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Ten free expansions down. Now an eleventh.  Set for Winter 2009, EVE Online: Dominion will focus on what is often cited as EVE's "end game" - alliance warfare. It offers a complete overhaul of the current sovereignty mechanics in favor of a system that's a brilliant mix of our game design vision and the input we've received from fans on forums, at conventions (FANFEST!) and via the CSM. Savvy alliances will benefit greatly from following and understanding these changes, which will receive extensive testing.

In addition, we'll be adding some new epic arcs for pirate factions, offering the first iteration of the integrated social networking platform known as COSMOS, setting our artists free to rebeautify planets and more.

As always, more information is in the pipeline from any number of sources. Check in with our dev blogs, CCP interviews at conventions like PAX and Austin GDC, coverage from Fanfest and Alliance Tournament VII, gaming news and fansites, our forums, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and the newly launched (but still mysterious) EVE Online: Dominion feature page.

How about they drop the entire capture the flag/pos/bunker crap and award sov based on the alliance activity in a constellation. An alliance get sov points for every rock mined, every pvp & pve kill, every mission completed, every item produced, exploration site cleared or whatever other metric that indicates activity they can come up with. With a system like that they can easily tie in their xbox game without too much consequences.
Maybe they can couple it with a new system for t2 reactions and be done with the r64 bullshit too. If they can make a system in which it makes no economic or military sense to occupy a larger patch of space than your pilots need they can open up 0.0 and make sov levels a more organic consequence of activity.

That all sounds horrible, it sounds like basing sov on who deserves it rather who wins an actual fight for it.

I really can't see that happening. I suspect sov will get even more separated from industrial and other isk related activity.

The following discussion is performed on an idea level - all possible actions in regards to 0.0 stated here are subject to change and/or not be taken.

CCP created the sov system in the Coldwar expansion to allow alliances to claim 0.0 and has been running for a while, but is in need of renovation and changes.

The current system was given a brief summary. CCP feels the sov system should be more complex, more factors should weigh in, so CCP is thinking along the lines of 'the Pendulum' idea where sov can be determined by multiple forces, each force 'pushing' the pendulum to a desired state. The forces in question could be starbases, agent missions, deadspace complexes, agent bribes, and 'pillars of society' (still a concept).

The idea is to bring more carebears into 0.0 to ally with alliances to effect sov. CCP wants to keep using the old systems to accomplish this, but wants sov to change things like exploration sites, what NPCs spawn, what moon materials are generated, output volumes, agents being available, and possibly NPC market seeding. CCP wants to bring in a system that brings life to 0.0 not just through conflict but market forces and 'seeding' 0.0 with logistics.

CCP wants to bring in a system that brings life to 0.0 not just through conflict but market forces and 'seeding' 0.0 with logistics.[/b]

I like the idea of NPC agents though. Going to be hilarious when we discover that the players who live there currently can't use them because they already shot their standings to -5.0.

non-combat sovereignty...

Retarded. Expect goons to take over the galaxy by shitting it up.

Scarce and valuable resources create conflict.

Because there aren't enough of you to create a truly large and vibrant economy. Carebears are what? 90+ percent of the players? If you ever want a 0.0 version of Jita you need them.

I wouldn't be too concerned though. For those of us interested in playing market games empire space is the place to be and I doubt that's going to change any time soon.

By the very nature of 0.0 if they go there they are taking initiative to try and reap more rewards while being threatened by more risk. People don't play this game just to pvp. Accumalting isk and faction for new shinies is all they want.

Come on, "large and vibrant economy"?  That sounds like a CCP marketing guy desperately looking for a buzzword - anything - he can use.  What's the purpose of 15 guys 0.01-isk'ing each other over Tech 1 junk?  The 0.0 outposts I've seen have sufficient quantities of all the ships and stuff I've needed, and cheaply (considering the income I could get from ratting locally).

And every time Jita is mentioned, it's with a groan.  

Armageddon Navy Issue:

• Slot layout: 8 high, 4 med, 8 lows, 7 turrets, no launchers
• Fittings: 557 CPU, 17325 powergrid, 350 calibration, 3 rig slots
• Bonuses unchanged next to normal hull
• Hitpoints: +50% hit points on hull (9316), armor (9961) and shields (8203)
• Dronebay: +50m3 dronebay, bandwidth unchanged
• Sensor: +25% radar sensor strength

I still want to hire my agents though =(

Id like to make myself an agent - kill ten goons and receive a mystery prize, although I would probably be beaten to the punch by goons themselves.

...they are simplifying the way in which you claim space and attack people, and they are also letting alliances upgrade their space and invest in it.

Along with that, they are rebalancing the power of ships, making adjustments so that no one type of ship will be heavily favored. It's always been thought that the outcome of a battle was more or less settled with the presence of a Titan capital ship, the largest ship in the game, as its doomsday weapon could potentially wipe out an entire fleet. However, in the expansion this weapon is being changed from an area-effect to a single-target one. On the other end of the spectrum, they are introducing fighter-bombers, small ships much like the current fighters but which can destroy capital ships. Also in the pipeline are so-called "speedboat missions" for smaller ships, as most of the existing PvE missions tend to focus on the larger battleships.

As social networking seems to be the buzzword of the new millennium, EVE steps up to the plate by introducing COSMOS, a social networking framework that allows players to create Facebook-like pages for their EVE characters, allowing them to maintain friend lists, write blogs, update their status, send each other messages and upload pictures. E-mail sent ingame can be read by the recipient through the website. Corporations and alliances will also have their own page.

But, according to Noah, this is only the beginning of where they want to take this feature. Eventually, they want players to be able to access all sorts of ingame information from this website and even update their skills or buy and trade goods from the market without logging into the game, possibly even from their mobile phones. All the data that goes into the social network will also have API support, which will be valuable to fansites once they start putting in features like the calendar and market data. EVE currently supports an ingame web browser that's a little dated so this functionality will also be upgraded so players can access the website from within the game.

With the expansion, they are introducing more tutorials for advanced stuff like PvP and exploration. These tutorials are optional, meant for players who think they might need a little bit of help before they venture out into the cruel world. Planet graphics are being revamped so each planet will be unique and truly beautiful. Also, players will now be able to gift other players with Pilot License Extensions (PLEX), which are game time cards that can be purchased from the EVE website and that can be traded ingame.

I'm glad CCP feels able to make long overdue changes now their pet alliance is dead :oh_i_see:

I'm glad CCP feels able to make long overdue changes now their pet alliance is dead :oh_i_see:

good things are coming i promise. today SELEENE of all people, who works for ccp these days and is working on Dominion in particular asked us about 0.0 thangs... this game will be getting much better in like november trust me. i will write a better postgame post when i get home ok goodnight

also that guy in the top picture on the right sitting on the table? that's john and he's been helping the csm do things all weekend but you might know im better as THE ENSLAVER lol. ive gotten everyone to call im chowdown to irritate him though

mnmnghghg,  mnnghgughg mnhghgghg!

"Do not fear change, embrace it."

This blog is the first in a series which will focus on giving you a glimpse into some of the big features of our next expansion, Dominion.  In this one, we want to give you a high level overview of how we plan to change the sovereignty mechanic.  Subsequent blogs will detail things such as the theories behind some of these new concepts and, eventually, the actual mechanics as well as a few other key bits we feel directly affect the massive sandbox of null-sec game play in EVE.  For now though, let's get started.

Out with the old...

In the beginning, there was no sovereignty... then there were starbases.  Intended to be ‘homes' of a sort for corporation or alliance members, or even a lone miner in deep space, these venerable structures have since been pressed into a multitude of roles for which their initial design was never intended.  Their link to attaining control of star systems is something which we will move away from in Dominion.  So now comes the words which so many have longed to hear:

Sovereignty will no longer be tied directly to starbases.

This decision was an obvious one, as there is no one thing that causes more consternation amongst players than the seemingly endless task of shooting towers.  Once the choice to do this was made, we then went ahead and pretty much scrapped the entire current system and started to build a new one from the ground up.  Literally years of forum posts, player experience and feedback from the CSM contributed to what was a long, arduous process.  What has emerged is a much leaner and infinitely more expandable system which we can continually evolve over time.

The thoughts and theories behind this process will be detailed soon in a following blog, but I'm sure you're ready for some actual information.

Planting the Flag

There are no sov ‘levels' anymore; you either have sovereignty or you do not.  The mechanic for claiming a star system will be much more simplified and symbolic.  You will plant your ‘flag' in the form of a new claiming module and it will sync up with the traditional ‘borders' of a star system, namely the stargates.  The exact mechanics of how this works and why will be explained later, as we are still in the process of balancing the system, however we can tell you one of the more important bits.

Upkeep

Who makes sure all those stargates in 0.0 continue to run?  Who pays the bills to the crews and funds essential services to ensure there are no breakdowns?  When Dominion is released, the answer is simple - if you want to control the space accessed by these stargates, you will be responsible for their monthly maintenance and upkeep.  The current design calls for this to be a simple ISK transaction, representative of things like duct tape for reactor maintenance, Amarrios breakfast cereal and other important stuff.

The other major factor is the more space you spread your ‘Dominion' across, the more expensive it will become to maintain your stargate network.  We do not want to see alliances holding space simply for the sake of holding it or just making their color on the map bigger.  We want to see alliances more properly utilizing their space and providing more places for their members to generate income.  In order to facilitate that, we are going to let you do some really cool stuff!

Home Improvement

One issue that we intend to specifically address is that of ‘infrastructure'.  This is a word you are going to hear a lot more of in the months and years to come.  Essentially, we are going to give you the tools to improve the space you hold.  There will be many ways you can do this, but they will all fall under one of three categories: Military, Economic and Industrial.  These are not set ‘paths' that you can follow, simply a classification of daily activities that take place in EVE.

The idea is that some areas of space are obviously considered of less worth than others and always have been.  This is going to change.  YOU are going to change it.  Through the investment of time, money and effort at all levels, an alliance will be able to directly affect the value of and develop the space they hold.  This will consist of things as simple as investing in improvements that allow your members to discover new riches in systems long thought barren and useless.  The resources were always ‘out there', hidden or out of sight, and now you will have the tools to access them.  Other developmental areas will concern the expansion and efficiency of your industrial base. 

In essence, you are going to be able to make your space more attractive to both your current alliance members and also smaller entities that might be looking for incentives to take their first steps out of Empire.  The goal is to provide incentives for you and your allies to not have to spread out so much in order to provide reasonable rewards for your pilots.

I want to blow *%#$ up!

No matter what happens, there will always be important things to shoot.  The key is finding a balance between allowing smaller gangs of raiders to disrupt the day to day operations of your space against requiring massive battleship and capital fleets to actually remove you from the same space.  Conquest of space in Dominion will differ greatly from what exists currently, as will the ability of roaming gangs to cause an ‘AFK Empire' no end of frustration.

Just as raiders will be presented new opportunities to create havoc, aggressors intent on all out conquest will have to carefully weigh their plans and make decisions on what and where to attack first.  Strategies that work in one system may completely fail in the next.  Defenders of space in Dominion will have new ways of defending their space as well.  These tools will not replace a proper defense force but they will provide new and exciting options which ensure that not every fight is the same and will reward investment in military infrastructure.

Dominion Tools

Tying all of this together will be a feature we are tentatively calling the "Sovereignty Dashboard" (cooler name pending).  Depending on your level of access in a corp or alliance, you will be able to use this new feature to get up-to-the-moment information on what is happening in a given system of space that your alliance controls.  You will be able to see where the efforts of your alliance are going, what areas of space are being developed and how you as a member, director or executor might help.  This is just an overview of basic functionality.  This feature may be expanded upon and you can expect more details soon.

Iteration & The Future

One very important point to take away from this blog is that everything described here is only the beginning.  One of the mandates that we've followed in our recent development cycles is that any new features we introduce be open ended enough to allow for future development and improvement.  The wormholes of Apocrypha are a prime example of this in that who knows what else might be lurking in the darkness of wormhole space?  Likewise, while we felt that the old sov system was at an evolutionary dead end, with no ability to properly expand upon it, the new one we plan to introduce in Dominion is specifically aimed at allowing us to continually tweak it and introduce new content.

As an example of this philosophy, one feature which we plan to implement early next year as a direct follow-up to the new Sovereignty system is the introduction of Treaties.  Without going into too much detail, Treaties will be a fully functional mechanic that formalizes many of the agreements already in game.  The plan is to give alliances the tools to ‘rent' out areas of their space to other alliances or corporations, create formal military treaties and establish diplomatic boundaries with regard to your alliance interests.

As you can see, we are not doing this by half measures.  The sandbox is about to get bigger and badder than ever.  This is EVE Online - Dominion.

Heh. And from another forum:

"Unless it's done cleverly, you'll just see GoonSwarm, GoonMob, GoonGang, GoonPile, GoonRiot, GoonGoon and GoonNoog alliances holding adjacent space in the massive space continent all will come to know as GoonTopia."

Also not quite sure why you'd attack another group if you cannot afford the upkeep of that space. Going to depend heavily on just how expensive it is to hold space.

Actually, from what I'm reading, it seems that an alliance can pay the Sov upkeep costs to get a chance to improve the space (for example, CVA might do this)

"Unless it's done cleverly, you'll just see GoonSwarm, GoonMob, GoonGang, GoonPile, GoonRiot, GoonGoon and GoonNoog alliances holding adjacent space in the massive space continent all will come to know as GoonTopia."

I got the impression that moons will become less important, as the value of a system will depend on the infrastructure you put in there, and how much your members exploit the benefits the infrastructure provides, rather than the number and types of moons.

So Delve stops being the golden land once Goons have it:) But it does seem like a good idea to me.

CVA have to be really fucking careful about this. If they upgrade the space in a way that it becomes worthy of invasion - such as by attracting better rats or ore, they could be in trouble.

It's always been thought that the outcome of a battle was more or less settled with the presence of a Titan capital ship, the largest ship in the game, as its doomsday weapon could potentially wipe out an entire fleet. However, in the expansion this weapon is being changed from an area-effect to a single-target one.

Would seem to favor small, high value regions (high moon concentration) over larger expanses of space.

On Thursday, September 3rd, Adam Ridgway (aka Larkonis Trassler) bought items worth of 2.5 billion ISK in order to stockpile those items before a game design change would be implemented. Further 2.5 billion was traded in these same items earlier that night based on the same information but through another character. This was purely speculative since this particular game design has not been finalized yet and at this point the effect of the change in question is not known. However, insider information was used as the basis of this trade and that is not according to the standards that we set for members of the Council of Stellar Management or employees of CCP. Adam Ridgway realized his mistake and decided to step down from his post as a member of the Council of Stellar Management. He will be replaced by Michele Boland, aka. Issler Dainze.

During the last visit of the CSM members to the Reykjavik office one member of the council acted upon information he had received during a earlier meeting, engaging in speculative trading and trying to cash in on that information.

In so doing the CSM member broke the agreement between him and CCP, and more so, broke the trust he had build with other members of the council.

'Internets Spaceships are serious business'

SOVEREIGNTY_CLAIM_MAIL_ALLIANCE_BODY 'This mail is your confirmation that DED now officially acknowledges that your member corporation %(corporation)s has claimed sovereignty on your behalf in the system %(system)s.

Your sovereignty claim is contingent on your administration bill payments arriving on time.'
SOVEREIGNTY_CLAIM_MAIL_ALLIANCE_HEADER 'DED Sovereignty claim Acknowledgment: %(system)s'
SOVEREIGNTY_CLAIM_MAIL_CORPORATION_BODY 'This mail acknowledges that your corporation has claimed sovereignty in the system %(system)s on behalf of the alliance %(alliance)s.

This claim is conditional on prompt administrative bill payment. '
SOVEREIGNTY_CLAIM_MAIL_CORPORATION_HEADE R 'Sovereignty claimed in: %(system)s'
SOVEREIGNTY_DISRUPTOR_DETECTED_BODY 'A new disruptor has been detected in %(system)s.
If a disruptor is online at all the star gates then your sovereignty claim in this system could be jeopardized. '
SOVEREIGNTY_DISRUPTOR_DETECTED_HEADER 'Disruptor activity detected in %(system)s.'
SOVEREIGNTY_NOTVULNERABLE_ALLIANCE_BODY 'The link to at least one star gate has been restored in the system %(system)s.'
SOVEREIGNTY_NOTVULNERABLE_ALLIANCE_HEADE R 'Sovereignty claim stable.'
SOVEREIGNTY_UNCLAIM_MAIL_ALLIANCE_BODY 'DED acknowledges that you have lost your claim to sovereignty in the system %(system)s.'
SOVEREIGNTY_UNCLAIM_MAIL_ALLIANCE_HEADER 'Lost sovereignty in %(system)s'
SOVEREIGNTY_UNCLAIM_MAIL_CORPORATION_BOD Y 'Your corporation has lost sovereignty in the system %(system)s. '
SOVEREIGNTY_UNCLAIM_MAIL_CORPORATION_HEA DER 'Lost sovereignty in system %(system)s.'
SOVEREIGNTY_VULNERABLE_ALLIANCE_BODY 'Your claim in %(system)s is vulnerable to claim jumpers as the connections to the systems star gates has been disrupted.

Reestablish the connections to the system star gates to retain sovereignty.'
SOVEREIGNTY_VULNERABLE_ALLIANCE_HEADER 'ALERT: Sovereignty claim is vulnerable to claim jumpers!'


CantOnlineSovereigntyAllreadyClaimed - messageText 'The %(tower)s cannot be onlined because sovereignty has already been claimed in this system.'
CantOnlineSovInWormhole - messageText 'There are no Stargates to connect with in this system, structure can not online.'
CantOnlineDisruptorsOnline - messageText 'The %(tower)s cannot be onlined because there is disruption generators at each of the stargare. Offline or destroy the disruption generators to online the claim marker.'
CantOnlineDisruptorsOnline - messageText 'The %(tower)s cannot be onlined because there is disruption generators at each of the stargare. Offline or destroy the disruption generators to online the claim marker.'
CantAnchorDisruptorNoStargate - messageText 'The %(tower)s can't be anchored more than 20km away from a stargate.'

We are looking at the upgrades in player built outposts. We are considering a few new offerings but will have to see how they balance against the rest of the Infrastructure system. Of more immediate import is we will likely be reducing the cost of the Level 2 and Level 3 outpost upgrades to something sane enough to discourage players from simply dropping another outpost because it's cheaper. This is also important because some Infrastructure upgrades will require you to have an outpost upgraded to a certain level as well.

Cyno Jammers will be one of the more expensive Infrastructure upgrades and may only be anchorable in systems where you have sov and own a station.

I love all of this. It's the final fucking nail in the coffin of BoB's tired old saw of "We're just better than you".
No. No, they were just given better toys and now that we get to play with them they suddenly become 'unbalanced'.  :awesome_for_real:

I do wonder how CCP are planning the switchover

These changes were proposed at a high level by me at the end of the second CSM, after a great deal of discussion with the Devs and non-goon players in the first.

http://wiki.eveonline.com/wiki/Incentivizing_0.0

I don't want to appear to be claiming complete credit or tooting my own horn or anything, but anyone complaining about the devs changing it simply because we own Delve now is off their rockers. We have been pushing these changes via the CSM for over a year. They listened. The finished product will certainly have a lot more detail than I ever mentioned but the root ideas of "FIX SOV BY REDUCING POSSES OR SOMETHING FUCK" and "INCENTIVIZE 0.0 BY LETTING US UPGRADE/DEVELOP OUR SPACE" appear to be the priorities.

I believe we also championed the supercap changes in the first and second csms, though again not in as much detail.

A week of no sovereignty be fun (to watch).

Just turning off all the jump bridges and cyno jammers while infrastructure is built would be... eventful.

It looks to me more like the Providence model writ large, the value of space is going to be far more derived from what you've *done* with it, rather than just what it has naturally. 

I believe we also championed the supercap changes in the first and second csms, though again not in as much detail.

Bhaalgoorn changes make me happy.


That first CSM was definitely the most influential. I do remember CCP pushing you guys to really think big as the initial ideas you brought forward were quite menial, not sure if this has been the case in recent CSMs.

How much do those pirate ships cost? They still super duper wtf expensive?

How much do those pirate ships cost? They still super duper wtf expensive?

No, its not. Its a retarded idea. If all space is the same then there is no economic incentive for anyone who already has 0.0 space to go and take anyone elses.

Only if I get loyalty points.  Oh and what are your faction ships like?

I could always stick 12 velators together with a bonus to civ electron blasters.
Can't think of a name right now, so the Thingy will have to do for now.

It looks to me more like the Providence model writ large, the value of space is going to be far more derived from what you've *done* with it, rather than just what it has naturally.  Taking space for it's own sake won't be that attractive, because you won't get the benefit of the development, but just raw undeveloped space that's had the vast majority of the infrastructure value-added razed in the process (much as there's no point in taking all those outposts in Providence, because the value is in the economic activity of the residents, which would not carry over for an invader).  R64 moons would be a nice bonus, and a good seed crystal to form a space empire around, but they'd be mere ornaments compared to the real value, not the singular focus of an internet-spaceships chess match only massive power blocks got to play.

"Territory" will no longer be a noun.  It will be a verb.

--Dave

It looks to me more like the Providence model writ large, the value of space is going to be far more derived from what you've *done* with it, rather than just what it has naturally.  Taking space for it's own sake won't be that attractive, because you won't get the benefit of the development, but just raw undeveloped space that's had the vast majority of the infrastructure value-added razed in the process (much as there's no point in taking all those outposts in Providence, because the value is in the economic activity of the residents, which would not carry over for an invader).  R64 moons would be a nice bonus, and a good seed crystal to form a space empire around, but they'd be mere ornaments compared to the real value, not the singular focus of an internet-spaceships chess match only massive power blocks got to play.

"Territory" will no longer be a noun.  It will be a verb.

--Dave

A group of new players from a outside-eve location form an alliance in Syndicate and are attacked by the inhabitants of Delve. Losing a war they cannot win, they swear revenge.

Anonswarm?
Ebaumswarm?
HalTurnerswarm?
CollegeHumorswarm?

:ye_gods:

I'm still a bit new to the politics at play here (still new-ish to EVE,) but shouldn't sov-holding alliances be vetting new corps to hold space for them? If most alliances are half the population of Goonswarm, wouldn't they start looking to expand to make use of more space?

We've been thinking about nullsec for quite a long time. The last big round of changes were made in Revelations II back in summer 2007, and we've been watching the results ever since. Some things worked out pretty well. Some things not so much. Some things have changed in the intervening period. And now here we are, two years on, and we've been given a mandate to re-engineer the dynamics of nullsec. Which is exciting, and challenging, and maybe a little scary. We think this stuff is kind of important, and it's not like there's anyone else in the industry who we could talk to about this stuff even if we wanted to. Nobody else does - has ever really done - what we do here: it's undiscovered country.

So anyway, here we are today. Nullsec is largely the domain of large, 2-3000 member PvP alliances, grouped up into inevitable coalitions and engaged in not-quite-impossibly large wars. Costs are mosty covered at the alliance level by a combination of old money and high-value moon minerals. The latter continue to rise in price due to ever-increasing demand from invention, and the after-effects of last year's exploit-related burp invalidating the calculations used to construct the Alchemy pressure-release valve. Most of the space that's up for grabs is owned by a clone army of ideologically-distinct but functionally-similar alliances, making the entire political landscape depressingly homogeneous. The state of the military art is not much better - sub-capital fleets are wheeled out for cyno-jammer take-downs and then packed away before they can fall victim to multiple doomsdays, leaving huge capital fleets to park themselves in front of a never-ending procession of starbases. And the smaller groups, the newer organizations hoping to gain a foothold in the Great Game, are left begging for crumbs around the edges. Who's going to let security-risk nobodies into their back yard when they'll never be able to compete pay as much as a single dysprosium moon?

We're not convinced that this is the best, most interesting, most dynamic and most emergence-friendly state of being for nullsec, so we're going to make some changes.


Why nullsec is worth working on

Nullsec is cool and different and awesome because of emergence. It's not the most populous area of the game, sure (and more on this shortly), but it provides one of EVE's most compelling and unique experiences. It does this because, by and large, we let you the players call the shots. This does have some impact in empire, but in nullsec the effect is writ large.

By giving players and player organizations tactical and strategic freedom, we allow a situation to arise where each challenge is different from the last, because every time there are different people involved making different decisions which result in different outcomes. You may have seen this effect in trailers such as The Butterfly Effect, and it usually goes by the name "emergence". And it's awesome.

The reason emergence works is that players make decisions. The more decisions that players can make, the more emergence you get, and the more interesting the experience is. Therefore, a primary development goal in nullsec is to enable players to make decisions, which can be boiled down to two directives.

First, try to give players tools. More tools give players more options, which means more decisions. Of course, to have value these decisions need to be meaningful - it's not enough to say "you can paint your shed red or blue" if the color of the shed has no impact on anything else.

Second, try to avoid telling players what to do or how to do it. The current sovereignty system, for example, mechanically prescribes a certain path to conquest, which limits the number of command decisions to be made. Obviously you need some mechanics in order to reach a definitive outcome - which lessens the number of decisions but also makes them more meaningful - but in general, the strategy is "deregulate, deregulate, deregulate".


The other thing

As mentioned above, nullsec isn't the most populated area of the game, and doesn't contain anything like the majority of EVE's characters. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity for this expansion. A challenge, because we obviously have to be careful not to ruin the gameplay for everyone in empire by accident, but an opportunity because we can change the balance here and give more of our players a chance to experience nullsec gameplay.

We're aware that some players just aren't interested in the nullsec experience, and that's fine, but we're also aware that there's a lot of players who'd like to try it out but can't seem to get started - in no small part because of the problems outlined in the first few paragraphs. If we have a really compelling game experience, and we have players that want to try it out but can't, then we're doing something wrong somewhere.


Where we're going with this

Ok, so that's pretty much the top-level view. Let's drill down a bit to some of the big whats and whys.

The first big departure is the actual sovereignty system itself (which is only a small part of the whole picture). Right at the start of the project we asked "why do we even need a sovereignty system?", and the main argument for keeping it has nothing to do with shooting at things. Rather, the biggest reasons for having a mechanical system of ownership are to have something we can use to regulate who can do certain things in a system, and (more importantly) to let people stake out their territory. Being able to say "this is our space, we fought hard for it, and now everyone can see what we achieved" is important to a lot of people.

A system to do this can be fairly lightweight. It needs to handle systems changing hands, of course, but it can afford to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. Currently we have a prescriptive sovereignty system: you fight over sovereignty explicitly, with the sovereignty mechanics determining who owns the system. A descriptive system says who's in charge, so it only needs to change hands after the dust has settled and one side has emerged triumphant. The actual fighting is deregulated - rather than mechanically telling you what to do (shoot sixty hardened starbases), you just need to do whatever it is you need to do so that at the end of the day the enemy goes away.

Of course, there's one class of thing that can't be left entirely free-form, and they're the things that helped bring about the current sovereignty system in the first place: stations. Outposts and conquerable stations are the river-crossings of EVE - each one lets you project power all around it, and as a result they're pivotal military objectives. Station ping-pong - waking up in the morning and finding that someone in a different timezone had taken your station, and the first thing you had to do was shoot it again to take control of it so you could re-dock - was very silly and we don't want that to come back.

There's no reason that the solution to this has to be the sovereignty system, but it does need to be timezone-proof. There's also no reason that it needs to take two weeks for an outpost to change hands - while comparatively shorter switches give the defender less time to mount a defense, they also make re-conquest easier. The combination of a lighter, descriptive sovereignty system and a separate mechanism for outpost conquest should (we think) lend itself much better to emergent outcomes.


Density and density

Sovereignty and outposts are roughly half the problem. The other half are the two related concepts of resource density and population density, and here everything ties itself into a messy knot that can be unravelled in a fairly elegant way.

Where to start? Resource density in nullsec is too low to support a high player density, which limits the number of people that could theoretically live in nullsec. Moon mineral values mean that there's no need at an alliance level to worry about other resources anyway, which limits the number of people who are actually allowed to live in nullsec. A lack of population or vulnerable resources means smaller fleets have little strategic relevance. Alliances hold vast tracts of space that they have no actual use for, simply because they can, locking out other groups from using it.

These problems are all interlinked, and solving them with a few key changes should bring a lot of good results.

Firstly, let people upgrade their space, and in particular its resource density. By increasing the resource density, you increase the potential population density, and by letting players do it rather than simply seeding more resources, you open up more decisions and more emergence.

Secondly, reduce the amount of income that can be derived from mining moons. In conjuction with the first change, this means that the best way to raise funds for an alliance will once again be to fill your space with as many people as possible, upgrade your space as much as possible and watch the money roll in.

This serves several masters. It gets more people into nullsec - one of our objectives - by making big alliances want more people in their space. It makes it much harder to be a big, rich, military alliance; rather, things should move more back towards the old dichotomy between big rich carebear alliances and smaller, poorer military alliances, because history (both in EVE and in the real world) shows that badass military organizations can't handle crop rotation without going soft and squishy. This dichotomy leads to more interesting conflicts; balanced but non-symmetric wars and political interactions between organizations with wildly differing objectives tend to be more entertaining than fights between largely identical groups. And if some alliances are relying heavily on lots of people working in their space on a regular basis in order to fund all their activities, interesting and strategically meaningful small-fleet combat materializes on its own, without resorting to "here is a structure for twenty ships to shoot": there's lots of soft targets for roaming fleets to harass, and space-holders have a pressing financial incentive to keep the residents of their space safe and fight off any incursions.

Thirdly, charge rent on systems. This allows us to scale the rent based on how well-developed a system is, which means it's less of a no-brainer to upgrade (meaningful decisions!), and also reinforces the idea that the more people are using a system, the more money it'll make you. In conjunction with a few well-placed additional penalties, it also combats alliance sprawl, leaving more space up for grabs and again letting more people experience nullsec.

Obviously, the anti-sprawl mechanics are a bit of a soft limiter, as you can always split up your alliance into multiple "alt alliances" to work around any possible mechanic in this vein. That's ok though, although to explain why needs a short digression on social structures in EVE.

The most stable social structures are almost always corporations, and they're also the ones with the most value for players. Corporations usually survive turmoil, and they represent the strongest set of social bonds. Alliances are fairly stable and represent some additional social value, but often fragment after major defeats. Finally, coalitions of alliances are pretty unstable and rarely last beyond whatever war brought them together. (It's also interesting to note that the number of real people in the average large corporation rarely exceeds Dunbar's Number, and that the average stable military alliance is almost always ~3000 players divided into 6-8 major corporations, but that's not directly relevant.)

Groupings of "alt alliances" fall somewhere between regular alliances and coalitions in terms of stability (and by reducing the number of people in alliance chat to a more manageable number, likely actually increase social utility), so even if alliances attempt to circumvent soft limits by fragmenting themselves, they're decreasing their stability and to some degree at least increasing the number of political entities present in nullsec, both of which lead to more conflict and more interesting emergent behavior. And of course in addition, by adding some non-linear cost scaling, the upkeep system will likely encourage at least some multi-region alliances to consider whether they really need all that additional space or not...


Recap that for me?

We implement the following:

• A simple, descriptive sovereignty system
• A separate mechanism for governing outpost conquest
• A way to increase the resource density of your space (as well as other cool gubbins)
• A reduction in the value of moon minerals
• An upkeep system for the space you hold and develop
 
We get (hopefully!):

• A more comprehensible, streamlined and robust way of showing who owns a particular system
• A better conquest experience
• More organic, meaningful and fun small-fleet combat
• Less territorial sprawl by major alliances
• A more diverse and interesting political landscape
• More opportunities for players to get involved in nullsec
• More awesome emergent gameplay
 
If it works out like we're hoping, we think this is a pretty good outcome.

-Greyscale


Postscript

This is actually my third stab at this blog. The first was a 3000-word rehash of some internal documents, which was interesting but too wordy and not informative enough, and the second draft I binned after getting to 1500 and realizing I was still warming up... We even discussed not doing this at all for a bit, but decided it's worth doing what's essentially a theory-dump for three reasons. For one we find this stuff really interesting for its own sake, and figured that a few of you might too, and for another we've found internally that a lot of the things we're doing make no sense until you have the "why" of it explained.

The third reason though is to show that we really have thought about this stuff. Nullsec gameplay is a big deal and a lot of you are rightly worried that there's a huge potential to screw this up badly (I know it keeps me up at night sometimes). We think though that we've got a good handle on the underlying theory for what goes on out there, and that gives us a good basis to move forward on. It should also go some way to explaining why we're being fairly comprehensive here. The current systems in nullsec are a bit like a house that's been built up piecemeal from a single small hut, and while it has a lot of rooms, the layout doesn't make a lot of sense ("why is there a toilet in the middle of the living room?" "well, three years ago..."). Most of the prior discussion we've seen, both internally and externally, has been limiting itself to knocking through a few walls and rearranging the furniture; what we're trying to do here instead is to level the entire building, and then rebuild the foundations and the ground floor according to an actual plan. The resulting structure won't (initially) have as many rooms as the current one, but it's been designed with coherent future extensibility in mind, and more importantly the toilet will actually be in the bathroom this time round.

  Unless we want to let things sort themselves into two new powerblocks, who will stomp all the small fry who try to stay unaligned (what few remain), and simply have another unresolvable war to suck up all of the player's efforts, it's time for a change

--Dave

No, by wilderness I mean that actually living there is a pointless ritual of repping everything you own every day and never securely holding your outposts.

that was a hugely useless blog that contained no real information that we didn't already know without giving us anything of substance to determine whether or not the actual system will work.

I'm glad they aren't paving over the current bloated mechanics.

that was a hugely useless blog that contained no real information that we didn't already know without giving us anything of substance to determine whether or not the actual system will work.

Are you anticipating more pet/renter alliances, then? Some sort of nullsec protection racket?

Like I said earlier, I'm still new-ish to EVE, but I doubt anyone will let huge swaths of 0.0 sit unused.

Most of 0.0 is left unused right now.

If I have an unstoppable super weapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve." - Evil Overlord Rule #40

It began over four years ago with the Dreadnaughts; massive engines of destruction designed to engage the starbases released in the Exodus expansion and the Outposts of Cold War.  Then came Red Moon Rising and the advent of Carriers, Motherships and Titans.

When capital ships were first introduced, the Alliances of EVE were just beginning to expand into nullsec.  The sight of more than a few capital ships in one place was a newsworthy event.  The first Motherships were near-mythical beasts, used by ruthless pirate corporations and powerful PvP alliances, able to stand against and destroy entire fleets nearly single handedly.  The mere suspicion of an alliance even building a Titan was enough to spawn epic battles and wars whose legends live on to this day.

How times change!

Over the last couple of years, both the size of capital fleets and the use of capital warships has grown at an exponential rate. "Hot Dropping" has shifted from being something done to decide the fate of a war to becoming a blood sport that major alliances play with each other, with dozens of capital wrecks littering the battlefield after such engagements.  Factional Warfare even sees regular use of Carriers and Dreadnaughts.

With the current number of active capital ships on Tranquility, they can no longer be looked upon as tools of the elite.  This evolution of warfare has made it apparent that capital engagements are not some random occurrence anymore but simply another level of combat in EVE.  Some of these ships have withstood the test of time better than others.  So, now we're going to walk through the various classes of PvP capital ships and explain how we see them fitting into Dominion and beyond.  Traditionally, we would start from the bottom and go up, but I'm not traditional.

Titans

The most dramatic change to Titans will be the removal of the current area of effect, grid smashing, lag generating, fun killing, fleet destroying super weapon.  It's gone, folks!  In its place will be the first of what we hope to be a new line of mutually exclusive super weapons, usable only by Titans. The first of these will debut in Dominion and will keep the names of their grid-wide predecessors but will now focus their destructive energies upon single targets.  (Insert Admiral Ackbar quotes as you please!)

To illustrate what we are talking about here, let me share the early concept art for the new Amarr super weapon:



There is nothing fancy about this. You will have to warp your titan on grid and actually target an enemy ship to ruin his day.  You won't be killing other supercapitals in one shot, but very little else is going to survive.  The weapon has drawbacks that are designed to prevent the Doomsday drive-bys of the present, but you'll find a couple more changes which might encourage you to stick around a bit longer than before.

First up is that the current weapon bonuses on Titans will get just a tiny bit of an enhancement so that the turret locators actually might get used. This damage will vary with fittings, just as with any other ship, but will certainly enable a Titan to make its presence felt if the pilot so chooses.

Second, to ensure that you don't instantly melt and can survive more than a minute on the modern EVE capital battlefield, we will be giving Titans a respectable hit point increase.  This will not render Titans invulnerable to assault, but it should allow allied forces time to properly assist them after someone says, "Hey, watch this!" on voice comms and gets in trouble.

The future of this ship class is not set in stone and as EVE continues to evolve they may find even more roles to play.  For now, we consider these changes to be a step forward in bringing Titans closer to being an actual ship instead of the giant nano-smart bombs they have become.  However, Titans won't be alone in dealing with the capital fleets of EVE...

Motherships no more...

Perhaps no ships in EVE symbolize the majesty of the game more than the Nyx, Wyvern, Aeon and Hel.  Featured in dozens of player-made movies, official trailers and screenshots, it is a sad testimony that their presence has not been a factor on the capital battlefields of EVE for quite some time.  The simple fact is that this class of ship now stays mostly parked on trained alts and is rarely used as they are nothing more than expensive targets for hungry legions of Dread pilots.

No more.

Motherships are being reclassified as Supercarriers. The name of ‘Mothership' has long caused confusion as to what the intended role of these ships was supposed to be but we are finally putting that to rest.  This refocusing will see these ships go through a few changes.  Gone will be:

·         The ability for Supercarriers to fit Triage modules.

·         The ability for Supercarriers to fit Clone Vat Bays.

·         The ability for Supercarriers to fit one additional Warfare Link per level.

One side effect of this change is that the build cost for Supercarriers will go down slightly as they will no longer require the Capital Clone Vat Bay components.

What are they getting? In addition to receiving their own hit point boost, Supercarriers are going to get new teeth in the form of the deadly new Fighter Bombers they can launch.  Fighter Bombers have exactly one purpose: to destroy capital ships and look very cool while doing so.  Here is the Gallente version:





Fighter Bombers will be unique to the Supercarrier class, launching specialized torpedoes capable of inflicting immense damage against other capital ships. We are still looking at a few other ideas that will help Supercarriers do their jobs more effectively and you may see those popping up on SiSi in the coming weeks.

One more thing - the Hel is getting rid of its current repair bonuses and trading them in for bonuses that enhance the endurance of its Fighters and Fighter Bombers.  I guess the Flight Deck Chiefs on Hels like duct taping spare bits of armor onto their strike craft or something...

Carriers

While we are still looking for possible ways to tweak them, Carriers as a class will remain unchanged in Dominion.  We have however reduced both the duration and fuel consumption of the Triage module by half in order to allow a bit more tactical flexibility in their usage.

Dreadnaughts

The heavy hitters of New Eden will continue in their role as the primary anti-structure and anti-capital ship in EVE.  Since my blog last week, many have expressed worry that their beloved Dreads would have a reduced purpose in Dominion.  This is not true.  If anything, Dreads will be used more than ever against not only each other, but new challenges which will require the mentality to "Siege green!"

Dreads will remain unchanged with one small exception - the Moros will only receive its drone damage bonus if it is in siege mode.

‘Bays' Again

We are also working hard to bring the next iteration of our ‘bay' concept into Dominion in the form of Fighter / Fighter Bomber bays for Carriers and Supercarriers.  This will allow you to better organize and separate your primary strike craft from your regular drones.  In addition to allowing us to better balance the numbers of drones that these classes of ships carry around with them, we are also doing this for performance reasons.  The server does not like it when Supercarriers have 1500 spare Hobgoblin II's in their drone bays and making the server happy is always a good thing.

Will there ever be more capital ships?

Not in Dominion.  The biggest issues with creating new capital ships involve both finding a defined role for them to fill and then devoting the considerable art and design resources needed to bring such massive ships to life.  As EVE continues to evolve, we will be on the lookout for ways to possibly expand the capital ship lineup.  After all, something has to wear the tag of Mothership again at some point!

To close, please be aware that we are planning some special events on SiSi in the near future to live test all of this stuff, so be on the lookout for announcements in the Test Server Feedback forum!

I've always wanted to be able to turn off a gate into a constellation so the only way in/out is jumpbridges/cynos.  I don't like paying attention while I jew.

Entity will go spare when I let him know there's one in-game. I might record myself self-destructing it just to taunt him.

(the very first Dread was built by one of the factions in the Stain Civil War, it was ambushed and destroyed by the other faction while being hopped from low-sec to Stain). 
--Dave

If this is going to actually work remains to be seen. Remember the idea is to have more wulfpax and 20-40 man fleets, but with the current Titans being equal to mobile death stars, one-shotting anything including the new claim disrutpors and dreads dieing to 5 volleys from a fighterbomber on Sisi it's still unclear as to wtf. Even if you don't take the concept literally it still seems arbitrarily dumb.

seems like they're incentivizing having numbers and having a  lot of carebears in your alliance over being purely pvp based and milking moongold, which'll suit goonswarm fine. alliances with small numbers that are more into pvp will have to get ratters and miners to come down from empire, which could be a problem because there's really no incentive to come down to 0.0 when you can make comparable money with a lot less risk by sitting in empire. they're trying to get more people into 0.0 but this'll only work if they buff 0.0 isk generation by a lot.

It's more like the 0.0 look at the empire players as trash, and the empire players just wish the 0.0 players would leave them the fuck alone to rat/mine/mission.

There's always some crusade to nerf/remove <carebear empire stuff> because it somehow devalues the 0.0 players.

Ah ha ha ha ha. This was dumb when CCP first floated it a fucking year ago. Will they never learn?

Also, what the fuck is it with people panicking about losing sov in 12 hours. You need to shoot something with the EHPs of a couple of (very) well-tanked rokhs at some point during a twelve hour window. If we at our size can't get together a mid-sized gang then hurf blurf we don't deserve space.

Sure, the hostiles might sit there with it pre-locked with carriers ready to rep. Maybe even so many that a few blackbirds can't fuck that up. Hands up all the capital pilots who want to sit there for twelve hours straight on a gate, by definition in an unjammed system, while your opponents just need to scrape together the dreads to hot-drop you for a few minutes of that period and you're down a capfleet. Often, whether to do a second ten-minute cycle of siegeing is enough to have an FC worrying about getting hot-dropped, let alone 720 minutes.

Post contains too much content.  Consider breaking it up, next time, into two or more posts of more easily digestible size.

Care to share just what makes you so sceptical?

Could someone just dump disruptor in like 50 systems and make you run around like a jackass?

Sorry about the confusion on this matter; it turns out that the design doc was wrong Crying or Very sad

The onlining time for the System Restore Unit / Disruption Marker is correctly set at 24 hours. The text description and the flowchart in this blog are both using an incorrect value of 12 hours because that's what it says in the design. Which is wrong.

We are having a ponder over whether the claiming unit should be less vulnerable - either moving its cycle to 12 hours, or giving it a longer invulnerable anchoring time and a shorter vulnerable onlining time or similar.

Also, when considering how easy/hard sov is to take/disrupt, it's informative to ask yourself why you're trying to do so in the first place. Specifically, bear in mind that sov has no impact on station ownership under the current design.

bear in mind that sov has no impact on station ownership under the current design.

Someone should tell him that that does not make it any better. Seriously, separate mechanisms for upgrading space and owning the stations? [which were previously tied to who owned sovereignty so its not like this is an undue assumption]

Also, the new In Game Browser is great since honestly it can't be any worse. It's based on Chromium, which is nifty since I'm using Chrome right now.

And yes, I'm speculating, but how in god's name do you test this in any meaningful way?

Test schedule:

Friday [September 18] @ 18:00 GMT Faction Ships revisited STRESS!
Friday [September 25] @ 18:00 GMT Supercapital unavailing Ohhhhh!
Monday to Sunday [October 5-11] @ 18:00 GMT Sov war of WIN!

On the test server  :oh_i_see:


http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1180242

Two alliances (Red and Blue) will be created on Singularity and players will be invited to join them and duke it out for control of a small area of space. Your opinions will be gathered on this part of the new sovereignty system and will be relayed to the team responsible.

[...] how in god's name do you test this in any meaningful way?

Red vs. Blue

It's simple:  log on to the test server, where they have their nice red vs. blue scenario all planned up nicely, and without being part of either alliance, go and completely fuck up any attempts by either alliance to set up anything meaningful.  If 12 hrs. is the problem, show how that can be exploited.

Or can people dock in stations even where they don't have sovereignty, which would suck.

Something that also needs to be considered is the making of supercaps.  What alliance is going to make these beasts when the manufacturing process can be disrupted so easily.  There is no Sov 4 to protect the manufacturers now.

Prediction: If this does not get rectified Titans will no longer be made.

It's not in the sisi patch notes because I don't know how to edit them

Something that also needs to be considered is the making of supercaps.  What alliance is going to make these beasts when the manufacturing process can be disrupted so easily.  There is no Sov 4 to protect the manufacturers now.

Prediction: If this does not get rectified Titans will no longer be made.

Should be higher, or scale with time spent in the corp, or something.
1% tax for the first three months, then 11% for the next three, then 21% and so on.

Do you have a reason for this or is it just more "punish the empire dwellers" nonsense?

11% tax in NPC corps.

If it were about inflation then the tax would apply to all corps - not just the NPC ones. Clearly, it's yet another "incentive" for carebears to get out of them and into regular Corps so that they can learn about all the special fun involved in being war-decced by bored pvpers with nothing better to do than torture miners and mission runners.

The only reason I can see to do it is to penalise level 4 mission runners, and a flat 11% tax on everyone to fix that one issue is too big. It also leads me to to suspect that 0.0 individual player rewards aren't going to be very big.

Why do you care how long people spend in NPC corps? How does their playing the game the way they want to hurt your fun?

If you mean me - I don't. My main is in The Scope at the moment.

If you mean random players who whine about Empire citizens, I believe the reason is "We play the real way, you suck!"

Internet spaceships are serious business, after all.

Everyone preaches the holy sandbox of EVE, until it comes time to force everyone to play their way.

instead of increasing taxes, why not just lower the bounties on those rats/rewards/bonuses?

Because this way they remove one excuse for empire players not to at least try out an player empire corp, player corps are more likely to lead to players interacting and experiencing more of the game, even if it is initially in empire.

The more people interact with other players and the more parts of the game players are exposed to, the more likely they are to move toward the end game in 0.0, and the more likely they are to stick around longer.

I'm in NPC corp CAS at the moment and the members are up in arms.  They are royally pissed at the moment.  Many are talking about creating one-player corps instead of being forced to join another player corp.  How is pushing players into one-player corps going to help the game?  Who is going to answer the questions of the noobs when everyones' alt is in a one-player corp?

Leave the carebears alone, they don't want to play PVP.   If you get them pissed-off enough they will starting leaving the game.  And how will pulling in less money help CCP?

It's more like the 0.0 CCP look at the empire players as trash, and the empire players just wish the 0.0 players CCP would leave them the fuck alone to rat/mine/mission.

Because this way they remove one excuse for empire players not to at least try out an player empire corp, player corps are more likely to lead to players interacting and experiencing more of the game, even if it is initially in empire.

The more people interact with other players and the more parts of the game players are exposed to, the more likely they are to move toward the end game in 0.0, and the more likely they are to stick around longer.

Do you have a reason for this or is it just more "punish the empire dwellers" nonsense?

Which just confirms my long standing opinion that the CCP devs stumbled into success completely unintentionally.  If it were up to them EVE would still be a minor league niche game with 20,000 subscribers.

But by all means. They should continue to alienate the largest single segment of their playerbase.  What could possibly go wrong?

I'd hardly say I was being overly dramatic. People aren't going to quit in large numbers over this - but it is just another in a seemingly endless series of irritants to the people that have no desire to play the game according to the CCP "vision" who actually pay the lions share of the subscription fees. I'm amazed that as many miners and mission runners keep paying their 15 dollars a month in the first place. Mining is about the most boring task I've ever seen in any game and EVE still has about the crappiest PVE anywhere.

It's not like these silly people are demanding the devs do anything crazy like maybe devote 10 percent of their time to making the game more fun for the vast majority of their customers. God forbid that they should be distracted from their vision and forced to take a little time off from their never-ending tinkering with 0.0.

For the life of me, I don't understand why you people are bothered so much by the Empire carebears. They do nothing to interfere with your gameplay. All they do is pay their money every month and allow the devs to concentrate almost entirely on keeping you and friends entertained.

When the best way to get minerals is to shoot rats and loot the wrecks instead of mining asteroids then there may be something wrong. Add in the fact that the guy shooting rats is also earning bounties, mission rewards and loyalty points too and you have a seriously unbalanced risk/reward ratio.

EvE has 300k players by some miracle of unintentional design. But CCP is deciding and actively attempting to piss of 280k players in order to fulfill the "true vision of EVE"? At around the same time their making a console add on to the EVE universe? Let me get by dancing shoes, i got the grave stone right here.

Most 0.0 players I know have an alt in Empire supporting them. Based on that, it seems to me that the real problem is lack of isk making opportunities in 0.0 not that living in Empire pays too well.

Most 0.0 players I know have an alt in Empire supporting them. Based on that, it seems to me that the real problem is lack of isk making opportunities in 0.0 not that living in Empire pays too well.

From what I've seen most of the serious money making happens at the corporate or alliance level. The leaders can do quite well for themselves if they're dishonest enough. The average 0.0 nobody makes his money ratting or mining. Or missioning on his empire alt.

Edit : Just read your post above mine. So yes, it looks to me like there are serious problems making money at the individual level in 0.0.  Torturing the carebears isn't going to anything to solve that problem.  I don't believe the 11 percent tax in NPC corporations has anything at all to do with "risk vs. reward."  It's just the retarded CCP devs trying once again to force people to play the only part of the game they have any real interest in.

Making 0.0 mining more lucrative by itself would unbalance a lot of other economic factors, you'd either have to increase the density of rare minerals or increase the yields, either way you're going to be devaluing minerals across the board as a result.

11% tax is 'torturing carebears'? Ok....

Remember that only bounties and mission rewards are taxed. Mission bonuses are tax free as are market transactions. High sec miners won't notice, high sec industrialists won't notice, only the guys who are running back to back level 4s will see any impact from this and frankly those guys should be exposed to more risk.

For full disclosure I have an Empire industrialist alt in an NPC corp parked in high sec churning out t2 items for sale to mission runners. My main has spent most of her career to date chaining level 4s in high sec so I'm fully aware of the situation faced by the average Empire dweller even if now I'm one of the evil 0.0 denizens trying to impose my playstyle on you or something.

Remember that only bounties and mission rewards are taxed. Mission bonuses are tax free as are market transactions. High sec miners won't notice, high sec industrialists won't notice, only the guys who are running back to back level 4s will see any impact from this and frankly those guys should be exposed to more risk.

For full disclosure I have an Empire industrialist alt in an NPC corp parked in high sec churning out t2 items for sale to mission runners. My main has spent most of her career to date chaining level 4s in high sec so I'm fully aware of the situation faced by the average Empire dweller even if now I'm one of the evil 0.0 denizens trying to impose my playstyle on you or something.

I was under the impression that sov was a license to print money? Or is that only a few alliances?

Since it's hardly going to affect anyone, and we don't like the kind of people it affects anyway, and they won't even notice then why bother with it at all?

Oh well, if this doesn't do the trick and convince everyone in Empire to move out to 0.0 and play the game properly they can always reduce mission rewards again.  It's certain to work this time.

Clearly what seems to CCP sneaking in yet another nerf to mission rewards in Empire...

Nobody is being forced to play the game in any way.  Nothing is being removed, banned or stopped.  Nothing is precluded.  Nothing is unavoidable.  Nothing is blocked, suspended or made unreachable nor obfuscated, hidden from use or otherwise made inaccessible.

Could you list some of the other ones from recent patches please? I appear to be reading different release notes to you as the constant stream of nerfs to mission rewards seem to be missing from mine.

And to add to that, I really wonder how many people in NPC corps would have even noticed this change if ccp hadn't announced it.

Some of the members of CAS noticed while playing on the test server, before CCP made an announcement.   And ever since that all the corp chat has been about is this tax, to the point where I am sick of hearing about it.  They are filing petitions in protest and sending emails and letters. They are trying to organize a protest of some kind.  Anyone who thinks they are taking this lying down is dead wrong.

Some of the members of CAS noticed while playing on the test server, before CCP made an announcement.   And ever since that all the corp chat has been about is this tax, to the point where I am sick of hearing about it.  They are filing petitions in protest and sending emails and letters. They are trying to organize a protest of some kind.  Anyone who thinks they are taking this lying down is dead wrong.

Some of the members of CAS noticed while playing on the test server, before CCP made an announcement.   And ever since that all the corp chat has been about is this tax, to the point where I am sick of hearing about it.  They are filing petitions in protest and sending emails and letters. They are trying to organize a protest of some kind.  Anyone who thinks they are taking this lying down is dead wrong.

Reg, it's only 11% of like 20% of the income you get from missioning, maybe less.  Bonus' aren't taxed, loot/salvage isn't taxed, LP rewards aren't taxed (which make up the lions share of the reward).

It's more like a 2% tax.  *rage*

CCP has said, since the year dot, that they want all people to eventually move out of empire and into low/nullsec. The whole "Sit in Empire running L4s for eternity" was a fuck-up they never intended to happen. Adding time-scaled drawback to people who refuse to take off the training wheels after a reasonable period seems like a logical way for them to follow this design.

In other words, the change is just fine because it's designed to encourage people to play more like you do.  I'm glad we're clear on that.

It's all about risk vs reward, Reg.  Basically, you'll be able to buy immunity from wardecs at the low, low price of 11% tax.  That's a perfect example of the balancing of risk vs reward.

In other words, the change is just fine because it's designed to encourage people to play more like you do.  I'm glad we're clear on that.

Reg, it's only 11% of like 20% of the income you get from missioning, maybe less.  Bonus' aren't taxed, loot/salvage isn't taxed, LP rewards aren't taxed (which make up the lions share of the reward).

It's more like a 2% tax.  *rage*

Do you rant at Blizzard because eventually you're forced out of Goldshire when all the mobs go gray?

Do you feel that some areas of Eve should be essentially risk-free without any associated cost?  That's the real question, not forcing playstyles on people.  As I keep saying, and you keep ignoring, nobody is being forced into any playstyle.  They're just paying protection money, essentially.

In other words, the change is just fine because it's designed to encourage people to play more like you do.  I'm glad we're clear on that.

Tell me more about the enormous risks you incur as you collect datacores every month from your 900 alt characters to be sold in Jita....

Do you feel that some areas of Eve should be essentially risk-free without any associated cost?

Tell me more about the enormous risks you incur as you collect datacores every month from your 900 alt characters to be sold in Jita.

If you guys can't see that the real problem is that there aren't enough interesting ways to make isk in 0.0 then I really can't think of anything else to say to you.  This is me exiting the thread.

Why would I do that?

Oh wait, I see. The 90 percent of the playerbase who happily play their game mining and mission running in Empire are just hanging out in the level 1 tutorial area.  They must at all costs be encouraged to play exactly the way you do. Because... oh never mind, obviously I'll never understand. I'm sure you all have very good reasons though to be so annoyed that people you don't know and have no contact with are enjoying the game in a way that you don't. It must be spoiling your fun somehow.

"Sov system has grown in an ad hoc manner without a coherent vision. It has reached an evolutionary dead end. Needs to be much more flexible and easier to balance, with the ability to iterate on it."

"People will cry and it will be awesome."

CCP has said, since the year dot, that they want all people to eventually move out of empire and into low/nullsec. The whole "Sit in Empire running L4s for eternity" was a fuck-up they never intended to happen.

Anyway, their desire to herd the carebears to 0.0 seems laughable to me.  Not sure if I can even believe they're dumb enough to think they should be trying to do that as it is doomed to failure.    There are a lot of people who have seen the 0.0 end game, left, and resumed doing things they enjoyed doing more in empire.  There are others who are chicken shits and will never try it.  There are also some who may try it someday but are having fun in high sec TYVM.

And what's wrong with that?

Eve's problem has always been that you have to search for your fun, or go out and make it.  The tutorial does a minimal job of preparing you for a career as a mission-grinder or single-box solo miner, but after that you're on your own.  If you aren't able to enjoy those gamestyles, or you aren't the sort of person that will go out and play in the sandbox long enough to find where it's fun for you, you're not going to last long:

(http://images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/d/d5/LearningCurve.jpg)

The last two years-plus of development focus by CCP has been about easing that transition from "lead me by the hand to the fun parts" to making your own way through an incredibly complex gameworld, finding your own fun along the way.  And the deepest and most complex part is 0.0.  For *5* years, they've been trying to get to a point where the servers could handle the battles to really resolve 0.0 conflicts by means other than manipulation of lag, and they've finally gotten there.  So now, it's finally time to see what else can happen, what else the players can do with the sandbox.

Empire is, will be, and *should* be nothing more than training wheels.  It's just taken a really long time to get to a point where "taking the wheels off" (deliberately leading players towards 0.0 play) was anything but a recipe for disaster.

--Dave

Easy big fella :D

I was only responding in Simon's comment "CCP has said, since the year dot, that they want all people to eventually move out of empire and into low/nullsec."

I was only saying that if that's true, it's stupid.

A snapshot of the status on October 19th, 2007 was used to find out which ship players happen to be in at downtime. We found that 78% of all characters were located in high security areas (security status at 0.5 or higher), 13% were located in low security areas, and 9% were in 0.0 at the time the snapshot was taken. So, the majority were flying in high sec. But what were they flying then?

EDIT: Source (http://ccp.vo.llnwd.net/o2/pdf/QEN_2007Q3.pdf)

So, what you're saying is constantly funneling thousands of players into a contained area for a climactic battle woul deventually cause problems, and that CCP was simply biding their time before people thought the game was broken?

Where were you when WAR was being put together?

I'd guess the aim is to make it so holding space is about playing the game and shooting the people who try to take it off you, rather than having a POS fuelling team treating EVE as a full time unpaid job as they jump from system to system pouring isotopes into towers. A simple sovereignty tax makes 0.0 far more accessable to the small-medium alliances than them having to drag millions of m3 in fuel halfway across the galaxy every month.

I obviously don't know who is in charge of tower logistics for CVA's various corps, but ask them what they think of no longer having to spend untold soul-destroying hours running round Providence with fuel for literally hundreds of towers.

[stuff from Eve-O]

I thought that was a pretty good response and would sum up my feelings on the matter. I think the whole point of case is should we really give a fuck if every alliance goes belly up overnight could be the shakeup 0.0 space needs, if it makes the game more fun for the majority of players while pissing on a few stuck in the muds then its a victory in itself. I mean we pay $ every few month or so for entertainment not to endlessly grind and delegate, Eve has always focused too heavily on grind for my liking. A very basic example of this is jumpbridge passwords get erased from your ship everytime you enter a new system, this is completely ridiculous yet we do it almost robotically and never question why or if it is needed. I have had some people explain to me oh there must be a reason this that and the other 'zen and the art of motorcycle maintenence' level psychobabble. Simple fact is it's just horrible design and players have been completely conditioned to the stage that we have come to accept, oh this is just how it happens. This conditioning has also spread to the higher echelons of the game eg. POS mechanics, ship mechanics etc.. Crazy thing is 5 years on Eve is still a massive WIP, it's just a shame this POS bullshit (I feel so liberated that I can call it that now) got so out of control.

CCP likes to play catch up with their information for some reason I cannot grasp.  Do they have a system or is this guesswork?

CVA are in an unusually vulnerable situation with what has been discussed so far.  As the long-term holders of the "destination of choice for bored roaming gangs" award, there is a real risk that the Providence block will find themselves constantly repping their sov artifacts which have been shot to provoke "good fights".

At the same time, one of the reasons that Providence has been so stable is that the space is so awful.  Sustained assaults are unusual (two in three years?) because the space is almost as bad as it gets.  And the competitors for that crown in the NW at least have far more high quality moons, even if PL owns them all.

However, what if this expansion really does offer the realistic prospect of substantially improving sovereign space?  The good logistics of Providence, together with the putative decreases to the value of Prom and Dyspro moons (CVA have only two, I think?) might even persuade someone that the notoriety of being the people who threw out CVA is worth a shot.

There's a lot of info still needed - much of what has been released is mere incidental mechanics and not the most important elements in assessing the viability of holding space: cost, logistics and return.  But I do hope that we're looking at the eventual point of equilibrium being substantially different from where we are today, because apart from a small number of GFFL events, I have barely done more than change skills in months.

Links fixed.  

Maybe CCP loves what we do, I am not sure they understand what makes it possible, or if they want it sustainable in the least.

  I think they'd rather not have mentioned any details about the expansion, complete blackout, and just one day we try to log on and it's been patched in, deal with it.

Pezzle, your youtube links seem to go nowhere for me.

Also CCP loves what CVA is doing. Through this patch they want to lead everybody to the model CVA is employing. Their mantra of 'develop your space' and 'attract the empire carebears' is what CVA has been doing for so long now. Unfortunately that doesn't mean they won't screw you over but at least they feel your vision of 0.0 life is the way they want to go.

I don't think CCP realizes that the only reason CVA is successful is because no one bothers attacking CVA...

Sounds like CCP loves the CVA model, including the skirmishes and the influx of empire players into their space, but doesn't particularly care whether CVA specifically will survive.  Or the Goons or any other specific alliance.  They'll just force the CVA type of 0.0 space to be the only possibility, and then who cares who owns any particular corner of 0.0, that's a player concern not a developer concern. 

The influx only happens because we have an open door policy and spent years building the security.  Taking away sov security will drive some industry types back to empire.  Honestly?  I do not see the changes encouraging people to try 0.0.

So if you want skirmishes and an influx of empire players you have to be content with there not being any big SOV shakeups. There needs to be stability.

I think that there will be stability and no big SOV shakeups because all the big name alliances will be wiped out by the ISK cost of claiming space, and a sea of little 3-corp alliances will sprout up in their place, each holding a star system or maybe a constellation, but each incapable of "big SOV shakeups" or anything more than skirmishes.  

Bye bye dinosaurs, hello small furry mammals.  And then, roaming sharks bent on destruction.  Followed by empty 0.0, or 0.0 that looks like lowsec: all pirates, no carebears.  Which means, no empire players out there in the end anyway.

Attatching ratting to sov in any way is a terrible idea.  Chinese farmers with bots would conquer all of 0.0.

Attatching ratting to sov in any way is a terrible idea.  Chinese farmers with bots would conquer all of 0.0.

"Haeruldaelfen Siggurerurinternalauditingsson, why does thirty-man alliance 'The Tiger Descends the Mountain' have sov in thirty systems in the south?"

"Haeruldaelfen Siggurerurinternalauditingsson, why does thirty-man alliance 'The Tiger Descends the Mountain' have sov in thirty systems in the south?"

Will any of this make T2 ships cheaper?

I am so weary of typical MMO players giving the same old tired "I hate change change sucks evrything is stupid" responses we've all heard since Ultima Online.  It's the same in SGBS right now: apparently the sky is falling, Eve sucks, and the old system was just fine thanks all of a sudden.

I am so weary of typical MMO players giving the same old tired "I hate change change sucks evrything is stupid" responses we've all heard since Ultima Online.  It's the same in SGBS right now: apparently the sky is falling, Eve sucks, and the old system was just fine thanks all of a sudden.

Will any of this make T2 ships cheaper?

I had a big rant about this, but I want numbers, I want how a constellation that can barely support 6 people at a time is going to support 600 *without* adding agent missions.

I suppose it can work, if everyone gets super poor and has to fly tech 1 ships and BS only get used as often as Dreads do now.

I had a big rant about this, but I want numbers, I want how a constellation that can barely support 6 people at a time is going to support 600 *without* adding agent missions.

I suppose it can work, if everyone gets super poor and has to fly tech 1 ships and BS only get used as often as Dreads do now.

5 belts per person

Increasing the respawn rates via upgrades could increase how many people can rat in a system easily though.  If upgraded enough the respawns are almost instant, so its just wave after wave of rats, you could support a lot more people.

Yeah, but what about those people who mine by themselves?  Are there going to be designated rat-free belts for them, or are they going to have to ask a corpmate to sit around for them all the time?

Since you can get both ratting and mining upgrades I'd assume you upgrade some systems for one and some for the other.

I like the idea of adding upgrading space to the things you can shape and improve in the universe.  Vio Geraci, who posted at length about these exact ideas back in 2007 or so, and whose ideas were taken to the devs by Darius and Bane, and then further pushed by Zastrow, must be feeling pretty :smug: right now.  The fact that this has been something influenced so heavily by goonswarm makes it mildly ironic that the usual doomsayers are complaining quite so volubly in SGBS.

People want change but no one can agree on what change to enact.

My prediction: CCP screws this up horrendously.

Great changes. I hope it succeeds in limiting alliances to a few systems, maybe a constellation. I'm pretty sure that even if it doesn't CCP will tune the system until it does.
The aim here isn't making everybody grind like mad to cover the costs associated with owning a region but to concentrate entire alliances in a few core systems.

I'm sorry but I really cant see how anyone will be abe to support themselves in 0.0 with these changes. Will they be spawning 300 anomalies per system or something?

Ten or so, when fully upgraded.
Populated with deadspace rats, to boot.

Where did you get that?  All I see is "two extra anomalies per system".  But I know that some devs have been posting with varying degrees of usefulness throughout.  The worst is Stoffer (CCP Soundwave).  I have an account on a temp forum ban now for reporting him to the mods for unconstructive trolling  :awesome_for_real:

I think Chronotis just stated in the Dev blog that the TCU charge will be reduced to 1m per day along with the marker at 5m per day, which works out at 180m per month for base infrastructure.

I think Chronotis just stated in the Dev blog that the TCU charge will be reduced to 1m per day along with the marker at 5m per day, which works out at 180m per month for base infrastructure.

Pezzle, roughly how much does it cost CVA to hold Sov with current mechanics so we can compare?

Ten or so, when fully upgraded.
Populated with deadspace rats, to boot.

RP reasons. The "agents" are from the corp that owns the station and you are doing missions for that corp. That's why when The blood raiders came to delve they did BOB the "disservice" of converting those systems to NPC space, the rotters.

Also, what happens if you lose sov for a day or two before getting it back?  All your upgrades are wiped out and you're back to 1-2 anomalies at a time?

Still, one thing that people seem to be ignoring is that the 50-100 person figure isn't meant to be simultaneous, It's meant to be all day long.  So if there are ten anomalies plus various other sites, let's say a system can handle 15 people simultaneously.  Those people all take about 3 hours, and then 15 new people cycle in.  That's much more in line with the figures that CCP are throwing out.

afaik, anomalies only respawn at DT.

That's what I thought too, but I assume that if they are making changes this radical they would be changing the spawn rate of anomalies to match.

In the end, a whole load of fuss over no change.

If we are forced to pay 25M a day for linked bridges does the fuel go away?

- Nothing at all happens to base individual level income, but corp taxes/fees rise.

You will then have seven days, until December 8th, to set up your Infrastructure Hubs and install the upgrades you wish to have.

I'm very concerned about how dificult it is to get the military index up, especialy in systems with low belt counts.
I had 6+ pilots running my 5 belt system and anomolies in it for most of the day yesterday after patch.
killed almost 1000 rats (1000, not a typo) and got 12% toward lvl 1.

came back today and it was back at 0%, killed another 200 rats and no movement at all, still red down arrow.
something must be wrong here.

I never really understood the problem with the current reinforcement mechanic.

It did basically the same thing as this but added an element of having to outhink the other guy and rewarded you for controlling more timezones than your opponent.

Plus having people rush in to do stront timing under fire was pretty cool.

Dominion trailer has been released.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDVEHE10nHc

I won't lie, my face was :grin: when watching this.

Not enough swearing to be genuine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAH1TRy9jhc

I aim to please.

Oh god that kills me.  Much better.

Saw like 47,000 people online tonight. Game is still growing, thats for sure.

Saw like 47,000 people online tonight. Game is still growing, thats for sure.

As long as it isn't >1000. If it is, then damn I want to see how he's solved the heat, power and internet connectivity problems. :grin:

So what's the verdict on the new patch?  Did it fix 0.0 warfare?

Theres some discussion that it has made o.o worthless without upgrading it though. Some people have reported that signitures as opposed to anomalies have vanished. Havent done any scanning myself so I dunno.

Finally, i would make the random variation in the window increase according to how many systems or stations an alliance holds relative to its number of members.  The last outpost should time perfectly, while the 400-man alliance with ten towers should be playing a lottery with a twelve-hour window.

Under geometric costs, why would everyone not split up into half a dozen fake alliances?

Hello, everyone. We’ve made a few changes that we would like to give you a heads up about and get your feedback on. We will attempt to be as active in this thread as we can and reply to your feedback / answer questions. So, here is a short list of the important bits which will change from what is currently on TQ and appear on SiSi very soon:

Structure Signature Radius

Most importantly, we’ve changed the signature radius on all Control Towers and POS structures. You will find that all of these numbers have been increased to a minimum signature radius of 2000 so that all capital weapons are capable of doing full damage to their intended targets.

State Module Changes

We have added a mass multiplier to Siege Modules, Triage Modules and Industrial Cores. When these modules are activated, the mass of your ship increases exponentially, making it much harder for other ships to move or bump.

The Triage module has had its duration and fuel consumption reduced by half.

Dreads

Dreadnaughts will receive their own signature radius bump that puts them in the same range as other capital ships. We’ve also straightened up one other issue by returning the Naglfar to its primarily turret based bonuses.

Naglfar: Launcher RoF bonus removed and Turret RoF bonus (5%) added.

XL Turrets

XL turrets have been adjusted slightly to ensure their damage is balanced and to give the short range weapons a bit more range.

Dual 1000mm Railgun: Damage mod to 5.8
Quad 3500mm Siege Artillery: Damage mod to 12.75

Ion Siege Blaster Cannon: Optimal 30 / Falloff 15
Dual Giga Pulse Laser: Optimal 37.5 / Falloff 10
6x 2500mm Repeating Artillery: Optimal 25

Citadel Torps / Cruise

We’ve changed several things here in order to balance these weapons with their turret counterparts and ensure they are doing the damage they are supposed to.

Citadel Torps: Velocity 1750; Explosion Radius 2000; Launcher RoF 34s
Citadel Cruise: Velocity 4250; Explosion Radius 1750
Compact Torps: Damage 3000; Explosion Radius 1750

We are also adding faction Citadel Cruise Missiles as well. They will receive the same 10% damage bonus that the current faction citadel torpedoes receive.

Motherships --> Supercarriers

After careful consideration and further balancing, we will be reintroducing Supercarriers for Dominion 1.1. This will include:

• Fighter Bombers
• Hit Point boost
• Jump Range increase
• Removal of Triage usage
• Removal of Jump Clone usage

A special comment on the Hel – we realize that among these ships, the Hel’s bonus to repair might be seen as a bit ‘meh’. The other school of thought is that considering how useful remote repair is, especially when it comes to carrier combat, perhaps the Hel’s bonus is not so bad. So, what would you like to see here? Would an additional boost to the current RR bonus be welcomed? Ponies?

Titans

A couple changes here to ensure all the titans are doing similar levels of damage, which they currently are not.

Ragnarok: Damage bonus to turrets to 125%
Leviathan: RoF bonus remove;, Damage bonus to 125%


All of this will be going to SiSi in the next couple days. While future iteration on capitals is still possible, all of the above is what we consider to be updates and fixes to current issues. We look forward to your constructive and always enthusiastic feedback.

Patch notes for Dominion 1.1, released Thursday, January 21, 2010

Table of Contents
FEATURES
CHANGES
FIXES

FEATURES

Ships

    * Motherships are a thing of the past and are now known as Supercarriers. These frontline behemoths will retain their former hulls which are the Aeon (Amarr), Hel (Minmatar), Nyx (Gallente) and Wyvern (Caldari). Supercarriers will receive a massive boost to hit points and can now field Fighter Bombers.

Drones

    * New fighter bomber drones have been added which can be used by Supercarriers. Fighter Bombers have to be directly controlled by the Supercarrier’s pilot, unlike standard fighters, and cannot be delegated to anyone else. They are meaner versions of fighters with more hit points and field compact citadel torpedoes against their targets. Blueprints for the new bombers will be available from CreoDron stations.

Skills

    * The Fighter Bomber skill book has now been seeded and will need to be trained in order for Supercarrier pilots to deploy Fighter Bombers.

EVE Voice, Mail & Chat

    * Voice fonts have now been added to EVE Voice. This new feature will allow you to alter your voice during chat to increase or lower pitch or to change from male to female voices. This is certainly not going to be abused in any way.

CHANGES

Ships

    * Dreadnoughts, Carriers or Rorquals: when using their appropriate special module, such as the siege module, triage module or industrial core, they will have a much higher mass when these modules are active. This will limit the effect of bumping stationary ships.
    * Supercarrier base jump range has been increased to 5 light years.
    * Supercarriers can no longer fit and use jump clone bays.
    * Supercarrier shield, armor and structure hit points have been increased greatly for their new frontline role.
    * Naglfar secondary bonus has been changed from a Launcher Rate of Fire Bonus to a 5% Capital Projectile Rate of Fire Bonus.
    * Signature Radius of all dreadnoughts has been increased to bring them in line with other capital ships.
    * Astrometric Frigates now correctly get a bonus to the flight time of survey probes. This bonus is detailed in their description.
    * The bonus to large hybrid damage on the Vindicator has been increased from 25% to 37.5%

Modules

    * Triage modules have had their duration and fuel consumption halved.

Weapons & Ammunition

    * Citadel Torpedoes and Citadel Cruise Missiles have been balanced with their turret counterparts to ensure they are doing the damage they are supposed to.
    * XL turrets have been adjusted slightly to ensure their damage is balanced and to give the short range weapons a bit more range.
    * Titans have had their damage bonuses balanced to ensure all the titans are doing similar levels of damage.

Skills

    * The Laboratory Operation Skill can no longer be trained by characters on trial accounts.

Starbases, Outposts and Stations

    * Territorial Control Unit hit points have been doubled.
    * The onlining time of the Territorial Control Unit has been reduced to 8 hours.
    * The reinforcement variance on Conquerable Stations, Outposts and Infrastructure Hubs has been increased to a maximum of three hours.
    * The hit points and resistances of Sovereignty Blockade Units has been increased to make them harder to kill and easier to repair.
    * The signature radius on all Control Towers and starbase structures has been increased to a minimum signature radius of 2000.

NPC's

    * Some Amarr and Gallente “friendly” NPC's were fixed so they no longer attack players.

Agent's & Missions

    * The mission “Informed Attack (4 of 5)” has been fixed. The target structure was previously invulnerable.
    * “Cash Flow for Capsuleers (10 of 10)” will now display the correct NOC dialogue in the final room. In addition, structures will also no longer overlap.
    * Deadspace areas now correctly spawn in the same solar system for the mission “Portal to War.”
    * The cost of Blood Gamma small crystals has been reduced in the Loyalty Point store to bring it in line with other small Blood crystals.
    * A missing line of text was added to a popup for the Anomaly Training Site.

Agent's & Missions

    * Some changes have been made to the Regional Blood Raider Command Center, Regional Sansha Command Center, Regional Angel Command Center and Regional Guristas Command Center in regards to what triggers various waves.
    * Several NPC’s were missing a description in the site “Port Maphanate.” These have now been added.
    * Pop ups in the exploration site “Angel Annex” now correctly refer to Crok Crokan instead of Pat Wead.

Science & Industry

    * The Caldari Outpost Platform now requires station docking bays as one of its manufacturing requirements similar to the other outpost platforms.

Graphics

    * The medium quality shader setting has been removed.
    * Moons will now correctly occlude stations as intended.

User Interface

    * Locked targets show a standings icon making it easier for remote repairing pilots to identify who they should be repairing and who they should be shooting more easily.

EVE Voice, Mail & Chat

    * You can now read, unread or trash all mail messages at once via right click. This applies only to the mails available in your inbox (max. 1500 at a time). All mails that are not currently accessible from your inbox will not be affected by these actions.
    * Notifications now contain links to various linkable items if they are written in the notification.
    * New mailing list members can now be set to muted by default.
    * Mail labels can now have colors assigned to them.
    * You can no longer browse mail labels list with arrow keys.
    * You can no longer multi-select entries in allowed/blocked/operator list in the chat channel settings.

Miscellaneous

    * The in-game browser version was upgraded to version 3.0.195.33 of Chromium.
    * The Jukebox UI was overhauled.
    * New wallet API functions have been added.
    * The Jukebox now fully supports unicode characters in file names and ID tags.
    * Ore mined by drones is now logged in the loot history of a fleet.
    * The remote container view window now labels items in special cargo holds of ships.
    * The map “Pilots in space” now counts correctly.

FIXES

Ships

    * Ships with a Covert Jump Portal Generator can now bridge to a Cynosural Generator Array as well as a Cynosural Field.
    * Heavy ships will now properly align themselves towards their warp destination so no more warping sideways or backwards.

Modules

    * If you jumped while in the process of recovering probes, those probes would be unrecoverable. This has now been fixed.

Weapons & Ammunition

    * The descriptions for Radio and Multifrequency laser ammunition was changed to make the damage types, penalties and benefits more clear.

Drones

    * Drones can now be used to attack Zephyrs in wormhole space.

Starbases, Outposts and Stations

    * There is no longer a duplicate office shown when the owner of an outpost rents an office there.
    * A bug where stations coming out of reinforced during downtime would incorrectly show the station as still reinforced was fixed.
    * Owners of Territorial Control Units and sovereignty blockade units will now be correctly notified when the structures are under attack.

NPC's

    * You can no longer add NPCs that you can't interact with to your address book.
    * You can no longer start a conversation with NPCs that you can't interact with.

Agent's & Missions

    * An inversion between deadspace and non-deadspace warp To options has been corrected.
    * The ship restrictions list in the mission details window now includes the current ship type that you are piloting.

user Interface

    * The right-click menu of the View Source window in the in-game browser had extra, non-functional options which have now been removed.
    * The "Split Stack" menu option is again available in your personal hangar and a corporation's station hangar.
    * Moving and/or resizing the View Source window in the in-game browser should no longer stretch the page texture or cause the browser to become unresponsive.
    * Declining a mission and requesting a new mission will now refresh the agent conversation window so that the mission details are consistent with the mission being offered.
    * Rebooting the client after selecting a mission choice in the epic arc "The Paths That Are Hidden" will no longer cause the agent conversation window to appear blank.
    * An issue where the HUD buttons would move around was fixed.
    * A layout corruption of the character selection screen was fixed.
    * The issue where the buddy list would be cleared on session changes was fixed.
    * The overview now closes correctly on resetting while being stacked with other windows.
    * The Selected Items window can now be minimized with the shortcut “minimize active window” like the other windows.
    * Various columns and column headers got resized. This also fixed various issues with localized versions not fitting into the headers/columns.
    * An issue with the search for outposts in People & Places was fixed.
    * When scrolling the market too quickly the images would sometimes move to the wrong places. This will no longer happen.
    * The buttons in the corp bulletin dialog now vanish when this window is collapsed.
    * A dotted line indicating a column in People & Places was removed since there is no actual column.
    * Drone settings window will be maximized when opened after being closed while minimized.
    * Tutorial pointers are no longer removed when the windows get hidden with Ctrl+Tab.
    * The search feature in the help window can be started by hitting enter.
    * An issue where there overview was cleared while minimizing it was solved.
    * The wormhole system sovereignty status is now correctly displayed as “Unclaimable.”
    * A bug where the right click menu of the jukebox was missing if the jukebox button was grouped into accessories was fixed.
    * In the Overview, when selecting “apply to ships & drones” only, backgrounds and colortags will correctly not include starbase structures.
    * It is now possible to once more assign the spacebar as a shortcut key.
    * Changed the settings on the Territorial Control Unit so that it no longer rotates in the preview mode; it now behaves identically to the (non-rotating) in-space model.
    * Capitalized the word "Zephyr" in the description of the Prototype Iris Probe Launcher.
    * Fixed a minor typographical error in the wallet orders tab.
    * Fixed a typographical error in the description of the Civilian Salvager.
    * Fixed a typographical error in Wrath cruise missiles and all variants.
    * Fixed some inconsistent capitalization in the overview states filter.

EVE Voice. Mail & Chat

    * You can now send mails to a character and a mailing list with the same name at the same time.
    * You can no longer “apply” mailing list member settings when no members are selected.
    * You can right-click a mail without selecting it.
    * The option to right-click senders of mails is now available.
    * An undesired vertical scroll bar was removed.
    * The paging buttons in the mailing list member management are no longer available if there aren't enough members in the search result.
    * The notifications of how many labels that have been applied or removed from how many mails no longer displays when done through the management dialog.
    * The unread mail counter in the tool tips will update correctly.
    * The subjects of anchoring alert notifications no longer break.

CONCORD & Killmails

    * Killmails will now display more accurate damage totals from participants.
    * Killmails will now be correctly generated in some situations where previously they were not.

Mac

    * Fixed an issue where the caps lock key would become stuck and print in caps lock regardless of caps lock being active or not.
    * Resolved a client hang when pressing CTRL+fn+F9.
    * The client will now instantly recognize language input change instead of taking a few seconds like before. The issue relating to language input indicator persists.
    * Alt-key combinations should now work properly again.
    * Fixed a memory leak regarding sprite de-allocation.
    * Fixed issues with multichannel audio devices, such as Bose Sound Companion 5 USB.

Localized Clients

    * The message displayed when clearing the in-game browser cache fails has been translated in all localized clients.

Miscellaneous

    * Clicking the right-click menu option "Open In New View" for a Knowledge Base article now opens the link in a new tab in the in-game browser.
    * An exception was thrown when entering special characters in the in-game browser’s address bar. This has been fixed.
    * The Show Info option now allows for unpublished items to be used.
    * Lines that were commented out now persist in the prefs.ini file after client reboots.
    * Extra URL validation has been added to the in-game browser when adding sites to the Trusted/Ignored list.
    * Corrupt character settings no longer prevent the characters from logging in.
    * A corrupt prefs.ini file no longer prevents the player from launching the game and logging in.
    * Saving the browser cache location as blank no longer causes the in-game browser to crash.
    * Changing languages in the client after adding comments in the prefs.ini file will no longer prevent the client from starting.
    * In some cases remote repairing was not applying aggression correctly to the receiver of the repairs if they were committing crimes at the time. This has now been fixed.
    * Asteroid belt celestial markers will no longer decloak ships
    * CCP Tuxford can no longer shut down TQ on a whim.

Yeah, I'm pretty gutted that I'll never see my capitals warping sideways through space again :smith:

Patch notes for EVE Online: Dominion 1.1.1, to be released on January 28, 2010.

Table of Contents
CHANGES
FIXES

CHANGES

Ships

    * The volume for Fighter Bombers has been reduced.
    * Fighter bombers can now be manufactured in a Small Ship Assembly Array.

Modules

    * Any Clone Vat Bays or Triage Modules that were fitted to Supercarriers have been removed and moved to each owner’s clone station.

Player Owned Structures, Outposts and Stations

    * The Signature Radius of conquerable stations and outposts has been increased

Graphics General

    * The medium shader quality option was removed in EVE Online: Dominon 1.1. If the setting was set to High when using a graphics card that could not support SM3, it would default to Medium quality even though Medium didn't exist resulting in a black screen. This has been resolved by making the default setting Low on cards that do not support the High SM3.

 

FIXES

Ships

    * The rate of fire bonus on the Naglfar was erroneously being applied as a penalty. This has been corrected.

User Interface

    * The right click context menu on fleet members, when running multiple clients, was failing to open. It will now open normally.
    * You are once again able to save multiple ship fittings without them being overwritten at the next login.

Miscellaneous

    * Many behind the scenes optimizations and fixes have been implemented.

What's up with the pos hotfix? Are they warping around again?