Vendetta Online 1.8.199

VO 1.8.199 includes:- Bots no longer drop cargo if they are not damaged at all by players. If a player damages a bot but does not destroy it, cargo is still dropped.- Nation choices are now randomized in the Character Creation menu.- Added support for Android devices with PowerVR graphics.- Further reduced raw materials needed to manufacture the Trident.- Trident Type M cargo expanded to 600cu. - Mass of Fused Composite Plating significantly reduced.Bot Drops - We had developed a bit of an issue with people "farming" bot drops by having NPCs fight one another, and keeping the sector artificially "alive" by flying out into the distance. This was both troublesome for my ability to create rare drops that couldn't easily be farmed, as well as a load on the server (some of these NPC battles are pretty intensive, meaning server resources are being used where no one is actually playing).Thus, the solution was to have bots only drop items when they have sustained damage from a player character. We didn't do that originally, in the interest of maintaining a kind of "equality" between PC and NPC characters, but it really wasn't worthwhile given the later tradeoffs. Trident Changes - Hopefully this will make the tridents more easily constructable. We are planning more capship changes, but all development has to be juggled by immediate priority. To get a more complete list of what changed in the Trident Type M build tree, see this Suggestions Forum thread.PowerVR support on Android - This is a big deal, and has been a long time coming. We had to put in quite a bit of work to make this happen, along with support from our friends at Texas Instruments (OMAP CPUs) and Imagination Technologies (PowerVR GPU series). We now support all the major game-capable Android chips, with the exception of ARM's problematic Mali GPU (Galaxy SII, etc), which may work with uncompressed textures. Currently, our official support includes NVIDIA Tegra, Qualcomm Snapdragon and now PowerVR (TI, Samsung). We welcome testing and reports (good or bad) posted to our Android Forum.Happy Thanksgiving! - To all our US-based players, and frankly all our friends everywhere in the world. We have a lot to be thankful for. All the best.This will be the planned "release" for this week (barring major bugs). Some of us have family events on different days, and while we'll still be working, this will probably be it for content changes until next week.

Vendetta Online 1.8.198

VO 1.8.198 includes:- Avalon Torpedoes now do 15,000 damage and require only 60 energy per shot.- Newsposts and Events being no longer marked as 'New' once it is read.- Show Station in Login/PDA menus options for all platforms.- Added graphical enhancements for NVIDIA Tegra 3.- Fixed a condition where depositing credits into a guild bank took the player's credits but didn't deposit the credits into the guild account. Please continue to post feedback about the Avalons and other areas to gameplay to the Suggestions forum. More changes are in the works.

Loyalist of the Year Award Announced



Amarr Empire, New Eden - Each year, PIE Inc. sponsors awards aimed at recognising those who have taken extraordinary steps to further the Amarr Empire over the previous twelve months.

The first of the two awards is the "Amarrian Capsuleer of the Year". This award is limited to pilots of Amarrian, Khanid, or Ni-Kunni descent who have been recognised for having done the most for the Empire. The second award is the "Loyal Servant of the Year". This award recognises the pilot, of any race or descent, who has done the most to further the goals of the Empire.

The nomination process is fairly straightforward. People may make nominations for the appropriate awards as long as they are not nominating any current member of PIE Inc., a member of their current corporation, or themselves. In addition to this, current members of PIE Inc. are not permitted to make nominations.

Admiral Rodj Blake, of PIE Inc., stated how it works: "Although it is PIE who decides upon the winners, we do not nominate them. Therefore, for someone to win, they must have impressed not only PIE but the wider capsuleer community. As such their deed can be held up as an example of what it means to serve the Empire and serve as an inspiration to others who may wish to follow in their footsteps."

Nominations will close on the 3rd of December. At that time, PIE Inc. leadership will take all nominations, reduce them to a list of no more than 6 pilots for each award, and deliver these ballots to the PIE Inc. membership for voting. Admiral Blake said the plan is to announce the winners on the 17th of December.

"The Amarrian Capsuleer of the Year" will be awarded a Navy Issue Apocalypse, while the winner of the "Loyal Servant of the Year" will receive a Navy Issue Omen.

GalNet References

Award Announcements


Are you affected by the events in this article? Do you have information regarding another event in New Eden? If so, please contact us with any information that you may have.

Want to become a news correspondent with IC? We are recruiting.

Loyalist of the Year Award Announced



Amarr Empire, New Eden - Each year, PIE Inc. sponsors awards aimed at recognising those who have taken extraordinary steps to further the Amarr Empire over the previous twelve months.

The first of the two awards is the "Amarrian Capsuleer of the Year". This award is limited to pilots of Amarrian, Khanid, or Ni-Kunni descent who have been recognised for having done the most for the Empire. The second award is the "Loyal Servant of the Year". This award recognises the pilot, of any race or descent, who has done the most to further the goals of the Empire.

The nomination process is fairly straightforward. People may make nominations for the appropriate awards as long as they are not nominating any current member of PIE Inc., a member of their current corporation, or themselves. In addition to this, current members of PIE Inc. are not permitted to make nominations.

Admiral Rodj Blake, of PIE Inc., stated how it works: "Although it is PIE who decides upon the winners, we do not nominate them. Therefore, for someone to win, they must have impressed not only PIE but the wider capsuleer community. As such their deed can be held up as an example of what it means to serve the Empire and serve as an inspiration to others who may wish to follow in their footsteps."

Nominations will close on the 3rd of December. At that time, PIE Inc. leadership will take all nominations, reduce them to a list of no more than 6 pilots for each award, and deliver these ballots to the PIE Inc. membership for voting. Admiral Blake said the plan is to announce the winners on the 17th of December.

"The Amarrian Capsuleer of the Year" will be awarded a Navy Issue Apocalypse, while the winner of the "Loyal Servant of the Year" will receive a Navy Issue Omen.

GalNet References

Award Announcements


Are you affected by the events in this article? Do you have information regarding another event in New Eden? If so, please contact us with any information that you may have.

Want to become a news correspondent with IC? We are recruiting.

Vendetta Online 1.8.197

VO 1.8.197 includes:- In non-fogged sectors, other vessels are no longer visible on the sector list beyond 15km. There is no longer "universal knowledge" of all other ships in the sector, regardless of distance. This may continue to be tweaked and adjusted, moving forward.This has been a more technically complex change than we originally anticipated. We tried to drop it in last week, and then had to revert while we sorted out some bugs. So, please let us know if you see any issues with this particular feature.This is also likely to be a feature that comes with some attached controversy. If you'd like to read some of the backstory, check out the five-page 2009 feature-proposal thread on Suggestions (post don't respond to that thread or revive it). Limitations to awareness have always been part of the intended goal here; after all, with limitations comes the ability to alter those limits through various equipment changes, creating a richer and more diverse option selection, as well as making "stealth" tatics more of a possibility.It's also notable that 15km is pretty far, in the game. We definitely have sectors that have things spread across larger areas, but in most "social" cases (like stations), this pretty easily covers the areas where people congregate. 15km is also a lot of ground to cover to "sneak up" on anyone.Also, as a reminder, changes like this should be seen as a first step, not a final and absolute statement. We welcome feedback, as always. We may need to tweak distances, or change things based on sector content (beyond fog-vs-no-fog). Perhaps have major station sectors with larger "ranges" thanks to some radar-enhancing feature of stations, while more far-flung sectors have smaller and more claustrophobic visibility ranges (plus variability due to addons or ships, or grouping with capships, etc). All these things are possible, and should be duly discussed on the Suggestions Forum.

Anti-Sansha Fleets Baited by Pirate Gangs



Sahdil, Domain - 08.11.113 - High bounties placed by CONCORD on invading Sansha vessels are attracting pirate forces seeking to force engagements and loot the wrecks of defenders' expensive and well-appointed ships.

"BTL Pub" and "The Ditanian Fleet" (TDF) are two of the largest anti-Sansha communities operating in high security space, formed around channels that organize full fleets from lone pilots and small groups who want to be more potently involved. Phattecia, a BTL representative, stated that BTL's goal is to allow a "secure channel for shield fleets to rally from, this is our highest priority." TDF is similar, though focused on armour fleets. Their spokesman Carmelos53 said they "allow pilots from all corners... to socialize and fly in relative safety from griefers."

BTL has a banlist of over 1000 known pilots, corporations and alliances and employs moderators to bring a measure of order and security to their channel, while TDF maintains a public mailing list of blacklisted pilots. Such measures have only a limited effectiveness, however, in the face of numerous spies. Ammzi of BTL stressed that the onus is on all pilots to ensure their own safety by "taking corp history of other fleet members and their killboards" into account.

The Skunkworks [SKNK] are one corporation that has come to specialize in baiting the pilots fighting incursions into high security-space engagements. CEO Psychotic Monk said that the best part of his business is "taking joy in knocking the wind out of some smug incursion bears who have, until recently, thought they were perfectly safe." SKNK diplomat Slimy Worm went on to say "We target valuable ships that can't really defend themselves." Recent kills included a Rattlesnake battleship which was lured into a trap by a member of Skunkworks claiming to be under attack. When the Rattlesnake pilot remotely repaired the ship, a gang of Skunkworks-affiliated vessels quickly came down on the Rattlesnake and destroyed it.

Psychotic Monk described the efforts of the incursion-fighters to defend themselves against The Skunkworks and their ilk as "meagre," citing his corporation's killboard which now claims over 40 billion ISK worth in damage dealt in a week, with very few documented losses. Pilots associated with the TDF channel, however, have collected donations to hire mercenaries to deal with The Skunkworks. SKNK claims that their increased operations is a direct response to the war declaration that they have received. Slimy Worm said "We're defending ourselves from [the incursion community] but we don't really need any justification: might is right." It's alleged that The Skunkworks use multiple shell corporations to shield their members and assets - Psychotic Monk himself was flying under a alternate ticker himself at the time he was interviewed.

After a little over a year of engaging Sansha Kuvakei's forces, BTL representatives dismissed The Skunkworks and similar predators as able only to hurt those who don't yet grasp the high security-space Rules of Engagement enforced by CONCORD, while TDF's Carmelos53 stated that "The Skunkworks is just the flavour of the month."

GalNet References

Evelopedia - Incursions
Evelopedia - Criminal Flagging
The Skunkworks Killboard
The Skunkworks War Declaration
BTL Incursion Promotional Footage


Are you affected by the events in this article? Do you have information regarding another event in New Eden? If so, please contact us with any information that you may have.

Want to become a news correspondent with IC? We are recruiting.

Vendetta Online 1.8.196

VO 1.8.196 includes:- Arklan Guardians now have a one-in-ten chance of dropping an Avalon Torpedo launcher. They will eventually be for sale near Deneb as well, or potentially dropped by certain convoys; this is a first step.- All platforms now default to autodock mode. This can be changed in Options -> Game Settings.- Single-player Android tutorial now does autodock.- Miscellaneous UI tweaks for Android version.- Marshall only gives a list of bounties that have logged in within the past year.- Bounties are sorted by number of bounties and then the total bounty price.- Collector bot behaviour in Training sector have been changed to not attack unless being attacked and to not fly away as easily.- Empty bounty news posts now say there were no bounties collected instead of being blank.