EVE Online Economics Part 2 The Post ISBoxer World of New Eden

--Read Part 1 Here--

 

What ISBoxer brings to mind

Coming off my post about EVE Online Economics and the pursuit of fun, there's been some changes to the way CCP views input broadcasting, an often important part of the process of "multiboxing".  That is to say, running multiple clients on effectively the same machine and using software to push inputs from a single keyboard and mouse to dozens of clients at once.  CCP has flatout banned the practice of input broadcasting.  Now this will not stop the more complex multioboxers.  But it will have some effect.

Multiboxing has always been a somewhat difficult to understand practice.  As the players who did it typically have other motivations besides enjoying the game.  Aside from outliers, there is a stigma that many multiboxers are allegedly engaged in RMT (trading in game assets for real money).  This accusation however is not the subject of this post.

There have been no serious attempts by the EVE community to gather data on these multiboxing players, and not many of them come forth willingly and admit they do it.

EVE Online Economics And Game Design

The depth and scale of the EVE Online economy often sees it touted as the most interesting and robust economy in all of gaming.  When considered along with the rest of the game and it's hyper-competitive nature, the realization of just how complex the economics of internet spaceships can be becomes clear.  Even in a wider audience when the discussion of EVE's economics plays like a one-note band.

The type of emergent gameplay that CCP has spent the last decade building into the EVE experience is reflected in its economy more than anything.  With almost everything in the game being partially produced by players, there is no doubt that the economy is as much about the transfer of wealth and assets; as it is as much about player interaction.  Every day, traders, resources gathering operations, manufacturing, and out-of-game services all have some impact on the game and it's players.  The nature of the best is best conveyed in broad terms when talking to a wider audience which is what I'll attempt to do here.

I am of course no economist myself, so I will focus mostly on socio-economic aspects rather than econometric analysis, neither is this intended as a guide for industrialists or traders. Instead, this discussion of the EVE economy can offer some insight to readers of all playstyles.

o7: The EVE Online Show. Episode 3

1:13 - CCP Nullarbor and CCP Mankiller tell us about their work for Rhea and give a glimpse into their work for EVE in 2015.

12:42 - The EVE Trailer Team, fresh off delivering the smash hit ‘This is EVE’, tell us how an EVE trailer is made and what goes on behind the scenes.

19:00 - CCP Guard and CCP Mimic take a look at what’s been happening in the EVE community.

33:45 - Coelomate from The Phoebe Freeport republic shares the story of how a rag-tag group of strangers took settled in hostile 0.0 space as a result of the changes made in the Phoebe release.

41:53 - Executive Producer of EVE CCP Seagull and Lead Game Designer CCP Scarpia sit down for a chat about the eventful year that passed, where we’re at and what 2015 might have in store.

So Many Newbros, What It Could Mean For EVE's Future

Many people have seen it, and even if you have, you know you want to watch it again:

EVE – The Second Decade Collector’s Edition, currently selling for $50 and PLEX 15% off!

Here is a nice “Black Friday-ish” deal for you all EVE Online aficionados, the EVE: The Second Decade Collector’s Edition is retailing on Amazon for just $50, which is nearly $100 off!

The EVE: The Second Decade Collector’s Edition package which contain a amazing illustrated book called “Into the Second Decade” which is well worth the price tag alone, a “Minmatar Rifter” combat frigate 4-port USB hub to lighten up those bloomy Mondays at the office, also an EVE Symphony sound-track CD and many others goodies (including a rare board game which features CCP Guardian on the cover, WTF!)

[ Buy the EVE Second Decade Collector's Edition from Amazon ]

Here is a more detailed take on what’s included on the package:

Attention Gamers! PLEX is 15% off!

That’s right, CCP Games is also discounting the price of PLEX a 10% off. Right now, PLEX is trading at 880mil in Jita, since it price might come down in the coming months, right now is a good opportunity to cash on the inflated price. This couple with the 10% discount CCP Games is giving to it, makes this a nice deal!

Buy EVE Online PLEX – Now 15% off!

This is EVE” Uncensored 2014

CCP have released one of their most graphically stimulating and compelling EVE Online trailers to date, "This is EVE - Uncensored". Initially aired at EVE Down Under, it was subsequently published onto YouTube and has made quite the splash.

The trailer features a wide variety of visuals: some staged animation and some footage captured in-game. Taking center stage is the dramatization of fleet combat and maneuvers, featuring CGI fleet fights overlayed with audio captured by Nulli Secunda, HERO, TEST, Rooks and Kings, and notable EVE celebrities such as Johnny Pew and JEFFRAIDER. All of the voice work is player-submitted and was used to reverse-engineer appropriate accompanying footage, including the industry interaction screen, the hacking minigame, footage of in-game fitting windows and hangars, the ISIS ship tracker, and, of course, flying, fighting, and exploding spaceships.

Response from the community has been overwhelmingly positive, with players calling it "amazing", "the greatest EVE trailer ever", and even committing to resubscribe.

Hero Coalition Resets Almost Awesome Alliance

HERO Coalition has been fighting ProviBloc, Pandemic Legion and others for the last few months. Everything was proceeding as planned until we received notice that Almost AwesomeDOT [N0FUX] is leaving HERO Coalition.

Travel advisory: Almost Awesome. [N0FUX] are leaving Hero and therefore they have been set to 0.0, please check your standings.

SENT BY Migui X’hyrrn to All online test/allies @ 2014-11-16 16:27:30 EVE Time

Following an argument between Roweena Azur and June Ting, the Almost Awesome alliance has been booted from HERO.

Our information [later also posted on reddit] said that there was tension between Almost Awesome. leadership and other HERO Alliances. This tension exploded into a big argument which led to multiple alliances resetting Almost Awesome.

The remarks by Roweena are far worse than depicted initially, being heavily homophobic and bigoted in general.  This should not be tolerated by HERO or any coalition that seeks to bring new players to EVE.  EVE already has a somewhat toxic reputation about how it treats new players, this is just unacceptable.  Thankfully, most of the EVE community seems to agree with this sentiment, including some HERO alliances offering to take in Almost Awesome members who wish to jump ship following this.

[VIDEO]: HERO Co. vs Pandemic Legion in B-3QPD 11.11.2014, HERO Web Loki Perspective

As an addendum to this earlier post:  [VIDEO]: HERO Co. vs Pandemic Legion in B-3QPD 11.11.2014, HERO Web Loki Perspective

DEV POST The Bowhead

As promised, here is your brand new ship-moving ship – the Bowhead.

We originally expected this to be a sister ship to the Orca, but after digging into the details realized that it was really more of a freighter and by setting it up that way we could avoid heavier skill requirements that had nothing to do with its role. This means we are going to introduce a new skill: ORE Freighter, which requires ORE Industrial III and Advanced spaceship command V just like other faction freighter skills.
There isn’t much else to say other than that this ship is intended for a specific niche: high-sec transport of fitted/insured ships. It may find applications in other parts of space (especially because of the reduced jump fatigue), but we aren’t really worried about hitting anything outside of the high-sec application. Because we were starting from scratch here, we decided to give a little more fitting flexibility (mid slots and rig slots), meaning the base hp is set a little lower than other freighters since you can actually get the EHP higher using rigs and a DCU.
Let us know what you think.

BOWHEAD

Ore Freighter Bonus:

5% bonus to max velocity per level

5% bonus to ship maintenance array capacity per level
Role Bonus:

90% reduction in jump fatigue generation
Slot layout: 0H, 3M, 3L, 3R; 0 turrets, 0 launchers

Fittings: 1350 PWG, 215 CPU

Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 10000 / 11000 / 36500

Capacitor (amount / recharge) : 3900 / 235000

Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / warp speed): 65 / .065 / 640000000 / 1.37

Drones (bandwidth / bay): 0 / 0

Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 51.5km / 45 / 3

Capacity (cargo / ship maintenance array): 4000 / 1300000 (goes up to 1.6 something with ore freighter 5)

Sensor strength: 12

Signature radius: 3200

@ccp_rise

As of this morning just after the patch hit, Phoebe Freeport Republic has claimed sovereignty

In a stunning bit of success from another EVE subreddit based idea, Phoebe Freeport Republic has claimed a system in Nullsec.  Now only time will tell how quickly or slowly this implodes.

The idea finally came to fruition when the players involved heaped into WPV-JN and blasted a TCU belonging to the Absolution Alliance.

To quote the redditor who originally started this whole thing:

Battle report: We took our system under force and arms, albeit at an opportune time. In the end, we "fought" 3 dreads and 20 cruisers with some blockade runners, cloaky frigs, jita alts, half a billion isk and a hero iteron V... and somehow won. I still can't believe it. I'll write it up, or somebody else will, later.
Recruitment: Come check out http://www.reddit.com/r/PhoebeCrusadeWarRoom - it has links to our public channel, and the corp/alliance you can submit applications to.

Haters: Pretend I pasted all the comments we've received about how a newly formed group claiming sov would be impossible here. Pretend that I taunted them with clever wit. Pretend also also it's likely we'll hang onto this system for the long haul.

Diplomacy: Can somebody invite me to the really cool alliance sov holding blue donut command parties / intel channels / whatever por favor? Do I finally get to meet ~the mittani~?

[opsec]: I'm sure it'll post to Dotlan soon but otherwise I'm not drawing attention to where we are just yet :P {edit for clarity - when I made this thread, it had not posted to Dotlan yet}

Can I have a nap please: christ my eyes hurt

Recruitment again: http://www.reddit.com/r/PhoebeCrusadeWarRoom

Twas the Night Before Phoebe

‘Twas the night before Phoebe, and all ’round the region

capsuleers were all cheering, (except Pandemic Legion)

Some decried their suitcases would be covered in dust

and Shadow Cartel’s titans would certainly rust.
But ratters and carebears and pilots of small ops

were happy they could fly with less fear of blops drops.

And others in Sov were equally blissed

while many big coalitions were totally pissed.
But the complaints about logistics and freighters were heard

so freighters and rorquals wouldn’t be nerfed, was the word.

And blops (so frightening) would get only a small nerf

So alliances could still use them to protect their home turf.
So, in the days before Phoebe plans were all put into place

to move assets around and even trade space.

Goonies and Legion, and Shadow Cartel

Traded this for that from Geminate to Delve.

Move Nyxes! Move Thannies! And Moroses too

Wyverns an Hels, you know what to do!

Light up those cynos, in the north and the south

From east and from west, move them all NOW!
Because in just one days time, fatigue is our bane,

and a limit of five light years is a changer of game.

Projection of force is up in the air,

but whatever happens will make things more fair.
How will it work out when we run out of gas

trying to cross Immensea, or Bob-forbid even Impass.

How will we make sure those pesky ratters will be gone

if we can’t hot drop a drake with our shiny Archons?
How will Eve change? I don’t know, but it will.

It will be hard to swallow, like a dose of Blue Pill.

If you want some advice, I’ll give you a freebie,

and tell you, you’ll find out, right after Phoebe.
The following poem was copied from Reddit and written by Robaticus. The original post can be found here. Great work!

EVE Online and the "Pay to Win" Argument

The situation is extremely clear: as the definition of “win” is “reaching your goal”, if paying real world money gets you closer to your goals, you are paying to win. All the excuses are wrong. The pay-to-win people usually claim that their win is not guaranteed by the payment. It’s true, but irrelevant. Just because it’s possible to win a soccer game 10 vs 11, bribing the referee to ban one of the opposing team without reason is still cheating. Playing 11 vs 10 is a huge advantage. Just like having gold ammo or being able to spend all your game time on fighting because you bought dozens of replacement ships from $.

The “my real world income is higher than the $1-2/hour I can earn in the game” is wrong for three reasons:

    your income is $0.00 while playing a video game. Unless you are an RMT seller, you create absolutely no monetary value. Being more productive while working than while playing is obvious.

    if you can earn 50-150M per active playing hour, you are either very newbie, very “just smelling the flowers and watching the scenery”-casual or fail very hard

    finding that paying gets you in-game progress easier than playing is an obvious criteria for deciding to pay to win. Saying it loud isn’t more of an argument than “I cheat because it’s easier to progress this way”.

Now the trick in EVE, compared to World of Tanks is that you don't pay the developer to win. In WoT, you buy gold ammo and you can pop enemy tanks like they were tissue paper. In EVE, you buy a PLEX from CCP, but it doesn't make you any stronger. However, you can trade it to better players for their power.Te common saying among many EVE players is "ISK doesn't buy you PVP skill".  There is no better way to say it.  The fact of the matter is that even if a large number of players invested personal out of game wealth into the game for the purpose of creating a formidable and well-fit fleet.  Their understanding of game mechanics, overall coordination, and general skill at manipulating the game and its players is laughably poor.

A small but skilled force will always outclass a richer force as they have the means and understanding to utilize tactics that will confuse and disorient the newer players, nullifying their ISK advantage.

This is where the hiring of skilled players comes in.  An entire industry exists within EVE for exploiting the relative weakness of players with little skill but, lots of wealth.  Hiring a merc alliance to distract your enemies can work.  If you use that distraction to your advantage to build up your own forces or devise new ways of hiding from your enemies.  But most players who go this route never take it that far.  Most don't even bother to fight back.  They take their lumps and continue with the same activities that made them a target in the first place. 

What is worse about this cyclical behavior is that these players are often driven from the game entirely because they cannot cope with the sense of constant PVP of all forms that EVE embodies to its core.

While buying PLEX does make a player stronger in the sense that they have POTENTIAL for better resources and the means to engage and overpower their enemies.  The true strength lies in the judicious exploitation of that potential.  Why buy a brand new fleet of ships without the adequately trained pilots to fly them?

It would seem that the the obvious conclusion for anyone that understands EVE, is that the game will never be what most undretsand to be "Pay to Win".

Dev Blog: U and I – Together we continue our little improvements

Hi space friends!
CCP karkur here to tell you about a few often-requested changes that are coming your way in Phoebe.

Asset Search and Advanced Search

Many of you like organizing your assets into station containers, which is all well and good, that is, until you need to find that Polaris Engima or that ‘Nibelung’ Mining Laser you have misplaced but know you have somewhere. The Asset Search you are used to has not searched inside your containers.
That’s changing in Phoebe– items inside containers in stations will be included in the search results.
I should note that for those who have thousands and thousands of neatly organized items in containers, fetching the information on the items might take a bit longer than you are used to.  However, after the data has been cached the searching should be really fast, and you can actually find the items you are looking for
Some of you may know that we have pretty powerful advanced search functionality in EVE. However, I’ve found that surprisingly many citizens of New Eden either don’t know it exists at all, or don’t know how to use it.
We wanted to raise the visibility of this powerful tool, so we have added a little question mark icon in the Asset Search tab, which will show a handy tooltip that lists all the keywords you can use and how to use them when you hover your mouse over it. For further information on the advanced search, please take a look at this dev blog by CCP Frellicus.

(Click image for a larger version)

The Overview States and “Always Show”

The ability to have a “war target”/”fleet member” only Overview has been a commonly requested feature and it is arriving with Phoebe. We will be adding a third entity display setting called “Always Show” to the overview. Before I explain what that means, let me go over how the display settings currently work:
Entities (ships, drones, etc.) on the same grid as you in space are displayed in the Overview as long as they do not match a state that is filtered out. This can be quite tricky and confusing because any one entity commonly has multiple states (war target, outlaw, etc).
For example, you can have a corp(1) and alliance(2) mate in the same fleet(3) as you, but is also a supspect(4) with security level below 0 (5), and he‘s neutral(6) to you. If you filter out any of those 6 states he matches, he will not appear in your Overview, which is not always ideal. This has for example caused war target hunters some issues, because in order to have war targets in the Overview, they cannot filter out all those random neutrals they meet on their travels, since their war targets might be neutrals too.
So what is this new display setting? As I mentioned above, we refer to it as “Always Show”, and what it means is that if an entity has a state that is set to “Always Show”, it does not matter if any of the other states it also matches are filtered out, the entity will always appear in your Overview.
If an entity does not have an “Always Show” state, it’s displayed by default as long as it does not have a state that is filtered out, just like before.
To summarize:

Always show	Entities with this state will always be shown regardless of the display setting of additional states they may have
Filter out	Entities with this state will be filtered out unless they have additional states that are set to always show
Show by default	Entities with this state will be shown unless they have additional states that are filtered out

These changes are compatible with all current Overview profiles, which are simply treated as having no state with the “Always Show” setting.
It‘s worth mentioning that although we talk about “Always Show”, nothing will override the settings in the Group tab. That is, if you have chosen to not see Battleships in your Overview, your fleet mate in the Raven will not be in the Overview, no matter how your state display settings are.
With this change, we’ve had to change the interface where you control the display settings of the entity states. The states are back to being in one list, but now you have 3 radio buttons (“Always show”, “Filter out”, “Show by default”) to choose from for each of the states.
You can click each of them individually, or select many states in the list and set them all at once by clicking on the header icons.

Scanners

Many have asked for the ability to have both the Probe Scanner and the Directional Scanner open at the same time, but none have pleaded more than the wormholers among us who are not only constantly scanning with probes but also need to be on the lookout for someone sneaking up on them. These two very useful scanning tools have lived together as tabs in the same window, along with a lesser used tool, the Moon Analyses tab. In Phoebe we will be splitting them apart, giving each its own window, and these can of course be stacked just like any other windows.

Shortcut for Directional Scanner

We have added a shortcut to directly open the Directional Scanner.

The Rest

Lastly, I want to mention a few small changes we have implemented recently but not had the opportunity to tell you about:

• 
  Added a Booster Timer that clearly shows you how much time you have left on your active boosters, their benefits, and side effects. This timer is displayed next to other timers such as Weapon and Limited Engagement timers.
• 
  Added the ability to select which overview preset to use when scanning with the Directional Scanner.
• 
  Added a visual timer in the HUD on modules (such as micro jump drives and cloaking devices) that have cooldown time to indicate how much was left of the cooldown.
• 
  Added the ability to name your jump clones. This can be done through a right click option on the jump clones in the Character Sheet

We hope these small changes make your stay in New Eden a little bit more pleasant.
Fly Safe,

@CCP_karkur
[ Original Dev Blog ]

[Patch Notes] Patch Notes for Phoebe ~CCP Logibro

http://community.eveonline.com/news/patch-notes/patch-notes-for-phoebe/

FEATURES CHANGES:

Audio:

• Added new sounds to some mission structures that were previously silent.
• New awesome theme song for Phoebe release

Balancing:

• All Expedition 'bosses' found in the final stage have had their loot tables buffed
• Certain ships will receive bonuses to jump fatigue generation* Black Ops* Max jump drive range increases slightly to 8 Light Years (LY)
• 50% reduction in fatigue generation
• All ships using a covert jump portal also gain the same reduction
• Jump Freighters* 90% reduction in fatigue generation
• Max jump drive range reduced to 10 LY
• Haulers* 90% reduction in fatigue generation when using jump bridges
• Rorqual* 90% reduction in fatigue generation
• Max range reduced to 5 LY, as with most other capitals
• Balance changes have been made to the Heavy Interdictor and Stealth Bomber ship classes.
• Heavy Interdictors:
• Devoter

Amarr Cruiser Bonuses:

10% bonus to Medium Energy Turret capacitor use

5% bonus to Medium Energy Turret damage

Heavy Interdictor Bonuses:

10% bonus to Medium Energy Turret optimal range

5% bonus to range of Warp Disruption Fields

Role Bonus:

20% bonus to all Armor Resists

Can fit Warp Disruption Field Generators

Slot layout: 6H, 3M, 7L; 5(+1) turrets, 0 launchers

Fittings: 1265 PWG, 368 CPU

Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 1100(-293) / 2400(+312) / 1800(+112)

Capacitor (amount / recharge / cap per second) : 1625 / 335s / 4.85

Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 215(+12) / 0.51(-0.084) / 16,200,000(+1,000,000) / 11.45s(-1.07)

Drones (bandwidth / bay): 25(+25) / 50(+50)

Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 65km(+10) / 250(-10) / 6(-1)

Sensor strength: 15

Signature radius: 140

Cargo Capacity: 375(+95)
* Onyx

Caldari Cruiser Bonuses:

5% bonus to Kinetic Missile damage

5% bonus to Missile Launcher rate of fire

Heavy Interdictor Bonuses:

10% bonus to Missile velocity

5% bonus to range of Warp Disruption Fields

Role Bonus:

20% bonus to all Shield Resists

Can fit Warp Disruption Field Generators

Slot layout: 6H, 6M, 4L; 0 turrets, 5 launchers

Fittings: 900(+65) PWG, 560 CPU

Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 2700(+696) / 1200(+4) / 1400(-6)

Capacitor (amount / recharge / cap per second) : 1250(+187.5) / 335s / 3.73(+0.56)

Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 200(+2) / 0.55(+0.001) / 15,400,000(-20,000) / 11.74s()

Drones (bandwidth / bay): 0 / 0

Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 80km / 240(+5) / 7(+1)

Sensor strength: 19(+3)

Signature radius: 150(+15)

Cargo Capacity: 450
* Phobos

Gallente Cruiser Bonuses:

10% bonus to Medium Hybrid Turret tracking

5% bonus to Medium Hybrid Turret rate of fire

Heavy Interdictor Bonuses:

10% bonus to Medium Hybrid Turret optimal range

5% bonus to range of Warp Disruption Fields

Role Bonus:

20% bonus to all Armor Resists

Can fit Warp Disruption Field Generators

Slot layout: 6H, 4M, 6L; 5 turrets, 0 launchers

Fittings: 1165 PWG, 375 CPU

Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 1300(+140) / 2200(+160) / 2500(-31)

Capacitor (amount / recharge / cap per second) : 1375 / 335s / 4.1

Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 205(-4) / 0.58(+0.0285) / 14,000,000(-1,080,000) / 11.26s(-0.88)

Drones (bandwidth / bay): 0 / 0

Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 70km(+5) / 250(+25) / 6

Sensor strength: 17(+2)

Signature radius: 160

Cargo Capacity: 400(+85)
* Broadsword

Minmatar Cruiser Bonuses:

5% bonus to Medium Projectile Turret rate of fire

5% bonus to Medium Projectile Turret damage

Heavy Interdictor Bonuses:

10% bonus to Medium Projectile Turret falloff

5% bonus to range of Warp Disruption Fields

Role Bonus:

20% bonus to all Shield Resists

Can fit Warp Disruption Field Generators

Slot layout: 6H, 6M, 4L; 5 turrets, 3 launchers

Fittings: 1010 PWG, 392 CPU

Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 2000(+418) / 1600(-404) / 1400(-6)

Capacitor (amount / recharge / cap per second) : 1250 / 335s / 3.73

Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 220(+6) / 0.55(-0.0215) / 15,000,000(+180,000) / 11.44s(-0.3)

Drones (bandwidth / bay): 0 / 0

Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 55km / 255(+10) / 6(+1)

Sensor strength: 14(+1)

Signature radius: 130

Cargo Capacity: 452

• Stealth Bombers:
• Purifier:

Fittings: 45 PWG, 305(+7) CPU

Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 350(+138) / 600(+213) / 450(+63)

Capacitor (amount / recharge / cap per second) : 355(+42.5) / 266.25(+16.25) / 1.33(+0.0833)

Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 300(+38) / 4.4(+0.053) / 1,495,000(+99000) / 9.12s(+0.71)

Warp Speed: 4.5(-1)

Sensor strength: 19(+2)

Signature radius: 40(+3)

Cargo Capacity: 260
* Manticore:

Fittings: 38 PWG, 330(+2) CPU

Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 625(+309) / 350(+62) / 400(+62)

Capacitor (amount / recharge / cap per second) : 315(+46.25) / 236.25(+21.25) / 1.33(+0.0833)

Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 280(+24) / 4.5(+0.622) / 1,470,000(+4000) / 9.17s(+1.29)

Warp Speed: 4.5(-1)

Sensor strength: 21(+1)

Signature radius: 41(+2)

Cargo Capacity: 265(+80)
* Nemesis:

Fittings: 38 PWG, 315(+8) CPU

Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 400(+125) / 475(+159) / 650(+228)

Capacitor (amount / recharge / cap per second) : 355(+61.25) / 266.25(+31.25) / 1.33(+0.0833)

Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 275(+11) / 4.6(+0.057) / 1,410,000(-11000) / 8.99s(+0.04)

Warp Speed: 4.5(-1)

Sensor strength: 20(+2)

Signature radius: 42(+5)

Cargo Capacity: 270(+55)
* Hound:

Fittings: 40 PWG, 310(+7) CPU

Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 550(+304) / 425(+87) / 350(+69)

Capacitor (amount / recharge / cap per second) : 285(+35) / 213.75(+13.75) / 1.33(+0.0833)

Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 310(+26) / 4.4(+0.326) / 1,455,000(+85000) / 8.88s(+1.14)

Warp Speed: 4.5(-1)

Sensor strength: 18(+1)

Signature radius: 38(+4)

Cargo Capacity: 255(+60)

Exploration:

• The Directional Scan, Probe Scanning, and Moon Analysis features are now split up into separate windows
• Lowered the volume of the most commonly dropped items in exploration Data Sites from 1.0m3 (and above) to 0.1m3.
• Lowered the volume of all Datacores and Decryptors in exploration Data Sites from 1.0m3 to 0.1m3.
• Null Security space Data and Relic exploration sites can now also be encountered in Wormhole Class 1, 2 and 3 systems.
• The spawn frequency of the Besieged Covert Research Facility has been increased.
• The drop frequency of faction POS blueprints in all Data and Relic sites has been increased.
• The drop frequency of 'Optimized' items in all Data sites has been increased.
• Various Faction Materials have been added to the exploration Data site loot tables. These can be found in the Manufacture Research Materials Faction Materials section of the Market.
• Various Industrial Goods have been added to the exploration Data site loot tables. These can be found in the Trade Goods Industrial Goods section of the Market.
• The percentage chance of encountering rarer Expeditions from combat sites has been increased.
• Expeditions now have completion messages, congratulating the player in various ways on the death and destruction that followed in their wake.
• 'Guiding' messages have been added to some, but not all of the dungeons where an Expedition could possibly occur.

Dev Blog: Guiding Light, The Mission Objective Guidance system

Hello Capsuleers! This is CCP SoniClover on behalf of Team Banana Stand, telling you about one of our new features in Phoebe: Mission Objective Guidance. Mission Objective Guidance is a system intended to aid people in completing missions they’ve accepted by giving hints on what to do next to progress or complete the mission.
There were several reasons for going for this feature, the two main ones being to reduce likelihood of players becoming confused or frustrated when doing a mission and to allow us to start delving into the pretty arcane agent/mission code for future work on the framework of missions.
In deciding on how the feature should function, we had two general rules of thumb. One was to make this as unobtrusive as possible and the other was to avoid having hints lead the player by the nose too much. As such, the guidance provided indicates the general direction or area to focus on, but should not be completely brain-dead instructions to follow. This is of course a fine line to tread, so please let us know where you feel we stand here.
So let’s go over how the Mission Objective Guidance system works in a bit more detail.
The system uses the Agent info panel in the upper left corner of the screen. This means you can turn the guidance system on or off alongside the panel (by clicking the human silhouette icon to the left of the header).  To the left of the mission name in the panel, there is now an icon that hints at the state for that mission. Here is an example:

This icon is then updated when the player does something that progresses the mission to a new state. Here is another icon example:

When a mission is completed, the icon changes to the mission complete icon:

To get more information, the player can mouse-over the mission to get a tooltip with further information. This information depends on the mission and the current state of it. Let’s look at a few examples:

Notice here that the hint tells the player what item he needs, but doesn’t tell him where that item is.
Another example:

This is a common tooltip for instance when you need to kill all NPCs to activate the acceleration gate to the next deadspace complex area.
This is not an exhaustive list of all the states or tooltips. We’ll have that in the patch notes, so check them out when they are published for more details.
The mission system is an old bastard in many ways and creating a generic system to cover all the ancient snowflakes still floating around in it is far from easy. So while the Mission Objective Guidance system does cover the vast majority of missions, there are a few for which we can only give very vague hints. Often, this means simply telling the player to refer to the Journal for further information.
To help players a bit more, we have a few graphical elements to emphasize what’s going on.

• 
  When a state changes, the icon in the agent info panel blinks to indicate this.
• 
  When the mission is specifying a particular object, for instance a structure to destroy, clicking on the state icon will move the camera to show the object. This will only work if you have the camera tracking on. This is an exception to the rule of not giving too strong hints, because we want to improve how players can find objects in the space scene without having to resort to the overview.
• 
  If the tooltip references a specific item, clicking on the name of the item in the tooltip will bring up the show info window for that item. This includes destination system, allowing you to set destination.

Future iterations on this feature will cover more of the special snowflake missions that we can’t track adequately at the moment and will possibly offer further polish on the visual side, especially in making people more aware of mission objectives in their surroundings.
The Mission Objective Guidance system is on Singularity right now, so head over there if you want to test it and please give us feedback if you run into anything strange.
[ Original Dev Post ]

Dev Blog: Longer Queues Expected – Skill Training Above and Beyond 24 Hours - Eve Online

Quick history lesson: once upon a time there was no skill training queue and much use of alarm clocks and other reminders was involved in “optimizing” a skill-training plan. There was therefore great joy when the skill queue was released in the revered Apocrypha expansion in 2009. This joy was only slightly tempered by the limitation that skills could only be inserted into the queue as long as they started within the next 24 hours.
In Phoebe, by removing the 24-hour window for inserting additional skills, we will be providing the possibility of skill queues containing multiple skill entries requiring many more than 24-hours to train. We believe the value of this for you, with many of you needing to manage your skill training alongside busy and varied schedules throughout the year, will be considerable.
Since the skill queue will now be opened up to provide for skill training plans that are not limited by a short installation window and be effectively unlimited in time, there are a few points to note.

• 
  Trial accounts will remain limited to the 24-hour window for inserting skills into the queue.

• 
  Strictly speaking the skill queue will have an installation window of 10 years. Further, the skill queue will remain limited to 50 entries in total for the time being. These limits are being maintained for safety as this significant change to the skill-training system goes live, and are not set in stone.

We wanted to focus on (effectively) removing the arbitrary time limit without getting lost in new user interface design or additional features. As the skill-training system is so central to EVE, we felt that it is important to take small steps and not change too much at this time.

All that said, as you can see from the example above, a training queue can now be many months long and it is certainly possible to construct a queue that will run for years, even with the 50 entry limit.
While making this change we have noted further areas for improvement and very much look forward to your feedback and ideas about the skill-training system and related gameplay.

Happy skill-planning!
On behalf of Team Pirate Unicorns
[ Original Dev Post ]

HERO and PROVI Call For a Truce

As the changes of Phoebe loom on the horizon and the major Null entities get ready for the inevitable clusterfuck, HERO and PROVI have attempted to end the border dispute that has since become a proxy war involving PL, N3, RUS, and others.

An allegedly leaked image above details the agreement between the two groups.

Some may have enjoyed the progression of the dispute took over the recent months, but it made perfect sense that this would happen at some point.  Catch will be a very hot target in the coming months after Phoebe as more groups look to join the "fun" in Null.  And holding what they have should be the primary concern.

I'd bet my bottom dollar that we will see both groups pour resources into capitals and supercaps for the coming weeks.  And with PL returning to it's roots as a "burn it all" merc group, we may see a very big dustup between them and HERO soon.

Another interesting point is how both groups will seek to define the common enemy portion of the agreement.  And whether or not it leads to seriously bad outcomes for either.

Phoebe, and the Null Resource Advantage

Let’s talk more about the dark side of Phoebe and the jump changes.
First, let’s state the problem that plagues all competitive multiplayer games but open ended games like EVE the most, the n+1 problem:

All else being equal, the side with n resources is at a disadvantage to the side with n+1 resources.

In EVE, n can refer to the amount of ISK, skill points, friends, experience, etc. Basically, there is always an advantage to have more of things available to you than your opponents. This is a fact of gaming life. As well as business and life in general.  There is a constant need for more resources.  Or as the last George Carlin put it, "The meaning of life is just trying to find a place for your stuff.".

In gaming this inherent advantage is addressed by caps on players, either direct or indirect. Limiting points, items, money, or other in-game resources.  Limits in skill discrepancies, always trying to find ways to give the "little guy",   i.e. the side on the lower end of the n+1 problem, the ability to punch up against the “big guy”.  Adding in diminishing returns, or more of a particular item or mechanic to try and bring "stuff" in balance.

A common complaint about any changes to nullsec is some variant of “this change benefits the big coalitions more than the little guys you want to balkanize null sec with because they have more of [insert specific resource here]“.  Well, DUH!  The larger and more organized group will ALWAYS have an advantage over the smaller and less organized groups unless the former choose not to take it. This is not a surprise. The goal of changes should be to give so many decisions and actions for large groups to take that they cannot press the advantage in all areas at the same time.  To diffuse their advantage across multiple areas to the point they still have an advantage,  but so that the opportunity for smaller groups to enter into the scuffle is always there.

This is what the jump ship and fatigue changes in Phoebe are trying to do: limit power projection of all capital fleets AND force large coalitions to make choices about how they use their n+1 advantage to the best effect, hopefully leaving opportunities open for smaller groups to gain footholds in the game. Right now, there is no choice to be made when faced with the question of smashing a smaller group because of the ease of tactical and strategic deployment of capitals, or rather the only choice is “do I feel like it?” and that’s not a good gameplay design.

So we get Phoebe. And one of the responses is “well, the large capital using coalitions will just put caches of capital ships all over the galaxy and use jump clones or interceptors to get to them when needed”.

Yes, yes they will.

The groups we are talking about are some of the most organized and affluent in EVE’s history, there is literally no mechanical solution to force projection they cannot buy and/or maneuver around with enough effort. But that’s the key word there, isn’t it? Effort.

Yes, they will create stockpiles of capital ships in various NPC stations and POS around the cluster (easier with regular caps than with super caps). Yes they will be able to avoid the jump fatigue mechanic with interceptors and/or jump clones to get to the caches as they need them. Yes, they will recruit or create more specialty accounts to accomplish this. Yes, they are still going to be able to throw their weight around considerably.

But hopefully the effort of making and maintaining these caches in an operational and ready to go state adds enough complexity to force projection to cause these large powerful groups to have to make decisions that leave gaps in the defenses.  The point seems to be that these concessions will force a train of thought that means these larger groups will not only have to expend vast amounts of resources to maintain their holdings.  Creating the opportunity for exploitation by smaller groups with a keen eye and ear to the ground.  A small group with proper planning and good intel could easily cause havoc for these larger groups, mostly by gumming up the deployment of these caches.  Thereby forcing redeployment and restructuring.  A very cat and mouse game may emerge.

Only time will tell.

Eve NYX Event Hero Coalition

Yet another massive battle in WH Space (J150020)

In a somewhat unexpected turn of events, HK, QEX, and other regular fixtures of wormhole shenanigans were involved in a fight which destroyed over 130 Billion ISK.  With the loss of 54 T3,s and multiple dreads and carriers means that HK and their allies had taken quite a heavy hit.

From what I could see HK had spent most of the previous days RF'ing towers in holes to secure a foothold in a certain area of WH space.  Along with the obvious intent of trying to find some fights.  And targeted the home system of NOHO close to DT.

To quote reddit user NoobmanHK:

Man talk about adrenaline.They logged and landed all around us. I burned downed a Moros with my 2 dreads. Over heating guns and reps. Died with both. Then logged in Noobman. Warped down to ForgetmyFace and started blaring primaries. I was switching fast as shit trying to wear their triage pilots out. Managed to snag a couple T3's kills under idk how many triage. Everyone one was dying around me.
Was fun
Way to catch us with our pants down after spending 7 hours Rf'ing 57 towers. haha our dudes were just about to go to bed.

 The primary opposition against HK and it's allies was NOHO, being a quite well known WH alliance were able to deal quite the blow to HK.  Although given the jovial attitudes about the fight from those involved, the losses were well worth the fun.

Over the past few weeks, No Holes Barred had held suspicions of hostiles moving capitals into their wormhole, with the disappearance of wormholes at inopportune times, and directional scans that showed dreads on long range occasionally, but could not fully pin their suspicions down. Yet, on Friday at approximitely 04:16 server time, the veil was lifted, revealing that the groups E X P L O S I O N, Lazerhawks, and Hard Knocks as well had built up a sizable capital presence inside of the hole without NoHo realizing it, and began to lay siege to the entire system. The size of their forces was around a hundred and twenty five subcaps, with the primary purpose of maintaining of hole control, and eighteen capitals as well, mostly dreads and the like.

NoHo, who had barely fourteen people on at the time, chose to draw first blood by using Tornados to quickly pop a hostile Tengu before getting down to business, evacuating assets out of the POSes into external containers over the course of a few hours. Within seven hours, they had completed their initial goal of safeguarding their assets, during which, the hostile forces had been working steadily on reinforcing the dozens of POSes that had locked down the moons in the system. Also during this time, the dread group had split into two entities to better coordinate and reinforce the POSes around system while sixty of the subcaps maintained hole control. The NoHo capital and subcapital group under the command of Faye Fantastic and Sibasomos, sensing an opportunity, made the decision to utilize buffer fit dreadnaughts and go in to engage the targets.

No Holes Barred warped their capitals into the hostile fleet at one of the planets, engaging the dreadnaughts on land; the subcapitals of Hard Knocks and E X P L O S I O N attempted to return and engage the NoHo forces, supported by allies in Exit Strategy.., but were stopped bubbles which put them 110km off of their trapped dreads. Hostile forces attempted to send their other capitals in to support their trapped ones, but by the time they and the subcapitals made it down to where the first half of the cap fleet was, they were dead, leading to a wholesale slaughter of a lot of the remaining Hard Knocks and E X P L O S I ON ships.

While No Holes Barred secured the engagement handily, they don’t seem to harbor much animosity against the attempted evictors, expressing enjoyment for the goodfights that they had as well as mentioning that there would always “be rivalry” between the groups involved. Others, however, on Eve-ru. were less enthused, and angrily wrote posts about the fight that they participated in.