Greetings to you, heroic capsuleer!

Once again, I have the pleasure of introducing you to a brand new faction ship line: Mordu’s Legion.

(click to enlarge)

On June 3^rd, for the Kronos release, we are adding full pirate faction lineup: the Garmur Frigate, the Orthrus Cruiser and the Barghest Battleship.  These three new player ships are going to be a lot of fun and we really enjoyed building them but before I walk you through their creation, let me show you what you can look forward to seeing and flying on June 3^rd:

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

If you aren’t familiar with this faction (which wouldn’t be too surprising considering they only hold one station in all of New Eden!) let me give a short introduction: The Legion is commanded by a military genius named Muryia Mordu and is comprised of Intaki separatists who joined the Caldari Navy to fight the Federation.  They were born during a politically oriented uprising but shortly after it ended they turned their talents on the private sector, taking on mercenary and security work.  The Legion has plenty friends within the Caldari Navy and related Caldari Megacorps across the cluster and is always adding to its list of clients and allies.  Despite only recruiting fighters who are already trained and proven elsewhere, the Legion’s elite ranks are growing steadily and their high-tech, Caldari Navy influenced hardware is starting to catch capsuleer attention.

So why did we choose Mordu’s Legion?  Missile lovers in EVE have lacked the variety of end-game options that turret users have enjoyed for some time and we’ve been looking for an opportunity to correct that. This was our chance and Mordu’s Legion is a perfect fit.  We began planning for these ships with the hope that they would draw on skills from Minmatar and Caldari but found that Mordu’s Legion was ideal in so many ways that having Gallente rather than Minmatar would have to do.  A rise in Mordu’s Legion activity also fits EVE’s constantly evolving storyline rather well considering their bitter hatred for the Guristas who are also stepping up their game of late.

So these ships look good enough to win Miss Hawaii 2014 and they have a solid backstory, but what do they actually do? As said above, we wanted missiles to be at the heart of the faction so you will find a substantial missile damage bonus on all three ships.  We also decided that we wanted them to be very fast skirmishers (partly emerging from the original idea of them having Minmatar influence, but also as a nice contrast to traditional Caldari ships which tend to be fairly slow) so they will be the second fastest pirate faction, losing drag races only to the Angel Cartel.  When looking for a bonus from their Gallente side we quickly zero’d in on warp scrambler and disruptor range because of the perfect synergy with speed and long range damage application.  Finally, we wanted something special, one more bit of unique flavor to really set Mordu’s Legion apart.  After some tinkering we settled on an unprecedented missile velocity bonus that increases missile speed by 200% while lowering the flight time by half.  All said and done you get missiles that get to their targets extremely quickly and give a significant range bonus as well.  These things are nasty, so get a tackle on them early or get out.

One of the things about Mordu’s Legion that we are most excited about is the method by which the ships can be acquired.  As usual, Mordu’s Legion LP stores will have them on offer, but we are also going to be adding some new Legion patrols to asteroid belts across all of low security space.  Like other pirate faction commanders, these spawns will be fairly rare.Unlike other factions, Mordu’s Legion belt patrols will have 100% chance of dropping a blueprint for one of the new ships. This should make searching for Mordu’s Legion patrols an exciting and rewarding activity, and because it happens in low sec, we expect that it will also lead to an increase in player combat--which is always fantastic.  A small note: there will be other Mordu’s Legion NPCs associated with some other new content in Kronos, but only the ones spawning in asteroid belts will drop BPCs for the Garmur, Orthrus and Barghest.

(click to enlarge)

There are more details available in the features and ideas section of the forums where you can see their stats and give us feedback, make sure and check that out. We can’t wait to get these into your hands (and into our own) and look forward to seeing what you do with them!

Fly safe and good luck,

@CCP_Rise

 

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

Greetings to you, heroic capsuleer!

Once again, I have the pleasure of introducing you to a brand new faction ship line: Mordu’s Legion.

(click to enlarge)

On June 3^rd, for the Kronos release, we are adding full pirate faction lineup: the Garmur Frigate, the Orthrus Cruiser and the Barghest Battleship.  These three new player ships are going to be a lot of fun and we really enjoyed building them but before I walk you through their creation, let me show you what you can look forward to seeing and flying on June 3^rd:

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

If you aren’t familiar with this faction (which wouldn’t be too surprising considering they only hold one station in all of New Eden!) let me give a short introduction: The Legion is commanded by a military genius named Muryia Mordu and is comprised of Intaki separatists who joined the Caldari Navy to fight the Federation.  They were born during a politically oriented uprising but shortly after it ended they turned their talents on the private sector, taking on mercenary and security work.  The Legion has plenty friends within the Caldari Navy and related Caldari Megacorps across the cluster and is always adding to its list of clients and allies.  Despite only recruiting fighters who are already trained and proven elsewhere, the Legion’s elite ranks are growing steadily and their high-tech, Caldari Navy influenced hardware is starting to catch capsuleer attention.

So why did we choose Mordu’s Legion?  Missile lovers in EVE have lacked the variety of end-game options that turret users have enjoyed for some time and we’ve been looking for an opportunity to correct that. This was our chance and Mordu’s Legion is a perfect fit.  We began planning for these ships with the hope that they would draw on skills from Minmatar and Caldari but found that Mordu’s Legion was ideal in so many ways that having Gallente rather than Minmatar would have to do.  A rise in Mordu’s Legion activity also fits EVE’s constantly evolving storyline rather well considering their bitter hatred for the Guristas who are also stepping up their game of late.

So these ships look good enough to win Miss Hawaii 2014 and they have a solid backstory, but what do they actually do? As said above, we wanted missiles to be at the heart of the faction so you will find a substantial missile damage bonus on all three ships.  We also decided that we wanted them to be very fast skirmishers (partly emerging from the original idea of them having Minmatar influence, but also as a nice contrast to traditional Caldari ships which tend to be fairly slow) so they will be the second fastest pirate faction, losing drag races only to the Angel Cartel.  When looking for a bonus from their Gallente side we quickly zero’d in on warp scrambler and disruptor range because of the perfect synergy with speed and long range damage application.  Finally, we wanted something special, one more bit of unique flavor to really set Mordu’s Legion apart.  After some tinkering we settled on an unprecedented missile velocity bonus that increases missile speed by 200% while lowering the flight time by half.  All said and done you get missiles that get to their targets extremely quickly and give a significant range bonus as well.  These things are nasty, so get a tackle on them early or get out.

One of the things about Mordu’s Legion that we are most excited about is the method by which the ships can be acquired.  As usual, Mordu’s Legion LP stores will have them on offer, but we are also going to be adding some new Legion patrols to asteroid belts across all of low security space.  Like other pirate faction commanders, these spawns will be fairly rare.Unlike other factions, Mordu’s Legion belt patrols will have 100% chance of dropping a blueprint for one of the new ships. This should make searching for Mordu’s Legion patrols an exciting and rewarding activity, and because it happens in low sec, we expect that it will also lead to an increase in player combat--which is always fantastic.  A small note: there will be other Mordu’s Legion NPCs associated with some other new content in Kronos, but only the ones spawning in asteroid belts will drop BPCs for the Garmur, Orthrus and Barghest.

(click to enlarge)

There are more details available in the features and ideas section of the forums where you can see their stats and give us feedback, make sure and check that out. We can’t wait to get these into your hands (and into our own) and look forward to seeing what you do with them!

Fly safe and good luck,

@CCP_Rise

 

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

Good day capsuleers,

Coming up on March 12^th we will be releasing EVE Online: Rubicon 1.3. With it comes your usual installment of game-balance tweaks from yours truly, CCP Rise, along with CCP Fozzie, and an angry Frenchman who should remain nameless.

Somehow this release ended up with quite a bit of substance so we thought it would be nice to describe all the changes in once place for you.

SISTERS OF EVE UPDATES

Alright, first up we have some changes affecting the Sisters of EVE. The new Sisters ships are doing well for the most part but we wanted to try and bring down their price tag slightly since right now they are stuck competing with those Sisters probe launchers everyone seems to love so much.

Rather than lower the LP cost directly, which we intentionally set a bit higher than other pirate factions, we are going to provide an alternate means of getting your hands on our newest faction line! Starting in 1.3 the Sisters of EVE corporation will put out contracts for some rogue drone tech that you can find on most of the "Sentient" rogue drones appearing around New Eden.

Keep your eyes peeled for Rogue Drone 46-X Nexus Chips, Rogue Drone 43-X Nexus Chips and Rogue Drone 42-X Nexus Chips, which can all now be traded directly to Sisters of EVE LP stores for corresponding Astero, Stratios, and Nestor blueprint copies.

On top of that, we are also making some small adjustments to the Nestor to help it fulfill its role as a one-of-a-kind logistics battleship. The changes are:

• Raising the base cap to 7000 (was 6200)
• Speeding up the capacitor recharge significantly from around 5 cap/second to around 6.5 cap/second
• Increasing scan resolution to 125 (was 85)
• Doubling the range bonus for remote armor reps to 200% (was 100%)

DRONE ASSIST

This is a simple change with a very large impact: We are going to put a cap on the total number of drones that can be assigned to any one character. For now, we are setting that cap at 50.

I wrote a more detailed post in the Features & Ideas Discussion in the EVE Online forums, but here’s a short run down:

We have two big motivations for making a change to drone assist: improving gameplay and improving performance. As drone assist grew in popularity, it quickly became apparent that while it’s a very powerful tactic, it isn’t much fun, especially at large scales. Having hundreds of ships' worth of drones assigned on one trigger pilot relieved an enormous amount of people from almost any responsibility in fleet.

Now, EVE may not have the twitchiest gameplay around, but drone assist goes too far and testimony from frustrated pilots has been pouring in for a while now from all over. We feel that by limiting drone assist we significantly improve the chance of pilots feeling invested and responsible during fleet engagements (even if it means they don’t get to watch quite as much TV).

The second big incentive to make a change is that drones are relatively taxing for our hardware when compared to other weapon systems. That means the recent surge in popularity of drone assist has had a tangible, negative impact on server performance in some of the battles of late. While the balance between design goals and performance goals can be tricky, this is one of those nice opportunities where we can have a positive impact on performance without any design cost at all.

Again, if you’re interested in more details surrounding our broader design philosophies in regard to this change or in the specific solution we came to, I would heartily recommend checking out the forum thread.

HULL MAINTENANCE BOTS

We have been receiving player requests to add a hull-repairing line to the logistics drone group for quite some time, and in Rubicon 1.3 we will be delivering. Hull-repair drones are especially useful for starbase upkeep, where they can be used to repair incidental structure damage that starbase modules take when they are incapacitated. They will also provide an effective way for groups of pilots to repair hull damage on long deployments without having to bring along a separate remote hull repair module.

The Hull Maintenance Bots will be introduced in light, medium and heavy sizes, and in both Tech One and Tech Two. Their use will require the Remote Hull Repair Systems and Repair Drone Operation skills and they will receive the benefits of the Repair Drone Operation skill and Drone Repair Augmentor rigs. Blueprints to build the Tech One variants can be purchased in CreoDron stations.

For more information and discussion about the new Hull Maintenance Bots, check out this thread.

REMOTE SENSOR DAMPENERS AND THE CELESTIS

Electronic warfare balance is always a tricky tightrope to walk as a designer, since there is a fine line between fun and frustrating when it comes to disruption effects. We feel that we are very close to the sweet spot with Remote Sensor Dampeners, but there’s a little bit of tweaking left to do.

We want Dampeners to remain a strong and compelling electronic warfare system, but with a slightly higher risk involved with using them. Therefore we are going to be reducing their optimal range slightly to push Dampening ships closer to their opponents.

In Rubicon 1.3 we'll be reducing the base optimal range of all damps by 16.66% and reducing the damp range bonus on the Celestis to 7.5% per level.

We have another change to Damps that we plan to put in a later patch, and this tweak should both lay the groundwork for that change and help keep Damps balanced in the meantime.

For more information and discussion, check out this thread.

TECH ONE FRIGATES AND CRUISERS

In Rubicon 1.3 we are also making a series of small changes to some Tech One Frigates and Cruisers based on continued feedback and observation. These ships are foundational pillars to EVE Online, since they can be flown and enjoyed by characters of all ages, and we want to make sure that there is a variety of fun and engaging choices to be made when deciding what ships to fly.

Part of this balance-pass is a new set of tweaks intended to properly illustrate the flavor of Amarrian ships through their movement characteristics. Amarrian vessels are bulky, heavy plated warships that gain their mobility through powerful engines and maneuvering thrusters, not through light construction. This means that Amarrian ships are not nearly as encumbered by the addition of extra heavy armor plating systems. In practice after these changes, players will notice that the Punisher, Inquisitor, Augoror, Omen and Maller all receive smaller penalties to their mobility from the addition of armor plates than they did before.

We are also making significant changes to the iconic Rifter frigate, exchanging its old tracking speed bonus for a falloff bonus that will allow it to project damage across greater ranges and take better advantage of the trademark Minmatar speed.

Pilots of T1 Support Frigates will also notice that their speed has increased greatly, but their ships will take longer to turn. This tradeoff should ensure that flying the Support Frigates through live firefights remains an exciting and challenging endeavor.

There are also several other smaller tweaks to ships in these categories, all of which can be found in greater detail in this thread.

That's it for us! Have fun in 1.3!

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

Hello current and future EVE streamers and viewers!  This Tuesday, December 10th, we are launching Twitch.tv integration for EVE Online and I’m here to give you a quick overview of this lovely feature.

If you aren’t familiar with streaming or Twitch, let me explain quickly.  Streaming is a way of broadcasting media of your choosing (anything from EVE Online to your favorite political protest) live via the magic of the internet to as many viewers as you can attract to your channel.  Game streaming has been growing rapidly in popularity over the last few years as people get their hands on better hardware and streaming services like Twitch keep improving.  If you aren’t familiar with twitch.tv specifically, it’s a web-based streaming service focused exclusively on games.  At any time of day there are more than 100,000 people watching other people play games on Twitch and there are hundreds of people streaming.

What does this have to do with EVE you might say?  Until now, streaming meant getting ahold of software to actually manage the stream output from your computer, which can be costly and/or confusing.   By integrating an SDK created by twitch.tv into EVE, you can now completely bypass the 3^rd party software and stream directly from the EVE client.  Amazing!

Here’s how it works:  First, you will have to go to twitch.tv and create an account.  This should be fairly painless and you only need to do it once.  Next, just load up EVE and then look under the "social" tab in the root of the Neocom and you should notice a new “Twitch Streaming” option.  It looks like this:

You can access Twitch options from the root, but I recommend dragging it into the Neocom bar because the Neocom icon lets you know when your stream is active at all times.  When you open the Twitch Streaming window you will see a set of options that looks like this:

From here you simply need to enter your twitch.tv login information that you created earlier (or use the conveniently located link in the window to sign up at this point) and set up some basic streaming options including a title, resolution and frame rate, and then with the push of one button your stream will be active and viewable on twitch.tv at your default page which will be www.twitch.tv/USERNAME.  While the Stream is active, the options window and the Neocom icon give you feedback to let you know you’re streaming which looks like this:

You might wonder if streaming EVE is actually a terrible idea that could only lead to your own suffering, and at first I wondered about this as well.  Not only did I discover that streaming even the most dangerous and intel-sensitive combat I could find was actually incredibly fun, but the more EVE streams I watch the more I value I think this feature has.  Teaching corpmates to d-scan, giving an EVE-UNI lecture, streaming the eyes of your scout for your gang, following around huge fleets in a cloaky Tengu and playing questionable techno or even streaming market trading (which I spent an hour watching the other night and had a really good time) are just a few of the potential reasons to stream.  You can also set your stream to private on the Twitch stream page if you like.  There's a lot of possiblities and we're hoping the easy access means more new applications pop up.

Twitch offers a lot of functionality through their web interface that you should make sure to check out.  Probably the most important is stream chat, a simple chat room attached to your channel where your viewers can give you questions, offer feedback on the stream or simply tell you to ???????? Drink the Water ????????.   A second valuable feature is that Twitch will archive your live streams and allow you to set new titles and highlights for them.  Make sure to look into these features and also visit Twitch's rules of conduct while you're there.

If you are already a streamer and find your streaming software useful in setting up a more personalized broadcast, we don’t expect you to switch to the integrated option.  While we would love to add features like overlays, information filtering (such as location or social information) or delay (which is currently only available through Twitch as a partner) we want to hold off for now and see how this is received and work on spaceships in the meantime.  I also have to mention that sadly, if you are a mac user, this feature will be disabled for you.  There is a technical block related to the way we emulate EVE on macs which we are investigating but don't have a fix for at this time.

Please visit us in the feedback thread for this blog and let us know how you intend to use this feature, or how you might want it improved in the future.  And even if you aren’t going to be streaming yourself, make sure to head over to Twitch's EVE Online page and see what your fellow capsuleers are up to and always keep an eye on our official CCP Twitch page. 

Thanks, and may you all become space famous! 

- CCP Rise

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

Hey guys!

I’m here to tell you about some brand new ships coming to EVE Online in the next free expansion: Rubicon, which is now less than a month away!

I’m sure many of you know a lot about them already, whether you heard us talk about them at EVE Vegas, on our expansion announcement stream, or read about them in the Features and Ideas forum thread where we’ve laid out all the details, but this blog should collect all the important information in one place while shedding some light on their development as an added bonus!

So, without more delay, let me introduce you to the Astero and the Stratios:

 

In a nutshell, this is a new ‘pirate faction’ ship line from the Sisters of EVE.  It combines Amarr and Gallente skills and has a strong focus on exploration and self-reliance in hostile space.

Following off the strong exploration theme in Odyssey we really wanted to create a ship line that EVE’s explorers, both new and old, could be excited about.  We were also inspired by the success of the Gnosis, which was introduced for EVE’s 10^th anniversary and was generally well received due to its flexibility and accessbility. 

So, if we whittle that down to a more specific set of goals it might look a bit like this:

• Appealing to solo explorers in all security bands of space
• Focused on sustainability and long deployments away from stations
• Capable in combat, whether in sites against NPCs or against other players
• Provides a lot of fitting versatility that translates into support for a range of play-styles and tasks

Let me go through point-by-point and tell you how we’re hoping to meet those goals.

Appealing to solo explorers in all security bands of space

This basically boils down to being able to compete with other popular exploration ships.  We went full-on for this goal by not only giving both ships bonuses to scan probe strength and virus strength for relic and data analyzers, but also by giving them both the ability to use Covert Cloaks.  If you aren’t familiar, Covert Cloaking Ops Device II is the only module that allows you to warp while cloaked, and before the introduction of the Astero and Stratios, you could only use one on certain tech 2 ship classes like Recons or Covert Ops Frigates.  Access to these bonuses and capabilities goes a long way towards creating an exploration ship that can compete with Covert Ops frigates or even Tech 3 cruisers like the Tengu.

Focused on sustainability and long deployments away from stations

This goal is a large part of why we chose Amarr and Gallente as the contributing races for the Sisters of EVE ships.  If you’re going to be out in space a long time without being able to refuel you want weapons that don’t rely on a lot of charges, and so with drones coming from Gallente and lasers coming from Amarr, you won’t have to worry.  Both ships also have very large cargo and drone bays so you can hold even more loot before needing to find your way back to a hangar.

Capable in combat, whether in sites against NPCs or against other players

Now this is a goal I can get behind.  The cloak gives these guys a leg-up to begin with, so we didn’t want to get too out of control, but substantial drone damage, an armor resist bonus on both ships and all of that backed up with pirate faction quality base stats makes both the Astero and the Stratios extremely mean fighters. 

Provides a lot of fitting versatility that translates into support for a range of play-styles and tasks

Both ships have above average mid-slot allocation for ships with an armor bonus; 4 for the Astero and 5 for the Stratios.  This means that they sacrifice some raw damage and tank potential but can easily field all the modules necessary for exploration.  It also means that if they aren’t exploring, they have lots of room to field support mods, electronic warfare or even switch to shield tanks for more damage.  This sort of flexibility is a big part of what makes the Gnosis so much fun and we’re excited to have more ships in the game with a similar versatility.

The end result is a very exciting new tool in the sandbox with tons of potential and we can’t wait to see how they get used in the wild.   And again, if you want the nitty-gritty numbers head over to the feedback thread and dig in.

Alright CCP Rise I’m sold, how do I get one?!

Well, as you can see by this graph of LP awarded over the last three months by EVE’s biggest pirate factions, many of you already know the answer: Sisters of EVE Loyalty Points.

 

Both of these ships will be on offer from all Servant Sisters of EVE corporations in the game, which means these will be the first ‘pirate faction’ ships available in high sec.  This doesn’t come without a cost though. Only the Sanctuary Corporation, who are credited with actually creating the Stratios and Astero, will offer them at the normal pirate faction prices.  If you get them from the Sisters of EVE Corporation in high security space get ready for a mark-up of up to 50%.

We hope you guys enjoy the new ships, and make sure to keep your eyes peeled following Rubicon, the Sisters of EVE may not be done giving us new toys quite yet…

- CCP Rise

 

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

Hello, I'm CCP Rise. I’m kind of new here, but you may know me from EVE where I controlled the honorable Kil2 in space combat for the last 6 or 7 years along with being an Alliance Tournament commentator, podcast host, and YouTuber. Since arriving here in the frigid north my biggest contribution to EVE development thus far has been to the battleship rebalance, which I took the lead on, but I have a lot more to do and I want to talk to you about my latest project! Industrials!

Let’s start with an important tl;dr:

•  Industrials got a major makeover and many of them perform much differently than before
•  We are renaming the Iteron, Iteron Mark II, Iteron Mark III, Iteron Mark IV, and Badger Mark II

Before I get into what we actually did, I want to share a little bit about why we did it.

Some of you may ask, “CCP Rise, why are you balancing industrials, they are fine, go do something important like deleting falcons from the game (I kind of agree with you)”, so let me explain. As CCP Ytterbium so graciously details in the blog here, we changed a lot of the skill requirements for commanding space faring vessels in Odyssey, and industrials were heavily affected. With all industrials only requiring the relevant racial industrial skill at level I (rather than a range from level I to level V), any trace of decision making was replaced with an obligation to use the Iteron Mark V.  That, along with the fact that many of the haulers were pointless even before Odyssey, made them prime pickings for a rebalance.

Getting these ships finished and ready to ship was quite the process and while I can’t recount it all here, I recommend catching up in the Features and Ideas section of the forums where you can see the version one thread, which had a huge impact on the final design, or go look through all the specifics of the final implementation in the version two thread! For me, this effort represents a huge success in terms of cooperation with the community to make the best choices for the game. I found myself not only our forums, but also posting on Reddit, talking constantly with the CSM (who are awesome and consistently steered us in the right direction), spending time in Twitch.tv stream chat with players and even arguing with DJ FunkyBacon from EVE Radio at 4am. All of it culminated in the resolution of "Mammoth-gate", a set of industrials with a lot more character, and a more interesting class of ships overall.

In case you don’t want to go get all the details from the forum thread, here’s some highlights on the rebalance:

• Like combat classes, industrials have been divided into roles rather than tiers.
• Each race will have one cargo-focused industrial (which can actually compete with Iteron Mark V for carrying space).
• Each race will have one industrial focused on travel time and resilience.
• We are introducing industrials with specialized bays

o   The Hoarder (HODOR!) will have a bay that carries anything in the ‘charge’ group, including ammo, bombs, nanite paste, cap booster charges, etc.

o   The Kyros will have a dedicated bay for minerals

o   The Epithal will have a dedicated bay for planetary commodities

o   The Miasmos will have a dedicated bay for asteroid ore, ice ore and gas

• We also tried to give each industrial something special to set it apart from the pack, whether that means the fastest travel time (Wreathe), the largest cargo bay (Tayra), or even things like drone bays (Nereus) or missile launchers (Badger and Tayra)!

So now with that out of the way, I need to tell you about one of the most important elements of this rebalance that you might have already picked up on: NEW NAMES.  With a move towards roles, which are meant to make each ship different and valuable, rather than a tier system which is about progression, it no longer fits to have the Badger and Iteron lines named in progression-based way. Many players raised this point in the feedback thread and I told them we wouldn’t do it because of how disruptive it could be, but after more internal discussion we decided that there was too much tension between their names and their function. There will be some growing pains as we all get used to seeing these names on our overviews, but in the long run it will be a huge improvement.

CCP Abraxas did an amazing job creating the new names, and he even gave me detailed explanations for the origin of each one.  Enjoy:

By itself, "Iteron" means a specific kind of repetitive pattern of DNA within a bacterial cell. As such, we decided to focus on general themes of organics, base materials, repetition and patterns.

“Iteron” to “Nereus”

Nereus is a Greek sea god with a rich heritage, the oldest of several sons, and a shapeshifter - perfect for an original hauler that later saw several siblings/variations. And it's fitting that this is the only hauler with a drone bay, because Nereus was the father of the fifty Nereids, a small army of nimble and quick sea nymphs.

"Iteron Mk. II" to "Kryos"

This one in particular is a mineral hauler, and the term for a pattern or order of minerals is "crystal". If you dive down enough, the Greek root of that word eventually beomes "Kruos". That particular name is too similar to "Cruor" (we don't want to muck up someone's target calling in lowsec), but as it happens, the pronunciation of Kruos actually became more akin "Kryos" as the Egyptians and Byzanthians picked it up, so there we go.

"Iteron Mk. III" to "Epithal"

Here we're dealing with a motley of different materials, but there's a definite feel of life to them - not just in the strictly biological parts like bacteria, proteins, fertilizer and livestock, but also in the number of compounds that, while not strictly speaking biological, are very much prone to activity if they are exposed to the wrong element. So, we're thinking ordered cells, and something that needs protection. The name for an order or pattern of cells is "tissue". One of the basic tissue types is called "epithelium", and it's primarily in charge of protecting its contents from outside influences, and keeping them stable through whatever means necessary. It's a perfect metaphor for the containment vats you'd need on a PI-focused vessel. Go back in time a little, muck about with the roots of the word, and you end up with the variant "Epithal".

"Iteron Mk. IV" to "Miasmos"

This one carries ore, which means ice, minerals and gas. We've pretty much covered the first two with the Kryos name, so we decided to have some fun with gas. A "miasma" is a gaseous contagion - actually one of the first on record, from Greek mythology; and as we tend to sometimes mythologize Gallente ship names, it was a good fit. Another candidate was "Atreus", the dude who actually caused the plague by doing some horrible things (seriously, look him up), but it's far too similar to the Atron; so "Miasmos" it is.

“Iteron Mark V”

We aren’t changing the name on the Mark V.  This was the best version of the former line of Iterons, it was the most used of the five, and it is changing very little in this balance pass.  For these reasons we feel that both the story and the design are supported by leaving the name intact.

"Badger Mk. II" to "Tayra"

Badgers belong to the sizeable weasel family, which includes anything from the Hairy-Nosed Otter to the Wolverine. A Tayra is a rather clever kind of badger-type weasel.

You can expect to see all of this on Tranquility for our Odyssey 1.1 release coming up later this summer.  Hope you enjoy the changes!

See you in space o/

CCP Rise

 

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.