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Blog Banter 36: The Expansion of EVE

"With the Inferno expansion upon us, new seeds have been planted in the ongoing evolution of EVE Online. With every expansion comes new trials and challenges, game-changing mechanics and fresh ideas. After nine years and seventeen expansions, EVE has grown far more than most other MMOGs can hope for. Which expansions have brought the highs and lows, which have been the best and the worst for EVE Online?"

"Time may change me
But I can't trace time"
- David Bowie

CCP heralds the twice-annual EVE expansion as "Free", and in the strictest sense, it is. We don't have to pay more for it, but it is not truly free. Players pay every month for EVE, far more than maintenance costs. Seventeen expansions into EVE, I've seen ten of them, beginning with Trinity. When I tried to list the expansions I've seen, several were forgettable. I'll cover my top three, and touch upon the ones with the most failed promise that I've lived through.

I Trinity

Trinity holds a special place in my heart, as the most important EVE expansion for me. As a Mac user, I had drooled and grumbled about not playing EVE for the first four years it was out. When it was announced that the Intel conversion at Apple was bringing EVE to the Mac, I signed up for a subscription on Day 1 (I didn't even do a trial). It wasn't the most game changing expansion for EVE, but it was for me.

II Apocrypha

Apocrypha had the most impact on me as a player. I had been solo-ing EVE (badly), and having skills to get in and out of wormholes early in the Apocrypha days made me friends with people who did things in groups, and opened my eyes to the truth of EVE - it is not a game for solo players. New probing methods, Tech 3 ships, isolated islands in space, Apocrypha brought about a whole new class of player - the dedicated wormholer, and strategies and tactics alongside it.

III Crucible

For many, Crucible was the make or break of EVE. Players who had yearned for the success of Incarna had been disappointed (putting it mildly), and the issues that surrounded Incarna needed a clean break. Crucible focused CCP on spaceships, and EVE was once again a fun, beautiful game that included spaceship combat. Cruible kept many of us from leaving the world of New Eden forever.


The worst expansions are harder to cover. Really, only one expansion in the 4+ years I've played EVE has been bad. I had some forgettable ones though. Quantum Rise and Tyrannis didn't bubble to the top of my memory when thinking about expansions, and I wasn't sure Incursion was a full expansion until I checked the expansion history on Wikipedia. That didn't make them necessarily bad, they just weren't...memorable. In the four years I played EVE, only Incarna was a failure as an expansion. Incarna has been covered so many ways, by so many including myself, I'd rather just say "it was bad" and leave it in the basement.

Two expansions that could have been amazing were Empyrean Age and Dominion. Both of these brought about new conflicts, new areas for player driven content, and both were abandoned half-finished or worse – broken. With the recent introduction of Inferno, CCP looks like they might actually make good on the promise of the Empyrean Age, and it hints at changes to fulfill Dominion in the future. Here's hoping that Winter 2012 (or Summer 2013) brings about the next iteration in the long-broken Dominion as well.

The title of this post is taken from "The Formula for Change" created by Richard Beckhard and David Gleicher, refined by Kathie Dannemiller and is sometimes called Gleicher's Formula. This formula provides a model to assess the relative strengths affecting the likely success or otherwise of organisational change programs.


Simply put, Change = dissatisfaction + vision + practical first steps

On the definition of Piracy

Just a bit of a brief explanation, in case anyone cares.

In my fantasy land of EVE Online, pirates aren't just pilots who run around in frigates looking to gank ratters or miners in losec belts. They don't just sit on hot losec gates in instalock canes popping noobs who turned on "shortest" autopilot.

Don't get me wrong, they do these things. But they do (or they did) much more. Pirates hunted the losec systems of EVE for lucrative haulers (who used to exist), for hisec mission runners attempting to run the rare losec mission, or small fleets running LV Missions. Pirates felt like they owned certain constellations, or systems, and made it their mission to hunt down anyone who dared enter their territory.

They didn't just shoot each other, or the foolish random pilot. They hunted Faction Warriors (they didn't join FW). They might have even occasionally roamed into hisec for the terror of a mining fleet gank (not a random one, a full-blown operational gank).

To be fair, I haven't seen a lot of pirates in losec lately. I see solo hunters, I see groups who are more like the mafia than a pirate corp. Not that there is anything wrong with either of those things. But they aren't pirates. If you are calling yourself a pirate, take a look at the historical (and modern) pirate, and ask if that's what you are doing. Because if you aren't, you shouldn't bother calling yourself a pirate. Also, just because you live in losec, have a -5.0 or lower sec status, and you shoot people, that's not really piracy either. Just saying'....

Ships in my Hangar

I've not been logging in a lot lately, but I've been collecting my ships from around New Eden into a central staging system. After 4 years, I had a lot of ships scattered around, and now I find I just have a lot of ships. It doesn't help that I used to play Somer.blink and collected my wins instead of cashing them out.

Upon doing this list, I realized that I have a serious problem – too many ships. So the first thing I did was donate some hulls to Hulkageddon for prizes. The other interesting tibit was that I don't have a single battleship in my staging hangar. I have a couple hulls stored in HiSec, but not one fit up Battleship. I never really liked them. Too slow and deliberate for my style.

Saying that, I like frigates a lot, even though they aren't the hardiest of ships. I added up the numbers, and (excluding T1 hulls) I have almost 48 frigates in my staging hangar. Here's a sampling of them:

Enyos (a lot) - I really like this AF, and it's even more awesome since Crucible.
Ishkurs I keep meaning to set one of these up as a losec PvE boat.
Jaguars and Wolves - Did I mention that when AFs were buffed in Cruicible I bought a lot of them?


Helios - A decent LoSec prober for exploration. Less useful in Null (where I fly a Cheetah instead)
Keres - I've never fit up the Keres. I am really annoyed by Sensor Damps in PvE, so I really have to try it soon in PvP to see if it annoys others. But it requires good support to survive.

Ares - tackle. Because fleet tackle matters.
Taranis - tackle with a bit of a bite. Also a good 1v1 boat.

Hounds & Nemesis' - my old CEO loved bombers and hot drops. I've bombed badly a number of times, not sure I've ever done it well.

I won't go into the other hulls. Lets just say I have too many ships, and I need to start losing some.

Unintended Consequences

Once upon a time, traders plied the spacelanes, hauling goods across the expanse of space to net a profit.

In the olden days, these traders had to utilize freighters or industrials to haul their goods across dozens of systems. Then, the empires developed the Jump Freighter.

A massive vessel with over 300,000m3 of storage, the Jump Freighter is able to both navigate standard stargates and jump to a cynosural beacon. And in that instant, losec died.

This is not a clarion call for the end of the Jump Freighter, because it has a purpose, in fact much of nullsec in EVE would not exist as it does, without the Jump Freighter. This is a thought, about the rule of unintended consequences. I believe the idea was to improve logistics to deep nullsec. After all, even on a good day, it's fairly difficult to get to Stain, or the deep drone regions. And that is with a Jump Freighter.

But the unintended side effect of the jump freighter may have been the death knell for true losec piracy. After all, it's not profitable to hunt the spacelanes between regions when there are no industrials (or freighters) traveling them. And so, as I found in a trip out to Solitude this weekend, the once-busy losec routes are, sadly, desolate and barren. But the station systems on common jump routes are filled with cyno alts, awaiting their moment to undock in a frigate, pop the cyno, and sit for 10 minutes, waiting to either dock (or if they are lucky, get shot).

And so piracy in New Eden is but a ghostly shell of its former self.

Fixing Dominion Part Four: Details and Errata

Part four in the series covers the bits and pieces, the little details around this new sovereignty system.

Taxes

Alliances will now have the ability to tax member corporations. Tax rates are voted on by the members of the executor corporation, and implemented with a successful majority vote. Failure to gain a successful majority will prevent the tax changes from occurring. Taxes are based on a percentage of income to a corp wallet, from any given transaction.

Treaties

Survival and prosperity in EVE requires cooperation. Corporations and Alliances will have a new tool to enable cooperation: the Treaty. A treaty allows all entities involved to have identical access to sovereignty upgrades including stations, jump bridges, and the Subspace Transmission Tracker Array. Any party in a treaty can opt-out with a 24-hour cool down notice to all other parties in the treaty.

Index Decay

All upgrade indices can decay over time. The baseline decay rate is 10% divided by the Empire Sovereignty Index. Activity in a system reduces the decay rate for a particular index. For example, if the Pirate Detection Array 5 is installed there are 20 anomalies that are spawned simultaneously. Each anomaly is worth a % reduction in the decay rate for the day, based on the level of the array. The decay rate is carried over daily. Each iHub upgrade has an independent decay rate and activity level. If a particular upgrade index has a decay rate less than 0%, the index will climb, rather than decay.

When the activity index is calculated for the system at downtime, it is possible for the sovereignty level to drop based on cumulative rate of decay. If sovereignty drops below the required level for an upgrade to function, the specific upgrade will go offline. If the level drops below that of a specific Infrastructure Hub Upgrade, that upgrade will function at the next level down.

Damage Resistance Profiles

All sovereignty structures have a baseline resistance profile. The resistance profile for generic structures is an omni resist at 30%. The profile is increased based on the Empire Sovereignty Index. If the ESI is 2.5 then the resist profile is 55% (with a maximum of 80% at true ESI 5.0).

Jump Bridge Fees

Jump Bridges can have usage fees. Fees are paid directly into a selected corp wallet. Fees are based on usage and standings. The calculation for Jump Bridge fees is: ((500 * Jump distance in LY) * (ship mass / 1,000,000,000)) * Standings Fee. Standings Fee is: Baseline ISK * (10/Standings). The total cost for a 4LY jump to a pilot who is +10 to your corp in a 270,000m3 Cruiser would be 54 ISK. For +5 pilots it would be 108 ISK. Pilots who are neutral or have negative standings cannot use Jump Bridges.

Turret Damage Calculations

Missiles do less damage based on the signature radius of the target. Turret damage calculations need to be altered to behave in a similar way - although it has to scale for turret size. There is a discussion on Failheap Challenge about this concept, where large weapons do less damage against smaller targets. I'm not a mathematician, but the idea is a variable damage result, based on weapon size (sm/med/lg/xl) vs signature radius.

Fixing Dominion Part Three: Total Domination

This is part three in a series of nullsec changes I wish CCP would implement. Part One: Use it or Lose it focused on how the sovereignty index is a tiered system based on empire size, sprawl, and individual system use. Part Two covered smaller strategic engagements. Part three covers war, in all it's glory.

One day in the pavilion at Karakorum he [Genghis Kahn] asked an officer of the Mongol guard what, in all the world, could bring the greatest happiness.

"The open steppe, a clear day, and a swift horse under you," responded the officer after a little thought, "and a falcon on your wrist to start up hares."

"Nay," responded the Kahn, "to crush your enemies, to see them fall at your feet -- to take their horses and goods and hear the lamentation of their women. That is best."

"Genghis Khan: The Emperor of All Men" by Harold Lamb

Total Domination

The endgame in nullsec is to take, hold, and control territory. Total domination of your space, to build your own space empire. Unfortunately, war today is one of timers and structures with millions of hitpoints, with a single victory by the defending party leading to a total reset of the battlefield. War should rage across multiple systems, multiple constellations, with victories on either side affecting the total tide of the battle. Each system taken reduces the Constellation Index, each constellation liberated reducing the empire index, and affecting the systems and constellations around them. In addition a "headshot" at the capital system and constellation can bring the empire index crashing down, affecting the decay rates of all systems in the empire.

Strategic Targets

Currently Dominion has two (or three) strategic objectives in a given solar system: The Infrastructure Hub, the Territorial Claim Unit, and a station. To assault a system you need to have Sovereignty Blockade Units anchored at 50% of the gates in a system, attack the iHub. Attack the Station. Repeat twice more. If successful, attack TCU.

Station Games

The first change to this is to remove the station from the required targets list. Control of a station is not required for control of a system. However, if the TCU and the Station are not owned by the same alliance, the station is vulnerable at anytime, and can be taken by anyone. In addition, if the station is not owned by the controlling alliance, it becomes a freeport (anyone can dock). If the TCU and station are both owned by the controlling alliance, the station is invulnerable (although services are always vulnerable) unless the system itself is vulnerable.

Control Bunkers

Similar to Faction Warfare, when a system becomes vulnerable due to the deployment of SBUs, a series of bunkers are spawned. One bunker is spawned for each Military and Infrastructure iHub upgrade in the system, and is tied to that iHub upgrade. These targets appear on the overview just like FW control bunkers. Bunkers are gated, to prevent capital and supercapital ships from participating directly in the bunker battleground. In addition, sovereign ships will land in proximity to the bunker structures, while any foreign ships will land on grid +/-50km to the structures. The bunker will have variable resists based on the sovereignty index (base of 30%, up to 80% omni resists in a system with a local sovereignty index of 4.5-5). Small bunkers can only be entered by Cruiser or smaller ships. Medium Bunkers are limited to Battlecruiser and below, while Large Bunkers allow Battleships and below.

Once a bunker complex is occupied by an invading force, the SBUs become invulnerable until the bunker is destroyed or vacated.

Bunker Structures

At each bunker are three structures – a remote repair tower, a cloaking dispersion array and the bunker itself. The cloaking dispersion array will deactivate the cloak on any ships inside the complex once every 5 minutes. The remote repair tower will automatically repair all sovereign ships and structures on the same grid as if it were a set of Tech 2 large armor/shield/hull remote repair units. The remote repair tower can be hacked using the Codebreaker, which will disable it for 5 minutes, or destroyed. Destroying the bunker itself completes that objective. When a bunker is destroyed, the activity index for the paired upgrade is lowered by one point (not below 1).

Destroying all bunkers in a system makes the iHub vulnerable (as it is under Dominion), for the shield/armor/hull cycle. At the end of each reinforcement cycle a new series of bunkers deploy in the system. If enough SBUs are destroyed to defend sovereignty, all bunkers will despawn automatically.

This model introduces several battlefields in a system simultaneously. The SBUs at the gates are vulnerable for the defender to attempt to resolve the conflict until the bunkers are occupied. The bunkers provide multiple targets that affect the system as a whole and impact the value of the system if the defenders choose not to actively defend from the first vulnerability cycle. In addition, the gates at the bunkers provide multiple battlefields requiring different ships, while still preserving a space in strategic system control (iHub and Station assaults) for Capital and Supercapital ships.

Victory

For the defender, victory is the same terms as today - destroy the SBU(s) to regain control. The difference is, to destroy the SBUs bunkers must be empty of opposing forces. For the attacker, the destruction of all the bunkers is required to make the iHub vulnerable for each cycle, ending with the destruction of the iHub and the vulnerability of the TCU. Occupation/destruction of the station is no longer required in station systems.

Trickle-down impacts

When a system is lost, the constellation and empire sovereignty indices are automatically recalculated, with all the affecting results.

Destructable Outposts

Even in Empire, stations can be destroyed. Player deployed outposts are no different. If an outpost is flipped (shield/armor/hull reinforcement) a new deployable charge "Outpost Demolition Device" can be jettisoned from the cargo hold of a ship outside the station. After a two minute timer, the demolition device will "destroy" the outpost. During the two minute timer, the device can be targeted and shot, or any member of the alliance who deployed it can disable it.

Replacing an Outpost

Destroyed outposts can be reconstructed or replaced by deploying a new Outpost Egg. The new outpost does not have to be the same type as the previous one.

Accessible Assets

All Jump Clones are destroyed. Medical Clones are moved under the same process as a revoked clone. An outpost wreck will contain all assets that were in the outpost, accessible only to the owner of those assets. Based on corporate roles, a player may see the contents of their own hangar or the corp hangars. Items can be removed from the outpost wreck, but not added. Items in a wrecked outpost do not expire. If a new or replacement outpost is deployed in the same location, all items in the wreck are transferred to the new outpost, and the wreck despawns. If an outpost is deployed elsewhere in the system the wreck remains.

Part One: Use it or Lose it
Part Two: Farms and Fields
Part Four: Details and Errata

Fixing Dominion Part Two: Farms and Fields

This is part two in a series of nullsec changes I wish CCP would implement. Part One: Use it or Lose it focused on how the sovereignty index is a tiered system based on empire size, sprawl, and individual system use. Part Two talks about smaller strategic engagements, while Part Three will cover war.

Part Two: Farms and Fields

I was involved in the original "farms and fields" discussions on k.com a couple years ago, and I may or may not have actually linked that phrase to the woes of combat in nullsec. For those of you who don't understand the idea, there are two primary opposing schools of thought in nullsec - the group that wants to get fights, and the group that wants to hole up and let the nomads fly on by. Both of those are valid positions. The "Farms and Fields" position states that there should be something the invading force can do to disrupt life if left unopposed. You can sit safely in your castle, avoiding the fight, but the bandits will have license to burn your farms and fields to the ground.

Smaller Strategic Targets

First of all, let me be clear. The concept here is to create points of conflict, not to tear down huge space empires. However, an empire that cannot or will not defend itself will suffer if their farms and fields are razed.

Targetable Infrastructure Hub Upgrades

Individual iHub Upgrades can be attacked, and when offlined, the AI index for that system drops by one level for the duration the upgrade is offline. This creates an immediate effect - if your Pirate Detection Array is offlined, you won't get as many anomalies to farm. iHub upgrades have omni resists at 30% + the Empire Sovereignty Index effect (with a maximum of 80%) and a very small signature radius to minimize damage from larger weapons. The HP would be relatively small, so a small gang (20 cruisers) can offline an individual upgrade in about 10 minutes.

Repairing iHub Upgrades

The default offline duration is 4 hours, with an option to repair using a new High Slot module, the "Infrastructure Repair Unit" (IRU). The IRU has small, medium, and large versions. Repair points per cycle are scaled based on module size. In addition, iHub upgrades have a natural repair/recharge cycle that takes 4 hours. 20 large IRUs will repair an offline upgrade in about 10 minutes. If an upgrade is offline when any sovereignty index is calculated, that index is calculated at the original level to prevent downtime shenanigans.

The Codebreaker module can now be used to temporarily offline a single iHub upgrade for 5 minutes, with a 30-minute cooldown between uses.

Player Owned Customs Offices

POCOs are already targetable, reinforceable, and destroyable. This would not be changed.

The Codebreaker module will be able to "crack" the security on a POCO. If there are any commodities in the POCO, a certain percentage of them are liberated by a successful hack (but not the planetary resources below). These commodities are taken randomly from any player who has them stored in the POCO.

Station Services

Station Services can already be attacked individually. There is no change to this behavior.

The Codebreaker module can be used to offline any single station service for 5 minutes, with a 30-minute cooldown between uses.


Introducing small targets of opportunity via the Codebreaker and targetable iHub upgrades provides opportunitites for small gangs or dedicated terrorist groups to harass individual systems or whole constellations, but not significantly impact the empire as a whole.

The Benefits of Ownership

These new methods of being able to harass or terrorize a sovereign alliance are counterbalanced by increasing the returns from existing PvE content in Nullsec, as well as new farms and fields.

Local changes in Nullsec

The Local channel is one of the easiest (hence most valuable) tools for intel in EVE. There are three significant changes to how the Local channel behaves:
1) In all space, the name and portrait of a character does not update in local until the 30 second invulnerability timer expires (even if the character immediately recloaks, this data updates).
2) In NPC Nullsec, names and portraits do not show up in local unless the character is docked in a station. Note: If a character undocks, until the 30 second invulnerability timer expires they will still appear to be in the station.
3) In Sovereign Nullsec, names and portraits do not show up in local unless the character is docked in a station. In addition, if the sovereign alliance has purchased the "Subspace Transmission Tracker Array" members of the sovereign alliance (and associated coalition members listed in the coalition treaty) then local (for them) is treated like Empire Local.

edit - thanks to TGR at K.com The Codebreaker module can be used to temporarily offline The Subspace Transmission Tracker Array for 5 minutes, with a 30-minute cooldown between uses.

Sovereignty Upgrades

Subspace Transmission Tracker Array
The Subspace Transmission Tracker Array is a sovereignty upgrade that is anchored within 300km of a stargate. It requires Sovereignty 4 to online, and updates Local for the Sovereign Alliance and Coalition allies to behave like Empire local.

Internal Affairs Monitoring Upgrade
This iHub upgrade reduces the corruption level in a system by 2% per System Index level (up to 10%).

Racial Professional Outpost Platform
Professional Outpost Upgrades double the specific upgrade features from Advanced Upgrades. These upgrades are designed to bring player outposts closer to the production capacity of empire stations.

Racial Outpost type Mission Platform
An Outpost Mission Platform provides one mission Agent from the Outpost faction. Each outpost can be ugpraded with 3 Mission Platforms (Security, Distribution, Mining). Each level of the upgrade adds an agent of the next level (Basic: L1, Standard: L2, Advanced: L3, Professional: L4). Mission platforms (like other station services) can be attacked and disabled, or hacked and disabled.

Part One: Use it or Lose it
Part Three: Total Domination
Part Four: Details and Errata