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.

Read More

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

Read More

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

Once a successful override has been made, any Territorial Control Units in the system will become vulnerable to attack.

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

The Captains Log 15/9/09

Another DevBlog was released by CCP today detailing the reasons behind why CCP is redoing Sov the way they are. Below is the recap that was given at the end of the blog (I encourage you to read all of it as it goes into a hell of a lot more detail for the reason behind their future actions).

We implement the following:

-      A simple, descriptive sovereignty system

-      A separate mechanism for governing outpost conquest

-      A way to increase the resource density of your space (as well as other cool gubbins)

-      A reduction in the value of moon minerals

-      An upkeep system for the space you hold and develop

 
We get (hopefully!):

-      A more comprehensible, streamlined and robust way of showing who owns a particular system

-      A better conquest experience

-      More organic, meaningful and fun small-fleet combat

-      Less territorial sprawl by major alliances

-      A more diverse and interesting political landscape

-      More opportunities for players to get involved in nullsec

-       More awesome emergent gameplay

 
I am personally all for this as it fits into my style of gameplay and the way I believe EVE should work. Firstly, as I have stated, I like small and medium gang PvP better than large fleets. For me a more diverse political landscape will also lead to an increase in PvP, though I doubt we will see anything on the scale of the two Delve Wars. Also allowing new alliances to get involved in the 0.0 game is something I am all for, particularly in regards to my history in EVE as I have being in two alliances that have tried to gain access to 0.0 only to find that the only way to do it is through renting. The end result was or Land Lords attacking us and forcing us to move out. One interesting problem that deep 0.0 alliances are going to find is trying to get back into empire as they are going to have to traverse the territory of multiple alliances, which if CCP gets it way will be more populated then it currently is, making gate camps more prevalent.

 Another important change they are introducing is to lower the price of moon minerals. The reason for this to prevent alliances from paying all its bills through the use of moon minerals as they do now and instead force alliances to get ISK from their members (or carebares). This will force alliances to have a dedicated carebare wing to produce ISK for their military wing that protects them from hostiles. Another unintended side affect for this will probably be lower prices on T2 equipment and ships, which is great for me.

There is one other thing that the alliances are going to have to do; and that is to be prepared for the changes. The alliance that waits for these Dominion to be released be for it changes its alliance structure will die. Alliances have to start thinking about what they are going to do ensure their survival. The four important steps I believe that alliances should take is

1. Horde your ISK from moon materials – you’re going to need this ISK to buy new outposts
2. Consolidate space instead of expanding (that’s if you have a fair bit already).
3. Begin thinking about how you are going to integrate carebares into your alliance to earn ISK
4. If you hold lots of space start thinking about alt alliances

Of course this could all change once CCP release a DevBlog on the actual mechanics but the above points a fairly general. The important thing is to start thinking about these changes now and not latter.

Related Posts

Sovereignty: breaking the chains

The Future of EVE: DUST 514

The Captains Log 10/9

CCP has relased a little teaser on what they plan to do with sov in the next expansion located here.

Gaining Sov

There are no sov ‘levels’ anymore; you either have sovereignty or you do not.  The mechanic for claiming a star system will be much more simplified and symbolic.  You will plant your ‘flag’ in the form of a new claiming module and it will sync up with the traditional ‘borders’ of a star system, namely the stargates.

From this I get the idea that sovereignty may be based around a similar process to that of faction warfare, with alliances fighting over control bunker type modules. The main problem here is I don’t see how this is going to mesh in with DUST514, which from CCP said, looked like it was going to be based around planatray control instead POS warfare. Maybe you will have to put the claiming module on every planet? I would also like to see corps be able to take Sovereignty and not just alliances.

When Dominion is released, the answer is simple – if you want to control the space accessed by these stargates, you will be responsible for their monthly maintenance and upkeep … the more space you spread your ‘Dominion’ across, the more expensive it will become to maintain your stargate network

Now CCP has stated here that having a large empire will cost an alliance more as they will have to pay for more stargates. Now lets look at this map of goons space.

Every one of those systems has at least one goon tower in there and that tower costs ISK. So unless that stargate upkeep costs a lot I believe that alliances will be saving ISK compared to what they spend now. Also the other question is what happens if a system has no sovereignty? Do the stargates shut down and cannot be utilised anymore?

Building Roads and Fortress

One issue that we intend to specifically address is that of ‘infrastructure’.  This is a word you are going to hear a lot more of in the months and years to come.  Essentially, we are going to give you the tools to improve the space you hold.

Now I like the sound of this. It means that alliances will no longer have to bunch up into a couple of good constellations but be able to expand into the surrounding space. I think this will also make coming to 0.0 attractive to smaller alliances and possibly increase the number of people who move out to 0.0 as they will be able to gain access to good systems as well. When you combine this with new methods of tacking SOV…

The key is finding a balance between allowing smaller gangs of raiders to disrupt the day to day operations of your space against requiring massive battleship and capital fleets to actually remove you from the same space… Conquest of space in Dominion will differ greatly from what exists currently, as will the ability of roaming gangs to cause an ‘AFK Empire’ no end of frustration.

I believe this may further open up 0.0 to smaller alliances and therefore make the SOV map more fluid, which is something that I really want to see as the larger alliances will start to lose hold of over their space and other smaller entities will be able to gain control of it. By the sounds of it roaming gangs may even begin to play a larger role in removing Sov from empires, which I would love to see since I like gangs over big fleets.

The Future

one feature which we plan to implement early next year as a direct follow-up to the new Sovereignty system is the introduction of Treaties.  Without going into too much detail, Treaties will be a fully functional mechanic that formalizes many of the agreements already in game.  The plan is to give alliances the tools to ‘rent’ out areas of their space to other alliances or corporations, create formal military treaties and establish diplomatic boundaries with regard to your alliance interests.

This sounds just as good. I have had a idea similar to this for awhile. It’s good to see CCP is adding in more tools help EVE politics mature.

Well it sounds like there is interesting times coming for 0.0 warfare, keep any eye out for my DevBlogs.

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The Future of EVE: DUST 514