Retribution 1.1 Point Release status post

Expansion name: Retribution 1.1 Point Release
Release date: February 19th, 2013
Expansion theme: Battlecruiser rebalancing, Black Ops boost, Cloaking Device boost, Ancillary Armor Repairer, Armor Plate boost, in-space route map
Last update of this post: 19.02.2013
Patch notes: available
SQLite Database dump: build 473478

Battlecruiser rebalancing

The Spaceship Command skill tree will not be changed until the new Summer Expansion Source: Fozzie’s forum post. Battlecruisers will however get their tiericide treatment very soon. Some ships are getting boosted (former tier one), some are getting nerfed (former tier two) and some are getting adjusted (vide: Myrmidon). Source: yet another Fozzie’s forum post.

PROPHECY:

5% bonus to all Armor Resistances

10% bonus to drone damage and hitpoints

Can fit Warfare Link modules

Slot layout: 5/4/7,
4 turrets, 4 launchers
Fittings: 1100MW, 415tf
Shields: 3000
Armor: 5500
Hull: 4000
Capacitor: 2850
Cap Recharge: 750s
Max Velocity: 150 m/s
Drone bandwidth: 75
Drone bay: 225
Targeting range: 50km
Scan Resolution: 210
Max Locked targets: 6
Sensor strength: 17
Signature radius: 270
Cargo capacity: 400

FEROX:

5% bonus to all Shield Resistances

10% bonus to Medium Hybrid Turret optimal range

Can fit Warfare Link modules

Slot layout: 8/5/4,
7 turrets
Fittings: 1250MW, 510tf
Shields: 5000
Armor: 3500
Hull: 4000
Capacitor: 2750
Cap Recharge: 723s
Max Velocity: 140 m/s
Drone bandwidth: 25
Drone bay: 25
Targeting range: 65km
Scan Resolution: 195
Max Locked targets: 8
Sensor strength: 19
Signature radius: 295
Cargo capacity: 475

BRUTIX:

10% bonus to Medium Hybrid Turret damage

7.5% bonus to Armor Repairer effectiveness

Can fit Warfare Link modules

Slot layout: 7/4/6,
6 turrets
Fittings: 1125MW, 435tf
Shields: 3500
Armor: 4500
Hull: 4750
Capacitor: 3000
Cap Recharge: 789s
Max Velocity: 155 m/s
Drone bandwidth: 50
Drone bay: 50
Targeting range: 55km
Scan Resolution: 200
Max Locked targets: 7
Sensor strength: 18
Signature radius: 305
Cargo capacity: 475

CYCLONE:

5% to Heavy and Heavy Assault Missile rate of fire

7.5% bonus to shield boosting amount

Can fit Warfare Link modules

Slot layout: 7/5/5,
2 turrets, 5 launchers
Fittings: 1100MW, 525tf
Shields: 5000
Armor: 3750
Hull: 3750
Capacitor: 2850
Cap Recharge: 750s
Max Velocity: 165 m/s
Drone bandwidth: 50
Drone bay: 50
Targeting range: 45km
Scan Resolution: 220
Max Locked targets: 6
Sensor strength: 17
Signature radius: 250
Cargo capacity: 450

HARBINGER:

10% bonus to Medium Energy Turret Damage

10% bonus Medium Energy Turret capacitor use

Can fit Warfare Link modules

Slot layout: 7/4/6,
6 turrets
Fittings: 1425MW, 375tf
Shields: 3000
Armor: 5000
Hull: 4500
Capacitor: 3125
Cap Recharge: 822s
Max Velocity: 150 m/s
Drone bandwidth: 50
Drone bay: 75
Targeting range: 55km
Scan Resolution: 210
Max Locked targets: 6
Sensor strength: 17
Signature radius: 270
Cargo capacity: 375

DRAKE:

5% bonus to all Shield Resistances

10% bonus to heavy and heavy assault missile kinetic damage

Can fit Warfare Link modules

Slot layout: 7/6/4,
6 launchers
Fittings: 800MW, 500tf
Shields: 5250
Armor: 3250
Hull: 3750
Capacitor: 2500
Cap Recharge: 658s
Max Velocity: 140 m/s
Drone bandwidth: 25
Drone bay: 25
Targeting range: 60km
Scan Resolution: 195
Max Locked targets: 8
Sensor strength: 19
Signature radius: 295
Cargo capacity: 450

MYRMIDON:

7.5% bonus to Armor Repairer effectiveness

10% bonus to drone damage and hitpoints

Can fit Warfare Link modules

Slot layout: 5/5/6,
5 turrets
Fittings: 1050MW, 400tf
Shields: 3500
Armor: 4500
Hull: 4750
Capacitor: 2850
Cap Recharge: 750s
Max Velocity: 145 m/s
Drone bandwidth: 100
Drone bay: 200
Targeting range: 55km
Scan Resolution: 200
Max Locked targets: 7
Sensor strength: 18
Signature radius: 305
Cargo capacity: 400

HURRICANE:

5% bonus to Medium Projectile Turret damage

5% bonus to Medium Projectile Turret rate of fire

Can fit Warfare Link modules

Slot layout: 7/4/6,
6 turrets, 3 launchers
Fittings: 1125MW, 400tf
Shields: 4250
Armor: 4500
Hull: 3500
Capacitor: 2250
Cap Recharge: 592s
Max Velocity: 165 m/s
Drone bandwidth: 30
Drone bay: 30
Targeting range: 50km
Scan Resolution: 220
Max Locked targets: 6
Sensor strength: 16
Signature radius: 250
Cargo capacity: 425

From patch notes: “As a part of these changes, extra materials have been added to the build requirements of several Battlecruisers. These extra materials do not return when the ships are reprocessed.”

Similar change hit Mining Barges during their rebalancing. Minerals are simply added as “additional materials”. This is CCPs prefered solution to combat possible speculation as covered in this post about barges. If CCP added the minerals as normal materials, people would simply buy off entire supply of battlecruisers from market now, and then reprocess them post patch to multiply the minerals. Yes, dear players, this is because we are a bunch of smartass opportunists 😉

Black ops boost

Source: Fozzie’s forum post.

All Black Ops battleships will get a boost to jump range, which base will be 3.5 ly (+75% range boost to current 2.0 ly). Fuel bay has been increased to 1250m3 (+25% increase), whereas Jump Portal fuel need has been reduced by 25%. These changes will certainly make Black Ops quite a bit more useful (I was however arguing that black ops were useful already – in this post).

Cloaking device boost

  • CPU need of Covops cloak have been reduced to 100, while coverts, recons and blockade runners get their bonus adjusted to “-20% CPU needed for cloaks per level”.
  • Covert Cynosural Field can now be fitted to any ship that can fit Covert Ops Cloaking Device

Armor tanking changes

Source: Fozzie’s forum post.

Armor Rigs

  • Change the penalty on all active armor rigs (Aux Nano Pump, Nanobot Accelerator, and the new Nanobot Overcharger) to increase the powergrid use of local armor reps by 10% instead of reducing ship velocity. Note this is increasing the PG use of the reps by 10% (or 5% at Armor Rigging V) not decreasing the total PG of the ship.

Plates

  • New skill: Armor Upgrades. This skill reduces the mass penalty of all armor plates by 5% per level. (Int/Mem, rank 3, requires Mechanics 3) This skill affects all plates (including 1600mm)
  • All 800mm, 200mm and 50mm plates mass penalty is reduced by 20%

Armor Reps:

  • Reduce the PG need of all Medium Armor Repair units by 20%
  • Reduce the PG need of all Large Armor Repair units by 10%

Ancillary Armor Repairer

  • When not loaded with Nanite Repair Paste, has 75% repair amount as a T1 Armor Repairer
  • When loaded with Nanite Repair Paste triples rep amount (so reps for a total of  225% a T1 repairer when loaded)
  • Same cycle time and fittings as T1 reps
  • Always uses the same cap as a normal (T1/T2/Named) Armor Repper
  • Small reps use 1 paste per cycle, mediums 5, larges 10. Each holds 8 cycles of paste. Reload time is 1 minute just like an ASB
  • Can only fit one such mod per ship
  • Incursus gets its rep bonus reduced from 10% to 7.5%

Crimewatch 2.1

With the introduction of the new Crimewatch it is now impossible to start a consentful 1 vs 1 by stealing from each others containers. Doing so after the release of Retribution will result in a global Suspect flag, so anyone in the system can legally attack you. To rememdy this, Team Five O has introduced a way to start a consentful duel in high security space by giving you a limited engagement flag against each other. Source: dev-blog.

New limited edition ships

A bunch of new ship makes their way to New Eden. First of them is Society’s of Conscious Thought (Jovian) Gnosissee this post for more details about it.

gnosis gnosis-fitting

Ship stats are available in Data Dump Explorer:

Pirate rookie ships & Faction Destroyers

Ship collectors and market speculators get another set of new toys to play with: pirate rookie ships. It seems that all the ship skins which art departament made during the V3 process will eventually make their way to the game.

violator echo hematos immolator
taipan nefantar-thrasher

Ship stats are available in Data Dump Explorer:

UI changes

  • New Information Panels now show all the system information in a consistent way. Source: dev blog.
    Each panel has three modes: normal, compact and collapsed. Normal mode is the one we are used to and is the most verbose one. Compact mode shows the most important information and the collapsed mode hides the panel completely. Information is still accessible by hovering the mouse cursor above the top row of icons. It is also possible to re-arrange the panels by dragging the icons in the top row.
    It is worth noting, that a Notification Panel will join the existing ones in a further release. It will work in a similar way to Notification Center in Android and iOS, by aggregating all notifications into one configurable list.
    info panels
  • Route displayed on the background stars.
    There is a new autopilot setting “Show route path in space”. When enabled, it will draw the route in space, connecting the stars in the space scene nebula. When you click the screen below you will also notice that the stargate actually connects the system you’re in to the rest of the path.
    heaven-map
  • You can now click Alliance logos to zoom in on them.
  • Skill Points will now be displayed in Medical Window, so you no longer have to open the Character Sheet to know which clone upgrade to buy.
  • Corporation Recruitment process has been further streamlined (source: dev-blog)
  • Applying character has to confirm that they still want to join once their application has been accepted
  • Welcome mail can now be customized, for example to contain TeamSpeak and Corp Wiki addresses.

War changes

  • War history in Corporations and Alliances will be divided into groups
    • Active Wars
    • Factional Wars (active)
    • Pending Wars
    • Finished Wars
  • Allies will not have to wait 24 hours before joining the war – this cooldown will be reduced to 4 hours.
  • Inactive characters are not taken into account when calculating war cost – remember to log on all alts when you get a war dec!
  • Peace after surrender – when one entity surrenders to another, both corporations are forced into 14 days of peace, when no war can be started against each other.

Source: dev-blog by Punkturis

PS. If you find any information inaccurate or out of date, feel free to contact me. This post is meant to be a “by players – for players” source of information.

 

Ship re-balancing makes my recent post outdated

A few hours ago CCP has published a dev-blog about ship balancing changes, which we have already heard before Inferno. TL; DR: all Tech I frigates are getting a specific combat role. This is a change from the tiered ship approach we’ve seen over the past years. Instead of putting ships in tiers, each better than the previous one, Tech I vessels will have specialized roles instead, much like their Tech II counterparts do.

  • Interception: Executioner, Condor, Atron, Slasher. Small, agile ships meant for stopping other ships dead in the water
  • Snipers: Navitas, Bantam, Burst The Navitas will become a drone boat. The Bantam will replace the Merlin as the railgun based sniper. The Burst will most likely become a mobile artillery platform, drone boat or a mix of above.
  • Missile lobbers: Inquisitor, Breacher, Kestrel, Tristan. Offer decent tank and speed.
  • Support exploration frigates: Magnate, Heron, Imicus, Probe. These ships will become even more specialized, with possible bonuses to mini-pofessions like hacking and archaeology.
  • EWAR disruption frigates: Crucifier, Griffin, Maulus, Vigil. Crucifier will be re-shaped to become a miniature Arbitrator. All ships will be specialized in EWAR and combat disruption.
  • Rookie ship boost: with the new looks, rookie ships will become very versatile ships, but not nearly as good as any Tech I frigate.

New ship! It’s one of the things that always make me smile in EVE: new ships. Since Navitas and Bantam will no longer be mining frigates, ORE will introduce an ultra-mobile mining frigate for new miners as well as experienced ones, who are mining in a hostile environment.

The new mining frigate does not have a name yet, but I’m sure CCP will come with something cool, like “Carebearmobile” or “Veldnaught” 😉 I personally vote for “Ius” -> see Ius Primae Noctis.

Barges will not have tiers anymore – instead, they will have a balance between EHP and mining output.

  • Procurer and Skiff will sport battleship-like EHP, but their mining output will be the lowest.
  • Retriever and Mackinaw will have less EHP than the above, but will mine more minerals in each cycle. They will also sport biggest cargoholds.
  • Hulk and Covetor will mine the most, but will have about as much EHP as they do right now, making them most vulnerable.

The EHP boost will also make my post about tanked barges void.

CCP has also mentioned that Barges are getting specialized cargoholds, similar to the ones on Rorqual and Orca.

All this will be coming to Tranquility in the 2012 Winter Expansion.

Do Black Ops really need a fix? (edited)

Players have been voicing their concerns about Black Ops ships being underpowered for quite a while (almost for as long as Black Ops are in game). People complain, that BO are weaker than their Tech I counterparts, have limited jump range and so on. When CCP run the crowdsourcing poll to see what areas of the game need improvement, Black Ops were quite high on the list.

One might wonder, did CCP really just overlook this group in Crucible, or was this intentional? Are Black Ops ships really this ineffective?

The answer is: Not really.

Black Ops are Tech II battleships, which cost as much as a carrier, have on-board jump drive, no targeting delay after decloaking and can bridge other ships into the fray. They are already quite powerful, and the reason why they are not so commonly used is only their price rather than their capabilities. A skilled team of pilots can destroy almost any target by dropping a gang of BO, recons and T3s.

The voice of concerns claim that Black Ops jump range is too short. I say it’s ok. Give them more range, and people begin hot dropping to anywhere in New Eden straight from Jita. Do we really need an unstoppable gang of battleships that are able to deploy instantly almost anywhere in the game?

Others ask for T2 resists, because the ship is too expensive to be paper thin. Au contraire, mes amis: repelling a BO hot drop is already quite hard as it is, and when done properly, no Black Ops losses should happen at all in a fight. In my opinion, the EHP and resists are just fine.

Some players claim, that the DPS is not high enough. Then I ask you this: since when 700 DPS is low for a Battleship? Mind that a covert hot drop might also have some tiny, cloaky, ultra-mobile DPS called Stealth Bombers. Having the element of surprise on your side, you don’t really need a lot of DPS.

The list of complaints contains one more issue: fuel bay capacity. As it is right now, fuel bay capacity is sufficient for ship’s own jump drives, but when it comes to bridging other ships, fuel runs out pretty quickly. IMHO this is the only valid concern and should be looked into. With the current fuel constraints, bridging one recon to the furthest reach of the Black Ops range (4.5 ly) takes as much as a third of the total fuel. Players of EVE are a resourceful bunch, when it comes to adapting, so they just take a Blockade Runner full of isotopes with them just to remedy this issue. In my eyes this should not however be necessary. Either the fuel bay should be increased in capacity, or the amount of fuel required for bridging should be reduced.

And one more thing: if you think the points above are not valid, please see Burn Eden’s killboard. This group has mastered the art of using Black Ops (and other jump capable ships) to perfection.

Edit 1

I will be answering here to let others see my replies as well:

@RockCalledSteve: 700 /is/ low for a battleship. It is, however, perfect for a stealth ship. Also, we don’t want massive range, just 2 extra AU.

Well, 700 dps indeed is not a lot, my Talos can fling about 700 dps over 40km while travelling at 700 m/s. But 700 dps with the element of surprise is… Well, a very nasty surprise.

2 extra lightyears after the Jump Drive Calibration skill is applied, or before? I would vote after the skill, because 6.5 ly gives BO almost regional range. Please mind that Black Ops can be safely deployed from high sec, and capital ships cannot. Increasing jump range makes them even safer to deploy, but yes, this would also allow more tactics.

I know that Sin is the weakest BO, but it was the first one I had the skills for when they were introduced (this is why there is Sin on the screenshots). Nowadays I’m flying a Panther instead.

Edit 2

The reason I have picked up this topic is because I am concerned. This is similar to what happened to Motherships (which are now known as Supercarriers). Players were not using them, because of their pricetag and only slightly better stats than normal Carriers. Community was complaining and CCP listened to these complaints. Result of the buff made Supercarriers the biggest solo pwnmobiles in EVE to the date. Of course, other part of the EVE Community began complaining about SCs being overpowered. Black Ops are very specific flavour of ships and it is very easy to make them too powerful. This in turn will result in nerfbat hitting them sooner or later…

What do You think? Should CCP buff the BO or leave them be? Comments are welcome.