The Howling Interdictors Update comes to EVE Online

Last year Team Talos brought us the Howling Interceptors update around Halloween.  This year we get Howling Interdictors.

Howling for you

Interdictors are a popular ship in null sec, deploying as they do the warp disruption probes with generate a 20km diameter warp disruption sphere or bubble.   Bubbles are generally a part of any null sec fight as they can keep a hostile fleet from warping off, keeping them from getting away allowing you to shoot them.  Or sometimes you’re in the bubble.  Either way, they are not an option in empire space.

Bubble, bubbles everywhere

The big change is the addition of a new type of probe that can be used by interdictors, the web stasis probe.

Stasis webification probe

Like the modules of the same name, the stasis webification probe will reduce the maximum velocity of any ships within its sphere.  That sphere is half the size of a warp disruption probe, only 10km in diameter, and it has a short warm up duration.

Now to see how it will get used.  I know at least one capsuleer who has wanted this sort of probe, and I guess it might be used as a counter to “kitey bullshit” and other “trash tier tactics,” but we will have to wait an see.

In addition, three of the four interdictor hulls received updates.

The Sabre was passed over, being null sec’s default interdictor.  I know FCs who just call for Sabres rather than interdictors, since that is what you get most of the time anyway.

The Sabre is even endorsed by Permaband

The Eris, a rare sight on the field, received the most changes, most in an effort to make it a bit more nimble.

• CPU increased to 250 tf (was 210)
• Power Grid increased to 71 MW (was 64)
• Max velocity to 316 m/s (was 305)
• Signature radius to 78 m (was 85)
• Mass reduced to 1,100,000 t (was 1,200,000)
• Gallente Destroyer bonus changed to “5% bonus to small hybrid turret rate of fire per level” (was 10% bonus to small hybrid turret optimal range)
• Interdictor bonus changed to “15% reduced mass penalty from armor plates per level” (was 5% bonus to small hybrid turret rate of fire)

The Flycatcher, which you do see out now and again, got a little more CPU and a little more tank, but had its damage bonus locked to kinetic.

• CPU increased to 290 tf (was 280)
• Caldari Destroyer bonus changes to “10% bonus to missile kinetic damage” (was 10% bonus to missile explosion radius)
• Interdictors bonus changed to “10% increased shield HP per level” (was 10% bonus to missile kinetic damage)

And the Heretic, which can be a feature on armor fleets, though you still get Sabres because Sabres, got a little more CPU, Power Grid, and tank.

• CPU increased to 270 tf (was 240)
• PG increased to 70 MW (was 60)
• Amarr Destroyer bonus changed to “10% increased armor HP per level” (was 10% bonus to light missile and rocket max velocity)

In addition to all of that combat interceptors, which were part of the Howling Interceptors changes, were revisited againthis year, getting a 100% boost to the effects of overheating on afterbruners and microwarp drives.  They will go very fast.  CCP is even holding a contest to see how fast people can make them go.

Also along for the ride with this patch are some fixes to improve the viability of the new Triglavian region in New Eden:

• Significantly increased the Standings values gained from killing NPCs related to Triglavian Space
• Corrected Standings incorrectly gained from Rogue Drone content unrelated to Triglavian Space
• Reworked the Triglavian Wormhole site distribution rules
• It is now possible to warp to 0 in Triglavian Wormhole sites
• Increased the time between NPC spawns around Triglavian wormholes
• Increased the drop availability and variety of Triglavian Space Filaments

There are a few other small fixes, but that is the primary content of today’s update.  They have all been appended to the October patch notes.

 

EVE Online Expands Abyssal Sites with Depths of the Abyss

Abyssal Deadspace was introduced a little over two years ago with the Into The Abyss expansion.  This gave players a new PvE experience with five levels of difficulty, random-ish enemies, and a 20 minute hard timer that meant you had to exit by then or lose your ship and your pod when the pocket collapsed.

There were also blueprint copies for Triglavian ships, weapon systems, and ammo to be found, as well as mutaplasmids, which would mutate modules to change their states, possibly making them better, but sometimes making them much worse.

All of which became very popular very quickly, as CCP explained in a presentation at EVE Down Under just a couple of weeks after the expansion launched.

Abyssal Deadspace has continued to be expanded, with more blueprints showing up, different mutaplasmids becoming available, and even an option to run them as a team in three frigates rather than just solo in a cruiser.  And yesterday saw perhaps the biggest boost yet to Abyssal Deadspace content with the Depths of the Abyss update.

Now Live

The details, straight from the updated patch notes:

• New Tranquil (Tier 0) Abyssal Deadspace is now available to provide an easier introduction to Abyssal Deadspace. Whether you’re a new player, or an experienced player looking to try out Abyssal Deadspace for the first time, Tranquil runs are a great way to learn the mechanics of Abyssal Deadspace in a low-pressure environment that can be completed by very inexpensive ships. Tranquil Abyssal Filaments can be obtained through the new player gifts, exploration sites, and in Tier 0 and Tier 1 Abyssal Deadspace.
• New Cataclysmic (Tier 6) Abyssal Deadspace is now available to provide an extreme challenge for elite pilots! Cataclysmic Abyssal Deadspace is perfect for pilots who have mastered all other tiers of the Abyss and are looking for a new challenge to overcome. Cataclysmic Abyssal Deadspace provides even greater rewards than Chaotic Abyssal Deadspace, including being the exclusive source for the new capital module mutaplasmids. Cataclysmic Abyssal Filaments can be obtained from Tier 5 Abyssal Deadspace.
• A new two pilot Destroyer mode is now available for all tiers of Abyssal Deadspace. This mode allows entry by up to two pilots flying Tech 1, Tech 2, and/or Tech 3 Destroyers and requires two Abyssal Filaments for entry.
• New groups of enemies can be found in all tiers of Abyssal Deadspace. These new opponents include new varieties of Triglavians, pirate faction expeditions into the Abyss, and even shadowy CONCORD strike teams who will attack any intruders on sight!
• A new environmental cloud can be found within Abyssal Deadspace: the Tachyon Cloud. This cloud dramatically improves the velocity and maneuverability of ships within its area of effect, but beware the dangers of unexpected high speeds if your ships leaves the cloud pointed in the wrong direction!

Two new tiers, destroyer mode, new enemies, and new space weather is quite a bit.

In addition, there are new capital sized mutaplasmid drops available from Tier 6 Cataclysmic space:

• Warp Scramblers
• Warp Disruptors
• Afterburners
• Microwarpdrives
• Local Armor Repairers
• Local Shield Boosters
• Neutralizers
• Nosferatu
• Siege Modules

So those will be the next hot thing for cap pilots.  I can foresee many officer mods being wrecked in the hope of getting a big bonus on the right stat.

And, finally, some of the standard drops have been reduced in size so you can fit them all in your cargo hold.

• Crystalline Isogen-10: Volume reduced from 0.35m3 to 0.3m3
• Zero-Point Condensate: Volume reduced from 0.25m3 to 0.2m3
• Triglavian Survey Database: Volume reduced from 0.1m3 to 0.01m3

There we go.  CCP has expanded the Abyssal Deadspace content.  We shall see how many dead ships the new tier will create.

Seven Weeks of World War Bee

This past week saw CCP take some official notice of the war.  We didn’t get a dev blog or a news item.  Instead CCP sent out a press email to some gaming sites announcing that $112,000 worth of ships and structures and what not have been destroyed so far in the war which has involved maybe 130,000 players/accounts/capsuleers.  Some examples of sites running with that:

• MMO Fallout
• Massively OP
• MMO Bomb
• MMORPG.com
• P2Gamer

And then there are sites who couldn’t even copy the email successfully, like MMOs.com that attributed that destruction amount to the Triglavian invasion of high sec.  Or maybe they got it right and the others were wrong.  I haven’t actually seen the email that CCP sent out.

I do wonder what the distribution list looked like, as I haven’t seen PC Gamer, where Steven Messner has done a bunch of in-depth coverage of the game over the years, mention this.  The email must not have had enough to build a story of much substance around.

I am disappointed that CCP didn’t publish a Dev Blog or a news item on their site, but you can figure out what it said based on what got repeated over the multiple stories.  I am curious as to how they came up with that 130,000 number.  Hell, I am curious as to how they came up with the $112,000 amount.  Back at the end of week four it was estimated that ten trillion ISK worth of ships, structures, and modules had been blown up, an amount that, with even the most generous PLEX package they sell (who spends $500 on PLEX?), comes up to nearly that $112K figure.  Maybe that count at four weeks was wrong, but that just makes me want to know how CCP counted all the more so.

And then there is the World War Bee site which is trying to log all the losses, and it tallies up to more than that as well.

I am also a bit surprised they went for the ISK to real world dollar measurement, which generally hasn’t been their thing.  But I guess it does get headlines.

We also saw some action in high sec as Legacy Coalition went into Niarja to defend its supply lines from the Triglavian invasion.  The Imperium pushed back and now Niarja is a free fire zone with no CONCORD there.

EDECOM gives up at this point

Haulers will want to bypass that system, which means taking a lot more gates between Caldari and Amarr space.

Northern Front

PandaFam has turned their attention to Imperium structures in the Fountain region.  They had killed a number of smaller structures, but the attention has mostly been on the Keepstars  The successfully reinforced then destroyed the Keepstar in O-PNSN and had the Keepstar in KVN-36 in their sights.  However, a server crash interrupted things during the fight for the armor timer.  The clock reset and they now have to start the process all over again.  That moved the fighting to social media, forums, and Reddit, as people tried to blame one side or the other for the crash.  It is all about the smart bombs people say.

PandaFam is momentarily stalled them on the road to Delve.  But they still have four Keepstars in the bag already.

The Fountain kills

The Keepstars in KVN-36 and Y-2ANO remain standing, waiting to for the coming assault.

Southern Front

It is difficult to sum up what TEST and their Legacy allies have been up to for the last week.  I mean, sure, they showed up at the Keepstar fights in some force and managed not to get bombed off the field, though their leader seemed to have problems fitting the rigs on his ship, as I mentioned in my post about the O-PNSN Keepstar fight.

They were, of course, part of the fight at Niarja, where Brave and TEST both declared they were going to help EDENCOM defend the system.  And Brave actually showed up.  But I mentioned that at the top of the post.

And then there is Queirous, where one can describe efforts as dissolute at best.  In order to prove that nobody really wants to hold that space, a bunch of systems now sit with no ihub installed.  Neither side wants to defend ihubs in eastern Querious, but neither can they abide the other side holding an ihub.

Querious ihub map – Aug 22, 2020

So the Legacy ihub count is down to 18, but it is clear they are not really trying any more, so the count is more an indication of that.

There have been the usual range of skirmishes at the gates between Legacy and the Imperium, but the war is happening in Fountain right now and the south is just a side show at best.

My Participation

I managed to get in on a couple of big ops, including the two Keepstar battles, but otherwise it has been a quiet week for me.  A massive heatwave out here, plus the state catching on fire (smoke from two of those fires are visible from our house), work, and getting ready for our daughter to head off to college has kept me from doing much gaming at all over the last week.  And this week will likely see me even less focused on gaming.

I did manage to lose at least one ship on every fleet I went on however.  My ship loss count for the war so far now stands at:

• Ares interceptor – 9
• Atron entosis frigate – 5
• Drake entosis battle cruiser – 3
• Malediction interceptor – 2
• Scalpel logi frigate – 2
• Ferox battle cruiser – 2
• Bifrost entosis command destroyer – 1
• Cormorant destroyer – 1
• Purifier stealth bomber – 1
• Hurricane battle cruiser – 1
• Sigil entosis industrial – 1

Overall

As I mentioned at the top of the post, CCP half-halfheartedly tried to drum up some press interest in the war with an email that got a few takers from second tier gaming sites.  I guess our fights are not big enough to be worth a dev blog yet.  But they at least put a little effort into some publicity.

But, after last week, I guess CCP doesn’t want to go bragging about a server crash.

Of course, CCP has been all about EVE Echoes since it launched the week before, putting out some odd adds.  But they are justifiably proud of the millions of players who have signed up for the game.  Now they just have to buy some stuff.

And then there was the fight over Niarja, which pulled null sec into the Triglavian invasion event.  I’m not sure everybody is happy that we showed up.

Anyway, another week of war has gone by and a victory for the attackers, or an accord between the belligerents seems a distant hope.

If the word is right, the invaders are moving their titans and supers from FAT-6P, where they have been sitting since the war, idle behind the 49-U6U – 4-07MU gate connection, to come around and approach Querious from a low sec direction to get them into the fight.  Apparently we’re too formidable for them to gate through directly into the region, so they have put down a chain of Keepstars to avoid that gate.

Maybe that is what drove the peak concurrent users up to 38,299, up from 34,974 last week.  Still not up to the first week peak of 38,838, but close.

We shall see how the move op turns out and what the invaders plan to do with their 1,000 titans.

Addendum:

• INN: World War Bee Week Seven

The Fall of Niarja and the Shape of High Sec

Surprise!  Niarja became low security space last night!

Things have changed here

I had not been paying much attention to the Triglavian invasion event.  New Eden is a big enough sandbox that I can play in my own area and not care about what was going on in high sec.  Delve is many gates from the nearest high sec system.  Also, the war.

And then Niarja became the next Triglavian target and everybody lost their minds.

Niarja is a 0.5 high sec system known primarily for two things; being a prime spot for suicide gankers and being on the direct trade route when traveling between Caldari and Amarr space in general and the trade hubs of Jita and Amarr specifically.

When the Triglavians take a system, the security status of that system drops by 0.1.  That change would drop Niarja to 0.4, making it low sec and turning it from a place to suicide gank to a place to simply gank people passing through as CONCORD responses would no longer occur.

Meanwhile, the “safe” route from Jita to Amarr would go from 10 gates to 46.  I am not sure how much trade is specifically between those two points and how much of the traffic is from Jita to points beyond Amarr, but either way Niarja looked to become another low sec danger spot on the shortest route between regions.

The forces of chaos, in which I include CCP, seemed quite eager to see Niarja fall.  Others seemed quite angry at the prospect.  At least one group was sending out mail messages in game warning people that they had better not get caught supporting the Triglavians.

Signed, a friend

I am sure that was just some fun role play.

And this was all a high sec affair… until it wasn’t

Early yesterday Legacy Coalition declared that they were going to protect high sec by siding with EDENCOM to make sure the Triglavians didn’t take the system.  Dunk Dinkle of Brave posted a truncated image from what looks to be a Discord message that said:

THE COALITION DIRECTIVE IS TO SECURE NIARJA

At some later point Vily posted elsewhere that the coalition had just decided to fight the Triglavians because the Imperium had sided with them.  World War Bee was coming to high sec.

To my knowledge, up until then, there had been no official effort by the Imperium to influence the events in Niarja either way.  Word later came out that incursion squad had gone there on the down low to push things in favor of the Triglavians.  But once Vily reacted it became an official Imperium operation.  Pings went out to get people to pile on for the Trigs.

Once I saw that was going on, I logged in a high sec alt just to see what I could see.  The gate to Niarja was suitably adorned with the Triglavian logo.

A new sheriff is in town

Inside the system, the battle was tilted towards the Triglavian side.

77% in favor of the Triglavians

Ashterothi, who was providing status updates on Twitter, reported that the Trigs had been as high as 85% at one point, but EDENCOM had slowly worked that down into the 70s.

The fighting is done by blowing up NPCs that spawn at sites in the system.  If you want the Triglavians to win, you go to the EDENCOM sites and shoot the spawns, and if you support EDENCOM you warp to the emerging conduit sites and shoot the Trigs.

Some sites from the probe scanner window

I was not on as an Imperium character so couldn’t join their fleet, but I spotted them and watched them take down a couple of the EDENCOM sites.  (I also saw a Brave group shooting up an EDENCOM site, and I am not sure what was going on there.)

It was already late for me and I wasn’t going to be able to join in so I docked up at one of the Raitarus in the system.  The Triglavians seemed to be edging up every so slightly as time went along, but it was going to take some time.

When I work up this morning however, I logged in to check and found I was in a low sec system.

The Triglavian sky is strange

The Mittani was smugging about having cut the high sec travel route as it apparently impacts Legacy and their own ability to resupply.

Broke the galaxy in half today, because fuck you, that's why~ #tweetfleet #eveonline pic.twitter.com/UMnDBbB62b

— ~Abolish the Police~ (@TheMittani) August 18, 2020

Meanwhile, the battle for the system carried on and the Triglavian side hit the final luminality.

EDECOM gives up at this point

Niarja is effectively a null sec or wormhole space system now in terms of security status.  That doesn’t make much difference to haulers, as low sec status was going to keep them away in any case.

In the short term I will be interested to see what this does to trade.  Does making Jita 30+ jumps further away make Amarr more valuable?  Does it grow as a trade hub out of Jita’s shadow?  Or was its proximity to Jita what made it the second trade hub?  Does Jita shrink?  Does this help Hek, Rens, and Dodixie, the lesser trade hubs?  What happens to the market?  What happens to shipping charges?  There is a lot there to unpack.

For the longer term I am back to wondering what CCP’s end game plan is for the Triglavian invasion.  It was a happy fun PvE event for quite a while, but now with more and more high sec systems falling to the Trigs (The Agency says 16 systems are now in final luminality) what is going to happen?  Will the Trigs remain and their systems be changed for good?  Will they reach some accord with the empires and become the fifth Beatle empire?  If there is a fifth empire will Max Singularity and the Sixth Empire demand some high sec space of their own?

CCP has never run an event like this in high sec.  In the past high sec followed the rules of TV sitcoms, where things can go crazy for a bit, but at the end of the episode the status quo must be restored.  It will be interesting to see if they want to return to the way things were or have a new long term state of affairs in mind for high sec space.

Other coverage:

• CCP News
• Imperium News
• SparkoMarko Gaming
• Evehermit and follow on

EVE Online and Quadrant 2

With no EVE Fanfest this year… maybe I was premature in marking my prediction that 2018 would be the last one as wrong… we were instead treated to a video premier of the trailer for the Quadrant 2 update.  Called Eclipse, it follows the Fight or Flight quadrant and highlights CCP’s desire to… I don’t know… change cadences every couple of years?

Eclipse is coming our way next week

We have quadrants for quarter releases and Team Talos for releases every two weeks plus the usual monthly update plus… and expansion too?  Or are quadrants in lieu of expansions?  I don’t know.  But they made a pretty trailer.

 

It is very pretty.  The trailers often are.  But it doesn’t tell us much straight up.  Lots of Triglavians running around and, towards the end, what appears to be a CONCORD gate getting powered off.

The gate just before it goes dark

Does that mean the Triglavians will be shutting down travel?  Re-routing traffic?  Will they be cutting off choke points?  We shall see.

Also not dispensing much information was the news post about Eclipse.

The one thing we did learn is that the next event coming up will start next week.  Called Let The Hunt Begin, I don’t think those are Easter eggs we’ll be going after.  Or maybe they are.  Capsules look like eggs, no?

Coming soon

The blurb for the event says:

First up for the Eclipse Quadrant will be the return of The Hunt on 6 April, a time of year when Capsuleers will undertake their now-annual egg hunt! Players will hunt down and scan capsules in order to gain access to special event sites, and potentially valuable drops. This will be an event with smaller ship classes like Frigates and Destroyers as the focus, so pilots with less experience and fewer skills trained can get involved. During The Hunt, player pods will have a chance of dropping their implants as loot when destroyed, so get podding!

Starting an event on a Monday rather than a Tuesday is a little out of character, but maybe they’ve lost track of days the way so many of us have when force to work from home for weeks.

Then, earlier this week, CCP post about the EVE Online ecosystem.  Therein they graded themselves on how the game and the economy was currently doing and set out some goals and high level plans as how to improve things.  How that will line up to concrete changes in the coming months is unclear.  It is easy to say, for example, that you want dynamic distribution for mineral resources, it is another thing to implement a system that both won’t be abused and won’t drive away a chunk of the player base.  Change is tricky.

Finally, there was a mass test on Singularity where people got to see the new Avatar model, which is also featured in the trailer.

The new Avatar model

I’ll have another post about that at a later date.

Anyway, there are things to look forward to I suppose.  We shall see what we get.

Related posts:

• The Nosy Gamer – The Latest Dev Blog On EVE Online’s Ecology
• The Graybill – EVE Online Eclipse Trailer Analysis

EVE Online Gets Rapid Fire and Triglavians in its Third November Update

I thought EVE Online going to updates every five weeks was a bit of a fast pace, but now we’re into our third update for November.  We had the new player login campaign update first, a tiny update yes, but it got its own release notes, so I covered it.  Then we got the Beat Around the Boosh update two weeks back.  And now we’re getting an update to the Triglavian event and the Team Talos Rapid Fire update, which was mentioned back at EVE Vegas.

The invasion continues

On the Triglavian front, the event has been updated, with CONCORD observatories being deployed around New Eden to study the Triglavian stellar accelerators.  But, as always, CONCORD needs your help.  In this case, they want you to defend these observatories from Triglavian attack.

Also coming with this update is the Triglavian dreadnought, the Zirnitra, which was previewed at EVE Vegas.

Very big Triglavian ships arrive

With it comes a new capital ship class entropic disintigrator weapon along with the X-large ammo to go with it and the skills you’ll need to train up in order to use the ship and its weapons.  And, of course, there are BPCs out there.  This dreadnought is supposed to be less expensive to build than past faction dreads have been.  CCP wants people flying this beast.

Then there is the Team Talos project, the Rapid Fire update, which brings good news to a number of Minmatar hulls and auto cannons.

Stabber Fleet Issue, Tempest Fleet Issue, Typhoon, Bellicose and Rifter are all getting a bit of a buff, while medium autocannons are getting a bit of stat increase as well.

On the flip side, the over-used Muninn is getting a bit of a nerf (no wonder Elo Knight is taking a break now) as are Angel Cartel ships.

Then there is Team Five-0 and the shareable bookmarks update.  This brings the long sought after Alliance Bookmarks feature by creating a way that bookmarks can be shared via the Access Control List interface.  There is a cost however, in that there are limits to the number of bookmarks than can be saved.  There are 102 individuals that currently exceed the 20,000 bookmark hard cap that the system will enforce, but with 248 million saved locations in New Eden, some effort to keep system performance viable had to be made.

There is a dev blog that covers this in detail and the forum thread where problems with the change are brought up.  No matter what CCP does at this point, somebody will be unhappy.  Of course, I only have a few hundred bookmarks, so I am nowhere close to the problem zone.  And I know people who are very happy with the change as well.  I’ll personally be glad to have wormhole bookmarks that can be set to expire and go away on their own.

Then there is the Black Friday login campaign which will reward capsuleers who login daily between Nov 27th (tomorrow) and Dec 3rd.

Further details for these changes are in the updated November patch notes, with some additional information on the updates page. The update has been reported live, so it is our reality now.

In addition, as part of EVE London CCP released a new trailer for items coming to the game this winter.

However, a good portion of them are available as part of today’s update, which is dropping nearly a month ahead of the calendar maker determined first day of winter in the northern hemisphere.  But I’ve always maintained that seasons are more a state of mind… though November still feels like autumn in my book.

The October Update Expands the Triglavian Invasion of New Eden

We are into October and it is time for another update to EVE Online.  Probably the biggest thing on the agenda for the patch is a new stage to the Triglavian invasion.

The Triglavian Menace Continues

There isn’t much in the way of details however, with the only line about it being:

The Triglavian Collective has been spotted deploying what appear to be system-altering structures across invaded locations.

What these structures are and how they may be altering systems remains to be discovered.  Let’s just hope that CCP can keep them out of the new player starter systems this time around.

There are also a new Triglavian implants with the mid-grade Mimesis set being introduced.  The low grade set came in with last month’s update.  These are available at LP store at DED stations.

CCP has modified the market so that players do not need to manually repackage items in order to list them on the market.  If a player attempts to list an item now it will be automatically repackaged.  Given that what can be listed on the market and the state it needs to be in (repaired and repackaged) has always been a bit of a pain, this is probably a good change.

The UI has been updated so that players can distinguish between the different cyno types that were introduced with the September update.

Another item from the September update that has seen some revision is the tutorial part of the new player experience.  Given that the recent CSM Summit Minutes indicated that CCP would be putting 80% of dev resources on new player retention, I suppose the only surprise here is that there were not more changes.

The tutorial got the following changes:

• Improvements made to the text Aura displays throughout the Tutorial.
• Added shortcuts to the Tutorial Instructions.
• Improved the flow for claiming rewards during the Tutorial.
• Removed the civilian mining laser from the starter corvettes (not other versions of the corvettes) to help new players.
• Improved the hiding behavior for the Aura Conversation window
• Updated the rewards to the tutorial to be ISK, modules, or ammunition.

In addition there was a wave of UI changes to various aspects of the game that very much feel like an attempt to make the UI less obstinate in the face of player needs.  Whether or not the notoriously balky interface that has seemed at times to almost resent telling you what you need to know can be improved enough to keep it from scaring off or scarring new players remains to be seen.  I have heard the phrase “lipstick on a pig” bandied about, but CCP isn’t done yet.

My own favorite item from the patch notes was a fix to a situation where mobile tractor units were causing scooped items to go missing:

Mobile Tractor Units would occasionally not eject their contents when being scooped from space, leading to the apparent loss of some items. (This was caused by the MTU being too greedy and scooping back up its own jet-can at the same time as a ship is picking up the MTU!) The auto-looter behavior will now shut down earlier during the scoop-to-ship process.

As I have been known to say, timing is everything.

There are, as always, lots of other small fixes and tweaks in the update.  You can find details in the patch notes  No updates page entry for this patch (so far).  Word is that the update has been deployed successfully.

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.

The EVE Online Invasion Expansion Arrives on May 28th

CCP has announced the arrival date for the next big EVE Online expansion.  Titled Invasion, it will be landing on May 28th.  I almost missed the announcement because they are also in the middle of the EVE Online Invasion world tour of events.  I guess we know the 2019 theme for sure now.

Invasion is coming

If the name and graphic were not enough, the announcement straight up tells us that the Triglavians are coming to get us.  I supposed we’ve been messing around too much in Abyssal space.

The Triglavians will also be bringing along three new hulls, an assault frigate, a heavy assault cruiser, and a command destroyer, giving them a range fleet options.

With the Invasion expansion we will also get further changes to the War Dec system and and overhaul of the unloved interface of The Agency.

There will also be a range of smaller fixes and changes, including allowing faction weapons to use Tech II ammunition.

All of that is coming at the end of the month.

Lost Dungeons of New Eden

This past Saturday I wrote about the EverQuest Agnarr server, one of Daybreak’s progression servers, and passed over at one point one of the expansions slated for it, Lost Dungeons of Norrath.

The main focus of that expansion was instanced content, a brand new concept for EverQuest at the time.  They were dungeons that came in a few basic flavors that had some variations between them, allowed the players running them to choose a difficulty level, and ended up rewarding players with “augmentations” that they could use to upgrade their current gear.

It was a moment of change for EverQuest and MMORPGs in general.

Saturday evening I decided to log onto the EVE Online test server, Sisi, where early cuts at the upcoming abyssal deadspace content had been made available for people to try.

The “How to” aspect of this new feature wasn’t obvious to me, but I found the thread about trying it out in the forums, which at least got me pointed in the right direction.

I wasn’t sure what ship or fitting I ought to try, so I just used my ratting Ishtar fit and figured I would adjust from there.  Everything on Sisi is 100 ISK and the market is stocked with all the non-faction non-officer hulls and modules, so you can grab what you want.  When grabbing some ammo I accidentally bought 2,000 Ishtar hulls, but what the hell right?  It is all 100 ISK.

I then grabbed a “calm” filament, the level 1 flavor and headed out to give it a try.

Ishtar in an Abyssal pocket

The tiers run like this:

1. Calm
2. Agitated
3. Fierce
4. Raging
5. Chaotic

And each comes in variations, the difference between which I have yet to see.

Tiers and types of filaments

I spent most of the first run fiddling with my drones to figure out what would work and what I ought to skip.  All the NPCs had placeholder names, but they were either ships or drones.  I seemed to be running into just Sleepers, but that might be related to which filaments I picked.

It seemed that 5x Acolyte IIs would eat up anything small and be able to dodge incoming fire.  Mediums and heavies were too easy to hit and I had to pull them right away.  So I plowed through a room, went through the gate, which opens up once you’ve cleared, then did another room, and then another, and then was back in normal space again wondering when I would get my prize.

I knew that ships did not drop loot, so skipped past them, but I didn’t notice the part about blowing up the structure in each room.  That is the loot pinata.  So I grabbed another calm filament and gave it another try.  This time I broke all the pinatas and came out the other side unscathed.

That run dumped a bunch of loot on me, though the loot payout is cranked up at the moment, well beyond what it will be when it goes live, to let people experiment with drops.  I got a mutaplasmid for a large shield extender so bought one off the market to mutate it.  The result was okay.

Mutated shield extender II

CPU usage went down but power grid went up.  Sig radius got a little bit worse, but the shield hit points were boosted quite a bit.  Not a bad mutation I guess.  And the newly created module shows you what was initially mutated and what got better or worse.

The after module

It also has a button to find that sort of thing in contracts, since these items won’t be on the normal market.  I am going to guess that contract usage will jump sharply when these are introduced and that we might get a pass on the contract UI after a lot of people are suddenly using them more than ever before.

I also had a mutaplasmid for a medium shield booster, so I grabbed a tech II version and ran it through the process… and ended up wrecked.

Worse for the tinkering

I also got a tier 4 filament drop so decided to give that a try.  That went less well.  I managed to blow up small stuff in the usual way… a pack of cruisers in this case… with acolyte IIs, leaving me with a Sleep battleship once they were out of the way.

Sleek Sleeper Seeking Me

And even that seemed to be going well.  I pulled in the acolytes and sent heavy drones after the battleship.  Not problems at all…. right up until my ship suddenly exploded and I was dead.

And that was that

I am not sure what did me in really.  I may have flown into a pocket of toxic space.  The timer may have run out.  Nothing in the feedback (or in the logs) indicated what happened.  Something just turned my ship into mush, ripping through armor and hull in a flash before I could react and do anything.  Surprise!

That threw me to where my death clone was set.  From there I had to move to a station that had stuff up on the market then set about fitting another ship.  I decided to go with an Eagle this time.  It could hold the five acolyte IIs I’d need and I thought the guns might speed things up.

Eagle on a run

As it turned out, nothing I could do would make medium rails track the small drones once they closed range, but my own drones took care of them as expected.  Being able to reach out and shoot larger targets seemed to work okay.  And I could pop the structure right away.

Structure going up as the gate opens

I ran some tier 1 and 2 versions just to get a feel for it.  It sure looks pretty.

Eagle waiting for the gate to open

My tour ended when I had another insta-pop event.  This time I didn’t even see things change, I was flying one moment and dead the next.  The logs don’t show anything, just my drones popping away at the small stuff… and it was all small stuff.  Maybe I hit a mine.  I don’t think the timer ran down… but there is no visible timer, so I am not sure.

Just before my sudden demise

Anyway, that was enough for me to get at least some flavor of what is in store.  I might try it again as we get closer to the Into the Abyss expansion release and things have settled down some.

But as I tinkered around with all of this my brain kept making the link with the Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion for EverQuest.  Here we have players being given instanced content, able to choose the style and challenge up front while the actual layout comes from a set group of possibilities, and offering up items that augment current equipment as a possible reward.

Nothing new in the world I guess.

Unfortunately my impression so far is that abyssal deadspace has all the drawbacks of of PvE in EVE Online; It is fun and interesting the first couple of times, but it becomes tiresome on repetition.  And there is the insta-death timer thing.  I don’t know enough to know if that is avoidable or if we’re going to get a visible timer, but it will rile people up when it happens on the live server.  People do not like to get their shit blown up.

In the end some people will optimize and do abyssal deadspace for the rewards, and then complain about having to grind and the lack of predictability in getting what they wanted.

And that leaves aside the whole RNG module upgrade element, which already has people annoyed, as well as the strange new contract marketplace that will spring up where you’ll have to be very careful to inspect whatever you buy because every mutated module could be different.

That it doesn’t appeal to me doesn’t mean much in the larger scheme of things.  Somebody will love it.  There is a niche fan base out there for every feature.  But will it be a draw for enough people to have been worth the effort?  Will it change the game in a good way?