Revelations 2.2

This patch has been deployed on August 28th. There are very extensive patch notes at the Eve-Online site. Browsed over it a little bit and didn’t see a lot that did appeal or seemed remarkable to me, though the sheer size of the list is a good thing :).

There are two things that stand out though, the NOS changes as described at this dev blog and the Capital Ore Ship.

Nosferatu Changes

In their current implementation Nosferatus not only neutralize cap of the targeted ship, but also leeches energy for your own ship. For instance a Heavy Nosferatu I gives you 8en/s and the peak recharge rate of a Megathron is about 20en/s with good skills, so a single Heavy Nosferatu I gives you about 40% increase in cap recharge rate. Even if the Nosferatu didn’t leech energy it would still be a useful module since it can neutralize a capacitor at no (energy) cost to yourself. The problem, then, is that Nosferatus allows one to both leech energy off a target and at the same time neutralize its capacitor. This makes the Nosferatus too powerful since there is no compromise involved.To address this issue we have changed the effect on Nosferatus (but not on Energy Neutralizers) in order to make the Nosferatu less powerful as an Energy Neutralizer without affecting its ability to leech energy. Under the new system, the amount transferred by a Nosferatu is based on the relative capacitor charge levels (measured in percent). Energy is only transferred while the charge percentage of the targeted ship is higher than the charge percentage of the ship that activated the Nosferatu. This means that the target is no worse off (energy wise) than the attacking ship.

For instance, if a battleship with 30% capacitor left activates a Nosferatu on a frigate, then the frigate is not drained below 30%. In other words, the Nosferatu would not drain the capacitor of the frigate completely, though an Energy Neutralizer would do the job nicely (but at an energy cost to the battleship). It is, however, still possible to use Nosferatus to drain a target if one is willing to sacrifice ones own energy to do so.

Capital Ore Ship

The ship fills this role by having the unique ability to compress ore and ice to a fraction of its original volume for transport and storage using the latest in advanced techniques. Additional abilities include:

  • Fitting capital tractor beam modules which can pull cargo containers from two hundred kilometres at a much faster velocity than normal tractors beams can,
  • Inherent bonuses to the range of survey and cargo scanners allowing it to survey asteroid belts at a glance from its position and the status of cargo cans for its mining gang and,
  • It can equip multiple gang links and provide significant bonuses to the mining foreman gang links.
  • Bonus to Capital Shield Transporter range per lvl of ship skill.
  • Like other ships in its class, the ORE Capital Ship will also:
    • Include a ship maintenance bay, corp hangar, a generous drone bay and cargohold,
    • Have the ability to fit a clone vat bay, and
    • Be propelled by its own jump drive to move between systems.

Would definitely be fun to have one in the Corporation, though I dont see that happen very soon !

Is Eve A Casual Game ?

Nice article on slashrandom:

Eve Online is a casual game

I certainly think Eve is a casual game. This is mainly due to the skill system. No need to grind for hours on end to get better skills, you just get them overtime ! Only grind that there is, is the one for Isk. You’ll always need ships and gear to do anything and those cost Isk. If you pvp a lot, you even need more isk as you loose the ships far more often than someone who justs mines / runs missions and/or pvps every now and then. So you need some time to invest in running missions (more profitable than mining) to gain some wealth so you can enjoy the game more. But you can certainly do anything on your own pace.

Eve Wishlist

Some of the other EVE Online Bloggers posted a wishlist of things you’d like to see changed in Eve, so after some thought I came up with this list:

Missions

– more engaging and fun missions

– a choice between short and long missions would be nice. Sometimes you only have an hour or something and that is simply too short for a Guristas Extravaganza, but plenty of time for Duo of Death.

Drones

Drones should have one simple option added: ‘attack as group’. Drone AI (!) has improved lately, but they still wander off sometimes, after they destroyed their target, each attacking another target. This simple option would improve that situation a lot.

Ship Setups

Being able to save a ship’s setup. For example, you could have a raven setup for torps + kinetic / thermal hardeners and a cruise missile + em / general hardeners, so instead of swapping out all the individual parts, you simpy select a previously created setup and the modules are loaded from your bay onto your ship

Inventory

Easier way to look through your inventory, including containers ! The longer you play the more stuff you leave around the Eve galaxy. And searching through it, is a PITA atm.

Skill Queueing

This one seems to be on everybody’s list : Skill Queuing. Especially the shorter skills are annoying. Like 3 – 4 hrs. You cant start those unless you know you’re going to be able to change skill once they’re done. I dont understand why they dont allow this. There could be a max of 3 skills in the queue or something like that. As an alternative, a web interface to your character would be nice as well, to allow the player to easily change his training.

Think there are a lot more things that could be improved, but for now, that’s my list !

Links

Crazy Kinux List

The ancient gaming noob’s List

War Video

Two weeks ago The Otaku Invasion of which my corp Rakeriku is a member, was war-decced by Hooligans of War. A small pvp corp, looking for some kills in empire space. What they probably didnt know is that OI has quite a few experienced Eve players as members. The rakeriku industrial flag is no longer very accurate as some members do also engage in Pvp regularly or have done that in the past. So after the week the war was over, HOW had heavily underestimated the strength of OI. Some losses on our side, a few cruisers and frigs. On their side however, a few Hacs and recon ships. You can see the results on our killboard.

Thanks to Hitman47 some fights were recorded on video !

[flv:/movies/OIvsHOW.flv 480 368]

Unfortunetely, I logged on at the wrong times and managed to not be part of the action :(. I did fly around a bit in my Covops ships cloaked though ;).

Revelations Tutorial

As you might have read in the patchnotes of Revelations, the tutorial for Eve was revamped. I remember walking through the whole thing when I started out in november 2005, it was helpful, but it also left more questions that it answered ;). Then you were dropped in the rookie chat channel for the 1st 30 days of your Eve Online life. But that channel was so busy, the answers and questions scrolled by so fast, you could hardly read it.

The new tutorial seems to be a lot better and focuses more on action. The Acient Gaming Noob has taken the trouble to walk through the new tutorial and posts about it on his blog:

 Revelations Tutorial I

 Revelations Tutorial II

Eve-Online.tv

While starting up Eve I noticed the eve-online.tv ad and remembered I wanted to check it out. Only to find out it’s a service you have to pay for ! It’s explained on eve-o forums in this thread. The people they hired to present the show might look pretty but as it turned out after some reading most of them only just started playing eve and were probably hired as ‘pretty faces’ for the show.

Well I am not going to pay for this show, in this day and age where you can download, very well produced, podcasts (audio and video ones) for free, I think it’s a bit ridiculous to ask their customers to shell out more money. I wouldnt have mind some commercials or maybe some less pretty faces ;).