Quick note: Thanks to Matteral for research and image support!
Wednesday saw another episode of CCP’s O7 Show, a live-stream where CCP announce changes and talk about their announcements on Twitch.TV. First on the couch were CCP Fozzie and CCP Nullarbor. Nullarbor was fresh back from EVE Vegas, where CCP had announced a huge array of features and expansions planned for EVE, and the O7 show is a perfect place to recap these changes.
Structures Recap
One of the huge announcements of this year’s EVE Vegas was the unveiling of even more details about Citadels, which can be read about here, and are due to be released in early 2016. CCP briefly discussed the different sized Citadels, and how they expect these different iterations to be used:
Extra Large Citadel As Titan’s Approach
CCP also said that they were thrilled with the response of players, not only at EVE Vegas, but online as well. Citadels will allow players to shape even more of New Eden, as each citadel will be fully placeable by the player.The Structures Round-table at EVE Vegas was also great, as CCP were able to listen to suggestions, and take notes, in particular from the wormhole community, who have a unique style of gameplay not found anywhere else in EVE Online, and do not wish to see their play-style compromised.
Citadels will also feature a new mechanic known as Tethering. Tethering will allow players to be tethered to a Citadel and ,while tethered, players will be immune to damage, and will not be able to be locked. However, once a player chooses to commit to combat outside a Citadel, they will not be able to dock or tether. CCP hopes this will end station games, and force the players to commit to combat.
Upon the discussion of Citadels at EVE Vegas, market speculation began in-game, with traders fluctuating the prices of minerals and other ores that will be required to build Citadels, sparking the largest market speculation in years.
CCP is enthusiastic about the release of Citadels, but is aware there is a lot of uncertainty as to how gameplay will be affected when they finally reach the Tranquility Server in Spring 2016.
CCP then answered players’ questions in relation to Citadels:
1. How easy will it be to remove someone who is no longer wanted from your Citadel?
We aim to make it as easy as possible for players to remove unwanted guests from their Citadels, with new Access Groups, deciding who can use the market, man guns, and even dock, we aim to make Citadel control easy to manage. We have been thinking of creating a time-period for players leaving the Citadels, or having them launched into space at their next log-on. we are trying to come up with a mechanic that cannot be used to troll people.
2.Will Wormhole Citadels have special mods?
We do not currently plan on having wormhole specific mods when the Citadel Expansion is released, we are thinking of giving modules different effects depending on the area of space they are in. We are considering changing the siege timer to a 48 hours, and the Citadel anchor times for Wormhole and Sovereignty space, to ensure the defender has a chance to defend an attack, and prevent the enemy from quickly establishing a beachhead, and maintaining the uniqueness of Wormhole space.
3.How far ahead will details be released
The required components for Citadels will be changed, and the Dev-Blog will be posted before the release, however Citadel Blueprints will not be added until the release of Citadels in Spring 2016.
Capital Changes Recap
At EVE Vegas, CCP also announced their much anticipated Capital Class Ship changes. This involves a complete re-balance of Capital Ships, along with the addition of a new class of Capital ships. CCP have an objective that they wish to reach when it concerns Capital ships.
Capital Ships should be useful in all types of battles without dominating the battlefield. We aim to create strong counter-play when it comes to Capitals, including the ability that the new mechanics are telegraphed, allowing sub-caps to move out of the way, and creating much more vulnerability when it comes to Capitals.
New Capital Ship Changes – Where Does The Rorqual Fit In?
Carriers will be removed from logistics roles, and a new Capital Class, the Force Auxiliary Class will be the new Triage Class, and will be uniquely balanced for that purpose. Carriers will now be responsible for squadrons of Fighter Drones, featuring squadron micromanagement, with new camera detachment that allows a Carrier pilot to unlock his camera from the ship, and move around the battlefield, commanding squadrons as he does so. This means that Multi-boxing will not be as effective, as to be fully effective, Carrier pilots will need to pay attention to their screen. There will be no mixing and matching of Fighter Squads, and Fighters will feature Special abilities.
New Fighter Bay Inventory Management
CCP will also be re-balancing Capital ships in general, adding more modules and Capital module tiericide. Capital ship’s immunity to electronic warfare will be removed, and Capitals will have high warp strength so it will take a large amount of small ships to tackle a Capital. CCP are aware that new players cannot interact with these large ships, and aim to change that, and removing E-War immunity is the first step. Dreadnoughts will now have a fitting service, allowing ships to refit off of them, however, refitting will no longer be possible with a weapon’s timer, meaning that FC’s have to commit to decisions. This may or may not apply to the Force Auxiliary Class, as it is still in development, however, stats can be modified so that they can be balanced.
CCP have also announced 3 new doomsday weapons for Titans, with the promise of more to come.
Players also requested that the Rorqual gain a mining doomsday weapon.
Player questions regarding Capitals
1. Will Capital ships be allowed into High-Sec to attack Citadels?
We are currently not planning on ,allowing Capitals to return to High-Sec. With Citadels having damage mitigation when it comes to large fleets, a Large amount of Battleships should be as effective as a group of capitals when it comes to Citadels, however, this means we can expect huge battles in High-Sec over Citadels too.
2. What are your plans concerning the Rorqual?
The Rorqual is like Off-Grid Links, we will conquered them, but are not ready to talk about plans. We have some old plans, some new plans, and changes may be implemented in Spring 2016 when the other Capital changes are implemented, before we change the Rorqual, it needs to meet 3 requirements
- It needs to do powerful things on the field
- Effectively support other miners
- Defensive abilities that can be good enough to survive
The Rorqual needs love, and has been neglected for a while, but we are working on changes.
O7 Show Battles Recap:
For more information on these battle reports, and more, click here for a list of the most recent reports by Sallivan Harddin
Current Affairs
A new killboard has been released, with fully interactive ship models and information, see https://github.com/roxlukas/lmeve for more information.
The Crimson Harvest was a Halloween event added by CCP, which had some great effects. The Crimson Harvest added Blood Raider Gauntlets, which turned out to be very popular, as they dropped Blood Raider Abaddon skins and Blood Raider Cerebral Implants. Not only were these sites a great source of profit, but they created a lot of content, with contests in high-sec, but PVP conflicts everywhere else in New Eden. The Crimson Harvest has been very popular, and EVE players are calling for more of the same.
The Amarr Championship will also take place next weekend, and will be live streamed on CCP’s twitch channel. The Amarr Championship contains 6 teams, including some well-known names such as Chessur, Elise Randolph, and Max Singularity. The Champions and their team-mates will fight against each other in a round robin tournament on the 14th and 15th of November. The two teams that achieve the highest scores will move onto the finals, which will be held live on stage at FanFest 2016 on April 22nd. Both teams competing in the finals will be flown to Iceland by CCP where they will fight in a best of 5 series. The winner of the series becoming the new champions and the heir they represent will then be crowned the new leader of the Amarr Empire. The full list of competitors can be found here. Each House’s team will have different rules, and these will be announced in a Dev-blog later in the week.
Eve Online Community TV officially launches on Sunday the 29th.
EVE Events
EVE Vegas took place last weekend! The event was sold out, with almost 800 people in attendance. CCP also mentioned other events coming up over the next month. For more information on these events, visit EVEmeet.net. These meetups include:
CCP Mimic interviewed Otto Bismark, one of the organizers of EVE Down Under, he mentioned the following:
He also mentioned Care for Kids, and asked for people to donate to the cause.
Brain in a Box
Dev PrismX took a guest spot on today’s O7 Show to talk about the Brain in a Box, EVE Online’s new technology to help the servers process information.
Dev PrismX energetically discussing Brain in a Box
Brain in the Box saves computations for working out skills and their effects, rather than having to work them out on-the-fly. All skill effects are now going to be placed into one entity, rather than mass calculation. The calculations will be stored online, allowing quicker and easier maths, which should make the servers run easier. Brain in the Box has finally reached fruition after 2 years of work, and CCP’s anticipation is huge. It will make EVE run smoother performance wise, and will stop Gate-Lag when huge fleets jump through gates, which has been a big issue in EVE. It will also reduce things like Jita load times, or any instance where a lot of players are involved. There is much more that can be done when developing new modules, as their attributes can be pre-loaded into the Brain in a Box. Ship attributes and skill multipliers were placed in the Brain, literally concepts of numbers, which allow the removal and modifications of numbers, thus making the development of new mechanics simpler. Boosters are now more manageable for the client, as Skills are handled by different nodes to battles. The Brain in a Box should see a smooth release on Tuesday, when it will be activated on Tranquility.
CCP Masterplan & CCP Fozzie then discussed the upcoming updates, Paralax and Acaron.
The Aegis Sovereignty mechanics will be updated to add passive defensive regeneration to Entosis targets. This is needed because when Capsuleers begin Entosising, they may not necessarily complete their capture, leaving a target half captured. While a target is in this state, the defender will not receive any warnings about it being captured, and they may have to re-ship in order to fit an Entosis Link of their own. This update allows the defender to hold the field while the target regenerates naturally. All Entosis targets, including capture nodes, will now automatically return to the defender if they are not captured fully. This is a much needed fix to a problem that has effected Aegis Sovereignty from its release, and should now end long contests.
The question “Will Entosised systems be repealed with the deployment of Citadels” was also asked. CCP responded with a non-specific answer.
It is much too early to say. We will see after Citadels are released which aspects of game-play people enjoy. One thing is for sure, when Citadels are released, Entosis Warfare and the traditional warfare of large fights will come closer together. We will not be able to comment until thing happen Tranquility.
The Acaron update will be released in December, and will feature:
Capsuleers will also gain the ability to show off how many ships they have killed with Paralax. All non-corp kills will leave a mark on the ship, and as your kill count increases, so will the marks on that ship. Capsules, Shuttles and Rookie Ships will not count to prevent the farming of marks. Paralax will have ships with numbers, however on Acaron’s release, ship marks will be added and the number will be removed.
New graphical textures will be added to show age of your ship. The older the ship, the more dust ‘n’ rust.
The Acaron release (December) will also see the release of 13 new Frigate and Destroyer Hulls
The Endurance – An Ice Mining Frigate
The Crucifier Navy Issue – Amarr Tech 2 E-War Frigate
The Griffin Navy Issue – Caldari Tech 2 E-War Frigate
The Maulus Navy Issue – Gallente Faction E-War Frigate
The Vigil Navy Issue – Minmatar Navy E-War Frigate
The Deacon – Amarr Tech 2 Logistics Frigate
The Curon – Caldari Tech 2 Logistics Frigate
The Thalia – Gallente Tech 2 Logistics Frigate
The Scalpel – Minmatar Tech 2 Logistics Frigate
There will also be four faction specific Micro-Jump Drive Capable Destroyers released with Acaron, the Dev-blog concerning all these ships will be released next week. CCP also confirmed that the MJD Destroyers will affect any sub-cap hull within the modules area of effect radius, jumping it in the direction the Destroyer is facing. The exact distance and radius were not stated, however the module will only work outside of High-Sec space.
We can expect more announcements and Dev-Blogs next week, but this weeks O7 show was very exciting, and along with the list of changes mentioned at EVE Vegas, I for one am looking forward to the future. I have but one thing to say. EVE Online is very much alive.
What is your opinion on all that is covered here?
O7
