Cloud Imperium Games Posts Record Sales Of $28.4 Million In November 2023

Cloud Imperium Games recorded a record amount in sales in November 2023. Last month the makers of Star Citizen and Squadron 42 set a single-month sales record of $28.4 million in sales according to the CCU Game - Star Citizen dashboard. The total surpassed the year-over-year sales compared to November 2022 by $5.3 million, or 23.2%. Overall, CIG's sales total for 2023 so far is $109.1 million, a 3.4% increase from the first eleven months of 2022's total of $105.5 million.

Overall, CIG has raised $731.0 million from confirmed sources (the funding page & the 2021 financial report). The income breaks down as follows:

• Sales/Pledges: $649.0 million (through 30 November 2023)
• Subscriptions: $27.8 million (through 31 December 2021)
• All other sources: $54.2 million (through 31 December 2021)

In addition, CIG received $63.25 million in investor funding in 2018 and 2019, bringing the total confirmed funding of the project up to $794.2 million. Of the total through the end of 2021, $1.4 million was paid out to investors as dividends.

With the monster sales powered by the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo in the final 2 weeks of the month, CIG will most assuredly surpass 2022's sales figure of $113.6 million. If the company matches the December sales of 2019, the possibility exists of reaching $120 million in sales for 2023. 

Next month is a big month for those watching Cloud Imperium's finances. The company will publish its financial report for 2022, giving observers a look at spending and income other than the sale of virtual goods. The amount displayed on the funding tracker does not cover the day-to-day operations so the report will show exactly how healthy CIG's financial situation truly is. 

A Quick Gripe About The Corporation Projects UI

Over the weekend I did a little mining in EVE Online. I want to build a Porpoise, a ship designed to support mining operations.

When new lower-mass wormhole connections began appearing across Anoikis in late YC116, ORE tasked the engineers at its advanced Outer Ring Development labs with creating a mining foreman vessel capable of passing through these gateways and exploiting the unspoiled riches available within. Creating such a compact ship while preserving much of the utility of the larger Orca and Rorqual designs proved a significant challenge, but the end result was a ship that had great potential for capsuleer mining operations in all areas of space.

The Porpoise can use a medium industrial core to substantially increase its industrial capabilities, while empowering its defenses during deployment in a static configuration. A key element of the industrial capacity unlocked by activating an industrial core is the ability to use compressor modules, with the Porpoise also having this capability, although limited to using medium gas and asteroid ore compressors.

The Porpoise is a smaller, more mobile and more affordable mining foreman platform that is perfect for supporting mining operations in dangerous space. It is capable of providing support to its allies through mining foreman bursts, remote shield boosters and survey scanners. The Porpoise also enjoys strong bonuses to mining drones, allowing it to pull in its own share of the ore in any mining operation.

The ship isn't really that expensive. I just want to build the ship to say I built one. Because I don't play very consistently, I used the corporation projects feature released in the Viridian expansion to help keep track of my progress. I refined my ore and wound up having enough tritanium and pyerite to complete my orders for those minerals.

Working to complete a corporation order

I couldn't deposit the minerals because I had too many and needed to deposit the exact amount to complete the order. No problem, right? Just split the stack and copy the number remaining into the split stack window. Only one problem. I couldn't copy the number from the order into the clipboard. I wound up opening up Notepad, typing the number into the app, and then did a copy and paste into the split stack window to create the new stack. After doing so I was able to complete the order.

I know, high sec problems, right? The pie-in-the-sky solution is for the developers to just automatically determine the maximum amount needed to complete the order and autofill the information where needed. I'm not sure how much work that would take so I won't ask for that. But if anyone from CCP reads this, could someone please make a straight copy from the "Remaining amount" field possible? 

Why CCP Continues To Push FPS Play In The EVE Universe

Back during Fanfest this year, CCP announced a new, first person shooter module for EVE Online. Instead of pulling up footage from the keynote address, I'll pull up the press release instead.

In a surprise announcement, CCP Games also presented a first look at EVE Vanguard, an upcoming multiplayer FPS module for EVE Online being developed using Unreal Engine 5. In this dynamic and evolving shooter, players will take on the role of the Vanguard, a new generation of war clones fighting for their survival and to free their consciousness as they undertake hazardous contracts on the planets of New Eden.

In squads or solo, players will deploy onto the surface of planets wracked with turmoil and littered with opportunity. To advance their clone, suit and equipment, players will need to complete missions, acquire resources and engage in tactical combat with rival Vanguard squads as well as hostile forces, each with their own agenda. EVE Vanguard will be connected to EVE Online from day one, starting with Vanguard players being able to impact EVE Online through Frontline Corruption. Over time, new gameplay, content and interoperability with EVE Online will be added, deepening the immersion for players and the living universe of New Eden.

If the websites I visit are any indication, people are puzzled as to why CCP continues to not only push another FPS game onto the market but link the game to the EVE Universe as well. Hasn't CCP tried before and always failed? Isn't the definition of insanity, “...doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”?

As a semi-retired practitioner of Texas Space Law, I don't have the time to play psychologist. But I have paid for at least two EVE Online subscriptions for over 14 years. I've also written about EVE for over 14 years, posting slightly over 1700 blog posts with the EVE tag during that time. In addition, I have attended 13 major EVE conventions, including 7 in Reykjavik, Iceland, in which EVE game devs and CCP community staff attended. So let me try to explain why I think plans to attach EVE: Vanguard directly to EVE Online.

1. EVE Forever. When I first heard the phrase "EVE Forever" at Fanfest in 2013, I thought, "Oh great, another lame marketing campaign." But a funny thing happened. CCP's Chief Marketing Director at the time, David Reid, left the company with the closing of the San Francisco office in 2014, I thought the phrase would leave with him. But a funny thing happened. The phrase is brought up at least once in every keynote address. At this point, a skeptical observer has to admit the concept has some deeper meaning than a marketing tagline. And if the EVE intellectual property is to last for decades, then some sort of growth needs to come to the franchise and its flagship game.

2. Redemption for DUST 514. I'm not sure redemption is quite the correct term, but I get the feeling the staff at CCP believes adding FPS play to gameplay on the global Tranquility shard is a reasonable proposition. In September Director of Product Snorri  "CCP Rattati" Árnason gave an interview to PC Gamer:

But Dust had problems, and not the least among them was CCP's unusual decision to make it a PlayStation 3 exclusive (Sony co-published the game and doubtless provided a financial incentive for doing so). That always felt so odd to me because, of all the PC-ass PC games, surely EVE Online is one of the most singular: You cannot imagine it being possible on any other platform, yet this linked experience was never on PC itself. I ask Árnason how he felt about that exclusivity and the decision to close the game in 2016.

"I was a part of making that decision," says Árnason. "So it was hard but needed to happen, because we simply couldn't continue on the platform. Then I personally went through all of the motions of trying to evolve it: so moving from PS3 to PC, updating, I went through all of these internal phases, we had Legion [a successor announced at EVE Fanfest 2014], various internal codenames etcetera. So it was hard but at that time I really thought we would do it, and it kind of felt that if we would come back to it we would be able to deliver and put it back on PC where it kind of belongs. Looking at, like, Warframe was big at the time. And I always wanted it to work and I think if we had been on PC the whole time the game would literally be alive. Like, it would just be growing and still be a part of EVE."

3. Redemption for The Summer of Rage. Back in June 2011 CCP launched the Incarna expansion. The events surrounding that expansion, from ridiculously priced items in the new cash shop to players experiencing their video cards melting, is a low point in the history of EVE Online.  One of the most egregious was the state "Walking in Stations" content came out. Initially labeled "The Minmatar closet", players not only experienced hardware issues but the removal of UI elements making the game harder to play. All in order to introduce avatars to New Eden.

Fast forward to today. By adding an FPS module to Tranquility, CCP will add fully functioning avatar gameplay to the game world. Better yet, by using Unreal Engine 5 instead of the internally developed Carbon engine designed for World of Darkness, players shouldn't have to worry about system performance or the software damaging computers. I eventually see all avatar related content in EVE switched over to Unreal Engine 5 to simplify maintaining the software. When that happens, CCP will finally deliver on the Ambulation promise first made back at Fanfest in November 2007.

4. Increased cash shop sales. Now we get into the more business related reasons. EVE Online and the EVE IP does well for a 20-year old game and franchise. But I believe when Pearl Abyss purchased CCP Games in 2018 they expected a little more than level sales. Our overlords in Anyang also operate Black Desert Online, a game rather notorious for its monetization model.

Personally, I believe the beancounters are a little disappointed in sales. Having played BDO, I can say I spent a lot more on items for my character in a couple of months playing BDO than I have in 14 years playing EVE.  But do you know which game I've probably spent $200-$300 over four years making my character look good? Final Fantasy XIV. As I mentioned before, I am not a psychologist, but my experience tells me video game players, on average, will spend more on their avatars than on their equipment (Forza players excepted).

5. Competition with Plan 8. With the long delay in the release of Crimson Desert, development of two other games, DokeV and Plan 8, were put on hold. Regular readers of my coverage of Pearl Abyss' quarterly earnings calls probably recognize the name DokeV, but what about Plan 8?

Plan 8 was originally introduced to investors as Project K back in August 2019. Pearl Abyss hired Counterstrike co-creator Minh Le as the technical director for the new project. With Plan 8 in the development queue, Pearl Abyss probably did not want CCP to compete with a new property, especially given the development problems involving Crimson Desert. Those problems are neatly skirted by adding the FPS gameplay of Vanguard directly into EVE. After all, no one will ever confuse EVE for an FPS game. 

6. Star Citizen. Some will think the idea of Star Citizen and EVE competing for the same audience is preposterous and I need to undergo drug testing. But please hear me out. For each of the last two years Cloud Imperium Games has brought in twice the revenue as the EVE IP. That's right. A game still in pre-alpha is handily brushing CCP to the side financially. Just as Elite Dangerous did with its Odyssey expansion, I believe CCP sees having some sort of avatar play in its game as a requirement to compete with Star Citizen when it finally reaches a point the developers announce the final server wipe. CCP still has a few years before that happens. 

7. Project Awakening. Until CCP finally releases more information on its play-to-earn/blockchain game, I will link developments in EVE to Project Awakening. The information released at the announcement of the $40 million funding round definitely makes Project Awakening sound like EVE 3.0. 

Tacking on an FPS module to a 20-year old game sounds crazy. Taking on FPS play to a brand new game sounds like Star Citizen or Starfield. I can see CCP using Tranquility as the model for Project Awakening. After all, developing two games with the same updates is an efficient use of money. As long at EVE looks as pretty as Project Awakening with lots of new ships and improved game systems, I don't really mind.

Tis The Season For EVE Online Sales

I'm one of those people who looks at the offerings in CCP Games' EVE Online store and usually says, "Thanks, but no thanks." Buying PLEX has no attraction as I have 2717 PLEX I obtained years ago. I just keep the PLEX around because at today's prices, my PLEX is worth around 13 billion ISK after taxes. Buying skill points never interested me and now my main characters have 298 million and 276 million skill points respectively. As for multiple character training, I have my alts trained up well enough for planetary interaction and hauling. They can even do a fair bit of mining and mineral reprocessing. 

The EVE Store on Cyber Monday 2023

In Final Fantasy XIV I am a bit of a fashionista. I spent way too much on eastern-style glamour pieces (think transmog if you play World of Warcraft) when I started out and try to limit myself to purchases under $7. But in EVE, the SKINs system never tempted me. If CCP hadn't made non-store bought SKINs automatically apply to a character when redeemed, I probably still would not have a single SKIN on any of my characters. I mean, one way to get through the sense of loss in EVE is to treat ships like ammunition. Who decorates their ammunition?

Okay, so some people do decorate ammunition in the real world

But, I did find something worth handing over my real world dollars for. The store had 12 months of Omega time marked 20% off. With my two accounts due to expire in February and August next year, I figured I wouldn't see a lower price. So yesterday I spent $239.84 on two years of gametime (one year for each account). The total comes out to just under $20/month for both accounts, or a shade under $10/month. Each character also now has Alligator, Khizriel, Mamba, and Mekubal Arkombine Arisen SKINs, but like I am going to own one of the new pirate ships that came out with the Havoc expansion.

Now, I do have to admit CCP came up with a way to make SKINs sound somewhat appealing. The PLEX sales now on through 4 December at 2359 UTC include SKINs designed by T'Amber. Here is the Cyber Monday sale offer:

• 1,000 PLEX + Gila Empyrean Outlaws SKIN - 20% discount
  
  
• 1,500 PLEX + Cynabal & Gila Empyrean Outlaws SKINs - 20% discount
  
  
• 3,000 PLEX + Gila, Cynabal, Alligator Empyrean Outlaws SKINs - 23% discount
  
  
• 6,000 PLEX + Alligator, Gila, Cynabal, Khizriel Empyrean Outlaws SKINs - 23% discount
  
  
• 12,000 PLEX + Alligator, Gila, Cynabal, Rattlesnake Empyrean Outlaws SKINs - 23% discount
  
  
• 20,000 PLEX + Alligator, Khizriel, Gila, Cynabal, Rattlesnake, Azariel Empyrean Outlaws SKINs - 25% discount

I would like to know who came up with that time to end the sale. Back in my day, sales always ended at the daily downtime, and we liked it!

EVE Havoc Patch Notes: Pirate Insurgency Changes 20-23 November 2023

Has anyone else noticed the pirates are doing very well during the first week of EVE Online's pirate insurgency system? Looking at the patch notes, I don't think that result was intended. Over the last few days the developers implemented several changes, with some fairly significant changes going live today. Just because Icelanders tend to speak American English doesn't mean they get to celebrate U.S. holidays like Thanksgiving.

Instead of just doing a copy and paste of all the patch notes, I thought I would do something a little different today. I'll just make a blog post with the changes affecting the insurgency system. I'm pretty sure someone will want to look at the history of the system if insurgencies become a staple of EVE content. Maybe today's post will come in handy someday. I've put the actual patch note the change/fix appeared in at the end of the description.

Features & Changes:

Pirate Insurgencies:

• Increased the amount suppression gained when the empire militias complete insurgency sites by 33%. [2023-11-23.1]
  
  
• Decreased forecasting time for future insurgencies from 48h to 24h. [2023-11-23.1]
  
  
• When a former insurgency FOB system ends the period of pirate occupancy after a pirate victory, it will now start at 100 points over the victory point threshold required to make the IHub vulnerable, instead of 500 points over the threshold. [2023-11-23.1]
  
  
• Pirate insurgencies will now only spread within the empire space controlled by their primary insurgency enemies. This means that the Angel insurgency will no longer spread into Caldari/Gallente regions, and the Guristas insurgency will no longer spread into Amarr/Minmatar regions. [2023-11-23.1]
  
  
• The factional warfare HQ systems for each empire (Onnamon, Intaki, Mehatoor, and Amo) have a base suppression level of 2 and can never drop below that level. [2023-11-23.1]
  
  
• Insurgency Sites will now give suspect timers to neutral players who are not enlisted with an appropriate militia for the campaign, similar to existing Factional Warfare complexes. [2023-11-21.1]
• For Angel Insurgencies, players who are not in the Minmatar Militia, Amarr Militia or Angel Cartel will get a suspect timer for entering outpost raid sites.
• For Guristas Insurgencies, players who are not in the Caldari Militia, Gallente Militia or Guristas Pirates will get a suspect timer for entering outpost raid sites.
• It’s no longer possible to enter a gated insurgency site with a Warp Core Stabilizer fitted.
  
  
• When a system is at corruption or suppression level 5, more sites will now spawn aside from the Open ADV-1 and Open ADV-5. [2023-11-20.1]
  
  
• Added a note that says “There currently are no active Insurgencies” for the Insurgency Systems agency page if no insurgencies are in the active state. [2023-11-21.1]
  
  
• There is now a pop-up warning when activating a stargate which would take you to a corruption 5 pirate insurgency system. [2023-11-21.1]
  
  
• Insurgencies will now display “LAWLESS” next to the security status in the solarsystem info panel when corruption 5 has been reached. [2023-11-21.1]
  
  
• Corruption 5 High and Low Security systems will now appear in bright red on the autopilot route, and Lawless is included in the tooltip. [2023-11-21.1]

Universe:

• The dramatic appearance of the pirate insurgencies has caused the Gallente Federation to begin a security audit of some potentially vulnerable key systems. The Federation Senate headquarters system of Villore has been deemed insufficiently secure given its proximity to the warzone and relatively low security levels. Multiple new Federation Navy facilities have begun appearing in the Villore system and this increased Navy presence has caused the security status of Villore to increase from 0.5 to 0.6.  [2023-11-23.1]

Defect Fixes:

Gameplay:

• Faction NPC police will no longer block capture timers for pirate players if they are spawned inside Highsec complexes. [2023-11-21.1]

Localization:

• The Mining Ambush dungeon will no-longer send misleading chatter if the site is contested by both sides fairly equally and one side wins shortly before the other side kills enough cruisers and battleships to cause them to flee. [2023-11-21.1]
  
  
• The evemail message you receive for capturing a dungeon while under the effects of suppression will now correctly contain the bonus LP you got and not just the flat value. [2023-11-21.1]

User Interface:

• Fixed a rare issue where solarsystem info panel would fail to display if the corruption/suppression service timed out when a client was trying to connect. [2023-11-22.1]
  
  
• Fixed an Issue where the enlistment window could appear blank if a player has stacked it or docked it in another window. [2023-11-21.1]
  
  
• Fixed text being obscured by the icons to swap factions and to the insurgency dashboard in the FW Map window. [2023-11-21.1]

What Players Of Two Sci-Fi MMOs Can Be Thankful For

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States. The holiday celebrates the harvest and other blessings of the past year. But in the case of two video games, Star Citizen and EVE Online, fans of each game are celebrating different things. 

First for Star Citizen. In March 2023 CIG released patch Alpha 3.18, a very buggy and unoptimized bit of software I believe was pushed onto the Persistent Universe to avoid complains of 10 months of a content drought. Players showed their dissatisfaction by holding onto their wallets in both the second and third quarters of 2023. By the end of September revenue recorded by the CIG API showing sales from the cash shop was down 11.5% for the first 9 months of the year.

But then October and CitizenCon came around. Two big pieces of news came out of the event. The first was the debut of server meshing which apparently was theoretically solved two weeks before CitizenCon. The other is the news Squadron 42 is feature complete. The idea that Cloud Imperium is on the cusp of launching a finished product in the next year or so had to come as a big relief to those who purchased the game years ago. What they purchased isn't a scam and the gaming press had to report as such.

Will the solution scale to handle the hundreds of characters Star Citizen's loyal player base longs to see? Is the gameplay in Squadron 42 as good as the game looked in the trailer? While we won't know the answers to those questions for at least a year, players have to give thanks the questions are realistic and can't be brushed off as copium.

Perhaps players of EVE Online had even more good news whether their game was concerned. Following talk of adding NFTs and play-to-earn technology followed by a 25% subscription increase, the average number of players logged onto Tranquility during October 2022 fell to under 16,000. 

Then, something extrodinary happened. The leadership of CCP stopped chasing after flavor-of-the-month get rich quick schemes in EVE and set the developers to producing solid expansions like they did during the first decade of EVE's existence. The Uprising expansion in November 2022 produced the first boost to the number of accounts logged onto Tranquility. The Viridian expansion launched in the summer of 2023 and kept the traditional summer from slump from cutting deep into player counts. 

And Havoc? The past weekend was the busiest in terms of players logged in since October 2020 at the beginning of the Beeitnam War/World War Bee 2. Over the first week of Havoc, the average concurrent number of users was approximately 25,000, a more than 50% increase over October 2022.

As both Star Citizen and EVE Online go through November, they each are holding a major event that sums up why each player base should feel thankful. Currently Star Citizen is holding the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo 2953, an in-game event promoting the sales of expensive equipment for real world money. Between the ship sales surrounding CitizenCon last month and the sales during the IAE, Star Citizen sales are actually ahead of last year's sales at this point of the year. If the revenue continues at the current pace, the likelihood of layoffs slowing down the development of the project decrease significantly. If for no other reason, the Star Citizen fan base should at least give thanks that development time won't slow even more.

As for EVE, the launch of the Havoc expansion occurred 10 days ago. The measurement of choice to determine the health of the game is average and peak concurrent users. As of today Tranquility has experienced a daily peak concurrent user number over 30,000 for 12 consecutive days, with over 40,000 on Sunday. Players, at least for now, are excited about pirate insurgencies. New ones often attract more players and generate more player deaths than anywhere else in EVE. As mentioned before, the average concurrent user mark for the week is around 25,000. The more players logging in and flying around in space, the more interactions occur, including PvP. Something I think a lot of players are thankful for.

EVE Online's Busiest Weekend In Years

Over the weekend, I expected EVE Online's Tranquility shard to experience its busiest weekend in a very long time. I expected Sunday might see the highest daily number of peak concurrent users (PCU) for 2023. Honestly, I expected a good day would see a PCU of 39,000 or so. 

The TL,DR graphic from EVE-Offline.net

Saturday started off well with a PCU of 36,299. Not only did the figure set the highest number of players logged onto Tranquility in 2023 so far, the number exceeded the PCU for all of 2022 as well. Looking back, I couldn't find a higher PCU until February 2021 when some daily numbers exceeded 37,000. But the peak number of players each week always occurs on Sunday's around 1900 UTC.

On Sunday, the perfect storm was set up to post an epic number not seen in years. Between the new pirate insurgencies, CCP's now customary giving away of 7 days of Omega time with the expansion, and increased activity in null sec, at 1909 Sunday Tranquility had 39,294 accounts logged into the game. And then something happened. Between 1909 and 1914 871 net players logged onto the servers.

I blame Goons. Apparently The Imperium was conducting a move op and I'm guessing they chose the busiest time of the day. The timing makes sense as 1900 UTC is a very convenient time for both European and North American players. But shortly afterwards bad things happened and CCP performed an unscheduled reboot of Tranquility.

Still, the PCU managed to reach 40,165 which surpassed the PCU for 2021. Sunday's total was the highest PCU since the 40,359 recorded on 18 October 2020. Also, given the time of day, I doubt the traffic would have exceeded the 2020 PCU of 41,562 seen on 10 May 2020. But perhaps next Sunday. I hear CCP is offering a really good deal on Omega time on Black Friday.

How To Find A Pirate Insurgency

The Havoc expansion for EVE Online launched Tuesday with a new game system based in low security space: pirate insurgencies. Some players want to take part, or at least feed off the low sec leftovers from fights between the Angel Cartel or Guristas loyalists and faction militias. Others just want to avoid the fighting and carebear in peace. In either case, locating the pirate insurgency is a priority for many players.

As one might expect in modern EVE, the place to start is The Agency. Click on the Encounters button (second from top on the left side of the screen) to get to the next window.

The Agency Home Screen

Next, click on the third button (labeled "03") to get to the good stuff.

The third encounter type listed

For returning players, what follows is not a joke. CCP put documentation inside the game on how pirate insurgencies work.

The Pirate Insurgencies Home Page

For players wanting to become formally involved in the conflict, the "Open Enlistment Window" can help aid the recruitment process. For those already enlisted in a pirate or faction militia, the next button brings up a map of the Guristas and Angel Cartel insurgency systems.

The first Angel Cartel insurgency

At the bottom of the map is a toggle to go between the Angel Cartel and Guristas insurgencies. For those wondering it getting rid of the left panel is possible, I couldn't find a way. The right panel shows the information for the system clicked on in the map. In addition to the name and how many jumps, the panel displayes the corruption and suppression levels of each system as well as the location of the pirate forward operating base (FOB).  And then the progress for each side. The dot highlights the number of victory points each side has earned.

Also, clicking on each system shows the corruption and suppression standings as well.

The two buttons on the Insurgencies screen correspond to the buttons on the many Pirate Insurgency page. The "Learn more" button corresponds to the Pirate Insurgency Guide.

The Pirates Insurgency Guide

While not providing instructions on how to complete the content, the information is about what players find on the EVE University Wikipedia.

Finally, the last button on the Insurgencies screen, "find objectives", corresponds to the Insurgency Systems page. 

The list of systems will grow if the pirates are active enough.

For those wondering which and how many sites are in each system, this is the screen to look for. The developers intended for players to use the window to set a destination to the war zone. I have the feeling some players might put the system or constellation on the avoid list.

This post is probably the last of my initial Havoc coverage. Most of the rest of the new expansion content is pretty much based on existing systems. But the Pirate Insurgency system is something new so I figured some folks might like a hand. Hopefully people enjoy the guide.

EVE: Havoc Post-Launch Patch Notes - 2023-11-15.1 & 2023-11-16.1

The latest expansion for EVE Online, Havoc, launched on Tuesday. As one might expect, the expansion launched with a few bugs, defects, and intended changes that somehow didn't make their way into the final build. Not only were two patches required, but the list is rather long. As a public service, I thought I would merge the patch notes for 2023-11-15.1 and 2023-11-16.1 together into something a bit more readable.

Features & Changes:

Corporation:

• Players will receive an EVE Mail Notification when leaving their player corp on their own volition.
  
  
• The EVE Mail Notification received when getting kicked out from the corp now includes the information about 30 day auto claim for corporation project rewards.

Missions & NPCs:

• The Amarr now mutually dislike The Deathless by -2.0 like all other empire factions.
  
  
• The Guristas now hate the Caldari state by -9.0, instead of having neutral standings towards them.
  
  
• Various other law enforcement and pirate organizations have adjusted their standings.
  
  
• Insurgency Mining Ship has been added to the default overview profiles which include FW and Insurgency NPCs.

Opportunities:

• Pirate Insurgencies have been added to the Opportunities interface.
  
  
• Tracked opportunities now display their ‘tracked’ icon by default within the Opportunities interface.

Universe:

• The Caldari State have held military control of the newly built Samanuni to Athounon gate for an extended period of time thanks to the efforts of loyalist capsuleers enlisted with the State Protectorate. Thanks to these efforts, Caldari stargate engineers have managed to upgrade and secure the connection and it will no longer be able to be disrupted by the Federal saboteurs if they are able to seize Athounon.
  
  
• Samanuni has been removed from the autopilot blacklist.
  
  
• The FW map has been updated to reflect that the Samanuni → Athounon gate connection is now permanently connected.

Zarzakh:

• Players will no longer land inside the deathless shipcaster portal effect in the center when warping to it, and instead land outside it.

Defect Fixes:

Corporation Project:

• Factions will be prioritized over character, player corporation and player alliance names in the scroll down menu for Contribution Methods.
  
  
• Contribution Methods for Defend and Capture FW Complexes now has a drop down menu for faction selection.
  
  
• Remote Armor Repairing or Shield Boosting a capsuleer associated with a specific faction is now getting counted for projects in which faction is a requirement.
  
  
• Search Filter for Unclaimed Rewards has been added to the Projects tab in the Corporation window.
  
  
• Payment in ISK is getting copied over when duplicating a Corporation Project that contains ISK reward.
  
  
• Corporation projects with payment option can now be created with non-ASCII characters
  
  
• Links to Corporation projects in the Wallet’s Transaction will now show the correct Project name when using non-ASCII characters.

Gameplay:

• Adding the missing ‘5x penalty to entosis link duration’ to the Azariel traits tab.
  
  
• Fixed the Alligator Heavy Missile kinetic damage bonus not applying correctly.
  
  
• The repair service in pirate FOBs is now working as intended.
  
  
• The Insurgency Dashboard will now use your autopilot avoidance list and safety settings when displaying the ‘number of jumps’ an insurgency system is away from you, instead of always closest.

Homefront Operations:

• Corrected a few typos in conversations.
  
  
• Hostile homefront NPCs should now show as red again instead of neutral.

Localization:

• Fixed Mordu battlecruiser NPCs incorrectly claiming they are based on the Talos instead of the Naga hull.

New Player Experience:

• Added a missing UI blink in the fitting window in Part 1 of the experience.
  
  
• Updated the info panel objective at the end of Part 1.
  
  
• Corrected a highlight banner at the end of Part 1.
  
  
• Improved off-path handling throughout the experience.
  
  
• Fixed an issue causing the NPE to become unfocused when guided to accept a Career Agent mission.
  
  
• Players will now be instructed to track a goal during the ACP Career Path introduction.

PVE & NPCs:

• Fixed some behavior NPCs being passive or showing as neutral instead of red.

User Interface:

• Fixed the hint when trying to enlist for a pirate faction and not having high enough standings claiming you need 0.0 standings instead of -2.0.
  
  
• Mutaplasmid Items Show Info window now shows 2 decimal places for attributes they can affect, instead of none and rounding down, so players can easily see in game what the actual mutation numbers are.
  
  
• Window will no longer scroll up after changing option from the drop-down menu in Settings Window’s "Display & Graphics" tab in the Settings Window
  
  
• Font size changes in the Settings Window will update directly without having to relaunch.
• Tooltip appears when hovering over a hyperlink.
  
  
• Fixed elements of the Zarzakh agency page so that it is now formatted correctly, and text doesn’t go out of bounds or overlaps in different languages.

EVE: Havoc Starts With Over 30,000 PCU

Over the last two days I published 12 blog posts about the patch notes for EVE Online's Havoc expansion which launched today. I know, kind of crazy. But not as crazy as Tranquility posting peak concurrent user numbers over 30 thousand five days in a row. Yes, that really happened in the year 2023.

For those keeping score, PCU since Friday was:

• Friday, 10 November - 30,109
• Saturday, 11 November - 32,897
• Sunday, 12 November - 33,841
• Monday, 13 November - 31,388
• Tuesday, 14 November - 32,684

The first four days cover the Veteran's Day/Remembrance Day holiday weekend. Some countries celebrated on Friday and some on Monday. But over 30,000 on a Tuesday? A promising sign.

I'll stay with my prediction that Sunday's PCU will exceed 2022's PCU for the entire year of 35,240. Can Havoc entice a day with a PCU over 40,000? I'm not sure Tranquility will see that number this weekend. At this point, I'd settle for the daily PCU exceeding 30,000 becoming an ordinary event not worth mentioning again.