Hello Capsuleers. I’m CCP SoniClover from Team Super Friends here to tell you some more about what the team’s been working on for Retribution. This blog is a follow up on the first one I did, which covered our work on a high level. I recommend you skim over that one if you haven’t already, as this blog assumes the reader has at least rudimentary knowledge of what’s going on. But I’ll quickly summarize what the team has been working on – we’ve been re-doing the broken bounty system so that now bounty is paid out proportionally based on the loss inflicted in a kill. We’ve refactored the kill right system so that players can now get others to help in exacting revenge on their former assailants. We’re also continuing to iterate on the war system and adding and adjusting a few modules.
The team has used the time since the last dev blog to implement, refine and polish the features, taking into account feedback from various sources – the CSM, the forums, test servers and so on. This feedback has resulted in us making some adjustments to our work and priorities and will be discussed in more details below.
On the whole, we’re on track to deliver what we set out to deliver. A few items have fallen of the to-do-list, but there are a few new ones on it instead. We aim to continue working on these features post-Retribution, so expect further iteration down the road. We’ll keep you posted on the details here as the time comes.
So without further ado, let’s look at some of the stuff we’ve been doing.
It’s Full of Bounties!
In addition to the Most Wanted List, we’ve added a Bounty Hunter List to the Bounty Office. This lists the characters with the highest total bounties claimed in ISK, as well as the number of kill reports they’ve been on where a bounty was claimed. There is separate list for corporations and alliances, though those do not list number of kills.
There is also a tab where you can track all bounties you’ve placed (My Bounties).
When you have a bounty placed on you, the notification you get sent now also includes the name of the character that placed the bounty on you.
We’ve reduced the minimum amounts for placing a bounty on corporations and alliances, from 50 million and 500 million to 20 million and 100 million respectively.
It will not be possible to place bounties on NPC characters (like agents) or corporations (but you can place a bounty on a player character in a NPC corporation), nor on CCP developers or ISD people.
A final note on bounties, there have been a few misconceptions floating around regarding them that we want to clear up/restate:
- Having a bounty on you will never by itself make you a legal target anywhere.
- The 20% payout is based on the loss value of the kill report, not on the bounty pool itself. Example: If you have a 150 million bounty on you and the loss value of the kill report is 100 million, then 20 million will be paid out, leaving your remaining bounty at 130 million. If the bounty pool had been 15 million instead, then the entire 15 million would have been paid out on the kill.
- The total loss value includes both ship and lost modules.
- If you’re fighting a character that has bounty on him and he self-destructs or is killed by CONCORD, you still get the bounty. The bounty then goes to the player with the highest damage contribution.
License to Kill
As before, the kill right section under your character sheet is the place to go to view your kill rights. But now this is also the place where you manage the kill rights you have.
In the kill rights view, you can now make your kill rights (the kill rights you have on other characters) available to others. You do this through the utility menu at the right of the kill right entry.
We’ve added an option for people to limit who the kill right is available to. Now when you make a kill right available, you can choose to restrict access the kill right to a specific corporation, alliance or even character. You can still make it open to anyone if you wish. When you make a kill right available, a notification is sent to the target of the kill right informing him that the kill right has been made available (and to whom if that is specified).
You can also revert your choices here and cancel the availability of your kill rights, using the same menu. Currently there are no restrictions on how fast or frequently you can cancel kill right availability or make them available again.
To be able to spot better those you have kill rights available on, we’ve added a new icon to the overview and the chat channel. You can set these to show those in your vicinity (overview) or system (local chat channel) that you can activate kill rights on. Note that there is also a bounty icon already in existence that is now more viable to show than before.
To use a kill right (your own or one that another player has made available to you), you select the target’s ship in space. In the select window you can activate the kill right (for kill rights available to you from other players this might cost you ISK to activate). This makes the target a suspect for 15 minutes. If you have more than one kill right available on the target (for instance if two characters have made it available to you), the one costing less is always chosen as default.
The Suspect flag means that anyone in the vicinity can now attack the flagged player. Running through the scenarios of what this entails make this less of an issue than at first glance.
* If the kill right is made available to everyone, but at a low price, the targeted player can simply use an alt or a friend to get rid of the kill right. This is then just an extra hoop to jump through for those players frequently causing others to get kill rights on them.
* If the kill right is made available to everyone, but at a high price, then there is much less of a chance of it being activated constantly and thus less of a hassle. This is especially true when considering that players will likely be wary of kill right scams and thus not keen on paying to activate a kill right with a considerable cost.
* If the kill right is made available to a specific entity, then this is little different than being at war – you just need to remember whom to look out for as it is not as clearly shown as for war.
If a kill report is generated where a kill right was removed (i.e. the kill was a consequence of a kill right being activated on the victim), then the kill report shows this by stating that the victim was killed on behalf of the owner of the kill right.
The Rules of War
We’ve done two iteration stories on the war system from the Inferno expansion. These are the stories we got to this time around, but there is more work to be done here.
The aggressor now has the option to retract a war that has been made mutual by the defender. This ends the war in 24 hours. The other option here was to give the aggressor a chance to accept or refuse making the war mutual, but we felt the retraction was a cleaner and simpler solution.
The other story is a bit of refactoring of the war declaration cost. We’ve removed the cost multiplier based on number of wars you’re in, as this was causing issues when wars are being copied around, plus it’s much more severe to be multiplying the base cost now compared to before (50 million and 2 million respectively).
Also, we’ve changed a little bit how the cost scales depending on number of characters in defender corp/alliance. The cost now starts ramping up faster than before and thus hits the ceiling of 500 million sooner. Before the cost started scaling up around the 128 character mark and hit the ceiling at ca. 7200. After the change, the cost starts ramping up with the 51st character and hits the ceiling at the 2000 character mark.
Tools of the Trade
Here’s some more information on the two new modules we’re making for Retribution.
For the Micro Jump Drive, we will start by just doing a large version of this module (Large Micro Jump Drive), which only battleship size ships can fit (Battleships, Marauders and Black Ops). Here are a few pertinent points:
- The spool up time is 12 seconds; this is reduced by 5% per level of the Micro Jump Drive Operation skill (which you need at level 1 to fit the module).
- The Capacitor Need is 786 and the reactivation delay time is 180 seconds.
- The jump distance is 100 kilometers, the ship will maintain direction and velocity.
- The module is affected by warp scrambling effects, but not warp disruption effects (including bubbles and interdictor effects).
- The fitting requirements are: Mid slot, 77 CPU, 1375 PG.
- On activation, the ship’s sig radius is increased 150%.
For the salvage drone, we will start with only a tech I version.
- Small, 5 drone bandwidth use.
- Speed 900 m/s.
- Base salvage chance is 3%. This is increase by 2% per level for the Salvage Drone Operation skill.
- Cycle time is 10 seconds; same as for the salvaging modules.
- When you deploy the drones, they go to idle mode, but you can activate them to start to automatically salvage wrecks. In this automated mode, they will only salvage your own and neutral wrecks, not wrecks belonging to other characters. You can manually order the drones to salvage wrecks belonging to other players, though.
- Salvage drones never loot, they only salvage. Also, there is no difference in the quality of the loot received – salvage drones can salvage the same items as the salvage modules, the only difference being that because of lower chance they are much worse at salvaging difficult wrecks (and are incapable of salvaging the most difficult Sleeper wrecks).
One final note is that we’re also making a small adjustment to the Noctis. We’re giving it a drone bay of 25m³. Initially, this was limited to salvage drones only, but we decided to remove that restriction, so you can now put any drone type in there.
Finally, we’re also tweaking a few of the Inferno modules. Notably:
- Ancillary Shield Boosters – we’re reducing the capacity by 30%, increasing the capacitor need by 40% and increased the duration of the X-Large ASB to 5 seconds from 4. We’ve tested several other changes, but feel this is enough at this stage. We want to be cautious in not nerfing them too much, but if further changes are needed we have another batch ready (this would make the ASBs use a small amount of cap even when fueled by a cap booster). But we don’t want to do that unless it is obviously needed.
- Reactive Armor Hardener – this module is basically doing what it’s supposed to do, but we wanted to give it a bit more oomph, so we’ve increased how much the resistances shift every cycle. It is now 6% instead of 3%. Also, the skill Armor Resistance Phasing now also reduces capacitor need of using a RAH.
- Target Spectrum Breaker – We’ve reduced the activation time to 8 seconds and reduced the scan resolution penalty to 25%.
Quick note, the drone damage amplifiers are also being adjusted (their damage bonus is increased), but this is the work of Team Game of Drones, so I’ll only mention it in passing here. Also, Team Five-0 is also adding meta-variations of the drone damage amplifiers (and other drone modules). Check out the Game of Drones dev blog here and here for more info.
That’s it for Team Super Friends. We hope you enjoy what is coming and have a happy Retribution.
- CCP Sonyclover
I feel so honoured to be the first comment. All of my hard work and dedication has paid off. Getting the top comment has been a dream of mine for many years, and I would like to thank those who have helped me along the way. Next I would like to thank my parents. I want to thank my dog Dutch, for being really old and always there for me. I would also like to thank my pet chick for surviving against all odds for over a week. Next I would like to thank my rats that run on a wheel all day long because that gives me inspiration that I need to get through the day. I also want to thank Captain Price for giving me courage to beat MW3 in Veteran mode. This is a special moment in my life and I would like to thank any of my unmentioned friends and family that have helped me along the way. This moment will be a moment that I will never forget.
I just remembered a few other people I would like to thank; Facebook, the mantis I caught in first grade, my light in my room because I wouldn’t be able to see the keyboard without it, the internet for letting me go on Facebook, my house because without it I would be homeless, and last but not least I would like to thank all the people out there that actually took time out of their day to read this. I cannot stress how much of a big deal to me this is. I have been trying to be the first comment on a post for years, but that has not been possible until this amazing day. Hopefully my good luck will continue, but this is undoubtedly a rare occasion. If you asked me how I did this, I would say, you can achieve anything you set your mind on. To all the kids out there reading this, I would like to tell them to follow their dreams. Being the top comment is amazing, thank you everyone.
I want the 5 sec back fire reading this
From reading this
It took you five seconds to read that!? took me like two minutes
What the….
+1 would read again
Edit:
Read again
+1 for reading it again
post of the year
+1 Post of the year, all years.
At first I was like lol, but then I serious'd. This guy deserves gold.
awesome. +1
Sorry about Dutch earlier today…. I guess my KARMA ran over your DOGMA xD[youtube e-AxomH9pwQ&feature=fvwrel www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-AxomH9pwQ&feature=fvwrel youtube]
Not cool, prick. GTFO. Take that shit to /b/ where it belongs. And do yourself a favour and gargle with bleach. That shit is. Not. Cool.
just a real shame this is a copy and paste :3
I was just watching a vid on youtube with the same thing XD
Porco Rosso avatar.
This man has class.
who knew, years ago, that a site about eve online would be created, filled with blogger bloggery. And one day, on that website, a commenter would be first to comment on that bloggery, and that man's name was Versuvius. Versuvius Marii. Let us all remember, and not forget….. don't worry, I just told myself to GTFO
I'm pretty glad they're actually giving the noctis a buff with the drone bay. Now, instead of the 4 salvagers and 4 beams, you can go 2 and 6, making salvage alts useful again!.
Also, indirect marauder buff ftw!
how is it a buff to marauder? more than for raven?
4 guns/weapons, 2 tracktor beams and use drones to salvage…
*win*
If I'm reading this correctly this is a nerf high sec ganking. Someone suicide ganks you, you make your kill rights public or give them to a corp like Moar tears. Now he has issues flying around in high sec. I have a feeling the Ice interdiction is going to become a lot less one sided.
It's makes bering a pirat more dangerous. Seems fair too. Every action has a potential reaction. But somebody has to do it.
Sounds like a nice change. Now it's not "free" kills anymore.
actually it's going to make pirating a lot more awesome – instead of being a pirate just mean you sit around in lowsec, now you actually have to watch your back and make quick raids before retreating off somewhere safe.
can't wait to bounty all the miner bumpers, especially the dip shits in the macherials. the gankers will come out of the wood works
You realize that you'd have to make it a REALLY high bounty for people to try that that, right? Read up on how bounty is paid out more. 20% of the VALUE of the kill. You'd have to put at LEAST 8 billion bounty just to cover the losses of trying to gank that machariel (assuming you try with 4 gank fitted oracles, which is about 400 mil). Anyway, good luck trying to do that and wasting your ISK.
> You'd have to put at LEAST 8 billion bounty just to cover the losses of trying to gank that machariel (assuming you try with 4 gank fitted oracles, which is about 400 mil)
> assuming you try with 4 gank fitted oracles
> gank fitted oracles
> oracles
don't know where you're getting those numbers. A mach is roughly 1.2bil, and unless someone is dumb enough to fit a bumping mach in highsec with faction and officer shit, the bounty for it would be roughly 260mil (again, more if they are dumb enough to put a ton of shit on it). And I would be more then willing to put that bounty on every bumping mach pilot I see
I think they should have linked the bounty and public kill rights, only allow public or shared kill rights if you have a bounty on the person. A bounty hunter has to pay for the kill right but only gets that one chance of 15 minutes to kill them and earn the reward. Should also be a way for a corp director to activate the kill right for his whole corp, I'd imagine when catching someone in system with a bounty and only having 15 minutes to kill them, it will pay to work in teams. I think it's strange that kill rights can only be used once, maybe once per corp/alliance would be better so a rich ganker can't just nullify his own kill rights if they are made public.
It's a good idea, I'm just not sure it's being implemented correctly.
Multiboxing FTW!
lol this is going to be silly willy fun.
Make Alt.
Run through low sec racking up kill rights.
Make them available to everyone for like a million isk
???
Profit.
I believe you only get kill rights from getting podded now, not just shot/blown up.
Actually if i reckon correctly its simple that the bounty is a pool…
and i think you get about 10% worth of the total bounty..
so you get 60M isk from someone who had a 600M bounty…
I also recall a blog post about it beinf shared within the corporation…
This was my EXACT reaction. Just run around doing stupid shit. Then of course the one where you put large bounties on your alt and just sit there on the jita undock waiting for someone to pay you 50 mil to kill your alt's empty bestower
only pod kills in low sec generate kill rigts
I am still interested to see if the jump drive will fit on caps. If so, it seems that a major change will be needed in the way you scram caps, also bubbles will no longer really be effective on bs and larger ships.
Was not aware that caps were battleships?
"which only battleship size ships can fit (Battleships, Marauders and Black Ops)"
R u cereal?
Letting the Micro Jump Drive work in bubbles is bullshit.
Maybe bullshit but then again it has a long cooldown, you can't reactivate it for the next 3 minutes. I fear it won't be used because you won't be able to move around the battlefield in sniping battleships, heck it would be easier to fight without it and use the open slot for more shield tank or utilitiy modules
BS null-sec jumpathon.: Stabs + target breaker + ecm burst + micro jump drive + cloak.
I wonder if you can cloak and then MJD, like you can with MWD
it takes 1375 power, so yeah, i don't think people who fight in larger fleets will want it at all. Only the solo player hoping it will get their bs out of a gate camp might consider it. Still bummed my orca won't be able to fit it…
"Having a bounty on you does not make you a legal trgt everywhere" then CCP you have failed to deliver!