EVE Online's Viridian expansion, set to launch on 13 June 2023, is the game's second full expansion since the return of the content format in November 2022. The patch notes are fairly extensive. Instead of just composing a surface-level single post giving my thoughts, I thought I'd do a little experiment. Are people interested in perhaps a little deeper coverage? I'm about to find out, as this post covers the introduction of the first ships in EVE's third decade, the Lancer-class tech 2 dreadnought.
I think the new ship class deserves a bigger introduction to the game than is provided in the patch notes. Back in May, CCP provided this description:
Lancers represent the first foray into the advanced Tech II arena for capital ships in EVE since jump freighters were introduced in 2007, and there will be one for each of the four main empires. These ships will be equipped with new area-of-effect disruptive lance beam weapons derived from titans’ lance doomsdays that are designed to disrupt and manipulate the battlefield. This includes temporarily preventing a target from warping, tethering, using their jump drive, while also causing a 50% reduction in remote repair.
This will be the first step in an ongoing evolution of the capital ecosystem where new roles, new tools, and new dimensions of combat will be introduced to keep capital warfare dynamic in all its forms, with strong strategic depth. Dreadnoughts have some of the most clear and well-defined roles in the capital ecosystem currently and that provides a good foundation to work from before attention is turned to expanding on other ship classes.
First, though, the most important change every player in EVE, even those who mainly play in high sec, should take advantage of.
- Lancer Dreadnoughts have been added to the default overview settings, those who are using a custom overview will have to add Lancer Dreadnoughts to their overview settings.
With that important public service announcement out of the way, let's look at the traits and slot layout of the four new ships. For those looking for fitting, attribute, and capital attribute information, I recommend going to the expansion's patch notes.
Bane (Faction: Amarr)
Amarr Dreadnought
- 5% to XL Torpedo, XL Cruise and Torpedo Damage
- 5% Reduction to XL Torpedo, XL Cruise and Torpedo Explosion Radius
Lancer Dreadnought
- 10% Bonus to Disruptive Lance damage
- 20% Bonus to Disruptive Lance maximum range
Role Bonus:
- Can fit a Siege Module
- Can fit a Disruption Lance
- 5.0x penalty to Entosis Link cycle time
Slot Layout:
- High - 6
- Medium - 4
- Low - 8
- Launchers - 3
- Turrets - 0
Karura (Faction: Caldari)
Caldari Dreadnought:
- 5.0% bonus to Capital Hybrid Turret tracking speed
- 10.0% bonus to Capital Hybrid Turret Optimal Range
Lancer Dreadnought:
- 10% bonus to Disruptive Lance damage
- 20% bonus to Disruptive Lance maximum range
Role Bonus:
- Can fit a Siege Module
- Can fit a Disruption Lance
- 5.0x penalty to Entosis Link cycle time
Slot Layout:
- High - 6
- Medium - 7
- Low - 5
- Launchers - 0
- Turrets - 3
Hubris (Faction: Gallente)
Gallente Dreadnought:
- 5.0% bonus to Capital Hybrid Turret rate of fire
- 5.0% reduction in Armor Repairer Cycle Time
- 5.0% bonus to all hull resistances
Lancer Dreadnought:
- 10% bonus to Disruptive Lance damage
- 20% bonus to Disruption Lance maximum range
Role Bonus:
- Can fit a Siege Module
- Can fit a Disruption Lance
- 5.0x penalty to Entosis Link cycle time
Slot Layout:
- High - 6
- Medium - 4
- Low - 8
- Launchers - 0
- Turrets - 3
Valravn (Faction: Minmatar)
Minmatar Dreadnought:
- 10.0% bonus to Capital Projectile Turret falloff range
- 5.0% bonus to Shield Booster and Armor Repairer cycle time
Lancer Dreadnought:
- 10% bonus to Disruptive Lance damage
- 20% bonus to Disruption Lance maximum range
Role Bonus:
- Can fit a Siege Module
- Can fit a Disruption Lance
- 5.0x penalty to Entosis Link cycle time
Slot Layout:
- High - 6
- Medium - 6
- Low - 6
- Launchers - 0
- Turrets - 3
Lances: What makes the Lancer-class dreadnoughts special are their ability to mount the disruptive lance. CCP went into great detail around their ideas surrounding the new weapon.
So, although the Bane, Karura, Hubris, and Valravn will be less efficient at single target damage than a Tech I dreadnought, they will instead gain the ability to deal more damage and apply debuffs to multiple targets caught within the beam of their new disruptive lance weapon.
The lance energy neutralizes the area around it when it fires, and given that it requires capacitor to fire, this makes firing them en masse from a single ball of ships difficult (plus, you're likely to hit friendlies in such an arrangement). This area-of-effect energy neutralization has the potential to encourage more thoughtful placement of capital ships on a battlefield, rewarding the side which is best able to make use of them. Ships struck by the disruptive lance beam will have their warp/jump drives disabled, tether/docking disabled, and experience a 50% reduction to incoming remote repair, all for 60 seconds.
Disruptive lance weapons also have the benefit of great existing design in their spool up time before firing and the fact that the damage they apply is based on the signature radius of their target. This lets them be tuned to be more interesting as anti-capital weapons than something that can be used as a means of punching down at subcapital fleets.
According to the patch notes, the disruptive lances will have the ability to inflict 1/3rd the base damage as the titan lance. The disruptive lance does bring some unique effects to the game.
- Disruptive Lances apply a suite of debuffs to any ship that it hits, including:
- Not being able to tether.
- Not being able to warp out, dock, jump, or use a stargate.
- Receiving only 50% of incoming remote repairs.
- Disruptive Lances will do a 10km AoE energy neutralize around the lancer ship that activates it, like Titan lances.
- Disruptive Lances will provide a similar set of debuffs to the lancer, such as not being able to tether, cloak, dock or jump for 5 minutes after firing.
- Disruptive Lances can only be fired while in Siege mode and ships with this module fitted are unable to activate cloaking devices.
CCP introduced three new skills associated with the new ship class.
- Lancer Dreadnoughts [x16]: 2,500,000,000 ISK at all empire school stations
- Disruptive Lance Operation [x14]: 500,000,000 ISK at all empire school stations
- Advanced Capital Ship Construction [x16]: 500,000,000 ISK at all empire school stations.
Empire schools are found in high and low security space and are not faction specific. For players interested in knowing the names of the 12 empire schools in order to use the agent finder feature to identify the closest stataion, they are:
Amarr
- Hedion University
- Royal Amarr Institute
- Imperial Academy
Caldari
- School of Applied Knowledge
- Science and Trade Institute
- State War Academy
Gallente
- Center for Advanced Studies
- Federal Navy Academy
- University of Caille
Minmatar
- Republic University
- Republic Military School
- Pator Tech School
The skills also have the associated benefits:
- The Lancer Dreadnoughts skill book will be required to fly the Dreadnoughts. In addition to the racial Dreadnought skill at level V.
- Disruptive Lance Operation is needed to use the new lances, each level of this will reduce capacitor consumption of the lances by 5%
- Advanced Capital Ship Construction is required to build Lancer Dreadnoughts. Each level will reduce the manufacturing time by 1%.
Industry - Let's start out with the tech 1 item first, the disruptive lance. Blueprint originals are available for sale for 500 million ISK at the appropriate empire school for the respective racial lance. Check the list of empire schools provided above to determine where to purchase the BPO.
Lance Blueprint Material:
- Zydrine: 20,000
- Megacyte: 25,000
- Isogen: 20,000
- Nocxium: 25,000
- Mexallon: 40,000
- Pyerite: 1,000,000
- Tritanium: 1,500,000
Players cannot purchase Lancer-class BPOs as the ships are tech II.
- Blueprints to build the Lancer dreadnoughts, are acquired from running invention jobs on existing Tech 1 Dreadnought BPCs.
T2 Dreadnought Material Requirements:
- T1 Dread - 1
- [Factional] Capital Reactor Unit - 1,700
- [Factional] Capital Microprocessor - 1,500
- [Factional] Capital Capacitor Unit - 1,500
- [Factional] Capital Sensor Cluster - 900
- [Factional] Capital Thruster - 900
- [Factional] Capital Armor Plate - 400
- [Factional] Capital Shield Emitter - 400
- Morphite - 4000
- Construction Blocks - 2000
- R.A.M.- Starship Tech - 100
In addition, two additional items that affect manufacturing the Lancer-class ships were noted.
- Lancer Dreadnoughts will have the same restrictions for Upwell Structures docking as regular Dreadnoughts do.
- Lancer Dreadnoughts will only be able to be manufactured in Low Security, Null Security in an NPC stations or with an Upwell Capital Manufacturing Service online in Low Security, Null Security or Wormhole space. The same as existing Dreadnoughts.
Finally, building the new ships in Upwell structures does have the advantage of the effects from rigs.
Large Structure Rigs
- Standup L-Set Capital Ship Manufacturing Efficiency I
- Standup L-Set Capital Ship Manufacturing Efficiency II
XL Structure Rigs
- Standup XL-Set Ship Manufacturing Efficiency I
- Standup XL-Set Ship Manufacturing Efficiency II
Hopefully this post has helped explained a very important change to EVE Online, namely the introduction of a new class of tech 2 capital ships. A long awaited feature, these ships are part of the big hype surrounding the Viridian expansion. While the ships are not available on day one of the expansion, the race to build the first one began upon the announcement of the ships coming to New Eden. So while not available to fly on Tuesday, the ships will provide industrial gameplay on launch day while other players obtain the skills required to fly the tech 2 dreadnoughts. And thus the introduction of new ships into EVE's third decade begins.
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