T3 announced...

[Endie]

... and it is way cooler than I expected.

It is Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri-style customisable ships, so that you can come up with your own hull providing your prefered balance of attributes.  This will make PvP unpredictable and exciting, I think.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=k-DPqnifEIg (not rickroll)

[TripleDES]

Hope there'll be either multiple styles per race or alternatively decorative parts and custom coloring. Otherwise things will look boring.

[Endie]

Hope there'll be either multiple styles per race or alternatively decorative parts and custom coloring. Otherwise things will look boring.

What?  Did you look at the presentation?  There were more designs for that one ship than all the other shiptypes combined.

[Pezzle]

You know, years and years ago at the CES (when it was held in Chicago and not open to the public)  I remember talking to those awesome guys at Microprose about games.  I brought up the subject of a space conquest game with planets and technology advancements.  We talked about a game with pirates based in the Caribbean during various ages.  I got free copies of games for my Atari 800 XL.  It was a grand time.  Sid is great.  Yes, he seems to follow the path of Steven Spielberg in exploiting all of his old glory.  In his defense, unlike the slavering beast Steven, most of his later content rocks.

Anyway, I am not hopeful of tech 3

[Yoru]

Fuck. I wish I hadn't drank myself stupid last night. I missed all the presentations today. 

[Sparky]

More new shiney that'll never be fixed woot

[TripleDES]

What?  Did you look at the presentation?  There were more designs for that one ship than all the other shiptypes combined.

They still look somewhat similar, which is to be expected giving a high-level Lego system. What'd be nice is if there'd be at least two layers of color on the parts, plus the ability to control glow, shine and what not.

--edit: And if certain attribute components always only go into the same location, minmaxing will end up in tons of the same ships. So here's where the decoration parts also come in.

[Endie]

What?  Did you look at the presentation?  There were more designs for that one ship than all the other shiptypes combined.

They still look somewhat similar, which is to be expected giving a high-level Lego system. What'd be nice is if there'd be at least two layers of color on the parts, plus the ability to control glow, shine and what not.

--edit: And if certain attribute components always only go into the same location, minmaxing will end up in tons of the same ships. So here's where the decoration parts also come in.

i dunno: I kinda want functional design to be important.  SWG suffered from massively customisable characters and corresponding amounts of data having to be sent around between clients.  And Eve fleet fights dwarf the largest SWG fights.

[TripleDES]

Coloring and shader parameters would just make up a few bytes, and decoration part would just define a component and the connections to other components, theoretically also just a few bytes, since it doesn't need to carry a list of attributes.

These days with hardware supporting shaders and instancing (with custom shaders), customization shouldn't present a huge hit on the hardware. It's not like a custom mesh is being generated per player, because that'd be a stupid thing to do. Ships will likely just be a group of instanced objects aligned as needed.

[eldaec]

What?  Did you look at the presentation?  There were more designs for that one ship than all the other shiptypes combined.

They still look somewhat similar, which is to be expected giving a high-level Lego system. What'd be nice is if there'd be at least two layers of color on the parts, plus the ability to control glow, shine and what not.

--edit: And if certain attribute components always only go into the same location, minmaxing will end up in tons of the same ships. So here's where the decoration parts also come in.

i dunno: I kinda want functional design to be important.  SWG suffered from massively customisable characters and corresponding amounts of data having to be sent around between clients.  And Eve fleet fights dwarf the largest SWG fights.

I'd have thought the extra customisation should only impact grid/zone loading time, shouldn't really hit lag in combat.

What will be interesting is how this fits in with the market. Complete ships will presumably only be sold through the contract system. Should fit in well with the corporation shop front features.

[ajax34i]

Two thoughts:

- "Need intel, what's on that gate?  Someone report!"  "Ok we have, uh, hold on I can't just tell from the overview, I must zoom in to each ship to visually recognize the components it's been put together from, cause CCP isn't listing all that shit in the overview!  Oh wait nevermind they jumped through, can't see them anymore!"

- With this extra layer of customization (customizable ships, with your choice of modules in them, with your choice of weapons and ammo, with customized rigs), CCP will forever be locked in a nerfing/balancing game, cause we'll keep finding the next Vagabond configuration, publish it, then everyone will fly it, and CCP will have to nerf it.  Again and again.

[Faust]

Having no idea what another guys ship is will be cool.  The cookie cutter "Official Guide to PvP in an XYZ Ship" is kinda boring.

and... it's a PvP game... all pvp games are forever locked in a nerfing/balancing/expanding game.

[Gets]

My video card took a look at it and said "Are you serious, dude? Hah! Pwseah-right!"

Besides the futility of making old hardware work harder it doesn't really excite me that much, at least not right now. After taking a few painful blows in the timeframe of a week I'm back to the conviction that we had during the first months of BAT where our creed was Blowing Them Up With Ships Worth Less Than Their Ammo. I'm still very much a proponent of that philosophy.

T3 has been an odd concept. I'm quite glad it won't be just a more expensive version of the current T2/Invention feature, but I would have thought it be just a new way to pimp existing ships into T3 variants, a là like when Earth cruisers gained Shadow technology or Vorlon ships + Minmbari ships = Whitestars </B5 references>. The video was T3 ships as I understand, but what about T3 modules? Or are T3 "modules" the actual subsystems? Speaking of subsystems, will capitals ever get them? I'd like to send a bomb through a Moros' behind by targeting its engines.

What we know of is
1) The roots to Tech3 will only be accessible through 'wormholes', which will be part of the yet again revamped exploration feature. The new epic repetitive storyline arcs coming with it will cover the storyline about 'wormholes'. As I heard listening in on the Fanfest panel these wormholes also (or included) will be access to new contestable areas.

2) A little part of Tech3 has already been in the game waiting for its chance. These are the Yan Jung, Takmahl, etc skills and items. Whether these "Tech3" datacores will really find their way into the market isn't certain.

3) We know of each race getting 5x5=25 possible major combination of ships, but with a vague mention thousands of minor modifications. Hey, I'm just glad newbies don't have to spend time figuring it all out... I hope.

When looking at the changes I see good reason to start brushing up those exploration skills and learn how to finish exploration sites as a group. But the ajax34i's point is fair, since the last time we got the ability to customize our ships (with rigs) we received nanoships and ludicrous speeds and that's still here.

[Hellinar]

- With this extra layer of customization (customizable ships, with your choice of modules in them, with your choice of weapons and ammo, with customized rigs), CCP will forever be locked in a nerfing/balancing game, cause we'll keep finding the next Vagabond configuration, publish it, then everyone will fly it, and CCP will have to nerf it.  Again and again.

Balancing will only be a problem if they have limits in mind for each attribute, but don't actually code for it. If they had coded the speed cap they clearly had in mind when designing rigs, nanoships would never have been problem. Maybe they will get it right with these ships.

[Amarr HM]

This looks potentially awesome just sayin ... 

[Teleku]

What?  Did you look at the presentation?  There were more designs for that one ship than all the other shiptypes combined.

They still look somewhat similar, which is to be expected giving a high-level Lego system. What'd be nice is if there'd be at least two layers of color on the parts, plus the ability to control glow, shine and what not.

--edit: And if certain attribute components always only go into the same location, minmaxing will end up in tons of the same ships. So here's where the decoration parts also come in.

Man, you, I, and everybody else here knows this is what an eve fleet fight looks like:


It wouldn't matter if every ship in the enemy fleet looked amazingly different, this is all you are actually going to see, before and after the T3 patch.

[Gets]

Primary the Scorpion! It has suspicious wingy bits on it!

[Fordel]

How much will this stuff cost in game?

[Comstar]

Considering you will first need to find the hidden portal to the new location, destroy everyone else already there, mine(?) for the new components, BUILD the thing and then find somewhere to sell it...billions.


Seriously. You need to build an entire supply chain out of nothing WHILE searching for random gateways and THEN mining in an area that will be like low-sec without the gate guns. Tech 3 is going to cost more than a Marauder. Its going to be a waste of time for anyone with less than 40mil skill points to use them.

[Teleku]

Well, looks like it was a good thing I maxed out my char for exploration after all.  The Day Is MINE!

[TripleDES]

When's that shit supposed to hit TQ?

[Endie]

When's that shit supposed to hit TQ?

Dunno.  I think it's a May/June release as currently planned.

[apocrypha]

Looks awesome at first glance but there'll have to be fairly narrow scales of possible change to the base ship if intel isn't going to become impossible.

If the class and role of the ship types blur into each other too much then I actually think it might reduce variety instead cos of min/maxing. Of course it's a little academic anyway because it's only going to be available to rich, high-sp players. Good for improving retention of the top of the pyramid, not so hot for helping EVE get over it's new player unfriendliness.

[Pax]

Perhaps ship scanners will finally make sense, other than to determine whether to blow up or try to ransom the mission runner you just busted.

[Endie]

I suspect that the mechanic they use for this will get reused in adding flexibility to T1/T2 stuff over time.  If they make it work then it is just too much fun as an idea not to.  Plus, they have a stated long-term intention to make object-crafting more like this, with the ability to focus on differences between objects (kinda SWG-ish).

[TripleDES]

Hope the Black Ops Jumpdrive, Covert Ops Cloak, Mega Cargo and Super Highslot Rack components are compatible with each other.

[Thrawn]

Hopefully it will raise the price of megacyte and zydrine. 

[Fordel]

Considering you will first need to find the hidden portal to the new location, destroy everyone else already there, mine(?) for the new components, BUILD the thing and then find somewhere to sell it...billions.


Seriously. You need to build an entire supply chain out of nothing WHILE searching for random gateways and THEN mining in an area that will be like low-sec without the gate guns. Tech 3 is going to cost more than a Marauder. Its going to be a waste of time for anyone with less than 40mil skill points to use them.

I suspected/feared as much. Oh well.

[kildorn]

EVE Online: making more cool features that really only point out the absolutely silly grind involved in not just using simple things for warfare.

It's T2 pre invention all over again!


Seriously, I often miss t1 only EVE. Back when randomly bumping into shitfit frigate swarms with other shitfit frigates was common, and a battleship showing up was a major event.

[Fordel]

Replace Bship with Capital, replace Capital with SuperCap etc 

[Predator Irl]

3) We know of each race getting 5x5=25 possible major combination of ships, but with a vague mention thousands of minor modifications. Hey, I'm just glad newbies don't have to spend time figuring it all out... I hope.

Actually I could be wrong, but isn't it 5pow 5 combinations? 25 modules with 5 possible options in each of the 5 sections? Thats a lot of variations!

[Amarr HM]

What if you can mix racial class? or have I missed something on this?

[Pezzle]

I am not sure players should be allowed to alter the basic bonus of a hull.  That may not be in the cards, but it would be seriously abused.

[Predator Irl]

What if you can mix racial class? or have I missed something on this?

No I think its race dependent from what I got from the video.

I am not sure players should be allowed to alter the basic bonus of a hull.  That may not be in the cards, but it would be seriously abused.

Its fundamentally having the ability to strap 5 hulls together combining their bonuses

[Fordel]

+Drones and +Missiles ftw?