Hello space ladies and gentlemen.

While you are all enjoying the new content available in Kronos, we would like to draw your attention to what’s coming up in Crius, our next release. This blog is specifically about tweaks and changes related to player-owned starbases, and while some of the information you’ll see here may previously have been available in various other blogs and forum threads, we figured you could use a central place to read it.

Reprocessing Arrays

As mentioned in our “reprocess all the things” blog, we are revamping Starbase Reprocessing Arrays for Crius. Those will now provide much better reprocessing abilities. Below are their exact attributes.

Let’s go into a little more detail on how they are going to work:

• Player reprocessing skills will be taken into account
• Reprocessing time is instant. No more waiting one hour or even 10 seconds for the outcome minerals
• Ore, ices and gas clouds may now be mixed together at the same time inside the structures – but modules cannot be moved inside the Reprocessing Arrays.

• Reprocessing is done via a simple right-click > reprocess option, which of course can be used on multiple ores at once.

• The Intensive Reprocessing Array may only be used in low-security solar systems and below. The standard Reprocessing Array, meanwhile, may be used everywhere, including 1.0 security systems.

Compression Arrays

Firstly we want to mention that we have further simplified how compression is generally going to work:

• Instead of requiring various amounts of ore to compress as expressed here, compression now requires 100 units of the base ore to deliver one unit of compressed variation.
• Volumes on compressed ores have been tweaked to preserve the same ratios as mentioned in our “reprocess all the things” blog, so the ratios shouldn’t change.
• Compression blueprints are being removed and properly reimbursed.

Example: I have 100 units of Veldspar in the Compression Array with a total volume of 10m3. After compressing them I will receive 1 unit of Compressed Veldspar with a volume of 0.15m3 (this may displayed as 0.2 in the client due to how rounding works).

Secondly, we are introducing a Starbase Compression Array. With perfect reprocessing rates being no longer achievable, this structure becomes quite important to faciliting the movement of ore. Here are the attributes.

Compression works in a similar way to reprocessing:

• It’s instant with no cooldown
• Ores and ices of different types may be compressed at the same time

• Compression is done via right-click and may be used on multiple selected items at once.

• Ore amounts don’t need to perfectly fit the compression ratios. Any left-overs will automatically be saved

Removal of slots for stations and starbases, to be replaced with tax scaling

As explained in “the Price of Change”, manufacturing and science slots are going away, to be replaced with a cost scaling system. While Starbases will be subject to the same global formula, use of them won't suffer taxation as NPC stations do.

Remote usage station changes

Another drastic change is that blueprints safely stored in a regular station can no longer be used for jobs in Starbase structures. Players will still be able to remotely start Starbase jobs from several solar systems away, but the blueprints will now have to be physically available in the structure for it to properly start.

Structure cost scaling

Removing slots from industry jobs discourage players from stacking more than one Starbase structure of the same type at a Control Tower. To counteract this point, we are going to give specific bonuses when Starbase structures of the same type are stacked together at the same control tower.

This bonus is going to be a flat reduction on the whole job cost price, whose amount and total bonus varies depending on the Starbase structure itself.

Structure Type	Cost reduction per structure	Max bonus per structure
Medium Ship Assembly, Advanced Medium Ship Assembly, Subsystem Assembly	2%	26%
Large Ship Assembly, Advanced Large Ship Assembly, Capital Ship Assembly	3%	21%
Design Laboratory, Experimental Laboratory, Hyasyoda Research Laboratory, Research Laboratory	1.5%	22.5%
Drug Lab, Ammunition Assembly, Drone Assembly, Component Assembly, Equipment Assembly, Rapid Equipment Assembly	0.5%	25%
Supercapital Ship Assembly	5%	15%
Advanced Small Ship Assembly, Small Ship Assembly	1%	27%

In practice, this means that stacking 13 Medium Ship Assembly, Advanced Medium Assembly or Subsystem Assembly Arrays will reduce the total cost to start a manufacturing job at any of those structures by 26%. Those bonuses are not system wide, which means that structures at two different locations inside the same solar system will not stack together.

Restrictions on starbase anchoring removed

Control Towers will no longer require faction standings to be anchored in high-security space. Moreover, Control Towers will now be anchorable in previously restricted solar systems like 0.8 and above.

Timed restriction to anchor Control Towers

Newly formed corporations will need to wait 7 days before being able to anchor Starbases. This is to inhibit players from immediately moving Starbase assets to another corporation if under a war declaration.

Improving Mobile Laboratories

Based on this forum thread:

• Mobile Laboratory has been renamed Research Laboratory.
• Advanced Mobile Laboratory has been renamed Design Laboratory.
• Hyasyoda Mobile Laboratory has been renamed Hyasyoda Laboratory.

Changes to Research labs:

• Time multiplier for Research ME: 0.7 (was 0.75).
• Time multiplier for Research TE: 0.7 (was 0.75).

Changes to Design labs:

• Time multiplier for copying: 0.6 (was 0.65).
• Time multiplier for invention: 0.5 (was 0.5).

Changes to Hyasyoda labs:

• Time multiplier for Research ME: 0.65 (was 0.75).
• Time multiplier for Research TE: 0.65 (was 0.75).

Improving Assembly Arrays

Based on the same forum thread:

• All assembly arrays receive a 2% material reduction to manufactured products (except for the Drug laboratory, Subsystem System Array, Rapid Equipment Assembly Array and Supercapital Assembly Array). Assembly Arrays will keep their 25% time reduction.
• Advanced Assembly arrays no longer 10% have material waste. They now all have 2% material reduction like their regular counterparts.
• Rapid Equipment Array material waste now is 5% instead of 20%.
• X-Large Assembly Array is being renamed Capital Ship Assembly Array to better reflect what it actually does.
• Capital Assembly Array is being renamed Supercapital Ship Assembly Array for the same reasons.

Assembly Arrays have their cargohold increased to the following amounts:

• Corporate Hangar Arrays: from 1,400,000 m3 to 3,000,000 m3.
• Ammunition Assembly Array: from 150,000 m3 to 1,000,000 m3.
• Component Assembly Array: from 1,000,000 m3 to 1,500,000 m3.
• Drone Assembly Array: from 150,000 m3 to 1,000,000 m3.
• Equipment Assembly Array: from 500,000 m3 to 1,000,000 m3.
• Rapid Equipment Assembly Array: from 500,000 m3 to 1,000,000 m3.

Material discount changes

We are modifying how Material Efficiency (ME) reduction works on materials. Instead of being applied on individual runs, they will now apply to a whole job. That means that manufacturing a large batch of items will still give some reduction on Assembly Arrays instead of being simply negated.

Some rules:

• We will be rounding up to the next significant digit, which means that 14.4 Tritanium required to manufacture 10x cheap-quality holoreels will actually be rounded to 15.
• Whole and single items will not be affected by this calculation. This is most relevant for Tech I items required to manufacture Tech II variations. For example, building 10 Paladins will not require 9 Apocalypse if you have a 10% ME.

Thukker Component Assembly Array

As we mentioned some time ago, we are also going to introduce a new type of Component Assembly Array to help low-security Capital ship builders to compete with the reprocessing changes.

This structure will give 25% reduction in manufacturing time, 10% reduction in manufacturing required materials and may only be anchored in low-security solar systems. It may only be used to build Capital Construction Components and Advanced Capital Construction Components.

Skill changes:

We are changing the Starbase Defense Management skill to only require Anchoring at 4 instead of 5, in order to ease entry of access into Starbase manual control.

The Supply Chain Management and Scientific Networking skills are also receiving some small changes. Currently you need level 1 to be able to either start Manufacturing or Science jobs in the solar system the blueprint is in, which each subsequent level increasing starting distance to 5 jumps, with level 5 giving you full regional control. We are modifiying those so that starting local jobs in the same solar system the blueprint is in doesn't require any skill, while each level of Supply Chain Management and Scientific Networking increase job starting distance by 5 jumps, up to a total distance of 25 jumps. This reduces dependency on region boundaries which may actually be closer than 25 jumps in some cases.

Removal of Starbase Assembly Line settings:

As mentioned in this thread, since blueprints cannot be remotely using Starbase structures, the whole appeal of this functionality is greatly reduced. As such, we are removing it to reduce confusion as a whole – this will be added back when we get to fully revamp Starbases in the future.

The end

We hope this will shed some light on the various changes coming to Starbases in the Crius release on July 22nd and help you make the right industrial decisions before its goes live.

Hello space ladies and gentlemen.

While you are all enjoying the new content available in Kronos, we would like to draw your attention to what’s coming up in Crius, our next release. This blog is specifically about tweaks and changes related to player-owned starbases, and while some of the information you’ll see here may previously have been available in various other blogs and forum threads, we figured you could use a central place to read it.

Reprocessing Arrays

As mentioned in our “reprocess all the things” blog, we are revamping Starbase Reprocessing Arrays for Crius. Those will now provide much better reprocessing abilities. Below are their exact attributes.

Let’s go into a little more detail on how they are going to work:

• Player reprocessing skills will be taken into account
• Reprocessing time is instant. No more waiting one hour or even 10 seconds for the outcome minerals
• Ore, ices and gas clouds may now be mixed together at the same time inside the structures – but modules cannot be moved inside the Reprocessing Arrays.

• Reprocessing is done via a simple right-click > reprocess option, which of course can be used on multiple ores at once.

• The Intensive Reprocessing Array may only be used in low-security solar systems and below. The standard Reprocessing Array, meanwhile, may be used everywhere, including 1.0 security systems.

Compression Arrays

Firstly we want to mention that we have further simplified how compression is generally going to work:

• Instead of requiring various amounts of ore to compress as expressed here, compression now requires 100 units of the base ore to deliver one unit of compressed variation.
• Volumes on compressed ores have been tweaked to preserve the same ratios as mentioned in our “reprocess all the things” blog, so the ratios shouldn’t change.
• Compression blueprints are being removed and properly reimbursed.

Example: I have 100 units of Veldspar in the Compression Array with a total volume of 10m3. After compressing them I will receive 1 unit of Compressed Veldspar with a volume of 0.15m3 (this may displayed as 0.2 in the client due to how rounding works).

Secondly, we are introducing a Starbase Compression Array. With perfect reprocessing rates being no longer achievable, this structure becomes quite important to faciliting the movement of ore. Here are the attributes.

Compression works in a similar way to reprocessing:

• It’s instant with no cooldown
• Ores and ices of different types may be compressed at the same time

• Compression is done via right-click and may be used on multiple selected items at once.

• Ore amounts don’t need to perfectly fit the compression ratios. Any left-overs will automatically be saved

Removal of slots for stations and starbases, to be replaced with tax scaling

As explained in “the Price of Change”, manufacturing and science slots are going away, to be replaced with a cost scaling system. While Starbases will be subject to the same global formula, use of them won't suffer taxation as NPC stations do.

Remote usage station changes

Another drastic change is that blueprints safely stored in a regular station can no longer be used for jobs in Starbase structures. Players will still be able to remotely start Starbase jobs from several solar systems away, but the blueprints will now have to be physically available in the structure for it to properly start.

Structure cost scaling

Removing slots from industry jobs discourage players from stacking more than one Starbase structure of the same type at a Control Tower. To counteract this point, we are going to give specific bonuses when Starbase structures of the same type are stacked together at the same control tower.

This bonus is going to be a flat reduction on the whole job cost price, whose amount and total bonus varies depending on the Starbase structure itself.

Structure Type	Cost reduction per structure	Max bonus per structure
Medium Ship Assembly, Advanced Medium Ship Assembly, Subsystem Assembly	2%	26%
Large Ship Assembly, Advanced Large Ship Assembly, Capital Ship Assembly	3%	21%
Design Laboratory, Experimental Laboratory, Hyasyoda Research Laboratory, Research Laboratory	1.5%	22.5%
Drug Lab, Ammunition Assembly, Drone Assembly, Component Assembly, Equipment Assembly, Rapid Equipment Assembly	0.5%	25%
Supercapital Ship Assembly	5%	15%
Advanced Small Ship Assembly, Small Ship Assembly	1%	27%

In practice, this means that stacking 13 Medium Ship Assembly, Advanced Medium Assembly or Subsystem Assembly Arrays will reduce the total cost to start a manufacturing job at any of those structures by 26%. Those bonuses are not system wide, which means that structures at two different locations inside the same solar system will not stack together.

Restrictions on starbase anchoring removed

Control Towers will no longer require faction standings to be anchored in high-security space. Moreover, Control Towers will now be anchorable in previously restricted solar systems like 0.8 and above.

Timed restriction to anchor Control Towers

Newly formed corporations will need to wait 7 days before being able to anchor Starbases. This is to inhibit players from immediately moving Starbase assets to another corporation if under a war declaration.

Improving Mobile Laboratories

Based on this forum thread:

• Mobile Laboratory has been renamed Research Laboratory.
• Advanced Mobile Laboratory has been renamed Design Laboratory.
• Hyasyoda Mobile Laboratory has been renamed Hyasyoda Laboratory.

Changes to Research labs:

• Time multiplier for Research ME: 0.7 (was 0.75).
• Time multiplier for Research TE: 0.7 (was 0.75).

Changes to Design labs:

• Time multiplier for copying: 0.6 (was 0.65).
• Time multiplier for invention: 0.5 (was 0.5).

Changes to Hyasyoda labs:

• Time multiplier for Research ME: 0.65 (was 0.75).
• Time multiplier for Research TE: 0.65 (was 0.75).

Improving Assembly Arrays

Based on the same forum thread:

• All assembly arrays receive a 2% material reduction to manufactured products (except for the Drug laboratory, Subsystem System Array, Rapid Equipment Assembly Array and Supercapital Assembly Array). Assembly Arrays will keep their 25% time reduction.
• Advanced Assembly arrays no longer 10% have material waste. They now all have 2% material reduction like their regular counterparts.
• Rapid Equipment Array material waste now is 5% instead of 20%.
• X-Large Assembly Array is being renamed Capital Ship Assembly Array to better reflect what it actually does.
• Capital Assembly Array is being renamed Supercapital Ship Assembly Array for the same reasons.

Assembly Arrays have their cargohold increased to the following amounts:

• Corporate Hangar Arrays: from 1,400,000 m3 to 3,000,000 m3.
• Ammunition Assembly Array: from 150,000 m3 to 1,000,000 m3.
• Component Assembly Array: from 1,000,000 m3 to 1,500,000 m3.
• Drone Assembly Array: from 150,000 m3 to 1,000,000 m3.
• Equipment Assembly Array: from 500,000 m3 to 1,000,000 m3.
• Rapid Equipment Assembly Array: from 500,000 m3 to 1,000,000 m3.

Material discount changes

We are modifying how Material Efficiency (ME) reduction works on materials. Instead of being applied on individual runs, they will now apply to a whole job. That means that manufacturing a large batch of items will still give some reduction on Assembly Arrays instead of being simply negated.

Some rules:

• We will be rounding up to the next significant digit, which means that 14.4 Tritanium required to manufacture 10x cheap-quality holoreels will actually be rounded to 15.
• Whole and single items will not be affected by this calculation. This is most relevant for Tech I items required to manufacture Tech II variations. For example, building 10 Paladins will not require 9 Apocalypse if you have a 10% ME.

Thukker Component Assembly Array

As we mentioned some time ago, we are also going to introduce a new type of Component Assembly Array to help low-security Capital ship builders to compete with the reprocessing changes.

This structure will give 25% reduction in manufacturing time, 10% reduction in manufacturing required materials and may only be anchored in low-security solar systems. It may only be used to build Capital Construction Components and Advanced Capital Construction Components.

Skill changes:

We are changing the Starbase Defense Management skill to only require Anchoring at 4 instead of 5, in order to ease entry of access into Starbase manual control.

The Supply Chain Management and Scientific Networking skills are also receiving some small changes. Currently you need level 1 to be able to either start Manufacturing or Science jobs in the solar system the blueprint is in, which each subsequent level increasing starting distance to 5 jumps, with level 5 giving you full regional control. We are modifiying those so that starting local jobs in the same solar system the blueprint is in doesn't require any skill, while each level of Supply Chain Management and Scientific Networking increase job starting distance by 5 jumps, up to a total distance of 25 jumps. This reduces dependency on region boundaries which may actually be closer than 25 jumps in some cases.

Removal of Starbase Assembly Line settings:

As mentioned in this thread, since blueprints cannot be remotely using Starbase structures, the whole appeal of this functionality is greatly reduced. As such, we are removing it to reduce confusion as a whole – this will be added back when we get to fully revamp Starbases in the future.

The end

We hope this will shed some light on the various changes coming to Starbases in the Crius release on July 22nd and help you make the right industrial decisions before its goes live.

One of EVE's strongest selling points always has been its player-centered industry; it creates lots of interesting gameplay around resource collection, distribution and transformation. This concept fuels not only the economy, but conflict as a whole. Since most assets can be lost, they acquire value, which takes time and effort to replace.

While we have been adding more professions over the years, the core idea of building stuff remains one of the most popular activities available in our game. You can see below that more than 50,000 characters use manufacturing and invention on a daily basis. Other industry activities, like research ME, PE, copying and reverse engineering only are a fraction of that number.

That is the main reason why, for EVE's summer release, we are going to focus our efforts on industry as a whole.

The big plan

While beginning our investigation task in fall 2013, it quickly became apparent industry was in dire need of some shoe polish. Problem was, the shoe in question had the height of the Eiffel Tower, and we only had a toothbrush to work with.

We thus needed a strong direction on how to proceed and, as such, we came up with the following set of principles:

1. Any industry feature must have an actual gameplay attached to it in order to exist
2. Any industry feature must be balanced around our risk versus reward philosophy
3. Any industry feature must be easily understandable and visible to our player base

This encouraged us to look at industry from a new angle and plan its extensive overhaul.

However, the amount of changes we are aiming for is too large for a single blog, which is why we are going to split this up into smaller increments.

• The first blog of this series tackled reprocessing, where we explained the overhaul to the reprocessing formula, skills, starbase reprocessing array and compression in general.
• This blog is going to focus on manufacturing system changes. It is mainly about damage per job, extra materials, slot removal and some starbase improvements.
• In a third blog, CCP Arrow will go into details on how the overhaul Industry UI is going to work and what that implies for the average user.
• In a fourth blog, CCP Greyscale will talk about the revamp of the research ME, PE and improvements to copy jobs.
• In a fifth blog, CCP Greyscale will discuss changes to job installation prices from a fixed tax to a fluctuating variable based on activity and explain slot changes in more details.
• In a last blog, CCP Soniclover will introduce the concept of teams, which are the workforce used for industry jobs in the new system.

Please note that blog order may change depending on time schedule.

Some smart people may have noticed we have not mentioned invention or reverse engineering. That is because we could not schedule them for summer and as such are pushed to be done next in line, mainly for fall and/or winter.

Cleaning Market groups

So let’s start with some manufacturing changes shall we?

The first place where most people go to acquire various industrial goods is from the Market. However the various items under the “Manufacture & Research” market category follow no logical order or predictable pattern, making it very difficult to actually find something. So we are clearing that up and reorganizing all materials, items and components to be properly sorted, which means shuffling the groups quite a bit.

Materials: raw items and resources obtained through harvesting or as loot. Split into:

• Faction Materials: all items coming from Cosmos and Storyline sites
• Gas Cloud Materials: gas materials used in either boosters or Tech III production
• Planetary Materials: self-explanatory
• Raw materials: unrefined materials, like ores, ices
• Reaction materials: items used in Starbase reactions. Includes moon, polymer and booster reactions
• Salvage materials: self-explanatory, also includes Tech III salvage
• Ice products: refined output from ice ores
• Minerals: refined output from ores

Components: any kind of industrial material that is a transformed product from materials above

• Advanced Capital Components: Tech II capital components, sorted by race
• Advanced Components: Tech II sub-capital components, sorted by race
• Outpost Components: includes all platforms and station components
• Fuel Blocks: products used Starbase fuel
• Hybrid Components: products used in Tech III manufacturing
• R.A.M.: tools used in Tech II and III manufacturing
• Standard Capital Ship Components: self-explanatory

Research equipment: items used for science jobs

• Decryptors: used to modify output of Invention / Reverse Engineering jobs
• Ancient Relics: required to start Reverse Engineering jobs
• Data Interfaces: items determining race of Tech II invention jobs
• Datacores: sink used in Invention and Reverse Engineering jobs
• R.db: tools used in research

Please note that reactions have been moved out of the “Manufacture & Research” market category and are now available on their own.

To make things clearer, we also added icons to all market groups, below are comparison shots:

Stopping the damage

There is a specific mechanic in place for Robotic Assembly Modules (R.A.M.) and Research Database (R.Db) which is called “damage per run”. Every time a job is run with one of those items, there is a chance damage will occur, causing R.A.M. or R.Db to be lost.

While the gameplay behind it is quite valuable (loss of item during production), it’s a bit confusing for everyone involved - how is damage applied? Is the whole R.A.M. stack affected or just one? Can I repair it? How is this visualized?

On top of all this, this kind of mechanic is almost already covered by regular materials consumption: if you require 5 R.A.M. to start a job, but may lose 2 during the process, why not just require 2 to start with that always are consumed?

To cut the story short, damage per job gameplay is not worth the hassle and that is why we are removing it from industry jobs. To be clear, it doesn’t mean we are removing damage from module overheat or ship repairs however.

After summer, R.A.M. and R.db will instead behave like any other material in the game. However, to keep loss ratios similar we will:

• Multiply number of R.AM. and R.Db. given for each run of their respective blueprint by 100.
• Multiply all R.A.M. and R.Db. job requirements by 100, then further multiply that number by the old damage per run percentage.

Looks complicated? Let’s take an example:

• An Adaptive Invulnerability Field II blueprint currently requires 1 unit of R.A.M.- Shield Tech per manufacturing job, with a damage per run of 60%.
• After the change, the Adaptive Invulnerability Field II blueprint will now require 1x100x0.6 =60 R.A.M.- Shield Tech. R.A.M.-Shield Tech Blueprint will also produce 100 units of R.A.M.- Shield Tech instead of one.
• All of this is applicable to R.Dbs as well.

With this mechanic gone, we can remove the “Dmg/job” column on the Manufacturing Quote without losing gameplay, which is a win-win scenario for everyone involved.

Extra Materials, the fifth wheel

Something else we found as part of industry design redundency is what we call “Extra Materials”. This concept was added back in the days to show materials we wanted to be consumed during manufacturing, or research, but not given back when reprocessing. Usually, we put those on advanced jobs, like Tech II manufacturing or Tech II BPO research to indicate materials that can never be recovered.

However, Extra Materials are a bit like cod oil: incredibly messy. Unlike regular materials, they are not affected by skill or blueprint Material Efficiency levels. Not only this is confusing to visualize, but it also misdirects building quotas and prices, while reducing the value of player skill training and blueprint research.

As time passed, we started adding them all over the place for various reasons. One of them was tied to the ship Tiericide initiative, as we adjusted prices on revamped hulls and needed to make sure players wouldn’t gain free minerals when reprocessing them.

However we now have another option: reducing reprocessing efficiency on all items allows us to remove the cod oil from the dining table. Take that you barbaric Icelandic cuisine! Since the maximum reprocessing rate on all items and ships is going to get capped at 55%, we can remove Extra Materials without fear of player abuse. As such, all materials currently listed as Extra Materials will become regular materials instead. This includes all materials in jobs like Science as well. Yes, they’re all going the way of the dinosaur, never to be seen again, except maybe in a movie featuring Sam Neill.

As an indirect consequence, it also means that affected blueprints will now be slightly more expensive to manufacture if you don’t have them researched and / or don’t have good science skills.

Removing station traffic jams, one slot at a time

Alright, what we listed so far was sweet, but a bit short on meat, like those little chicken wings you get as appetizers in fancy restaurants. Stop beating around the bush and give me the 500gr triple-layered-mutant-hamburger with so much fat it’s going to reduce my life expectancy by 25%!

Alright, here it is; for summer we are removing all industry slots. We can hear you from here: “Wait wait, you silly Frenchman, what do you mean removing all industry slots?”

Well it’s simple, at the moment, to use a blueprint at a station or starbase, you need to install it into a particular slot type. Usually, stations come with a limited amount of those, so once they are all filled up you have to wait quite a bit.

This creates some bottleneck gameplay, encouraging players to move around, use Starbases or just wait. We aren’t very satisfied with that, especially when we couple it with the ridiculously low NPC prices for installing jobs (that haven’t been changed since 2003).

So, what we are doing is removing slots altogether and replacing them with a cost scaling system. So now, if you all want to congregate in the same solar system to build things, you can, but the ISK cost required to install the jobs will increase dramatically, removing any hope of profit margin in the first place.

Please note we are not removing installation types however – a station that could not handle manufacturing or research will not suddenly be capable of doing so.

As mentioned above however, exact details on job cost scaling will be announced by CCP Greyscale in another blog, so stay tuned for details on that one. In the meantime, rest assured that profit margins are still going to be possible as long as you don’t all flock to over-saturated solar systems. Expect costs ranging from 0% to 14% of the base item being produced for the most extreme case.

Back into the structure, part deux

Slot removal does have another interesting consequence for Starbases; at the moment, most of the Starbases in high-security space use Mobile Laboratories to compensate for the lack of Material Efficiency Research slots in Empire space.

The Blueprints in question can be researched remotely, by installing them at a station while using a Starbase Mobile Laboratory in the same solar system. With the removal of slots this use case is no longer that important, as we expect research slots to be widely more available.

In turn, this allows us to change several points:

• Allow Starbases to be anchored anywhere in high-security space and without standing requirements (minus some protected solar systems, like Jita or new player starting systems of course).
• Remove the ability for players to use stations to safely store their blueprints without putting them at risk in Starbase structures. Players will still be able to start their jobs remotely (via the use of Supply Chain Management and Scientific Networking skills), but will now have to move their blueprints directly into the starbase structures that require it, like other materials.
• Improve Mobile Laboratories and Assembly Arrays to compensate for such risk – we’ll give you final numbers as soon as we have them.
• Reduce copy time on all blueprints to be less time consuming than manufacturing something out of it. This gives the option to use blueprint copies to build items at Starbases without risking the original.

So player corporations will now have the choice between the safety of NPC stations or the efficiency of Starbases to operate. The core goal is to motivate player entities to actually defend their Starbases if attacked or be reactive enough to take the blueprints out before they go into reinforced mode.

We are aware of the significance of this change and do not expect very expensive blueprints (Battleship and above) to be risked in such a manner, but we do feel it to be a good trade-off for smaller blueprints.

This is not even my final form!

Here is a glimpse on what’s coming on the Industry UI blog. We don’t want to spoil the details here, but let’s just say you’ll be able to get all the information you need from a single window, without excessive mouse clicks, while making job creation, blueprint browsing or installation search actually a pleasing experience.

And they lived happily ever after

We now have to put an end to this blog before it becomes a full novel. We’ll see you again on the next blog in line, in the meantime, may the little construction blocks be with you, always.

One of EVE's strongest selling points always has been its player-centered industry; it creates lots of interesting gameplay around resource collection, distribution and transformation. This concept fuels not only the economy, but conflict as a whole. Since most assets can be lost, they acquire value, which takes time and effort to replace.

While we have been adding more professions over the years, the core idea of building stuff remains one of the most popular activities available in our game. You can see below that more than 50,000 characters use manufacturing and invention on a daily basis. Other industry activities, like research ME, PE, copying and reverse engineering only are a fraction of that number.

That is the main reason why, for EVE's summer release, we are going to focus our efforts on industry as a whole.

The big plan

While beginning our investigation task in fall 2013, it quickly became apparent industry was in dire need of some shoe polish. Problem was, the shoe in question had the height of the Eiffel Tower, and we only had a toothbrush to work with.

We thus needed a strong direction on how to proceed and, as such, we came up with the following set of principles:

1. Any industry feature must have an actual gameplay attached to it in order to exist
2. Any industry feature must be balanced around our risk versus reward philosophy
3. Any industry feature must be easily understandable and visible to our player base

This encouraged us to look at industry from a new angle and plan its extensive overhaul.

However, the amount of changes we are aiming for is too large for a single blog, which is why we are going to split this up into smaller increments.

• The first blog of this series tackled reprocessing, where we explained the overhaul to the reprocessing formula, skills, starbase reprocessing array and compression in general.
• This blog is going to focus on manufacturing system changes. It is mainly about damage per job, extra materials, slot removal and some starbase improvements.
• In a third blog, CCP Arrow will go into details on how the overhaul Industry UI is going to work and what that implies for the average user.
• In a fourth blog, CCP Greyscale will talk about the revamp of the research ME, PE and improvements to copy jobs.
• In a fifth blog, CCP Greyscale will discuss changes to job installation prices from a fixed tax to a fluctuating variable based on activity and explain slot changes in more details.
• In a last blog, CCP Soniclover will introduce the concept of teams, which are the workforce used for industry jobs in the new system.

Please note that blog order may change depending on time schedule.

Some smart people may have noticed we have not mentioned invention or reverse engineering. That is because we could not schedule them for summer and as such are pushed to be done next in line, mainly for fall and/or winter.

Cleaning Market groups

So let’s start with some manufacturing changes shall we?

The first place where most people go to acquire various industrial goods is from the Market. However the various items under the “Manufacture & Research” market category follow no logical order or predictable pattern, making it very difficult to actually find something. So we are clearing that up and reorganizing all materials, items and components to be properly sorted, which means shuffling the groups quite a bit.

Materials: raw items and resources obtained through harvesting or as loot. Split into:

• Faction Materials: all items coming from Cosmos and Storyline sites
• Gas Cloud Materials: gas materials used in either boosters or Tech III production
• Planetary Materials: self-explanatory
• Raw materials: unrefined materials, like ores, ices
• Reaction materials: items used in Starbase reactions. Includes moon, polymer and booster reactions
• Salvage materials: self-explanatory, also includes Tech III salvage
• Ice products: refined output from ice ores
• Minerals: refined output from ores

Components: any kind of industrial material that is a transformed product from materials above

• Advanced Capital Components: Tech II capital components, sorted by race
• Advanced Components: Tech II sub-capital components, sorted by race
• Outpost Components: includes all platforms and station components
• Fuel Blocks: products used Starbase fuel
• Hybrid Components: products used in Tech III manufacturing
• R.A.M.: tools used in Tech II and III manufacturing
• Standard Capital Ship Components: self-explanatory

Research equipment: items used for science jobs

• Decryptors: used to modify output of Invention / Reverse Engineering jobs
• Ancient Relics: required to start Reverse Engineering jobs
• Data Interfaces: items determining race of Tech II invention jobs
• Datacores: sink used in Invention and Reverse Engineering jobs
• R.db: tools used in research

Please note that reactions have been moved out of the “Manufacture & Research” market category and are now available on their own.

To make things clearer, we also added icons to all market groups, below are comparison shots:

Stopping the damage

There is a specific mechanic in place for Robotic Assembly Modules (R.A.M.) and Research Database (R.Db) which is called “damage per run”. Every time a job is run with one of those items, there is a chance damage will occur, causing R.A.M. or R.Db to be lost.

While the gameplay behind it is quite valuable (loss of item during production), it’s a bit confusing for everyone involved - how is damage applied? Is the whole R.A.M. stack affected or just one? Can I repair it? How is this visualized?

On top of all this, this kind of mechanic is almost already covered by regular materials consumption: if you require 5 R.A.M. to start a job, but may lose 2 during the process, why not just require 2 to start with that always are consumed?

To cut the story short, damage per job gameplay is not worth the hassle and that is why we are removing it from industry jobs. To be clear, it doesn’t mean we are removing damage from module overheat or ship repairs however.

After summer, R.A.M. and R.db will instead behave like any other material in the game. However, to keep loss ratios similar we will:

• Multiply number of R.AM. and R.Db. given for each run of their respective blueprint by 100.
• Multiply all R.A.M. and R.Db. job requirements by 100, then further multiply that number by the old damage per run percentage.

Looks complicated? Let’s take an example:

• An Adaptive Invulnerability Field II blueprint currently requires 1 unit of R.A.M.- Shield Tech per manufacturing job, with a damage per run of 60%.
• After the change, the Adaptive Invulnerability Field II blueprint will now require 1x100x0.6 =60 R.A.M.- Shield Tech. R.A.M.-Shield Tech Blueprint will also produce 100 units of R.A.M.- Shield Tech instead of one.
• All of this is applicable to R.Dbs as well.

With this mechanic gone, we can remove the “Dmg/job” column on the Manufacturing Quote without losing gameplay, which is a win-win scenario for everyone involved.

Extra Materials, the fifth wheel

Something else we found as part of industry design redundency is what we call “Extra Materials”. This concept was added back in the days to show materials we wanted to be consumed during manufacturing, or research, but not given back when reprocessing. Usually, we put those on advanced jobs, like Tech II manufacturing or Tech II BPO research to indicate materials that can never be recovered.

However, Extra Materials are a bit like cod oil: incredibly messy. Unlike regular materials, they are not affected by skill or blueprint Material Efficiency levels. Not only this is confusing to visualize, but it also misdirects building quotas and prices, while reducing the value of player skill training and blueprint research.

As time passed, we started adding them all over the place for various reasons. One of them was tied to the ship Tiericide initiative, as we adjusted prices on revamped hulls and needed to make sure players wouldn’t gain free minerals when reprocessing them.

However we now have another option: reducing reprocessing efficiency on all items allows us to remove the cod oil from the dining table. Take that you barbaric Icelandic cuisine! Since the maximum reprocessing rate on all items and ships is going to get capped at 55%, we can remove Extra Materials without fear of player abuse. As such, all materials currently listed as Extra Materials will become regular materials instead. This includes all materials in jobs like Science as well. Yes, they’re all going the way of the dinosaur, never to be seen again, except maybe in a movie featuring Sam Neill.

As an indirect consequence, it also means that affected blueprints will now be slightly more expensive to manufacture if you don’t have them researched and / or don’t have good science skills.

Removing station traffic jams, one slot at a time

Alright, what we listed so far was sweet, but a bit short on meat, like those little chicken wings you get as appetizers in fancy restaurants. Stop beating around the bush and give me the 500gr triple-layered-mutant-hamburger with so much fat it’s going to reduce my life expectancy by 25%!

Alright, here it is; for summer we are removing all industry slots. We can hear you from here: “Wait wait, you silly Frenchman, what do you mean removing all industry slots?”

Well it’s simple, at the moment, to use a blueprint at a station or starbase, you need to install it into a particular slot type. Usually, stations come with a limited amount of those, so once they are all filled up you have to wait quite a bit.

This creates some bottleneck gameplay, encouraging players to move around, use Starbases or just wait. We aren’t very satisfied with that, especially when we couple it with the ridiculously low NPC prices for installing jobs (that haven’t been changed since 2003).

So, what we are doing is removing slots altogether and replacing them with a cost scaling system. So now, if you all want to congregate in the same solar system to build things, you can, but the ISK cost required to install the jobs will increase dramatically, removing any hope of profit margin in the first place.

Please note we are not removing installation types however – a station that could not handle manufacturing or research will not suddenly be capable of doing so.

As mentioned above however, exact details on job cost scaling will be announced by CCP Greyscale in another blog, so stay tuned for details on that one. In the meantime, rest assured that profit margins are still going to be possible as long as you don’t all flock to over-saturated solar systems. Expect costs ranging from 0% to 14% of the base item being produced for the most extreme case.

Back into the structure, part deux

Slot removal does have another interesting consequence for Starbases; at the moment, most of the Starbases in high-security space use Mobile Laboratories to compensate for the lack of Material Efficiency Research slots in Empire space.

The Blueprints in question can be researched remotely, by installing them at a station while using a Starbase Mobile Laboratory in the same solar system. With the removal of slots this use case is no longer that important, as we expect research slots to be widely more available.

In turn, this allows us to change several points:

• Allow Starbases to be anchored anywhere in high-security space and without standing requirements (minus some protected solar systems, like Jita or new player starting systems of course).
• Remove the ability for players to use stations to safely store their blueprints without putting them at risk in Starbase structures. Players will still be able to start their jobs remotely (via the use of Supply Chain Management and Scientific Networking skills), but will now have to move their blueprints directly into the starbase structures that require it, like other materials.
• Improve Mobile Laboratories and Assembly Arrays to compensate for such risk – we’ll give you final numbers as soon as we have them.
• Reduce copy time on all blueprints to be less time consuming than manufacturing something out of it. This gives the option to use blueprint copies to build items at Starbases without risking the original.

So player corporations will now have the choice between the safety of NPC stations or the efficiency of Starbases to operate. The core goal is to motivate player entities to actually defend their Starbases if attacked or be reactive enough to take the blueprints out before they go into reinforced mode.

We are aware of the significance of this change and do not expect very expensive blueprints (Battleship and above) to be risked in such a manner, but we do feel it to be a good trade-off for smaller blueprints.

This is not even my final form!

Here is a glimpse on what’s coming on the Industry UI blog. We don’t want to spoil the details here, but let’s just say you’ll be able to get all the information you need from a single window, without excessive mouse clicks, while making job creation, blueprint browsing or installation search actually a pleasing experience.

And they lived happily ever after

We now have to put an end to this blog before it becomes a full novel. We’ll see you again on the next blog in line, in the meantime, may the little construction blocks be with you, always.

Of the various activities available to EVE Online® players, one in particular has been around since day one: reprocessing. It grinds ore into the minerals needed to start basic manufacturing. It turns ice into fuel required to operate Starbases, Jump Drives and Forcefields. It also is a secondary income for some people that actually bother to loot. Last but not least, players have used it for years to facilitate mineral transportation across the universe.

This dev blog is about the significant improvements to reprocessing coming in EVE’s summer expansion.

Paving the way to Rome

Before listing the nitty-gritty stuff in detail, let us explain the general reasons why we are tweaking reprocessing as a whole before someone posts “it ain’t broken, don’t fix it pal” .

There is one particular design problem with reprocessing: Currently you can reprocess at a perfect 100% rate uniformly across New Eden, regardless of system or station. As a result:

• It prevents us from giving low and null-security facilities some advantage: Player-built stations in null security space can only be, at their very best, equivalent with NPC stations that are spread all across New Eden.
• Perfect refine reduces the incentive to train most reprocessing skills, since it’s possible to get to the cap without maximizing them all. As an indirect consequence, it discourages players specializing in this particular activity.
• It limits a game designer’s ability to increase material composition on items when needed, as this would give players free stuff in the process. As an example, we were forced to add Extra Materials to most of the ships that have been through the Tiericide initiative (which by itself, added a lot of confusion for players engaged in Manufacturing).
• It devalues the Rorqual and its compression facilities as a whole, since modules exist with better compression ratios.

And that’s why perfect reprocessing is out of place right now – since there is no reprocessing loss, there is no gameplay room to get better at it or geography that matters. Perfect reprocessing offers no landscape on the sandbox, just a flat, barren plain with small bumps that aren’t that noteworthy in the first place.

As we write those words, we feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were definitely not silenced. Are you afraid you are going to get your favorite profession killed because of CCP? Stay calm. Don’t panic and read what’s below.

• Yes, we are going to reduce reprocessing efficiency down by quite a bit, but we are going to keep mining efficiency the same as it is right now by increasing minerals gained from reprocessing ices and ores.
• Yes, module compression is going to be heavily nerfed, but we are going to boost existing ore compression to compensate.

So, take the blue pill and sit on the sofa over there. Stretch your legs for a bit. Want a baguette? A glass of Bordeaux? Relax, we have you covered. We know about the consequences of decreasing reprocessing rates – they are mentioned, tackled and solved later in this blog, which is why we strongly encourage you to fully read it.

E = MC²

The first thing we are going to look at is the reprocessing formula and its related skills. Those familiar with reprocessing know it as:

Reprocessing yield: Station Equipment + 0.375 x (1 + Refining skill x 0.02) x (1 + Refining Efficiency skill x 0.04) x (1 + Ore Processing skill x 0.05)

There are several issues with this formula.

• Our design philosophy on specialization in EVE suggests that it should take more time (or resources) to dedicate yourself to one specific field. That’s the case with Tech II in general. If you look at Gunnery skills, you will notice that Tech II specialization skills give less benefit than Tech I turret skills of the same type (2% vs 5% damage per level).Training for Tech II as a whole follows the same principle. However, in the case of Refining, Refining Efficiency and Ore Specialization skills, this process is reversed, with 4-5% given from the advanced skills, and only 2% gained from the basic one.
• There is a default 0.375 base variable that is arbitrarily added to the whole skill-part of the formula. It is not needed and decreases the value of station equipment.

As such, we are planning to change the formula to the following:

Reprocessing yield: Station Equipment x (1 + Refining skill x 0.03) x (1 + Refining Efficiency skill x 0.02) x (1 + Ore Processing skill x 0.02) )

• We are removing the 0.375 base multiplier, instead having the station equipment directly multiplied by skills in the new formula. We are primarily doing this to increase the importance of finding the right station, while achieving our goal to reduce reprocessing efficiency. It is also important to note that NPC station reprocessing rates are not being changed for now.
• Refining now gives 3% instead of 2%, Refining Efficiency and Ore Specialization skills only giving 2% each instead of 4% and 5% respectively.
• Also, all refining skills and implants will now only affect ore and ices. Any item that’s not part of the two categories mentioned earlier (like ships and modules) will only be affected by the Scrapmetal Processing skill, which will be decreased from 5% to 2% efficiency per level. That means you’ll only be able to reprocess ships, modules and other items at only 50-55% rates.
• We will alter the skill requirements a bit, and thus Refining Efficiency will now only require Refining at level 4 instead of 5 to train, to allow players to get better yields a bit more easily.
• We will rename all instances of “refining” into “reprocessing”. That includes changing skill names to Reprocessing, Reprocessing Efficiency, renaming the station service as a whole and all its references in the game. This is made in an effort to help players to quickly identify this activity and clear confusion in general. We will use “reprocessing” as the default term from this point forward in this blog as well.

To realize how this will affect reprocessing rates in general, let’s compare efficiencies before and after the changes.

So we can see a drop of 27.6% in reprocessing rates from a maxed character from 100% to 72.4%. Again, we know this has side-effects on mining and compression, which are tackled in the next sections of the blog.

Rock you like a hurricane

Decreasing reprocessing efficiency as a whole affects the outcome of mining, which really doesn’t need to be nerfed right now. As such, to keep ratio fairly identical, we are going to boost all minerals and ice products gained by reprocessing ores and ices approximately by 38.1% (1/0.724). This will apply to all the unrefined alchemy material as well.

In an effort to promote simplicity and consistency, we are also going to use this opportunity to unify all ore reprocess batch sizes to 100 units. Which means tampering further with amount of reprocessed materials gained from ices and ores a bit to keep fairly identical numbers with what we have right now.

So, to get the new quantity of refined minerals from a particular ice or ore type, we will use the following formula:

New mineral quantity = (old mineral quantity * new ore batch size / old ore batch size)* 1.381

This gives us the following quantities (rounded up for ores, rounded to closest digit for ices):

 

What does that mean in practice?

• A character with Reprocessing 5, Reprocessing Efficiency 1 and perfect NPC corporation standings will get 10.2% less reprocessed minerals in a 50% station than currently. This is intended as we now are pushing for all skills to be maxed out by players wanting to specialize in reprocessing in order to get the most of it
• A character that has perfect skills/standings who reprocesses at a 50% station with all skills maxed but without the 4% implant will have 2.8% less reprocessed minerals than currently. Again, that is an intended behavior, as we want players to invest in reprocessing to get the most out of it.
• A character having perfect skills and standings, reprocessing anything that’s not ores and ices at a 50% station will get 55% reprocessing outcome (The Scrapmetal Processing skill is applied on the same fashion than ore specialization skills on the formula above).

For a character reprocessing at a player-built outpost, don’t tune out yet, we have more news for you.

Little outpost on the prairie

Player-built outposts are currently very biased regarding reprocessing. Minmatar outposts have a default 35% output and all others have none. Currently there is not much of a choice on that regard.

In the same vein, there is not so much of an incentive to upgrade an outpost for better reprocessing yields, since perfect reprocessing rates are so easily achieved.

After the summer expansion, all outposts will now have a default 50% reprocessing rate (on all items, including ore, ices, ships, ammunition etc…). However:

• Amarr, Caldari and Gallente outposts can be upgraded to further increase ore and ice reprocessing by 2%, 4% and 7% (for a total of 52%, 54% and 57%)
• Minmatar outposts can be upgraded to add further 3%, 7% and 10% on ore and ice reprocessing rates (for a total of 53%, 57% and 60%)

In practice, that means that someone with perfect skills, implant and standings refining at a fully upgraded Minmatar outpost will receive 14.4% more reprocessed minerals than currently.

However, it is true not everyone has the resources or organization to own outposts, which brings us to the next point.

Back into the structure

Except in some rare edge-case scenario, Starbase Reprocessing Arrays are quite useless nowadays. They can only reprocess one type of material at the same time, have long cool-down timers and not-so-good reprocessing rates compared to NPC stations.

We would like to give more options to player groups who don’t have access to outposts or null-security space. As such we are revamping them on the following fashion:

Note: both Reprocessing Arrays may only contain ore and ices.

You may notice the third type of Reprocessing Array, previously named “Medium Intensive Refining Array” has disappeared from this list. Keep reading, young grasshopper, for this shall be explained in the next section.

Compressing the universe, one asteroid at a time

With the max reprocessing rate for any item that is not ore or ice dropping to 55%(with Scrapmetal Processing trained at 5), we needed to find other ways to favor compression or else null-security industry would simply stop functioning.

The solution is to improve compression ratios from Rorqual ore blueprints by increasing their outputs by 38.1% (due to the reprocessing changes above) while tweaking the compressed ore volumes to make it competitive with current modules like the 425mm Railgun I for instance. Exact figures on compression changes available below:

However, since the Rorqual cannot enter high-security space, this doesn’t completely fix our problem, since people would face increased transportation issues in this portion of the galaxy. That is why we are turning the previous Medium Intensive Refinery into a Compression Array that functions the same way that the Rorqual does. The stats for the Compression Array are below:

Note: the Compression Array may only contain ores and ices.

Please note that we are removing compression blueprints altogether in favor of a more user friendly solution.

• Compression blueprints are quite redundant and annoying to deal with, which is why they are being removed altogether. Players who currently own them will be refunded at market buy price. If belonging to a corporation division at the time of the change, the money will be wired back to the corporation wallet.
• From now on, when working with the Rorqual or the Compression Array, players will be able to right-click the ores or ices they wish to compress to immediately get the output.

Also, we do know the Rorqual needs more love to be a more viable ship, and that is being looked into, but chances are this won’t make it in EVE’s summer expansion.

Reprocessing like a boss

Before we bring this blog to a close, Teams SuperFriends and Game of Drones would like to show you some work-in-progress designs for a new reprocessing window. Here is a small glimpse on how it is currently looking. Please note that all of this is still work in progress. Values expressed below are purely fictional for the purpose of the mock-ups and not actually representing accurate reprocessing numbers.

Main functionalities are:

• Ability to directly add materials by drag and drop from the inventory into the input area of the window.
• Ability to remove items from the input area by drag and dropping.
• Sorting of materials into groups to break up long confusing list of items
• No need to press a “Quote” button anymore to get output results every time an input is changed
• Clear indication of the average market price of all input and output items
• Calculation of the total volume of all output materials, which is useful if you might be thinking about transporting them later
• Display of the user reprocessing rate based on character skills and station equipment (yellow bars in the output part of the mockup)
• Ability to change the output destination of reprocessing (hangar, corporation hangar or a container within those)
• Clearer representation of items that cannot be reprocessed or that are below batch size (red forbidden icon on asteroids).

• Warning indication of items that may be too valuable to be reprocessed (yellow interrogation mark on ships and tech II items)

• Marker to represent if output materials can be reprocessed further (green recycle icons)

And this concludes this blog on reprocessing – please remember all of this is still subject to change over time, as we will open feedback threads on the proper forums soon. Stay tuned for more as this only is a fraction of what we have in the oven for summer.

During the Quantum Rise expansion, we introduced a certificate system to help players deal with the recommended use of skills and ships available in our game. With a new age upon us of redefined ship roles and extensive rebalancing, it became readily apparent that its use as an effective guiding tool needed to be revisited.

That is why we are introducing a new certificate system, along with mastery levels for ships in the Winter expansion of EVE Online. Certificates help players understand what to train next, and as each ship gets a set of certificates associated with it, players will also be able to see how well they can fly and fit them. We will also change the skill requirements for operating turrets, to match our role-based overhaul of ships that has been going on for a while.

Read below for all the details about the changes, and how this new information will be displayed in-game.

Certified with 100% less confusion-fat

The first issue with our current certificate system lies in its over-complicated use. Each certificate lists a certain number of required skills, which in itself is a fine idea. However, the problem lies in having other certificates mentioned as prerequisite, creating a list of complex dependencies that are difficult to follow through. On top of that, each certificate has to be manually claimed and managed from not one, but two separate windows in the Character Sheet: the Certificate Tab itself and the Certificate Planner.

This conflicts with the goal of the whole system, which is to provide a simple recommended guideline for players to follow through.

As such, we are revamping how they work – instead of having a certificate for each progression level (Basic, Standard, Improved, Elite), a single certificate will now be the collection of all those levels, condensed in a single package.

Example, on Tranquility, under the “Navigation” category, we have 4 different “High-Velocity Helmsman” certificates. After the overhaul, we will only have one single “Navigation” certificate, containing all levels within for increased visibility. This change reduces the number of certificates to claim by at least four.

Peek at the new Navigation certificate:

Click to enlarge.

As shown in the instance above, we also are removing nested certificates as requirements for other certificates, which will significantly clear the progression up. From now on, each certificate will only have skills listed, always showing players the next step(s) they have to complete. This further clears up the progression and prevents the player from getting confused from over-nested requirements, from the very new-player friendly level 1 certificate to the uber-elite "I have maxed all skills in that field" level 5 certificate.

Certificates themselves are being overhauled to better reflect the current state of the game today. That means redundant ones, like the Starter Profession Certificates, will be removed as they serve no practical purpose. We are also going to tweak the certificate API to match the changes, which means some external party applications will need to be modified after the Winter release.

As a bonus prize, we also are making changes to the overall user experience:

•  Certificates will now be automatically claimed, no need for manual fetching anymore.
• The “Certificate” tab will be merged within the “Skill” category in the Character Sheet and both will be sorted by the same groups, since they are related to each other.
• Certificate tooltips have been updated to display accurate description on what they are actually doing.
• The Certificate Planner is no longer needed and is being removed.

Click to enlarge.

• Certificate icons are changed to be a lot more readable (how many of you knew that the old certificate icons were showing different levels?)

Click to enlarge.

• Certificates can no longer be set as public (feedback showed this option was not used for obvious intel reasons)
• With all the changes above, number of Certificates is approximately reduced sixfold, from around 360 to 60, while losing no progression value whatsoever.

Gunnery Tiericide

As we went through the Certificate overhaul, we realized some of the item skill requirements don’t make that much sense right now. In particular, skill requirements for Tech 2 turrets is a relic from an age where the artificial progression system made sense and doesn’t necessarily apply today: as noticed with the ship balancing project (nicknamed "Tiericide" by our playerbase), we are focusing on promoting role over tier, and this should also be true with turrets. Training Large Tech 2 turrets should not require proficiency in smaller ones if one wishes to focus in this specific gameplay.

As such, after internal and CSM approval, we are changing training requirements for turrets to follow a pattern more consistent with missile launcher requirements. That technically means Tech 2 medium and large turrets will no longer require smaller gun specialization skills at 4 to be trained. The Sharpshooter and Motion Prediction skills will still be required though. Exact changes are listed below.

Requirement for Large Turrets (top: on TQ, bottom: after changes):

Click to enlarge.

Requirement for Medium Turrets (top: on TQ, bottom: after changes):

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Masters of the Universe

There is much more to flying a ship than just training the required Spaceship Command skills - while certificates make sense to represent the general evolution of your character, we wanted to introduce a metric to clearly make this point.

As such, we are adding what we call ship “masteries”. It’s simple, a ship mastery level is the collection of all certificates of the same level assigned to that particular ship. So for instance, the Megathron Mastery level 3 consists of all the certificates level3 assigned to this hull, which are:

Click to enlarge.

As you reach higher ship masteries, additional certificates may be added as requirements. For instance, the same Megathron mastery at level 5 would require:

Click to enlarge.

The “Shield Reinforcement” certificate, which contains skills that increase your shield buffer (hitpoints and regeneration rate), are needed to completely maximize the hull, but not critical at lower levels, which is why it is not appearing there.

It also is important to note that more than one ship may share the same certificates. As such, unlocking a mastery on a specific hull may automatically grant it on others, allowing you to quickly see which ships share the same role, combat philosophy or weapon system, for instance. As a further example, the Hyperion, Dominix Navy Issue, Megathron Navy Issue, Megathron Federate Issue and Vindicator all have the exact same Certificate requirements together. Thus, training up for one of those will automatically grant Masteries for the others as well.

Click to enlarge.

Thus, to sum up, after this change, we give you:

• Skill requirements, based on Spaceship Command skills, granting the capsuleer ship bonuses. Example: Amarr Cruiser skill on the Arbitrator.
• Ship masteries, a collection of certificates, giving the pilot a general idea of which skills to train to fly and fit the ship properly.

However, remember that certificates and masteries in general are not meant to be specifically tailored for the individual needs of advanced pilots or even professional corporations (that’s where corporation created certificates might come in handy) – they are meant to be a general and basic guideline for all players to look at when progressing throughout ship classes.

Show me your stuff

While we were looking at the Ship Show Info we realized the “Prerequisites” tab could use some polishing as well. As such, we are removing the various groups inside the tab named “primary / secondary / tertiary skill required” as they are quite confusing: secondary skills are mandatory in all cases, not optional as the name would suggest. We also are changing the tab name to "Requirements" to further express the idea those are needed to fly the hull itself, in contrast with masteries, which are recommended skills.

We are then significantly increasing the readability as a whole – as well as improving the “total training time left” countdown logic: the timer will now skip lost sub-requirements as long as you can still fly the ship with the main skill. For instance, if you have Amarr Cruisers at level 1 but lose Amarr Destroyers 3 for some unlikely reason, it will keep showing 0 days since you can still fly the Arbitrator. That is one problem we encountered during the skill reimbursement last Spring that we wanted to fix.

Work in progress view of the "requirement" tab below:

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The Skill Requirement icon itself has been changed as well:

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1. The Capsuleer cannot fly the ship for not having the various Spaceship Command related skills trained at all.
2. The Capsuleer owns the needed skills but doesn’t have the required level(s).
3. The Capsuleer can command the ship and has the required skill level(s).
4. The Capsuleer can command the ship and has the maximum skill level(s).

You will also notice how they are now used in the Skill section of Character Sheet for consistency purposes:

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We are also adding the two main progression metrics to the header of the ship show info window – skill requirements and the mastery, so each Capsuleer can quickly see either of them on any ship show info without having to navigate to individual tabs. If the user wants to know more, clicking the Skill Requirement or Mastery icons themselves will open the respective tabs, at the proper levels.

Click to enlarge.

And that’s it for now ladies and gentlemen, hope you like it so far – we have more changes tied with certificates cooking in the oven right now, so stay tuned for more details on that matter when they become available.

A few weeks before a big expansion hits usually is the time for reflection on how well we have packed things together. In our case here, it’s all about having a final look at the ships we are tackling for Odyssey. And by “we”, I mean our team of rabid ship designing slave-monkeys, mainly CCP Fozzie and Rise.

So total, we are bringing you 40 revamped hulls in the next expansion, 4 of these being new – which fit as part of a Navy theme to complement the recent storyline events in New Eden, as requested by our evil CCP Soundwave and Seagull overlords.

Click to enlarge

So, let’s have a look at what’s changing for Odyssey and make sure our balancing boys worked properly – otherwise they aren’t going to eat for a while.

Skill Changes

As mentioned several times throughout the year, we are going change many skill requirements in Odyssey. Since this has been extensively covered beforehand, we highly recommend you read at the proper blog for more details so you can prepare accordingly, even if it is quite late at this point.

Short summary is that:

• Destroyers and Battlecruisers skills are being split in four racial versions and being reimbursed
• Skill requirements are changing for 23 ship classes (Rookie Ships, Navy Frigates, Destroyers, Cruisers, Navy Cruisers, Battlecruisers, Battleships, Navy Battleships, Carriers, Supercarriers, Dreadnoughts, Titans, Electronic Attack Ships, Interdictors, Heavy Assault Cruisers, Recon Ships, Heavy Interdiction Cruisers, Command Ships, Industrials, Freighters, Mining Barges, Industrial Command Ship and Capital Industrial Ship)

Navy Frigates

For Odyssey we decided to revamp the full line of Navy faction ships, all the way from Frigates to Battleships, as well as adding the new Navy Battlecruisers.

To start off the process we did a balance pass on the four Navy Frigates, which are very popular for their moderate prices and generally strong abilities, especially in Factional Warfare space. These ships needed smaller changes than the others. The Republic Fleet Firetail received the most significant overhaul, getting a stronger damage bonus and significantly more HP. The other Navy Frigates received smaller tweaks, mainly to their fittings.

Navy Cruisers

The next step on the Navy overhaul was the eight Navy Cruisers. These ships were suffering very severely from all the problems inherent with the old Tier system. The higher tier versions (Omen Navy Issue, Caracal Navy Issue, Vexor Navy Issue, Stabber Fleet Issue) were decent ships in their own right, although overshadowed to a certain extent by the newly buffed T1 Cruisers. The lower-tier versions (Augoror Navy Issue, Osprey Navy Issue, Exequror Navy Issue, Scythe Fleet Issue) on the other hand, were terrible.

So we have given these ships the full Tiericide treatment, splitting them into Combat (Augoror Navy Issue, Caracal Navy Issue, Vexor Navy Issue, Stabber Fleet Issue) and Attack (Omen Navy Issue, Osprey Navy Issue, Exequror Navy Issue, Scythe Fleet Issue)

• The Omen Navy Issue is trading some hit points in to get a lot more speed and range. With new bonuses to Laser optimal range and damage it will zip around the battlefield skirmishing with the best of them. Pilots will need to manage capacitor carefully with this ship, but it will be deadly in the right hands.
• The Osprey Navy Issue will fly much like an improved version of the Tech 1 Caracal, using mobility, range and an exceptional six midslots to control the battlefield.
• The Exequror Navy Issue is doubling down on its old role as an all-in blasterboat. It’s keeping the double damage bonus that made it unique among blaster cruisers, and gaining a new turret to place it clearly at the top of the cruiser damage per second charts. However it will need to be in close to do that damage, so in the game of Exequrors you either win or you die.
• The Scythe Fleet Issue is the first in a grand project to redeem the Minmatar tradition of split weapon bonuses. Instead of the old system where pilots were pushed into using two different highslot weapons, the new Fleet Scythe has double-strength damage bonuses for both projectiles and missiles. This means that it is very powerful with either weapon system and an opponent will never know what to expect when they see a Fleet Scythe on scan.
• The Augoror Navy Issue is built as the ultimate cruiser brawler. With bonuses to armor HP and a huge 25% per level damage bonus for three turrets, it can take advantage of a strong buffer tank and two utility highslots to outlast its opponent.
• The Caracal Navy Issue is the first in a new tradition of Caldari Navy missile ships with bonuses to explosion radius. This bonus allows the ship to apply damage much more effectively than most, and it will be able to tangle with a wide variety of opponents.
• The Vexor Navy Issue is getting a big increase in drone bandwidth, making it the most nimble ship capable of fielding a full flight of five heavy drones or sentry drones. A bonus to drone velocity and tracking replaces the old blaster bonus, ensuring that a Navy Vexor focused purely on drone damage will be a force to be reckoned with.
• The Stabber Fleet Issue is receiving the smallest changes of all these Cruisers, as it is already the most effective and most used Navy Cruiser. Small tweaks to hitpoints and mass for polish is all this ship needs to remain balanced and desired.

Attack Battlecruisers

We felt those vessels were overstepping a bit on other classes, mainly Cruisers and to some extend Battleships. However, since Tech 1 Cruisers have been buffed in Retribution and Tech 1 Battleships are receiving the same treatment for Odyssey, only small tweaks are necessary. That is why we are only giving them small decrease in mobility, scan resolution and signature radius for now, even if we are going to keep watching them in the near future.

Yes, we do know Heavy Assault Cruisers are being overshadowed by them as well, and we will come to them in due time, oh yes my precious, we will.

Navy Battlecruisers

For Odyssey we wanted to give a strong emphasis on the four main Empire factions and we believe there is no better way to build excitement than releasing Navy variations of the already popular Battlecruiser hulls.

• The Harbinger Navy Issue was a tough call to balance. Going for a traditional Amarr combat philosophy of “slow inflexible brick with guns everywhere” proved to be disappointing during internal playtests. We thus opted to give this vessel something that often lacks in the Imperial Navy line, flexibility by giving it an additional 5^th medium slot and swapping its medium energy turret capacitor reduction bonus with a tracking bonus.
• As explained in our previous Blog, we did not wish to directly improve on the already good capabilities of the Drake, which is why the Drake Navy Issue instead offers extended flexibility with better mobility and damage application than its regular Tech 1 counterpart.
• Choosing between which hull to pick between the Brutix or Myrmidon proved to be tricky for Odyssey – we finally picked the former as we foresaw some heavy role overlap for a possible Myrmidon Navy Issue with the Ishtar, Vexor Navy Issue, Gila or even Dominix. As a result, the Brutix Navy Issue is a ship that directly iterates on the strengths of its predecessor, with improved low slot layout and better damage application.
• For the Minmatar, we decided to bring the old, pre-nerfed flexibility of the Hurricane back into the Fleet brand. As such, you will find the Hurricane Fleet Issue to be an extremely versatile and familiar ship, with many possible configurations to choose from.

Acquisition method:

• Regular corporation LP stores, blueprint offer: 200,000 LPs plus 100 million ISK for 1 run blueprint copy (BPC)
• Regular corporation LP stores, built ship offer: 250,000 LPs plus 1x built Tech 1 Battlecruiser plus two Cruiser sized Nexus Chips
• FW Loyalty Point stores, blueprint offer: for 100,000 LPs plus 10m ISK for 1 run BPC
• FW Loyalty Point Stores, built ship offer: 100,000 LPs plus 1x built Tech 1 Battlecruiser plus two Cruiser sized Nexus Chips

Tech 1 Battleships

Odyssey will forever hold a special place in that empty and black spot where our hearts used to be for rebalancing one of the most iconic classes of the game, Tech 1 Battleships. Next to other vessels we’ve tackled as part of the “Tiericide” initiative in the previous expansions, Tech 1 Battleships were relatively well balanced by stat, the problem laid in their role distribution. As explained below, some of them required creative thinking to rebalance, and we do hope the results will shift the meta-game in interesting ways for the upcoming months.

Amarr Battleships

• As we started looking into this class, we realized the Armageddon was in a very precarious position; for being the former Amarrian Tier 1 Battleship, it made sense to provide a hard-hitting turret based option before moving into the Apocalypse and Abaddon. However, removing tiers made us realize it would compete with the Abaddon on the same niche, which motivated us to look for creative solutions to solve this problem. As a result, the Armageddon role is moving away from its standard combat turret platform to a more devious energy neutralizing drone ship.
• Until now the Apocalypse was renowned as a very comfortable hull due to its large capacitor, further enhanced by the Large Energy Turret Capacitor use reduction provided by one of its bonuses. However, it was judged quite dull by our balancing team, and as a result we have changed this previously mentioned bonus to favor turret tracking instead. For moving into the “Attack Battleship” role, the Apocalypse is also gaining mobility and is about to become a damage projection bully at its designated medium-long engagement range.
• The Abaddon was the Amarrian hull in the least need for change, as its role is already potent in multiple scenarios. As such there is not much to write about it, except the armor resistance decrease which is global to many hulls (see below for more details).

Caldari Battleships

• Overall we are pleased with the Scorpion for being the only purely Disruption focused Battleship. Thus its changes were minimal, mainly with a slight increase in hit points and the swap of a high slots in favor of a 5^th low slot.
• The old tactic known as “Cavalry Raven” that used that vessel in a speed setup may be coming back as this venerable hull is being moved into an Attack role. Literally, that means the Raven gains mobility and trades one of its two utility high slots for a 7^th medium slot. This change also has a very strong synergy with our Cruise Missiles boost, explained below, so who knows, this ship may even be used in PvP situations again. Time will tell.
• The Rokh remains a very solid choice for large engagements, or any kind of situation requiring what we internally call a strong “tank’n’spank” power. As such it’s not affected that much, except again for the shield resistance bonuses being slightly lowered.

Gallente Battleships

• The Dominix, also known as the old war shoe, the flying potato or even the space whale, has seen considerable service over the years. Adaptable in a myriad of ways, we nevertheless decided to swap its role from what essentially was a Turret plus Drones split weapon system to purely focus on the latter. It is now aiming to be much more efficient with Sentry drones than any other ship in-game, which is a distinct advantage.
• The Megathron is one of our favorite hulls in-game. Over the years though, it suffered setbacks as a Blaster platform, due to its poor mobility with plated setups and tight fittings. We want to emphasize its role as the Gallente main gunboat platform by moving it into the Attack role. Technically it means improved mobility, swapping the utility high slot for a 8^th low slot and replacing the Large Hybrid Turret Damage bonus with a Rate of Fire one to see further use in fleet engagements.
• The Hyperion has been one of the most delicate problems we had to tackle for Odyssey, as it suffered a role crisis – initially designed as a close range blaster platform, it overstepped on the Megathron, and was ill-equipped to fully use that active Armor tanking bonus with only 6 low slots. As such, we are moving it to be the flexible small gang stepchild of the Gallente Battleship line, by providing it with a versatile 7H / 5M / 7L slot layout and a good dronebay.

Minmatar Battleships

• The Typhoon was well known among our player base as the perfect embodiment of the “jack-of-all-trade, master of none” philosophy. While we acknowledge it provided an interesting role on the field, we did not necessarily agree with how niche it remained, or how much skill training it demanded to fly effectively. Instead, we are turning it into a missile launching monster by replacing the Turret bonus with a Cruise Missile and Torpedo explosion velocity, giving it 6 launchers and tweaking its slow layout to 7H / 5M / 7L.
• There was little need to alter the Tempest attributes as its role as a flexible Attack Battleship is well set in stone already. As such, only slight tweaks were made to it, mainly by slightly increasing its hit points, fittings and mobility.
• The Maelstrom role remains healthy and secure, and as such nothing is changing on it.

Price changes

As we have done with the previous Tech 1 ship classes that have gone through rebalancing, mineral prices for Tech 1 Battleships are going to be adjusted to meet the new “Tiericide” requirements.

• Former Tier 1 and 2 Battleships (Armageddon, Apocalypse, Scorpion, Raven, Dominix, Megathron, Typhoon and Tempest) are being increased to be approximately on par with the current Tier 3 Battleships (Abaddon, Rokh, Hyperion, Maelstorm).

This is quite mandatory for several reasons:

• There is no need to have price differential within ships of the same class if tiers are gone. If all of them have an equally valuable role, price should match.
• We cannot decrease overall costs of Battleships due to the mineral consumption linked with the production of the current Tier 3 Battleships. Doing so would affect the market adversely.

After studying various metrics at our disposal, we concluded increasing the price on such fashion would not affect Battleship acquisition that much due to inflation and increasing wealth generation over the years.

So, in practice:

• The most expensive Battleships are going to be Combat related, with an estimated price around 150m-180m ISK. This includes the Armageddon, Abaddon, Rokh, Dominix, Hyperion and Maelstrom.
• Other Battleships whose role is either Attack or Disruption will settle with an average price of 100-130m ISK. Thus the Apocalypse, Scorpion, Raven, Megathron, Typhoon and Tempest.

As usual, the increase in mineral requirements will be done through Extra Materials that won’t be obtained through refining. All the prices stated above are rough estimates, your mileage may vary depeding on market speculation, conspiracy plots, backstabbing schemes and alliance drama.

Navy Battleships

As part of something we hinted in our previous blog, Navy Battleships also are receiving some love in Odyssey. As with their Tech 1 counterparts, we are dead set into removing tiers from them so each has a unique purpose.

• The Armageddon Navy Issue performs well and we believe its current role as a laser brawler to be adequate. As a result it is not changing much, except for slightly more hit points, fittings and 25m3 additional drone bay.
• The Apocalypse Navy Issue inherits the same traits as its Tech 1 variation by being moved into the Attack role. This means better mobility, reduction in hit points, but swapping the Large Energy Turret Capacitor reduction with the tracking bonus.
• With the Cruise Missile boost and the gain of an extra low slot, the Scorpion Navy Issue has potential to become an extremely dangerous hull to cope with, and we are going to keep an eye open on this one to make sure it does not asphyxiate other Battleships.
• Inspired from the Drake Navy Issue, his bigger cousin the Raven Navy Issue now provides extended flexibility with 8 launchers combined with a missile explosion radius and velocity bonuses. It also follows the same pattern than its regular Tech 1 counterpart by being moved into the Attack role: more mobility, a 7^th med slot at the expense of slightly less hit points.
• The Dominix Navy Issue roughly keeps the same attributes as before, as we wished to keep it unique and were not willing to change it on the same pattern than its Tech 1 counterpart. For being a Combat ship however, it gains some hit points at the cost of mobility and signature radius.
• The Megathron Navy Issue will iterate on the strengths of its new standard variation for being switched to an Attack role with fast mobility and good damage with its new Rate of Fire bonus. It also has room for a utility high slot and more drones in general than its Tech 1 variation.
• We wanted to keep a unique flavor for the Typhoon Fleet Issue by preserving the split weapon bonus, but trying to make it right this time around. As such, this vessel has 7.5% bonus to Cruise and Torpedo damage and 7.5% to Large Projectile Rate of Fire per level, while boasting 8H / 5M / 7L with 6 turrets and launchers.
• Finally, with the Tempest Fleet Issue we wanted to experiment on maintaining a hull flexible enough for multi-purpose situations. As such, while being officially sorted as a Combat this hull offers a good enough mix of hit points, mobility and low signature radius to be considered as an Attack-Combat hybrid.

LP offer changes:

Just like the Tech 1 Battleships, Navy versions are going to be consistently unified in price all across the board. Not only does that mean their Blueprint Mineral requirements are going to be closely matching the prices indicated above, but it means that LP offers for the former Tier 1 Battleships is going to be leveled at Tier 2 prices.

• The Armageddon Navy Issue, Scorpion Navy Issue, Dominix Navy Issue and Typhoon Fleet Issue LP offer costs are going to be increased to 250,000 LPs in the 24^th Imperial Crusade, State Protectorate, Federal Defense Union and Tribal Liberation Force LP Stores.

Module and general changes

Sometimes only looking at ship hulls is not enough to fix specific issues and crippling gameplay. This is particularly true for Odyssey, as we had to closely look at a certain number of attached problems to ensure our Tiericide changes were healthy as a whole.

Cruise Missiles

Long have Cruise Missiles been waiting for some attention – we found them sobbing in their little corner, reminding us of the now extinct age of the ‘Arbalest’ Cruise Missile Launcher I Raven. They begged for mercy, claiming they suffered enough and that they won’t insta-pop Frigates ever again, promise.

And so CCP Rise came forth and said, “fear not, my child” then basked them in his balancing light. And they were grateful:

• Cruise Missile Launchers Rate of Fire has been increased by 5% (they fire faster)
• Velocity of all Cruise Missiles has been increased to 4700m/s
• All Cruise Missiles base damage has been increased by 25%
• To compensate, Cruise Missile Launcher Powergrid requirements have been increased by 200
• Cruise Missile base flight time has been decreased to 14 seconds and their explosion radius has been increased by 10%

As a result, all Cruise Missiles should now hit harder, faster at the cost of slightly tightened fitting requirements and reduced damage application to smaller targets. In all cases, they will complement your Raven or Typhoon setups well and shall blot out the sun. Treat them well.

Large Energy Turrets

When rebalancing the Apocalypse and its Navy evil twin, we realized Large Energy Turrets were not only difficult to squeeze in, but also quite capacitor hungry. Since using wrench and duct tape to fit things remains the dedicated area of Minmatar engineers, we decided to soften them up a bit.

• All Large Beam Laser capacitor needs have been decreased by 20%, powergrid requirements have been reduced by 10%
• All Large Pulse Laser capacitor needs have been decreased by 10%

Navy hull rig calibration increase

As miscellaneous note, we realized only having 350 calibration on Navy hulls didn’t make much sense since they are supposed to be improvements over Tech 1 ships. As such, with Odyssey they will autoretromagically have 400 calibration instead. These were not the rigs you were looking for.

X-Large Weapons

Balance between the different Dreadnaughts has been an issue for a long time, and their vast increase in use since Crucible has made the problem more pronounced. We want to be very careful with these ships to ensure that none of them get broken, so we are starting a process of small iterations to capital weapons to help bring the class into balance. For Odyssey we are reducing the tracking of capital blasters and autocannons, reducing the range of capital blasters and increasing it for capital pulse lasers, and significantly improving the Phoenix by removing the explosion velocity penalty from siege modules. These changes do not go the whole way, but they are a step in the right direction and we are committed to take those steps carefully and correctly.

RSB and TEs

Two more modules that will be receiving tweaks in Odyssey are Remote Sensor Boosters and Tracking Enhancers. RSBs are too good for supporting “instalock” gatecaps with large ships, and are seeing their scan resolution bonus lowered slightly. TEs are receiving a reduction in their optimal range and falloff bonuses, to bring them in line with other similar modules such as Tracking Computers.

Ship Resistance changes

We are also turning our attention to ship resistance bonuses in Odyssey. These bonuses are among the most powerful in the game, and have been overshadowing other defensive bonuses to a large degree. We have chosen to make a small adjustment to the resistance bonuses on all applicable ships, reducing the per-level bonus from 5% to 4%. Resistance bonuses will still be extremely powerful after this change, but the adjustment opens up some room for us to do more interesting things with other defensive bonuses and create more interesting choices in fitting and combat.

And that’s pretty much everything we are delivering to your doorstep for Odyssey - that is quite some heavy package to carry around. We do hope you will enjoy those changes as much as had crafting them and we can't wait to see how EVE tactical gameplay will shift as a result. Stay tuned for more blogs on what's to follow on the ship balancing menu, and may the pew pew be with you, always.

At CCP Game Design, we are proud to take great care of our new recruits through a very well-established training program. It involves three months solitary basement confinement, intense brainwashing electroshock techniques, and accelerated body-building sessions complemented by clever use of relevant motivational soundtracks.

While CCP Fozzie handled the process well, he sometimes cannot contain his excitement, which can create problems (that’s where the straitjacket comes in). However, with the new addition of CCP Rise to our militia of bloodthirsty ship balancing maniacs, we are now confident that we can tackle various projects more efficiently.

Speaking of projects, the one we would like to introduce today is about navy ships overhaul.

For those who just joined EVE, navy hulls mainly offer improved performance over regular tech1 ships. They can be acquired at your nearest navy or Factional Warfare (FW) militia friendly store if you don’t feel like obtaining them through other players on the regular market.

However, those vessels haven’t been touched for a while. The last iteration on them dates back to late 2009, which, in term of Internet standards may as well be the Bronze Age. Some of them, the Navy Cruisers especially, even go back way before that, and remain dinosaurs waiting to be put down by a giant smiling space rock.

Thus, as the Tiericide initiative nears completion, we decided to apply the same effort to the navy ships in the Odyssey release.

Navy Frigates

These ships are receiving less intense changes than their larger counterparts.

• Imperial Navy Slicer: is keeping its basic role intact and benefitting most significantly from an increase in available CPU. It is also gaining some capacitor and lock range, amongst other small tweaks.

• Caldari Navy Hookbill: is the most dominant navy frigate in the current meta. It is receiving a decrease in mobility, softened by a noticeable increase in hit points and other small changes.

• Federation Navy Comet: is receiving small buffs to HP, CPU, and capacitor.

• Republic Fleet Firetail: is the frigate receiving the greatest changes in this expansion. Its damage bonus is increasing from 20% to 25% per level and it will also benefit from increased HP, fittings, and capacitor.

Would you like to know more?

Navy Cruisers

As mentioned above, Navy Cruisers were not iterated on during the Dominion expansion, and many of them needed extensive work. The navy cruisers currently range widely in ability, from the excellent Stabber Fleet Issue to the virtually useless former “Tier 1” Navy Cruisers (Augoror Navy Issue, Osprey Navy Issue, Exequror Navy Issue, Scythe Fleet Issue). As we did with the standard hulls, we are removing the capability gap between the former tiers, although it’s important to note that we are not turning the former “Tier 1” Navy Cruisers into Navy Support Cruisers. They will serve much better by staying as combat hulls.

• Augoror Navy Issue: this ship is currently defined by the interesting 10% armor HP per level ship bonus, but the lack of any other useful features limit its role to that of bait ship. We are keeping the hit point bonus but removing the laser capacitor use bonus in exchange for a large 25% per level energy weapon damage bonus for three turrets. This leaves this vessel with solid turret damage, an excellent buffer tank and two utility high slots.

• Omen Navy Issue: expanding on the Attack role of the standard Omen, the Navy Omen is gaining significantly more speed and a new energy weapon optimal range bonus in exchange for fewer hit points and turrets. It deals less turret damage than its standard counterpart but gains much better projection and speed to control engagements.

• Osprey Navy Issue: takes the Attack role of the Caracal to the next level with more speed and a larger kinetic damage bonus. The addition of a utility high slot, an extra low slot and (most importantly) a sixth medium slot makes the Navy Osprey extremely versatile. It can choose to fit a strong shield tank or take advantage of the mobility and medium slots through electronic warfare.

• Caracal Navy Issue: this vessel has been changed to be a heavier version of the regular Caracal, more suited for brawling than kiting. It is keeping its 6^th launcher that already set it apart from the standard Caracal. Bonuses to missile damage and velocity have been replaced by 5% rate of fire on launchers and 5% missile explosion radius reduction per level, giving it excellent damage application against smaller targets.

• Exequror Navy Issue: the ultimate glass cannon, it has kept its double hybrid damage bonuses which paired with an extra turret give it unprecedented amounts of close range damage. Fast and hard hitting, it however lacks the Thorax tracking bonus, making less effective at hitting smaller moving targets.

• Vexor Navy Issue: this vessel has been overhauled to be a pure drone boat. We removed the hybrid damage bonus and three turret slots in favor of 5% to drone velocity and tracking per level. It also now has a 125m3 bandwidth and 200m3 drone bay, giving it the ability to fit a full flight of heavy drones as well as spare sets of mediums and lights. We expect this ship to be very effective with either heavy drones close up, or tracking-bonused sentries at range.

• Scythe Fleet Issue: this is our attempt to redeem the old Minmatar tradition of split weapon systems. Instead of forcing two separate weapon types this ship has a choice between two equally valid weapon options. It has been changed to have 5 launchers and 5 turrets, with a 10% bonus to medium projectile turret rate of fire and 10% bonus to missile damage per level. Since these bonuses have twice the strength of the bonuses the ship would receive normally, it effectively has four weapon bonuses, two of which can be used at a time. This will allow the Fleet Scythe to have an exceptional element of surprise as opponents will never know what to expect until they see the ship arrive on the field of battle.

• Stabber Fleet Issue: The current gold standard in Navy Cruisers, this ship performs well and as such is receiving only small modifications. The main change is an addition to the ship’s mass, which reduces its agility and speed slightly.

Would you like to know more?

Navy Battlecruisers

Like the sweet, yummy sugar and cherry frosting on that desert you are about to eat, we decided to introduce navy variants of the Combat battlecruisers to fill the gap between Navy Cruisers and Navy Battleships. That would be the Harbinger Navy Issue, Drake Navy Issue, Brutix Navy Issue and Hurricane Fleet Issue.

• Harbinger Navy Issue: we decided to give this ship some much needed flexibility by adding a 5^th medium slot, and replacing the medium energy turret capacitor reduction bonus with a 7.5% medium energy turret tracking bonus per level. However, the drone bay has been slightly reduced next to its regular counterpart.
  • Amarr Battlecruiser skill bonuses: +10% medium energy turret damage and +7.5% to medium energy turret tracking per level
  • Slot layout: 7 H, 5 M, 6 L, 6 turrets, 0 launchers
  • Fittings: 1495 PWG, 410 CPU
  • Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 4500 / 7500 / 6750
  • Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 3125 / 822 s / 3.8
  • Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 150 / 0.69 / 13800000 / 13.2 s
  • Drones (bandwidth / bay): 50 / 50
  • Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 55km / 210 / 6
  • Sensor strength: 21 Radar
  • Signature radius: 270

• Drake Navy Issue: unwilling to imitate our dear friend Victor by creating a Drakenstein monster, the navy version focuses on flexibility instead of improving the already good raw firepower and tank of the regular Drake. It has a 10% missile velocity and 5% missile explosion radius bonus per level, 8 launchers and improved mobility.
  • Caldari Battlecruiser skill bonuses: +10% to heavy missile and heavy assault missile velocity and 5% bonus to explosion radius of heavy missile and heavy assault missile per level
  • Slot layout: 8 H, 6 M, 4 L, 0 turrets, 8 launchers
  • Fittings: 880 PWG, 550 CPU
  • Defense (shields / armor / hull) :7875 / 4875 / 5625
  • Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 2500 / 658 s / 3.8
  • Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 150 / 0.64 / 13329000 / 11.8 s
  • Drones (bandwidth / bay): 25 / 25
  • Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 60km / 195 / 8
  • Sensor strength: 23 Gravimetric
  • Signature radius: 295

• Brutix Navy Issue: this vessel is an iteration over the regular version. The armor repairer amount bonus has been swapped for a 7.5% medium hybrid turret tracking bonus per level, another low slot has been added and it is a bit more maneuverable as well.
  • Gallente Battlecruiser skill bonuses: +10% to medium hybrid turret damage and 7.5% bonus to medium hybrid turret tracking per level
  • Slot layout: 7 H, 4 M, 7 L, 6 turrets, 0 launchers
  • Fittings: 1235 PWG, 455 CPU
  • Defense (shields / armor / hull): 5250 / 6750 / 7125
  • Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 3000 / 789 s / 3.8
  • Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 155 / 0.704 / 11875000 / 11.6 s
  • Drones (bandwidth / bay): 50 / 50
  • Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 55km / 200 / 7
  • Sensor strength: 22 Magnetometric
  • Signature radius: 305

• Hurricane Fleet Issue: over its regular version, this ship has 8 high slots, two utility slots, slightly more mobility and fittings, while the role itself doesn’t change. Kind of reminds us of something, but what could that be? Memory must be playing tricks on us.
  • Minmatar Battlecruiser skill bonuses: +5% to medium projectile damage and 5% bonus to medium projectile rate of fire per level
  • Slot layout: 8 H, 4 M, 6 L, 6 turrets, 3 launchers
  • Fittings: 1235 PWG, 420 CPU
  • Defense (shields / armor / hull): 6375 / 6750 / 5250
  • Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 2250 / 592 s / 3.8
  • Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 165 / 0.704 / 12500000 / 12.2 s
  • Drones (bandwidth / bay): 30 / 30
  • Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 50km / 220 / 6
  • Sensor strength: 20 Ladar
  • Signature radius: 250

The new Navy Battlecruisers will be available from:

• Regular corporation LP stores, 1 run blueprint offer: 250,000 LPs plus 100 million ISK for 1 run blueprint copy (BPC)
• Regular corporation LP stores, built ship offer: 300,000 LPs plus 1x built tech1 Battlecruiser plus two cruiser sized Nexus Chips
• FW Loyalty Point stores, 1 run blueprint offer: for 125,000 LPs plus 10m ISK for 1 run BPC
• FW Loyalty Point Stores, built ship offer: 125,000 LPs plus 1x built tech1 Battlecruiser plus two cruiser sized Nexus Chips

Click to enlarge

If you would like to know more, exact details will be posted for review in the Features & Ideas Discussion section of the forums as soon as possible.

Navy battleships

As the Tiericide locomotive is rolling through the various ship groups it’s now up to tech1 battleships to be put under the microscope – we don’t have accurate details yet, but expect changes to be announced on the proper section of the forum shortly as they are planned for Odyssey.

However, let’s not drift away from the theme of this blog. As a special-sized free one-kind-of-a-deal package bonus, navy variations of regular battleships are going to be looked at as well in the near future. If not released for Odyssey, to be delivered soon after: please remember that none of this is set in stone yet and subject to change before release depending on circumstances.

We do hope this sate your appetite for now – and if you are starving for more, keep an eye open for our Fanfest ship balancing presentation as well, as that’s sure going to be a juicy meal.

Time flies - it has almost been one year already since our first Dev Blog on the rebalancing initiative, and much has happened since then. The balancing team, extended with the addition of CCP Fozzie, the machine sent from the future to kill Sarah Connor, and soon to be joined by someone else you guys know about, has so far tackled tech 1 Frigates, Destroyers and Cruisers. With Battlecruiser changes planned for Retribution 1.1 time has come to purge the ship skill requirements with fire as we promised a while back.

Since the changes have far-reaching consequences, this blog will go into as much detail as possible to make sure everyone understands exactly why, how and when this is happening. So, take your time reading it and don’t hesitate to spread the news; copy then paste it in your corporation forums. Discuss it in-game, or on your favorite social communication tool. Print it in your local newspaper and announce the apocalypse is coming. You can even tell your mom about it.

In A Land Far Far Away

Before we take the red pill and go down the rabbit hole, let’s explain why we are overhauling a system that seemingly works fine.

Above is a simplified view of the current EVE Online ship progression tree for one Empire Race (we will use Amarr as an example here) plus mining ships most often associated with the ORE (Outer Ring Excavations) corporation. There are several things we do not like about this tree.

First, ship progression is not consistent. We have racial spaceship command skills (like Amarr Frigate, Amarr Cruiser, Amarr Battleship) mixed with generic skills (Destroyers and Battlecruisers). This creates unneeded complexity, as to define who can fly a Prophecy for instance, you thus need Amarr Cruisers 3 on top of the Battlecruisers skill, while the Prophecy bonus amount itself will still be linked from the Battlecruisers skill itself.

This problem is amplified on the tech 2 level. To fly a Damnation (and without counting the other requirements), one not only needs Battlecruisers at 5, but Amarr Cruiser at 5. This issue exists in the first place because Destroyers and Battlecruisers ship classes were added after the original release in the Exodus expansion, and had to be integrated in a way not to disrupt training at that time. The multiplication of ship hulls since then no longer makes it a viable option to maintain.

Another point we are not fond of is the over-redundant training needed for specialization. Still looking at the tree above, some tech 2 ships require sets of skills that are not relevant to the hull you are specializing into. Notorious example is the Absolution, the Amarr Field Command Ship, with forces training of Heavy Assault Ships, itself demanding Assault Ships to be learned. While we are fine with time sinks, they should be related to the field you are specializing into and not push you into hulls you are not interested in.

Less apparent on the tree above, there also is a lack of transparency on specialized modules tied to a given ship niche. Let’s take the Heretic, for instance. Among other things, it requires the training of Interdictors 1, Destroyers 5 and Amarr Frigate 5, for a total training time that approximates 40 days – (without counting any support skill). It seems alright for a ship of this size and role. However, the trap lies that 30 more days are required to use an Interdiction Sphere Launcher. Of course, a smart player should notice the module from the ship description and react accordingly, but the point remains that the training time on the show info is misleading.

At the end of the road

So, where does that bring us? To the revamped tree below that we want to achieve Summer 2013. This will require some significant modifications on training requirements.

Destroyers and Battlecruisers skill are going to be split up into four racial versions each. We announced this last year and there is nothing new about it. The Destroyers skill will be removed from the game and replaced with Amarr Destroyer, Caldari Destroyer, Gallente Destroyer, Minmatar Destroyer. Same with the Battlecruisers skill, being removed and swapped with Amarr Battlecruiser, Caldari Battlecruiser, Gallente Battlecruiser and Minmatar Battlecruiser. The new skills will have the same ranks and attributes than the old generic ones. Reimbursement will be given to all players that meet all requirements to fly tech 1 Destroyers and Battlecruisers (more details on the last section of this blog).

The new racial Destroyer and Battlecruiser skills will be set as requirements to train larger ship classes. To compensate for the extra training steps, all prerequisites to hop into the next, larger tech 1 hull will be reduced from 4 to 3. To train Amarr Battleship at level1 right now, one has to train Amarr Frigate and Cruiser to 4, plus a few levels in Spaceship Command. After the change the same person will need to train Amarr Frigate 3, Amarr Destroyer 3, Amarr Cruiser 3 and Amarr Battlecruiser 3 (plus a few levels in Spaceship Command, still) before being able to reach Amarr Battleships.

On the same vein as above, requirements to train capital hulls will only require battleship 3 instead of 5. Simply put, aiming for tech 1 hulls should not require training the previous class skill to 5, which is specialization, thus dedicated to tech 2 vessels. We are changing skill requirements to keep a training time close to what we have in game right now and to make sure players meet more relevant prerequisites when gearing for Capital Ships. This also means it will be easier for Capital pilots to cross-train to other races which we believe to be a good point.

All tech 2 ships requiring skill training conditions from other tech 2 ships will be cut. Again we will adjust other skill requirements to keep a close training time with what we have now. In practice it means that Heavy Assault Ships, Recon Ships, Command Ships can now be trained without first going for Assault Ships, Covert Ops, Logistics or Heavy Assault Ships.

Ship skill training has been further adjusted when necessary to include specialized module requirements. This is the case for Interdictors, Heavy Interdictors and Command Ships in particular. This also applies to Capital Ships, as you will see from the skill changes with Dreadnoughts, Carriers, Suppercarriers and Titans.

The ORE branch (Venture, Noctis, Orca, Rorqual plus all mining barge variations) has been tweaked to a consistent progression. For instance, the Rorqual will not need Mining Barges 5 to be flown anymore, but will instead require the Industrial Command Ship skill at 3, itself requiring ORE Industrial at 3.

Assault Ships, Heavy Assault Ships and Heavy Interdictors classes are going to be renamed to Assault Frigates, Heavy Assault Cruisers and Heavy Interdiction Cruisers. That is because with the training connection cut, we don't want to lure players into believing that some tech 2 hulls are linked in skill anymore. Besides, that is how you call them anyway, right?

What are the impacts of all of this?

• Cross-racial training will be slowed down for sub-capitals, as a pilot will now have racial Destroyers and Battlecruiser skills.
• However, since prerequisites have been lowered from 4 to 3 to hop into the next class, reaching a ship size you interested into will be faster. While this doesn’t mean much on its own as you need support skills to be effective, it follows ship balancing motto that no vessel in EVE should override another in role, or required another to be mastered to unlock it.
• Cross-racial training will be faster for Capital Ships, so you can more quickly adapt to your corporation / alliance fleet policy when you reach that level.
• Tech 2 specialization will be faster, or at least have more related skills. Training for a tech 2 hull requirement will give you skills you need to fly the vessel you aim for instead of being unrelated time-sinks.
• The ORE ship progression will no longer be inconsistent and will offer two paths of progression: mining hulls with the Venture, then the Mining Barges, or industrial support vessels with the Noctis, Orca and Rorqual. As a side-effect, the Orca will be significantly easier to train for.

Skill changes under the microscope

Except for the Navy Battleships, Destroyers and Battlecruisers (whose reimbursement is detailed in the next part) all the affected ships will still be flyable even after the change with no fancy reimbursement, provided you can fly them on Tranquility right now. This works because once a particular skill is trained, the system doesn’t care about sub-requirements anymore. Theoretical and unlikely example: you have Amarr Battleship 1 and Amarr Cruiser 3 currently trained. You are pod-killed without having a proper clone, and Amarr Cruiser 3 is reduced to 2. You will still be able to fly the Armageddon, as long as Amarr Battleship 1 is retained.

To clearly illustrate the changes, we will be using two characters (with minimal skills and 20 in all attributes, except for Charisma at 19, no implants) to compare how training time is affected in game.

Rookie ships:

• Removing racial frigate as a requirement. We now only keep Spaceship Command 1.

Navy Frigates:

• Decreasing Racial Frigate level from 3 to 2.

Destroyers:

• Splitting the Destroyers skill into 4 racial variants (Amarr Destroyer, Caldari Destroyer, Gallente Destroyer, Minmatar Destroyer).
• All these new skillbooks will have the same training attributes, rank and cost as the previous generic Destroyers skill.
• Racial Frigate level 3 requirement moved as a prerequisite to train the Racial Destroyer skill.
• Spaceship Command requirement for the Racial Destroyer reduced from 3 to 1.

Cruisers:

• Spaceship Command requirement decreased from 3 to 2 on all cruiser skills
• All racial cruiser skills now require respective racial Destroyer skill at 3 instead of racial frigate at 4

Navy Cruisers:

• Decreasing Racial Cruiser skill from level 3-4 to 2

Battlecruisers:

• Splitting the Battlecruisers skill into 4 racial variants (Amarr Battlecruiser, Caldari Battlecruiser, Gallente Battlecruiser, Minmatar Battlecruiser)
• All these new skillbooks will have the same training attributes, rank and cost than the previous generic Battlecruisers skill
• Oracle, Naga, Talos and Tornado racial Battlecruiser requirements reduced from 3 to 1 as part of the Tiericide initiative
• Racial Cruiser level3 requirements moved as a prerequisite for the racial Battlecruiser skill
• Spaceship Command requirement reduced from 4 to 3

Battleships:

• All racial Battleship skill requirements have been reduced from 1-3 to level1, depending on their former tier position.
• All racial Battleship skills now require Racial Battlecruiser at 3 instead of Racial Cruiser at 4

Navy Battleships:

• Increasing requirement to fly Navy Battleships previously known as Tier 1 (Armageddon Navy Issue, Scorpion Navy Issue, Dominix Navy Issue, Typhoon Fleet Issue) from level1 to level2 to make it consistent with other navy ships. Since the training from level1 to level2 only takes a few hours, we will not adjust your Racial Battleship level. Please make sure you train it before the change if you still wish to be able to fly Navy Battleships.

Carriers and Supercarriers:

• Racial Carrier requirements on the Aeon, Wyvern, Nyx and Hel have been reduced from 3 to 1
• Capital Ships requirement on all Carriers and Supercarriers increased from 3 to 4
• All racial Battleship requirements on Carriers and Supercarriers reduced from 5 to 3
• Adding the Jump Fuel Conservation skill at 4 as prerequisite
• Adding the Jump Drive Calibration skill at 3 as prerequisite (which itself requires the Jump Drive Operation skill trained at 5)

Dreadnoughts:

• All racial Battleship requirements on Dreadnoughts reduced from 5 to 3
• Capital Ships requirement on all Dreadnoughts increased from 1 to 3
• Adding the Tactical Weapon Reconfiguration skill at 1 as prerequisite (requires Advanced Weapon Upgrades at 5)

Titans

• All racial Battleship requirements on Titans reduced from 5 to 3
• Adding the Jump Portal Generation skill at 1 as requirement (which itself requires the Jump Drive Operation skill trained at 5)

Electronic Attack Ships

• Swapping the Electronic Upgrades 5 skill with Long Range Targeting 5

Interdictors

• Racial Frigate 5 requirement swapped for racial Destroyer 5
• Generic old Destroyer skill removed from the Interdictor skill
• Interceptor requirement removed from the Interdictor skill
• Graviton Physics 1 added as skill requirement in the Interdictor skill
• Propulsion Jamming 5 added as skill requirement in the Interdictor skill

Heavy Assault Ships

• Assault Ships requirement removed from the Heavy Assault Ship skill
• Energy Grid Upgrades 5 added as skill requirement of the Assault Ship skill
• Energy Management 4 added as skill requirement of the Assault Ship skill

Recon Ships

• Covert Ops requirement removed from the Recon Ships skill
• Cloaking 4 added as skill requirement of the Recon Ships skill
• Electronic Upgrades 5 added as skill requirement of the Recon Ships skill

Heavy Interdictors

• Weapon Upgrades removed from the Heavy Interdictor skill
• Graviton Physics 4 added as skill requirement of the Heavy Interdictor skill

Command Ships

• Racial Cruiser 5 requirement swapped for racial Battlecruiser 5
• Generic and old Battlecruiser skill removed from the Command Ship skill
• Heavy Assault Ships skill requirement removed from Field Command Ships (Absolution, Nighthawk, Astarte, Sleipnir)
• Logistics skill requirement removed from Fleet Command Ships (Damnation, Vulture, Eos, Claymore)
• Information Warfare 5 skill added as requirement for the Command Ship skill
• Armored Warfare 5 skill added as requirement for the Command Ship skill
• Siege Warfare 5 skill added as requirement for the Command Ship skill
• Skirmish Warfare 5 skill added as requirement for the Command Ship skill

Industrials

• All ship skill requirements reduced from 1-5 to 1. We want to overhaul Industrials roles as part of the Tiericide initiative and this is the first step in that direction. Watch out for more details when they are ready for player feedback.
• Racial Frigate skill requirement removed from the Industrial skill

Freighters

• Now requires Advanced Spaceship Command 5 instead of 1
• Racial Industrial skill requirement reduced from 5 to 3

Mining Barges

• Mining Frigate 3 skill added as a requirement of the Mining Barge skill

Industrial Command Ship

• Mining barge skill requirement removed
• Adding ORE Industrial 3 as requirement

Capital Industrial Ship

• Mining barge skill requirement removed from the Capital Industrial Ship skill
• Industrial Command Ship 3 skill added as a requirement of the Capital Industrial Ship skill
• Industrial Reconfiguration 1 skill added as a requirement of the Capital Industrial Ship skill

All the other vessels not listed here (shuttles, frigates, Interceptors, Assault Ships, Covert Ops, Logistics, Strategic Cruisers, Black Ops, Marauders, Pirate Frigates, Pirate Cruisers, Pirate Battleships, Pirate Supercarrier, Transport Ships, Jump Freighters, Mining Frigate, Ore Industrial, Exhumers) are not directly affected by the skill modifications, although this may create prerequisite changes in nested requirements. For instance, Marauders require Battleship at 5, whose own requirements are changing.

Destroyers and Battlecruisers, please fill your reimbursement form

That was for the easy part. As mentioned above, since we are splitting Destroyers and Battlecruisers skills in four, we need to make sure we reimburse those properly to follow the motto of “if you could fly it before, you can fly it now” that we have been stating for quite a while now.

To understand how we are going to proceed, it’s wiser to have a look at current ship requirement themselves.

At the moment on Tranquility, the Prophecy requires two skills to fly: Amarr Cruiser 3 and Battlecruiser 1. Thus, if you have these two skills when the change happens, we will give you Amarr Battlecruiser 1. Simple so far.

The trick is to remember that the Prophecy bonuses are based on the Battlecruiser skill. Thus, if you want to maximize the reimbursement, training Amarr Cruiser past 3 will do you little good. Aim for Battlecruisers 5 instead, as you will then get Amarr Battlecruiser 5.

It is noteworthy to point out that if you don’t have a racial Cruiser at 3, then you won’t receive the corresponding racial Battlecruiser skill. It is thus worthwhile to train all Racial Cruiser skill at 3, then focus on maximizing Battlecruisers before the reimbursement happens.

Since we are also in the process of removing tiers, the Oracle, Naga, Talos and Tornado skill requirements will be dropped from 3 to 1, so you don’t even need to go past Battlecruisers 1 if you wish to fly them after the reimbursement.

Still following? Good, now applies everything we have said before to Destroyers, you just need to replace racial Cruiser with racial Frigate instead.

In case you wonder, the skill reimbursement also includes:

• Removal and refund of all Destroyers and Battlecruisers skill books at the NPC order price.
• Partial skill training will be properly be saved and duplicated. If you are halfway between Destroyers 3 and 4 when the change hits, your progress will be properly copied to all the racial Destroyer skills you are eligible for.
• If, for some odd reason, you have Destroyers and/or Battlecruisers skills, but have no Racial Frigate/Cruiser 3 at all, then the skill points will be moved in the free allocation pool when the old skills are removed.
• Skill queues having Destroyer and/or Battlecruiser in-training will be paused at the time of the change. If you expect to be away for a long time when the reimbursement hits, please make sure you don’t train either of these skills.

However, we will not adjust clone level if the refund causes your total skill points to go above your current clone capacity. If you have Destroyer and Battlecruiser 5 trained, you should account for approximately 6.2 additional million skill points, thus we highly suggest you think about upgrading your clone accordingly, especially if you plan on going into hostile or remote space.

Sealing the deal

All of this will happen for the Summer 2013 expansion. That’s a lot to take on, which is why we wanted to give you as much of an advance notice as possible so you can react accordingly. We do hope this will clear any confusion on the matter – all of this is final and should not change at this point.

 

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The tiericide locomotive is well on track so far. Retribution ship changes are already packed and ready to be delivered to your personal fireplace on December, the 4^th.

With the bulk of our work out of the way though, this begs the question, what are we going to do now with all that precious free time? Eat marshmallows on the CCP office balcony? Impossible, it’s snowing outside. Break CCP Fozzie’s fingers with the Nerfbat™? Already done. Fondly trim CCP Unifex’s hairs while singing dirty French limericks? No can do, he is desperately and irrevocably bald.

Well, guess that leaves us no choice but to move forward with future balancing plan then. Let’s assume 2012 is not the end of the world, the universe and all things we hold dear, and let’s take a peek into what we want to start tweaking next year.

Battlecruiser operational

Yes comrades, battlecruisers are indeed next to get through the tiericide revolution. Let’s face it, they had it coming, as current tier 2 variations perform too well while tier1s are found wanting. With this in mind, the plan is to adjust total slot layout to 17 on all of them and split them into two categories depending on their expected role.

First, the attack version; they favor speed and damage over resilience, which fits the current tier 3 battlecruisers extremely well.

• Oracle, Naga, Talos and Tornado: are mostly fine, except for the mobility which is a little too high, and signature radius, which could be increased a bit. Apart from this, little needs to change.

Second, the combat flavor, which follows in the footsteps of the frigate and cruiser variants – made for front line duty, they have a good balance of firepower and resilience.

• Prophecy: expected to be changed to a drone boat. This is a role revamp that will radically modify its slot and fitting layout. It will most likely have less bandwidth but more drone bay than the Myrmidon.
• Ferox: we would like to reinforce the sniping nature of this ship, most likely by replacing the shield resistance bonus with a hybrid damage bonus. Nothing is set in stone yet, as we need to find ways to ensure it doesn’t compete with the Naga.
• Brutix: this ship role conflicts a bit with the Talos, mainly because the latter is more mobile and packs more punch. We want to explore options on how to turn the Brutix into a more reliable close-range brawler, while the Talos keeps a kiting advantage.
• Cyclone: ancillary shield boosters have significantly improved this ship performance; however, it won’t hurt to make sure it’s in a good shape before moving on.
• Harbinger: assuming direct control. Problems on this ship are tied with the shield versus armor tanking issues, which need to be looked at.
• Drake: once again, blame the modules, not the hull – while missiles are being looked into by CCP Fozzie, shield tanking is the root of the problem here.
• Myrmidon: this vessel is mainly fine, but it couldn’t hurt giving it a bit more drone bandwidth and bay to make it more of an improvement when compared to the Vexor.
• Hurricane: counting CCP Fozzie’s adjustment to its fitting, the cruiser boost should reduce its over-the-top versatility, especially if battlecruisers slot layout is altered to 17 as mentioned above.

That’s the big lines for battlecruisers. As usual, your voice will be heard through feedback threads posted on the proper forum sub-section when the time is right. It is also worth noting that we will adjust ship mineral requirements as we continue with the rebalancing.

You sunk my battleship

Next on the ship rebalancing queue, battleships suffer the least from the current “tier” system, and most of them are fairly well balanced. However, some still require a little face lift, since we are one year into the future and we have the technology.

As usual, we would like to keep up with the ship line classification we have been using for frigate, destroyer and cruisers so far. This is not designed to arbitrarily pigeon-hole vessels into narrow roles, but to provide a basic line of operation for anyone to understand and follow through. The ship role and purpose on the battlefield will still greatly be influenced by the choice of modules, rigs and ammunitions you make.

First, let’s have a look at the disruption line, which only has one ship so far:

• Scorpion: fine at the moment, it dies fast in fleet of course, but that’s what the ECM role brings to the hull anyway.

Then, we have attack battleships, where most of the changes will be:

• Armageddon: this ship is performing well at the time being, and thus we have little reason to alter it.
• Megathron: just like the Thorax on the cruiser level, the Megathron role will be changed slightly to make it less resilient, but more mobile so to make proper use of blasters. Think of it as a ship closer to the Typhoon in terms of speed and agility. Next to a Talos, it will be more durable, more flexible, but still cumbersome to have in small gangs.
• Typhoon: this vessel is very good when you possess all skills on earth and beyond trained to 5 – for being a jack of all trades, it has nothing really going for it. That is why we would like to change its role to a missile platform. Next to the Raven, it would have less range, but more mobility for more close range in your face damage.

And finally, combat vessels. They share the same functions as explained for battlecruisers above, so without further delay:

• Apocalypse: is behaving well at the moment, so there is little point in changing it.
• Raven: the king of the hill lost its throne a while back. That’s mainly due to cruise missiles being terrible in most situations, and torpedoes not always being usable with a slow, cumbersome hull.
•  Dominix: still remains a popular ship. It is fairly good, except for the drone mechanics themselves, which are terribly outdated. While we are not certain when this can be tackled, it definitely has high priority on our to-do list.
• Tempest: we are mostly fine with it at the moment, no major change planned.
• Abbadon: a nice ship with fine purpose in fleets and large gangs.
• Rokh: is also all good, very competitive with the Abbadon
• Hyperion: the hull could be improved, but again most of the issues come from passive versus active tanking problems
• Maelstorm: has a good role as well, no need for major changes

Again, mineral requirements are most likely to be tweaked as we go through the balancing process. Below you can see how all tech1 ships come together with the new tiericide overhaul.

Click to enlarge

I love it when a plan comes together

As announced at the beginning of the year, skill requirements will be modified when we are done overhauling tech1 battlecruisers and battleships. This consists of:

• Breaking Destroyers and Battlecruisers skills into four racial versions with an identical training multiplier (thus making it four times harder to get all races trained)
• Changing skill requirements for Racial Cruisers from Racial Frigates 4 to Racial Destroyers 4
• Changing skill requirements for Racial Battleships from Racial Cruisers 4 to Racial Battlecruisers 4
• Changing skill requirements for capital ships from Racial Battleships 5 to 4, but introducing or increasing other skills to keep the same overall training time requirements

We are doing this for two reasons:

• Make ship progression more consistent over all sizes, instead of having a mix of racial and generic skills
• Allowing for faster tech2 specialization, and slower multi-racial diversification. In EVE Online, while you as a new player will never catch up with the total amount of skill points a veteran has, you can still be on the same level by specializing. This is precisely what we want to promote here. For instance, currently one needs Amarr Cruiser and Battlecruisers 5 to fly an Absolution, after the change the same pilot will only need Amarr Battlecruisers 5 (on top of the other skill requirements).

Reimbursement details:

• Let us repeat again: if you could fly it before, you will be able to do so after the change. Technically it means if you are able to fly an Oracle by having Amarr Cruisers 3 and Battlecruisers 3, we will remove the Battlecruisers skill from your character and give you Amarr Battlecruisers at 3. If you had Battlecruisers at 3 and Caldari Cruisers 3 instead, you would not receive Amarr Battlecruisers but the Caldari Battlecruisers skill at 3 instead. The same principle work with the Destroyers skill.
• With the way nested skill requirements work in EVE, it also means that you will still be able to fly an Apocalypse even if you don’t have the Amarr Battlecruiser skill trained at 4 after the change. It won’t matter as long as you have the Amarr Battleship skill at the proper level.

With this in mind, it becomes quite obvious to focus on training the Destroyers and Battlecruisers skills before the change to get the maximum return effect. We highly recommend you start doing so now.

Command and conquer

When we're finished with tech 1 hulls we are going to start looking into more advanced roles, starting with Command ships. They are seriously lacking at the moment for two reasons: first, regular tier 2 battlecruisers mostly fill the same combat role for less expensive operational costs, and second, tech 3 hulls are just plain better at gang link boosting.

Our goal is to make them appealing to fly as a whole, not something you keep inside a POS forcefield while watching your favorite TV show. For this reason, we want:

• Tech 3 ships to be able to carry more gang links at once than Command Ships, but with less effect
• Tech 3 ships to be able to carry some gang links while still maintaining some combat capability
• Command Ships to carry fewer types of gang links than Tech 3, but with stronger effects (specialization over generalization) - if fitted with gang links, they have less combat capability than Tech3 hulls.
• All Command Ships to have a combat role on the field on top of having the possibility to be fit for a pure fleet commanding platform.

What does that mean in practice? We are removing the distinction between “fleet” and “field” Command Ships. All of them will now have 3% bonuses to two Warfare Link fields and be able to fit three warfare link modules simultaneously (instead of 3 for fleet versions only). That also means that the previous fleet Command Ships will be rebalanced to fit combat roles. Want to use an Eos as a truly effective drone ship? You can. Or the Damnation as a sexy Khanid missile platform beast? Be our guest. All that matters is the specialization choices you make before undocking by deciding to fit gang links or not, not something forced to you from the arbitrary "field" versus "fleet" hull.

Tech 3 treatment will focus on making them more generalized. Their Warfare Link bonuses will be reduced from 5% to 2% effectiveness; however they will have bonuses to three racial Warfare Link fields while being able to fit three Warfare Link modules simultaneously.

As a side note, as we announced a while ago, we are not pleased by having Warfare Links work outside the battlefield zone, and will be investigating options to move them on grid. Command and Tech3 ships providing that much of an advantage should commit to an engagement instead of being safely parked inside a POS bubble.

Here is a picture summarizing the text below as a tl;dr version:

Click to enlarge

Well that’s pretty much it for now, remember this is just a vision for the beginning of 2013 and as such, not final. We have more balancing changes to be planned and released, so keep your eyes peeled for updates.

Hope that helped and many thanks for your time!