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.
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
The Captains Log 20/10
Well as I mentioned in my post on Hulkageddon Day I mentioned that I would go into detail on how I got the ISK to buy the ships I utilised during this event. I believe the following mail will explain it:
For your termination of Prometheus09 we have paid you the bounty that was set to his head: 133,000,000.00 ISK
That’s right I had a bounty of 133 mill on my head, which I acquired from my first Hulk killing rampage. I was originally going to leave the bounty alone when it was only 33 mill, however I couldn’t resist 133 mill, especially when I could use it to buy more ships to gank more hulks with. So, thanks to all the Carebares out there who supported me with their donations to kill more Hulks. A lot of people don’t realise how broken the bounty mechanic is and that a bounty does not deter a pirate, they wear it as a symbol of pride. Now my actions here indicate that the bounty mechanic is hopelessly broken and needs fixing, so here are my ideas on this.
The ship not the Pod.
The first thing that can be done is to not hand out the full bounty placed on a person’s head. Instead the payout a person gets should be based on the ISK loss of the ship (plus fittings) that the target was flying. This would then prevent the target from using an alt to kill himself to collect the bounty, as he would only be gaining as much bounty as he was destroying. It would also mean that bounty placer knows that the target is going to be hurt to the degree they want. ie they know that if they put a bounty of 133 mill on a person head, the target will lose a 133 mill worth of ships.
Kill rights
As we know when a hostile action is performed on an individual, then that individual gets kill rights on the aggressor. However, not everyone can act on these kill rights as they do not have skills necessary to combat the aggressor or the knowledge on how to do so (such as XxBlack PearlxX). Therefore, a person should be able to contract out there kill rights to a Bounty Hunter. Anyone is still able to kill the aggressor and collect the bounty placed on them, however the bounty hunter is able to gain all the benfits of kill rights and they will not have a kill right placed on them when they engage the target. Once one of the targets ships has being destroyed the kill rights are lost, irrespective of the ship destroyed and bounty hunter collects the bounty equivalent to the destroyed ships worth. Naturally, contracts should have set time limits so that if that bounty hunter does not act on it fast enough it can be contracted out to some else who will act on it. Naturally, there should be fee associated with accepting a bounty contract.
I would also like to see a better way of tracking people down other than locator agents, such as homing beacons which can be fired onto a person’s ship.
Example
Fishy Night (bounty placer) places losses a Hulk to Prometheus09 (target) so he places a bounty of 170 million ISK on Prometheus09. Fishy Night then contracts his kill right out to Caladan09 (bounty hunter), who pays a small for fee to accept it. Caladan09 then manages to destroy Prometheus09’s Drake in Jita, which fully fitted, was worth 100 million ISK. Caladan09 acquires 100 million ISK and loses the kill rights on Prometheus09. A few days later a random person destroys Prometheus09’s Raven, worth 190 million ISK and gets 70 million ISK in bounty. There is no more bounty on Prometheus09’s head.
I think this would be a simple and eloquent solution to fix bounties.
The Captains Log 10/10
Ever since I first saw that blog about the new planet graphics over at Crazy Kinux’s blog I have wanted to see them myself. So to see them myself I jumped on the Test Server and went to my nearest planet, only to bitterly disappointed when I saw that it was only Prime Planets that had the new graphics. So yesterday I gave into the urge again and took a quick visit to New Caldari and took a couple of snap shots.
The old graphics
The new graphics
I particuly like what they have done with the Caldari Monument in the new graphics. Im sure the inhabitants of New Caldari appreciate having a large monument sticking ouf the surface of the planet. I personly wish the new planets where the same size as the old ones.
The Captains Log 23/9
A response to Hallan’s post on cloaking. Also reads Manasi’s post
As a regular cloak user I also agree that cloaking should be modified to allow AFK cloakers to be found. Note if you are not AFK cloaking it should be hard to find you.
Just as Hallaan proposes, I also agree that cloaking signatures should be introduced which can be used to probe down cloakers. However, I don’t think that a ship should always have this signature. The reason for this is becuase I can probe down a person in one cycle if I have an idea of where they are. If I know they are watching a gate camp I put my probes out put them down to the smallest size and get them in one go. Due to this I have my idea.
Instead when a cloak is activated it starts to release a form of radiation, which can be probed down. The longer you have your cloak activated the more radiation that is released into the sounding space making the signature stronger and thus easier to probe down. There is only one way to remove the radiation that is surrounding your ship and is to warp. Once you load a new grid your radiation signature is reset.
Naturally, the different meta levels of cloaks would release the radiation at different rates, thus making it easier to find cloakers using low meta levels. I am of two minds about covert ops cloaking devices though. These ships are meant to be able to cloak so it seems natural that covert ops cloaking devices should not release radiation. However they can still be AFK cloakers. Either way, they would have lowest rate of radiation emission.
I would also like to see the introduction of T2 combat probes, which would be used to probe down cloakers, as well as giving a bonus to normal probing. Naturally, they would have longer training times then normal probes.
In regards to the directional scanner, I think it should be used to locate the cloaker once you are on the same grid as him. You can not use your directional scanner to locate a cloaker unless your are one same grid as him, he just wont appear on it unless you are on the grid.
Anyway that is my idea.
For the last two weeks I have being busy doing uni work, so I have had no time to play Eve. Come Saturday though I got on just to try the new factions ships and in particular, the Gila.
I only really tried the one set up and that was a passive tank.
High Slots
3 x Arbalest Heavy Missile Launchers
2 x Empty (didn’t know what to put here)
Medium Slots
3 x Large Shield Extender II
1 x Shield Recharger II
2 x Invulnerability Field II
Low Slots
1 x Power Diagnostic System II
3 x Shield Power Relay II
Rigs
3 x Medium Core Defence Field Purger
16 x Heavy Drones : )
After playing around with it I came to the conclusion it can fit one hell of a passive tank and do a decent amount of damage. However, flying it solo isn’t the way to do it. I ran into one couple (pictured bellow) who were by looks of it using cap transfers, remote shield repers and NOS to take down anyone who attacked them. All in all it is one hell of a nice ship. I think I might buy one for myself (after I get a Dread and then a Proteus).
I also got to see some of the new fighter bombers in action and they make some very pretty explosions. Once concern is the amount of Lag that his may cause. Also they have a hard time hitting anything that is sub capital ship, which I saw in a Stabber Fleet Issue which was tacking next to no damage from the fighter bombers as he flew around.
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
This unit contains a large fluid router array. By establishing an alternate data route to CONCORD networks, it grants de-facto administrative control of the system it’s in to its owners.
Once online, it installs defensive protocols into the local data net, which cause targeting systems to consider it an invalid target. The only way to remove this structure once established is to seed override protocols into all stargates in the system simultaneously, using System Restore Hubs.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v473/W4lly/capture2.png
System Restore unit-
This computing unit will interface with any nearby stargate, and attempt to restore default operating protocols to it. This process takes twelve hours to accomplish, and will only succeed when all stargates in the system have been overriden in this manner.
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
Update
Haven’t had much time to play Eve due a couple of rough weeks at uni so I have had now PvP at all. Skill wise my characters are on long skills at the moment (though I gave Caladan some trading skills) so there has being no change there. The biggest news of the week is that I now have 770 mill in my Dreadnaught fun, the majority of which has come from running some plexs (post coming soon) and a bit from trading (though I still don’t know how to do it well).
Pirate Faction ship Changes
Go here and have a look at the changes that CCP is going to be making to pirate ships. Most of the changes look quite nice. I am quite happy to see that the Guristas dual weapon bonuses are being removed as they were pretty fail. The Glia (Guristas Cruiser) looks like it could show some promise. It has 400m3 dronebay with 125m3 drone bandwidth allowing it to field a flight a of Heavy Drones plus its three launchers. With the same mid and low slot layout as a Drake (though less CPU and powergrid) it will be interesting to see what kind of passive tank you can get on it. Or maybe you will be able to get a good nano fit on there. Would like to try it out on EveMon.
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
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
Prometheus09