Interesting Side Effect

One thing I did not think long about with the advent of Dominion was that the new sov structures are big. How big? Well, let's review:

Territorial Claim Unit (TCU) - used for actually claiming sov = 5000 m3
Sovereignty Blockade Unit (SBU) - used to attack someone else's sov = 2500 m3

So the act of claiming or attacking a system requires some minor hauling ability, but nothing that Blockade Runners even could handle. Now, what about the upgrade structures.

Infrastructure Hub - the structure upgrades are attached to = 750,000 m3
Entrapment Array 1 - the lowest level upgrade to add permament complexes to a system = 5000 m3
Entrapment Array 2 = 10,000 m3
Entrapment Array 3 = 100,000 m3
Entrapment Array 4 = 250,000 m3
Entrapment Array 5 = the highest level upgrade which adds a whack load of permament complexes to a system = 750,000 m3

The other military and industrial upgrades appear to follow the same size progression as the Entrapment Array. And the Strategic Upgrades?

Advanced Logistics Network - allows the anchoring of jump bridges = 400,000 m3
Cynosural Navigation - allows the anchoring of cyno beacon generators = 400,000 m3
Cynosural Suppression - allows the anchoring of cyno jammers = 500,000 m3
Supercapital Construction Facilities - allows the anchoring of Capital Ship Assembly and Maintenance arrays = 200,000 m3

With the old sov system, getting a number of POS and their fuel supplies into position required a fleet of industrials and jump capable ships like Jump Freighters and Carriers and Rorquals. The new sov system in Dominion doesn't require POS fuel but the sheer size of upgrades will mean that alliances will need a lot of freighter pilots and convoys through dangerous low sec and null sec space will become more common, especially during times of sov expansion like right now as the switch over is in progress.

And people will be on the lookout to take advantage of this new reality:

NULL SECURITY SPACE - Multiple freighter fleets suffered severe losses this evening as massive logistical operations took place all across New Eden. The latest reports indicate twenty-seven freighters belonging to RAZOR Alliance [-RZR-] and SOLAR FLEET [SOLAR] fell victim to hot drops in separate attacks.

Twenty seven freighters down, ten in one fight out of a fleet of 25 and 17 in another fight. A lot of infrastructure hubs found in the wreckage. If you have a researched freighter BPO, I'd be building them like mad at the moment. And ops to escort freighters are probably going to become a more common occurrence in New Eden.

Welcome To Dominion

Ok, I did a post last night celebrating the newest Eve expansion, but this is a more substantial post.

The fleet finder is awesome. Within seconds of logging in I had found a fleet run by one of my directors and joined up. No fuss, no muss, no running around voice comms and channels trying to see what's going on. I especially love the fact that its not limited to just your corp and alliance. For multi-allied organizations like CVA and the Holders it will be an invaluable tool for coordination. Hell, it will be invaluable for anybody who is not a loner in a private one man corp.

We went on a roam and I undocked in my never-used Rook Combat Recon called Dragon Wing. And yes, the planets look amazing. More pictures of planets at the end of the post.


We roamed for a while and caught an Ishkur and Vagabond whilst losing a friendly Crow as I arrived a bit late to throw my ECM on the Vagabond.

Corp mate getting a little too trigger happy:


Then I was off voice comms so I explored the new features like the in game browser based off Chromium. It
was fast, powerful, mutli-tabbed interface. I loved it.


Loaded up Dotlan maps, made it a trusted site, and used the radar function to check out my surroundings. Why CCP have never done this themselves is beyond me. I've complained about the ingame map before and this is the perfect solution in my mind.



And now, the planet porn:

Posting From Inside Eve

Yeah, Dominion?

It rocks.

The numerous quality of life improvements has made the experience so much better.

And multiple tabs in the browser? So perfect.

So yeah, loving Dominion.

Dominion Trailer

Awesome sauce... and almost realistic. A little faster paced than normal Eve combat but the events and their order is accurate IMHO.

Capital Ship Gap

So ignoring the way that CCP dropped the ball on the mothership/supercarrier changes for Dominion, let's talk about what should be done.

The graph above reflects my opinion of the four combat capital ships effectiveness in combat and logistical (i.e. moving stuff, jump portals, repairing POS shields) roles and it reflects the problem with the current mothership: its effectiveness is not much superior to the carrier and dreadnought but its cost is far greater.

Side Note: I think this is because the original cost of the mothership took into account the supposed power of the clone vat bays, but they are virtually unused for a variety of reasons.

There are two ways to address this disparity: make the mothership more effective or bring the price down.

CCP tried the first on the test server with a huge hit point buff and fighter-bomber drones and it was well received by the playbase but for whatever reason was not acceptable to CCP. Then they proposed the second by making motherships effectively tier II carriers and lowering the price but the playerbase howled in outrage (especially current mothership pilots whose asset would drop in value by half with no recompense).
So now CCP has backed out of any changes.

What's the right answer? I propose two strokes to solve the issue.

1) Introduce new ships called supercarriers that would represent what CCP Nohz tried to do in the second phase of mothership changes.

These would be tech II carriers costing about 7 billion, have superior stats to regular carriers in terms of hitpoints but still be limited to +1 drone/fighter per level, can dock, have bigger ship bay and corporate hanger, same jump range, and can use Fighter-bombers unlike normal carriers.

These ships would be feasible as flagships for smaller corporations and alliances and fill the price point gap between Dreadnoughts and Motherships.

2) Change motherships by removing the ability of clone vat bays and introducing a new capital module for motherships only called Teleportation Device or something else suitably sci-fi sounding. This module would allow for ships in the fleet with a new high slot module called a Teleport Homing Device fitted to be transported immediately to the mothership as if they jumped there.

In essence the Mothership would be able to act as a focal point for a fleet, bringing in new pilots arriving on the scene or pilots reshipping from so many light years away. This would give the ship the intended role of the clone vat bays without all the downsides that made it pointless to use, and in protracted conflicts would be an important driver in a fleet's ability to maintain numbers.

As well, Motherships would be due a hitpoint buff and perhaps the ability to use fighter-bombers.

Dominion: Kicking it When Its Down

I've seen a lot of angst and anger over the next Eve Expansion Dominion lately on blogs and forums. A lot of people kicking it and saying "whatever" or "worst expansion ever" mostly in response to the twin debacles of initial sovereignty costs and the mothership changes.

So I figured being a dyed-in-the-wool Eve fanboy I'd list the big features of Dominion and weigh in on them to put everything in persepective.

No Mothership Changes - Makes me sad panda. Whether you're talking about the first edition supercarriers with massive waves of fighter bombers or the Nohz edition with affordable cost and docking privs, I supported anything to make this class more prevalent. I have hope they will address this in the near future.

Sovereignty Changes - Massive overhaul of the core 0.0 political mechanic moving away from Dickstars and POS spam. Good. System upgrades. Good. Massive logistic networks costing lots of ISK. Good.

R64 Moon Goo Nerf - I think they didn't go far enough personally but I look forward to any loosening of single point static income sources.

Planet and Moon graphic overhaul - Take a good hard long look at Eve of 2004-2005 and then compare to Eve of Dominion. Ships, stations, asteroids, and now planets. Eve looks amazing and I can't think of another MMO that started in 2003 or thereabouts that has made the effort to upgrade their graphics like Eve has. Brilliant.

New Navy Battleships - Navy Dominix? Yes please! Navy Armageddon? DROOL! Navy Scorpion? Meh. new rare ships is always a treat. Not to mention some other navy ships getting rebalanced.

Rebalanced Pirate Faction Ships - Huge overhaul to make the pirate faction ships cool again like the Sanshas Nightmare and its ilk. Good stuff.

Pirate Speedboat Missions - More variety to PvE is a good thing and I know a lot of people are looking forward to working for the pirates even more.

Titan Doomsday Device Rebalancing - The proliferation of Titans means that the DDD needs a change. I look forward to seeing killmails of carriers and dreads killed by the new version.

Capital Ship Weapons Rebalancing - Good stuff and appears well thought out to my untrained eye.

New Email Client - *Angels Singing* Can't wait.

Moondoggie akak new in game browser - Oh hell yes. That is a must have for me.

Projectile weapon balancing - having almost no familiarity with projectiles I can only guess if its good or not, but at least they are looking at it and trying to improve them.

Conclusion:

Dominion is huge in terms of changes, from politics to quality of life. There is a lot of good in there its just not big and flashy in one area like Apocrypha was with the wormholes or Empyrean Age with factional warfare.

Keep up the good work CCP, and work on improving your conversation with the playerbase over changes. That's your weakness at the moment.

That's Better

Dev blog today had some good news compared to the last one.

For one thing, costs have been rationalized and reduced across the board. Improvement indices remain even if the upgrade hub is destroyed and can be taken by an invading force. The cosmic anomalies "Pirate Detection Arrays" has been upped from 2 static complexes to 4 per level:

Pirate Detection Arrays

Each level of this upgrade gives you four anomalies per level, each of which re-spawns instantly upon completion.  This mean that at Level 5 you are guaranteed to have twenty anomalies at all times in a system.  These are basically dungeons which spawn waves of NPC's for you to happily shoot.  The top level anomalies in terms of ISK per hour are among some of the most profitable content in the game.
These anomalies are awesome because there is a constant supply of them and there are no skill requirements to scan them down.  They can be found by anyone using the onboard scanner with a 100% success rate.  Basically, if you are in a system that's small enough to be covered by one probe, you will get the full list of available sites instantly and you can warp to them.
These anomalies also have a percentage chance to spawn NPC faction commanders, as well as escalate to other dungeons.

Based on my experiences last night, that could be very valuable to a system indeed.

Thoughts On Anaomalies

While reading the Eve Tribune last night an article on the dev blog about sov changes and upgrades and costs made for an interesting read. Specifically these parts:

Pirate Magnet: adds two additional guaranteed anomalies per level to your solar system

 And:

Now, the initial thought when reading this is that CCP has just added over a billion ISK per month in upkeep costs to all of our systems, and yet these upgrades as listed are never going to add even a billion ISK per month total into the alliance coffers, let alone several billion per system! However, a number of the dev replies buried within the thread do offer at least some reason for optimism compared to the bleak outlook presented by the blog itself. If these facts had been part of the initial blog rather than buried on page 18 onwards of the thread then the reception might have been slightly less rabid. One of the two most important dev posts in that thread is the first one, found on page 18, in which CCP Soundwave says:

Anomalies are a good way of injecting single player content into a certain system. The way it's currently set up is that the site instantly re-spawns when run, meaning it's not three sites per day; it's three sites constantly. Financially, having guaranteed access to NPCs should provide a much more solid stream of income than jumping from belt to belt, hoping that rats have re-spawned. We could have added more belts to systems, but why would we want you to jump around in a growing list of belts when we can just have you jump into a single anomaly and make money?

They were not put in as "OH GOD I STRUCK GOLD" sites. You don't make 0.0 financially inhabitable for thousands by adding extra officer spawns, you do it by providing a constant flow of content that makes a good amount of money, which is what the anomalies do. The distribution of sites is made so that the higher the upgrade, the higher quality anomaly. Financially, the top tier anomalies that will be spawning are much more profitable than mining and ratting currently is, and pretty much on par with level 4s. Added to that, they have a chance of escalation.

So the upgrade gives a number of constantly re-spawning anomalies - with the level of the anomaly being guaranteed based on the development index of the system. Suddenly that sounds a lot more promising, although it will still only keep a few ratters busy at a time per system. He also clarified that these are anomalies not signatures and that you can scan them down very quickly using just the on-board scanner or a single probe.

I've run anomalies before when living in crap space in Syndicate and can verify that they can be more profitable than ratting. If we get the Pirate Magnet to level 4 or 5 and there are a constant supply of 8-10 anomalies in the system at all times, that is a lot of ratting potential, possibly equal to one or two systems of asteroid belts.

Very interesting. I can see how such an upgraded system might support 10-20 ratters easily and a constellation with a few such upgraded systems could house a large corporation.

Maybe CCP has thought this out more than some people think. Time will tell.

The Post In Which I defend CCP

I'm sure you've heard of the dev blog post that came out last week and caused some head explosion amoungst the playerbase, myself included. It was easy to look at the costs listed above and see that a basic claimed system with no upgrades was 600 million isk every month and wonder what the hell CCP was thinking.

But in that very post CCP told us what they were thinking. Allow me to quote:

The base cost is currently 20 million ISK a day and mirrors the approximate current daily operational fuel cost of five starbases fuel cost.

And they are correct:  five large POS will cost upwards of 600 mil in fuel costs per month.

So the question becomes why is the majority of the playerbase especially those in large alliances so upset? Well, simple really. Most territory is claimed by only one or two starbases, sometimes not even larges. Only the crucial systems get the larger POS networks for defense and industry.

Some players claim that these costs would prevent small alliances from ever moving to 0.0 space but really, if they can't afford to run 5 large towers should they be in 0.0 space? Going out to null sec unprepared for the harsh realities of large alliance warfare will lead to a lot of crushed dreams.

So, I say that the costs originally published by CCP were logicial and ultimately reasonable.

HOWEVER...

I would like to point out that I am not pleased to see its a static cost instead of rising one as an alliance claims more space. And I have serious doubts that the listed upgrades will allow 50-100 pilots to live in a system once its fully upgraded.

Time will tell.

Crystal Ball Time

Dominion is a weird expansion compared to previous ones.

For one things, the majority of ships and modules and the mechanics that govern them are not changing. Sure, projectiles are getting some love and Minmatar focused pilots are thrilled about that, but everything else is pretty much business as usual.

Faction ships are getting overhauled, but they make up a small percentage of the ships in space. Capital ships are getting overhauled, but for the majority of the playerbase that is not going to affect them, and even amoung Capital pilots only those rare few with Titans and Motherships will be greatly impacted.

If that is all there was to Dominion, I'b be tempted to call it a content patch instead of expansion. But its not.

Sovereignty. Its the basis of the endgame for Eve as much as it has one. Large groups of players working towards a single goal of taking and defending their own space. That it is due for an overhaul is not questioned. The real question is how is it all going to shake out?

We can guess what the developers want to happen. They want more Providences, that is to say, they want more pilots per system such as you find in Providence. CVA's unique NRDS policy (and working hand in hand with the Holder alliances like Paxton Federation) may be a bookkeeping nightmare when neutrals wander into the region, but it has allowed a larger population than you would find in normal NBSI space. Couple that with the agressive station building and the "crappy" region of Providence is one of the most dynamic and active regions in null sec space outside of NPC space like Curse or Syndicate. Development is the key to CCP's vision; they want alliances to invest in the space they occupy.

The upshot is that in order for an alliance to populate and development an entire region, you need a hell of a lot of active pilots. So there is either two end results if you want to maintain control of a whole region: you either have a lot of pilots working the new mechanics to develop the majority of the systems; or you charge of lot of isk per pilot to pay the fees to own the empty undeveloped systems.

Faced with two hard choices (bloat or bankrupcy) I expect very large space holding alliances to contract. A lot. If a properly developed system can support 20-50 active pilots' money-making enterprises, that would replace an entire constellation of pre-Dominion systems. Its feasible that a 1000 pilot alliance could live comfortably in a single constellation.

So let's say most large alliances do shrink from region spanning empires to one or two constellations that they develop agressively. What happens to the space they vacate? Well, they don't want just anyone moving in next door so there would be negoiations, truces, and alliances of alliances so that a pre-Dominion single colour region map becomes a patchwork of colours working together... much like CVA and the holders in providence.

The upshot of this is that you have the ability to fit a lot more friendly pilots into a region and gives you a larger pool for calls to action, but faced with communication hazards a single alliance would not face like which comms to use, who is the FC, where to rally, etc.

On top of all this space contraction and local development, the new mechanics means it will be harder for alliances to engage in campaigns far from home for long periods of time. In order to develop systems alliances will need ratters, miners, explores, builders, etc and combat pilots to defend them. Combine that with Moo Goo getting nerfed, alliances will definitely need these carebears to generate income to pay for the control of their space.

I expect some alliances will become nomadic rather than become slaves to carebears. Maybe even become hired guns for alliances that hold space and make money but lack the interest in intense PvP. Will Mercenaries become sexy again?

All in all, Dominion is going to change the game for the entire player base. Even high sec dwellers will feel the impact as null sec space becomes more populated (or more empty if Dominion is a failure). December first is coming, brace for impact.

* * * * *

As a side note, I was so looking forward to the Dec 1st scramble of alliances in the new sov regime. So I was quite disappointed to hear that there will be a grace period overlapping the sov systems to allow alliances to maintain their cyno beacons, jammers, etc while the new system takes effect. I've heard the grace period will be indeterminiate amount of time and I've heard 35 days (5 weeks).

While I understand the reason the developers will be doing this as to not piss off existing loyal customers in the existing space holding alliances, I will miss the chaos that was promised from a sudden switch on Dec 1.

Update On Navy Scorp and Typhoon

I talked about the proposed Naval Scorpion and Typhoon last weeks but an update based on testing and feedback has been proposed:

Scorpion Navy Issue:

• Slot layout: received an additional launcher slot (for a total of six)

Typhoon Fleet Issue:

• Slot layout: weapon layout back to 4 turrets and 4 launchers, receives an additional low-slot instead (for a total of eight)

Ok, now that is a Navy Scorpion I can get behind. Missile firepower of a Raven with the tanking of a Rokh, that could be a fierce combination. As for the Typhoon change, I can't help but thinik its a step back but I'm not a Minmatar specialized pilot.

Sober Thoughts On New Sov Mechanics

Image courtesy of Dev Blog on Sisi testing schedule.

Known Mechanics:

- Claiming sov of a non-claimed system takes one "Claim Marker" and 24 hours to online.

- To make the "Claim Marker" vulnerable to attack, you need to disrupt its communications with the stargates of that system. You do this with Disruptors anchored and onlined at stargates which takes 12 hours to online.

- All stargates must be disrupted to make the Claim marker vulnerable.

Thoughts:

- I hope these claim markers and disruptors have blueprints and can be manufactured.

- Systems with one stargate will be easy to remove sov from an enemy alliance. Conversely, systems with many stargates, i.e. hubs, will be harder to assault as the defenders only need to destroy one disruptor to stop the attack.

- I wonder what happens if the claim marker is vulnerable but before its destroyed the defenders destroy a disruptor? Does it switch immediately back to invulnerable?

- Depending on the hitpoints of disruptors and claim markers, this could either be better or worse than POS bashing and tower spamming. On the upside, claim markers may not have any defenses other than its vulnerable invulnerabilty and hitpoints.

Dominion - Biggest Change Ever?

The new Navy faction battleships combined with the overhaul of current Navy ships and the lower cost of said ships in Factional Warfare provide new shinys to Empire dwellers.

The pirate faction ships are getting overhauled and rumours of new pirate epic missions swirl about.

Awesome new planet graphics to take your breath away.

Titan doomsday turning into a death star super laser, Motherships becoming Supercarriers with powerful anti-capital Fighter-Bombers.

Yet all of those combined does not reflect but a ripple compared to this:

The massive Sovreignty changes will reshape null sec space and perhaps open it up to hundreds if not thousands of new pilots currently stuck in Empire.

Its like Eve II is coming.

Sweet Jesus!

Now THOSE are planets!

Navy Typhoon

With the recent announcements of changes to Pirate Faction ships, the Sov Mechanics, Titans and Motherships, my head is spinning.

I'm going to finish this review of the proposed Tier 1 Navy battleships and then take a break to absorb it all in.

So on with the Navy Typhoon:

Typhoon Fleet Issue:

• Slot layout: 8 high, 4 med, 7 low, 5 turrets, 5 launchers
• Fittings: 660 CPU, 13125 powergrid, 350 calibration, 3 rig slots
• Hitpoints: +50% hit points on hull (9316), armor (9316) and shields (8203)*
• Dronebay increased by 25m3, bandwidth unchanged
• Speed: +10% max velocity and agility increased by 10%
• Sensor: +25% ladar sensor strength

* Standard Typhoon armor and shield values have been swapped as well

What we have here is no new fitting slots  but an extra hardpoint of each type, a decent boost to CPU and powergrid, and a lot more armour and shields with more emphasis on armour now. Combined with better speed and agility. The increase of drone space means that the Typhoon can now carry a full flight of heavies, mediums, and lights for maximum flexibility.

Overall its is a nice damn ship. It won't win any competitions for over poweredness but it will be very quick for a battleship and the increase of weapons using its damage bonus will be noticiable for pilots speciailizing in one type over the other.

Breakdown of a Dev Blog

One of the Eve endgames is null sec alliance warfare and at the heart of that is Sovreignty; literally putting your alliance name on the map. With the changes coming in Dominion the dev blogs are important for gathering a feel for what is coming.

The latest offering from CCP Greyscale is titled "Sovreignity: Emergence is Neat" and I'm going to pull out the facts from the fluff for you.

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.

I quoted a lot there but there is a lot to consume. Essentially what we have here is a capture the flag mechanic. I'm saying that without a lot of details but based on other information from people looking at the Sisi code base to see messages, I'm confident that is where this mechanic is headed. Think Faction Warfare complexes and bunkers writ large and based on special modules and stargates.

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.

Yeah, rare moon minerals is broken at the moment I'm afraid, and I've been saying density in null sec is far too low for a long time. I like the direction they are going here because it is very true: null sec is often vast swathes of empty systems. That sucks.

 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.

If I were a large alliance holding a lot of rare moons right now, I would begin to get nervous. The implied threat in that bolded part means that the gold farm that is moon minerals is going to be threatened if not removed. You might have to work hard to make your isk now and it might be harder to protect easily. The days of holding a region while fighting an extended war on the other side of New Eden could be coming to an end.

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.

Ah, exponential costs. The weapon the devs used against Privateers alliance war dec frenzy will be the same they use to combat region sprawling alliances.

Overall I really really like the way they are headed with this change. By getting more people into null sec it will create more dynamics and social interactions.

I'm very excited.

Navy Dominix

Continuing the series of reviewing the proposed new Navy battleships, we are going to look at the new Navy Dominx.

Dominix Navy Issue:

• Slot layout: 6 high, 6 med, 7 low slots, 6 turrets, no launchers
• Fittings: 660 CPU, 9900 powergrid, 350 calibration, 3 rig slots
• Hitpoints: +50% hit points on hull (9961), armor (9316) and shields (8203)
• Capacitor: +5% max capacitor (5250 capacitor, 1087.5s recharge)
• Dronebay increased by 25m3, bandwidth unchanged
• Sensor: +25% magnetometric sensor strength

Overall, this change is unexciting to me. While the big improvement in hitpoints is welcome and more capacitor is nice, the ship does not boast an improved DPS at all, and the extra mid slot is of utility value at most.

Don't get me wrong, the Dominix is a fearsome beast capable of lots of different roles and the Navy Dominix is even more fearsome with a huge hitpoint boost. Its just not probably worth the large price tag this sucker is going to have compared to the plain jane Domi. I'm expecting at least 10x the price right now.

Tomorrow, the Typhoon Navy Issue.

New Amarr Navy Armageddon

Well, Talinthi asked nicely for write ups on the other new faction battleships in the Navy Scorpion post and how can I resist a request like that? Let's jump right into the win sauce that is the Navy Armageddon.

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

Sorry, couldn't type for a second there... I was wiping up the drool on my keyboard. I love the basic Armageddon, its a solid ship all round. This ship here has more CPU, more powergrid, vastly more hitpoints, improved sensor strength, utility drone space for a flight or two of smaller drones to take on smaller targets (GAH!), and an extra mid slot. This is pure win.

Its got the great DPS of the Armageddon with more hitpoints than an Abaddon (albeit less resistances). The flight of 5 HEAVY drones is complimented by mediums or two flights of lights, and it can do the holy trilogy of tackle (MWD, Web, Point) as well as a cap booster.

Dear god, this is how a navy vessel should be. A marked improvement over ALL tech 1 basic battleships in the Amarr lineup (whereas the Navy Scorp is argueably not better than the Raven or Rokh).

Mark my words, this ship will be in high demand from the get go. People will run missions and complexes in faction warfare with alts just to get these things to sell as they will go for many multiple of millions.

Next week we'll look at the Navy Typhoon and the Navy Dominix.

News Flash: News About Dominion

Huge hattip to Iambeastx for the link to this news post at IGN:

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.

Whoa. Emphasis mine.

That is a HUGE change for Titans. I'd go so far to say it is a huge nerf. Doomsday weapons are a primary defense tool for cyno jammed systems at keeping enemy battleship fleets from jumping in. With it changed to a single target weapon the defensive ability is useless.

On the other hand, it the Doomsday is capable of one-shotting another capital ship, like say a Dreadnought, it might be a useful change for making Titans more offensive in nature.

Too much to think about. Along with the sov changes and new faction battleships (and faction ships overhaul!) the next expansion promises to be very interesting and exciting.

For more thoughts on the news, go to Ecliptic Rift.

Clues

When was Empyrean Age expansion released? June 10th, 2008.

When was the Empyrean Age novel published? June, 2008.

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When was Apocrypha expansion released? March 10th, 2009.

When was the latest Eve Retail box released? March 12th, 2009.

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A new Eve novel is coming out called The Burning Life and according to Massively.com:

[I]t will focus on the game's pirate factions. Hjalti explains more about this in his most recent dev blog: "For quite some time I've been dying to put more focus on the pirates. They've been there with us all this time, like creepy nannies - watching over us when we mine, hanging out to greet us at the gates..." 

A new Eve expansion is coming out called Dominion and will focus on the Sovreignty overhaul as well as "includes the introduction of pirate epic arcs".

When is The Burning Life novel being published? According to Amazon.com, March 2nd, 2010.

When is the Dominion Expansion being released? They say Winter 2009. Maybe it will be pushed back to March 2010? Or will we see another expansion called The Burning Life on March 10th, 2010?

Curiouser and curiouser....