If you were unaware, one of the things that came with the Dominion expansion was a well deserved and long-overdue balancing and de-bugging of projectile weapons and ammo. For starters, projectile ammo has been normalized and categorized into three types: -50% range, 0% range and +60% range. Autocannons (especially the larger ones) now have a much better falloff, and artillery now has a massive increase to alpha (ex: 1400mm howitzers now have a whopping damage multiplier of  10.672). Letrange over at Letrange’s EvE Blog has written two incredibly detailed guides outlining and breaking down the changes and how they pertain to you, the capsuleer. Whether you use projectile weapons and ammo, or typically have them shot at you, I highly, HIGHLY recommend reading both the autocannon & projectile ammo guide and the artillery guide. The are invaluable tools, and I tip my hat to Letrange for writing these up. Check em out.

o7,

-Aiden

I wasn’t sure what to write for this post. After a lot of tough thinking, distractions, and much digressing, I decided to pan on talking about either the CSM election results or Dominion. There are a million and a half Eve-blogs out there that will talk more than enough about those for me to add anything else on the subject worth reading. What I will say though is 1.) Even though I spend almost zero time in 0.0 and have nothing to do with sovereignty or null-sec politics, Dominion is pretty awesome. Nice new graphics, new sounds, better UI, and some cool new features like the sovereignty window and cooler still, the fleet window (makes FC-ing a WHOLE lot easier). As for the CSM results? Meh….you can check em out here if you already haven’t. No, Logit didn’t make it, and yes, I am still worried about the future of the sandbox. But for now, I’m going to make like a Ralph Nader supporter after, well, every election and lay low on the subjects of a politics for a bit.

I’d been thinking a lot about my goals in Eve recently, both long and short-term. The short term is easy: I’m just about to get into a Raven, and I’m pretty excited about that. I had a lot of the missile skills trained up already for flying Stealth Bombers, and I’ve been feeling a strange draw towards Caldari ships anyways, so I took the plunge and started training up for Caldari Battleships and topping off those missile skills. Along the way it also got me into a Manticore, which I was more than happy to trade in my Hound for. I do love flying Minmatar, but the ridiculously tight fitting constraints on the Hound were really cramping my style. With the Manti, I feel like I’ve got more PG and CPU than I know what to do with. So far I’ve only used to it while ninjaing to jump into a few missions and steal some bounties, but its fun as hell to fly. The Raven is going to be fitted up for pure Bear-spanking goodness, and I should be flying it in under 2 weeks (que evil laugh and creepy finger tapping).

The long-term plans I suppose deserve a lot of thought. I can say with confidence though that I intend to stay with Suddenly Ninjas for the long haul, probably so long as I play Eve. I really can’t ever see myself with a greater group of guys to fly with, and I count myself thankful to have found them earlier on in my Eve career (besides, thats what alts are for =P ). It is always a shame to see good friends leave the corp for other adventures (Cyberin you twat), but it’s also fun knowing that you’ve got buddies out there swimming in other circles that’ll have your back or give you a hand when needed. I also intend to keep going with the Saturday night salvage ops, because a) I think they’re a great idea in terms of getting new and old members together to help each other out, have fun, and make some money, and b) (on a more selfish note) I have a TON of fun running them. Saturday night’s my relax-at-home night. My girlfriend works late, I turn my phone off, I make myself a double makers on the rocks, and I have a blast with a group of awesome guys terrorizing some carebears and making a quick buck. Other plans of mine include taking things a little further with my side-projects in corp espionage and theft. I won’t say exactly what I’m up to, but suffice to say that I’ve got my little ninja hands in many, many pies right now ;).

I’m looking back over this post and realizing it reads a lot like “new years eve” type post. Which is a little annoying because I’ve already got one dynamite post planned for the real new years eve. Anyways, I’m working on a couple new ninja ship-setups right now that I’ll be posting soon (hint: “move over Firetail, here comes the Dramiel!”) so check back soon for that. Enjoy the spiffy new planets kids.

o7,

-Aiden

I haven’t been keeping up with the dev posts/blogs/etc… containing information around Dominion. One thing I have heard from a third party source that makes me giggle inside is the POS fitting will actually support Tech 3 subsystems. This will make my life so much easier considering I have to keep a scanning ship(Talon II) + Tengu (Avenger) at the POS.

I did finally bring in my hauler & have spent quite a bit of time hauling out the salvage & hauling in more fuel.

I wish I had hacking ( smacks self for lacking this ) I could of made quite a bit more.

oh well,

my two cents

Tos

EDIT: Still playing with EFT on my Tengu sorting through battleclinic setups and what I feel is better, who knows we shall see how my final fit ends up.

The Captains Log 8/11

System: E1UU-3; Esoteria

Station: La Fabbrichetta del Papi

Continuing on from my last post this post is for all those people who don’t like to make their way through 61 pages of forum threads. CCP has responded to the overwhelming hate coming from the Eve-O forums and released these revised details on the new upkeep system.

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The Captains Log 7/11

System: E1UU-3; Esoteria

Station: La Fabbrichetta del Papi

Well that DevBlog a lot of us have being waiting for has being released and it has made a lot of people cry (11 pages on the Eve-O forums so far) and they are going to have a big change on the way alliances are run So here are the important parts

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While I sit here, cussing and fuming at my main computer and trying to get it fixed (note…I had it fixed, then did something stupid, and am trying to refix it now).  I figured I’d actually post something up.  I’m still working on a post that I think everyone will like, I’m quite proud of it so far…but while I finish that one up I thought people might be interested in my opinions of the Preliminary Patch Note for Dominion.  And if not…well…here they are anyway!

Be advised, the patch notes are actually longer than what I’ll be responding to…but for the sake of your sanity, I have decided to remove the pointless remarks I was making about parts of the patch notes that I really don’t care about…enjoy.

Ships
-We have added 4 new Navy battleships, based on Tier 1 battleship hulls.  They are the Navy Armageddon, Navy Scorpion, Navy Dominix, and Navy Typhoon and they have shiny new model skins from Art.
-The existing Navy frigates and battleships have been rebalanced. Details in this thread.
-All pirate faction ships have been rebalanced. Details in this thread.

This simply makes me very happy.  While they all have their good points and somewhat-meh-points, I’m really looking forward to the new Navy Typhoon…for reasons that will be discussed in that upcoming post I mentioned earlier.  Also, Kirith over at the Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah did some very nice posts on these new ships, make sure to go read them…Navy Armageddon, Navy Scorpion, Navy Dominix, and Navy Typhoon!

The Pirate/Navy ship rebalancing was not as exciting to me at first simply because they screwed up two of my favorite salvaging ships…the Firetail and Dramiel, but now I’m decent impressed with them…due in part again to the new post coming out Soon™.  Casiella over at Ecliptic Rift also made some posts similar to Kiriths about the Navy Frigate changes…Republic Fleet Firetail, Imperial Navy Slicer, Federation Navy Comet, Caldari Navy Hookbill.

Graphics
-Some prime planets have had their graphics changed to an enhanced and more detailed version.

While this does excite me a little bit, I can’t help but to notice that part where it says prime planets.  Does this mean it’s only going to be Caldari Prime, and other important planets like that?…or does it mean all the planet models?…I can see it meaning either way…

User Interface
-Players can now get the repair quote on items through the right click menu if the station they are in has a repair service.

Now if only they would make it so only repairable items show in the repair service…I hate having to figure out which one of those 700 items is damaged when trying to repackage them!

Miscellaneous
-We have replaced the old in game browser with a modern version based on Chromium.  Documentation can be found here with the Dev Blog available here
-Player owned wrecks can now be marked as “Available for all” which prevents CONCORD or criminal repercussions for taking from or destroying free for all wrecks.
-Wallet now shows the correct capitalization.
-Starmap will correctly show whether a militia service is located in a station.

-Finally…it’s about damn time! ‘Nuff said.
-I fail to see the reasoning, or the reason, for this change…it adds nothing in my opinion.
-I can’t tell you how much that NEVER bothered me…or how much I NEVER noticed it…why the hell is that even in the patch notes.  Srsly?
-That…makes me happy…

Modules / Skills
-Fitting a Small Tractor Beam will now require Science to be trained to level 3 instead of level 4.
-Fitting a Micro Auxilary Power Core I will now require Energy Management 2 instead of level 3.
-Fitting an Armor Hardener I will now require Hull Upgrades to be trained to level 3 instead of level 4.
-Hacking will now have the following prerequisites: Science level 3 (from level 5), Electronics Upgrades level 2( from level 5), Electronics level 1 (from level 2) and Engineering level 1 ( from level 2)
-Archaeology will now have the following prerequisites Science lev 3( from level 5), Survey level 3 (from level 5) and Electronics level 1
-Salvaging will now have the following prerequisites Mechanic level 3, Survey at level 3 and Engineering level 1
-Cloaking has the following prerequisites Electronics lev 4 ( was 5)
-High Speed Maneuvering will now have Navigation at level 3 and Afterburner at level 3 as its prerequisites (instead of all at level 4)
-Tactical Shield Manipulation has Engineering at level 3 as its prerequisites(instead of level 4)
-Trajectory Analysis has Gunnery at level 4 as a prerequisite (instead of 5)
-Bomb Deployment has Missile Bombardment at level 4 as a prerequisite (instead of level 5)
-Mining Upgrades now has Mining at level 3 as a prerequisite (instead of 4)
-Thermodynamics has Engineering at level 5, Energy Management at level 3(instead of 5) and Science at level 4
-You can no longer inject skills if they cannot be added to the end of the training queue immediately.

There’s too many skills listed above to comment on all of them.  All I can say here is this significantly reduces the time it’s going to take me to get to some of my needed goals.  Thermodynamics is probably my favorite change out of all of these.  Awesome!

Starbases, Outposts and Stations
-Bookmarks can no longer be placed in starbase structures.

Why the hell not?…I can place them in my hanger, my cargo cans, other people cargo cans, little wooden boxes, under the pillow, in the closet, under the bed, inside the mattress…why can’t I put them in my POS?  What’s so special about that?…I can put everything else in there.

Modules
-Remote ECM burst modules now have a chance of affecting the target ship.

Good!  I never understood why they didn’t in the first place.

Drones
-Drones would sometimes refuse to attack certain structures, they’ve been given a stern talking-to and will now obey orders with more diligence.

They said it before…

NPC’s
-Small, Medium and Large Standard laser crystals will now drop from the appropriate NPCs.

What about the Angels that drop Miner Is?  Or the Sanshas that drop Warp Core Stabs (they never seem to use them to leave ya know…)?  Ooh…Ooh…or the Serpentis that like to use Light Missiles in their Rocket Launchers…I wish I could do that!

The Captains Log 17/9

CCP DevBlogs are coming out thick and fast. This one though is more of a public service announcement for and details some dates for Testing of some of Dominions new features.

Here are the dates

The faction ships test will take place on Friday the 18th of September at 18:00

The supercapitals test will take place on Friday the 25th of September at 18:00

And the sovereignty test will take place on the week of the 5th to the 11th of October (subject to change)

For the supercapital test everyone will be getting all skills to level 5. So if you want to fly a Titan, here is your chance. Also there was this picture attached to showing how SOV is going to work (though no other details).

There is also this information of the forums (which I presume was data mined)

On Sisi right now:

Territorial Claim Marker

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v473/W4lly/capture3.png 

This picture indicates that taking out the claim marker isn’t going to involve just shooting it and blowing it up, you are going to have to use disrupter fields to make it vulnerable. The other interesting thing to not is the onlining period of 24 hours for the claim marker and the disrupter field (this is not evident in the picture. The disrupter takes 24 hours to online and then another 12 hours to disrupt the claim module, so 36 hours in total). It is fairly evident that this is the equivalent to stront for current POS warfare. Basically an attacking alliance is going to have to keep their disrupter field/s alive for 36 hours, which presuming they put it up in their prime time, it will be quite vulnerable for the majority of time. They will then have to attack the claim maker, which after that 36 hours will be out of their prime time so in all likly hood they will have to wait longer before they can take it out. If they do get the numbers and take out the claim marker and put up their own, they are going to have to defend it for 24 hours before it becomes invulnerable, giving the defenders plenty of time to take it out and put up their own. From the above information it seems apparent that you are going to have to put up a disrupter unit on every gate, so systems with lots of gates are going to be easier to defend.  

The system does sound alright to me, though I want to see it being tested first. It is going to force alliances to obtain players from multiple time zones or form coalitions with other alliances to make up the numbers they are missing. Also you can see how this may move battles away from blob warfare (some of the time) as alliances are going to have to really on small gang warfare to defend both modules. Though this does not mean that the defending alliance wont blob the units to take them out. Additionally, this going to make SOV more fluid as the whole system is going to be quicker take and hold SOV.

However, people should not get carried away just yet. There has being no other details released yet so there may be other mechanics we don’t know about yet, such as how DUST 514 is got to integrate into this. As for how we could change from the current system to this one, I have one idea. CCP could release a mini patch which that makes the claiming module available to everyone, though they do nothing as yet. People grab them and put them up in systems they control, if you don’t have SOV there at the time you can’t put one up. CCP then puts the full patch onto EVE and SOV changes from the old system to the new one.

Anyway that’s the latest till next time.

The Captains Log 16/9

Another DevBlog is out, this one deals with upcoming capital and super capital ship changes. Assault frigates are also looking to get a +75% boost to the speed of afterburners as well, though there seems to be a lot of hostility towards it. 

Just a quick run down

Titan – Removal of the AoE doomsday and replaced with a single target super weapon. Their weapons will get a bit of a boost and a hitpoint increase. They will be looking at further developing the Titan. The death ray will have a RoF of 5 minutes, consequently the ship will be immobile for 30 seconds and can’t jump from 5 minutes (Quoted from here, subject to testing). They will have the damage output to one hit a Dread, but not another super cap.

Motherships – Gone. Instead we get Super Carriers (SC) (don’t like the name). They lose a few things that Motherships had but get a hitpoint increase and get Fighter Bombers, a new type of fighter for SC only, that are designed to kill capital ships. The cannot be assigned.

Carriers and Dreads – No real changes but they will still be important in the future.

What does this mean?

So what do I think of this? Personally, I would have liked to have seen doomsdays become scripted giving you a choice on what to use (sing target or AoE) as this gives them a bit more versatility. Sub Cap fleets may even become a more important part of large fleet battles as they don’t have to worry about being instapoped by a titan or two. On the other hand capital ships may be more vulnerable. Remember Goonswarm and friends display of power with the 27 Titans killing a Carrier with their doomsdays? Now it is going to be 27 titans killing 27 capitals ships every 5 minutes. I do have to wonder about the Leviathan though. What is its death ray going to look like? As we all know Caldari are missile users; so are they going to get a Torpedo the size of a battleship (or bigger) that travels at 100m/s? I can foresee the Torpedo being primaried by the whole fleet.

On the other hand though, it may be harder for alliances go get titans with the other changes being introduced in Dominion. If CCP’s grand goal is realised and there are multiple small alliances and moons that don’t provide as much ISK as they do now, it may be harder for alliances to gather the funds to build a Titan.

Super Carriers though are a bit of an unknown. We will have to wait until testing on sisi to see how much damage they can put out before any comments can be made about them. However, I do like the general direction they are going towards. I think I’ll have to for train one (Fishy can be in one in 23 days, though I have to get the relevant fitting skills etc).

So to finish this off here is a picture of the Amarr super weapon