Sunset Period

Yesterday some terrible news was delivered:

EVE Valkyrie creator CCP is pulling out of VR with major layoffs
CCP Games is closing two studios and moving away from virtual reality, one of its main focal points for the last few years. The Iceland-based company will close its branch in Atlanta and sell the one in Newcastle as part of a round of layoffs, leaving the studios in London, Reykjavík, and Shanghai. The Iceland Monitor reports that today’s cuts will affect around 100 employees worldwide; CCP says that it’s providing relocation opportunities or severance packages to anyone who’s affected.
CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson calls the changes “tough, but important.” CCP will continue to run its flagship title EVE Online with no changes, and it is continuing with two previously announced projects: a multiplayer PC shooter called Project Nova and a free-to-play mobile game called Project Aurora, which is being developed by external studio PlayRaven. It will also maintain support for its existing VR titles, including the sci-fi sports game Sparc and EVE Valkyrie, which was recently updated to a VR-optional title called EVE Valkyrie – Warzone.

First of all, my heart goes out to the employees whose lives just got shattered by being let go. I've been laid off before and it was terrible. I hope all those affected find new jobs quickly.

Secondly, I feel that this move indicates a retrenching of the company and despite their assurances that EVE Online itself will suffer no changes, I can't help but feel that is not true. Both CCP Manifest and CCP Logibro were affected by the layoffs and both were instrumental to supporting the EVE community and well liked.

CCP Falcon posted this on the forums:

Hey guys,
Just a quick follow up to this, given that there are questions about EVE, and the future.
Obviously this is a really difficult day for CCP, and it’s been super tough to see a lot of our friends and colleagues end their journey with CCP.
With regards to EVE, it’s kind of bittersweet that this puts us in a more solid position going forward, as a lot more focus is back on EVE Online, its services and all the technology and support around it.
The EVE Online development team was not impacted at all by these changes, and remains the same size, working toward the same goals and features that have already been announced.
We still have very big plans for EVE Online, and everything we’ve announced, plus more, is still going ahead, so there shouldn’t be any concerns from our pilots in that respect.
There’ll be more information about other projects, studios and suchlike in the coming days, and there’s also communication going out soon to the Valkyrie community too that has further information.

This does not make me feel better to be honest. Even if the development team itself was not impacted directly, there will be follow on indirect impacts as the work the laid off employees had gets farmed out to remaining employees, or dropped altogether. Will alliance tournaments be affected? Live events? Council of Stellar Management? Fan site and events support? All of these are considered non-development activities but how many of them will continue going forward? And by whom?

In the end, I feel this move is not only an abandonment of VR technologies, but an acknowledgement that EVE Online's heyday is truly over. The hordes of Alpha players to power EVE into a new stratosphere of concurrency numbers did not appear like the Host of Rohan at the battle of Minas Tirith. We are definitely in the Sunset Period of EVE Online.

My own pic, actually a sunrise.

Is EVE dying? No, I wouldn't go that far. But its not thriving anymore.

Lifeblood Is Live

The age of Player Owned Starbase moon mining and reactions is over. Long live refineries!

Actually, I hope refineries are not long lived. I hope they die a lot. Because this guy is build Athanor Refineries and it's good for business if they keep dying.

Speaking of business, I've got a lot invested in Athanor production. I had previously purchased materials for 10 Athanor builds but I added another 5 builds to the queue after I got 7 orders for them in the weeks leading to the expansion. In order to minimize time to delivery I decided to bite the bullet and purchase two Athanor Blue print originals which takes up almost all the remaining capital the corporation had available.

In other words, I've invested ~15 billion ISK in materials to build Athanors, and 11 billion ISK for the blueprints. Do I expect to earn more than 26 billion ISK in return? Definitely. Once the initial rush is over I'll research one of the Athanor BPO to reduce build time and then sell the other one for minimal loss after that, recovering about 5 billion. The 15 Athanors I build will pull in at minimum 20 billion ISK I estimate, and at that point we are almost breaking even. Long term, we'll make our ISK back, but how long will it take?

Each Athanor build takes 3 days and 5 hours. Say 3.5 days to account for times I can't get them out and next one into the oven right away. With two lines going, it will take ~25 days to build the first 15, so say a month to sell them all assuming demand continues to remain strong.

Also, I have an audit coming up in November, but I might wait until later in the month to clear the baffles of all these structures for the most accurate picture of how we are doing.

Assault Frigates and the Proposed New Module

I've mentioned recently how assault frigates and cruisers have been squeezed out of the meta.

At EVE Vegas CCP devs announced that they are going to do a balance pass on Assault Frigates and Assault Cruisers, and as part of that pass they will introduce a new module that can only fit on these classes of ships, an Assault Damage Control. This new low slot module is like a normal damage control module with less resist bonuses, but can be activated to give 20 seconds of super resists with a long cooldown (how long is unknown at this time).

The concept is to try and make the frigates a viable option for heavy tackle in fleets (i.e. tackle that can get in close and scram/web to allow rest of fleet to pile on, as opposed to interceptors that usually only point from a distance and do not slow the target down) and to make assault cruisers more viable as a mid range fleet ship more capable of resisting initial enemy fire and to catch logistics repping in time.

Read more details from this article by Jin'tann.

Ashterothi has a quick audio editorial (~5 min) on the topic and he thinks that this concept is not a great idea because it's just another variation on the burst tank as popularized by Auxiliary Shield Boosters and Auxiliary Armour Repairers. In fact, since this module will fit will on the ships and operate at the same time as the repair modules it will exacerbate the issue with a super burst tank.

I can't speak to how this module will impact larger scale combat in fleets except to say that it might improve the lot of HACs versus T3 Strategic Cruisers or it might not work out if enemy fleets are smart enough to force an activation of the module on a target and then switch off it for 20 seconds only to come back while its cooldown is active.

But in low sec, these modules are going to be a pain in my ass if the enemy has them.

Tech 3 Destroyers are already a deadly opponent with the combination of speed, tank, and damage, but at least these machines are hampered by being excluded from Small faction warfare plexes. Assault Frigates with super tanks are going to be able to crash a small plex, activate the ADCU, and push the position more so than any contemporary frigates or destroyers that can fit in the small plex. I predict the current small plex champions, Cormorants and Algoses, will get replaced quickly by assault frigates.

On the other hand, small gang fighting in roams will be very interesting in low sec with these ships as they will act as durable scout / bait / tackle for long enough for the rest of the fleet to arrive. Hell, it may even help to make the Ishkur a viable alternative to the double-rep Incursus I'm so fond of.

Regardless, I'm pleased CCP is looking into these ship classes and look forward to trying them out once they receive some attention.

P.S. I've been radio silent the past few weeks due to a project at work eating all my free time. Its finally letting up.

Capital Wrong Way

Lately CCP has had a thing for expanding the capital range of modules and ships. There was the big shake up early last year where carriers were split into carriers and force auxiliaries, followed by new tech II and faction modules to increase. Then this year we've been introduced to more faction capitals to join the Sansha Revenant, first four from the Blood Raiders and then three from the Serpentis, ships that like their sub-capital counterparts combined differing design philosophies into more powerful and threatening ships (in theory). For example, the Serpentis Vehement dreadnought gets a 10% bonus to stasis webifier effectiveness for Minmatar dreadnought skill.

And not to be outdone, the Guristas are building three new capital ships which include a dreadnought and titan with fighter bays (subject to change):

Secondly, the Dreadnought and the Titan have Fighter Bays! … Yes, you did read that correctly!!

I get what CCP is trying to do here, I really do. They have an aging population of players who get to the end of this graph and then run out of things to do:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/2tlstq/for_all_the_newbros_who_havent_yet_seen_this_the/

So they are expanding the number of possible goals for those players by introducing capitals with unique abilities / play styles to will give them something to train for and save ISK for. It also gives them opportunities to spice up capital gameplay with odd possibilities and synergies.

I get it.

But I think CCP is missing an opportunity to expand other areas. I have pointed out that the sub-capital to capital jump is large and has room for an intermediate class, and I think that class could be a smaller carrier:

2) The gap between battleships specializing in drones and full blow capital carriers is too big.
I've argued for this last year in a blog banter. Think about it: you are specializing in drones, working up through Tristan, Algos, Vexor, Myrmidon, Dominix, controlling five big Ogre IIs or 5 Warden IIs in a hull around 200 million all fit, maybe a bit more. And the next step is a hull 5-6 times the cost that can control 10 Fighters (or 15 if you're insane with Drone Control Units) but has all the mobility of a log. And includes new mechanics such as jumping, triage module, ship maintenance hangers, etc, etc. 

The jump in price and functionality is too big. Its a barrier to natural progress and prevents fighter gameplay from seeing wider use, creating an environment where a lot of people never (or hardly ever) experience it because its too risky / difficult to learn and a few people master it and use it extensively. This will only be compounded by the new fighter mechanics and interface (which might be mitigated some if drones undergo a similar shift). 

So I propose a new capital ship class that I call Assault Carriers similar in size and function to the Orca: hull price point about 500-700 million ISK, can use fighters like carriers (albeit fewer in number), no jump capability, can go into high sec, etc. This would make the jump from drones to fighters less severe, get more people used to the mechanics of fighters (both on controlling and receiving ends).
CCP, its time.

I added emphasis because I feel my prediction has played out exactly like that. The new fighter mechanics keep any player who is not constantly in carrier gameplay from being more hesitant in using carriers casually because the mechanics are vastly different and the risk investment is vastly higher.

While I applaud CCP at expanding gameplay in the upper tiers for veteran players, I want to also encourage CCP to expand gameplay in the middle tiers to ease the jump from battleships to capital carriers.