First patch for EVE:Citadel

Has been released and I'm updating as I type. The patch notes however have me scratching my head and wondering if the CCP Staff still have lingering hangovers from FanFest.

The very first defect fix listed under Game play has me wondering if anyone in CCP's QA department either plays the game or is maintaining a Test Plan of things they need to test in every release.

• Force Auxiliary ships will now appear on directional-scan and probe-scan results as intended.

Really. You'd think this would be up there high on, at least, regression testing to make sure that things that used to work still work and that new things added (such as ships) work as they should be expected.

Reading thought the rest of the Patch Notes I can see the expected fixes for things missing, incorrect or weren't quite right when released. However four of the five items listed under Game play defect fixes has me shaking my head in amazement that this wasn't picked up, either on Sisi OR in internal testing.

And who wants to create contracts from a Corporation Hanger... pffft only newbies or carebears do that, not like people use Corporation Hangers much now do they.

I mean seriously, not being able to jump clone into/from seems like a major thing people would want to do, granted to/from Thera is a special case but then again Thera is SPECIAL because it's the only wormhole location you CAN jump to/from.

Bigger Guns

ISD Rontea has posted to Twitter a lovely image to make all capital pilots squirm with glee:

Long wanted T2 variants of capital weapon systems.

 

With any luck it means that there will be T2 variants of other capital modules but for the moment these are very welcome. Capital ships haven't had much love over the past 12 months and T2 modules for them has been requested or wanted since before I started playing so it's not a huge surprise.

 

It's very welcome regardless, no details of statistics for the weapons but already I can see a 500m3 reduction in Volume over T1 variants. Makes sense, T2 would incorporate new changes to materials and compression or something like that.

 

Still, Bigger Guns are a nice hint that Capitals are getting the rebalance they need. Only a month until EVE Vegas and we find out the whole story.

Weekend Round Up

It has been a quiet weekend overall, RL was oddly enough too well except the niggling headache I had over my left eye for most of Sunday. But that went away after a mid-day nap and some panadol so I can't really bitch too much about that.

 

*Tumbleweed*

 

I intended to do some nice wormhole activities this weekend but I received a request from a friend for help on Thursday night in watching a null sec POS. He had eyes for EU/US times but needed help with AU and he thought of me.

 

He offered me a couple of hundred million ISK but friends in need get my 100% discount rate and I was quite happy to do it as it was passive and would not interfere with my other activities.

 

The POS was in a null sec system in Wicked Creek, it had been erected by a small corporation of which I could find no details, pilots had losses (all cyno ships) but no kills and all pilots in the corporation were less than 12 months old.

I was told it was an alt corp used to move Supercapital and Titans for sale. I did not see any during my time online being moved but during US time two Avatar's were moved through the POS that was promptly taken down.

I have recorded names and details in Notes and will remember them in the future but it was quiet for me and I was able to help out a friend. Of course the character I had to use for the monitoring meant that I was unable to participate in a blingy Kronos kill that my wormhole brethren got.

Still, I logged in and did things I guess...
 

Mass Production

Staggered over Sunday I had a total of three Bowheads and seven Orcas come out of the cooker. It's been a pain in the arse moving them all to either trade hubs or systems for sale.

As I can't make any more ships at the moment I've added a load more capital components to the production lines in order to get my mineral stores trimmed back somewhat. At least I finally can start to uses the minerals I've collected over the years and the large stack of blueprint copies I have in my home system.
 

The sale of these ships will be reinvested back into production materials. I've gotten a lot of T2 blueprint copies that I need to use, they're cluttering up my overviews and they should turn a nice profit once complete.

Tower Shenanigans

I appear to have either miscalculated the fuel needed for my towers or someone is siphoning off my fuel blocks.

I don't know which and the list of people who could be doing this is extremely small in the corp I'm in but I've had two warnings over the past fortnight that towers are low on resources. Since I've managed to get my monitoring application running again I've been able to keep an eye on the fuel situation but I've noticed lower than expected fuel in the towers.

I trust the other people who have access to POS roles so I must have made a mistake but it's bugging me that fuel has run out quicker than I was expecting.

Warships!

I have been having fun with World of Warships.

So far I've kept to the US Navy only and I'm now Tier VIII in Destroyer and Cruiser with Tier VII in Battleship & Carrier. I've stopped playing the carriers and battleships at the moment, I'm low skilled in both and need to get some XP to unlock the upgraded hull/skills before I can jump back into them.

I used all my "free XP" unlocking the Tier VIII Benson destroyer and it's 8.5km ranged torpedos and as a result I'm having a lot of fun killing ships who expect only a 4.5km or 5.5km torpedo spread.

I had a few awesome games over the weekend in my New Orleans cruiser and I'm 90% of the way towards the Tier 9 Baltimore which I'm looking forward to as it's AA ability is nearly 20% better than what I have now!

Trying to die for Bob in glorious battle

Operation Midway was set to be underway around 0100 EVE Time and we were expecting a good fight that, we hoped, end with the destruction of two Archon's that were located in Bex's wormhole.

It is said (even this is paraphrased) that "No plan survives contact with the enemy." Well this was no different but not in the way you'd expect.

Operational Details

Bex wanted to have a viking funeral (he likes big explosions) for two Archons he had had in his posession since taking over his current C3 wormhole. Feelers were put out (I believe) and Maythorn agreed to come and provide the firepower. 

T1 battleships, battlecruiers and faction T1/T2 cruiers were the agreed upon ships to take part (in addition to the two carriers). The carriers dictated this would be armour fits and our Dear Leader made sure to add the following :

No guardians, please, we don't want this to be gay. Clean clones, gents, in case mistakes. 

Simple enough, even for me to understand, and comms was quite fun although somewhat restrained, no doubt due to people wearing "game faces". That's not to say we didn't have worthwhile discussions on Citadels, the new Sov mechanics and, of course, boobies.  

Visiting the Store

Bex suggested that I bring a neut fit Armageddon to the fight as he would do likewise and we'd be able double team to help bring down capacitor hungry vessels. Sounded like a good idea but, of course, there was one minor hiccup...

My Prolapse character has Amarr Cruiser III only, no battle-cruiser or battleship skills for any Amarrian vessels. Bugger. Checking skills and injecting them I'd only have Amarr Battleship I in time for the battle so I had to call upon another out of alliance alt, who has Amarr Battleship V. I was also asked if I could bring a booster with Information Warfare Link skills, as there was the possibility we might be facing a large ECM force and any extra help we could get might just even the playing field.

So off to Jita I went and purchased a Nighthawk (it's really a Drake with different colours) and the following Armageddon (which as Bex says on his blog was an "experimental" but he never said that to me!) fit:

[Armageddon, New Setup 1]

Damage Control II

1600mm Steel Plates II

1600mm Steel Plates II

Corelum C-Type Energized Explosive Membrane

Corelum C-Type Energized Kinetic Membrane

Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Corpii A-Type Thermic Plating

Large Micro Jump Drive

100MN Afterburner II

ECCM - Radar II

ECCM - Radar II

Large Remote Capacitor Transmitter II

Large Remote Capacitor Transmitter II

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Large Trimark Armor Pump I

Large Trimark Armor Pump I

Large Trimark Armor Pump I

I made sure I had nanite paste, an MTU and a couple of depots in the cargo hold. I had four NOS ready, in case we needed them and I could refit "on-the-fly".

I moved my ships into the wormhole the night before, turned out to be quite simple as we had an entrance a few jumps from Jita and then I logged off until Sunday morning (AU Time) and battle commenced.

For Bob!

Bex has covered the fight nicely on his blog (have a read of his other articles too, he actually is a good writer (but I never said that)).

 

We were fielding the two remote repair/cap regeneration Archons with a reasonable sized sub-cap force of a Scorpion, two neuting Armageddon's and a good mix of DPS battleships and BC/CL. A nice mobile force that we hoped would be a match for what Maythorn would bring.

 

Unfortunately, through no fault of the Maythorn leadership nor their FC they bought a much smaller force that would not have been able to break the tank of one of the carriers even if we weren't defending it. You can provide content it and tell people where to go and when to participate but alas, you can't make them login.

 

Props to Maythorn regardless, they turned up. Saw they were outnumbered but fought anyway. It wasn't pretty and there were a couple of accidently poddings (we were there for fun, not to execute) due to smart bombs. But on the whole I think it was fun, I had fun and those in Prolapse I spoke to voiced the same thoughts.

 

But the carriers, they live

 

For now they do. But that just gives Bex (and Prolaspe) more reason to do this again in the near future and that is the plan.

 

After all, what better way for a capsuleer to honour Bob but with a sacrifice in pod goo AND ships. I can't think of one.

I Did Not Know That: Capital Navigation

There are UI windows in EVE that even now I'm discovering and finding a use for and what I found today, thanks to a post on Reddit, 

Capital Navigation

Capital Ships can use cynos, be they from a ship with a Cynosural Field Generator module or the Jump Beacon anchorable sov module, and the typical method of using these is to right click on the capacitor and then select the  jump to -> <name> (<system>) menu item.

The downsides to this are many not least that it can take a second or two for the menu items to appear and be populated not to mention the right click method is a little fiddly. But never fear, the EVE UI is here to help.

Let me present the Capital Navigation window:

Capital Navigation window showing all nearby beacons

You have to be sitting in a jump capable ship for the tabs to populate but once they do you'll see all systems around you that you can potentially jump too as well as those within range of your ship. 

A very useful window and one I've added to the short cuts for ALL my jump capable pilots.

I'm tempted to evemail this pilot and let him know, it could have saved him but then again being a member of Yulai Federation they do only have the one brain and he didn't have it that day.

Stop, Revive and Survive

The post title comes from a Road Safety campaign from one of the Australian states and seems rather apt (to me) with the announced changes from CCP with regard to Jump Drives and Capital Ships.

Long Term Plan

Announced overnight by CCP Greyscale in a devblog are details of the three phases of changes that are coming to null sec over a-yet-to-be-given time scale:

• Phase 1 - Long-Distance Travel
• Phase 2 - Medium-Term Changes
• Phase 3 - Dynamic Warfare and Granular Territory Control

Very little information is given for Phases 2 and 3 but we have a lot of detail for Phase 1 as this is being planned for the next Expansion, called Phoebe, in November 2014.

Changes, Soon

It is made clear form the devblog that the changes are not "a silver bullet" that will fix all issues in null sec in one go but instead will form part of a greater number of changes, over time, that will represent a significant improvement to "specific areas of concern" within EVE Online.

The major change coming will be changes to how capital ships can move:

• they will now be able to use gates in null and low sec
• their jump distance changed to a maximum of 5ly per jump

but by far the biggest change are the new timers:

• Jump Activation - counter that shows how long you have to wait until you can jump again
• Jump Fatigue - counter of accumulated jump fatigue that is used to calculate the Jump Activation timer when you do jump

New Timers for Jump activation and Jump fatigue

An example is given in the devblog of how this will work in practice but basically the further you jump the longer it will take you because the length of wait between jumps will increase due to Jump Fatigue. 

Read the devblog, it clearly lays out the functionality and how it will work much better than if I reproduced it here.

Jump Freighters/Capital Industrial Ships

The Jump changes potentially could have a massive impact on goods movement within null sec and CCP appear to have foreseen this and have given Jump Freighters and Capital Industrial Ships (i.e. Rorqual) a role bonus that will reduce these timers by 90%.

From my perspective this is great, it means that when I have my "logi day" I won't have to worry too much about jump timers slowing my jumps down. I did have to check the jump range of JF's but they already are at 5ly so there won't be much change for me.

Fuel costs already went up, now I may have a couple of minutes between jumps when I use midpoints but aside from that these changes won't impact me very much I believe. 

How Will This Change Things

This certainly will have an impact on force projection but it will not change the ability of the current Null Sec power blocs to retain their power. They will need to adapt and change but the ability for them to deploy will not be greatly diminished and we will certainly see capital armadas moving via gates, with sub-capital support, to continue to strike fear into any smaller groups looking to get a foothold anywhere in Null.

We could see the end of large empires spanning entire quarters of null sec but entire regions would still be defensible and with the changes to jump mechanics it will make more sense for power blocs to maximise the use of the systems they have and relinquish control over areas they cannot actively defend or would be more trouble than they are actually worth.

Null Sec Power Blocs

These changes could stimulate Null Sec industry, forcing characters to use the space they have rather than claiming it and not making use of it. New null sec trading hubs could be created and catered to by local industry rather than importing everything from High Sec. 

A lot of space is currently unused because it is not very resource rich or profitable, Phases 2 and 3 should address this and perhaps we'll see rebalancing of system sec and upgrades that mean space is finally worth owning.

My own hope is that there will be smaller entities, be they Corporations or Alliances, that can will finally be able to gain themselves a small foothold in one or two systems in areas that the current Power Blocs cannot easily assault or want to retain because they cannot profit from them.

Actually I love that this brings risk back into null sec, no longer can wrecking ball fleets or massed capitals move around with impunity and at high speed.

More To Come

I see there is some "hurt feelings" in some quarters, so much so that they has been a leak of a post/message that CSM Member/Providence Head FC corebloodbrothers on internal forums.

People certainly get passionate about changes, especially if they feel it will have a negative impact and after having lived in Providence myself I can recall the insular and "me" behaviour a lot of people had. 

Changes can only be good, in the long term. Short term it means everyone will need to look at what they're doing and finding new ways of existing or adapting to the changes.

Reaction

"I was astonished by CCP’s latest DEV blog"
                                                                - EVE Hermit
"Dis gon b gud"
                     - Neville Smit

"I actually rather like this"
                                   - Stabs

Three quotes from three people who don't jump to conclusions or mince their words. These quotes come from their respective blogs based on their feelings on the devblog.

Wilhelm Arcturus also has an excellent write up, he even tries to explain to his non-EVE readers what this change could be compared to in other games. The other three seems positive about the changes but Wilhelm is, from my reading, on the fence about the changes possibly even thinking that they don't go far enough.

I believe they are a good start, I still feel that a mass restriction on cynosural fields is another way of limiting force projection, but what we're seeing (subject to feedback and change) is an excellent start and certainly seems to open the way for splintering of null sec space away from the current Power Blocs.

I'm sure over the next couple of days we'll see more comment come out, there will be the nay-sayers and the EVE Online Forums will be full of people saying the changes are too much and they will be quitting because of them. 

These changes are the start of something good and perhaps its time for a culling of the old guard to allow new players a chance to get into the game without the bitter vets of old.

Jump Drive and Isotope changes are coming

In just over two weeks Crius will be deployed and with that a whole raft of changes to industry, star bases and one major change to jump fuel usage for capital ships.

Stimulation

CCP are trying to stimulate the isotope market and keep prices steady due to changes made in Kronos that could have seen a significant drop in the number of player star bases being operated. 

In order to stimulate the market there really needs to be something that will take over the need for the isotopes that previously would have been used in POS fuels. CCP have decided to change jump drives (and jump portals) and make them consume 50% more isotopes on use.

It's a bold change and one that has had plenty of comments in the official forum thread and it turns out that one of the comments was such a good idea that CCP have implemented it as part of the changes.

The changes coming will be as follows:

• 50% increase in fuel usage by all jump drives and jump portals
• 33% decrease in isotope volume from 0.15m3 to 0.10m3

The latter change is especially good against the first as without it it was probable that some multiple jump courses could require refueling stops but this means that you'll be able to carry more 33% isotopes without changing fuel bay.

Costs

I've calculated the costs for fuel usage in Kronos and post-Crius and come up with the following based on the following isotope costs:

Isotope cost as of 7th July 2014

Highlighted in red isotope quantities that exceed the ship fuel bay size

It's clear from this that any pilot not trained to at least Jump Fuel Conservation IV is going to seriously cut into any profits or rewards for jumping. 

Fuel costs are definitely going up but the reduction in isotope volume will mean most pilots will be able to continue without the need for refueling points. Only really low skilled pilots will have an issue and realistically I don't think this is an issue as any jump freighter pilot will be trained to have all jump skills to V.

How This Affects Me

Not a huge amount but for me my costs will increase by 11m per round trip.

It looks like I'll be increasing my shipping prices for Corp/Alliance/Friends. My current price per m3 almost covered the increased costs but not quite so I'm going to increase my shipping prices by 10% per m3 to cover this and still jump "at a profit".

Post Crius

What will happen post-Crius will be interesting. Will we see a reduction in isotope costs or will they stay pretty much unchanged.

I think the latter is most likely, isotope usage will increase over time but people will have stockpiled before hand to ensure that they have stable costs, at least until they use what they have stockpiled, and the convenience of a supply to last any further fluctuations. 

Personally I've bought enough to survive a couple of months worth of normal usage and I know friend who are/have done the same. It's good planning to have stockpiles for situations like this.

One Wish

Changes to Ice mining and certain events have certainly fluctuated pricing over the years I've been in game but the one thing that really makes no sense to me is the limit that isotopes can only be mined in the racial area that they are used by.

i.e. Helium can only be mined in Amarr and aligned regions, Oxygen in Gallente/aligned regions and so on

I'd like to see this change and instead all ice belts should provide a good mix of different types instead of just the one. 

Imagine warping to an ice anomaly and seeing not just Dark Glitter or Glacial Mass but maybe a group of Clear Icicle or Blue Ice. Certainly limit the amount of non-local/region racial ice that appears but start making it appear everywhere and maybe that will also stimulate the market as there would be more supplied from all over New Eden and not just certain regional places.