The headline feature of EVE Online: Ascension, Clone States, will bring brand new cloning technology to New Eden, including the Omega clone which will be familiar to all our current subscribers, alongside the new Alpha clone, which pilots will be able to utilize to gain free access to EVE Online using a pre-determined skillset, giving access to a whole host of playstyles and in game content without the need for a subscription.

In addition to this, the first phase of a completely re-worked new player experience will offer new pilots more assistance and guidance than ever before as they take their first steps into the vast expanse of New Eden.



Today we’re glad to share with you another update on what the EVE Online team is working on in the run up to EVE Online: Ascension.

This November the Upwell Consortium will be introducing a new set of Standup-brand service modules that will expand comprehensive research and manufacturing support to the entire line of Upwell structures. These service modules will be fully compatible with existing Citadel structures, and Upwell will simultaneously be releasing a new set of Engineering Complex structures which are bonused for optimal performance with these service modules.



Initially codenamed Industrial Arrays, Upwell’s new line of Engineering Complexes are the second stage in the overhaul of the structures system in EVE Online. Arriving in the same size classes as Citadels (medium, large and extra-large), these new platforms are similar in function to the already familiar (and widely used) citadels. While Citadels focus on peak defensive capability, Engineering Complexes are more specialized towards research and manufacturing.



With the arrival of Ascension, a selection of new Standup service modules will be made available to expand the functionality of Upwell structure and allow player organizations to tailor their structure to their needs more closely. These new Engineering Service Modules will be available for any type of Upwell structure (currently Citadels and Engineering Complexes) unless specifically noted:

• Standup Manufacturing Plant I – allows manufacturing of items and ships. This does not include capital and supercapital class ships which have their own dedicated service modules
• Standup Capital Shipyard I – allows manufacturing of capital ships and can only be installed in large and XL citadels and Engineering Complexes in lowsec, nullsec and wormhole space
• Standup Supercapital Shipyard I - allows manufacturing supercapital ships and is exclusive for the Sotiyo XL Engineering Complex. This service module also requires capsuleer alliance sovereignty and the “Supercapital Construction Facilities” Infrastructure Hub upgrade
• Standup Research Lab I – allows research and copying of blueprints
• Standup Invention Lab I – allows invention of Tech 2 and Tech 3 blueprints

We have full details of current draft of fittings and fuel usage for these service modules at the end of the blog.

These new Engineering Service Modules are fully functional out of the box, but to get the best performance from them you will want to combine them with Engineering Rigs for your structures. These new rigs are available for all Upwell structures and provide significant bonuses to specific forms of industrial activity, allowing corporations to customize their structures to meet their specific needs.



Like existing Upwell structure rigs, Engineering Rigs provide the same strength of bonuses at each size category. The primary benefit of upgrading to larger rigs (on larger structures) is that larger rigs are more generalized in their bonuses and smaller rigs are more specialized. This allows larger structures to gain bonuses to more types of industrial activity than their smaller brethren.

For example, a corporation can potentially rig their Medium Raitaru Engineering Complex to receive the maximum possible Material Efficiency (ME) bonuses for constructing small and medium T1 ships, and significant cost reduction to invention jobs by filling its three available rig slots with:

• Standup M-Set Basic Small Ship Manufacturing Material Efficiency II
• Standup M-Set Basic Medium Ship Manufacturing Material Efficiency II
• Standup M-Set Invention Cost Optimization I

If that corporation upgraded to a X-Large Sotiyo Engineering Complex they would be able to get the exact same ME bonuses to production of small and medium T1 ships, while also receiving rig bonuses to a larger variety of industry jobs by installing:

• Standup XL-Set Ship Manufacturing Efficiency II
• Standup XL-Set Laboratory Optimization I
• Standup XL-Set Reprocessing Monitor II

This rig setup provides the maximum ME and Time Efficiency (TE) bonuses to all ship manufacturing, as well as improving cost and duration for all research, copying and invention jobs and enabling maximum reprocessing yield all in the same giant structure.

Thanks to the greater generalization of larger rigs, there will be a total of 64 available M-Set Engineering Rigs, 32 L-Set Engineering rigs, and 8 XL-Set rigs to choose from (including both T1 and T2 variations).

If you’re itching to see all the granular details, we have a chart with the current draft of stats for all of these Engineering Rigs at the end of the blog.



Another area of similarity between the new Engineering Rigs and the existing Citadel Rigs is that the bonuses provided by these rigs changes depending on what type of space their structure is anchored within.

Each Engineering Rig has three sets of bonuses:

• One base value for highsec space
• One for lowsec space that has a 50% higher bonus than the base value
•  One for nullsec and wormhole space that has a 67% higher bonus than the base value

All three Engineering Complex structures receive a 25% bonus to the strength of all Engineering Rigs, just like bonus citadels receive for the structure combat rigs.

To find out more, please head over to the dev blog

The headline feature of EVE Online: Ascension, Clone States, will bring brand new cloning technology to New Eden, including the Omega clone which will be familiar to all our current subscribers, alongside the new Alpha clone, which pilots will be able to utilize to gain free access to EVE Online using a pre-determined skillset, giving access to a whole host of playstyles and in game content without the need for a subscription.

In addition to this, the first phase of a completely re-worked new player experience will offer new pilots more assistance and guidance than ever before as they take their first steps into the vast expanse of New Eden.



Today we’re glad to share with you another update on what the EVE Online team is working on in the run up to EVE Online: Ascension.

This November the Upwell Consortium will be introducing a new set of Standup-brand service modules that will expand comprehensive research and manufacturing support to the entire line of Upwell structures. These service modules will be fully compatible with existing Citadel structures, and Upwell will simultaneously be releasing a new set of Engineering Complex structures which are bonused for optimal performance with these service modules.



Initially codenamed Industrial Arrays, Upwell’s new line of Engineering Complexes are the second stage in the overhaul of the structures system in EVE Online. Arriving in the same size classes as Citadels (medium, large and extra-large), these new platforms are similar in function to the already familiar (and widely used) citadels. While Citadels focus on peak defensive capability, Engineering Complexes are more specialized towards research and manufacturing.



With the arrival of Ascension, a selection of new Standup service modules will be made available to expand the functionality of Upwell structure and allow player organizations to tailor their structure to their needs more closely. These new Engineering Service Modules will be available for any type of Upwell structure (currently Citadels and Engineering Complexes) unless specifically noted:

• Standup Manufacturing Plant I – allows manufacturing of items and ships. This does not include capital and supercapital class ships which have their own dedicated service modules
• Standup Capital Shipyard I – allows manufacturing of capital ships and can only be installed in large and XL citadels and Engineering Complexes in lowsec, nullsec and wormhole space
• Standup Supercapital Shipyard I - allows manufacturing supercapital ships and is exclusive for the Sotiyo XL Engineering Complex. This service module also requires capsuleer alliance sovereignty and the “Supercapital Construction Facilities” Infrastructure Hub upgrade
• Standup Research Lab I – allows research and copying of blueprints
• Standup Invention Lab I – allows invention of Tech 2 and Tech 3 blueprints

We have full details of current draft of fittings and fuel usage for these service modules at the end of the blog.

These new Engineering Service Modules are fully functional out of the box, but to get the best performance from them you will want to combine them with Engineering Rigs for your structures. These new rigs are available for all Upwell structures and provide significant bonuses to specific forms of industrial activity, allowing corporations to customize their structures to meet their specific needs.



Like existing Upwell structure rigs, Engineering Rigs provide the same strength of bonuses at each size category. The primary benefit of upgrading to larger rigs (on larger structures) is that larger rigs are more generalized in their bonuses and smaller rigs are more specialized. This allows larger structures to gain bonuses to more types of industrial activity than their smaller brethren.

For example, a corporation can potentially rig their Medium Raitaru Engineering Complex to receive the maximum possible Material Efficiency (ME) bonuses for constructing small and medium T1 ships, and significant cost reduction to invention jobs by filling its three available rig slots with:

• Standup M-Set Basic Small Ship Manufacturing Material Efficiency II
• Standup M-Set Basic Medium Ship Manufacturing Material Efficiency II
• Standup M-Set Invention Cost Optimization I

If that corporation upgraded to a X-Large Sotiyo Engineering Complex they would be able to get the exact same ME bonuses to production of small and medium T1 ships, while also receiving rig bonuses to a larger variety of industry jobs by installing:

• Standup XL-Set Ship Manufacturing Efficiency II
• Standup XL-Set Laboratory Optimization I
• Standup XL-Set Reprocessing Monitor II

This rig setup provides the maximum ME and Time Efficiency (TE) bonuses to all ship manufacturing, as well as improving cost and duration for all research, copying and invention jobs and enabling maximum reprocessing yield all in the same giant structure.

Thanks to the greater generalization of larger rigs, there will be a total of 64 available M-Set Engineering Rigs, 32 L-Set Engineering rigs, and 8 XL-Set rigs to choose from (including both T1 and T2 variations).

If you’re itching to see all the granular details, we have a chart with the current draft of stats for all of these Engineering Rigs at the end of the blog.



Another area of similarity between the new Engineering Rigs and the existing Citadel Rigs is that the bonuses provided by these rigs changes depending on what type of space their structure is anchored within.

Each Engineering Rig has three sets of bonuses:

• One base value for highsec space
• One for lowsec space that has a 50% higher bonus than the base value
•  One for nullsec and wormhole space that has a 67% higher bonus than the base value

All three Engineering Complex structures receive a 25% bonus to the strength of all Engineering Rigs, just like bonus citadels receive for the structure combat rigs.

To find out more, please head over to the dev blog

We're happy to announce that the 118.9 release for October will be deployed tomorrow, Tuesday October 11th, during a regular daily downtime from 11:00 to 11:15 UTC.

The 118.9 release brings an exciting overhaul of the graphic post-processing system improving the performance on all GPUs. We also get revamped market graphs and a variety of bug fixes. Additionally, blueprints for Command Burst charges will be available, allowing you to build the charges in anticipation of November's fleet boost revamp.

Check out EVE Updates for further information, and take a look at the patch notesfor more in depth details on what's coming tomorrow!

We're happy to announce that the 118.9 release for October will be deployed tomorrow, Tuesday October 11th, during a regular daily downtime from 11:00 to 11:15 UTC.

The 118.9 release brings an exciting overhaul of the graphic post-processing system improving the performance on all GPUs. We also get revamped market graphs and a variety of bug fixes. Additionally, blueprints for Command Burst charges will be available, allowing you to build the charges in anticipation of November's fleet boost revamp.

Check out EVE Updates for further information, and take a look at the patch notesfor more in depth details on what's coming tomorrow!

to the third and final blog on Clone States before EVE’s November expansion. Clone states will allow all past and future EVE players to play for free for as long as they want. If that doesn’t sound familiar, go check out the announcement blog here for more details.

In the last installment, which you can read here, we summarized post-announcement feedback and discussed our strategy going into the CSM summit. The summit has now come and gone (read minutes here), so let’s talk about what we learned what we’re planning to change about the Clone States feature before the expansion hits.

First of all, I want to say that this particular summit was fantastic. Despite being an almost completely new group, the entire CSM seemed engaged, organized and professional. They worked hard, respected both us and each other, and provided information and insight on Clone States as well as many other features. Okay, before this feels too much like a love letter to Bobmon, let’s keep moving.


Simultaneous Logon for Alphas:

The CSM’s number one focus for Clone States matched the biggest concern from general player feedback: simultaneous Alpha clone logon must be limited. We agree and so we are planning to implement restrictions that keep any Alpha account from passing character select if another EVE client is already active. This will be true even if the other client is Omega. Bypassing these restrictions will also be a breach of the EULA and may lead to penalties and punishments and all that nasty stuff that our security team does if they catch you being bad.

There are two reasons to make this kind of restriction. The first and most obvious reason is the potential for abuse and exploitation. The second, which the CSM focused on heavily, is that we don’t want to create a situation where normal players feel obligated to run Alpha alts. It would be unfortunate if every player has to choose between running an alt (which isn’t necessarily fun) or feeling disadvantaged against players who do. We’ve been deliberately trying to remove this kind of system (see off grid links) and certainly don’t want to add a giant new version of it with Clone States.

High-sec and Suicide Ganking:

The topic of high-sec ganking was the first thing to follow after simultaneous logon. This subject is pretty complex, and discussion on it during our first session soaked up 45 minutes without any signs of slowing. The general concern is simple: free accounts will make suicide ganking easier and therefore more common, which is bad. But, the reason we were able to burn half our meeting so quickly is that basically all the assumptions baked into that concern are up for debate. Will it actually be easier? Will it then be much more common (will more people do it)? Is that bad? How much high-sec ganking is the right amount? Both us and the CSM aren’t clear on all of these questions, so here’s what we’re going to do.

First of all, we know we have a solid solution for limiting the impact of Clone States on high-sec if we need it: we can lock safety settings for Alphas to ensure they can’t commit crimes. We are planning to keep that solution at the ready if we see substantial negative impact after the release, but make no limitations initially. This approach follows a philosophy that we’ve been trying to pursue for the Clone States feature in general, which is to deliver the most full and unhindered EVE experience we can for Alphas.

The CSM were satisfied with this as long as we commit to watch the results and act quickly if things go sideways. We agree this is the best path forward, and plan to closely monitor actual behavior changes as well as feedback channels after release. 



What Happens If I Lapse With…

Moving right along! We have a group of situations that emerge when a skill is needed to install or create something, but then isn’t needed afterwards. This includes jump clones, implants, planetary colonies, corporations, and more. The question is, what happens if I use these skills as an Omega clone, then lapse with the benefits still in place. We think that in almost all of these cases it will be fine to let you continue to take advantage of these benefits as an Alpha as long as no new installations are possible. That means that if you’re an Alpha, but you installed a nice set of implants and 3 jump clones some time ago when you were Omega, you can just go on using them as an Alpha. However, you won’t be able to install any new implants or jump clones that require skills outside the Alpha set until you resubscribe, reactivating your Omega skills.

The one stand-out exception here is Planetary Interaction. If you lapse to Alpha, you will keep ownership of your colonies and they will keep running, but you won’t be able to collect any resources from them until going back to Omega State. We don’t want infinite free PI farms and we doubt (most of) you do either so we feel this is a sensible solution.

The Alpha Set

Through discussion at the summit we did come across a few smart changes for the Alpha list, so here they are in no particular order:

• Adding Infomorph Psychology at level I – this allows one jump clone for Alpha characters, a very helpful tool for new players, especially if they want to dive head first into a distant nullsec corp
• Increase skill requirement for Entosis Link I module to Informorph Psychology II (was Infomorph Psychology I) – to allow Alphas to use jump clones we must also make this change to prevent Alphas from using Entosis Links
• Raising Drones skill to V for Caldari and Minmatar (was III)
• Add Gas Harvesting II to all factions – no reason for Alphas to not have this activity available
• Lower Electronic Warfare to III for all factions (was IV) – not sure how this was at 4 to begin with but it’s safe to say we would rather not make tech II ECM an Alpha capability

Look at this happy Alpha pilot harvesting gas!

But that’s not all!

There’s a few more odds and ends worth mentioning which came from the summit. Each of these still has some uncertainty associated with it, either because of timeline or exact execution details, but they are all items the CSM pushed for that we hope to have included with Clone States.

• Clone State exposed in the API. We tried to create some design uncertainty but the CSM wasn’t having it so we are going to get this in ASAP.
• A small manufacturing tax applied to Alpha industry jobs. The industrialists on the CSM (looking at you Ayrth) pushed hard for this. It should have low impact on legitimate new players but saves min-maxing producers from spinning up tons of production alts for low end goods, which is good for them and for everyone else in the economy. We are still exploring the best way of implementing but we hope to have some form of it working at release.
• Alphas won’t be able to fuel star bases. This was suggested as an easy way to keep everyone from having free alts distributed to set timers perfectly. This restriction feels a tad arbitrary but POS fueling isn’t exactly a job we desperately hope new players will find themselves assigned to so we’re fine including it
• Skill Extraction will be allowed for Alphas. This is another one of those areas where we can see potential issues down the line with SP farming, but we also really want returning players to have the option to extract old skills if they like. This could be a good path for many returners to go Omega, or just fund for some startup ships and modules. Of course, we won’t allow Alphas to extract skills in the Alpha set, but we may need even further restrictions later. It’s an easy one for us to keep an eye on so we will just update later with changes if they are needed.

Okay, that’s all!

That pretty much does it for the post-summit round-up. Clone States will bring big changes for the entire EVE universe, many of which we can’t anticipate, so we have time carved out for follow-up tweaks based on how things go in November. For now, we feel confident that we’re in good shape for release.

Thanks again to the CSM for coming to Reykjavik and talking quite a lot with us, and thanks to all of you for all the feedback you’ve given to this feature since its initial announcement.

Fly free o/

- Team Size Matters on behalf of The EVE: Online Development Team

to the third and final blog on Clone States before EVE’s November expansion. Clone states will allow all past and future EVE players to play for free for as long as they want. If that doesn’t sound familiar, go check out the announcement blog here for more details.

In the last installment, which you can read here, we summarized post-announcement feedback and discussed our strategy going into the CSM summit. The summit has now come and gone (read minutes here), so let’s talk about what we learned what we’re planning to change about the Clone States feature before the expansion hits.

First of all, I want to say that this particular summit was fantastic. Despite being an almost completely new group, the entire CSM seemed engaged, organized and professional. They worked hard, respected both us and each other, and provided information and insight on Clone States as well as many other features. Okay, before this feels too much like a love letter to Bobmon, let’s keep moving.


Simultaneous Logon for Alphas:

The CSM’s number one focus for Clone States matched the biggest concern from general player feedback: simultaneous Alpha clone logon must be limited. We agree and so we are planning to implement restrictions that keep any Alpha account from passing character select if another EVE client is already active. This will be true even if the other client is Omega. Bypassing these restrictions will also be a breach of the EULA and may lead to penalties and punishments and all that nasty stuff that our security team does if they catch you being bad.

There are two reasons to make this kind of restriction. The first and most obvious reason is the potential for abuse and exploitation. The second, which the CSM focused on heavily, is that we don’t want to create a situation where normal players feel obligated to run Alpha alts. It would be unfortunate if every player has to choose between running an alt (which isn’t necessarily fun) or feeling disadvantaged against players who do. We’ve been deliberately trying to remove this kind of system (see off grid links) and certainly don’t want to add a giant new version of it with Clone States.

High-sec and Suicide Ganking:

The topic of high-sec ganking was the first thing to follow after simultaneous logon. This subject is pretty complex, and discussion on it during our first session soaked up 45 minutes without any signs of slowing. The general concern is simple: free accounts will make suicide ganking easier and therefore more common, which is bad. But, the reason we were able to burn half our meeting so quickly is that basically all the assumptions baked into that concern are up for debate. Will it actually be easier? Will it then be much more common (will more people do it)? Is that bad? How much high-sec ganking is the right amount? Both us and the CSM aren’t clear on all of these questions, so here’s what we’re going to do.

First of all, we know we have a solid solution for limiting the impact of Clone States on high-sec if we need it: we can lock safety settings for Alphas to ensure they can’t commit crimes. We are planning to keep that solution at the ready if we see substantial negative impact after the release, but make no limitations initially. This approach follows a philosophy that we’ve been trying to pursue for the Clone States feature in general, which is to deliver the most full and unhindered EVE experience we can for Alphas.

The CSM were satisfied with this as long as we commit to watch the results and act quickly if things go sideways. We agree this is the best path forward, and plan to closely monitor actual behavior changes as well as feedback channels after release. 



What Happens If I Lapse With…

Moving right along! We have a group of situations that emerge when a skill is needed to install or create something, but then isn’t needed afterwards. This includes jump clones, implants, planetary colonies, corporations, and more. The question is, what happens if I use these skills as an Omega clone, then lapse with the benefits still in place. We think that in almost all of these cases it will be fine to let you continue to take advantage of these benefits as an Alpha as long as no new installations are possible. That means that if you’re an Alpha, but you installed a nice set of implants and 3 jump clones some time ago when you were Omega, you can just go on using them as an Alpha. However, you won’t be able to install any new implants or jump clones that require skills outside the Alpha set until you resubscribe, reactivating your Omega skills.

The one stand-out exception here is Planetary Interaction. If you lapse to Alpha, you will keep ownership of your colonies and they will keep running, but you won’t be able to collect any resources from them until going back to Omega State. We don’t want infinite free PI farms and we doubt (most of) you do either so we feel this is a sensible solution.

The Alpha Set

Through discussion at the summit we did come across a few smart changes for the Alpha list, so here they are in no particular order:

• Adding Infomorph Psychology at level I – this allows one jump clone for Alpha characters, a very helpful tool for new players, especially if they want to dive head first into a distant nullsec corp
• Increase skill requirement for Entosis Link I module to Informorph Psychology II (was Infomorph Psychology I) – to allow Alphas to use jump clones we must also make this change to prevent Alphas from using Entosis Links
• Raising Drones skill to V for Caldari and Minmatar (was III)
• Add Gas Harvesting II to all factions – no reason for Alphas to not have this activity available
• Lower Electronic Warfare to III for all factions (was IV) – not sure how this was at 4 to begin with but it’s safe to say we would rather not make tech II ECM an Alpha capability

Look at this happy Alpha pilot harvesting gas!

But that’s not all!

There’s a few more odds and ends worth mentioning which came from the summit. Each of these still has some uncertainty associated with it, either because of timeline or exact execution details, but they are all items the CSM pushed for that we hope to have included with Clone States.

• Clone State exposed in the API. We tried to create some design uncertainty but the CSM wasn’t having it so we are going to get this in ASAP.
• A small manufacturing tax applied to Alpha industry jobs. The industrialists on the CSM (looking at you Ayrth) pushed hard for this. It should have low impact on legitimate new players but saves min-maxing producers from spinning up tons of production alts for low end goods, which is good for them and for everyone else in the economy. We are still exploring the best way of implementing but we hope to have some form of it working at release.
• Alphas won’t be able to fuel star bases. This was suggested as an easy way to keep everyone from having free alts distributed to set timers perfectly. This restriction feels a tad arbitrary but POS fueling isn’t exactly a job we desperately hope new players will find themselves assigned to so we’re fine including it
• Skill Extraction will be allowed for Alphas. This is another one of those areas where we can see potential issues down the line with SP farming, but we also really want returning players to have the option to extract old skills if they like. This could be a good path for many returners to go Omega, or just fund for some startup ships and modules. Of course, we won’t allow Alphas to extract skills in the Alpha set, but we may need even further restrictions later. It’s an easy one for us to keep an eye on so we will just update later with changes if they are needed.

Okay, that’s all!

That pretty much does it for the post-summit round-up. Clone States will bring big changes for the entire EVE universe, many of which we can’t anticipate, so we have time carved out for follow-up tweaks based on how things go in November. For now, we feel confident that we’re in good shape for release.

Thanks again to the CSM for coming to Reykjavik and talking quite a lot with us, and thanks to all of you for all the feedback you’ve given to this feature since its initial announcement.

Fly free o/

- Team Size Matters on behalf of The EVE: Online Development Team

The EVE Online team is continuing to work hard on the upcoming November expansion, and today we’re ready to share another dev blog with all of you!

This is the second dev blog in our series on “Command Bursts”, the new and improved system for providing bonuses to your allies.

• The first blog covered the goals of the new system, the new mechanics, and the plan for leadership skills and other modifiers. We’ve been continuing to update that original blog as we’ve made changes to the plan thanks to your feedback, so it’s a great reference for getting an overview of the system as a whole.
• This blog will go into detail on the changes to mining foreman gameplay, including the Mining Foreman Bursts, changes to the Rorqual and Orca, and the new Porpoise-class industrial command ship.
• Blog three will focus on the balance tweaks being made to combat-focused boosting ships that will release alongside the new system.
• Blog four will be released right before the November expansion and cover all the changes to the plan we made thanks to your feedback. It will also summarize all the ship and module balance changes in the November release for easy reference.

 

The short version of all this is:

• In the November expansion mining support gameplay is getting a huge revamp
• Fleet boosts (including mining boosts) are becoming AoE buffs that only work on-grid
• There’ll be three mining foreman ships: the new inexpensive Porpoise, a buffed Orca and a buffed Rorqual
• Each Mining Foreman Ship will be able to fulfill three roles at once:
• Help fleetmates mine more effectively
• Defend the mining operation
• Contribute with powerful mining drones

 

We’re really excited for the chance to finally revamp this area of gameplay after years of talking to all of you about it. We want to give special thanks to all the players who have talked to us about the Rorqual and mining support gameplay at Fanfests and other player gatherings over the past few years, and to the CSM who made a great contribution to this process.

We are very interested in hearing what you all think about these proposed changes and to see what issues you foresee. We’ll be spending much of the next month going through your feedback and making changes as necessary, and we are sure there will be plenty of tweaks made after release as well once we see how players use these ships in New Eden. You can give feedback for each mining foreman ship in the threads linked from their section, and use the general feedback thread for this blog to give us any feedback that doesn’t fit in those specific areas.


Thanks and happy mining!

-Your Friendly Neighborhood Team Five 0

To read the entire blog in it's glorious 7000 words, please click here

The EVE Online team is continuing to work hard on the upcoming November expansion, and today we’re ready to share another dev blog with all of you!

This is the second dev blog in our series on “Command Bursts”, the new and improved system for providing bonuses to your allies.

• The first blog covered the goals of the new system, the new mechanics, and the plan for leadership skills and other modifiers. We’ve been continuing to update that original blog as we’ve made changes to the plan thanks to your feedback, so it’s a great reference for getting an overview of the system as a whole.
• This blog will go into detail on the changes to mining foreman gameplay, including the Mining Foreman Bursts, changes to the Rorqual and Orca, and the new Porpoise-class industrial command ship.
• Blog three will focus on the balance tweaks being made to combat-focused boosting ships that will release alongside the new system.
• Blog four will be released right before the November expansion and cover all the changes to the plan we made thanks to your feedback. It will also summarize all the ship and module balance changes in the November release for easy reference.

 

The short version of all this is:

• In the November expansion mining support gameplay is getting a huge revamp
• Fleet boosts (including mining boosts) are becoming AoE buffs that only work on-grid
• There’ll be three mining foreman ships: the new inexpensive Porpoise, a buffed Orca and a buffed Rorqual
• Each Mining Foreman Ship will be able to fulfill three roles at once:
• Help fleetmates mine more effectively
• Defend the mining operation
• Contribute with powerful mining drones

 

We’re really excited for the chance to finally revamp this area of gameplay after years of talking to all of you about it. We want to give special thanks to all the players who have talked to us about the Rorqual and mining support gameplay at Fanfests and other player gatherings over the past few years, and to the CSM who made a great contribution to this process.

We are very interested in hearing what you all think about these proposed changes and to see what issues you foresee. We’ll be spending much of the next month going through your feedback and making changes as necessary, and we are sure there will be plenty of tweaks made after release as well once we see how players use these ships in New Eden. You can give feedback for each mining foreman ship in the threads linked from their section, and use the general feedback thread for this blog to give us any feedback that doesn’t fit in those specific areas.


Thanks and happy mining!

-Your Friendly Neighborhood Team Five 0

To read the entire blog in it's glorious 7000 words, please click here

With the arrival of a new video blog update from CCP Seagull that charts the next couple of months of activity around EVE Online, we've made a few additions to EVE Updates to the upcoming changes to New Eden over the course of the next release, plus the November expansion as well.

Head on over to EVE Updates where you can watch the latest video blog from CCP Seagull, and check out what's coming in the 118.9 release on October 11th, and a little more about the Expansion in November!




CSM 11 recently finished its first summit in Reykjavik, discussing all aspects of developing and running EVE with a wide representation of EVE's developers, producers and executives.

The democratically elected Council of Stellar Management has long been an important advisory group to CCP and at least half the council has typically been flown to CCP HQ twice a year to allow for seamless communication and exchange of opinion.

This year big changes are coming to EVE with Clone States fast approaching. CCP invited the whole CSM to attend the summit in person. Everyone accepted and we had four days of solid meetings and feature demos with all 14 councillors. 


The meeting minutes are a collaboration between CCP and the CSM. A CCP staff member jots down meeting minutes on our internal wiki during each meeting and they are then edited through an open editing process on the same wiki. Every CCP staff member attending a meeting, and the CSM, must review and approve the version of the minutes that goes out. Typically not a lot is changed. Sentences get tuned to better convey meaning and of course a few tiny bits are redacted to preserve surprise and wonder at a later date.

This summit';s minutes can be found here. We look forward to reading, and taking part in, your discussions of them. If you wish to discuss them on the forums, please visit this thread.

With the arrival of a new video blog update from CCP Seagull that charts the next couple of months of activity around EVE Online, we've made a few additions to EVE Updates to the upcoming changes to New Eden over the course of the next release, plus the November expansion as well.

Head on over to EVE Updates where you can watch the latest video blog from CCP Seagull, and check out what's coming in the 118.9 release on October 11th, and a little more about the Expansion in November!




CSM 11 recently finished its first summit in Reykjavik, discussing all aspects of developing and running EVE with a wide representation of EVE's developers, producers and executives.

The democratically elected Council of Stellar Management has long been an important advisory group to CCP and at least half the council has typically been flown to CCP HQ twice a year to allow for seamless communication and exchange of opinion.

This year big changes are coming to EVE with Clone States fast approaching. CCP invited the whole CSM to attend the summit in person. Everyone accepted and we had four days of solid meetings and feature demos with all 14 councillors. 


The meeting minutes are a collaboration between CCP and the CSM. A CCP staff member jots down meeting minutes on our internal wiki during each meeting and they are then edited through an open editing process on the same wiki. Every CCP staff member attending a meeting, and the CSM, must review and approve the version of the minutes that goes out. Typically not a lot is changed. Sentences get tuned to better convey meaning and of course a few tiny bits are redacted to preserve surprise and wonder at a later date.

This summit';s minutes can be found here. We look forward to reading, and taking part in, your discussions of them. If you wish to discuss them on the forums, please visit this thread.