Caroline’s Nebula

Last thursday CCP Guard and CCP Mimic hosted episode #3 of the o7 show (which, mind you, is quite amazing and you should definitely check it out), and during that show CCP Seagull told us the name of the January expansion, the Proteus. The guys responsible for the Community website have already prepared a page for the upcoming release, and it’s available here:

proteus-page

Now back to Caroline’s Star. Did you notice the thing in the top left corner, just under words “Proteus 13 Jan”?

carolines-nebula

(original picture is here)

Every supernova leaves a nebula after the explosion. It contains the remains of the exploded star, mostly made of elements heavier than Helium, which were fused during the stellar collapse and subsequent explosion. Mind you, most of the atoms in our very bodies came from a supernova. Anyway, as you can clearly see on the picture, Carolines’ Star, despite its superluminal effects, behaves just like a typical nova: it creates a new nebula.

Caroline’s Nebula

carolines-nebula-t_plus_24

Updated on Dec 19th:

As it turns out, the background on Proteus website is refreshed every day, so it shows how the nebula looks like in game, in real time.

rhea_21gt8YACsq rhea_23sQX8882M rhea_249dDVA3Yy rhea_29D8yVuTc3

Stargate network in Jove space is destroyed

Almost everyone knows the “Caroline’s star”* by now. It’s this bright new star, with a vertical streak, that is visible from every corner of New Eden.

carolines-star

 * the screenshot of the new star was first published on Twitter by Caroline Grace. Both CCP and players quickly adopted “Caroline’s star” as the name for this phenomenon.

But there is more to it than just a few pixels on the sky. It seems that the recent supernova in Jovian space has destroyed almost all stargates in the following regions: A821-A, J7HZ-F and UUA-F4.

Data mining only confirms these findings. When you queried EVE SDE database for Phoebe for jumps between systems in Jove space, you would get 546 jump connections:

SELECT COUNT(*) 
FROM `eve_pho100_dbo`.`mapSolarSystemJumps` 
WHERE `fromRegionID` 
IN ( 10000004, 10000017, 10000019 ) 
546

But now, when you open your map in game and set all jump lines to be shown, you will notice there is no jump connections in Jove space anymore! Also please notice how the epicenter pinpointed by NPCs players in this ingame news item happens to be exactly in the middle of the cleared area.

carolines-star-explosion

Querying Rhea Static Data Export only confirms this:

SELECT COUNT(*) 
FROM `eve_rhe100_dbo`.`mapSolarSystemJumps` 
WHERE `fromRegionID` 
IN ( 10000004, 10000017, 10000019 ) 
32

Warning: wild speculation follows

This answers the question why CCP has removed Jovian graphical assets from the game earlier this year. There are no Jovians left. I am probably safe to say that by now all the Jove are gone!

This also let’s me believe that the whole “Stargate Building” thing shown by CCP Seagull during the last Fanfest will most likely happen in the post-Jovian regions of space. Of course nothing has been confirmed byt the CCP yet.

New Blackbird & Incursus models in Rhea

Hi fellow pilots of EVE! In this post I have gathered screenshots from Singularity which show new and revisited ship models coming in Rhea. If you haven’t read CCP Seagull’s feature dev blog yet, I really recommend you do it now.

The revisited models include Incursus (all variants, both special edition and Tech II) and Blackbird (including Rook and Falcon). Moreover, Onyx and Eagle have been given a tiny facelift to make them look different from the Tech I variant.

While I realy like the new Incursus and it’s Tech II versions (my favourite assault frigate, the Enyo), Blackbird and especially Falcon are IMHO overdone. There is so much antennas sticking out in all different places, that it looks like some kind of satellite instead of a spaceship. What I do like is the ramjet engine, which is opened when the ship goes to warp, giving the whole vessel a mantis-like look. This is of course my own opinion and I hope you guys will like it much more than I do 😉

All the screenshots have been taken on singularity in the new PBR rendering mode, which makes all the reflections and light distribution look way more natural. Amarr ships look especially gorgeous now!

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EVE Online cloaking effect evolution

The constant evolution of EVE is one of the main things that keeps me hooked to it. Today’s post is one of those posts about EVEolution of EVE 🙂

First discovered by those, who frequent Singularity test server, and then officially confirmed by both CCP Seagull and CCP Manifest in dev blog and on YouTube, Cloaking Device effect gets a visual overhaul in Oceanus! This new effects complements warp and jump animations and the recently added warp blink after ship leaves and before it enters the grid. This new cloaking effect looks quite original, but it bears some similarity to Predator’s cloak from Aliens, which was most likely the inspiration for this new shader. Behold:

But did you know this is not the first time CCP attempts to change the cloaking effect?

First time CCP done it was in 2007 when Trinity was still in development. In Trinity CCP has done an immense graphical overhaul. All starships have been redesigned into higher poly models and have been given higher resolution textures. As you know, Cloaking Device icon shows half of the ship visible and the other half cloaked, so the effect introduced in Trinity was obviously trying to reflect that:

Second attempt was in 2009 when Apocrypha was being developed. If you logged on to Singularity to have a look at the then-new Wormhole Space, you could also notice this “Triage” like cloaking effect:

Eventually, both of the above visuals have been rolled back to a simple “vanishing” animation.

I must say the new cloaking effect in Oceanus looks really cool and I hope it stays in the game. It is just as good as visuals in some modern sci-fi series (but please mind the one in EVE is rendered in real time, while the ones on the TV shows have been rendered during visual post-processing).

Kudos (again) to CCP’s art departament!

What’s new in Rubicon 1.3? Status post! (due to popular demand)

darkblad-tweet

Last friday @Darkblad_eve, maintainer of a german fansite schildwall.info, sent me some resources regarding Rubicon 1.3. I couldn’t just ignore it, so here you go: the usual feature compilation for upcoming 1.3 Point Release for Rubicon!

New way of acquiring the Astero, Stratios and Nestor

High demand caused new Sisters of EVE ships to have quite a pricetag. CCP came up with a solution, that will reduce these high prices slightly, boosting Rogue Drones nullsec regions at the same time. Since Rubicon 1.3, Rogue Drones will start dropping nexus chips. It will be possible to turn in said chips at any Sisters of EVE agent for a one-run BPC of either a Nestor, Stratios or Astero. The chips will be called:

  • Rogue Drone 46-X Nexus Chip,
  • Rogue Drone 43-X Nexus Chip
  • Rogue Drone 42-X Nexus Chip

Source:dev forum post

T1 Frigate and Cruiser Balance Pass

Combat Frigates:
The Punisher will now follow the new Amarrian high mass pattern. It will be getting a boost to cap recharge and fitting. Kestrel gets a slight a mobility buff. The Breacher is getting a boost and a nerf at the same time: its missile damage bonus will be changed to Rate of Fire bonus (which means higher dps, but also the need to reload more often). It will also be getting a tad more speed at the cost of agility. The changes to Rifter are however the most significant. Rifter will have its Small Projectile Turret tracking bonus changed to a 10% falloff bonus. Judging by the replies under original post, this change was welcomed by the community.

Support Frigates:
First, the whole class is getting more base cap (but with lower cap recharge) and more speed (with lower agility). CCP’s idea is to reward actual piloting skills. Lowered agility will for sure require more attention when flying support frigs. The Inquisitor is also getting additional mass.

Cruisers:
The Augoror, Maller and Omen are getting their mass increased substanially. Vexor gets a tiny nerf to agility and speed, but gets its mass reduced to comepnsate. Moa will get a bit more shields at the cost of hull, slightly more cap with better recharge and substantially reduced mass. Osprey gets a bit more speed and less mass at the cost of agility. And Caracal? Caracal will loose just a tiny bit of agility.

Source: dev forum post

Mobile Tractor Unit Meta Types

‘Packrat’ Mobile Tractor Unit – best durability
+200% higher sensor strength than the base MTU (affects difficulty of probing)
+25% higher tractor beam velocity than the base MTU
+50% Armor and Shield HP, +33% Hull HP compared to the base MTU

‘Magpie’ Mobile Tractor Unit – best range and tractor speed
+500% higher sensor strength than the base MTU (affects difficulty of probing)
+50% higher tractor beam velocity than the base MTU
+40% higher max tractor beam range than the base MTU

Source: dev forum post

Corporation Member Cap Increase

In Rubicon 1.3 the effect of all four of the Corporation Management skills that affect corp membership limits will be doubled:

Corporation Management will provide +20 members per level.
Megacorp Management will provide +100 members per level.
Empire Control will provide +400 members per level.
Sovereignty will provide +2000 members per level.

Source: dev forum post

Remote Sensor Dampeners and the Celestis

The base optimal range of all damps will be reduced by 16.66% and the damp range bonus on the Celestis will be reduced to 7.5% per level.

Name Old Optimal New Optimal
Remote Sensor Dampener I 30000 25000
Remote Sensor Dampener II 36000 30000
Low Frequency Sensor Suppressor I 34500 28750
Indirect Scanning Dampening Unit I 33000 27500
Kapteyn Sensor Array Inhibitor I 31500 26250
Phased Muon Sensor Disruptor I 36000 30000
‘Broker’ Remote Sensor Dampener I 36000 30000
‘Executive’ Remote Sensor Dampener I 36000 30000
Shadow Serpentis Remote Sensor Dampener 36000 30000

Source: dev forum post

Hull Repair Drones

hull-rep-dronesHull repair modules are the only logistic modules that didn’t have drone counterpart. Since Rubicon 1.3 there will be Hull Repair Drones in Light, Medium and Heavy sizes, and Tech I and Tech II flavours. Their skill requirements will be very similar to Armor Repair Drones, but will be using Remote Hull Repair Systems skill instead of the Remote Armor Repair Systems skill. Other skills required will match other logistic drones. Both Repair Drone Operation skill and Drone Repair Augmentor rigs effect will now be applied to Hull Maintenance Bots just like they do for Armor and Shield drones currently.

  • Light Hull Maintenance Bot I – 6HP restored over 5s
  • Light Hull Maintenance Bot II – 7HP restored over 5s
  • Medium Hull Maintenance Bot I – 12HP restored over 5s
  • Medium Hull Maintenance Bot II – 16HP restored over 5s
  • Heavy Hull Maintenance Bot I – 30HP restored over 5s
  • Heavy Hull Maintenance Bot II – 36HP restored over 5s

Source: dev forum post

New limited edition ships

These have not been officially confirmed by the CCP, neither they are visible on market on Singularity. They have been found in static data dumped from the current Singularity client.

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Yup, those two guristas ships look like this year’s Alliance Tournament prizes.

On 6 of March CCP Xhagen unveiled the secret of the above ships. According to dev-blog, These are ship skins. They have exactly the same stats as normal ship variants, and will come as BPCs. Some will cost LP, some will be sold for AUR. The microtransaction prices should be moderate, at 45 AUR per 1 run frigate BPC and 350 AUR for Battleship. Of course all ships and blueprints can be sold on market for ISK. While many players question AUR payments in itself, these skins seem to be exactly the same as 100 AUR pants. Don’t like them? Ignore them. Like em? Fly skinned ships. By the way, Police Pursuit Comet blueprint will cost 3,000 CONCORD LP and 3,000,000 ISK and will be available in any station with a CONCORD LP store. I can’t wait to fly the Woop Woop Comet!

By the way, if you inspected the link from @Darkblad_eve that I’ve mentioned in the first paragraph, you’ve probably noticed some new clothing coming to game, too. I like the New Eden Open shirts best:

2014.03.02.09.05.59 2014.03.02.09.05.49

Source: Singularity, Dev-blog

TriLambda Features

  • All ore and ice asteroids have received their Shader Model 3 treatment. EVE has just become prettier.
  • V3 doesn’t end there, because Territorial Claim Units have been redon as well. They will correctly display alliance logos, and have fancy activation animations.
  • Remember the Tristan redesign mentioned on last fanfest? Well, Fat Man does look like a fat man now.
  • Linear Lighting, which is supposed to get more details out of ship textures (but for the moment causes them to look a tad darker than usual).

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Source: dev forum post, Singularity

Drone Assist change

As per CCP Rise’s forum post, post Rubicon 1.3 it will only be possible to assist a maximum of 50 drones to one pilot.

Source: dev forum post

Little things by Karkur, Punkturis and Merc

  • Guest Lists:
    • can be viewed in compact mode
    • has a counter to show you how many pilots are in the station
    • can be searched in a similar way to search in hangars
  • You can now assign a label when you add a contact
  • It’s now possible to open more than one Kill Report at a time.
  • Orbital bodies in the Show Info window will now have a more functional right click menu
  • The Directional Scanner has now 2 input fields (km and AU) and a slider for range input. The 3 inputs are connected so when one is changed, the other ones update.
  • The angle slider in the D-scanner as been changed so it’s non-linear and has even steps to make it easier to select the lower angles
  • In chat windows:
    • you can specify words to be filtered out
    • you can specify words to be highlighted
    • highlighted words can always blink the chat tab, even if the channel is set “Blink Off”
  • Right click on booster will now show “Consume” as the topmost option
  • The “Fitting” tab in the Show Info window has been given a bit of a facelift
  • The capacity of the bays of your current ship is now displayed in a bar in the Show Info window (just like resists)

Source: dev forum post

…coming soon in Rubicon Point-Release

With the new year break now over, Rubicon 1.1 is looming closer. If you’ve enjoyed the new deployables in Rubicon, you will certainly like the two new ones coming in this point release!

Rubicon 1.1 will be deployed on January 28th, 2014.

Mobile Micro Jump Unit

  • single use structure
  • can’t be placed:
    • within 20km of gates or stations,
    • within 40km of a starbase tower
    • within 10km of another MJU
  • you have to be in range (within 5000m) to start spool-up
  • spool-up of 12s, skills are not taken into account
  • no cooldown – can immediately use a MJD or another MJU
  • anchor time 60s
  • lifetime 48hr
  • 5k EHP
  • can be used by friends and foes alike
  • 50m3 volume
  • 1M ISK build cost

If it could only be used by friends, it would be a major game changer, but it would also be overpowered a lot. With the approach CCP took, it seems much more balanced. Use cases? Quick spread-out to avoid getting bombed (MJU does not determine the direction of the micro jump). Will also allow a lot of cat & mouse games if you put enough of those around a reinforced tower. And yes, this structure is very similar to an acceleration gate (well, it does not determine the direction, though). Fun to be had!

Mobile Scan Inhibitor

  • single use structure
  • Can’t be placed:
    • within 75km of gates, wormholes or stations,
    • within 40km of control towers
    • within 100km of another scan inhibitor – MSIs can’t cloak each other
  • Hides everything within 30km radius from
    • d-scan
    • combat probes
    • itself it can be probed pretty easily
    • you only know something is hidden, but you don’t know WHAT
  • Ships inside 30km radius of MSI cannot use d-scan o probes
  • anchor time 60s
  • lifetime 1hr
  • 45k EHP
  • 100m3 volume
  • 15M ISK build cost

Again, not a major game changer, but allows to hide fleet composition from dcsan, which can be pretty useful. 30km range means that even if hidden ships are orbiting at 29,5km from the structure, it should be quite easy to catch them. Ceptors, arazus/lachesis’/proteus’ should be able to do that nearly instantly. HICs however would not be able to bubble everything just after dropping, though. Again, it gives a twist, but is not a major game changer.

Ships

More?

Well, if you log in to the Singularity test server, there is even more point-release things to see:

  • Little things by CCP karkur
  • Resists in Show Info are in one row now
  • Redesigned Station models (in space)
  • Redesigned Capital wrecks (WiP)
  • Rendered icons are now part of the patch

More reading: CCP Fozzie forum post, CCP Habakuk forum post

Sisters of EVE Battleship announced: please welcome the ‘Nestor’

Yesterday afternoon CCP Rise has posted the proposed stats for the SoE battleship, the Nestor. For those who expected the first Covert Ops battleship: sorry, not this time. The rumors about Clone Vat Bay turned out to be false as well. The ship has some other traits though, most noticeably its mass, which is about 56% of other Battleships mass. It also has the exploration and hacking bonuses that its smaller siblings have. The initial review is “hmmm… that’s interesting, but…”

Let’s have a look at the tables first

Nestor
SOE_Nestor_Battleship_FinalConcept_lrg
3D webgl preview

Role bonus:

50% bonus to remote repair amount

100% bonus to remote repair range

50% bonus to large energy turret optimal range

50% increased strength for scan probes

+10 virus strength for relic and data analyzers

Amarr Battleship Bonuses:

4% Armor resistances per level

Gallente Battleship Bonuses:

10% drone damage and hitpoints per level

Slot layout: 7/6/6
5 turrets, 0 launcher
Fittings: 11250MW, 680tf
Shields: 8900
Armor: 9950
Hull: 9900
Capacitor: 6200
Cap Recharge: 1044
Max Velocity: 92 m/s
Drone bandwidth: 125
Drone bay: 500
Targeting range: 75 km
Scan Resolution: 85
Max Locked targets: 7
Sensor strength: 24
Signature radius: 465
Cargo capacity: 700

As you can see, it has quite a set of bonuses. We’ve got armor resists, we’ve got drones HP and DPS, we’ve got exploration and hacking and instead of Covert Ops cloak expected by some players, we’ve got 50% to remote armor rep amount. With 4 Large remote reps and 3 cap transfers, Nestor would dwarf Guardian and Oneiros. But there is one issue: Large Remote Armor Reps have slightly over 8km range. Question that is currently open is: will it be better to drop the 50% rep amount bonus for a 100% rep range bonus? Or should it have both? This question is a tough one to answer, because with both bonuses this ship would be seriously overpowered, and better specialized at remote reps than dedicated ship class (Logistics). On the other hand, in it’s current iteration it would be rather vulnerable to bombs.

UPDATE: CCP Rise added 100% remote armor rep bonus. Is this the first ship with 5 role bonuses?

Nestor’s stats also make it a decent PVE boat, rather similar to the Rattlesnake (but the latter can be 100% passively shield tanked). It also seems at least partially useful for Incursions, where crazy remote reps and high resists would be very useful (but to be honest I don’t know if Incursion doctrine is still all around shields, as it used to be when I last played with them. Can anyone shed some light on the current state of affairs?).

It’s going to be expensive

Now let’s have a look at the LP store price tag. It won’t be cheap I’m afraid:

Item Sisters of EVE (hi-sec) The Sanctuary (0.0)
LP cost ISK cost LP cost ISK cost

Nestor BPC (1 run)
Nestor BPC (1 run)
600,000 LP 150,000,000 ISK 400,000 LP 100,000,000 ISK

Nestor pre-built
Nestor pre-built
1,000,000 LP 100,000,000 ISK 800,000 LP 80,000,000 ISK

If we assumed the LP rate for SoE loyalty points at 1,000 ISK / LP (typical exchange ratio), the blueprint-made version would cost around 985M isk, and the pre-built one would be 1,100M (rather cost-ineffective). But that is a very optiomistic scenario. For example, Stratios currently sells for 435M ISK, and takes 120,000LP, 30M ISK and 10M in minerals to produce. That leaves us with 120,000LP = 395M ISK equation, which brings the SoE LP ratio close to 3,291 ISK / LP. Nestor’s initial prices will be counted in billions for sure.

 

nestor-02  nestor-05 nestor-showinfo-traits nestor-showinfo-description

More reading:

Leopard, a Speedy Gonzales variation of Minmatar shuttle

I spent some time today browsing the Static Data Dump (aka Crystal Ball). I was looking for clues about Nestor, the Sisters of EVE unique battleship (CCP has shown two images of it on their Facebook profile).

I found something else entirely:

Leopard-shuttleLooks like a Minmatar Shuttle, right? Well, yeah, almost. It’s slightly darker, but apart from that, it looks just like a regular shuttle.

Description does not shed much light either:

Rumor has it the Leopard originated as a secret project in the Minmatar Republic. In their endless battle against enslavement by the Amarr Empire, the Minmatar have had to develop ways not only to liberate large masses of their people, but also to sneak in and capture individuals of high strategic importance.

These kinds of black ops search-and-rescue missions might be executed for key people who were held by the enemy and possessed either special qualities the resistance needed, or information the Republic couldn’t afford having tortured out of them. It’s notable that these individuals might not all have been Minmatar, and that the resistance movement is unlikely to have restrained itself from using the same methods on key Amarr people they’d captured with the help of the Leopard.

It is an extremely fast ship, meant for quick and stealthy getaways, and while its origins are covered in rumors, chances are the Minmatar leaked it to the capsuleers in order to curry favor with them.

Still following me? At this point I thought there is nothing special about this ship, besides it’s darker skin. And then I looked at the statistics, and I was literally blown away:

Ship warp speed: 20.00 AU/s

 

Damn, that thing is lightning fast! Tech II rigged interceptors (w/o implants) can reach 12,5 AU/s top speed, and this incredibly fast already. This shuttle is still another 50% faster!

I don’t know about you guys, but I definitely want one!

More reading:

EVE Online: Rubicon Status Post

EVE Online: Rubicon
Expansion name: Rubicon
Release date: November 19th, 2013
Expansion theme: Space Colonization, POCOs in high sec, small gang boost, ship rebalancing
Last update of this post: 15.11.2013
Patch notes: Rubicon

Intro

rubiconOn 26th of September CCP has announced the upcoming winter expansion called Rubicon. The deveplopers of EVE have hinted the general direction back on Fanfest, when CCP Seagull spoke about future EVE where capsuleers are not just inhabitants of New Eden. Players are supposed to colonize space, make it their own. Rubicon is probably the first in a series of expansions with space colonization theme.

While the first and most obvious feature that comes to mind is revamp of the POS system, it will not be happening just yet.

Rubicon has been available on Singularity test server since 7th of October 2013. Source: dev forum post.

New character selection screen

login-screen-v2

Click “Continue Reading” to read the whole post.

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Odyssey 1.1 brings back the power of NOS

Odyssey 1.1 will bring back some nice changes to PVP (there is something for industrialists as well). Sadly, it will also increase the minimum hardware requirements for EVE.

While the date of the expansion has not been disclosed yet, dev-blog about HW requirements blog mentions July 10th.

So, what is going to change?

  • Nosferatu modules will use actual cap value instead of percentage to determine if it can leech or not. What does this seemingly simple change mean? Small ships with low base cap will be able to leech bigger ships almost forever. You battleships pilots can expect nasty NOS frig gangs.

    Source:
    Forum post
  • Industrial ships are getting tiericide. As a result, two main roles emerge:
    • speed and tank
    • huge cargo

    Some races (Gallente, Minmatar) had more industrials – these will get specialized cargo bays, for example for PI commodities, ores and gases or ammunition. Battle Badger will now be known as HAM Battle Badger btw.

    Source:
    Forum post
    Updated forum post

  • EVE Online system requirements will be increased: minimum system will be NVIDIA GeForce 8600 or AMD X2600 GPU, and a dual core CPU running at 2.0 GHz

    Source:
    dev-blog