Disclaimer: This piece reflects the opinion of Dsan, old EN24 writer, Member of Habitual Euthanasia, Pandemic Legion.
lets talk about these latest changes announced in the most recent dev blog on October 1st.
For starters, if you’re a regular reader of devblogs and follow up on their final implementation into the actual game, you will know that from the first devblog to final implementation, a lot can change, so there’s no reason to lose your shit and unsubscribe just yet.
If you are quitting on the game from this, then first of all; you lost the game – To CCP even. Second, at least spend the last few months going out with a bang, suicide all your stuff into an RvB fleet, Amamake, HED-GP or similar. (There’s no cooler alternatives in the legal area atleast.)
I’m not going to dissect or do a lot of math on the devblog, read it yourself and then read it again to make sure you understand it. Also there’s like three times as much information in the threadnaught associated to it, and I can’t really be bothered to read it all or keep up with it, I have people for that (Thanks David!)
So 4 things are introduced in the devblog, all of them meant to have a significant influence on what is called power projection in 0.0 space.
90% of those who complain and are outraged, has done the math and is looking at how power projection under these changes will work, and it won’t. And thats kind of the point.
First, there’s the Jump fatigue added that will stack with a multiplier for each jump, increasing “cool down” between jumps. If they wanted to just make power projection harder or put in some buffer, it would be additive. It’s not, it’s multiplied, meaning if you can’t wait after the first jump to cool down fully, you get double punished for being in a hurry. So far there’s no upper limit to the jump fatigue meter, other than the natural limit where you just don’t play. And yes in 14 jumps or so, you can raise your fatigue to insane amounts, I’ll get back to this.
Second, capitals get to use gates now. This is meant to counter weight the fatigue penalty. so instead of just recapping and jump further and add to your fatigue, you are better off jumping to a regional border system and jump that gate. This could potentially save you a lot of LY fatigue and you regain some fatigue. It also adds content, where maybe you want your cyno to scout the route, so here cov ops cynos are highly advantageous in scouting a group or fleet of caps. And I just want to point out this part of the dev blog:
“We are going to allow capital ships to use gates in lowsec/nullsec, and we are aiming to make gate-to-gate travel take less time than jump travel over distances of more than ~20 LY.”
Third theres a change to range, basically stopping major entities from covering a 15LY Radius with their entire capital ship ability
A lot of sort of valid complaints relate to the changes to the Jump freighters, and how hard or difficult logistics to the furthest corners of 0.0 will be.
I got news for you, it’s not supposed to be easy. And logistics isn’t supposed to be a 3 man job for a 2.000 man alliance where one dude basically jumps from system to system, in a single jump freighter and fuels towers alone.
And I’m not saying that’s how it is everywhere, but now you need to group together in logistics teams and the introvert nerds of your logistics and infrastructure backend might have to call some fleets for freighter escorts and trust some members more, to get the reward for the alliance. Good thing this is an MMO so theres plenty of people around to play with, start doing it.
When I first ventured into 0.0, I lived in the most southern pocket of 0.0 providence, and i didn’t know a soul with a jump freighter or carrier. Exactly how I got battleships out to QBL for ratting, I can’t remember, but most ceptors, dictors and what else I flew I imported myself or via corp mates in industrials. Within the first year of playing eve, my PVE (later PVP) main HAD to train into a mammoth just to haul my own stuff.
It wasn’t till I joined Nulli Secunda in Querious and we had to assist BoB I tried jumping with jump bridges, and an entire new world opened up to me, and I know these are also being nerfed in ranged and having the ranges changes, but even in 2008 the power projection we did with BoB around DQPB was insane and OP.
So as I mentioned, these changes and especially the math and the mechanics aren’t final as of this devblog. I have to admit, the rate at which your fatigue goes up contra how quickly your fatigue goes down is a bit out of balance. I would suggest at least adjusting the the fatigue decay rate. which is currently 0.1 per minute. Set it to 0.3 or 0.5 and it helps a lot already. Also theres no mention of skillbooks yet, so lets see if they won’t consider a high ranked skill that adds fatigue decay rate in maybe 0.1 minute per second per level or similar. (Maybe limited to Jump freighter and Black Ops ships)
These changes will drive some content back into the game, in so many different ways and create so many opportunities from small gangs of 3rd party unknowns being able to roam around areas of conflict to catch stragglers or fuck around with moving fleets trying to avoid jump fatigue.
Here’s a fun scenario, imagine invading or even just harassing sov holders for their space. You can now be much more strategic in your invasion and entrance to the fight. By deploying SBUs in two systems separated by more than 5LY, you will force the defender to either pick one system, or wait for you to make your move giving you the first on field advantage. Do they go in with dreads, carriers or supers while you have arrived in the old fashioned way of gates. You can give up the fight, and head for the secondary target or possibly a tertiary target. The jump fatigue alone from the first two jumps will give you a significant time advantage in obtaining other objectives. Entities planning on defending a timer with capitals, will also probably opt to form early, as you did in the old days, when you would group up in fleets, go by gates and eventually orbit a POS for an hour or two, if nothing else to generate lag and fuck with the node (This was pre tidi and dedicated system servers). Now you want to maybe do those two jumps (1 mid) half an hour before the timer is up, to get to the mid, safe up and regain fatigue before jumping to the final system and have an actual jump ready carrier when the timer is up. This will put the defender in a position where they can atleast try to jump out quickly, if they are overwhelmed. Opposite, the hostile incoming fleet may also be forming and traveling early to gain equal advantage or just to have capital support within jump range of carriers. This is all content creation and will require a lot more players to be active, involved and take part in 0.0 warfare beyond anchoring, split guns, f1-f8.
I can’t stress this enough. These changes, in my understanding and interpretation, is to inhibit or totally kill power projection. So any argument against these changes that basically go “Well, now we can’t do *this* anymore so the game is fucked” is you trying to power project, and you’re not supposed to so you are doing it wrong.
Eve is a sandbox game, and this change isn’t just an attempt to reset the sandbox and have you build up or establish the same sandcastles again. The way eve is now, you have a few entities in eve who’ve all agreed on the lines in the sandbox where they can build inside and others can’t go inside it. CCP is trying to keep you from drawing these lines, and if anything limit the lines down to maybe 15 LY lines in radius.
Finally I can’t help but mention, i recently came back to eve. And in my 6 months back, the best “content” in 0.0 has been provibloc and BRAVE fighting. In their silly small skirmishes over SOV. And these engagement has had great potential for good fights, especially between the two. Into the mix, all the bored 0.0 entities has thrown themselves into the mix, taking the side of who ever is losing and maintaining the fight keeping both sides from winning. Personally Pandemic Legion has been very efficiently power projecting from Amamake to the Providence/Catch Border where the fights take place.
It’s very cool for us, in Pandemic Legion to be able to do this, it allows us to sit on our ass all day and in 10 minutes be in the war zone. It would make more sense if we had to actually go deploy in Stain, low-sec amarr or even pick a side, work with one of the entities and live in their space or similar. Make us commit to the fun or stay away. Point being, cool fights are being ruined by power projecting.
