Winter Expansion has a Name?

That name could be Crucible!

Or it might not be.

Evidence!

The real deal or Photoshop?

Who knows!!

Of all the names it could be this one would be suitable considering the issues of the past few months.

The Winter expansion aka Crucible (?) could create the alloy that forges a stronger Eve Online.

Or it's just an excuse to write some corny crap and feed the voracious blog for another day!

POS Polishing

The Winter expansion juggernaut of announcements rolls on!

Today we have some news of a revamp to POS's.

If you have to deal with a POS or two then after reading the dev blog you'll be saying stuff like "Holy Crap!" and "OMFG!".

First cab off the rank is the introduction of Fuel Blocks for the four races as seen below.

Jello shots for POS's

Now looking at that image I don't know which Fuel Block is for which race, so spending thirty seconds in The Gimp I came up with this...

Mmmmmm yummy Cherenkov radiation!

Much easier, moving on.

"Setup/Takedown Timers

The current timers for anchoring, onlining, offlining and unanchoring structures are suboptimal from a player-experience perspective, so we optimized them.

Here are some fun changes:
Jump Bridges now take 30 seconds to anchor (but are otherwise unchanged)
Cynosural Generators now take 10 seconds to anchor and unanchor (but are otherwise unchanged)
Cyno Jammers are unchanged
CSAAs and CSMAs now take 30 seconds to anchor, 3 seconds to online/offline and 10 minutes to unanchor
Turrets, launchers, EW batteries and hardeners now take 5 seconds to anchor/unanchor and 120 seconds to online/offline
Every other structure not already mentioned in this list now takes 5 seconds to anchor/unanchor and 3 seconds to online/offline."

One of the biggest pains with a POS is setting it up, changing the setup etc etc, apart from being able to queue the changes (which you cannot currently do and is not planned at this stage) these timing changes will make the process much nicer.

"The CPU and Power load will no longer have any impact on your fuel needs - all towers now need the same amount of fuel, regardless of configuration."

This is also a great help as the POS will use the same amount of fuel whatever is on, pretty much a high security space buff as corps/alliances can just leave the guns online outside of war decs, and then if you attract a war dec you don't have to online anything, another time saver.

The fuel cost to run a POS will be about the same or a bit less than it currently is.  Initially we'll see the typical cost spike as the supply chain gets into gear but later on it'll calm down.

One of the issues at the moment however is the implementation for the more pimped out towers like a Dread Guristas small/medium/large tower.  Previously those types of towers would use less fuel than the T1 options and thus be cheaper to run.  Come the "Winter" expansion (give it a proper name already!) they will not be cheaper to run, but will have a larger fuel bay so you'll be able to fuel them for perhaps 45 days instead of 28 days.

This solution is sub-optimal and needs to be changed, one suggestion is to also increase CPU and power for those sorts of towers.  We'll see what happens.

One item I didn't mention so far is the removal of passwords from jump bridges and relying on standings, a common sense change that was long in coming.

To wrap this up.

This is a positive change, the math is pretty sound though some people on the forum need to double check their figures before rage posting.  I'm concerned about my Dread Guristas tower regarding the fuel cost/usage but considering it's sitting in a hanger at the moment, and has been for a year or more, I can't be too upset.

I'd like to see the Fuel Blocks be a different colour like I illustrated above, this would avoid the situation we had for years with BPO and BPC confusion.

It remains to be seen how the rabble will accept the change but for me it's mostly a good solid move forward.

Rokh me Baby!

CCP have released an image of the last ship to be released in the "Winter" expansion, assuming no Christmas useless ship is given away.

The Caldari Naga as seen below in all its glory.

The interesting thing about this ship is it was imagined as a battleship by the creator David L.  CCP have decided re-purpose the design as a battlecruiser and make it similar to the Rokh.

The Rokh is one of those ships that has a dual purpose, a jack of all trades but master of none, so therefore isn't used very much.

During a roam, which are typically a couple of hours punctuated by short, sharp fights, if we see a Rokh in space we'll more often than not comment on it.

Common they are not.

So hopefully CCP will not be unleashing a battlecruiser sized Rokh upon the population of New Eden.

Nebulae!

CCP are re-vamping the look of the universe and are updating the nebulae effects.

I'm concerned they are going towards the shiny and not portraying space as a vast dull emptiness to cater for the ADHD, oh look a shiny thing, crowd.

One of my fellow bloggers has done the wonderful service of cruising around the Sisi test server and has posted some images, view them here.

Begone Mentor I want an Oracle!

Seemingly another day, another new announcement from CCP.

This time it's the new Amarr battlecruiser formally known as the Mentor in the Deviant Art competition, it's new name is the Oracle.

Stay for the beauty, ignore the stats.

Now this ship screams Amarr, when I saw the Mentor (now Oracle) as part of the competition it looked like it was already in Eve Online, obviously it isn't yet but it just seems to belong.

As usual CCP have not released any firm stats on the ship yet, some figures have turned up from the test server but these are subject to change, and have at least once from their first appearance.

Official Oracle CCP image that is subject to change

Only one more ship to be revealed and less then two months until 2012, but finally...

Evidence that huffing paint may be more of a problem at CCP than they know

Use CFL's!

It's been a long time coming but CCP have decided to once again walk along the tight rope balancing on one side a leopard and the other some hand grenades, they've announced a Gallente re-balance.

The number one item that caught my attention.

"Reduced Capacitor usage:
All hybrid turrets: -30% capacitor use"

No longer will my ships have the capacitor of a three year old iPhone 3G, gone will be the days of the mouse pointer dance of imminent death as I have to tightly manage power usage.

Well not quite but it will go some way towards improving the terrible power usage of Gallente ships.

"Power efficiency!  Bah!! Yeah we've heard of it.", a probable quote from a Roden Shipyards ship designer.

"Tracking Speed Increase:
All blaster turrets: +20% to Tracking speed"

So you mean my guns might now know where the enemy is and not where they were? Nice!

"Damage Increase:
All railgun turrets: +10% to Damage modifier"

Will people shift away from the Hurricane towards the Brutix or even the Myrmidon?

I'm not sure but at least Gallente battlecruisers could be considered as a viable option once again.

Some other stuff in the linked dev blog including a small CPU usage reduction to hybrid turrets, a small speed boost to most Gallente ships, inertia modifications, etc etc.

I assume this will be a first step from CCP towards balancing the Gallente quarter of the universe, and these quoted numbers are probably provisional, but it is a very welcome first step.

Maybe, just maybe at some point in the future a suggestion to bring along a Gallente ship on a roam will not be met with derision and scorn.

We can but dream.