First, I would like to welcome all the new members and corps who have joined us over the past few months. This is my first proper alliance update in a while and now that we have more of our infrastructure sorted out and operational, I will be able to do this on a monthly basis and I will be organizing monthly alliance meetings on TS. Moaning is allowed, but please make it good: keeps it interesting.
The corporations that have joined us recently are:
Trevyalok CEO: Fawx Kion
Alpha Squad Delta backup with Charlie Company CEO: Steve Akoi Aoiki
Astral Twilight CEO: Ehi Ambre
Welcome, and I hope you find it enjoyable with us as we persevere towards some sort of craziness I haven't thought of yet.
So far, the alliance's hard work is showing, with production for capital ships and doctrine ships running at full steam. If you want to get involved in either of these processes, please talk to Praddy for the former and Mikhail MacCloud for the latter.
Boring stuff that you may just read over
Alliance finances took a hit with the peace deal, as it meant the loss of our 2 Hafnium moons. However, with good fortune and a smattering of help from PerfectWing, I have managed to finalize a deal between EPA and the Golden Guard for two contracts and possibly more to follow(details coming soon). At this moment, we have a strong budget for the rest of the month at 3 billion ISK for the SRP, and the fuel bills already sorted for this month.
If anyone hasn't noticed, the POS in GN7-XY has been removed(380M ISK a month for an almost unused POS isn't worth it). Please use the POSes that multiple other corps have in GN7-XY as safe spots.
Details of the Deal with Blood Siphon
Blood Siphon has offered us administration rights for all the moons he takes in the
Derelik region. The numbers have not been confirmed yet as he has just started his campaign. Any and all support is to be given to the Golden Guard as they have offered us a very lucrative contract which should quickly fill our alliance coffers(he wants your capitals). The Golden Guard is Provibloc's capital strike group, which is hoping to get into some action in the following months. Blood Siphon is the head of the Golden Guard.
The motivational part
It makes me really happy to see so many people joining fleets and getting into the correct doctrine ships. If you need the fits, please ask in alliance chat or mail me and I will send them to you.
We could always do with more numbers, and the inclusion of EWAR into doctrines makes it all the more easier to get into fleets and contribute. POS grinding may not be fun(especially if you're a logi pilot), but the income will either be going to the coalition SRP if it is a POS grind with an FC other than Blood Siphon, or giving you capital SRP and funding your alliance if Blood Siphon is running the fleet.
Keep up the good work, the FC's are starting to notice our numbers. They also noticed Steve's shit fit Nidhoggur.
Normality is the limit for us, as we have people like Romashkinn and Steve in our alliance, so even that will be pretty hard to reach. Normality is boring anyway.
If you need anything, have any suggestions, have a problem with someone, or just need someone to talk to, I'm an insomniac(Murkar and Steve can confirm this) so I might be awake even if you are AU TZ. You can also just mail me, and I'll stay up for a chat.
Unlike the first episode, this one was hosted by CCP Mimic, one of CCP's game masters and every player's not-so-secret crush. She introduced CCP Punkturis and CCP karkur, and talked to them about the changes their teams made in Phoebe, including the Multisell feature and the removal of skill queue time limit, focusing on the overwhelmingly positive feedback received from the players. An interesting fact we got from the conversation is that before Phoebe was deployed we had 49 million hours of skills in our collective skill queues, and 12 hours after deployment, that number increased to 267 million. However, the highlight of the conversation was the
kanguristas hat knitted by CCP karkur. We then watched a report on EVE Vegas by CCP Guard, and an explanation of the new 5-week release cycle by CCP Explorer.
We went back to CCP Mimic, now in the company of CCP FoxFour and CCP Terminus. CCP FoxFour talked about the changes that were made to trial accounts and his work on 3rd party developer tools. CCP Terminus decided to talk about upcoming features instead, and revealed to us a big one: clone grades will be removed and there will be no more skill loss on podding! They believe this change will help both new and veteran players alike: it will prevent new players from losing their hard earned skill points because they were not familiar with clone mechanics, and provide an incentive for older players to get out and PvP in smaller ships as getting podded won't cost them anything except any implants they had plugged in at the time.
CCP RealX, the person responsible for composing EVE's theme songs, gave us a tour of his studio and showed us how he uses the equipment he has available there to make music, and CCP Rise, in his segment named "Does it fit?", explained to us how to fit a Worm, the Guristas pirate faction frigate, for low sec brawling. He aptly closed his segment with the sentence "I hope you all enjoy your Worms." Uh, we will?
In the end of this episode, CCP Fozzie joined CCP Mimic to talk about the new sensor overlay, which allows us to see personal and corporation bookmarks in space, displayed similarly to cosmic anomalies and signatures. They were also the first people to tell us about the new wormhole systems coming with Rhea: we will be getting a number of new wormhole systems. One of them, Thera, will be the first named wormhole system and the only wormhole system to have NPC staions inside of it.
Dev blog: Coming to EVE Online in the Rhea release on December 9th
This dev blog by CCP Seagull tells us about the new features coming in Rhea on December 9th. Apart from the features and changes listed below, there may be more coming to Rhea. The full list of the changes will be revealed with the final patch notes, but that doesn't mean there won't be teasers hinting at some of them. One has already been published: this
Tumblr post scolding CCP karkur for bringing her carrier into a system where they aren't allowed. Can you find the secret feature?
One of the NPC stations located in Thera, belonging to The Sanctuary(branch of the SOE).
A hundred and one new wormhole systems will be added in Rhea. Seventy five of them will be shattered wormhole systems. All planets in those systems will be shattered, and there will be no moons. However, they will have more sleeper sites than regular wormholes, special asteroid belt anomalies containing richer ores, ice belts and additional static connections. They will be of various classes and have various system effects. Twenty five of them will be small ship shattered wormhole systems. These will be identical to the regular shattered wormhole systems, except they will only be connected to other systems by small ship wormholes, which only allow frigates, destroyers and HICs to pass through, and they will all have C6 Wolf Rayet system effects(+100% armor hit points, +200% small weapon damage, -50% shield resists, -50% signature size), making them an interesting place to visit.
The one remaining wormhole system is Thera: the largest system, the only named wormhole system and the only wormhole system containing NPC stations. It will be well connected, with multiple static wormholes connecting it to various classes of systems. The system is central to EVE's currently developing storyline, and we will see lots of action going on in it.
Removal of clone grades and skill point loss
Clone grades will be removed: you will no longer have to update your clone after being podded. This means no more paying for clones, and no more skill point loss(except when losing a T3 strategic cruiser). This is a change from which both new and old players will benefit greatly.
Amarr T3 tactical destroyer: Confessor
Sample rendereing of the Confessor.
The first of the four T3 tactical destroyers will be released in Rhea: the Amarr Confessor. The Amarr Empire was far ahead of the competition in the recent
research race, and will be the first empire to release the results of their research to the capsuleers. These T3 destroyers will be capable of switching between three different operation modes: one focused on tanking, one focused on navigation and one focused on damage projection. They will be produced similarly to T3 cruisers, and more information on them will come in a future dev blog.
An often requested type of ship, which would be capable of transporting assembled ships, is coming in Rhea: the Bowhead. It is a freighter designed by ORE, and will require a new skill(ORE Freighter) which will have requirements identical to other racial freighter skills(ORE Industrial III and Advanced Spaceship Command V). It will have 3 medium and 3 rig slots, in addition to the 3 low slots all freighters have. Those extra slots, along with the cruiser-level power grid and CPU, will allow for some interesting fitting options. It is expected to see most of its use in high sec, and to cost 200-300 million ISK less than other freighters once the prices have settled. It has the following stats:
ORE Freighter Bonus:
5% bonus to inertia modifier per level
5% bonus to ship maintenance array capacity per level
Role Bonus:
90% reduction in jump fatigue generation
Slot layout: 0H, 3M, 3L, 3R; 0 turrets, 0 launchers
Fittings: 1350 PWG, 215 CPU
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 21000 / 11000 / 39500
Capacitor (amount / recharge) : 3900 / 235000
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / warp speed / align time): 65 / .0675 / 640000000 / 1.37 / 59.89s
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 0 / 0
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 51.5km / 45 / 3
Capacity (cargo / ship maintenance array): 4000 / 1300000
Sensor strength: 12
Signature radius: 3200
Physically Based Rendering
EVE's rendering engine is receiving a huge update in Rhea. All ships(except T3 strategic cruisers) will be rendered using PBR, with more parts of EVE getting the PBR treatment in future releases. PBR is meant to simulate light realistically reflect off surfaces of different kinds, making them look like they are made of actual materials. All of the textures have been updated as well, but they still aren't high resolution textures everyone has been expecting for ages.
On the
forums, players have left comments on the graphical updates. Reactions are mixed: the changes to Amarr ships are well liked, while the opinion on the ships of other races varies, especially on pirate faction ships, which have received the most significant changes to their textures. If you want to see the changes for yourself, the new rendering method is live on Singularity.
Rhea will also bring an updated UI. All windows will now have transparent backgrounds which will blur the content behind them, the intensity of the blurring and the transparency being dependent on the current focusing of the window. Color themes will be simplified, giving players the ability to quickly switch between multiple predefined themes. An
option to match the theme to the currently active ship will be available, but it is still unknown whether players will be able to define their own themes. Old Neocom icons will be replaced with monochromatic ones, and buttons and controls will be modified to provide better feedback. All of this is meant to make the UI augment the space scenery instead of obstructing it, while making it easier to use. If you want to try out the new UI, it's live on Singularity.
CCP is very focused on new player experience. Many of the features introduced in previous releases were meant to improve NPE, and many more are still in the works. One of the most popular complaints made by new players is the lack of direct ship controls. They can warp to, orbit, approach different objects, but they can't freely move their ship around, except by double-clicking in space, which is counter-intuitive to most new players. To solve this problem, manual control is being introduced as a beta feature. It is available for testing on Singularity, and seems to be working very well.
Optional new star map
We will be getting a completely redesigned star map in Rhea. It will be an opt-in feature, so you will still be able to use the old star map while any bugs are straightened out. Other than the fact that it will boast improved readability and usability, which is something the current star map is in desperate need of, no further details are known yet.
Ship redesigns
Blackbird's new model.
Multiple ships will be getting their models updated in Rhea. The Moa received a new model in Kronos, and in Rhea its T2 variants, the Onyx and the Eagle, will have their models slightly modified to make them easier to distinguish. On the other hand, the Blackbird and its variants are getting completely new models. The new models proudly display various antennas and sensor arrays, which is in line with the support role these cruisers are usually found in. Its T2 variants, the Falcon and the Rook, will have slightly different models, and all of them will have warp animations. This trend of giving T2 variants tiny model differences over their base ships is indication of CCP's intent to give players more freedom in applying ship skins. Today, T2 ships are defined by the skin of their manufacturer, and defining them by model differences is a good way of ensuring they can be unambiguously identified by their design even after ship skins become fully customizable.
Incursus' new model.
Another ship which will be getting a brand new model is the Incursus and its T2 variants, the Enyo and the Ishkur. The style of the model is similar to the one Tristan got in Rubicon. Its characteristic one-pronged design remains, but the single lance has now been replaced with several thinner antennas, and the main armor plating is now seamless, making it seem stronger. Aside from these changes, there is still no word on any others, including the
Dominix redesign many players have been waiting for since Kronos.
Asteroid belt effects, special edition dreadnoughts and new pirate faction apparel
The Sarum Revelation, the best looking of all the new dreadnought skins(objectively speaking).
Other graphical changes include asteriod belts with dust effects, visible sun rays and rock fragments. Whether this change will make miners happier because they will now have something pretty to look at or mad because their aging machines won't be capable of handling even the most mundane activities anymore is up for dicussion, as it is still unknown how taxing these new effects will be on players' GPUs and how attractive they will be. Judging from this early
screenshot, the answer to both questions might be "A lot."
Another change to ship visuals will be coming in the form of four new dreadnought skins, one for each faction. They are the Interbus Moros, the Sarum Revelation, the Wiyrkomi Phoenix and the Justice Naglfar. They will be available exclusively from the NES. No info is available on their pricing yet, but expect them to cost around 1k AUR or 200M ISK each. Compared to the cost of a fitted dreadnought, it's not much. Along with the new dreadnought skins, Rhea will also bring new pirate faction clothing sets to the NES, consisiting of a jacket, pants and boots.
Improvements to the notification system and the sell window
The selling window introduced in Phoebe will be easier to use when only selling one item at a time, and will provide sound feedback when dropping additional items into it. The notification system is being expanded to include kill reports and contract notifications. However, it still lacks integration with the mail system and the chat system, which still use their own notifications and pop-up windows.
Cleanup of old trial account character names
The feature that really makes EVE stand out in the crowd of various MMOs is its persistent, single-shard universe. The results of every action made by a player ever since EVE's release in 2003 is still present on Tranquility today, and will stay there for as long as EVE is up and running. In their first move of this kind, CCP is going to remove all characters created on trial accounts which were never converted to paying accounts, making over 6 million names which were previously taken up available for use once again. This will only affect trial accounts, so if you ever used a PLEX or paid for the subscription on your old accounts, they are safe.
CCP Alliance disbands
On Monday, November 10th 2014, soon after downtime, C C P Alliance, CCP's official in-game alliance, was disbanded, dropping sovereignty in the system
RU-97T and losing control of the Caldari Research Outpost located there. Several hours later, a tweet by CCP FoxFour confirmed the cause of the sovereignty drop:
@CCPGames confirmed literally the worst at our own game: Cannot even pay alliance bills.
This tweet confirmed that the sovereignty drop was caused by unpaid sovereignty bills, a problem which has caused a great deal of problems for many alliances in the past. However, unlike those alliances, no one was able to interfere with CCP's sovereignty, and the next day, CCP reclaimed both the system and the station. 3 days after the sovereignty drop, a new corporation,
C C P Alliance Holding, joined the C C P Alliance, and a week after that, on November 20th 2014, became the executor of the alliance. Hopefully, this change in management will prevent further embarrassing events like this one from happening.
Greater Providence restored
The system D-GTMI has been reclaimed from
Northern Coalition. Along with the recent surrender of HERO coalition, resulting in them ceding systems rightfully owned by Provibloc, the territories of Greater Providence have finally been restored! If you have only recently moved into the area, you may not know why we lost D-GTMI in the first place. Hopefully, this story will give you an idea of what happened.
The original pretence for taking over our systems was that
Care Factor went on a roam through N3 Space, smack talking in local, offending the local residents. Naturally, N3 wasn't very happy about this, and they decided that Care Factor needed to be taught a lesson. That lesson would be the loss of one of their systems:
G-B22J. This system contained an R64 moon, which was also C.F's only R64 moon, and as such a significant source of income.
A pitched battle was fought where Provibloc got slaughtered, with N3 bringing much better doctrines to all of the timers: Ishtars and Proteuses versus our aging sentry/neut battleships doctrine(Dominixes and Armageddons). Provibloc was hemorrhaging cash and we hadn't been in a proper conflict in over 9 months: morale was low and there wasn't much we could do. G-B22J fell quickly, N3 started threatening our staging system,
F-YH5B, and it was decreed that our staging system is to be moved to
Yong. N3 wasn't really interested in F-YH5B, and NC. had decided that D-GTMI would make a perfect staging point for their deployments, as at the time they could still use their expansive jump bridge network to move entire fleets halfway across the map in a matter of minutes. The first timer was uncontested, with
Nulli Secunda distracting us while NC. reinforced structures inside the system. The second timer was quite different.
The second timer was a bloodbath. Boldy going into the unknown, Corebloodbrothers led a fleet of 200 brave souls into the fiery doom which D-GTMI would become. Intel reported a bashing fleet hitting the station, which seemed too good to be true: unprotected capitals against a neuting fleet, easy kills. As soon as the fleet landed on grid a cyno went up and all hell broke loose. N3 and their friends jumped in over 100 supercapitals(including several titans), a 250 man T3 fleet with triage carriers and enough blap dreadnoughts to clear the field in a few volleys. The fleet was butchered: no one escaped in their ship, and the lucky ones managed to leave the system in their pods. D-GTMI was left to it's fate and NC. took the system on the 26th of May.
The hostilities semi-ceased after a fierce battle in Yong on the 9th of June 2014, where a S2N T3 fleet engaged a Provibloc sentry battleship fleet formed to attack hostile towers in the system. The initial fight started with S2N outnumbered 2 to 1 by Provibloc, with Provibloc alphaing T2 logistics cruisers off the field. Seeing this, S2N brought in 15 triage carriers which all immediately went into triage. This turned out to be a bad call, as the carriers all landed within the range of our batleships' neutralizers and quickly started dying. After a third of the T3 fleet was dead, with no support ships worth mentioning and two carriers dead and a third one dying, 20 blap dreadnoughts were called in to save the day. Unfortunately, just like the carriers, they landed within neutralizer range as well, some landing as close as 10km from the entire fleet. Focusing on Moroses and Revelations first, dreads started to fall one after another and after the first siege cycle, S2N sounded the horn of retreat, leaving the field to be picked clean by the ISK drained Provibloc horde.
Due to the lack of DPS from the kitchen sink sentry battleship fleet, only 6 S2N capitals died, with the total losses for S2N piling up to 27 billion ISK, compared to Provibloc's 11 billion. While not huge, this was the first victory that Provibloc had won in this conflict: morale soared. Unfortunately, N3 redeployed to the galactic north soon after, and normality was restored, but with Provibloc lacking 2 systems.
After the Phoebe release and introduction of jump fatigue, D-GTMI stopped being of strategic importance to N3. After several fights over the system, in which N3 chose not to use their capital fleets, the system was finally retaken on 13th of November 2014.
Interview: Maheel D'Yvettes
An Astero frigate attacking an unsuspecting explorer.
If you have logged in lately, you might have talked to Maheel D'Yvettes in alliance chat. And if you have opened our alliance's killboard recently, you might have noticed him in there.
His personal killboard, amongst numerous kills and several losses made during various Provi ops, contains dozens of solo kills of various exploration frigates, ranging from regular Magnates to various
CovertOps frigates and
Asteros. All of those kills, he made using an Astero himself. While I am aware that the Astero is a frigate suitable both for exploration and for combat, I was left a bit intrigued by these killmails, so I decided to interview him and share his story with you.
Carbon Alabel: Hello, Maheel. I love those kills you made using your Astero. Could you tell me something about how you joined EPA? Maheel D'Yvettes: Thanks. That is, oddly enough, Astero related. A while back, when I was still in Brave, I ran into Hunter Chen running a site and decided to gank his
Helios. We got to chatting and he invited me to the alliance's public channel. A while after that, he and Murkar got into making drugs, and I smuggled them down to Catch to help sell them off. Ended up leaving Brave, and decided to come hang out with EPA.
Carbon Alabel: That's certainly an interesting way to join an alliance. How did you come to the idea of attacking other explorers? Was it your intention from the beginning, or did you decide to start doing it after you began running into other explorers? Maheel D'Yvettes: I'd been exploring for a bit before I started, and when I realized that data sites aren't really worth it I took off my data analyzer and put in a scram just for the hell of it. I ended up getting a couple kills off it, so I kept it. After Kronos took out loot spew, my cargo scanner wasn't useful any more and made room for another scram. After that I started going after pretty much anyone I ran across to see if I could get some kills. It wasn't much about the actual PvP in the start, I just enjoyed kicking people out of sites and earning the extra ISK.
Carbon Alabel: That is an interesting example of new releases modifying player behaviour. The Astero is a cool frigate, with great bonuses both to exploration and combat. After the two scrams, how do you fill the rest of the slots? Also, have you considered switching to one of the T2 Covert Ops frigates? They are much cheaper, have a lower cloak reactivation timer and better scan probe strength bonus, but can't really live up to the Astero's combat capabilities. Maheel D'Yvettes: The rest of the fit is actually pretty boring. A Covert Ops cloak and a probe launcher in the high slots, a MWD and a relic analyzer for the other two mid slots, and some tank and a DDA in the low slots. I've played around with the lows/rigs for a while to achieve good balance, and it really comes down to what you're comfortable flying with. As for the other ships, I originally went with the Astero so I could explore in null while I waited for Covert Ops to train, but that didn't happen until I wanted to fly Stealth Bombers. By that time, I was enjoying the combat options of the Astero too much to sidegrade into a Covert Ops.
Carbon Alabel: Ok. Now, to your kills. Which one did you get the best loot from, which one was the most interesting, and did you ever lose a fight? Maheel D'Yvettes: My most profitable kill was one of my earlier ones, and it happened just after Kronos was deployed. Thanks to my brand new dual scram fit, I was able to snag this Astero. Picking the most interesting fight is a bit trickier. This
Venture will always have a place in my heart. I checked D-scan, saw a Prospect and a Venture, and realized one of the signatures was a gas site. I missed the Prospect, but it was still fun. Another incredibly fun kill was this
Tengu. Not technically solo, but I managed to keep my Astero alive for around 5 minutes before
Almost Awesome. formed up to get me the kill. As for losses, I had a bunch of them earlier on when I went after pretty much anything. Afterwards, I got a bit more sensible and started picking my battles. Now that I've got a solid fit and some skills behind me, I haven't lost a fight against another explorer in ages. And I've just realized that all of those kills are back from when I was still in Brave, so I'll toss in this
Astero. He ended up dropping Augmented Hobgoblins on me. I'd never expected to actually see them used, since two of them cost about the same as a Gecko. It was a pretty drawn out fight but my tank held up and eventually he had to reload his AAR.
Carbon Alabel: Interesting choices. For the end, tell me what you see in your future with EPA? Maheel D'Yvettes: I haven't given the future too much thought, since I never know how much spare time I'll have for EVE. For now, I try to help out when I can. A while after joining I realized I should move my skill plan around to better suit Provi doctrines since I'd been using Brave's skill plans as a reference up to that point. So, instead of doing that, I just started from scratch and wrote us some skill plans that would either get a complete newbie into lots of useful ships, or provide a reference for people looking to train into something new. These are the results:
TAABE General Skill Plan and TAABE Advanced Skill Plans. Carbon Alabel: I'm sure many of our members will find those skill plans useful. Thank you for your time, and good luck with your future adventures! Fly safe!
After the interview, Maheel also shared two Astero fits with us, which are similar to the fits he uses, but limited to T2 modules in order to lower the cost.
Exploration/hunting fit:
[Astero, The Mighty Tunafish]
Damage Control II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Prototype Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I
Small Armor Repairer II
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Relic Analyzer II
1MN Microwarpdrive II
Core Probe Launcher I
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Small Anti-Thermic Pump I
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Capacitor Control Circuit I
Hobgoblin II x5
Warrior II x5
Hornet EC-300 x5
Sisters Core Scanner Probe x16
Combat oriented fit:
[Astero, Battlestero]
Damage Control II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Small Armor Repairer II
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Small Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I
1MN Afterburner II
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Small Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Small Anti-Explosive Pump I
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Capacitor Control Circuit I
Hobgoblin II x5
Warrior II x5
Hornet EC-300 x5
Navy Cap Booster 400 x5
Downgrade to T1/meta modules if you want to use these fits but don't have the skills to use or fit T2 modules. Feel free to upgrade to faction/deadspace modules and T2 rigs, as they can increase the performance of the Astero significantly. For example, upgrading to an
A-Type Small Armor Repairer will significantly increase your tank at a reasonable cost. Also, having all relevant skills(Amarr and Gallente frigates, armor tanking, drones, navigation) along with core fitting skills maxed out will help you use the Astero to its fullest potential.
However, while the Astero is capable of leaving dozens of expensive wrecks in its wake, it is also very capable of becoming one itself. So, be careful while piloting it. Pick your fights: if you are unsure of your ability to defeat your target, avoid them and find another one. Even if things start going downhill, you still have a card up your sleeve: the Hornet EC-300 drones. These drones can break the target lock of your opponent, giving you a chance to escape with your ship still in one piece. Also, don't be surprised if one of your targets slings out these drones on you and manages to escape: it happens to the best.
Trevyalok
Alpha Squad Delta backup with Charlie Company
Astral Twilight
