Welcome to another blog on the upcoming Citadel expansion by Team Game of Drones. It’s been a while since we last discussed the Citadel feature and we felt some update was sorely needed. So come on in, make yourself comfortable and enjoy the show. Just stay clear of that mushroom-shaped house in the corner, that’s where CCP Guard lives.



The above picture shows our latest mass test involving a player fleet fight around the largest Citadel, the Keepstar. Model is work in progress. Picture courtesy from Lord_Maldoror.



Missed a structure blog? Have a look at the following:

• 
  Back into the structure – introducing the structure changes coming to EVE Online and our long term plan
• 
  Shake my Citadel – listing the first structure class to be worked on, as well as general mechanics
• 
  Citadels, siege and you, v2 – capture and defense mechanics for EVE’s new structures
• 
  I feel safe in citadel city – how assets are going to be saved and moved on structure destruction.
• 
  Building your citadel, one block at a time – how Citadels are acquired and built

Fitting of the Keepstar during one of our internal playtests.



Let’s recap what we have already talked about regarding fittings in case you haven’t followed progress closely  since Fanfest 2015.



Unlike existing Starbases (also known as Player Owner Starbases or POSess), the new Citadels will not rely on deploying multiple structures to add more functionality to your little space castle. They will use a fitting system in a way almost identical to ships, with slots and modules to achieve customization gameplay.



These slots are sorted into different categories:

• 
  High slots: dedicated to active modules--primarily weapons but also remote assistance modules--like our new structure missile launchers
• 
  Mid slots: mainly aimed towards electronic warfare and electronic / remote assistance modules like ECM, Sensor Dampeners, or Target Painters
• 
  Low slots: primarily used by engineering and passive modules, like weapon upgrades or reactor control modules
• 
  Service modules: a new layer of modules designed to provide functionality currently offered by NPC stations or other in-game structures like Manufacturing, Research, Market, or even Cloning
• 
  Rigs: provide further specialization into a specific structure role. For example, you fit a Market service module into a Citadel to get the basic activity, but the rig will be the item giving you bonuses like NPC tax reduction. Of course rigs are destroyed when removed, which makes them quite an investment

For more information, please visit the following page

Welcome to another blog on the upcoming Citadel expansion by Team Game of Drones. It’s been a while since we last discussed the Citadel feature and we felt some update was sorely needed. So come on in, make yourself comfortable and enjoy the show. Just stay clear of that mushroom-shaped house in the corner, that’s where CCP Guard lives.



The above picture shows our latest mass test involving a player fleet fight around the largest Citadel, the Keepstar. Model is work in progress. Picture courtesy from Lord_Maldoror.



Missed a structure blog? Have a look at the following:

• 
  Back into the structure – introducing the structure changes coming to EVE Online and our long term plan
• 
  Shake my Citadel – listing the first structure class to be worked on, as well as general mechanics
• 
  Citadels, siege and you, v2 – capture and defense mechanics for EVE’s new structures
• 
  I feel safe in citadel city – how assets are going to be saved and moved on structure destruction.
• 
  Building your citadel, one block at a time – how Citadels are acquired and built

Fitting of the Keepstar during one of our internal playtests.



Let’s recap what we have already talked about regarding fittings in case you haven’t followed progress closely  since Fanfest 2015.



Unlike existing Starbases (also known as Player Owner Starbases or POSess), the new Citadels will not rely on deploying multiple structures to add more functionality to your little space castle. They will use a fitting system in a way almost identical to ships, with slots and modules to achieve customization gameplay.



These slots are sorted into different categories:

• 
  High slots: dedicated to active modules--primarily weapons but also remote assistance modules--like our new structure missile launchers
• 
  Mid slots: mainly aimed towards electronic warfare and electronic / remote assistance modules like ECM, Sensor Dampeners, or Target Painters
• 
  Low slots: primarily used by engineering and passive modules, like weapon upgrades or reactor control modules
• 
  Service modules: a new layer of modules designed to provide functionality currently offered by NPC stations or other in-game structures like Manufacturing, Research, Market, or even Cloning
• 
  Rigs: provide further specialization into a specific structure role. For example, you fit a Market service module into a Citadel to get the basic activity, but the rig will be the item giving you bonuses like NPC tax reduction. Of course rigs are destroyed when removed, which makes them quite an investment

For more information, please visit the following page

Hi Mates!

As first revealed at EVE Vegas 2015, we are making some major changes to capital ships in EVE in the upcoming EVE: Citadel Expansion and you can expect additional dev blogs as more details become ready to announce. In this blog I’m going to cover the new Force Auxiliary capital class, our transition plan for current carrier pilots, new capital modules, and some design discussion on combat refitting!



One of the biggest components of our capital changes this spring is the new class: Force Auxiliaries, which some of our players have taken to calling FAX or FAux. This class represents capital repair logistics in a fully dedicated form. Here’s the beautiful new ships and their preliminary bonuses as of now:

Apostle(6 high slots, 4 mid slots, 7 low slots)

Amarr Carrier Bonus (per skill level):

• 5% bonus to Remote Capacitor Transmitter and Remote Armor Repairer amount
• 4% bonus to all armor resistances
• 5% bonus to maximum capacitor pool

Role Bonus:

• Can use 3 Warfare Link modules simultaneously
• 1% bonus to Armored Warfare and Information Warfare Links effectiveness
• 50% reduction in CPU requirements for Warfare Links
• Can fit Triage modules

Minokawa (6 high slots, 7 mid slots, 4 low slots)

Caldari Carrier Bonus (per skill level):

• 5% bonus to Remote Capacitor Transmitter and Remote Shield Booster amount
• 4% bonus to all shield resistances
• 5% bonus to maximum capacitor pool

Role Bonus:

• Can use 3 Warfare Link modules simultaneously
• 1% bonus to Siege Warfare and Information Warfare Links effectiveness
• 50% reduction in CPU requirements for Warfare Links
• Can fit Triage modules

Lif (6 high slots, 6 mid slots, 5 low slots)

Minmatar Carrier Bonus (per skill level):

• 5% bonus to Remote Armor Repairer and Remote Shield Booster cycle time
• 7.5% bonus to local Shield Booster amount
• 10% bonus to capacitor booster charge strength

Role Bonus:

• Can use 3 Warfare Link modules simultaneously
• 1% bonus to Siege Warfare and Skirmish Warfare Links effectiveness
• 50% reduction in CPU requirements for Warfare Links
• Can fit Triage modules

Ninazu (6 high slots, 5 mid slots, 6 low slots)

Gallente Carrier Bonus (per skill level):

• 5% bonus to Remote Armor Repairer and Remote Shield Booster cycle time
• 7.5% bonus to local Armor Repairer amount
• 10% bonus to capacitor booster charge strength

Role Bonus:

• Can use 3 Warfare Link modules simultaneously
• 1% bonus to Armored Warfare and Skirmish Warfare Links effectiveness
• 50% reduction in CPU requirements for Warfare Links
• Can fit Triage modules

All of the Force Auxiliaries will have a 10,000 m³ Fleet Hangar and a 1,000,000 m³ Ship Maintenance Bay.

Some of you may have seen preliminary stats for these ships gleaned from early test server builds. It’s important to remember that making predictions from unannounced test server details is always done at your own risk.

In particular we want to reassure wormhole players that the mass values for the Force Auxiliaries on our test servers are designed to be released alongside an increase in the maximum jump mass of the existing capital-capable wormhole connections. This per-ship mass limit increase is also designed to accommodate capitals fitting the new capital armor plates. Wormhole connections that currently allow Dreadnoughts and Carriers to pass through will continue to accommodate Dreadnoughts, Carriers and Force Auxiliaries, and will continue to disallow Supercarriers and Titans.

There will also be corresponding changes to the stats of capital remote repair modules and triage modules at the same time. For instance, don't worry about the loss of the range bonuses on the hulls as the range will be added to the base modules to compensate.

For more information, please visit the following link

Hi Mates!

As first revealed at EVE Vegas 2015, we are making some major changes to capital ships in EVE in the upcoming EVE: Citadel Expansion and you can expect additional dev blogs as more details become ready to announce. In this blog I’m going to cover the new Force Auxiliary capital class, our transition plan for current carrier pilots, new capital modules, and some design discussion on combat refitting!



One of the biggest components of our capital changes this spring is the new class: Force Auxiliaries, which some of our players have taken to calling FAX or FAux. This class represents capital repair logistics in a fully dedicated form. Here’s the beautiful new ships and their preliminary bonuses as of now:

Apostle(6 high slots, 4 mid slots, 7 low slots)

Amarr Carrier Bonus (per skill level):

• 5% bonus to Remote Capacitor Transmitter and Remote Armor Repairer amount
• 4% bonus to all armor resistances
• 5% bonus to maximum capacitor pool

Role Bonus:

• Can use 3 Warfare Link modules simultaneously
• 1% bonus to Armored Warfare and Information Warfare Links effectiveness
• 50% reduction in CPU requirements for Warfare Links
• Can fit Triage modules

Minokawa (6 high slots, 7 mid slots, 4 low slots)

Caldari Carrier Bonus (per skill level):

• 5% bonus to Remote Capacitor Transmitter and Remote Shield Booster amount
• 4% bonus to all shield resistances
• 5% bonus to maximum capacitor pool

Role Bonus:

• Can use 3 Warfare Link modules simultaneously
• 1% bonus to Siege Warfare and Information Warfare Links effectiveness
• 50% reduction in CPU requirements for Warfare Links
• Can fit Triage modules

Lif (6 high slots, 6 mid slots, 5 low slots)

Minmatar Carrier Bonus (per skill level):

• 5% bonus to Remote Armor Repairer and Remote Shield Booster cycle time
• 7.5% bonus to local Shield Booster amount
• 10% bonus to capacitor booster charge strength

Role Bonus:

• Can use 3 Warfare Link modules simultaneously
• 1% bonus to Siege Warfare and Skirmish Warfare Links effectiveness
• 50% reduction in CPU requirements for Warfare Links
• Can fit Triage modules

Ninazu (6 high slots, 5 mid slots, 6 low slots)

Gallente Carrier Bonus (per skill level):

• 5% bonus to Remote Armor Repairer and Remote Shield Booster cycle time
• 7.5% bonus to local Armor Repairer amount
• 10% bonus to capacitor booster charge strength

Role Bonus:

• Can use 3 Warfare Link modules simultaneously
• 1% bonus to Armored Warfare and Skirmish Warfare Links effectiveness
• 50% reduction in CPU requirements for Warfare Links
• Can fit Triage modules

All of the Force Auxiliaries will have a 10,000 m³ Fleet Hangar and a 1,000,000 m³ Ship Maintenance Bay.

Some of you may have seen preliminary stats for these ships gleaned from early test server builds. It’s important to remember that making predictions from unannounced test server details is always done at your own risk.

In particular we want to reassure wormhole players that the mass values for the Force Auxiliaries on our test servers are designed to be released alongside an increase in the maximum jump mass of the existing capital-capable wormhole connections. This per-ship mass limit increase is also designed to accommodate capitals fitting the new capital armor plates. Wormhole connections that currently allow Dreadnoughts and Carriers to pass through will continue to accommodate Dreadnoughts, Carriers and Force Auxiliaries, and will continue to disallow Supercarriers and Titans.

There will also be corresponding changes to the stats of capital remote repair modules and triage modules at the same time. For instance, don't worry about the loss of the range bonuses on the hulls as the range will be added to the base modules to compensate.

For more information, please visit the following link

Good day spaceship people. We have been actively working on a massive upgrade to the EVE in-space camera over the last few months. We initially released it to our public test server, Singularity in November and then moved it to opt-in beta on Tranquility last December, enabling us to collect a lot of great feedback. We’ve gathered a lot of data and made a lot of changes, fixes and improvements.



It is now time to take the next step, which is to turn the new camera on by default on TQ. Since changes to fundamental parts of core gameplay systems can be delicate, we’ve decided to keep the option of reverting to the old camera for about 1 month as of now. If, for whatever reason you feel it necessary revert, please us the forums to let us know why so that we’re able to squash any remaining issues before we pull the final plug on the old camera’s dwindling life support.



The initial driver for this substantial chunk of work was the identified need for a tactical camera that wasn’t necessarily attached to a space entity all the time—in preparation of the Capital rework and more coming in the EVE Online: Citadel Expansion. What we have now is a system where multiple, special purposed cameras can happily live side by side to give you the best view possible of New Eden. As a result, we now have three different in-space cameras instead of the one before:






The video description contains time stamps to the various sections and features described below.




The Orbit camera (ALT+2) is active by default when you first enter the game and is fixed on orbiting around an object in space. You can switch to a new object by performing the “Look At” command on that object. This camera is designed to give the player a somewhat cinematic feeling and try to emphasize things like scale and speed while behaving pretty similar to the old camera in other regards.


Features:

• 
  Dynamic Field of view (FOV), decreased as you zoom in, providing a much more epic sense of scale and a wider view angle when zoomed out for better overview of the action.
• 
  Ship position on screen is offset based on the speed vector of your ship, giving a much improved sense of speed and trajectory.
• 
  Smoother, yet faster zooming/orbiting, accompanied with a new camera speed setting in the system menu (this applies to all camera modes). Zooming now follows an exponential curve so you can zoom out all the way really quickly, while maintaining nice granularity close to the ship.
• 
  When looking at other ships, camera is allowed to drift slowly, making it very easy to set up super cool fly-by shots. Drifting can be temporarily disabled by holding down the left mouse button for a steady view when you need to take a closer look. When looking at your own ship, we allow an almost negligible amount of drift to achieve a subtle parallax effect as the nebula moves by ever so slowly.
• 
  Manual FOV zoom by holding ALT while zooming. Dolly zoom by holding CTRL while zooming.
• 
  Tracking now works in the same way as all other in-space commands work instead of having a special mode toggled on/off previously; you either click the new “Track” button in the “Selected Item” window, radial menu or right click menu. The shortcut key for Tracking is still the same though; C. The tracking camera implementation has also changed so that we now always keep the tracked object center-screen, while pushing the foreground object to the side as we zoom in.
• 
  New chase mode is activated by tracking the ship you’re already looking at, locking the camera straight behind your ship. This mode works amazingly well with manual flight! If you’re already looking at your own ship, this mode can be triggered by pressing the ship HUD Orbit Camera button again, or using the corresponding shortcut.
• 
  The “Look at” command is now also available for items far away, but instead of the camera travelling light years, we just rotate it in place so the object is centered at the screen, which is very handy for, say, directional scanning.

The Tactical camera (ALT+1) is designed to be purely practical and works in a similar manner to Real Time Strategy cameras by allowing panning. Objects can be attached to by performing the “Look At” command, and detached from by panning away with the right mouse button. In this mode, we don’t have any of the cinematic effects of the orbit camera present.

Features:

• 
  Field of view is fixed at a wide angle and none of the cinematic shenanigans of the orbit camera is present.
• 
  Panning is done by dragging with the right mouse button.
• 
  Camera is attached to an object by Performing “Look At” and detached by panning
• 
  The Look at command preserves zoom distance, so we essentially just pan the camera. This way battlefield overview and awareness is preserved as well.
• 
  Tactical overlay is turned on by default, but can still be toggled on or off.
• 
  While detached, the camera zooms toward the cursor instead of the center of the screen making it possible to traverse the field easily using zooming only. While attached, zooming works the same way as for the orbit camera.

The First Person camera (ALT+3) is probably the least practical (at least for now), yet most jaw dropping of the three. It is highly recommended that you try it out with the not-so-long-ago-introduced manual flight feature that is mapped to the keyboard arrow keys by default.

Features:

• 
  Fixed first person view with wide field of view
• 
  Military jet style roll and pitch indicators overlay for orientation
• 
  3 level stepped zoom

To read more, please visit the following page

Good day spaceship people. We have been actively working on a massive upgrade to the EVE in-space camera over the last few months. We initially released it to our public test server, Singularity in November and then moved it to opt-in beta on Tranquility last December, enabling us to collect a lot of great feedback. We’ve gathered a lot of data and made a lot of changes, fixes and improvements.



It is now time to take the next step, which is to turn the new camera on by default on TQ. Since changes to fundamental parts of core gameplay systems can be delicate, we’ve decided to keep the option of reverting to the old camera for about 1 month as of now. If, for whatever reason you feel it necessary revert, please us the forums to let us know why so that we’re able to squash any remaining issues before we pull the final plug on the old camera’s dwindling life support.



The initial driver for this substantial chunk of work was the identified need for a tactical camera that wasn’t necessarily attached to a space entity all the time—in preparation of the Capital rework and more coming in the EVE Online: Citadel Expansion. What we have now is a system where multiple, special purposed cameras can happily live side by side to give you the best view possible of New Eden. As a result, we now have three different in-space cameras instead of the one before:






The video description contains time stamps to the various sections and features described below.




The Orbit camera (ALT+2) is active by default when you first enter the game and is fixed on orbiting around an object in space. You can switch to a new object by performing the “Look At” command on that object. This camera is designed to give the player a somewhat cinematic feeling and try to emphasize things like scale and speed while behaving pretty similar to the old camera in other regards.


Features:

• 
  Dynamic Field of view (FOV), decreased as you zoom in, providing a much more epic sense of scale and a wider view angle when zoomed out for better overview of the action.
• 
  Ship position on screen is offset based on the speed vector of your ship, giving a much improved sense of speed and trajectory.
• 
  Smoother, yet faster zooming/orbiting, accompanied with a new camera speed setting in the system menu (this applies to all camera modes). Zooming now follows an exponential curve so you can zoom out all the way really quickly, while maintaining nice granularity close to the ship.
• 
  When looking at other ships, camera is allowed to drift slowly, making it very easy to set up super cool fly-by shots. Drifting can be temporarily disabled by holding down the left mouse button for a steady view when you need to take a closer look. When looking at your own ship, we allow an almost negligible amount of drift to achieve a subtle parallax effect as the nebula moves by ever so slowly.
• 
  Manual FOV zoom by holding ALT while zooming. Dolly zoom by holding CTRL while zooming.
• 
  Tracking now works in the same way as all other in-space commands work instead of having a special mode toggled on/off previously; you either click the new “Track” button in the “Selected Item” window, radial menu or right click menu. The shortcut key for Tracking is still the same though; C. The tracking camera implementation has also changed so that we now always keep the tracked object center-screen, while pushing the foreground object to the side as we zoom in.
• 
  New chase mode is activated by tracking the ship you’re already looking at, locking the camera straight behind your ship. This mode works amazingly well with manual flight! If you’re already looking at your own ship, this mode can be triggered by pressing the ship HUD Orbit Camera button again, or using the corresponding shortcut.
• 
  The “Look at” command is now also available for items far away, but instead of the camera travelling light years, we just rotate it in place so the object is centered at the screen, which is very handy for, say, directional scanning.

The Tactical camera (ALT+1) is designed to be purely practical and works in a similar manner to Real Time Strategy cameras by allowing panning. Objects can be attached to by performing the “Look At” command, and detached from by panning away with the right mouse button. In this mode, we don’t have any of the cinematic effects of the orbit camera present.

Features:

• 
  Field of view is fixed at a wide angle and none of the cinematic shenanigans of the orbit camera is present.
• 
  Panning is done by dragging with the right mouse button.
• 
  Camera is attached to an object by Performing “Look At” and detached by panning
• 
  The Look at command preserves zoom distance, so we essentially just pan the camera. This way battlefield overview and awareness is preserved as well.
• 
  Tactical overlay is turned on by default, but can still be toggled on or off.
• 
  While detached, the camera zooms toward the cursor instead of the center of the screen making it possible to traverse the field easily using zooming only. While attached, zooming works the same way as for the orbit camera.

The First Person camera (ALT+3) is probably the least practical (at least for now), yet most jaw dropping of the three. It is highly recommended that you try it out with the not-so-long-ago-introduced manual flight feature that is mapped to the keyboard arrow keys by default.

Features:

• 
  Fixed first person view with wide field of view
• 
  Military jet style roll and pitch indicators overlay for orientation
• 
  3 level stepped zoom

To read more, please visit the following page

Greetings Capsuleers,

Would you like the chance to help build the world of tomorrow?

Your friends at Upwell would like to help make your dreams a reality.  

This is a very exciting time to be a citizen of New Eden! The Upwell Consortium has completed the design phase of the Astrahus Citadel and is ready to construct prototypes to test run their staggering new technologies before releasing construction and control of them to the capsuleer market. To accelerate their plans of allowing the establishment of citadels across the cluster, Upwell is seeking capsuleer assistance in securing research components.  



Upwell have been able to obtain enough research components to start the construction of the initial Astrahus, however, many of these components have found their way in to the hands of pirate contraband dealers and must be retrieved from Serpentis Exploration Sites and Ghost Sites.

From January 26^th, Intaki Bank’s special accounts manager Lee Brinalle, will accept contracts (https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Contracts_guide) from capsuleers for the item ‘Research Component’ to help build the citadels in 5 locations in New Eden. To reward you for your efforts, each Research Component contracted to Lee Brinalle, will entitle you to one entry in to an Upwell sponsored prize draw. The lucky winner of the draw will receive a unique token that can be exchanged for 1, fully researched, Astrahus citadel BPC.  

But wait there’s more! Upwell would like to create 5 prototypes in different locations, so as capsuleers manage to provide the Research Component quota  needed for the first citadel, Upwell will increase the rewards for each additional prototype citadel:

• Citadel 2: One additional Astrahus BPC
• Citadel 3: Two more Astrahus BPC’s
• Citadel 4: One more Astrahus BPC and Upwell Branded Apparel for every capsuleer who contracts a Research Component
• Citadel 5: 1 Fortizar BPC

(All BPCs will be fully researched) 



So the more ‘Research Component’ items you contract to Lee Brinalle, the more chances you have of being selected during the prize draw.  There will be a draw for 1 Astrahus BPC after February 9^th, where all capsuleers who donated Research Components will be automatically entered and in with a chance to win.  If all 5 are completed, the draw will be for 5 Astrahus BPCs and 1 Fortizar BPC. In addition, the top contributor plus all prize winners will have their names immortalized on the descriptions for the prototype citadels they helped construct.  As the prize draws will happen at the end, all entries from January 26th - February 9th will be a part of the draw for each reward. 

You can start collecting Research Components any time, but starting January 26^th, remember to contract them to “Lee Brinalle”, for your chance to be in the running.

 Here is a photo of Lee Brinalle to help you double check you have contracted to the correct person:



Upwell will stop accepting contracts on February 9^th and the winners will be announced before the end of February. 

Good Luck Spacefriends!

- CCP Affinity on behalf of Team Astro Sparkle

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

Greetings Capsuleers,

Would you like the chance to help build the world of tomorrow?

Your friends at Upwell would like to help make your dreams a reality.  

This is a very exciting time to be a citizen of New Eden! The Upwell Consortium has completed the design phase of the Astrahus Citadel and is ready to construct prototypes to test run their staggering new technologies before releasing construction and control of them to the capsuleer market. To accelerate their plans of allowing the establishment of citadels across the cluster, Upwell is seeking capsuleer assistance in securing research components.  



Upwell have been able to obtain enough research components to start the construction of the initial Astrahus, however, many of these components have found their way in to the hands of pirate contraband dealers and must be retrieved from Serpentis Exploration Sites and Ghost Sites.

From January 26^th, Intaki Bank’s special accounts manager Lee Brinalle, will accept contracts (https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Contracts_guide) from capsuleers for the item ‘Research Component’ to help build the citadels in 5 locations in New Eden. To reward you for your efforts, each Research Component contracted to Lee Brinalle, will entitle you to one entry in to an Upwell sponsored prize draw. The lucky winner of the draw will receive a unique token that can be exchanged for 1, fully researched, Astrahus citadel BPC.  

But wait there’s more! Upwell would like to create 5 prototypes in different locations, so as capsuleers manage to provide the Research Component quota  needed for the first citadel, Upwell will increase the rewards for each additional prototype citadel:

• Citadel 2: One additional Astrahus BPC
• Citadel 3: Two more Astrahus BPC’s
• Citadel 4: One more Astrahus BPC and Upwell Branded Apparel for every capsuleer who contracts a Research Component
• Citadel 5: 1 Fortizar BPC

(All BPCs will be fully researched) 



So the more ‘Research Component’ items you contract to Lee Brinalle, the more chances you have of being selected during the prize draw.  There will be a draw for 1 Astrahus BPC after February 9^th, where all capsuleers who donated Research Components will be automatically entered and in with a chance to win.  If all 5 are completed, the draw will be for 5 Astrahus BPCs and 1 Fortizar BPC. In addition, the top contributor plus all prize winners will have their names immortalized on the descriptions for the prototype citadels they helped construct.  As the prize draws will happen at the end, all entries from January 26th - February 9th will be a part of the draw for each reward. 

You can start collecting Research Components any time, but starting January 26^th, remember to contract them to “Lee Brinalle”, for your chance to be in the running.

 Here is a photo of Lee Brinalle to help you double check you have contracted to the correct person:



Upwell will stop accepting contracts on February 9^th and the winners will be announced before the end of February. 

Good Luck Spacefriends!

- CCP Affinity on behalf of Team Astro Sparkle

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

Good day Capsuleers!

A couple months ago we published a dev blog introducing you to the idea of Skill Trading. The blog sparked a really great discussion in the EVE community. We decided to be fairly hands off and see where it would lead without us trying to persuade anyone. We weren’t sure exactly what to expect but it quickly became clear that many of you were able to see the potential benefits and that you’re also ready for some big changes in EVE, especially when they might help bring in newer players or give you more freedom with your own characters. After going through a lot of feedback while refining the design, I am now here to announce that we will be adding Skill Trading to New Eden and it is currently scheduled for our February release.

We learned a lot from all the articles, comments, and forum posts on the first blog, but before I get into any changes we’re making I want to again describe how the feature works since there did seem to be some confusion last time around.

Let’s look first from the perspective of someone wanting to add skillpoints to their character. All they need to do is get themselves a “Skill Injector” item (we simplified the name here for clarity), which they can find on the EVE market for ISK, providing another player has listed it. Once they’ve bought one, or convinced a loving supporter to give them one, they simple activate the item which immediately adds skillpoints to their unallocated pool and consumes the Skill Injector. Those skillpoints can then be spent however they like (following normal skill progression restrictions of course). That’s it.

The injector items will give a different amount of skillpoints depending on what your character’s skillpoint total is when you use the item, according to the following scale:

• < 5 million total skillpoints = 500,000 skillpoints per injector
• 5 million – 50 million total skillpoints = 400,000 skillpoints per injector
• 50 million – 80 million total skillpoints = 300,000 skillpoints per injector
• > 80 million skillpoints = 150k skillpoints per injector

But, the item you need and the process you use are the same no matter where you fall on the scale. One last thing here: we are making some big improvements to the UI for allocating skillpoints but I don’t have a screenshot of that for you just yet.

Now let’s look at the other side of the picture. If you’re someone wanting to sell some skillpoints, and your character has more than 5 million total skillpoints, you will need to get a “Skill Extractor”. This item comes from the New Eden Store, but can be traded on the market as well so you can choose the option that fits you best, ISK or AUR. Once you have a Skill Extractor all you have to do is activate it, which will give you a new window showing all your skills. 



You mark skills for extraction until there are 500,000 skillpoints worth marked. Once you’re happy with the skills you have chosen, you hit Accept. Now you will have a Skill Injector in your item hangar and the Skill Extractor you used will be gone, along with the 500,000 skillpoints.

It’s very important to note here that this means all the skillpoints available to buy on the market in EVE will have originated on other characters where they were trained at the normal rate.  Player driven economies are key to EVE design and we want you to decide the value of traded skillpoints while we make sure there is one single mechanism that brings new skillpoints in to the system – training.

The design hasn’t changed in any big ways since our last blog but you may have noticed that the diminishing returns scale has shifted somewhat since last time. Rather than seeing major concerns about this being used by high skillpoint characters we saw a lot of high skillpoint players who wanted better access to using it themselves and so we’ve relaxed the scale a little to allow more flexibility at the high end. Specifically, we changed the 3^rd bracket which used to give 200,000 to now give 300,000, and the final bracket which used to give 50,000 to 150,000.

I’m sure you want to know about pricing for Extractors but we are going to announce that a little closer to release time.

That’s the big important stuff. As I said earlier, our target is February so you can expect to give this a try in the very near future. We very much appreciate all the debate and feedback based on the last blog and look forward to a second round following this blog. We are very excited to get this in your hands and hope it will have a great impact on EVE.

For now, fly safe,
CCP Rise for Team Size Matters