During downtime this Wednesday, 6 February, we will unfit ships based on changes done in the Trinity expansion in December. Some ships now have fewer module slots than they had before, but the actual modules were not removed. With this fix, all fitted modules of ships that have too many modules for their slots will be placed in the ship’s cargo hold. Since this will not only strip your modules from removed slots but all modules from the entire ship we strongly suggest that you remove additional modules from your ship yourself before the downtime!

Affected ships in the expansion were (high/med/low):

• Eos - changed to: 7/4/6 - 2 turret hardpoints removed.
• Nidhoggur - changed to: 5/5/6
• Ares - changed to: 3/3/4
• Rook - changed to: 5/7/3
• Nightmare - changed to: 6/7/5 - 4 launcher hardpoints removed.
• Phantasm - changed to: 5/6/3 - 3 launcher hardpoints removed.
• Succubus - changed to: 4/4/2 - 2 launcher hardpoints removed.

Unfortunately there was a mixup with the slot data, this has now been corrected. We apologize if it caused any concern.

As Zulupark mentioned in his recent blog we have also been looking into improving some of the less effective ships.

Amarr Ships

The Omen has long suffered from a lack of damage compared to the Maller even though the Omen is intended to focus on offense at the expense of defense. The rate of fire bonus to energy turrets only compensates for the additional turret hardpoint the Maller has, so the Maller is a better choice in almost all cases. Because of this we have added a 5th turret hardpoint to the Omen. This also carries over to the Zealot, which is based on the Omen. While the damage output of the enhanced Zealot is massive, in particular in combination with the resistance changes mentioned in Zulupark's blog, we feel that this is where the close range Heavy Assault Ships ("HACs") need to be at in order to stay competitive.

• Omen: 5 turrets (+1 turret)
• Zealot: 5 turrets (+1 turret)

With the introduction of the Abaddon, the Apocalypse became close to obsolete simply because the Armageddon and Abaddon perform better in general. We considered several different options for giving the Apocalypse a role that wouldn't conflict with the "tank" and "gank" roles of the Armageddon and Abaddon, yet not be overly specialized. Eventually, we settled on the following.

Apocalypse:

• Fitting: 505tf, 20500mw (+5tf, +1000mw)
• Capacitor capacity: 7500en (+25%)
• Bonuses:
  • 10% reduction in large energy turret capacitor usage per Amarr Battleship level (no change)
  • 7.5% bonus to large energy turret optimal range per Amarr Battleship level (replaces the 5% capacitor capacity bonus)

With the above changes the Apocalypse becomes a very good option for long range sniping. The main reason that the optimal range bonus doesn't share the Rokh's 10% per level is that the optimal range bonus benefits both beam lasers as well as pulse lasers, whereas the hybrid optimal range bonus of the Rokh only really benefits railguns. Another concern is that the Rokh, a more expensive tier 3 battleship, should retain its range advantage over other battleships. With a balanced setup the Apocalypse can obtain an optimal range of over 190km, which fits within its targeting range of 205km when using two tech 2 sensor boosters. The Apocalypse uses significantly less energy to fire its turrets compared to the other Amarr battleships and even outperforms the hybrid turret snipers in terms of sustainability due to the larger capacitor capacity.

Deimos

After a significant amount of testing with the changes to the Zealot, it became apparent that the Deimos had problems compared to the other close range heavy assault ships. As the damage output is already the highest of all the HACs, we looked into boosting its defenses so it had a fighting chance. One of the main problems of actively repaired Deimos setups is the high energy requirement, so we have changed the slot layout so the Deimos can accommodate a capacitor booster.

Deimos:

• Slots: 6/4/5 (+1 med, -1 low)
• Capacitor capacity: 1625.0en (+250en)
• Bonuses:
  • 5% bonus to medium hybrid turret damage per Gallente Cruiser level (no change)
  • 7.5% bonus to armor repair amount per Gallente Cruiser level (replaces the MWD capacitor penalty reduction)

The above mentioned changes to the Deimos and Zealot allow them to better compete on even term with other close range HACs, such as the Sacrilege.

Caldari Railgun Platforms

Similarly to the Omen, a number of Caldari railgun platforms were suffering in the damage department due to the lack of turret hardpoints compared to their competitors, so we have increased the number of hardpoints as follows:

• Moa: 5 turrets (+1)
• Eagle: 5 turrets (+1)

The power outputs of the Moa and Eagle are sufficient to setup a 5 turret railgun platform so no further changes were need. However the Ferox lacks the power output to properly support an additional turret and has thus been increased.

Ferox:

• Hardpoints: 6 turrets (+1)
• Power output: 1075mw (+75mw)

The Raptor has also been given an additional turret hardpoint, but the combination of 30km range with tech 2 Warp Disruptors and the bonus to hybrid turret optimal range, that easily pushes the range beyond 30km with tech 2 munitions, makes for a potent combination. As the Harpy Assault Ship, which specializes in frigate level sniping, should retain its dominance as a frigate sniper, the power output of the Raptor has been reduced to encourage Raptor pilots to fit 125mm railguns rather than the longer range 150mm railguns.

Raptor:

• Hardpoints: 3 turrets (+1)
• Power output: 26mw (-4mw)

Tracking Disruptors

Finally we have added a falloff modifier to the Tracking Disruptors. The Optimal Range Disruption ARM script has been change to modify both optimal range and falloff. The reason for this change is the Tracking Disruptors are largely ineffective against blasters and auto cannons which have a high tracking speeds and large falloffs. Disrupting the optimal range does not affect them in any significant way and tracking disruption is not very effective either because of the large falloff. By allowing the Optimal Range Disruption script to affect falloff as well, Tracking Disruptors can be used effectively to reduce the range of blasters and auto cannons. Skills and bonuses that affect the effectiveness of Tracking Disruptors have been changed to also affect the falloff.

As always, note that these changes are subject to change based on further testing. We will be keeping a close eye on the Deimos in particular.

During downtime this Wednesday, 6 February, we will unfit ships based on changes done in the Trinity expansion in December. Some ships now have fewer module slots than they had before, but the actual modules were not removed. With this fix, all fitted modules of ships that have too many modules for their slots will be placed in the ship's cargo hold. Since this will not only strip your modules from removed slots but all modules from the entire ship we strongly suggest that you remove additional modules from your ship yourself before the downtime!

Affected ships in the expansion were (high/med/low):

• Eos - changed to: 7/4/6 - 2 turret hardpoints removed.
• Nidhoggur - changed to: 5/5/6
• Ares - changed to: 3/3/4
• Rook - changed to: 5/7/3
• Nightmare - changed to: 6/7/5 - 4 launcher hardpoints removed.
• Phantasm - changed to: 5/6/3 - 3 launcher hardpoints removed.
• Succubus - changed to: 4/4/2 - 2 launcher hardpoints removed.

Unfortunately there was a mixup with the slot data, this has now been corrected. We apologize if it caused any concern.

The holidays are safely over for us all; the Earth having safely completed yet another orbit around the sun. Up in the land of ice and Vikings, we are gearing back up to work off all those mince pies in what looks to be a very interesting year. For the past few weeks the focus has been on bug fixing but not without a spoonful of balancing and timely changes to go with it. It is the latter which we want to talk about and tell you about a few of the upcoming changes.

Clones

Six new clones have been added going all the way up to 450 million skill points at the cost of 150 million ISK which should keep Dr Caymus and the rest of you covered for a few years. We also took this opportunity to revisit the existing clones and rounded up both the skill points saved and the costs to figures that are a little easier on the eyes. The most significant changes are the price reduction of the Rho and Sigma clones to bring them more into line with the preceding clones. The table below shows the new clone figures.

Name	Skill Points	Cost
Clone Grade Alpha	900,000	-
Clone Grade Beta	1,380,000	40,000
Clone Grade Gamma	2,050,000	65,000
Clone Grade Delta	2,800,000	95,000
Clone Grade Epsilon	3,750,000	130,000
Clone Grade Zeta	4,800,000	180,000
Clone Grade Eta	6,100,000	250,000
Clone Grade Theta	7,750,000	335,000
Clone Grade Iota	9,800,000	470,000
Clone Grade Kappa	12,400,000	650,000
Clone Grade Lambda	15,700,000	930,000
Clone Grade Mu	20,000,000	1,340,000
Clone Grade Nu	25,600,000	1,980,000
Clone Grade Xi	32,800,000	2,990,000
Clone Grade Omicron	42,200,000	4,700,000
Clone Grade Pi	54,600,000	7,800,000
Clone Grade Rho	71,000,000	13,000,000
Clone Grade Sigma	92,500,000	20,000,000
Clone Grade Tau	120,000,000	30,000,000
Clone Grade Upsilon	156,000,000	45,000,000
Clone Grade Phi	203,000,000	65,000,000
Clone Grade Chi	264,000,000	90,000,000
Clone Grade Psi	343,500,000	120,000,000
Clone Grade Omega	450,000,000	150,000,000

Manufacturing Waste Fix in Trinity 1.1

Many of you were affected by a Trinity change to the rounding of manufacturing waste where both the blueprint and skill waste are rounded with runs. This resolved a lot of issues but had the side effect of making single batch or small scale production more efficient than mass production. Since smaller batch sizes suffered from reduced loss a diseconomy of scale resulted.

To fix this, we need to go one step further and realize that waste is significant at all levels by rounding up the waste so single run batches will be less efficient than mass production of an item returning us once more to economies of scale. For the many spreadsheet producers out there wanting to know how this will affect you, this means changing your Trinity spreadsheets from round to ceiling function when calculating the necessary materials needed in future jobs.

Combat Log Upgraded to Allow You to Scroll Backwards

The combat log will soon let you browse further back than the last 25 records in your character sheet combat log allowing you access to rest of your kills and losses.

Mining Drones Get a Little Love

The very best Gallente engineers have been working around the clock to retrofit all current mining drones with small shield generators as the cries and outrage of the mining elite were heard. Now mining drones have a small amount of shield, structure and armor hit points. They will still need protection as any rogue can easily destroy them but they should now be able to withstand someone sneezing on them.

Mobile Laboratories Reinforced

More hit points have also been added to Mobile Laboratories; they are now a little more resistant to attack when the occasion comes that they are vulnerable.

In Closing

Feedback as ever is welcome on any of these changes.

Ave - Chronotis

A dramatic and appreciably ironic title for someone as aptly named as myself to talk about spacetime and a possible future for Eve. The reason for the title is that what follows in this blog and everything mentioned hereafter is purely speculative at the time of writing. We are at the very beginning of the process in Game Design and as such cannot stress enough that what I want to talk about; if and when this arrives on Tranquility, it may be in a vastly different form to that which I talk about today. With your help, the idea will be molded into a form that will take shape and arrive upon the wings in some future expansion. So now the disclaimer is safely out of the way and the dramatic title explained, on with the idea I want to share with you all and some explanation.

A Background - Need for Speed!

Greyscale mentioned previously that we were considering moving asteroid belts to our content development system. The reason for this is primarily our Need For Speed initiative

Can 0.0 ever be conquered? Why would anyone want to try? Should they, and how they might go about such a task? Moreover, what might the consequences for the inhabitants of EVE be after such rampant colonialism is concluded?

...These are among the questions we hope to answer as we put together the next issue of E-ON, questions being pondered over by Nate Combs, a regular contributor to the respected online journal Terra Nova, and who is its most prolific commentator on all things EVE. His studies and search for anecdotes will take in historical parallels from the real and fictitious worlds and from the thoughts and views of the EVE community.

To be clear, this isn't about alliances controlling a few regions, this is a study about coalitions of alliances - player-empires - dominating 0.0. To that end I am asking for a discussion on this topic; one that I hope will be good-natured and, by the end, full of the kind of insight the EVE community is famed for. I will also be messaging prominent alliance leaders past and present for their direct opinions, so if you see an EVEmail from me, or an email from a friend of a friend, then please do me the honor of responding. Or, you can message me in-game first, of course

This is one of the most ambitious articles attempted for EON to date, one that will benefit from a full-bodied and fruity discussion in which I trust everyone will play nice. Even if you're far away from 0.0, even if your apathetic to the dealings of EVE's largest powers, domination by one or other could affect you and so everyone is welcome to participate - in spite of how ridiculous the premise is... or isn't

Thanks in advance for your time.

A little backstory

There have been a lot of requests (to put it mildly) and petitions to do "something" about the so called Amarr problem. Most of those are about Amarr not being competitive when it comes to damage output and therefore not a viable race to fly in PVP.

The complaints

There have been plenty of ideas for a fix put out there and I'm going to count out a few of them:

Fix crystals

Adjust the ratio of EM/Thermal in crystals to be Thermal heavier or at least 50/50 split

Introduce Explosive damage crystals

Reduce the cap penalty on the high damage crystals

More damage

Remove the energy turret capacitor need bonus and replace it with more damage bonuses

Increase the base damage mod of energy weapons

Amarr need more midslots

Need more midslots to fit Ewar/tackling gear

The answer that pretty much covers the damage arguments is: By simply changing damage types or increasing raw DPS doesn't really fix the issue that EM damage is pretty much useless against armor tanking ships due to high natural resistances and the popularity of omni-tanking. We would still have EM drones and EM missiles being less useful than others if we just changed damage types on crystals or increased the damage on energy turrets.

The more midslots argument doesn't have any one answer. The Amarr are the tanking and ganking floating rods of gold. While the Minmatar are versatile and the Caldari do electronic warfare the Amarr simply sit there and charge their lasers, secure in their knowledge that God is on their side.

The issues

These are the issues that we've identified with Amarr:

Some ships could need lovin'

Cap usage on Energy Weapons may be too high in some cases

Fitting requirements on some Energy Weapons need adjusting

Base EM resistances on armor are very high

By far the largest problem is that armor tanking is quite a lot more popular than shield tanking and EM by far is the highest resistance on armor for all races. Then once you start looking at the Minmatar ships that get extra 10% resistances to EM on armor by default and their Tech 2 versions go up to 92.5% resistances, well the issue pretty much explains itself.

The solution we've been looking at to fix this is quite simple and straight forward. Remove 10% off the EM resistance on all Tech 1 ships and re-calculate the racial bonuses for the Tech 2 ships from there. To maintain a correct ratio between shield tanking and armor tanking we'd also remove 10% from the explosive resistances on shields.

That's not to say we won't do anything about the other issues. For example we'll be looking into some of the Amarr ships this patch. However we don't want to change too much in one go so we're trying to pace ourselves and spread the changes over more than one patch.

A few examples

Jaguar base resistances

- Before changes

Shields
EM - 75%, Exp - 60%, Kin - 40%, Therm - 60%
Armor
EM - 92.5%, Exp - 10%, Kin - 25%, Therm - 67.5%

- After changes

Shields
EM - 75%, Exp - 50%, Kin - 40%, Therm - 60%
Armor
EM - 90%, Exp - 10%, Kin - 25%, Therm - 67.5

Zealot base resistances

- Before changes

Shields
EM - 0%, Exp - 90%, Kin - 70%, Therm - 20%
Armor
EM - 60%, Exp - 80%, Kin - 62.5%, Therm - 35%

- After changes

Shields
EM - 0%, Exp - 80%, Kin - 70%, Therm - 20%
Armor
EM - 50%, Exp - 80%, Kin - 62.5%, Therm - 35%

Raven base resistances

- Before changes

Shields
EM - 0%, Exp - 60%, Kin - 40%, Therm - 20%
Armor
EM - 60%, Exp - 10%, Kin - 25%, Therm - 45%

- After changes

Shields
EM - 0%, Exp - 50%, Kin - 40%, Therm - 20%
Armor
EM - 50%, Exp - 10%, Kin - 25%, Therm - 45%

Whoa, slow down there

This may seem drastic, but we've given it a lot of thought. We've also spent quite some time on our internal test server shooting each other repeatedly with various ships and setups. We initially thought about moving 10% from EM to some other damage type (or split it between the other three) but felt that would homogenize the base resistances too much. So we applied a healthy dose of Occam to the fold and came out with the current proposal. While EM resistances on armor and Explosive on shield are still the highest resistances and can easily be pushed over 70% they're more in line with the other resistances.

More examples

A variation of an omni-tank for a Raven for example would consist of a Photon Scattering Field II and two Invulnerability Fields II. An example of an omni-tank setup for a Dominix would use two Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II's, an Explosive Hardener II and a Damage Control II. Let's look at what that translates to before and after changes.

The Raven with shield hardeners running would be getting 79.3% Explosive resistances before the change and 74.1% after. That's effectively a 25% increase in Explosive damage taken. Other resistances on shield are not affected. The Dominix with armor hardeners running would get 80% EM resistances on armor before changes and 75% after them. That's a 25% increase in EM damage taken on armor.

The Tech 2 Minmatar ships that have enjoyed a 92.5% EM resistance on armor will now have to make do with 90%.

What now?

I've just gone over how we intend to fix one of the problems we identified with Amarr and that's something we want to implement as soon as possible but not without heaps of testing. The changes are now active on the Singularity test server and I urge you all to go there and try them out. We don't want to do too much at the same time since that could cause unforeseeable issues, so we'll start here and then figure out if we need to do something else and then what that should be.

In conclusion

Get on Singularity and test like the wind. Let us know what you think once you've looked thoroughly at it and if you've found something that doesn't work. Enjoy shooting each other in the face!

The EVE Online Terms of Service have been updated with the following addition as item 11:

• The advertisement or sale of out of game goods and services not directly related to EVE Online is prohibited. The only out of game goods and services which can be advertised or sold are the following: EVE forum signature creation, website and third party voice communication server hosting or EVE Time Codes.

In short, if you are offering a service or item(s) not directly related to EVE Online, you may not use CCP resources to advertise or discuss them.

Forum discussion thread may be found here.

As Zulupark mentioned in his recent blog we have also been looking into improving some of the less effective ships.

Amarr Ships

The Omen has long suffered from a lack of damage compared to the Maller even though the Omen is intended to focus on offense at the expense of defense. The rate of fire bonus to energy turrets only compensates for the additional turret hardpoint the Maller has, so the Maller is a better choice in almost all cases. Because of this we have added a 5th turret hardpoint to the Omen.

This also carries over to the Zealot, which is based on the Omen. While the damage output of the enhanced Zealot is massive, in particular in combination with the resistance changes mentioned in Zulupark’s blog, we feel that this is where the close range Heavy Assault Ships (”HACs”) need to be at in order to stay competitive.

• Omen: 5 turrets (+1 turret)
• Zealot: 5 turrets (+1 turret)

With the introduction of the Abaddon, the Apocalypse became close to obsolete simply because the Armageddon and Abaddon perform better in general. We considered several different options for giving the Apocalypse a role that wouldn’t conflict with the “tank” and “gank” roles of the Armageddon and Abaddon, yet not be overly specialized. Eventually, we settled on the following.

Apocalypse:

• Fitting: 505tf, 20500mw (+5tf, +1000mw)
• Capacitor capacity: 7500en (+25%)
• Bonuses:
  • 10% reduction in large energy turret capacitor usage per Amarr Battleship level (no change)
  • 7.5% bonus to large energy turret optimal range per Amarr Battleship level (replaces the 5% capacitor capacity bonus)

With the above changes the Apocalypse becomes a very good option for long range sniping. The main reason that the optimal range bonus doesn’t share the Rokh’s 10% per level is that the optimal range bonus benefits both beam lasers as well as pulse lasers, whereas the hybrid optimal range bonus of the Rokh only really benefits railguns. Another concern is that the Rokh, a more expensive tier 3 battleship, should retain its range advantage over other battleships. With a balanced setup the Apocalypse can obtain an optimal range of over 190km, which fits within its targeting range of 205km when using two tech 2 sensor boosters. The Apocalypse uses significantly less energy to fire its turrets compared to the other Amarr battleships and even outperforms the hybrid turret snipers in terms of sustainability due to the larger capacitor capacity.

Deimos

After a significant amount of testing with the changes to the Zealot, it became apparent that the Deimos had problems compared to the other close range heavy assault ships. As the damage output is already the highest of all the HACs, we looked into boosting its defenses so it had a fighting chance. One of the main problems of actively repaired Deimos setups is the high energy requirement, so we have changed the slot layout so the Deimos can accommodate a capacitor booster.

Deimos:

• Slots: 6/4/5 (+1 med, -1 low)
• Capacitor capacity: 1625.0en (+250en)
• Bonuses:
  • 5% bonus to medium hybrid turret damage per Gallente Cruiser level (no change)
  • 7.5% bonus to armor repair amount per Gallente Cruiser level (replaces the MWD capacitor penalty reduction)

The above mentioned changes to the Deimos and Zealot allow them to better compete on even term with other close range HACs, such as the Sacrilege.

Caldari Railgun Platforms

Similarly to the Omen, a number of Caldari railgun platforms were suffering in the damage department due to the lack of turret hardpoints compared to their competitors, so we have increased the number of hardpoints as follows:

• Moa: 5 turrets (+1)
• Eagle: 5 turrets (+1)

The power outputs of the Moa and Eagle are sufficient to setup a 5 turret railgun platform so no further changes were need. However the Ferox lacks the power output to properly support an additional turret and has thus been increased.

Ferox:

• Hardpoints: 6 turrets (+1)
• Power output: 1075mw (+75mw)

The Raptor has also been given an additional turret hardpoint, but the combination of 30km range with tech 2 Warp Disruptors and the bonus to hybrid turret optimal range, that easily pushes the range beyond 30km with tech 2 munitions, makes for a potent combination. As the Harpy Assault Ship, which specializes in frigate level sniping, should retain its dominance as a frigate sniper, the power output of the Raptor has been reduced to encourage Raptor pilots to fit 125mm railguns rather than the longer range 150mm railguns.

Raptor:

• Hardpoints: 3 turrets (+1)
• Power output: 26mw (-4mw)

Tracking Disruptors

Finally we have added a falloff modifier to the Tracking Disruptors. The Optimal Range Disruption ARM script has been change to modify both optimal range and falloff. The reason for this change is the Tracking Disruptors are largely ineffective against blasters and auto cannons which have a high tracking speeds and large falloffs. Disrupting the optimal range does not affect them in any significant way and tracking disruption is not very effective either because of the large falloff. By allowing the Optimal Range Disruption script to affect falloff as well, Tracking Disruptors can be used effectively to reduce the range of blasters and auto cannons. Skills and bonuses that affect the effectiveness of Tracking Disruptors have been changed to also affect the falloff.

As always, note that these changes are subject to change based on further testing. We will be keeping a close eye on the Deimos in particular.