From Extraction To Production: The Changes Coming To EVE Online In December

In the New Dawn Quadrant announcement on Tuesday, CCP teased news of upcoming changes to industrial and economic gameplay. Today the dev blog arrived with the changes. With the changes now on Singularity, the December patch release will introduce the end the Scarcity Era.

The changes are massive, so much so that the dev blog includes an associated Excel file. CCP provided a TLDR at the beginning of the article.

This update introduces more raw materials into New Eden, compression for gas, ice & moon ore, updates to mining & mining crystals, and a rebalancing of the Orca and Rorqual as well as other mining ships. While the Orca and Rorqual will no longer be the best solo-mining platforms, they are receiving a buff to their command bonuses and added new roles.

All the details here and in the support document are a work in progress and subject to change before release on Tranquility. This is a major update and getting your feedback is imperative. As of today, the discussed changes are available on the Singularity test server, so we encourage all Capsuleers to dive in, explore the changes, and join the discussion in the official forum thread.

For today, I plan to quickly review the highlights from the TLDR portion of the dev blog, which some may think is itself too long and didn't read. 

More Available Resources - CCP will double the resource quantity of:

• Ore in asteroids belts
• All Omber, Kernite, and Crokite quantities are doubled in sov anomalies
• Ice belts (on top of the previous 200% increase)
• Mykocerocin
• Cytocerocin
• Fullerine

In addition, Mercoxit quantities in sov anomalies will increase by 20%. The extraction rate for all moons will also double. However, the amount of basic minerals extracted will not double as CCP is introducing a mechanic called mining waste. The mining waste probability is "a chance per cycle for resources to be turned into space dust (in addition to what is going to the character’s inventory)".

Ship updates for gas and ice harvesting/hauling - Expedition frigates (Prospect, Endurance), mining barges, exhumers, and some T1 industrial ships.

• Adding new specialized gas and ice holds to
• T1 industrials (Hoarder, Kryos, Primae)
• Expedition frigates
• T1 barges
• T2 exhumers
• Increasing the resistance profiles of all exhumers
• Increase the base HP of, and adding mid slot to, Covetor and Retriever
• Adding new gas harvesters for all mining barges and exhumers

Mineral Compression - In addition to adding compression for moon minerals and gas, the Orca and Porpoise will also gain the ability to compress ore and gas in space.

• Introducing a new compact industrial core for the Orca.
• Adding new specialized gas and ice holds to the Orca, Porpoise, and Rorqual
• Adding compression for
• Mykocerocin
• Cytocerocin
• Fullerine
• Moon ore

In order to support the new gameplay, new modules and skills are being introduced. CCP will introduce blueprints and skill books into the game sometime in November so players can begin to use the new changes immediately.

The compression changes are important enough I'll list the highlights from farther down in the dev blog.

• Gone are the days of 'lossless' compression. From now on, when you compress resources, some amount will be lost during the process.
• Compression in stations will have a different efficiency depending on the type of resource that is being compressed, except moon compression will not be available. Compression will still be instantaneous but will be less efficient than in-space compression. Compression efficiency is as follows:
• Ore 90%
• Gas 90%
• Ice 79%
• Rorqual, Orca and Porpoise will be able to do compression in space but will require specialized modules for it. However, only the Rorqual can compress Moon Ore in space.
• Each compression module will be able to compress only a certain group of resources as defined by its tier.
• Gas compression modules for all gas types (Myko, Cyto, Fullerines) are being introduced.
• Moon ore compression modules for all moon ore types are being introduced. Moon ore compression will be unique to the Rorqual and will be only available out in space.
• Compressed types will now have the same portion size as their uncompressed counterparts. You can calculate the compression ratio by the difference of volume between the two types.
• Existing compressed types of quantities will be compensated due to this change, such that no loss occurs.

Reprocessing skill and mining crystal changes - In addition to the skills CCP is adding associated with the compression changes, the devs are also changing the existing reprocessing skills. As part of the change, mining crystals are also receiving a rework.

• Condensing all reprocessing skills from 19 individual skills to 6
• Refunding up to 13,568,000 Skill Points to be optionally re-allocated into the new categories (11,776,000 Skill Points)
• ISK will also be refunded at the base price for the deleted skill books (both in the inventory and injected to characters)
• Condensing all mining crystals into the following categories:
• Common
• Uncommon
• Rare
• Superior
• Abyssal
• Mercoxit
• Adding new variants for each mining crystal
• Standard yield
• Higher yield, high waste, less reliable
• Lower yield, very high waste, very unreliable

Just from a personal level, I am glad about the condensing of mining crystals. I found having to carry so many different types of crystals around a bit of a pain. Sometimes when moving around New Eden, I wouldn't have the proper crystal in my cargo hold. I also like knowing I can hold off on training some processing skills for a month and use the time to train other industrial skills.

I am also glad for the ability to compress ore in high sec. Back when the Scrapmetal Processing skill was nerfed in 2014, the thought was minerals moving from high to low sec would move via compressed ore instead of 425mm railguns. However, trying to compress the ore was a pain and I personally never bothered to do so. Now, I have the ability to compress the ore in my Orca and sell it on the market the way CCP would prefer I do.

Blueprint material changes - Finally, the developers are reducing some of the planetary interaction materials for some items. The big changes CCP highlighted are:

• Core Temperature Regulator: Water changes from 2500 to 1250
• Capital Core Temperature Regulator: Integrity Response Drones changed from 150 to 100, Self-Harmonizing Power Core changed from 150 to 100
• Enhanced Neurolink Protection Cell: Genetic Safeguard Filter changes from 200 to 100

Now that I have recorded my initial thoughts I'll go ahead and watch the take on the changes from the talking heads in the EVE media. I'm interested to see what I missed.