By now two EVE Online patches in a week should no longer surprise me. Today's patch is huge, affecting both the Equinox sovereignty system and industry. While the road to the winter expansion has begun, the developers still have unfinished business concerning the Equinox expansion. I'm not a null sec resident, but today's patch plus the activity I've tracked over the summer leads me to believe players are not adapting to the new sov system with the speed CCP wishes.
I have a practice of combining dev blogs with patch notes to try to provide a comprehensive look at the latest changes. I'll do so again with today's dev blog but I have to do so in three posts. The final post covers module changes, communication UI changes and Pochven.
Smartbombs are the highlighted module change in today's patch as they received a full balance pass. I don't know if the dev blog description is a flowery way of saying "we screwed up." Will players react positively to buffing all the things instead of nerfing EM damage smartbombs?
A comprehensive balance pass has also been applied to all smartbombs, bringing them up to par with the current EMP smartbomb stats. This rebalance not only ensures consistency across damage types but also encourages more strategic decision-making with faction and officer-level smartbombs. These new options provide capsuleers with enhanced customization possibilities for their combat setups and bring more diversity to the battlefield.
The patch notes are less flowery but more detailed.
Smartbombs have undergone a full balance pass. All smartbombs in the game have been brought up to parity with the current EMP Smartbomb stats, which were better than the other damage types.
- Meta "Named" Smartbomb modules are now 'Compact' and use less powergrid.
- All compact meta smartbomb damage types now use the same 20% reduced CPU requirements that EM Smartbombs have.
- Added Storyline variations for the Kinetic and Thermal Smartbomb damage types which were missing before.
- Players can obtain blueprint copies for these smartbombs from exploration content such as Data Sites, like most current storyline module blueprints.
- Explosive Storyline Smartbombs have been buffed to now have the same values as the EM ones.
- Storyline Smartbombs have received very small fitting buffs to keep them as the easiest to fit modules with the changes to Meta Smartbombs becoming the Compact variation.
- Faction and Officer smartbombs of non-EMP damage types have had their stats brought up to parity with EMP stats. We aim to not only bring the other smartbomb damage types up to par with EM, but to also make more interesting choices between the smartbomb damage types at Faction and Officer levels. Thus, after bringing them up to parity, the following changes were made:
- Thermal Smartbombs: +20% range, -20% damage.
- Explosive Smartbombs: +20% damage, -20% range.
- Kinetic Smartbombs: -20% capacitor cost, -20% CPU cost, +20% cycle time.
- There now are 36 new Mutaplasmid types available to further customize and modify Smartbombs.
- Smartbomb Mutaplasmids can modify the damage, range, cycle time, capacitor cost, CPU and powergrid requirements of Smartbombs.
- Players can obtain these Mutaplasmids by completing regular Abyssal Filaments. The type of Filament that drops each Mutaplasmid type is based on the damage type associated with that Filament.
- EMP (EM) Smartbomb Mutaplasmids - dropped in Electrical Filament Abyss.
- Plasma (Thermal) Smartbomb Mutaplasmids - dropped in Firestorm Filament Abyss.
- Proton (Explosive) Smartbomb Mutaplasmids - dropped in Gamma Filament Abyss.
- Graviton (Kinetic) Smartbomb Mutaplasmids - dropped in Exotic Filament Abyss.
- We will keep a close eye on the balance of missile "firewalling" strategies, Interdictor Bubble hitpoints for tackling Supercarriers and Titans, PVE Smartbomb balance, and Smartbomb gatecamps following these changes.
But smartbombs are not the only modules the developers worked on.
Increased Drifter activity in the Abyss and known space has brought as many as ten new high-ranking pirate officers out into the open, potentially dropping over 50 new modules. There are reports of rare officer frigates in highsec asteroid belts and officer cruisers in lowsec belts, providing both a challenge and an opportunity to acquire powerful new equipment.
Frigate and Cruiser Officers and Officer modules
- New Officer Frigate and Officer Cruiser NPCs have been added to the game.
- Officer Frigates can appear incredibly rarely in 0.5 rated high security space asteroid belts.
- Officer Cruisers can appear incredibly rarely in 0.1 and 0.2 rated low security space asteroid belts.
50+ New Officer modules have been added to the game.
- 1mn and 10mn Afterburners
- 5mn and 50mn MWDs
- Small and Medium Energy Neutralizers
- Small and Medium Energy Nosferatus
- Small and Medium Armor Repairers and Shield Boosters
- ECM modules and Signal Distortion Amplifiers
- Micro Auxiliary Power Cores
- 200mm and 425mm Autocannons, Light and Heavy Neutron Blasters, Small Focused and Heavy Pulse Lasers, Rocket and Heavy Assault Missile launchers.
- Assault Damage Controls
- Warp Disruption Field Generator
- And more!
But wait, there's more! Those who like to shield tank their frigates, destroyers, and cruisers (and tech 2 variants) will probably appreciate some more standardization.
Gistii B-type and Gistum B-type shield boosters
- Increased shield boost amount so that they now bridge the gap between C-type and A-type, rather than barely being better than the C-type while using more capacitor. This means they now follow the same precedent set by the large and x-large shield boosters.
- Gistii B-type Small Shield Booster shield boost amount: increased to 48 from 41.
- Gistum B-type Medium Shield Booster shield boost amount: increased to 144 from 124.
Something mentioned in the dev blog turns out to involve an improved user interface.
Effective communication is at the heart of strategic planning, relationship building, and successful trading in New Eden. Recognizing the importance of chat as a tool for information sharing and social interaction, several new improvements have been introduced to give you greater control and to refine the overall user experience.
User Interface:
- The tabs stacked in one window can now be reordered with drag & drop.
- Chat window improvements
- The hierarchy of the context menu has been improved to indicate settings applicable to the specific channel and to all channels.
- The context menu is now available from both the chat options menu (three dots) and the chat tab right-click menu.
- It is now possible to automatically hide messages containing specific phrases by using filters.
- Multi-line chat messages can now be automatically collapsed if longer than the chosen number of lines.
- The following chat channels no longer allow referral links:
- Local chat in starter systems.
- Local chat in Career Agent systems.
- Corporation chat for NPC starter corporations.
- Premade channels, e.g. Rookie Help, Spanish Recruitment.
- Minimized chat windows will now remain minimized after restarting the client.
Pochven also received some changes, including the ability to drop a specific structure.
Capsuleers operating in Pochven will now be able to deploy the mobile observatory. This structure, once deployed and having completed its automatic activation process, will periodically scan the solar system for cloaked objects with a chance to reveal them. This increases the chance of revealing hostile capsuleers engaging in espionage in the system and eradicating the threat or discouraging it in the first place.
Pochven:
- Mobile Observatory deployables can now be deployed in Pochven.
- Rebalanced the web strength of several Minmatar EDENCOM NPCs which had stronger than 100% webs.
And finally, believe it or not, no bug fixes deployed. I guess yesterday's patch addressed those.
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