Star Citizen's Intergalactic Aerospace Expo Pulls In $24.2 Million In Sales In 2024

Star Citizen's Intergalactic Aerospace Expo, the game's largest fundraising and new player recruitment event, concluded yesterday. The $24.2 million in sales fell 1.4% short of last year's $24.5 million sales total. On the recruitment side, only 51,848 accounts were created, a 27.8% decline from 2023's 71,811.

From the CCU Game Dashboard

For the first time since 2014 the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo experienced a year-over-year decline in sales. But a 1.4% YoY drop in sales should not spell trouble for CIG. To put the amount into perspective, the $24.2 million in sales CIG achieved over the past 14 days is 48.3% greater than the $15.1 million recorded by all games in the EVE franchise in the 3rd quarter of 2024. Overall, CIG is still on pace to record between $110-$120 million in cash shop sales for the third consecutive year in 2024. The company only needs another $3.6 million through the remainder of December to achieve that mark. If anything, this year's IAE sales performance should emphasis that CIG has probably maximized yearly sales from the cash shop and should plan accordingly.

The area that should cause concern is new account creation. Not only is this year's amount a 27.8% drop from last year, but is a 46.3% decline from the 107,705 new accounts created during the IAE in 2022. Eventually a declining player base will result in lower revenues. The launch of Squadron 42 may help in this regard, but the launch of CIG's single player game is not until sometime in 2026.

Given proper management, CIG should survive, and rather comfortably, through 2025 to reap the benefits of the launch of the studios first released game in 2026. However, I do have to include a reminder the man in charge at CIG is Chris Roberts. Given his track record at Digital Anvil, where he had to sell the studio to Microsoft because he ran out of money during the development of Freelancer, 2025 may hold a great deal of financial troubles for the company.

Do Rolling Expansion Launches Work?

A curious thing happened with the launch of EVE Online's latest expansion, Revenant. The developers keep rolling out content. First, we had the initial expansion launch on 12 November. Writing up the patch notes, the expansion seemed a lot smaller than the Equinox expansion in June. But then, two weeks later, the developers rolled out what I called the Thanksgiving patch on 26 November. When I read the patch notes, I thought to myself, "This is a mini-expansion." I published another 5 posts covering that patch.

This week players saw another sizable patch for Revenant. The accompanying dev blog detailed a new corporation project type, a new use for Evermarks, and starting tomorrow in-game cinematic introductions for ships. And I'm not even including today's patch. (Spoiler, check the wrecks in space.) Unlike other patches, I didn't even dedicate a post on the latest updates to the Tranquility shard.

I can see why CCP would choose a rolling launch for Revenant. They had two dates reserved for content drops at the end of November and start of December anyway. Last week saw a patch associated with the development and testing of EVE Vanguard, CCP's first person shooter under development. And tomorrow is the launch of EVE's second big seasonal event, Winter Nexus. If the developers have additional content to deploy, why not just add it to the patch?

Well, players of Final Fantasy XIV might go apoplectic. Maintenance downtime periods for content patches for the Square Enix title usually run from 6 hours for point patches to a full day for expansions. But CCP has really worked on their deployment capabilities over the years and now a thirty minute downtime is long. Now if CCP can just eliminate the daily downtime.

Anyway, I'm sure deploying a patch over 2, 3, or even 4 days does make things easier on the back end. But how about the player experience? Is it better to have everything dumped on our heads all at once, or spoon fed a little at a time over a few weeks? I'd hate it in FFXIV, but in EVE? I personally don't mind, except for when I need to cover the topic.

More Layoffs Reported At Cloud Imperium Games

Apparently Cloud Imperium Games, developers of the upcoming full loot, PvP sandbox MMORPG Star Citizen, didn't wait to see the financial results of this year's Intergalactic Aerospace Expo before making decisions on the size of its workforce for 2025. According to Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson, CIG started laying off staff a few days ago.

The original claims were made by a former CIG employee who then locked his Twitter account (now known as X). Those claims I totally disregard as uncredible and possibly the result of a bitter former employee looking to strike back at his former employer.

What I do find credible is Henderson's reporting that his sources indicate up to 12 employees, mostly from the QA department, were let go. Henderson has earned some credibility with his reporting on the layoffs at the beginning of 2024 at CIG's North American offices as well as the CitizenCon crunch story at the beginning of October. In other words, Henderson has more credibility than some random Twitter user with an axe to grind who locks away his allegations so others cannot check the story.

I find the story of the layoffs credible from a different direction. CIG is currently on pace to bring in as much money this year as the company did in 2022. According to CIG's financial report for 2022, the company turned a profit of $1.3 million with somewhere between 15%-20% less staff than today. Since employee costs make up a huge portion of the budget, figure overall costs are 15%-20% higher in 2024 than 2022, even after the approximately 10% force reduction at the beginning of the year.

With cash shop sales apparently plateauing between $110-$120 million per year, CIG probably needs to cut costs to stay in business. But cutting QA? From everything I've read and watched, one thing not done to excess is quality assurance. I realize CIG's customer base does a lot of QA work on Star Citizen, but these cuts may cut too close to the bone in the long-run. Then again, Chris Roberts may still be salty about what happened during the Squadron 42 demo at CitizenCon.

Cloud Imperium Games' Sales Down 28.7% YoY In November 2024

While expected, Cloud Imperium Games posted another 25%+ year-over-year decline in cash shop sales in November according to the CCU Game dashboard. Last month's total of $20.3 million in cash shop sales was a 28.7% decline compared to November 2023's figure of $28.4 million. For the year the company's sales revenue is a few thousand dollars short of $98 million, down $11.2 million, or 10.2% for from the first 11 months of 2023.

For those who keep track of new accounts (aka "new citizens"), November's 61,068 was 33.9% less than the total of 92,395 in November 2023. For the year, new account creation is down 30.4% for the first 11 months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.

Overall, the recorded sales tracked on the CCU Game dashboard is $755.3 million since the launch of the Kickstarter in October 2012. But Cloud Imperium has additional funding sources not tracked by the dashboard. Overall, the company has recorded $853.9 million in confirmed revenue (the funding page & the 2022 financial report).

• Sales/Pledges: $755.3 million (through 30 November 2024)
• Subscriptions: $33.0 million (through 31 December 2022)
• All other sources: $65.6 million (through 31 December 2022)

In addition, the company has received a total of $63.25 million in outside investment. According to the 2022 financial report, $4.8 million of the amount was returned to investors in 2020. Including the outside investment money, the total amount raised by CIG to create Squadron 42 and Star Citizen is $917.2 million, or $912.4 million when excluding the returned funds.

I started this post with the word "While expected" for a reason. Because after my November update, I found out CIG had shifted some dates for the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo into December. Through the first 9 days of the event, sales this year were $414,000, or 2.7%, ahead of last year's pace.

Here is my take from 7 November upon hearing of the event's shift into December

Cloud Imperium announced the IAE will run from Nov 22-Dec 5. This shifts Star Citizen's biggest ship sale partially into December. Expect YoY revenue in November to drop from $28.4 million to $18-$22 million and rise in December from $8.4 million up to $14-$18 million. 1/2

— Noizy (@noizygamer.bsky.social) November 7, 2024 at 11:09 AM

I'm projecting sales for Q4 to fall between $42 million and $50 million. While not matching last year's performance, it will be CIG's second highest sales quarter in its 12 year history. However, those sales would see CIG either match last year's sales total or fall as much as 7% short of 2023. 2/2

— Noizy (@noizygamer.bsky.social) November 7, 2024 at 11:13 AM

Will CIG's cash shop sales this year surpass those of 2023? The prospect becomes less likely each day. Here are the December sales totals CIG needs to achieve to meet certain metrics of success.

• Match December 2023 sales: $8.3 million
• Match Total 2022 sales: $16.2 million
• Match Total 2023 sales: $19.6 million
• Match Q4 2023 sales: $22 million
• Match 2022 Total spending: $31.5 million

I threw in the final category of matching 2022's total spending to highlight that ship sales don't pay all the bills for CIG. Also, despite news of post-CitizenCon layoffs amongst the QA staff, headcount at CIG is still probably between 15%-20% greater today than in 2022, meaning total expenses probably increased by that much as well.

Renewing My EVE Subscriptions On Black Friday

Every year players of EVE Online always ask about sales on EVE subscriptions (aka Omega time) on Black Friday. Usually the answer is no. But I saw the ad for Black Friday sales on the launcher and amazingly this year's sale included game time. So I had to dive into the store and look around.

I have two accounts I pay for, with one running out of game time in April and the other in October. But if the sale is good and I have less than a year remaining I'll buy the sale. And the Black Friday sale was particularly good. Forget about the SKINs. The cosmetics are for ships I will probably never fly, especially the Monitor. But at $9.62 per 30 days when buying game time one year at a time, the price is less than half that of buying game time once a month ($19.99). So I went ahead and bought the 12 month Omega package.

I also looked at the packages and found one with SKINs for ships I actually fly. The Rifter and Arbitrator are nice and while I don't fly Retrievers, I do like the Rockbreaker SKINs. So I bought the Silver Starter Pack for the sale price of $11.99 for both accounts. So at the end of the day, I purchased 390 days of Omega time for $9.80 per 30 days.

I was reminded of one other thing at the checkout screen. I was asked for a content creators WeHype code. I spent over $250 today but didn't have a code to put in. A pity because that was $12.75 that could have gone to someone. If content creators were ever going to participate in the program, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the times to join.

I did notice PLEX were not on sale today. Hopefully we will see the in-game New Eden Store which uses PLEX as currency hold a Cyber Monday sale. Now that I saw that the Rockbreaker SKINs are not just for mining barges and exhumers, I might want to pick up a few if they are on sale.

EVE Online: Revenant Thanksgiving Patch - Trustbreaker Arrays

Tomorrow is the CCP Games' first effort to link gameplay in EVE Online and its new first person shooter under development, EVE Vanguard. From 28 November to 1 December a testing event for the FPS game will go on requiring some sort of involvement from players in EVE Online. Between the dev blog and patch notes, here's the information provided by CCP.

First from the dev blog.

In connection with the Vanguard deployment starting on 28 November, the Deathless Circle has deployed Trustbreaker Arrays, which connect to the enigmatic Warden structure in Zarzakh. These arrays scan for crucial passkeys required to breach planetary defenses, enabling Vanguard forces to claim planetary strongholds. However, the arrays are now under siege by Drifter forces, and the Deathless has issued a call to capsuleers to intervene. 

From 26 November to 2 December, pilots can defend the arrays to earn ISK rewards, or destroy them to seize passkeys as valuable commodities. These skirmishes offer a high-stakes choice: stand with the Deathless or shut their operations down. 

The patch notes provided important information. Things like ship restrictions, recommended group sizes, and where to find the Trustbreaker Arrays. You know, the important stuff.

The Deathless Circle has deployed Planetary Trustbreaker Arrays to steal passkeys for planetary defense networks ahead of Vanguard assaults. These sites have fallen under attack by Drifter forces!

• Deathless Trustbreaker Under Attack sites are appearing in pirate Insurgency FOB systems.
  
  
• Capsuleer fleets can choose to protect the Trustbreaker Array for the duration to receive a reward from the Deathless. 5 capsuleers are recommended for this challenge.
  
  
• Alternatively, those who do not wish to support the Deathless can wait for the structure to generate PDN passkeys before destroying it. Many groups would pay handsomely for any such commodities seized from the wreckage!
  
  
• Regardless of their motivations, capsuleers are limited to bringing standard T1 cruisers or below within the site.

To participate in the testing, players in EVE Online should find an insurgency between 28 November and 1 December and take a side. Oh, did I mention rewards? No cookies, but everyone likes skill points, right?

The battle intensifies on 28 November, as war descends to the surface in EVE Vanguard. Insurgency deployments unleash warclones on planets to directly impact the ongoing war in space. In addition, capsuleers get daily rewards for taking flight in EVE Online between 28 November and 1 December: Vanguard-themed SKIN design components, 3,000 EverMarks, and 50,000 Skill Points. Choose your allegiance, shape planetary battlefields, and leave your mark on the EVE Online universe from the ground as well as amongst the stars. Learn more about EVE Vanguard and add the game to your Steam wishlist so you don’t miss a moment of action. 

EVE Online: Revenant Thanksgiving Patch - Little Things

CCP Games has faced a problem with the last couple of EVE Online expansions. After the goodies accompanying the launch of an expansion end, so does the attention of many players. The developers have come up with a unique solution. Once the login rewards and free game time run out, drop more free content. And so, I woke up this morning to find a mini-expansion's worth of patch notes waiting on the launcher along with a dev blog. After a quick read, I think the mashup might prove useful. So here's part four of the effort covering the Little Things updates introduced in today's patch.

The Little Things features are something that originated over a decade ago. At a certain point the developers discovered players don't just demand Jesus features. Making our lives easier gets applause also. The dev blog noted:

Today's release also ushers in a few Little Things to improve quality of life. While some Little Things are bigger than others, these are some of our favorite changes to make. If you have any QoL suggestions, head on over to the EVE Online Forums where we'd love to hear from you.

I'm not sure which change is better, making information in contracts more visible or being able to buy from more than one sell order at a time. I'll let you judge.

🤝 The yield, range and cycle time for gas cloud scoops and gas cloud harvesters has been added to the tooltip of the modules.

🤝 Corporations that you have 0 LP within your personal wallet or corp wallet are now hidden.

🤝 Added a dedicated neocom icon for the overview, so you can now more easily see it in the neocom and the ctrl+tab window when you have it minimized.

🤝 The input fields for courier contracts have been made bigger, and the left panel can now be expanded, so you can see larger values more easily.

🤝 Added checkboxes to courier contract filters so you can now more easily search for unfiltered results, without having to delete the info from the filter fields.

🤝 You can now copy names of item types in info windows and the market window.

🤝 You can now edit bookmarks through the radial menu while using the solarsystem map.

🤝 Added the number of jumps a system which is a point in your current autopilot route is if you mouse over it.

🤝 You can now drag and drop items onto the neocom item hangar icon to move them.

🤝 You are now able to buy from more than one sell order at a time from the ‘buy this type’ window.

🤝 You can now deliver corp items to yourself in the ‘deliver to’ right click menu.

🤝 Multiple skills can now be moved around in the skill queue.

🤝 Multibuy can now interpret ‘1x item name’.

EVE Online: Revenant Thanksgiving Patch - Factional Warfare and Insurgency Balance

CCP Games has faced a problem with the last couple of EVE Online expansions. After the goodies accompanying the launch of an expansion end, so does the attention of many players. The developers have come up with a unique solution. Once the login rewards and free game time run out, drop more free content. And so, I woke up this morning to find a mini-expansion's worth of patch notes waiting on the launcher along with a dev blog. After a quick read, I think the mashup might prove useful. So here's part three of the effort covering some factional warfare and insurgency changes introduced in today's patch.

The dev blog didn't really have much to say on the subject.

Over in the warzone, changes to Factional Warfare and Pirate Insurgencies ensure more meaningful engagements with improvements to Battlefield sites, shifting the makeup of signatures, buffing deployables, and more.  

The patch notes are a lot more descriptive on the changes made and the reasons why. This section of the patch notes sounds more like a dev blog than the typical CCP patch notes.

In Equinox we fixed battlefields being cheesed by holding a single battlecruiser NPC alive, however with that fix, players feel like Battlefields are now too tedious and not rewarding enough and this has caused a reduction in fighting and PVP in and around battlefields. To address this, we are approximately doubling the time between NPC waves.

• Respawn time for NPCs has been significantly increased

Propaganda Broadcast Structures and Listening Outposts advantage deployables are not being used outside of key system sieges. We’re trying to improve this by increasing their availability and effectiveness.

• Drop rates of Encoder Splice and Decoded Packages from FW Operation Centers (Rearguard Data Sites) has been approximately doubled.
  
  
• Doubled the effectiveness on advantage of the Propaganda Broadcast Structure and the Listening Post objective deployables.

A key complaint from anti-pirate players in insurgencies is that the Pirate FOBs have such huge tether ranges that it makes it incredibly difficult to siege as pirate aligned players can remain tethered and invulnerable until they want to engage while close to their ships even in long range setups, so we’re bringing it down to a value that should still feel very comfortable for players coming in from the shipcaster, but less powerful as a tool used against players trying to siege the FOB.

• Tether Radius on the Pirate FOBs has been dropped from 100km to 50km

Another common complaint with FW and Insurgencies is the amount of multiboxing destroyers in the warzone. We’re trying to address this by shifting the FW sites back towards 1-man sites and the insurgency 5-person sites away from Smalls and into Mediums and Larges. We’re doing this because it’s fairly difficult to contest 5 Destroyers inside smalls with less than 5 pilots, but much easier in Mediums and Larges where 2-3 Navy Cruisers/HACs or 1-2 BCs can engage them. Having slower responding but larger, more rewarding 5-person sites will hopefully also increase the number of them that are contested.

• Reduced the number of Factional Warfare Small NVY-5 and Small ADV-5 sites. A slightly increased amount of Small NVY-1s and Small ADV-1s will appear in their place to keep the potential number of victory points generated per day the same.
  
  
• Reduced the total number of the insurgency Small ADV-5 sites, their chance to spawn has been rolled into increasing the number of Medium and Large ADV-5 sites which spawn instead.
  
  
• The Respawn time of all insurgency ADV-5 sites has been increased (slowed down) to keep LP and Corruption generation rates similar with an increased number of Medium and large ADV-5 sites spawning.

And finally a change I don't really think needs an explanation.

• Added appropriate salvage to the Angel and Guristas FOB wreck.

EVE Online: Revenant Thanksgiving Patch - Ship Rebalancing

CCP Games has faced a problem with the last couple of EVE Online expansions. After the goodies accompanying the launch of an expansion end, so does the attention of many players. The developers have come up with a unique solution. Once the login rewards and free game time run out, drop more free content. And so, I woke up this morning to find a mini-expansion's worth of patch notes waiting on the launcher along with a dev blog. After a quick read, I think the mashup might prove useful. So here's part two of the effort covering additional ship rebalancing in Revenant.

The dev blog briefly mentioned some of the changes made to ships in today's patch.

A few ships, like the Ferox Navy Issue and the Eos were overperforming, which has been addressed by making them more engageable. Heavy assault cruisers have regained their MWD signature radius bonus to make them a bit more viable in the current meta, and various other ships, like the Ashimmu and Maulus Navy Issue, have been improved. 

This update also introduces several changes aimed specifically at mining. Resources can now be compressed through the right-click menu instead of the compression window, exhumers and barges have improved locked targets, and excavators are now faster.  

Normally I don't use quote boxes for patch notes. But for the explanations of the ship changes I'll change the format, at least for this post.

Ferox Navy Issue

The Ferox Navy Issue is overperforming, so we’re increasing the signature radius back up to the regular T1 Ferox amount and then nerfing the agility and targeting range slightly. We’re hoping the combination of sig and agility reduction will make them a bit more vulnerable to battleships and stealth bombers in fleet encounters. The Ferox Navy Issue loses the optimal bonus the regular T1 Ferox has so we are shaving a bit of max targeting range off as well.

• Signature Radius increased from 300m to 325m
• Agility nerfed from 0.66x to 0.69x
• Max Targeting Range reduced from 67500m to 60000m

Eos

Toning down the Eos somewhat. It has 11 mid-slots and low-slots combined, unlike all other Command Ships which have 10, which is even more powerful when you consider it is a drone ship. Seeing it start to become a little unhealthy in some places so we’re reducing the power of sentry drone fits slightly.

• Drone Optimal range per level reduced from 10% to 5%

Heavy Assault Cruisers

In the Uprising expansion, we made significant changes to HACs by removing or reducing long range bonuses and completely reworking the Muninn which was the most dominant ship in the game at the time. We feel like the meta has shifted now with more Battleships and Navy Battlecruisers being viable so that we can now add back the 50% MWD signature radius role bonus to HACs which we removed in early 2021.

• 50% reduction in Microwarpdrive signature radius penalty Role Bonus added back

Ashimmu

The Ashimmu has lower usage than the other pirate cruisers, so giving it the ability to field 5 medium drones, or 2 flights of light drones. And giving it some small speed improvements.

• Drone Bay and Drone Bandwidth increased from 40 Mbit/sec to 50 Mbit/sec
• Max Velocity increased from 208 to 215m/s
• Agility improved from 0.58x to 0.55x

Scythe

The Scythe has fitting issues, especially since it’s an entry level support cruiser so giving it a small amount of love there. Also boosting the mobility of the Scythe a bit to try and help it stand out from the Osprey more by improving its strengths.

• CPU increased from 285tf to 300tf
• Powergrid increased from 345MW to 375MW
• Max Velocity increased from 250m/s to 260m/s
• Agility improved from 0.6x to 0.57x

Vengeance

The Vengeance has low usage, so we’re giving it a small facelift with some extra damage (But still keeping the Hawk on top with kinetic damage missiles) and a bit more powergrid to help give it some more options.

• Rocket Damage Per Level of Amarr Frigate increased from 5% to 7.5%
• Powergrid increased from 43MW to 46MW

Cruor

The Cruor is underperforming relative to its peers. We’re giving it an extra drone to bump up its damage potential a bit, but have that DPS be destructible. We are then improving the Cruor’s mobility so it can better use the long-range web for catching kiting ships.

• Drone Bay and Bandwidth increased from 5m3 to 10m3 and 5 Mbit/sec to 10 Mbit/sec, respectively.
• Max Velocity increased from 330m/s to 340m/s
• Agility improved from 3.6x to 3.4x

Maulus Navy Issue

The Maulus Navy Issue currently has 1 less total slot than the other Navy EWAR Frigates, so we’re correcting that by giving it an extra high slot. The hope here is that this will improve its versatility and open up options like triple neut setups that its brother in spirit Tristan is capable of. Small PG boost to help fill that high slot, and then a small mobility improvement since it currently is the slowest navy frigate.

• Highslots increased from 2 to 3
• Powergrid increased from 35MW to 38MW
• Max Velocity incrased from 315m/s to 325m/s

Mining Ships

Just a personal note. It's about time the developers realized their mistake with the nerfs to the Procurer made back in 2022. Now, do we really need to have wastage?

We’re giving all mining barges and exhumers an extra few locked targets to improve quality of life when mining. Specifically, the Procurer and Skiff are getting a significant agility buff, which will bring down their align times by several seconds each, and an extra midslot. During the 2022 rebalance, the Procurer and Skiff both lost a slot each total, while the Covetor and Hulk gained one, when we rebalanced them around all having the same total number of slots. The Procurer and Skiff also had their agility nerfed a bit too much and so we are now correcting this and giving them back the slot they lost. Finally, we are improving the speed of Excavators to increase their effectiveness when mining, especially when mining further away asteroids, since the Rorqual is now a more supporting role and excavators are balanced around high wastage.

Rorqual

• 'Excavator' Mining Drone base velocity increased from 175m/s to 250m/s
• ‘Excavator’ Ice Harvesting Drone base velocity increased from 90m/s to 125m/s

All Exhumers

• Max Locked Targets improved from 6 to 8

Skiff

• Agility improved from 0.8x to 0.64x
• Midslots increased from 4 to 5

All Mining Barges

• Max Locked Targets improved from 5 to 6

Procurer

• Agility improved from 0.8x to 0.64x
• Midslots increased from 2 to 3

Navy Faction Light Fighters

Small buff to navy fighters doing longer PVE encounters like the Forsaken Sanctums and Teeming Hordes. Without obsoleting T2 Fighters which still have slightly higher DPS.

• Heavy Rocket ability charge count increased from 12 to 15.

Standard Cerebral Accelerator

Was being abused by new freshly injected characters to take advantage of the 20% damage boost in ships like Marauders and Dreadnoughts, or PVP smurf accounts rather than being used by new players. Removing the damage bonuses and increasing the attributes on it from +3 to +5, to compensate it, which should make it actually more useful for new players and remove the abuse cases.

• Removed 20% turret damage boost and 20% missile rate of fire boost.
• Increased attributes from +3 to +5.

EVE Online: Revenant Thanksgiving Patch - Mercenary Dens

CCP Games has faced a problem with the last couple of EVE Online expansions. After the goodies accompanying the launch of an expansion end, so does the attention of many players. The developers have come up with a unique solution. Once the login rewards and free game time run out, drop more content. And so, I woke up this morning to find a mini-expansion's worth of patch notes waiting on the launcher along with a dev blog. After a quick read, I think the mashup might prove useful. So here's part of the effort covering additions to one of the new features introduced in Revenant, Mercenary Dens.

First from the dev blog is an overview of the additions to Mercenary Dens that didn't make it onto Tranquility with the launch of the Revenant expansion.

Since the launch of Revenant, capsuleers have been hard at work constructing and destroying mercenary dens all over nullsec space. Today, Mercenary Tactical Operations (MTO) have been introduced to these dens, enabling capsuleers to seize control of their systems’ destiny. Upwell has lobbied for a crackdown of the transportation of the encrypted infomorphs of workers in breach of their work contracts, but the Deathless Circle has found a way to remotely transmit infomorph applicants using infomorph decryption keys, unlocking the same kind of remote consciousness that capsuleers use when they die. The production of these keys can be further stimulated through mercenary site activity and they can be delivered to the Deathless for handsome rewards. Dive into MTO today to drive development and reduce anarchy by completing operations, boosting production of infomorph decryption keys that can be traded for valuable rewards, and eliminating potential workforce disruption.

The above sounds great. Or confusing. Definitely confusing without some details. Thankfully the patch notes supplied a lot of details.

 

Mercenary Dens

• Mercenary Dens now have 2 new attributes, Anarchy and Development. Both Anarchy and Development values will slowly increase over time, approximately 5 levels per day (24 hours). Eventually, when the level hits a certain threshold, the Anarchy or Development for that mercenary den will level up, which can have certain affects.
  
  
• While a Mercenary Den is reinforced, passive Anarchy and Development are paused.
  
  
• Added a dedicated window for viewing all your mercenary dens which can be found via the neocom under Industry, or from the mercenary den agency page.

Anarchy

• Anarchy Amount: 0-19 - Level 0 - 0% reduction to Skyhook Workforce
• Anarchy Amount: 20-39 - Level 1 - 0% reduction to Skyhook Workforce
• Anarchy Amount: 40-69 - Level 2 - 10% reduction to Skyhook Workforce
• Anarchy Amount: 70-99 - Level 3 - 20% reduction to Skyhook Workforce
• Anarchy Amount: 100 - Level 4 - 40% reduction to Skyhook Workforce

This means that if left alone, it will take 8 days for a mercenary den to start to negatively impact a Skyhook.

Development Amount

• Development Amount: 0-19 - Level 0 - Regular Informorph Production rate
• Development Amount: 20-39 - Level 1 - 15% bonus to Infomorph Production Rate
• Development Amount: 40-69 - Level 2 - 25% bonus to Infomorph Production Rate
• Development Amount: 70-99 - Level 3 - 35% bonus to Infomorph Production Rate
• Development Amount: 100 - Level 4 - 50% bonus to Infomorph Production Rate

I do have to put my two cents in at this point. I believe players were promised some PvE content along with the introduction of mercenary dens. Today's patch introduces the gameplay. Plus, the sites seem custom made for newer player to contribute to the economic well-being of a null sec alliance. At least in theory. We'll need to wait for experience to see if the developers' plans bear fruit.

Mercenary Tactical Operations (MTOs)

Approximately every 3 days, a mercenary den tactical operation (MTO) will become available. MTOs are new PVE content designed for a single player in a cruiser. These sites are behind an acceleration gate that only lets in T1 and faction cruisers, or any destroyer/frigate. Once an MTO has been warped to, a beacon will appear in space which anyone can warp to, even hostile players. MTOs are very rewarding and will drop on average around 80-100 million ISK in loot, and if they are successfully completed, they will decrease anarchy by 20 points, and increase development by 10 points. Since it takes 4 days for anarchy to increase by 20 points, this means that running a MTO once every 3-4 days (when it becomes avaliable) will be enough for Mercenary Den owners to maintain their dens to prevent any adverse affect on the Skyhook if they so wish.

To Start an MTO, you will need to be undocked in the solarsystem where the mercenary den is located, and then start it from the Opportunities window, or from the Mercenary Den window. MTO sites always spawn in the same solarsystem as where the Mercenary Den is located. A Mercenary Den can have a maximum of up to 3 MTOs at once, and MTOs last for 4 days after being offered.

If a Mercenary Den is already maxed out at level 4 Development, completing a MTO will create 500 bonus infomorphs directly into the mercenary den on completion in place of the development reward.