Welcoming the New Triglavian Overlords

New dev blog, this time about the new Triglavian ships coming in 4 days.

Into the Abyss will include the Damavik Frigate, the Vedmak Cruiser, and the Leshak Battleship. These will be supported with a full line of small, medium and large Entropic Disintegrators as well as Entropic Radiation Sinks to upgrade their damage and rate of fire. New ‘Precursor’ skills will be required to make use of this hardware, and those skills can also be found in Abyssal Deadspace.

So things to find in Abyssal space:
- ship blueprints (frigate, cruiser, and battleship)
- entropic disintigrators blueprints (light, heavy, and "Supratidal")
- entropic radiation sink blueprints
- skillbooks

The prereqs for the skillbooks do not look too intense on Singularity right now and I believe that will carry over to Tranquility.

In the dev blog they talk a bit about the weapons:

On release, the maximum charge amount will be 150% or 2.5x the base damage on the turret. To get an idea of what that means, the Leshak Battleship will easily push out over 2500 DPS at full charge. The time it takes to reach full charge will vary, but you can expect a time around 80 seconds for the Frigate, 120 seconds for the Cruiser, and 140 seconds for the Battleship thanks to its rate of fire bonus. 

This massive damage potential is balanced by the fact that weapon deactivation, for any reason, resets damage to the base amount. Deactivation could happen because of direct disruption, such as ECM, but range also plays a huge role. Unlike other turrets, Entropic Disintegrators have no falloff range and they deactivate immediately if the target leaves optimal. Range control will be critical when dealing with Triglavians, whether you’re the pilot or the opponent. 

The last must-know for Disintegrators is that they only use one turret hardpoint. Consequently, Triglavian ships enjoy several utility high slots which can be used for a range of purposes. You will see NPC Triglavians favoring remote armor repair, but players may choose energy warfare, smartbombs, or exploration equipment.

 And at the end of the blog:

We expect Triglavian ships to be especially powerful in environments where targets go down slowly. This includes small gang, Factional Warfare, and especially wormhole engagements. We also expect to be surprised with player innovation, as always, and to make sure those surprises don’t get out of hand, we’ve already set aside time to make follow-up balance adjustments shortly after release. 

Looking even further down the line, we intend to flesh out the Precursor skillset with more ships and weapons that push the boundaries in EVE combat. We hope Triglavians set the stage for what’s possible going forward and we hope you enjoy these powerful new options in the capsuleer arsenal.

I can definitely see value for these ships and weapons in small gangs coming up against a target with a big tank; hold them for a couple minutes until the entropic disintigrator hits full charge and then begins to melt them. But we will have to wait and see if the ship has the survivability, mobility, and utility to make the wait for the weapon worth it.

Diving into the abyss in 4 days!

Initial Post Fanfest Thoughts

Disclaimer: I have not had time to dig into all of the information released about the new Abyssal pockets, Triglavian NPCs, and mutation mechanics for modules coming for the May expansion Into The Abyss. But here are some initial thoughts I have from the event and what I did pick up.

New Space: The Abyssal space sounds like just another type of wormhole space, but leaving nothing to chance this time to ensure players don't unexpectedly decide to move in and live there. On one hand that makes me disappointed about long term exploration possibilities since its basically feels like just instanced mission dungeons, but on the other hand I'm excited for the weird effects and environments these pockets can have and the new PvE content that they can host.

New Ships, New Weapon System: Ambivalent overall. I love the look of these new ships, but the new weapon system that increases damage over time (hello Inferno Dragon!) sounds great at first, like a weapon that smaller groups could employ against larger super fleets, but I suspect much like Strategic Cruisers, will find greatest use in mass numbers that large coalitions can bring together. Big losers might be the smaller elite groups that depend on up-shipping to maintain dominance.

Module Mutations: Random mechanics always sound neat at first, just like invention did when it first released. But here is a hard truth about random mechanics: you do enough of them, the randomness is eliminated via statistics. Ultimately the randomness will only punish the small guys trying out the mechanics, and the big producers will reap the benefits of the new powerful modules. Plus balancing these new mutated modules is going to be a pain, and ultimately will be the new benchmark for PvP ships if they come down in price. Remember, cost is not good a balancing factor.

Overall the feeling is hopeful pessimism. A lot of the devil is in the details of this expansion, so I eagerly await the dev blogs on some of this new material.

Triglavian Medium Cruiser in Yulai

One of the new Triglavian ships was in Yulai for a couple days this past weekend and I took my sightseeing alt Ninveah there to check it out and take some pictures.

Pictures do not do this model justice. Even with all the damage it is a beautiful ship.

WHAT WE KNOW: quick summary, we know there are three new ship models for the Triglavian Collective, frigate, cruiser (above), and battleship. We suspect that these ships are beating the snot out of Drifters (who are also getting a couple new ship models). The ship above was piloted by a CONCORD NPC and was "in quarantine" before docking at the DED station.

I currently suspect that these are going to be new "pirate" faction ships, perhaps to fill the Caldari-Minmatar crossover. Or rather I hope so. More NPC ships a la the Drifters would kinda suck.