Revelations 2.3

Is coming on Tues, 6 November. Set a long skill on monday night :-).

Tranquility will undergo an extended downtime on Tuesday, 6 November. The start time is 1100 GMT and the length of the downtime is expected to be 3 hours. During this time, a patch will be applied to Revelations consisting of fixes and improvements.

Eve-o Forum Link

Delivering Trinity

There is a new blogpost up on eve-o abuot the upcoming new client and the various upgrade paths for the Eve-Online client ! The new info is that they’ll be using a Windows service to download the client in the background.

The bigger content upgrades are going to be downloaded with via HTTP as well, but using a different download mechanism called BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service). BITS is a part of the Windows operating system and allows us to ask Windows to download the files in the background for us. BITS supports intelligent bandwidth throttling and allows for downloads to be paused and resumed at your will. The intelligent part of BITS is that you can configure it to yield for other network traffic, which will ensure that you will not lag and be able to browse the web while downloading. If you need the download right away, you can set the download priority to high, which will make BITS use up all the available bandwidth.

I would very much prefer a regular download or a torrent setup, instead of some vague Microsoft meganism, but we’ll see how it all works out.

Delivering Trinity

Tech 2 prices

Cap2 rechargerSome modules like the cap recharger II and Invulnerability field II, had not passed my mind lately. I remember the times when these costs like 15 – 20 mil., which I refused to pay even though I could afford them. But the past few weeks I purchased a few of these. It seems Invention is finally doing what it was supposed to do (I assume this was ccp’s intention) and the price of these modules have dropped considerably to 2-3 mil or there abouts. So my mission Raven got a little better lately ;).

Hulk Also the T2 ships like the Cerb have dropped a lot. It’s actually affordable now (though I lack the skill for now to fly one, my alt flies Amarr HACs) at 80mil instead of 200+. Most notably is the price drop on the Hulk. I am currently learning the skills (about a week to go) for the exhumers and checked the price again. A drop from 450mil to 130 or even lower. Probably everyone that can / want to use one already purchased one, so demand is getting lower as well.

All in all a good thing, if you werent in the T2 business :).

IskSense Advertising

As you might have noticed I replace the Google Adsense (that was dominated by Isk Farmers) by a new service called IskSense. The advertisement money solely deals in ISK :). So if you click on one of the ads, you give morph a few more isk to get that new shiny ship ! It’s amazing how creative some players are in Eve !

Check out the isk sense website if you have a blog or other related Eve website, and dont forget to visit the eve-o forum thread.

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.