Musings on the proposed Jump Drive Isotope Consumption changes

CCP have proposed changes to the use of racial isotopes for jump/jump bridge capable ships.

It hasn't been said, at least in the three pages of responses I read on the Forums, but this does appear to be a partial nerf (despite CCP Fozzie saying that "[we] don't expect this change to significantly impact behaviour around jump drive power projection") directed at capital ship proliferation as well as an attempt to 'balance the books' with the excepted drop in tower usage in high sec once the new industry changes come in to effect.

What Is Changing

Initially fuel bays were going to be increased by 50% (60% for black ops) but after a comment suggesting a one third reduction in isotope size that has changed to leaving fuel bays as-is but reducing the size of isotopes by one third or from 0.15m3 to 0.10m3. 

This will mean more fuel can be carried (by one third) but the 50% increase in fuel usage will lower their range due to the consumption but also the amount carried meaning that crossing the galaxy in minutes is going to be slower and cost more. The only example given was a high sec to null sec Rhea run that showed a 50% increase in fuel costs and this did not show a breakdown of what the trip was or how much fuel was consumed (so i'd say its a poor example).

What Does This Mean To Me

I see costs increasing (not a surprise, the industry changes were going to do that anyway but this adds extra overhead) and I think I'm going to have to stockpile isotopes before the Summer Expansion in my jump locations so I can ensure I'll have a steady supply at least for 2/3 months afterwards.

I'm also considering changing my jump freighter fleet from Ark's to Nomad's to take advantage of the isotopes available in the region I'm in. A couple of hours mining a week should cover my fuel costs but I will need to look into this in more detail.

I Spy A Future Change?

A patch was released last night weighing in at nearly 300mb, details are available on the patch notes but a few changes to the UI seem to have occurred. Most noticeable was the Character Selection screen which has changed to a really nice blue hue instead of the red it was before.

There were a few other changes listed but it was when I was looking at ship details later that I noticed that the Traits page had changed and now included icons representing roles/modules that the ship can use/be under the heading of Ship Characteristics. It's very nice and moving the mouse over the icons shows descriptive text about what the icon means.

Here is the text for a Interceptor:

But what really piqued my interest was what I saw when I viewed the Details for a Freighter or Jump Freighter:

I wonder what that XL icon means, let's have a look at what the tool tip says:

Well "bounce me up and down and call me Skippy", could this mean that Freighters and Jump Freighters are in for a major overhaul in the Summer expansion, could they be finally be getting module/rig slots and be able to have defensive and tanking modules fitted?

Obviously this could just be the UI being updated, after all Freighters/Jump Freighters are considered Capital Ships and thus would, if they could, be fitted with capital sized modules. But there is the chance, however small, that these ships are being looked and receiving the long-needed upgrade to allow them to be rigged and fitted with modules.

Hopefully we'll find out more during/after Fanfest 2014.

Building Better Worlds

CCP have released a devblog on the changes to industry that will be in the summer expansion. If you have an interest or do any industry with EVE Online and haven't already read this please go read it.

The Changes

In short the changes breakdown as follows:

• Damage Per Job is going away for R.A.M. and R.Db items
• Extra Materials are being removed
• All materials will be affected by reprocessing/production efficiency
• Market groups are being reorganized, again, to make a little more sense
• Industry slots are being removed, replaced with a variable charge based on demand/usage
• POS standings, in high sec, requirements are being removed
• Remote BP access will not be shared between POS and NPC station.
• Copy speed is being reduced to make it easier to distribute copies.
• New User Interface was shown that will reduce the click-fest we all have come to hate

Reaction

There has been much discussion about these changes and some of the best has come from Lockfox and The Nosy Gamer doing a casual look at the changes from their perspective. Lorna finally weighed in a long post that covered it from her perspective very nicely.

Overall it seems to be positive, even people I've spoken to in the channels I'm in are in favour of the changes that have been listed.

My Reaction

The devblog came as a surprise to me, I really didn't think Industry would be the summer expansion focus and I'm very happy with the changes that have been announced but I can't help but feel that the focus of the changes is for the solo industrialist and not the co-operative or group industrialists. I can understand the need for some of the changes, it removes maintenance and overhead for features that were good 10 years ago but no longer have a place. 

BPO Risk

One of the corporations I'm in has a research POS, it sits there churning out copies of the BP's we have, adding PE/ME to those BP's and it just works. The BP's are safe in a station in the system and the lock down functionality is used to secure BP's from opportunistic theft. Not that this is likely, we're a group that are friends and share this resource.

Making it so the BP's now cannot be remotely researched from the safety of a station is going to increase risk not just from external war dec's but also internally from (in larger corporations) as in order to move from copying to inventions or adding ME/PE additional roles will be needed. The likelihood that these roles may be wrongly or mistakenly applied increase, sure corporations will have proper auditing in place and will spot these things but the current Role Management UI/feature isn't exactly flexible and easy to use.

POS Standings

We recently put a new POS up in a 0.5 system, nothing special it was a staging POS in a well known system for use and friends to use in times of war and/or during operations. Our corporation is small and has no more than a dozen members at any one time but the slog to get standings was painful and slow, something never to happen again thankfully.

This is probably the most interesting change, will we no longer see offline towers cluttering systems holding precious moon locations or will we, hopefully, see more war dec's looking for enemy towers with the aim of killing them and, if a research POS, extracting the BP's held within?

The removal of the standings for a POS will, I think, result in a lot of new towers going up but towers aren't simply a "drop and forget" thing, you've got to fuel them and protect them should a bigger entity come along and want that location.

Industry Slots

Lorna will be (at least initially) ecstatic, they were complaining about the slots needed for industry in null sec and then this comes along and banishes slots forever! Of course you can't have the pleasure without pain and those doing anything that previously used a slot will have to figure in increased costs depending on how busy a stations industry is.

Hopefully no longer will people need to look at erecting a POS for manufacturing should their station be permanently suffer from "slot full" syndrome, they just have to pay a little more to use the station they want.

New UI

A new UI for industry was teased at the end of the devblog and it certainly looks good but that's all so far.:

So pretty but where are the buttons, the text telling us what's happening?

My initial impressions are it looks cluttered and not at all intuitive but then again it's just a picture and I cannot yet play with it to see how it functions. Hopefully we'll get a lot more information on this in the near future, a video of use would go a long way to helping understand this.

And lets hope "batch installation" has finally been implemented.

CCP Fozzie is Quackers - An Update

I had not intended to do an update but I was thinking more about the hint image and I realised that maybe I was reading too much into the image and had gotten it wrong.

 

Instead of being a "parent" and "child" relationship could it be an indication of lots of small objects shooting a larger object?

 

Over the my years playing one consistent thing said is that Super Capitals and Titans are too powerful and to effectively kill one you need more of the same. As such this situation has lead to an "arms race" of alliances and corporations who can field these ships and fielding as many as they have pilots for.

 

Could the new ship or ships we'll be seeing dedicated super/titan killers? Something with a medium to light tank but very heavy firepower vs capital class ships. T3 battle cruisers can do a lot of this now but they are (usually) paper thin and can be overwhelmed by even a small sub-capital fleet.

 

It's another 'out there' possibility but we won't know until next year.



CCP Fozzie is Quackers

At EVE Down Under 2013 CCP Fozzie announced the name and showed the new SOE battleship (the Nestor) but he also provided a visual hint of an new ship that will be introduced in the 2014 Summer Expansion.

 

Here is the visual hint that CCP Fozzie gave during his presentation:

 

Image from www.themittani.com

Firstly, Ducks are cool so credit to CCP Fozzie for the image but it is supposed to be a clue as to what is coming in Summer 2014.

 

So lets list the possibilities based on what we see from the above image as pertains to EVE Online:

 

New Ship Transporter

 

The image could represent a new ship type that allows the moving of large numbers of assembled ships. The Ship Maintenance Hanger provides this functionality but is really limited (in terms of useful space) to ships that exist outside of high sec or cannot use jump gates.

 

Could we be seeing the introduction of a new freighter type ship that will have a large Ship Maintenance Hanger that can travel through gates. This is something that has been asked for by players before and whilst a freighter can move ships the ability for it to move assembled ships is limited (the smaller the ship the more you can carry).

 

A very specialised ship for a specific and limited purpose, I think this unlikely is what the picture alludes to.

 

New Carrier

 

The use of the ducklings and a single duck could indicate drones and existing capital ships are classed as T1 so could we be seeing a new carrier, T2 class, for each race?  It certainly would be nice, again this is something players have asked for, I think it unlikely as just more drones are just what CCP wants on their nodes and we are still in the midst of the sub-capital rebalancing.

 

Adding a new capital ship seems an outside chance, it would be nice but I believe it to be most unlikely.

 

New Transport Mechanic for Player Ships

 

Ship Maintenance Hangers require that players exit their ships but could the image be showing a new way of moving within EVE Online? This new method could allow ships with SMH to jump and move with player piloted ships and instead of using Jump Bridging players exit the 'mother ship' when they reach their destination.

 

Really, I must have been smoking something (and I don't smoke) to come up with this. This is so far left field that I'm no longer in the same country, extremely unlikely.

 

Change to Drone Mechanics

 

For a long time, should you have the right skills trained and the limitations of drone bandwidth, you could deploy a maximum of 5 active drones. Could the image be alluding to an increase in the current 5 active drones per ship limit?

 

This is another long shot, drones at the moment are server resource intensive and as we saw recently that enough ships and drones can crash a server node. I really don't think this limit will change upwards because it could both negate the Guardian-Vexor's worth and utility but also add additional strain to server nodes.

 

Where would I put my money

 

At this time, selected from my limited list of possibilities I believe that a new carrier is the obvious front runner. However, as with all supposition, this may and probably will change over time as CCP release more information and/or teasers.

 

Still a new carrier is where I'd have my money at this time.