Lets put some shrimps on the barbie in this patch, surf and turf for the next? | EVE Online

Lets put some shrimps on the barbie in this patch, surf and turf for the next?

2005-03-15 - By CCP Oveur

The new TQ patch is being readied up on Singularity as I just pointed out in the news. I didn't list there some of the improvements which are not yet in but we're finalizing internally. I might delay the patch to get all of these in if they take more time to finish, but unfortunately I have other things to consider than just these points. Here are the main things (Excluding general bug fixes):

  • Small and Medium Control Towers. The Medium should fulfill many of the average corp needs and the Small is very mobile, but doesn't give you very much flexibility. This should definately add to the opportunities below 0.4 and even more so when we implement the new world order.

  • Agents now correctly take into consideration the security rating of the system they are in. There was a bug in the formula so that previously, the higher the level and better Effective Quality the agent, the less security rating had effect on the Reward/Bonus Reward/LP. This is now done correctly resulting in some high sec agent runners getting nerfed (high LVL, high EQ, 1.0) and low sec runners getting some love too (high LVL, high EQ, 0.0). However, this is not a deliberate nerf dear friends, I have been quite adamant on not nerfing Empire to boost low sec runners, but this is how it is supposed to be and we have to correct that.

  • More agent stuff, Tech Level 2 Components will be exchanged with Materials lower in the Component chain to be less disruptive to this upcoming market and encouraging agent runners to either group and set up their own (Small/Medium) Starbase setups or sell to moon material aggregators. This probably will nerf the YAY4TL2C rewards but reward calculation will compensate to some extent the movement of the reward to the material since it has lower unit cost (Short, you get multiple units of materials for each unit of TL2C you would have gotten).

  • Sheeet Lodz of new missions (44 to be exact), Zrakor has been quite busy, he also balanced many offers, including Navy and implant offers. (Some new skills in there too)

  • 4 new Deadspace Complexes are in and many of the current ones have had some changes. A difficulty 8 Gurista, diff. 6 and 10 Sansha and a diff. 6 Rogue are the ones coming.

  • Electronic Warfare / Propulsion Warfare is still scheduled to come in, now with proper UI support. I know it's quite a turnaround in gameplay and we're still testing it so it might get cut - but currently it's going in.

  • Pulse Laser Nerf is in, I think Hammer did a good job on those, it's mainly working on their range. Personally I'd like to look into Beams as a result since they have never been very useful, but thats perhaps something for next patch. Any comments on why the second smallest L laser is getting nerfed can easily seen in the link provided.

  • Hybrid turrets getting a small decrease in Cap usage is what we're discussing right now, hope we get this one in. The sugar on top would be a small decrease in grid usage too, but I wouldn't count on that one. How's that for hybrid love?

  • System Scanning times cut down considerably and the Covert Op getting a System scan bonus (YAY4TW)

  • Pilots in Space will now show a 30 minute average count. I really want this into this patch, it's not our final solution, but I think it's an improvement of over the current situation. This is a compromise which moves towards the blacking out of the map in 0.0 but also leaves room for improvement with things such as Starbase structures or skills/ships/modules which can give up-to-date info on systems or even whole constellations. I'm open for changing the 30 minute interval up or down based on experience, this can be done during downtime so feel free opening up some threads on the issue.

  • Ammo changes is a candidate for cutting, I'd like to test them some more before going out.

  • Lets not forget that Stealth Bombers are in.

  • Not to mention mutual war declarations. A party which is declared upon can accept the war declaration, resulting in no cost being billed to the declarer.

  • We are also finalizing a simplification to the war cost calculations. Wars including corporations should now cost 2M pr. week as usual and a war including an Alliance on any end will cost the fixed amount of 50M pr. week, size does no longer matter. The number of wars multiplier is still active, based on wars declared by you. The startup cost is exactly the same as the weekly fee and it does no longer consider cancelled wars towards the war multiplier (which was a bug, some other ones also fixed). Note: Increased after further investigating active current active wars on TQ

  • Why stop here? Lets not. Factory, Office and Lab slots in Empire Stations have been increased as a stopgap until the final solution is implemented later this year. Adding 24 slots of Lab and Factory and a 50% increase in Offices.

We are also putting in a number of optimizations in this patch, most notably a change to how we handle ammunition. This change makes ammo use less database resources and should hopefully result in better performance (ie SPIFFEH) under a number of circumstances, but we won't see any real results until it's live on Tranquility.

This patch is scheduled to go to Tranquility within the next 3 weeks depending on how testing goes on Singularity. I expect patch notes to be available before the weekend.

After we wrap up this patch we will start work on the next content patch, which is some months down the road, featuring 2 if not 3 new ship classes, the new world order and a paradigm shift in how you will look at agents (literally).