I Suspect Not

Real life has hit hard the last month, and I haven’t had a chance to look at all the Fanfest sessions I wanted to. I did read an article on EVENews24 the other day which had a couple things about the Triglavian sites I had not noticed or been clear on.

http://evenews24.com/2018/04/21/the-triglavian-collective-and-you/

The extra bits:

. You can use T1 Cruisers, not just Faction and T2 cruisers. I suspected so.

. Warping, cloaking, refitting and invulnerable timers are all disabled within pockets. Missed one or two of those.

. If a player dies there will be no way to get the dropped modules back – so no bookmarks and warping back after the site de-spawns. I suspect that is a feature of consequence instead of a game decision. It might be a side effect of whatever they did to ensure no warping directly in or out of the sites.

. Pilots exiting an Abyssal Pocket will emerge with a Suspect time.

Ahhhh… and now the penny drops. A normal suspect timer lasts 15 minutes. It allows any player to attack you without penalty or consequence in any area of space. Given local disappears when you enter these sites, if you don’t have an Alt or friend watching the beacon point, your exit could be blindly into the waiting arms of ambush.

You can tell it is the same people pulling the design strings at CCP.

(** I have not as  yet found the source of the Suspect Flag detail to check for myself.  Black Pedro helpfully commented that it was apparently not as yet set in stone.)

There is still information required to assess the risk of these sites. What sort of ship / bling fit do you need to fly them? Can you run them in cheap throw away hulls that you don’t care if you lose? How do players know there is a beacon in space? Does it come up on the Probe Scanner window as a cosmic signature? Does it come up on the Directional Scanner? Do players looking to gank runners just have to scan down whole systems just in case someone is running one?

I’ll await the answers, but I suspect at this point I won’t bother with the feature. As a solo character there doesn’t seem to be much you can do to mitigate or lower the risk. Funny enough – the least safe place to run these will be in High Sec.  They will be safe enough to run in your null sec pockets with intel channels and friends around.

Fanfest 2018 from afar – Structures

I was glancing through EVENews24’s live blog of the Structure Presentation this morning.

http://evenews24.com/2018/04/14/live-blog-structures-presentation/

I was hoping to avoid watching this presentation when it is made available – because, well, not really Hermit topics.

The summary followed the path I was expecting – what’s been done, some statistics, the road map, what’s coming, the faction outpost conversion, fireworks for structures. None of it particularly relevant to me.

Then there was a slide shown called “Potential Future: Player Forward Operating Bases”. The suggestion was players getting their hands-on pirate-modified Upwell tech for smaller, cheaper, faster deploying structures. They would be considered for short-term use, Wormhole day tripping, expeditions into Low and Null – the sort of thing I’ve been looking for. The “Potential” bit in the title chokes off any real excitement, but this is something I would really like to see and would use. It was something I was doing with Small POS in the past, and felt the current available Structures failed to provide a similar function.

There was also a cryptic slide / comment about the possibility of the Observatory Structure impacting Local Chat. Something a roving Hermit needs to be aware of. And there was also something about what would be happening to the POS related BPO, which I have a collection of.

*Sigh* Looks like I will have to watch the presentation after all.

Fanfest 2018 from afar – Triglavians

The main announcement at EVE Fanfest 2018 was the release of the “Into the Abyss” Expansion on May 29th. In it will be the new PVE content related to the newly found Triglavian Race. There won’t be any images in this post, just bullet points I scribbled down while watching the Keynote and the Triglavian Domain presentations. I may have got some of this wrong.

. The new PVE sites are in Abyssal Deadspace locations
. There are different levels of Abyssal Deadspace (lower are easier, deeper are harder)
. You open a wormhole like portal to the sites using Abyssal Filaments
. Low Level Filaments will be found in Relic Sites
. Deeper Level Filaments will be found in the Low Level Abyssal Deadspaces
. You can use or sell the Filaments
. There was a suggestion you needed new equipment to access the sites. I’m not sure if that is just the Filament, or there is a module that you load the Filament into.
. You can activate the Abyssal Filaments in a location of your choice, including high-sec, aside not being too close to some structures
. It leaves a beacon that can be scanned down
. As yet no one will be able to follow you through the portal
. When you exit the site you will come out at that beacon
. It wasn’t stated, but I assume you will only be able to activate deeper level Filaments in more dangerous areas of space? Otherwise what’s the point of the beacon and being able to be ambushed when you exit? People would otherwise just always activate them in High-Sec.
. You can only enter with Cruisers (T1 Faction or T2)
. There will be no local within the site (increasing risk when you exit)
. It will have a different Camera (limiting range you can zoom out / showing a wider field of view. This will make it look better, but make situational awareness a little more difficult.
. You won’t be able to cloak or warp out. You will have to move forward.
. They are time limited once activated. When a pocket collapses you will be returned to the beacon
. CCP expect sites to be run within 15 minutes
. There are three new in space structure asset classes in the Deadspaces – Up-scaled Asteroids, Crystals and Pillars.
. There are new Nebula and effects in the Deadspaces
. Each Deadspace will have a consistent Environment / Weather effect across it. The type will be noted in the Filament description.
. There are five different weather effects – Electrical (EM resist penalty/Cap bonus), Exotic Particle Storm (Kinetic resist penalty/Scan Res bonus), Dark matter Field (could not understand penalty/Velocity bonus), Gamma Ray Afterglow (Explosive resist penalty/Shield bonus) and Plasma Firestorm (Thermal resist penalty/Armour bonus). They apply both to you and the NPCs.
. All this makes for visually stunning locations
. There will be three pockets in each Deadspace (I presume that could change down the track)
. Each pocket will have an entry and exit point. The last exits back to the beacon.
. Each pocket will have a “safe” zone, starting at around 150km in diameter. If you fly out of that zone you will start to take damage. If you fly too far your ship will be crushed.
. Most of the new space structure assets will be anchored outside of these zones giving you room to manoeuvre
. Each pocket will (can?) have localised areas of special effects, such as Bioluminescene clouds (that increase your signature size), Filament Clouds (add Cap usage to shield boosting) and new sentry type weapons that attack drones and missiles.
. The Triglavians are human in origin but unpredictable and unknown. They are considered hostile.
. There will be random NPC groups in the pockets, scaled based on how deep the site is.
. The sites will be populated by Rogue Drones, Triglavians, Triglavians with Rogue Drones supporting them, Drifters, Drifters with Sleepers supporting them, and three way fights between you, Triglavians and Drifters.
. All NPCs will use the new AI with their new tactics, including podding you. Given you can’t warp out, podding would seem to be likely in these sites.
. There will be other undocumented dangers
. CCP will use these sites to test new ideas, features, tactics and what not. Things that work well might find themselves moved into the greater game.

So – what are the rewards?

. Rewards will include new ship blueprints, skills to fly them, modules, clothes
. The new ships will be the Triglavian Demavik (Frigate), Vedmak (Cruiser) and Leshak (Battleship)
. They fit one gun – an Entropic Disintegrator. It does as much damage as a full rack of guns, and after each shot, the damage increases (up to an extra 50%). It stops operating when the target gets out of fallout range. It does Thermal and Explosive Damage.
. The ships have lots of utility high slots, and bonuses for some of these
. The ships have lots of low slots for an armour tank
. The Battleship will have one of the highest sub-cap damage potentials in the game
. You will also be able to collect new Biotech called something like Artificial Micro-tech Colonies. These will come as a module type, and can be applied once to T1/T2/Faction versions of that module. Both the Biotech and the Module are consumed in this mating / merge / process, with a new Abyssal version of the module created. The impact will be somewhat random. You might end up with something worse than T1, or something super impressive.
. There might be Abyssal Filaments to access deeper sites

These sites will be hard.

It is an interesting idea. I guess we will have to wait to see just how common / easy the Filament are to find, how dangerous the sites are to run, and after six months, what sort of price we will see for the rewards.  This is obviously content available to Hermits.

Fanfest 2018 from afar – Overview

The first day of Fanfest is done, with the second underway (when I started writing this). You can view the opening ceremony on YouTube:

There isn’t much to it – it was focused on reminiscing and thanking the players for their involvement in the first 15 years of EVE Online.

I watched the Keynote and the Triglavian Domain presentations on the EVE Online Facebook page. I’m not sure they are available elsewhere yet – but I did notice a highlights video of the Keynote on twitch. CCP seem to be trying to make these video available quicker than they did last year.

So – what was in it for Hermits?

Moving forward CCP will be focusing their development on 3 Pillars –

. Game Health, Balance and quality
. Deepening the Sandbox
. Pushing boundaries and having fun

I am all for the deepening of the Sandbox. Solo play was mentioned several times, but overall the bent was towards making meaningful decisions and impacting and being impacted by other players.

The PI interface will be improved with tool tips, visual warnings of nodes not set up fully, and overall less clicking required. There will be a Dev Blog out for it. I am looking forward to seeing how well they manage that.

There will be a new tool called an Activity Tracker. This will highlight various things in game you can achieve, and what your statistics are like in each area. Many of the metrics will be new, so even if you have spent years previously doing some tasks, your statistics might only start from when the feature goes live. As with the Agency, this tool is about trying to highlight options players have in the game that they might not have thought about before. Tying it into measurable statistics is a good idea.

Our 15 year anniversary presents were mentioned. All accounts that log in during the 30 days prior to May 6th will get

. A Shirt
. A Hat
. A Pod Skin
. An Apotheosis Shuttle and Skin

If it is an Omega account (paid), you will get in addition the Society of Conscious Thought hulls:

. A Sunesis Destroyer and Skin
. A Gnosis Battlecruiser and Skin
. A Praxis Battleship and Skin (new)

These will be given out on May 7th.

There will be a new Event – Operation Conscious Interruption. Apparently Drifters will be attacking Society of Conscious Thought locations to try and disrupt the hand out of these gifts. There will also be Drifter bases to attack. I’ll have to research what their combat abilities will be. I have stayed away from interacting with Drifters as the Battleships at least could one-shot an attacker when they got down to a certain health level, which makes attacking them solo rather pointless.

There were other non-solo related announcements. The old stations will be converted over to Faction Citadels on June 5th. By the end of the year there will be structures for Jump Bridges, Cyno Beacons and Cyno Jammers. There will be new kill reports which will include Logistics and EWAR impacts from both sides.

Of course the big announcement is the new PVE content around the Triglavian Abyssal Deadspaces. I’ll summarise what I heard in a separate post.

25% off Omega Sale

As we wait for the reveals from the 2018 EVE Fanfest, CCP is running a short 25% off Omega sale.  That is more than usual.  If interested you have to be quick – it finishes in a couple of days.

https://www.eveonline.com/article/p70sge/fanfest-2018-25-off-omega-sale

I am still not doing anything of note in EVE, but I am pottering around.

Separately to my Skin purchases I remarked on a couple weeks ago, I’ve spent around 375M ISK on camouflage / military like skins for some of my Industrial hulls.  I mentioned the Angel Industrial Livery for my Porpoise a while back, but I also got the same for the Procurer, Retriever, Venture, Prospect and Endurance.  I’ve also got the Spirit skin for my Occator, Minmatar Industrial Livery for the Hulk and Mackinaw and the Gallente Industrial Livery for my Skiff, Covertor and Orca.  All to make them sit better amongst the Asteroid belts.  There is no way to logically justify it – aside having too much ISK, but I do like the look and it amuses me.

I finally sat down to look at the February Patch notes.  The Assault Frigates had updates which impacted the PVE Retribution fit I use.  The increased capacitor meant I was able to drop from two to one cap related module while still staying cap stable.  The weapon bonus went from tracking to damage – so I swapped in a tracking enhancer to make up for that loss.  I had to swap out the T2 damage control for the IFFA Compact Damage Control to fit everything together.

I looked at the new Assault Damage Control modules, but they only look to be of use in PVP.

The fit I ended up with:

[Retribution, PVE]

Centii A-Type Small Armor Repairer
IFFA Compact Damage Control
Heat Sink II
Dark Blood Adaptive Nano Plating
Tracking Enhancer II

Coreli A-Type 1MN Afterburner
Cap Recharger II

Small Focused Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Small Focused Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Small Focused Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Small Focused Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Salvager II

Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Energy Collision Accelerator II

Imperial Navy Multifrequency S x4

290 DPS
117 DPS Tank
8.8K EHP
1,202 m/s
Cap Stable

I’ll consider swapping the Small Armor Repairer for something a bit cheaper. It was much cheaper when I first put it on the hull. A problem I am finding – hidden inflation. Makes ships a bit more of a gank target than what I want them to be being so close to Jita.

More teasers on new stuff

A couple more YouTube clips from The Discourse if you want to build up some excitement for possible reveals at EVE Fanfest 2018.  The first is the suggestion of unknown space and structures noticed in their decrypted videos.

The second is that you can look at one of these new ships (damaged) in Yulai.  (I flew 19 jumps to see for myself.)