships left on the field.  It seemed like things were a foregone conclusion.

This does not look good

And then ren taka and Dirk Stertille managed to rack up a series of kills as the clock counted down, knocking out both DWH Eoses .  If the Golem could have held on a bit longer it might have been the end for the Ishtars.  But it could not, and its explosion seemed to call the match.  But then the Navy Scorpion did kill one of the Ishtars and the score got close again, sitting at 72 to 70 in favor of DWH.  But Dirk couldn’t hold out for very long, and with less than a minute left in the match the Scorpion exploded and that was it for the match.  Goons knocked out early once again.

The final score for GSF vs DWH

That was probably not the absolute best match of the game (the Fraternity vs The Network match was something else) but it was a good one and one I was invested in.  I bet all my channel points on Goons twice and lost twice.

It is interesting to see what comps were popular this year.  There were a lot of command ships on the field.  The Sleipner is usually pretty popular, but the Eos and the Nighthawk saw a lot of usage.  There were also multiple attempts at battleship heavy compositions to try and bring as much damage to bear early in the match as possible.  That worked a few times, but the mobility of command ships seemed the better choice in the first week.

All of which is a reminder of the esoteric nature of AT fleet comp theory crafting, where both teams are limited to ten ships and have a 100 points to spend on hulls in a pricing scheme setup by CCP.  This leads to a very tight balance between hulls and fits and pilot skill to create a winning team, and the teams that spend the most time testing fits and practicing tactics tend to stand out as the tournament progresses. (And props to Arrival for putting a 22 billion ISK Barghest flagship on the field. The AT took place in TQ in the UUA-F4 system so you can see all the losses on zKillboar.)

So it was an interesting weekend for round one.  We even got to see some teams secure prize ships as this time around the top 16 teams will all walk away with at least a few.

Marring all of this a bit was the whole turning kill mails into NFTs thing that CCP announced at the last minute, which went over like the proverbial lead balloon.  Hilmar was out on Twitter hyping up the NFT aspect and meeting quite a bit of push back.  The big defense for him was that these NFTs were less environmentally harmful than competing NFTs, with the tech bros he contracted with throwing links to dubious charts in his wake.

It is one of those things where I understand somebody like the CEO of Electronic Arts saying that NFTs and blockchain are the future of gaming.  He is just jumping on the hype train to try and juice is stock price (and thus part of his compensation package) even as he admits in almost the next breath that he doesn’t know what his statement even means. (And even if they have no real benefit and plenty plenty of downside for video games.)

But Hilmar and EVE Online have a pretty small audience so it isn’t clear to me what benefit he thought he was bringing to the company by diving in with NFTs, which is currently little more than a haven for scams right now, and block chain, which represents the favored currency of criminals globally.  This might be taking that “Be the Villain” ad campaign a bit too far.  That 10% cut of all sales transactions for the kill mail NFTs seems more like an accounting encumbrance than a benefit.

But he was all in on VR to save the company too at one point.

Anyway, we’ll see what becomes of that in the long term as well I suppose.

Related:

• CCP – Alliance Tournament Week One Announcement
• CCP – Alliance Tournament XVII Brackets
• The Greybill – Killmails in a Blockchain

EVE Online Fanfest Returns to Iceland for 2022

There won’t be a BlizzCon or a BlizzCononline for the foreseeable future and the annual events that SOE used to hold are but a distant memory at this point, but CCP carries on with its tradition of EVE Fanfest at the top of the world by announcing the event will return for 2022.  With the pandemic at least somewhat under control in many places and vaccinations readily available CCP felt it was time to get the band back together in Iceland after having skipped 2019 to do the FanFest World Tour instead and having had to cancel in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID.

Return to Iceland

Attendees will have to comply with the Icelandic government’s regulations… which as of today is asking people to avoid non-essential travel, but who knows what tomorrow will bring… and provide proof of vaccination.

But tickets are now available for purchase, with early bird tickets as a discounted price likely to be gone quickly.

So get ready for the triumphant return of EVE Fanfest in 2022.  Details are available at the EVE Fanfest 2022 site.  There is even a quick announcement video.

Now what about EVE Vegas?

Related:

• EVE Fanfest 2022 Announcement
• EVE Fanfest 2022 site
• EVE Fanfest 2022 forum thread
• Buy Tickets Now

The View From Delve as YC123 Draws Towards an End

YC123, the 123rd year since the Youli Conference, which marked the founding of CONCORD and the establishment of the current status quo of the empires of New Eden, opened with null sec space locked in a titanic war.  The second day of the year saw one of the biggest battles ever witnessed in the star cluster as the system of M2-XFE again became the place where many titans were destroyed.

That battle was at the end of a crescendo of spectacular, trillion ISK clashes in Delve that set world records.  October of YC122 saw thousands of ships destroyed and trillions of ISK vaporized in the vacuum of virtual space.

To put those ISK amounts into some context, using a scale I saw somebody using to make a very dumb political point, a million seconds ago was less than two weeks in the past, a billion seconds ago George H. W. Bush was still president of the United States, and a trillion seconds adds up to over 30K years, which would put us back in the late stone age when Fred Flintstone worked in a stone quarry and attended meetings of the Loyal Order of Water Buffalo.

So a trillion ISK is kind of a lot, and to commit that much ISK in assets across multiple battles takes some stamina.

The from late April of this year until the beginning of August, just three months back now, the Imperium holdings in Delve were just the O-EIMK constellation.

O-EIMK Constellation from late April forward

That was the great stalemate, where the might of the Imperium, focused in such a small area proved to be more than PAPI could manage.  There was a lot of talk about being contained and the threat of blockading the constellation by camping the NPC stations in Delve, but the will of PAPI as a coalition wasn’t up to the task.  Only Legacy Coalition had real skin in the game, having committed themselves to live in Imperium space.

On August 2nd, at the start of week 57 of the war, PAPI made one last attack on the Imperium stronghold, then started unanchoring structures even before the fighting was done.  By the end of week 57 of the war all of the ihubs in Delve were back in Imperium hands and the clean up of PAPI structures was well under way.

The war cost a lot in ISK, but there were other casualties.  The online user count suffered, especially towards the was entered its second summer.

Over the timeline of the war

While the PCU recovered as both sides reoriented themselves, it remains below where it was before the war started.  Some put blame on CCP and their economic starvation plan for that.  But a lot of us are also tired out after more than a year of war.

And now, in Delve, normalcy has returned.

The view from Delve

After many months of having content on our doorstep, of minor clashes happening multiple times daily just a gate or two away, it is kind of quiet.  People rat.  People mine.  Somebody in a Rorqual gets tackled about once a day and Delve 911 lights up.  The intel channels are active and some of the usual suspects from before the war appear now and then.

I went on an op last week, the first op I had been on in over a month, that was set to blow up a Fortizar in Cloud Ring.  As I got into fleet and the FC asked us to set our destination to J5A-IX I groaned a bit and the thought of that journey.  But once I adjusted my route settings to include friendly Ansiblexes, which is a hugely underrated feature in my opinion, it was just seven gates away.

A seriously excellent feature

The Eye of Terror Mk. IV was setup and in business, its Ansiblex highway ready to take me from Cloud Ring down to Period Basis or across Querious and into Catch, the last being a new outpost for the coalition since the war.

New Eden with Imperium space highlighted in red

It isn’t all peace and crabbing.  The combat pilots who still crave action are out with the various SIGs and squads making sure the rest of null sec, the bloc formerly known as PAPI, remembers that we’re still around and looking for revenge.  Meanwhile, our enemies have fragmented somewhat.  They have reset some of their blue standings and some of their own frictions are coming to the surface.

War will come again to null sec.  But for right now Delve is a pretty quiet place.

Also, as an aside, I made that “The View from 1DQ1-A” image with the intent of making a New Eden version of the famous (to those of us of the right age) cover from the New Yorker, View of the World from 9th Avenue.  However, my limited artistic skills haven’t gotten me very far.

The Crimson Harvest Returns to EVE Online

Halloween festivities have arrived in New Eden as CCP with the return of the Crimson Havest event.  Regarded by some as one of the better annual events, it is arriving a bit late this year, possibly due to the data center upgrades being performed by CCP earlier this week.

The Return of the Crimson Harvest

The Crimson Harvest comes along with other treats, all of which are included under the Halloween Horrors banner.

This year players will be able to choose which side of the event they wish to support.

EVE’s premiere Blood Raider seasonal event has begun once again, starting today and running until 9 November! This year, Capsuleers will be met in battle by the forces of the Order of St. Tetrimon, an Amarr religious order dedicated to the preservation of the scriptures of the faith. Join the Order in their campaign to drown this sanguine spectacle in laserfire, or for the first time ever take the side of the Blood Raiders, venerating the Harvest and painting New Eden in crimson!

Somebody will side with the Blood Raiders I am sure.  You get to pick which side in The Agency.

Sites for the event show up throughout New Eden, but some locations are better than others according to the patch notes.  Here are the details:

• Crimson Gauntlet and Tetrimon Base combat sites can be found in most areas of space. These sites should be approached with caution, and capsuleers are advised to fly a battlecruiser, battleship, heavy assault cruiser, or even more powerful vessels if they wish to investigate these locations. Rewards for looting the battleship NPCs found at the end of the sites include items that can be traded for isk, skins, boosters, clothing and more!
• Crimson Harvest Network Node and Tetrimon Network Node data sites are also appearing across New Eden. These hacking sites contain network node structures that can be accessed for more great rewards!
• Advanced versions of the combat and hacking sites can be found within the areas containing the most heated fighting between Blood Raider and Tetrimon forces: the Blood Raider controlled systems within the Delve region and the low security systems within the Derelik region. These advanced sites are rarer and more challenging than the standard versions of the sites but they provide much greater rewards. Bringing a friend or two helps reduce the risk immensely, but beware of other capsuleers who may be searching for the same loot!
• The most elusive and valuable strongholds of the Blood Raiders and Order of Tetrimon can only be found by obtaining a rare escalation from the advanced combat sites.

In addition there are the now traditional login rewards running during the event.

Crimson Harvest Rewards

The prizes include skill points, training accelerators, SKINs, and some fireworks.  As usual, Omega accounts get all the prizes, while Alpha accounts only get the top row.  Be sure to log in every day if you want to collect them all.

In addition, the popular Trick or Treat PvP flag has been set for the event, which boosts the drop rate for items for ships destroyed in PvP, with the dial being set to 90%.

More loot on the field

This will no doubt make some pilots quite happy.  Be extra careful flying your freighter through Uedama, the suicide gank capital of New Eden.

There are also various discounts on upgrading to Omega which include SKINs as well as some event theme SKINs returning to the in-game store.  There is also a a destroyer focused Proving Grounds event running that features boosts to Stasis Webifier range, Nosferatu and Energy Neutralizer strength, and Laser turret damage just to maintain the Blood Raider theme.

In addition to all of that, the patch notes also show that CCP is still adjusting the CRAB beacons introduced with last week’s update, with rewards and the requirements to build the beacons being changed up.

There was also an exploit notification posted about CRAB beacons.  Don’t get caught doing that trick now.  CCP is watching.  (Also, another reminder that players will find every flaw in CCP’s plans.)

Related:

• CCP – Halloween Horrors Announcement
• CCP – Patch Notes

Seven Years of Reavers

Another year has flown past, so fast that I missed the actual anniversary date, which is October 15th.  But I am still in the right month.

Reavers forum bee

I have done a series of anniversary posts about the SIG, noting what we have been up to each year.  Those past posts:

• A Year of Reavers
• Two Years of Reavers
• Three Years of Reavers
• Four Years of Reavers
• Five Years of Reavers
• Six Years of Reavers

Seven years is not an exceptionally long period of time in a game that is rounding the corner and headed towards its nineteenth anniversary.  There are corporations and alliances that have lasted nearly as long.  Goonswarm Federation, the CONDI version, is past the eleven year mark, and is predecessors go back to 2005.

SIG and squads though, they can be more transitory.  They are groups that do not exist strictly within the framework of the game.  EVE Online doesn’t know my various affiliations in that regard.

Some are almost stolid or venerable.  CapSwarm or GSOL or Corps Diplomatique are part of the framework of the organization, legs of the stool that keep Fat Bee from sprawling on the floor.

Others are more mercurial.  Some rise up due to a specific situation, then fade when the crisis has passed.  Others rise and fall only to return again later.  Some rise and fall with amazing rapidity.  I think there was a point where Bomberwaffe was getting purged and reformed every few moths.

The key for these groups seems to be the leadership and a core group of players who have bought in on the mission.  Black Ops and MiniLuv seem very consistent.  Liberty Squad fell when its leadership went off on a different adventure.  Bomberwaffer was mercurial because DBRB was running it, and mercurial is his middle name.

And in all that Reavers abide.

We are not as active as we once were.  There were a lot of ops on that first year summary as we deployed behind enemy lines.  This last year has been less active… at least as a group.

There was, after all, a giant war going on for most of the past 12 months where most of the rest of null sec grouped up and attacked us.  There was plenty to do on the home front, and with Asher being the Imperium sky marshal he couldn’t necessarily take us all off once more into hostile space for weeks at a time.

But still, we did some things.  We robbed some space banks when that became a thing.  We setup out in Catch and ran some ops with The Initiative to help put pressure on Brave and other Legacy alliances.  Eventually they abandoned the region and tried to live in our space.  But at the time Progodlegend accused Asher of abandoning the war.

Asher’s traveling trouble in Catch at Christmas

Of course, in the end, we know who really abandoned the war, undercutting his allies by starting to unachor structures even as they were making one last assault on 1DQ1-A.

A bunch of new groups formed up in the Imperium during the war, and some old ones revived. I joined a couple, flew with some more when they called for backup, but Reavers remains my home group.  Even when we aren’t officially doing something, it is a place where Asher can find some people to pick up a task that needs to be done.

I ended up in a Damnation boosting for one of the super fleets during the first battle of M2-XFE because Asher put out the call for help in our channel.

My Damnation in the the thick of our supers

I could have just stayed in a Rokh and gotten on a dozen more hostile titan kills, but sometimes you go where you are needed.

Furthermore, it is not uncommon to see names I recognize from Reavers now further up in the ranks of the coalition, punishment for showing competence in the face of need.

And our Mumble channel remains active.  I mentioned the anniversary earlier in the week, linking one of our early super kills, and there were people online who were there and remembered those early ops.

Since the end of the war things have been quiet.  I haven’t logged into EVE Online much at all over the weeks since then.  I think a lot of people are tired, and there is rebuilding to be done and ISK to be earned to build up reserves for the next war.

But eventually something will come up.  Some of our groups are already out in hostile space shooting our recent foes.  We may ride again when the time is right.

Our favorite ship and SKIN

The early days of Reavers, when we were out blowing up hostile titans in build and the Imperium was denying our existence (there is Progodlegend again) represent some good memories in New Eden.

An explosion from 2014

We will have to wait and see where we end up next.

The Summon the Swarm Update brings CRABs and Tax Changes to EVE Online

The previously announced capital ship ratting enhancement has finally arrived in New Eden.  With the Summon the Swarm update the CONCORD Rogue Analysis Beacons (CRAB) can now be built and deployed in the game. (“Crab” is the in-game vernacular for somebody who rats or mines or otherwise focuses on gaining wealth, with “crabbing” being the verb.)

Calling all CRABs

According to the patch notes these new deployables, which can only be activated from capital ships, have four phases of operation:

• 1 – Deployment
  • Anchoring III required to deploy, with restrictions in deployment locations.
  • Limited to Null and Low Security space.
  • Activation delay: 20 seconds
  • Maximum lifetime: 1 hour
  • Shield / Armor / Structure: 50,000 HP / 50,000 HP / 50,000 HP
• 2 -Linking
  • Once deployed, it will be globally visible via the Overview for anyone to warp to.
  • After its initial Activation phase, it can then be Linked to by pilots in the following ships: Carrier, Dreadnought, Supercarrier, Titan.
  • For the ship that begins the linking phase, it will be locked in place in space for a duration of four minutes.
  • While linking, the following will be in effect: Tether Blocked (Debuff), Cloaking Disrupted (Debuff), Warp Drive Disabled (Debuff), Resistance Bonus of 10% (Buff to all resistance profiles, Shield/Armor/Structure).
  • After linking the above four statuses will clear after a duration of 60 seconds.
• 3 – Scanning
  
  • After Linking, the CRAB will begin to broadcast a signal in the solar system that will attract the attention of Rogue Drone NPCs.
  • When Rogue Drones are in proximity of the CRAB, they will block the scanning progress and attack hostile threats in proximity to the CRAB.
  • The Rogue Drones must be destroyed to clear the perimeter so that the CRAB can continue its Scanning.
  • After 10 minutes of uninterrupted scanning, the CRAB will complete its analysis of the Rogue Drones and will have salvaged enough technology to reward players with new Mutaplasmids.
• 4 – Reward
  
  • After successful scanning, the CRAB will have mutaplasmids from Rogue Drones inside of its cargohold .
  • For two minutes after scanning, the ship that initiated the CRAB during its linking phase will have exclusive access to the cargo hold of the CRAB.
  • After these two minutes pass, the CRAB will self-destruct with the generated mutaplasmids always safely being found in the wreckage (it will be a 100% chance to drop its contents when it self-destructs).

In order to keep these new modules under control so they don’t get run constantly and lead to some sort of economic overload, CCP has added the following items to limit their use.

• Solar systems have a new property, “Signal Interference”.
  • Using the new CONCORD Rogue Analysis Beacon repeatedly in the same solar system will saturate a system with interference preventing the CRAB from being able to broadcast a signal that can be isolated. In practical terms, the CRAB will not be able to be linked to if interference is too high as the Rogue Drones cannot locate it.
  • Over time, Signal Interference will decay back down to a quiescent state. This state of decay is always ongoing and not attached to server downtime.
  • The time for a full recovery of a solar system with maximum signal interference is approximately 25 hours.
  • The User Interface has been updated to show Signal Interference in locations where appropriate.
• Capsuleers now have a reserve of Complex Encryption Qubits (CEQs).
  • CEQs are used when initiating a link to the CONCORD Rogue Analysis Beacon.
  • Over time CEQs will regenerate back to their full reserve, and the regeneration is always ongoing and not attached to server downtime.
  • The time for a full regeneration of CEQs is approximately 22 hours.
  • As CEQs are only required by the CRAB, your current reserves will be visible in a tooltip on mouse-over of the CRAB in your inventory.

Blueprints for the new modules are now available from CONCORD and DED LP Stores.  A 5-Run BPC costs 20,000,000 ISK & 20,000 LP.

These rewards from CRABs include new Rogue Drone Mutaplasmid technology.  These ew Mutaplasmids come in four variations (Durability, Firepower, Navigation, Projection). Each variation will favor positively one attribute, with all other attributes having unknown results.

They also are sorted out by drone type, with heavy, medium, light, and sentry drone variations.  In addition, there are two wildcard modifiers, radical variations, for drones and fighters.

In order to use modified drones players will need to train up the new drone skill introduced with last week’s patch. CCP changed the skill name from ‘Rogue Drone Specialization’ to ‘Mutated Drone Specialization’ with this update.

CRABs are the headline for this patch, but there is another sizable change in the patch notes as well.  The three month tax holiday for NPC stations, which came in with The Grand Heist update back in July, has concluded.

The new base tax rates will be:

• Sales Tax: 8%
• Brokers Fee: 3%

The change to base, unmodified tax rates are now (holiday -> post holiday (pre-holiday):

• Sales Tax: 2.5% -> 8.0% (Previously 5.0%)
• Brokers Fee: 2.5% -> 3.0% (Previously 5.0%)
• Total Taxes: 5.0% -> 11.0% (Previously 10.0%)

The minimum achievable tax rates for NPC stations, modified by skills, standings, etc, are now (holiday -> post holiday (pre-holiday):

• Sales Tax: 1.125% -> 3.6% (Previously 2.25%)
• Brokers Fee: 0.5% -> 1.0% (Previously 3.0%)
• Total Taxes: 1.625% -> 4.6% (Previously 5.25%)

Buying things in NPC stations is now more expensive, and the shift to favoring Sales Tax over Broker’s fees means that player owned structures like the Tranquility Trading Tower in Perimeter will no longer be as attractive for sellers or lucrative for owners.

So those are the big changes with today’s update.  There are a few minor fixes… well, maybe not minor when it comes to the MacOS client… but nothing that changes game design.

Related:

• CCP – Summon the Swarm Update Announcement
• CCP – Tax Restructuring Announcement
• CCP – Patch Notes

EVE Online is Back with Native MacOS Support

Back in the day CCP used to support a native MacOS client.  It was finicky… I once ran it on the wrong MacOS version and got some very odd results… but it mostly worked.  Then Apple swapped over to Intel processors and it became possible for CCP to just use WINE emulation to run the Windows client on Macs.  There was some extra work to do to support that, including contributing code to the WINE project, but it was a lot less effort than maintaining two clients.

And then recently Apple left Intel for their own new M1 processors which led to EVE Online MacOS players potentially being unsupported if they purchased the new machines.

This swap by Apple also prompted Intel to launch a petulant “Apple Sux!” ad campaign because I guess they think Apple will never ever buy another chip from them again or something.  But that is another story.

So CCP was left with a choice.  Given that they are still optimistically talking about growth and working on the new player experience, they opted not to ditch almost 10% of the PC market, which meant going back to native MacOS support.

While 10% might sound like a small loss, CCP knows how many MacOS users they have, so it might be worth it to them.  Also, the 10% number vastly understates the number of systems that might actually be able to run EVE Online.  There are a lot of base model Windows boxes sitting in enterprises and on desks all over the world that aren’t even in the running.  When I go to visit the sprawling medical center where my doctor resides, I walk by dozens of PCs… one at every reception desk, one at every nurse’s desk… they all little desks now because the need to access their PCs… one in every exam room, two in my doc’s office, and more in spots I whose function I could not identify.  And not even one of them is likely ever to load up any video game more complicated that Solitaire… and only that if the IT department hasn’t purged it.

Anyway, the path back to a native client culminated with yesterday update and the new EVE Online X Apple era, whatever that means.

Times Apple? Ten Apple? Kiss Apple? I don’t know

Post update there is a transition from the old WINE version to the new native version which is covered in detail in the patch notes.

To celebrate the update and transition back to native support, CCP has some login rewards for us that run for five days.

Included in the rewards are the usual skill points and SKINs, but there are special Quafe Zero Green Apple flavor SKINs.  While they aren’t the classic old blue Quafe SKINs, they are still good.

And the is also some Quafe Zero Green Apple flavor boosters to go with the event as well.  Per the packaging:

Capsuleers can now enjoy Quafe Zero Green Apple, the new flavor of New Eden’s favorite performance drink with the potency of a booster!
A taste explosion that will help avoid ship explosions, the Green Apple edition of Quafe Zero provides the benefits of increased agility and power with Zero drawbacks!

Benefits:
+5% Agility, +5% Capacitor Recharge Rate. Duration: 1 hour.

Quafe Zero Green Apple is fortified with a proprietary mix of performance enhancers, oxidizers, and natural fruit juices designed to push your abilities to the limit.

The secret is in our patented fulleroferrocene nanite delivery system, which attaches our exclusive pro-capsuleer formula directly to the neurons you want, not the ones you don’t. The result is an immediate and direct boost to your performance, with Zero drawbacks!

For maximum experience overload Quafe Zero Green Apple has been further enhanced with proprietary Quafe nanoparticles responsive to popular brands of subcranial nanocontroller personal enhancements, such as the LD-X100 range from Lai Dai!

So make sure to login and collect your SKINs, skill points, and boosters.

Yesterday’s patch also made some changes to the Dynamic Bounty System thresholds, whatever that means, and continued the iterating on the new skill window and skill plan functionality.  They have already fixed the most egregious issues, like the huge amount of empty space, but there is still tuning to do.

And a new skill was added, Rogue Drone Specialization, which is required for using the new modified rogue drones.

Not present in the update was the capital PvE ratting mechanics, previously announced as Summon the Swarm, which are still brewing on the test server.  That still needs some work.

Related:

• CCP – EVE X Apple Announcement
• CCP – Patch Notes
• CCP – General Feedback forum thread
• CCP – Known Issues forum thread
• CCP – General Feedback forum thread – Mac Edition
• CCP – Known Issues forum thread – Mac Edition
• TNG – EVE Online has a New Mac Client

The September MER Shows EVE Online in a Post War Mining Boom

CCP was out early this month, getting the September MER posted before the end of the first full week.

EVE Online nerds harder

Unfortunately we have another MER with a missing region, and I don’t just mean Pochven, which has yet to make the cut.  This time around Period Basis did not get included.  Regions have gone missing in the report in the past and that is apparently a small enough error in CCP’s eyes that they won’t bother with a revision.  Period Basis isn’t a huge region, so its absence won’t tilt the numbers dramatically.  Just know that it isn’t there.

Mining

I expect that we will see Delve in the top five for September and that overall mining value will go up with the changes we saw in last week’s update, where ice availability was doubled and Mercoxit spawns were increased.

-From my August MER Review

I made that minor prediction last month and it seems to have come to pass.  It is nice to be right now and then, even with a gimme prediction.

Overall mining output jumped from 21.95 trillion ISK value mined in August to 32.77 trillion ISK value mined in September.

When it comes to the most productive regions, Delve did indeed bubble up into the top five as expected, landing in the number two position.

1. Genesis – 2.15 trillion
2. Delve – 1.80 trillion
3. The Kalevala Expanse – 1.69 trillion
4. Vale of the Silent – 1.51 trillion
5. Fountain – 1.39 trillion
6. The Forge – 1.38 trillion
7. Metropolis – 1.11 trillion
8. Domain – 1.07 trillion
9. Malpais – 908 billion
10. Syndicate – 874 billion

The odd one on the list is Genesis, an empire region with a mix of high and low sec systems.  According to Reddit, Dock Workers and some allies are setting up a mining empire there.  But overall null sec regions now represent half the list, a change from June 2020 after the big mining nerf, when 9 of the 10 top regions were high sec.

Meanwhile, mineral prices kept to their decline, no doubt helps along with the boost in Mercoxit spawns which should have helped the morphite shortage.

Sep 2021 – Economic Indices

Since the value of minerals mined is a function of the market price, 30 trillion ISK in ore mined in September is still less ore than 30 trillion ISK mined two years back when the price was very low.  We will see if the increased output can keep pace with the falling prices.

Production

Things still have not kicked up much on the production front since the big industry changes back in April.  It still doesn’t make sense to produce many of the ships whose requirements were changed, capital ships especially, so most people are getting by on what they had before the update.

September 2021 – Production vs Destruction vs Mined

There was a bit of a post-change surge as it looked like there was going to be an epic end battle to the war, and that has carried on somewhat with the Imperium rebuilding its regions while Brave and TEST try to settle down into new space far from Delve.

CCP showed production value overall at 101.98 trillion ISK, up about 5 trillion over August.  I expect that might settle down a bit once the post-war rebuilding effort cools off.

The top regions for production in September were:

1. The Forge – 19.26 trillion
2. Delve – 11.47 trillion
3. Lonetrek – 7.44 trillion
4. The Citadel – 7.38 trillion
5. Vale of the Silent – 7.28 trillion
6. Sinq Laison – 3.95 trillion
7. Fade – 3.85 trillion
8. Domain – 3.07 trillion
9. The Kalevala Expanse – 2.99 trillion
10. Placid – 2.81 trillion

As always, The Forge, Lonetrek, and The Citadel all feed the Jita market and are always in the top five.  Delve was up slightly in amount, but otherwise stuck in second place due to the rebuilding effort in the region.

Destruction

The was was over in August, but there was still plenty of cleanup work going on… I was on two Keepstar kills in September… the war was mostly over and so the destruction level started to trend down a bit, dropping to 31.41 trillion ISK, about 5 trillion down from August.  The top regions were:

1. The Citadel – 2.01 trillion
2. Vale of the Silent – 1.74 trillion
3. The Forge – 1.66 trillion
4. Delve – 1.35 trillion
5. Metropolis – 1.34 trillion
6. Lonetrek – 1.31 trillion
7. Genesis – 1.09 trillion
8. Esoteria – 1.07 trillion
9. Sinq Laison – 1.04 trillion
10. Geminate – 995 billion

The Citadel is up top, being home to Uedama, the favored ganking choke point in high sec since the Trigalvians took Niarja away from us last year.  It is the place where Catalyst destroyers blow up.

According to the data in the MER, 55.8% of all Catalysts that died in EVE in September with a player on the killmail did so in Uedama. And on 34.8% of those killmails, GSF pilots got the final blow. #tweetfleet

— Noizy (@noizygamer) October 8, 2021

MiniLuv keeps itself busy.

Vale of the Silent is home to a low grade conflict, while The Forge was more ganks.

Delve is on the list, mostly due to remaining clean up and an opportunistic period during the rebuild.  You have to hold the ihub in a system for 35 days before you can start putting up Ansiblex jump gates.  Once up, travel becomes considerably safer.  During the wait for that a few groups took advantage of people gating for travel and got in some kills.

Trade

ISK keeps New Eden going, but trade was down a bit in September, ringing in at a 607 trillion ISK total, down  40 trillion from August.  The top regions for trade were:

1. The Forge – 449 trillion (Jita)
2. Domain – 43.55 trillion (Amarr)
3. Delve – 16.73 trillion (Imperium)
4. Sinq Laison – 15 trillion (Dodixie)
5. Lonetrek – 14.74 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
6. Metropolis – 9.27 trillion (Hek)
7. Heimatar – 7.34 trillion (Rens)
8. The Kalevala Expanse – 6.21 trillion (PanFam)
9. Vale of the Silent – 4.98 trillion (Fraternity)
10. Essence – 4.34 trillion (Gallente High Sec)

Those are the same ten regions in the same order as August, so things have carried on as before.  Some were down a bit, a few were up, but it was mostly the same.

ISK Faucets

And then there is where the money all comes from.

Sep 2021 – Faucet end of the chart big chart

That is hard to read, I know, even if you view it full size.  Somebody at CCP has much better eyes than mine if they’re making charts with such tiny print.

But the current order of things stayed about the same in September, with commodities remaining the top faucet, bringing in 35.7 trillion ISK.  NPC bounties and ESS payouts combined stayed about the same as last month, ringing in at 29.47 trillion ISK.  I suspect the Period Basis numbers would have bumped that up a bit more.

Sep 2021 – Top Sinks and Faucets Over Time

Going into September NPC bounties and commodities were running neck and neck, and then CCP had an in-game event and commodities saw a spike as people turned in their drops.

Missing from that top ten chart are Redeemed ISK Tokens, which saw a huge spike previously, enough for that to break into the chart, knocking blueprints off the list.  Well, now that most people have redeemed their tokens, it is off and blueprints are back on.  I guess that means the chart isn’t really the “top ten sinks and faucets over time” but “this months top ten sinks and faucets and their three year history.”

For commodities, you can see how they are broken out on this chart.

Sep 2021 – Top Commodity Items Over Time

The event items fell into the Overseer’s Personal Effects line, boosting that up as the month closed out.  Triglavian Data, which are drops from Abyssal Pockets, fell off a bit during that as people swapped to the more lucrative event path.

As for NPC bounties, Delve continued its come back, topping the list for September.

1. Delve – 2.22 trillion (Imperium)
2. Vale of the Silent – 2.11 trillion (Fraternity)
3. Outer Passage – 1.45 trillion (TEST)
4. The Kalevala Expanse – 1.39 trillion (PanFam)
5. Fountain – 1.34 trillion (Imperium)
6. Malpais – 1.06 trillion (PanFam)
7. Tenal – 956 billion (Fraternity)
8. Querious – 951 billion (Imperium)
9. Oasa – 911 billion (Fraternity)
10. Tribute – 891 billion (Fraternity)

The null sec blocs are back to crabbing to prepare for the next big war.  It is the necessary prerequisite if your going to burn trillions of ISK a month in a campaign.

Related:

• CCP – September Monthly Economic Report
• Reddit – MER Discussion
• TNG – The September MER – Ship Losses
• TNG – A Look at DOTLAN Data for Sep 2021