Early Stages

There is a little bit of initial information (or misinformation) available to be gleaned about the final stage of the Triglavian invasion.

As before, you can find the sites (closest?) in the Agency.

The systems targeted for invasion start in the Stellar Reconnaissance phase. There are EDENCOM and Triglavian assets in the system. You pick which side you want to fight for and go find / kill the opposite faction.

As you can imagine, there are plenty of Capsuleers lined up to fight for the Triglavians, wanting to shake things up in the game. Initially the Triglavian side won a number of the Stellar Reconnaissance phases – but the Triglavians then seemed to immediately pull up stumps and depart.

There were suggestions that it might be buggy, but CCP indicated via Social Media that it was behaving as expected.

There has been at least one system where the Triglavian side won the Stellar Reconnaissance phase and moved into the Escalating Liminality phase. This is Raravoss, in Domain.

The security status of Raravoss is now reported as being 0.3 – or Low Sec. That will make it more difficult to fight on the EDENCOM side. Of note, Raravoss has a Blue Sun.  It has been reported / alluded to by some of the Lore players that the earlier Triglavian invasions favoured such systems.

We do not as yet know what long term impact a Triglavian win will have on the system, if it becomes permanent, or if it can be liberated later. Given a High Sec system has been turned into a Low Sec system, even if temporarily, it suggests the stakes are higher than I thought they might be.

Meanwhile EDENCOM have two systems in the Fortress Phase.

I flew over and looked at Seiradih. From the outside the system looked like it was still being invaded.

There were a couple Triglavian cruisers on the Jove Observatory, but otherwise the system was empty. There were suggestions that there would be EDENCOM structures around the system, but after ensuring I was not missing anything in my overview settings, I could not find any.

Again we don’t know if a Fortress System means the Triglavians will never again attack it, or if it is just some temporary status.

So what impact will it have if the Triglavians only try to take over systems with Blue Suns?  I looked at all systems in Domain, and many with Blue sun’s are a little off the beaten track or can be side tracked. Some however are choke points, such as Niarja, and the little system called Jita.

I could imagine a real effort would be made to have Niarja fall to the Triglavians. Imagine if the Amarr / Jita trade route was permanently Low Sec, or Abyssal Space, or some other variation of not as “safe” as it now.

If your home system has a Blue sun, you might want to consider where you leave your assets until the invasion is better understood.

Build Named YC Month Version

Wilhelm Arcturus remarked on CCP’s changing Patch Note titles in one of his recent blog posts.

https://tagn.wordpress.com/2020/05/26/the-forsaken-fortress-update-comes-to-eve-online/

For many years now I have stored information about EVE in Microsoft’s OneNote. Looking through the list of patch notes I have saved, there have indeed been many changes to how they are named. Early on the patch notes referenced the Build number, then the release name, then the out-of-game date, then the in-game date, then the out-of-game date, then both release name and out-of-game date, and now CCP have moved onto using a version number.  Quite the OCD trigger.

The patch notes for version 18.05 – Invasion Chapter 3, are long but rather light on.

There was a long list of name changes for Shield and Armor resistance modules. They are now called Shield Reinforcers and Armor Reinforcers, plus the easier fitting / lower capacitor T1 variants picked up the standard Prototype Compact and Experimental Enduring names.  I would not normally remark on this, but there were a lot of changes (up and down) to the effectiveness of various faction modules. Worth revisiting your fitting tool to check for any impact on your tank.

Usefully CCP have now added a History tab to the Market Orders window. Less useful is the initial history did not include a date.

The change to make un-fueled structures easier to kill is now live. I do not imagine that required a great deal of coding.

What I assume did require plenty of coding is this one line entry:

“The next chapter of the Triglavian Invasion will unfold over the coming months.”

I wonder how many players engaged with the first two chapters of the Triglavian Invasion? How many are going to engage with this one? If you do not go out of your way to look for it, is it just going to pass you by?  (Aside whatever consequences someone else decides for you?)  I wonder just how much bang for its development buck CCP will get.  Time should tell.

 

To mark this momentously vague occasion, CCP released a set of skins so that you can show your support for the invaders or defenders. I quite liked the look of the Kybernaut Clade (invader) skin range – for their visuals, not who they represent; but starting at 250 PLEX they were too rich for me.

I have never quite worked out how CCP prices their skins. Obviously the larger the hull, the more expensive the skin tends to be. If a skin covers only a small range of hulls, it also tends to be more expensive than a skin that covers a wide range of hulls. And of course, the more fancy / brighter / garish the skin, the more it can tend to cost. That all makes some sense, however the price rarely seems to line up with how nice the skin is. I know that is subjective, but there are some crappy looking skins that cost a lot of PLEX.

I remarked recently that my first Skill points from the disappointing long-term daily log in bonus campaign failed to be applied to my characters. It was remarked on in the forums as a bug. The skill points were meant to have been added recently, although I am not entirely sure they were. The useless SP containers have however been converted into an amusing collectable:

I chuckled at the thought of someone trying to extract the skills of a Fedo.

Promising just what

The Forsaken Fortress release should arrive tomorrow.

https://www.eveonline.com/article/q9ayo4/forsaken-fortress-coming-26-may

As per its name, the keynote feature is an addition of an Abandoned State to Structures. If fuel is not consumed within 7 days, a structure will move from Low Power to Abandoned. In that state it loses all reinforcement phases (so can be destroyed in one sitting), tethering stops, and asset safety is turned off.

I have remarked before that I do not believe 7 days is long enough. That makes it too easy for someone on holidays / a casual player to lose large proportions of their assets just by being away from the game for a relatively short period of time.

The loot pinata aspect will ensure plenty of High Sec War Dec’s will be coming.

I guess the lesson is to only use NPC stations for assets.

I have already unanchored my structures. I have a Raitaru and Astrahus, with fittings and consumables, in storage, but have sold off most of everything else.

I am not sure on the exact timing, but we will also be getting Chapter three of Triglavian Invasion story. In this one CCP has been promising player influenced, game changing impacts. I am intrigued but a little dubious. There can be a disappointing gap between what CCP promises and what CCP delivers.

From what I can remember, a conglomeration of CONCORD, the Empires and Upwell have created EDENCOM to develop the mechanisms and means to defend against the Triglavians. Part of the 17 years of EVE celebrations involved players defending EDENCOM sites from Triglavian attacks.

https://www.eveonline.com/article/q9nv4n/17-years-of-eve-a-huge-birthday-celebration

Over a number of months players will be able to pick a side to support and earn standings with EDENCOM or the Triglavians. During this time EDENCOM will be releasing technology to help defend systems, and the Triglavians will release technology to help attack systems.

The outcomes of player involvement will “change the landscape of EVE forever!”.

https://bleedingcool.com/games/ccp-games-reveals-chapter-3-of-eve-onlines-invasion/

I can envision the sort of things CCP might be thinking about here.

There is a suggestion all types of players can get involved. If the stakes are high enough however, such as changes to NPC Station safety, it is likely the handful of Null Sec Superpowers will decide for the rest of us what path is taken.

Weekend

I have better post something. WordPress starts doing odd things when I try to like or comment on other people’s blogs if I have not refreshed my login credentials.

It is after 8am Saturday morning here. There is a beautiful clear pale blue sky. The forecast is for a sunny top of 17C. We are about halfway there, with the temperature slowly starting to rise after getting down to 4C overnight.

My wife and son are sleeping in, while my daughter is playing Roblox upstairs. I hear her chair clunk and bump against the desk as she mindlessly wriggles and squirms. I am logged into EVE, although not undocked.

I am looking at the skill points I was awarded from the Omega Daily Rewards Logon Campaign. They redeemed into my hanger, but I do not seem to be able to allocate or use them. I have made derogatory comments regards the login in campaign being a troll.

The day I got the unusable Skill Points I also got a Tier 4 Omega gift. This was a Signal-25 ‘Needlejack’ Filament. Unnecessary for a solo player, so I intend to sell that. It was the first thing even partially worthwhile handed out during the campaign so far.

I was reading the Ancient Gaming Noob earlier, who did a post on having to think about ISK generation again.

https://tagn.wordpress.com/2020/05/14/time-to-earn-some-isk/

Yadot made a comment which matches my view for what a casual player needs to do.

“I think the key to Isk generation is consistency. Not specifically what you are doing, but making sure that you are always doing something.”

I have used the term Osmosis earning, although it is not really a great analogy. The gradual, unconscious, accumulation of wealth. I might spend 5 minutes a day running one or two low level exploration sites, do 10 minutes of mining, then play with a couple items on the market. Day to day the ISK generated is trifling. But you get the occasional good drop, and because you are active in the game you come across the odd opportunity. Without realising you are earning a few hundred Million ISK a month. Not enough to PLEX your account, but enough to have some fun with.

I have not been following those rules of late, but I have had some luck. My experiments with building and using Structures turned an unexpected profit. My Azbel for example sold for 1B ISK more than I spent on building it. While I came late to the party, I flipped some of the minerals I stockpiled when it became apparent CCP was moving into a phase of resource scarcity, for another 1B+ Profit. Plus of course with moving to a new home in EVE, I have been selling off some excess ships that I had tested or experimented with. Some of the Faction modules I used have doubled or tripled in price.

I will continue to tinker in EVE a bit this morning, but I believe we are going to visit my wife’s parents this afternoon. They live about an hour away, but we have not visited them since the start of the year. My father in law had a heart scare and operation, but we could not visit him afterwards as his immune system was compromised. Then COVID-19 suddenly became a thing. We can visit now – if we maintain social distancing and really, really, really need to do it.  The look on my wife’s face suggests we do.

One last thing.

Stupid Pop Vinyls. I only purchased one to see what all the fuss was about.