The Great Outpost Conversion Commences

Then end of captureable stations is upon us.

We have been waiting for this since at least EVE Fanfest 2017, when it was discussed in detail, and possibly since the last game update in YC118 (December 2016), when the last outpost was deployed in null sec, or even since EVE Vegas 2014, when CCP Seagull spoke in the keynote about the roadmap of changes coming to EVE Online.

Time to drag this old slide out again… Are we at stargate construction yet?

CCP has planned for this change, written dev blogs to prepare people, and tried it out a couple of times on the test server.  But today it is happening for real.  All of the capturable stations… or outposts… or whatever they’re supposed to be called… will be converted to faction Fortizar type citadels.  Gone will be the stations that I and many others have grown accustomed to as a way of life in null sec space.

VFK-IV Station goes missing today

There are 1,217 outposts in player owned null sec… including the 8 in Jove space owned by CCP alliances… and CCP started a 3 hour downtime to covert them all into the new faction Fortizars.  That meant processing the contents of the stations, which according to the last dev blog included:

• More than 53,300,000 inventory items.
• More than 75,800 market orders.
• More than 33,000 contracts.
• More than 240,000 bookmarks.

Each item needs to be processed and placed into the correct corresponding new citadel.  Easy enough, as it is all just information in tables in a database.  But there is a lot of information and it has to be processed in a timely fashion and correctly, because mistakes will make players scream.

The new Fortizars will be special.  Some will have the look of old station models and are named after stations of note from the history of New Eden.  Players will be able to pack them up, move them, sell them, whatever.  And, of course, they can now be destroyed as well.  But each comes pre-configured with special rigs that make them more valuable if left in place, as packing them up will destroy these rigs and there will be no replacements.

The main beneficiaries of these new faction Fortizars contain some names you probably expect.  The final tally over at DOTLAN was:

Alliances sorted by Outpost Ownership

TEST alliance is at the top of the chart, with 102, having reaped the rewards of throwing Pandemic Legion out of Providence last month.  ProviBloc got the sovereignty, but TEST got the stations.

Goonswarm is second with 80 outposts, mostly in Delve, Querious, and adjacent regions.

The skill urself alliance was the beneficiary of the collapse of xXDeathXx in the east, gobbling up stations as they fell back to find a spot to crash on the couch of Legacy Coalition.

Brothers of Tangra is a renter alliance owned by NCDot, which itself is also on the top ten.  Combined the two add up to 106, so they win the crown for most outposts total I guess.  From there on down the rest of the top ten looks like the usual suspects.

There is a post up on Reddit that includes a spreadsheet listing the final ownership of all 1,217 stations if you are interested. (And yes, I will continue to use the words “station” and “outpost” interchangeably for as long as I continue to write.)  That indicates that TEST actually has 104, as certain older outposts don’t get counted on DOTLAN.  However, that still wasn’t enough to beat NCDot.

This all, for residents of null sec, is a big change.  We have mostly adapted to Upwell structures.  Delve is positively littered with them, to the point that I had to remove moon mining structures from my travel overview when I was last back as they were blotting out everything else displayed.  But the stations remained and were still used now and again.  The disposition of all of these special Fortizars will no doubt be a topic of interest for some time as ones in famous locations get packed up or destroyed.

And, of course, there are still stations in NPC null sec.  Station undock games will continue to be a thing.

But one big side effect of this change will be the unlocking of a lot of ships and items that had been stored in stations.  Everything left over in a hostile station which a player could not access will wind up in asset safety and be delivered a low sec NPC station where the owner can recover it for a fee.

This raises some questions.  How much of this will end up on the market and will it have any impact?  Will people come back to the game now that they can get their stuff back?  Will people setup and sell in place or haul stuff back to Jita?  And, since the NPC stations where these assets will end up are not a secret, will there be any effort to interdict some of this recovered wealth?

I suspect the impact will of this will be minimal… unlikely to outweigh all the assets being lost in Abyssal pockets over the last week… we need a dev blog on that… but I will be interested to see the Monthly Economic Report next month just to see.

Personally, I did not have much in the way of assets trapped in hostile stations.  As noted in blog posts over two years in age, I was able to pack up and haul most of my stuff out of Tribute just ahead of the invasion during the Casino War.  Likewise, the attacking forces obliged us by leaving Deklein mostly unwatched for weeks after we had pulled back to Saranen, so I was able to ship out nearly everything from there as well, leaving jump clones behind to fly out a couple of ships I did not want to repackage.

I have a few ships trapped in stations in Pure Blind, but that is about it.  Not much of a haul.

Anyway, we shall see.  According to the forum thread tracking the conversion, things we successfully and the server was back online and accepting connections at 13:56 UTC.  There was also an update blog post which included a link to the patch notes, as there were a few changes to Into the Abyss content that went in today as well, including a loot balance pass for abyssal pockets.  So there we go.

Of course, the job seeming done and it actually being done can be two different things.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find that an emergency downtime or two were needed today.

It will be odd, being tethered on something that looks like one of the old outposts.  And Alliance logos on them as well?

Unbelievably, Brave comes out on top in GE-8JV. 7o pic.twitter.com/k4rkJweswp

— Brave Newbies (@BraveNewbies) June 5, 2018

But it will soon be seen as the norm as we move on.

Next on the chopping block; player owned outposts, the POSes of old.  Right now all they really to is hold cyno beacons and jump bridge modules as well as giving bridging titans a place to hide in hostile space.  The writing is on the wall for the good old POS.

Fortizar Down in Hakonen Again

Round three of the battle to secure a Fortizar in Hakonen ended pretty much the same way that the previous two attempts did, with the Fortizar in question exploding.  I sat on grid to watch it after most everybody else has stood down.

One might well paraphrase Wellington for this fight.  “We deployed it in the same old way and they blew it up in the same old way.”

The now familiar pattern started as the timer drew down.  They first arrived with Machariels and Abaddons supported by Apostles for triage.

Battleships spreading out on arrival

Then a cyno went up and the mass of super carriers and Apostles, with a few titans in support, jumped into the system.

Hostile supers on grid

They in turn put fighters and drones on the Fortizar, stopping the timer at 13m 51s, a point from which the repair cycle never budged.

Timer stopper

We had capitals on stand-by, but did not bring them out to face the super capital gauntlet again.  No aggressive drops of dreadnoughts in hope of knocking out a few supers happened.  We stuck with sub caps for this round.

I was with the ECM Burst fleet again, hovering on a perch in my Atron, waiting to be warped in on hostiles to break their target locks.

Again my Atron swoops down upon the foe

After a few runs my security status was down to -7.1.  I am no longer safe to wander through high sec.  I will have to do quite a bit of ratting at some later date to fix that.

Our main striking force was a pair of Typhoon fleets whose progress I could mark from my perch by following the explosions.

Typhoons blowing up, they didn’t align in time

At one point both Typhoon fleets warped in on the far side of the fight, putting the hostiles between themselves and the Fortizar.  I put my camera on the fleet as it began to erupt in a near continuous series of explosions.

They did not stay on grid for long, warping off after taking quite a few losses in exchange for a few Machariels.  Our defense was called off shortly thereafter.

The fight itself was not plagued by as much time dilation as the previous two rounds, something a people on coms were quick to attribute to the fact that many of the groups in the conflict declared war on each other since the last fight.  That was alleged to lighten the load on Crime Watch, though the fact that there were 800 fewer people in local for the fight seemed a more likely explanation to me.  The war decs will likely just mean less worry about gate guns firing on people.

The battle report reflects the fact that we spent less time on grid fighting, with total losses adding up to less than 10% of the second fight and only 25% that of the first.

Battle Report Header for Round Three

The ratio of losses remained close to the same 70/30 split of the previous two fights, so we are consistent on that front.  We clearly lost the ISK war, but we drew some blood.

As a skeptical line member, whose only insight into overall strategy is what he reads in the papers, I am not sure where this Fortizar plan is headed.  It was reported that the fight managed to cover the deployment of a couple more Astrahus citadels in hostiles space.  These “roach motels,” as they have been dubbed, are set to be open to anybody, so if you want to camp in Tribute or Vale of the Silent, there are now rest stops where you can tether and repair or dock up for the night.

Attempts to return the favor by dropping citadels in Delve have been thwarted so far.

And even as we were fighting last night, another Fortizar was anchoring in Hakonen.

Aptly named “Another One”

This Fortizar is different in two ways.

First, it is in a slightly different location, since it was deployed while the one that just died was also going online.  Everybody will have to make new bookmarks.

Second, it is set to anchor and hit its 15 minute repair cycle during EUTZ, giving out European brethren a bite at the apple and some content of their own.  Will Jay Amazingness and the European members of the Imperium fare any better than we in the USTZ have done?  I suppose we’ll get the answer about two hours after this post goes live.  The fun is supposed to start at some point after 18:00 EVE time.

Anyway, as the line member space tourist, I’ll keep logging on for these fights.  It is what I signed up to do.  Join the Imperium and see New Eden!

Another Day, Another Fortizar Down in Hakonen

Last night was the return match.  After Monday’s fight another Fortizar was put down in the same spot in Hakonen.

Second Fortizar coming online

There was a Fireside chat scheduled before operations were supposed to begin, which was marred by network issues that dropped a large portion of the audience off the server.  “Something, something, fleets will be going up…” was about all I got.

Fleets did go up.  There was a ping for two Typhoon fleets and a Jackdaw fleet as well as a call for capital ships to be ready.  And there were a few special fleets forming up, including another small ECM Burst fleet, which I joined.

We were in the same Atrons with the same plan.  Since the Fortizar had been dropped in the same position as the previous one, our perch bookmarks were all still viable as well, though I went out beforehand and burned out to make a few more.

We formed up, Atrons were handed out to the people who hadn’t been on the Monday op, and went over the “how to” of the fleet.

It looked like our bookmarks might be troublesome.  The new ones I burned were a little closer in than the originals and there was a gang of five Raptors zipping around the area, not too far from one of my perches.  They got close enough to another pilot in our fleet to decloak and blow him up.  As they edged towards me I weighed the option of decloaking and warping off versus just sitting tight.  I chose the latter, which turned out okay.

The timer was counting down on the Fortizar, our fleets were undocking, and the enemy subcap fleets started landing on grid.  There looked to be two Machariel fleets and an Abaddon fleet, supported by Apostles.  Once on grid they lit a cyno and more Apostles jumped in along with a fleet of super carriers with four titans for support.  The arrival of these fleets and their supporting ships drove the roving third parties off and my perch was never in peril after that.

As the timer hit zero there were about 2,600 people in system and the time dilation was very light.  And then everybody, launched fighters, dropped drones, or otherwise opened fire and tidi quickly got down to 10%.

Opening the fight around the fort

Our little ECM Burst contingent did not have as much to do this time around.  The battleship fleets ended up a toe-to-toe slugging match, running smart bombs to clear drones and fighters.  In this situation we had to take care where we dropped lest we end up annoying our side as much as our foes.

So there were runs on the periphery and runs where we had to warp off without running our busts.  We tagged a few people, though some runs were pretty minimal in effect.

Two from my own fleet

The outcome of the Fortizar itself did not seem at all in doubt.  The repair timer was paused by damage just seven seconds into its fifteen minute count down and stayed fixed at that point throughout the fight.

Repair timer paused

So for a while I was mostly sitting on a perch, cloaked up, and able to watch the fight unfold.  Not a bad view.

TEST showed up again with their Nightmare fleet and joined in shooting NCDot, PL, and their assorted allies.  There was a sore temptation to take a shot at one of the Nightmares in the fleet, but we focused on the enemy at hand, leaving other scores to be settled later.

Its like a friend coming to your party with your ex

Then somebody noticed a couple of enemy super carriers warping off in somewhat random directions.  In a battle like this there are always lots of disconnects, and when you get disconnected your ship automatically warps off to a distant spot in space.  However, the ship is still in the game and can be probed down.  Azure and Argent, our FC, had us change fitting to add a warp scrambler and set us off to join in hunting these missing super carriers.

The first was a Nyx.  A Broadsword heavy interdictor had landed on it already and started to tackle it.

Broadsword and the Nyx

He then lit off a cyno and soon some friendly dreadnoughts started landing on grid with the Nyx.  The pilot had reconnected by then and was trying to get himself turned about and back to the relative safety of his fleet.  However, the dreadnoughts neuted out his capacitor as they oped their attack on him.

Nags on grid taking down the Nyx

I managed to get in close enough to get in a few hits… and take a few hits from the smartbomb the Nyx was running… so was on the kill mail.

We went after a second Nyx, but it was down before I arrived on scene, while a third Nyx just managed enter warp to escape as dreadnoughts were landing on it.

That seemed to be about the extent of the disconnect super kills to be had and we headed back to refit and then went to our perches to join back in the main fight.

The situation had changed some since we left.  While the Fortizar still seemed as unlikely to survive as ever, TEST had dropped a ball of dreadnoughts on grid at range to try to long distance volley faxes and super carriers.  Thi caused NCDot and PL to cyno in titans, who turned their doomsday weapons on the dreadnoughts.  The big guns were out and anybody who had not previously seen a doomsday in action got their chance as they shot dread after dread.  TEST ended up sustaining a third of the losses on our side of the battle, about 94 billion ISK, due to dreads being popped.

We only made one more run in to fire our ECM Burst projectors before we were told we could dock up.  I stayed on grid, cloaked up again at one of my perches, so see the Fort explode.  It had been a long fight for a week night, passing the three hour mark, and people were clearly ready to be done.  The hostiles were jumping out of the system even as explosions began to erupt on the doomed citadel.

Flames begin to appear on the Fortizar

The battle itself had about the same exchange rate as Monday night, favoring the foes in about a 70/30 split.  However, looking at the battle report, the total destruction was much greater, with almost three times the ISK destroyed, though only about 300 more ships were blown up.  Throwing in dreads and killing some super carriers no doubt added to the growing ISK total.

Battle report header

There also were not as many random third parties showing up.  The alliance list on Monday was much longer.

And so the battle was over.  I somehow missed getting a PAP link, but I imagine that I will get enough while we’re deployed to not sorely miss one.

The post-battle bit of “story time” where we head a bit about what happened indicated that we had dropped small citadels in Tribute set to come out at the same time as the Fortizar, so the enemy would have to choose.  They chose to kill the Fort, which would have been a major strategic asset to us, but now we have places to hole up in the middle of their territory, places where fleets can linger and dreadnoughts can safe up and wait to drop on targets.

Now we’re building replacements for many of the hulls we lost thanks to the Raitaru and Abzel we have in Hakonen, while the Jita market is booming because of the resupply efforts of both sides.  Now would be a very lucrative time to have a researched Tyhpoon BPO.

That is my own limited view of the battle.  Other reports I have seen so far:

• Imperium News – running timeline of the battle
• Reddit – Battle timeline and summary

And, of course, sitting on a perch, watching the fight, means I have plenty of screen shots.  We shall see when round three comes up.