I woke up this morning to find when CCP Games labels something as major, they are not joking around. Today's Revenant Major Update for EVE Online features quite a few topics that deserve their own posts. The second in the series will feature changes to Ansiblex Gates designed to affect force projection.
The news article about the update gave a brief description of the change.
Force Projection Adjustments
Ansiblex jump gates are becoming more vulnerable, creating new strategic opportunities for those looking to disrupt enemy logistics. Capsuleers using these gates will now land closer upon arrival, making them easier to intercept. Additionally, Ansiblex gates will no longer auto-repair and must be actively repaired like Metenox moon drills. Warp disruptors and interdiction bubbles will now prevent gate use, further limiting force projection and making nullsec movement more tactical.
The description in the patch notes was a bit more expansive.
We’re making a number of changes to Ansiblex Bridges to limit their force projection power. We’re doing that primarily through giving players more agency by making them more difficult or dangerous to use in contested space, removing the damage cap and requiring them to be manually repaired just like Metenox Moon drills, and requiring new Ansiblex bridges to be placed off grid from stargates to make scouting from the gate harder, rather than introducing new systems or mechanics which limits their use such as jump fatigue.
Our goal with these changes is to make sure nullsec line members and sov holders are still able to use Ansiblex bridges to access the core space that their alliance controls, so that they can still efficiently do daily activities such as mining, ratting, PI, Mercenary Dens, refueling and logistics work without impeding them with a system like fatigue. While opening up more gameplay options to counter force projection, such as delaying responses and fleets with defensive Interdictor and bubble usage, making them more dangerous through increasing the ability for players to setup traps like bombing runs and pipebombs, and to give more options to raiders and roaming gangs by making them easier to camp, and increasing the burden of maintaining distant Ansiblex gates outside of the alliances core space.
I was wondering if anyone would mention the fatigue mechanic introduced in the Phoebe release. If not for fatigue, Phoebe would have gone down in history as the release that brought players the expanded skills queue.
Since the developers went to great lengths to explain the changes I'll just conclude with the details from the patch notes.
Ansiblex Gates & Force Projection:
Ansiblex Jump Gates
- It’s no longer possible to use an Ansiblex while warp disrupted or inside a bubble.
- Ansiblex Jump Gates have been renamed to Ansiblex Jump Bridges for more clarity on not being able to use them while warp disrupted anymore.
- Reduced the Radius attribute on the Ansiblex Jump Bridge from 13,000m to 7,000m.
- This will mean that it now takes up much less volume/area in space and will be easier to camp with warp disruptors and bubbles.
- Ansiblex Bridges no longer auto-repair, no longer have a damage cap and now use the same reinforcement flow as Metenox Moon Drills.
- Ansiblex HP values and resistances have been rebalanced following this change, to provide an increase to their total EHP while giving them higher resistances and lower flat HP to make them easier to remote repair for logistics pilots.
- Shield HP and Armor reduced from 750,000 HP to 500,000 HP.
- (Note: These are increased by 4x when it is high power).
- Shield and Armor Resistances increased from 20% to 75%.
- Structure Hitpoints increased from 3,000,000 HP to 12,000,000 HP.
- Ansiblex Bridges can no longer be placed closer than 100,000km to stargates.
- Existing Ansiblex Bridges will be grandfathered into their current locations, but once destroyed, they will need to be placed at least 100,000km away from the nearest stargate to be replaced.
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