Next major patch announced: Apocrypha

[Amarr HM]

From what I just read in the comments thread you CAN put up a station in W-Space (what they are calling it internally) but you won't find fuel there so you will have a large logistics problem.  A large or dedicated group may be able to maintain a semi-permanent presence in a particularly nice system you will just have to deal with long shifting lines of supply.

I think the attitude is wait and see if something is broken and then they will try and make it easier/harder.

I wonder if this means that Marauders are going to become more valuable in the short term, high-damage, big tanks, extra slots for probes and cloaks and etc...?

Unless there's a mechanic which suits marauder bonuses really well then I'd guess people will bypass them as expensive toys which cost many times more than their T1 equivalents but only provide marginal benefits.   Don't get me wrong, they make really nice solo ships but I'd think twice before committing 1b worth of ship to an unknown location when there are cheaper tools available.

Pair of T1 battleships working together can do pretty much anything a marauder can, if they're using either lasers or drones then barring acts of God (or CCP) they also have a limitless supply of ammunition - combine that with some kind of supply dump to deposit loot and you have a ship which can remain in the field indefinitely and can be fully insured.

Have you seen the sensor strength on Marauders? I don't think CCP ever wanted people to PvP in them for reasons known only to themselves, not that it stops people, but in nearly every case exception being the Golem you are better of with the faction variant for solowork.

[Fordel]

Can someone give me/link the cliff notes of what a Marauder is?

[Jayce]

Tech2 battleship.  Large cargo capacity.  Hardpoints have a double damage bonus - the point of which is to be able to make one hardpoint worth two so that you can fit salvagers and tractors and other utility things.

However as someone stated they take forever to lock and have some other disadvantages, so you'd be stupid to use them in PvP, especially at a 1b investment.  They are made for long PvE voyages in relatively safe space.

[Amarr HM]

However as someone stated they take forever to lock and have some other disadvantages.

Sensor strength is their susceptibility to ECM but their scan resolution which effects this is also worse than their T1 counterpart, so in roundabout way you are correct have a cookie.

[Predator Irl]

Has anyone heard any information in regards to insurance on T3 ships, whether it is going to be as awful as T2 or somewhere nearer T1? Or have CCP hinted at improving T2 insurance when T3 is released?

[tazelbain]

Why should T3 be issuable?  Anyone getting to T3 should be a vet and handle the risks.

[Jayce]

For that matter why should T2?  They are better ships, and the tradeoff is that it sucks more to lose them.

If they were insurable there'd be literally no reason to fly T1 once you trained high enough.  You might as well introduce levels at that point 

[Predator Irl]

Why should T3 be issuable?  Anyone getting to T3 should be a vet and handle the risks.

Well assuming T3 follows the same insurance risk as T2, and a T3 ship can be composed of up to 5 pieces, its safe to assume a T3 ship could cost a huge amount to lose. Therefore I can see very few people actually using them in PVP, if at all.

[Gets]

T3 ships will all (initially) be Cruiser sized. One hull per race. There will be five main components - propulsion, offense, defense, sensor and power core. The sensor component will also act as the bridge component. Every section has separate skills, so there is a lot of training involved, but I don't see this as a bad thing from specialization point of view. You won't be training up for that separate weapon group or tank type, but also what configuration of T3 ship you want to fly. However the ISK sink isn't clear yet, as that will depend on what it takes to build it plus initial implementation hype, but - you know - cruiser sized, so fingers crossed. You can disassemble the ship components as well, but it's not clear how the single rig slot they're allowing it will work. I'm hoping it will be part of the bridge component, so you wouldn't have to destroy it when you do want to try new components.

The ability I think which interests me most, as a newbie-FC, is that the T3 ships all have the same name, but you never know what it's strengths are unless you see the killmail.

I guess we'll see in March.

[Amarr HM]

T3 ships will all (initially) be Cruiser sized....

Nice, where did you read this was this from the Dev responses to the comments on the blog?

[Gets]

From the thread on Scrapheap.

[Fordel]

Tech2 battleship.  Large cargo capacity.  Hardpoints have a double damage bonus - the point of which is to be able to make one hardpoint worth two so that you can fit salvagers and tractors and other utility things.

However as someone stated they take forever to lock and have some other disadvantages, so you'd be stupid to use them in PvP, especially at a 1b investment.  They are made for long PvE voyages in relatively safe space.

 


Fuck, it would be cheaper to take a standard issue ratting Raven (I think its a Raven) and use the extra ISK to buy time cards for a hauler alt.

[Amarr HM]

"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing."

Wernher von Braun (1912 - 1977), because quotes are cool

Whenever I am not aimlessly hanging around in CCP offices, mumbling like a desecrated zombie, I am actually busy attempting all kinds of most interesting experiments to improve mankind's living conditions. Would a man work faster in a computer science company with a third arm grafted onto his chest? Are human ears compatible with RJ-45 wires to build a local network? Could brains be replaced by SATA hard-drives for better storage capabilities?

However, my cloth-staining work seemed to be quite misunderstood, and I was sentenced to serve as Team Epic member, put within the (evil) grasp of CCP Zulupark. Of course, it contains many genetically-mutated Dev specimen, like CCP Oneiromancer and CCP Gangleri from Quality Assurance, CCP GingerDude and CCP Incognito from Software Engineering and myself, CCP Ytterbium from Game Design.

So, for quite some time now, Team Epic has been studying one game facet that most players confront on a daily basis. It is that part shortly after accepting a task from an agent, at that moment you arrive and survey the asteroid belt or exploration site that you were dispatched to. You know what we are referring to, when floating red crosses appear in your overview, often not for long before they are consumed by explosion, flashes and fumes: Non Player Characters, NPCs.


All your belts are belong to us

Team Epic's first goal was to restore balance throughout the known regions of New Eden by spreading NPCs where they were direly needed. As such, with the expansion arrival, expect various pirate battleships to arrive into low-security areas to ambush the unprepared pilots. Of course, the nature and type of these new spawns will be put into scale towards null and high-security space as we plan to even out rewards, not destabilize them further. To be clear, no pirate battleship spawn will make it into high-security space.

 

The Sleeper has Awakened

We have been observing the current strength scale between players and NPCs with watchful eyes for quite some time now. More often than not, PvE interactions in EVE are quite limited, merely consisting of watching the NPC explode after a few volleys. We are not satisfied with that. We want to offer our players true PvE challenge, requiring real team effort and proper gang coordination. We want to give players satisfaction when finally overcoming these PvE situations and reaping the rewards. And of course we want to achieve all of this while giving you the most enjoyment out of it.

That is why for Apocrypha, we are unleashing an ancient race into the universe: the infamous Sleepers, lurking throughout the vast unknowns stretching at the other side of the Wormhole maws. Do not underestimate them, as they will remain radically different from the regular pirate factions you are used to. More often than not, they will give you some substiantial bang for your buck and will require player gang coordination and effort to be dispatched. More details are left for another Dev Blog, but at the moment, know they have comparable player attributes and thus require variations of PvP fits to engage.

Why shoot them? Because they will guard and yield the very components needed for Tech3 ship production. There will be more details on this in future blogs.


Rise of the Machines

Last but not least, we are further improving NPCs by assigning advanced AI capabilities to them. Of course we are not going to assign such improvements all of a sudden to all NPCs, but rather proceed on a careful step-by-step approach which starts with the Apocrypha release. At first, only Sleepers and existing Officer spawns will receive such improved behavior and no other changes will be made to existing PvE interactions. However, with time, we might want to progressively revamp the whole face the EVE Online PVE experience by giving most NPCs clean and fresh roots to rest on.

How will they react with such a behavior? Let us just say at the moment they are going to make logical target choices depending on the most threatening targets available; but again such details are left to be explained in another Dev Blog.

Another Dev blog some more cool possibilities to mull over... Sleepers eh? and who the hell is Ytterbium?

[Nerf]

Great, rats are going to start spider-tanking and doing drivebys now.

[Murgos]

Great, rats are going to start spider-tanking and doing drivebys now.

I'm hoping they don't dork up the risk v reward eqn too much.  If all this really means is that we start seeing officer rats with mega-stupid repair rates and uber-damage and super long range neuts and webs I'm going to be annoyed.  Hey, look! Our PVE is challenging, you can't solo anymore!  Bleh.

Also, sounds like they are giving more reason for hi-sec players to risk a trip to low-sec, which I guess is good.

[Nerf]

I'm all for pumping up the rewards in lowsec, lowsec is shitty shitspace right now.  But if they're making everything harder, maybe that means they'll make bounties go up across the board.  Of course, if they increase bounties, they'd have to decrease the m3 of raw ore so that miners don't get shafted, and then it's just more mudflation.

[Comstar]

What it sounds like is the rats will now shoot the weakest target, *NOT* the tank or the 1st person who entered the wormhole and forgot to cloak.

[MahrinSkel]

I'm all for pumping up the rewards in lowsec, lowsec is shitty shitspace right now.  But if they're making everything harder, maybe that means they'll make bounties go up across the board.  Of course, if they increase bounties, they'd have to decrease the m3 of raw ore so that miners don't get shafted, and then it's just more mudflation.

Do I need to explain why this wouldn't help?

--Dave

[Nerf]

I'm all for pumping up the rewards in lowsec, lowsec is shitty shitspace right now.  But if they're making everything harder, maybe that means they'll make bounties go up across the board.  Of course, if they increase bounties, they'd have to decrease the m3 of raw ore so that miners don't get shafted, and then it's just more mudflation.

Do I need to explain why this wouldn't help?

--Dave

I thought the mudflation comment at the end meant it wouldn't work, although I'd be all for giving lowsec a purpose so it's not just that worthless space you can get ganked in but they take a sec hit between 0.0 and hisec.

[Amarr HM]

What it sounds like is the rats will now shoot the weakest target, *NOT* the tank or the 1st person who entered the wormhole and forgot to cloak.

Or even go for the logistics first :/

[WayAbvPar]

They should fit the rat ships more like humans would too. Be more of a challenge, and they would drop useful stuff.

[Murgos]

What it sounds like is the rats will now shoot the weakest target, *NOT* the tank or the 1st person who entered the wormhole and forgot to cloak.

Or even go for the logistics first :/

I have a profound doubt in the ability of the dev team to make something like that work.  I'd bet that within a week the players have figured out a way to make 100% sure that the rats all attack the target the players want them too.

[MahrinSkel]

I thought the mudflation comment at the end meant it wouldn't work, although I'd be all for giving lowsec a purpose so it's not just that worthless space you can get ganked in but they take a sec hit between 0.0 and hisec.

It wouldn't work because increasing the metal output of the minors would lower prices per unit (or lead to fewer people mining).  It also wouldn't help low-sec vs. high-sec or 0.0 mining because there are few ore types unique to low-sec.

--Dave

[Murgos]

It wouldn't work because increasing the metal output of the minors would lower prices per unit (or lead to fewer people mining).  It also wouldn't help low-sec vs. high-sec or 0.0 mining because there are few ore types unique to low-sec.

--Dave

[Gets]

For those waiting for it a long time now, you're going to get your skillqueue.

http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=621

The skill training system we came up with allows you to queue skills that will start training in the next 24 hours. You can enter in up to 50 skills in a queue, as long as they all start training within 24 hours. This leaves room to start a skill that will take 6 hours, followed with one that takes 12 to complete. With only 18 hours of training prepared, the queue still has room to start another skill.

 If you train a skill the old fashioned way (by activating a skill as you do now without the queue window) it will still be listed in the queue as the top skill; the skill you are training now. If you don´t add a follow-up skill then you´d have to come back when that skill is finished. You can still start training skills from your normal character sheet without entering the queue.

Even though it is a feature asked for many times, I think they should have spent time better working on something else. There are ways to avoid having to alarm clock at 4am to finish a skill train by thinking a bit more and changing short and long skills between your play sessions. Planning all that has always felt like part of the gameplay for me, especially when I want to hop into a certain ship setup before an event. This skill queue doesn't solve it for people who have real problems with the skill system - the ones who work and serve abroad, but still want to train their characters. What I'm saying is FREE GHOST TRAINING!

[Predator Irl]

Its a start at least, I welcome the change. I dont know how many times I didnt finish training that skill for 2 days because I had 12 hours left to train and wouldn't make it back for 14 or 15 hours. 

[tazelbain]

That screen shot looks off.  Paint targeting has less than 800 points to go but its bar is 14+ hours.

[Pax]

What does the 1x, 2x and 3x mean? How often a skill fits into the timeframe, level-wise?

[apocrypha]

Jesus Christ, trust CCP to manage to make even this complicated and with a crappy UI.

[Gets]

That image is just a mock-up, but frankly it is a reasonable fear to imagine your character sheet mutating into something hospitable as it likely will. Sorry CCP UI devs, but your track record has run on standards similar to the Special Olympics. Why can't it just be simple as in select a skill that you want it to train next with the exception that it can't be one that's already at level IV? Why is this 24h limit so important?

[Endie]

What does the 1x, 2x and 3x mean? How often a skill fits into the timeframe, level-wise?

From the values there, I'm guessing it's the skill multiplier (ie how hard the skill is to learn, reflected in the learning time).

[Amarr HM]

* Amarr HM risks getting flamed "I think it's not a bad idea actually" shame they didn't bring it in last patch though.

[Phildo]

It's not a bad idea, but limiting it to 24 hours is still kind of a punch in the nuts.  I'd rather they limited it to 2 or 3 skills instead.

[Amarr HM]

I'm training up missiles atm and the 20minute skills are bugging the shit out of me.

[Murgos]

To me this means you always want to end the queue with some god awful long training time.  That way you can chip away at it in increments while working on short term goals and if you miss a day or two you are still making progress on something.