EVE: Equinox - Homefront Operations

EVE Online's Equinox expansion, set to launch on 11 June 2024, is the game's fourth full expansion since the return of the content format in November 2022. The patch notes are fairly extensive and dense. I find reading lengthy patch notes rather boring, so I also like to go to other sources for information. For both the Viridian and Havoc expansions I wrote a series of posts based on the patch notes with other information added to hopefully make absorbing all the information less painful. This twelfth post in the series for Equinox will cover changes to Homefront Operations. 

Homefront Operations were introduced in the Viridian expansion in the summer of 2023. In a dev blog in June 2023 the developers laid out their vision of the new high-sec based feature.

Flying with other capsuleers, trying out different professions, and honing your skills out of the gate are key to being a success in New Eden. To that end, the AIR Opportunities portal will also be populated with brand-new activities called Homefront Operations, and these will be immediately discoverable on that platform. These sites will bring new and experienced capsuleers together to do new activities together, helping to establish social connections and introduce fleet gameplay. Homefront Operations offer a perfect opportunity for novice pilots to practice their combat, logistics, and hacking skills in a relatively safe PvE environment while cooperating with others. The highsec nature of the Homefront Operations makes the activities it offers a logical next step after completion of the AIR Career Program, especially if some players are apprehensive about venturing into lowsec or nullsec due to a lack of experience.

Equinox sees another set of changes to Homefront Operations. The patch notes indicate the changes were made "to make some of the less popular sites more attractive while addressing common pain points." The first set involves ownership of a site.

Acceleration Gates within these sites will now become partially restricted when activated:

• The character that first activates the gate will be considered the “owner” of that site.
• Anyone outside the owner’s current fleet will receive a suspect timer when activating the gate.
• If the current owner leaves the combat area of a site, another character within their fleet and the combat area will be selected as the new owner.
• If no fleet member is present within the combat area, another character within the combat area will be selected as the owner instead.
• If no owner is found, the gate will be reset and become unrestricted until it is next activated.

The next set of changes involved site payouts.

• Emergency Aid payouts have been reworked.
• The additional payouts received at 5 and 10 minutes have been removed.
• The sites will now complete and grant their main payout after 10 minutes, reduced from 15 minutes.
  
  
• All sites, excluding Abyssal Artifact Recovery, have had their payouts reduced.
• All payout values based on the number of contributors have been adjusted.
• For example, with a group of 5, the payout will now be 15.49 million ISK each, reduced from 17.14 million.
  
  
• The overall bounty values of NPCs within these sites have been greatly increased.
  
• Only characters within the combat area of a site will be eligible for payouts.

In the middle of the list of changes a ship restriction was listed.

• Empire Faction Cruisers are no longer permitted to enter the combat area of these sites.

Apparently the NPCs in the sites needed some adjustment.

• NPC combat fleet compositions, excluding those in Abyssal Artifact Recovery sites, have been adjusted.
• Less EWAR NPCs now appear on average, instead replaced with DPS NPCs.
• Some extreme cases at both ends of the difficulty curve are no longer possible.
  
  
• Combat fleet NPCs within all sites will now take longer to respawn when destroyed.
• Dedicated ECM using NPCs within Dread Assault sites will now take significantly longer to respawn when destroyed.
• Site failure timers in all applicable sites have been reduced to 20 minutes.
• The average DPS of NPCs using missiles has been decreased.
• The repair amounts of logistics NPCs have been decreased.
• Drifter NPCs within Abyssal Artifact Recovery sites will now show their piloting characters.

The final group of changes concern pop-up screens providing information to players.

• When a site ends unsuccessfully, the relevant conversation will appear even if it has been viewed before.
• When arriving at a site that has been completed, the relevant conversation will appear even if it has been viewed before.
• An Info Panel objective will now appear when the character is in warp.
• Improved consistency for when conversations and Info Panel objectives are displayed.