eve_caldari

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=3487&tid=6

Khanid Prime - The Royal Khanid Navy, in conjunction with Wiyrkomi, announced a massive maintenance program for the upkeep of its fleet.

Under the terms of the contract, Wiyrkomi have been loaned a maintenance facility within the Royal Khanid Navy shipyards in Kihtaled.  The contract has a fixed term of three years, with a possible rolling end-date should the contract be fulfilled to the Navy's satisfaction.  Wiyrkomi are to take control of the scheduled maintenance of the Fusion Thruster components for all the Khanid Navy fleet.

The Khanid Navy hopes that this maintenance program will give their aging fleet greater serviceability figures at a lower price than keeping an internal maintenance facility.

Wiyrkomi played down the significance of this contract. according to a company spokesman,  "This is standard maintenance practice in all modern fleet management models. It will allow our customer greater flexibility at a competitive price."

evenews

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=3561&tid=1

Mondes Persistants recently interviewed CCP Moloch, EVE Online's Lead Content writer, about the new pirate epic arc missions that will make their debut in EVE Online: Dominion. Moloch discusses everything from the regions these epic missions occur to the standing requirements you'll need in order to access them. You can read the interview in its entirety here in French, or here in English.

evenews

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=3560&tid=1

Three new CSM candidates take to the airwaves on Wednesday, November 11 at 21:00 UTC courtesy of Split Infinity Radio. They will answer questions put to them by the Planet Risk team and listeners. You can hear this week’s round of debates live here.

evedevblog

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=709

Of the many changes being introduced in Dominion, there was none more thoroughly subjected to scrutiny than how ownership of star systems will change hands.

While the basic mechanics have remained the same, the actual flow of how conquest works has been under constant revision for weeks.  This speaks highly of the solid work done on the Infrastructure system and how it will allow us to continue improving this aspect of the game in future releases.

To arrive at this point we have walked the design past all of our designers and discussed the various aspects at great length.  Most importantly, we delayed finalizing this part of the design because we wanted to maximize our interactions with the EVE community. By reading your forum feedback, speaking with the CSM and listening to you at FanFest, it is reasonable to say that this feature of Dominion has had more influence from the players than any other we've done.

As I said earlier, there have been numerous iterations on this process.  The whole idea is for the null-sec battlefield to be much more dynamic and force both attackers and defenders to make choices.  To summarize the design at its most basic level, here are the primary goals we set out to achieve:

• To tie sovereignty to an alliance's infrastructure.
• To create a combat environment where the defender has more tools than just "sitting and waiting".  At every step of the conflict, the defending force will be able to go on the offensive by taking out the attacker's structures.
• Ensure that while the process of taking structures is segmented, it does not allow for the steamrolling of star systems (a Russian alliance wakes up to find that Americans have taken it while they slept.)
• To give players multiple goals, so an aggressor can attack for territorial reasons or simply be malicious and disrupt infrastructure.

We have removed starbases from their previous role of being sovereignty structures.  The old game of spamming towers and waiting seven days for them to negate another alliance's territorial claim are gone.  In Dominion if you want to take someone else's land, you are going to have to fight tooth and nail for it.

Before we look at the actual path of conquest, there are a few new structures we need to introduce you to and explain their functionality.

Territorial Claim Units (TCUs)

This is your TCU:

When you enter an unclaimed system, you plant your TCU in order to establish a link with the stargates present and claim the system as your own.  Your own alliance logo will be proudly displayed for all to see.  Once your TCU is online, you will be responsible for the monetary upkeep of the system and your TCU will become an invalid target in the local data net.  TCUs are the symbolic representation of your commitment to a star system in EVE.  When your TCU falls, so does your control of the system.

Sovereignty Blockade Units (SBUs)

Depending on your approach to how you live in nul-sec, meet your new best friend / worst enemy.  SBU(s) represent an attacker's intent to take away what is yours.  They are the battering rams pounding on your doors... erm, stargates.  When a SBU is onlined at a stargate, it disrupts the connection linking your TCU to them.  If this is done at 51% of the gates in a system, your sovereignty control is in jeopardy and you've got some work to do (killing these things).

Infrastructure Hubs (I-Hubs)

Infrastructure Hubs are what allow you to develop your sovereign space.  They are the key to making sure you can do everything from anchor Jump Bridges and Cyno Jammers to improving the spawn rates of certain types of anomalies and even affect the appearance of wormholes.  Another blog will go into more detail about the upgrades and how the Hubs work but for now you need to know that the Infrastructure Hub is also one of the key defensive structures of your sovereignty.

New Reinforcement Mechanic

In Dominion, both Outposts and Infrastructure Hubs will have a dual reinforcement timer, one for shields and one for armor.  Owners of the structures will be able to set a preferred time that they wish for them to come out of reinforced mode and then a random variable will be applied that determines the exact time they will exit reinforced.

This mechanic serves two purposes in that we do not want to see station ping pong return and we also want to try to mitigate ‘time zone warfare'.

How does all of this work?

Flowchart time!

As you can see, both Outposts and Infrastructure Hubs play a part in how a battle might play out.  What is not immediately obvious is how SBU(s) can affect this dynamic.  It is easiest to explain this by detailing the various conditions which can exist in a system and the different structures interdependencies.  You can consider these the ‘rules' by which the chart above works.

Sovereignty

Capturing an Outpost, destroying an Infrastructure Hub or TCU does not grant the attacker sovereignty. Destroying the defender's TCU resets the system, opening it to TCU placement by either side.  An Outpost can be taken, an Infrastructure Hub and the defender's TCU can be destroyed, but gaining sovereignty is entirely reliant on the attacker placing their own TCU.

Defensive structures (Outpost / Infrastructure Hub)

Both structures have dual reinforcement timers to avoid being blitzed by an attacking force.

The Outpost has 2x 48 hour reinforcement timers to ensure at least 4 days between it switching hands.

The Infrastructure Hub has 2x 24 hour reinforcement timers to ensure at least 2 days before it can be destroyed.

Offensive structures (SBUs)

Vulnerability states

SBU(s) are vulnerable while being anchored and onlining.

Once an Outpost and/or Infrastructure Hub is reinforced, the SBU(s) enter a parallel reinforcement cycle. That means that the SBU(s) are invulnerable as long as there are no vulnerable structures in system.

If the Outpost and Infrastructure Hub are vulnerable, so is the SBU(s). If the Infrastructure Hub is vulnerable and the outpost is not, then the SBU(s) are vulnerable. If the Outpost and Infrastructure Hub are vulnerable, so is the SBU(s).

Controlling the Gates

Should the attacker at any point lose control of a number of SBU(s) that makes the total number of gates covered less than 51%, the siege is considered over. The Outpost / Infrastructure Hub will revert to an invulnerable state until a time where the attacker re-establishes onlined SBU(s) at more than 51% of the system gates.

Systems with no Sovereignty but with an Outpost

• If an Outpost owner does not have sovereignty, the Outpost is vulnerable. The attacker does not need SBU(s) and can freely shoot and capture the Outpost (ping pong).
• Sovereignty is a requirement to have an Infrastructure Hub and it is not be possible to have a scenario where a system has an Infrastructure Hub and no sovereignty.

Systems with Sovereignty but no Outpost or Infrastructure Hub

• The attacker must online SBU(s) at 51% (or more) of the gates in the system.
• Once the SBU(s) are online, the TCU becomes vulnerable and can be destroyed.
• Sovereignty is eliminated.  Attacker can place their own TCU.

Systems with Sovereignty

• If a Outpost owner has sovereignty, the station is invulnerable. To change the state to vulnerable, the attacker must place SBU(s) at 51% (or more) gates in the system.
• Once the Outpost goes through the dual reinforcement cycles, the attacker can take the station over.
• If an Infrastructure Hub owner has sovereignty, the Hub is invulnerable. To change the state to vulnerable, the attacker must place SBU(s) at 51% (or more) stargates in the system.
• Once the Hub goes through the dual reinforcement cycles, the attacker can destroy the Hub.
• Once the Hub has been destroyed and / or the Outpost captured, the attacker can attack the defender's TCU and place his own.

Choices

As the attacker, do you go for your enemy's Outpost or his Hub?  How much force do you commit to each objective, knowing that you also have to prevent the defender from eliminating your SBU(s) that are making his structures vulnerable?

As the defender, do you try to prevent your opponent from advancing further with an active defense of your structures?  Or do you mount an all out counter-offensive against their SBU(s), risking your fleets to bring the siege to an early conclusion?

Transition from Apocrypha to Dominion

What's going to happen to my stuff?!

When Dominion launches on December 1^st, your Cyno Jammers, Jump Bridges, Cyno Beacons and Capital Ship Assembly Arrays will all keep running.  During downtime of Dominion patch day, we will run a script that checks to see if a system is held by an alliance.  If it is, a TCU will be automatically anchored and onlined.

We are going to back-date each Alliance's sovereign claims into the new system so that they properly reflect the amount of time each system has been held.  This allows you to meet any of the time requirements needed for certain structures.

You will then have seven days, until December 8^th, to set up your Infrastructure Hubs and install the upgrades you wish to have.  Essentially, there will be a week-long grace period before the new rules of the Infrastructure system apply to any structures which require an Infrastructure upgrade. This will allow you the time to do some shopping, build and install your desired upgrades and get your defenses in order.

When the grace period is turned off on December 8^th, you will need to have the appropriate upgrades active in your systems, otherwise the structures which require them will go offline.

Future Iterations

From the beginning we wanted to ensure the new design would be able to incorporate new content or changes with minimal disruption to the day to day goings on of alliances in EVE.  The choices above indicate only the beginning of what we can do with this new system.  Once the dust settles and we see how the new system performs, we will begin to look at adding additional elements for both the attacker and defender to use.

There were many ideas we had to drop from Dominion or push back to a future release.  The main reason for this is that when making changes on this scale we felt it best to ensure everything currently in game now worked properly before adding additional elements or layers.

Tweaking & Testing

We are working hard to get every bit of this into your hands on the test server so please watch the Test Server Forum for event announcements.  We are monitoring your feedback on this feature very closely and will continue to refine it right up until Dominion launch day.

- Abathur

ramtops

• cancelled Virgin Media phone and broadband, and BT phone, and ADSL


• done the change of address for British Gas (EDF can be done when we do the final reading)


• cancelled the direct debit for the water rates (we owe them £17)


• cancelled the Council Tax direct debit here (they owe us £75 - yay!) and informed Hull Council that we are moving in. £360 per year saving *there*, which is nice.


• organised phone and broadband from Karoo (the only supplier in Hull) - £43 per month, as opposed to the £125 we're paying now for comms, although it'll only be one line. Still, it has a fixed IP, and a 75Gb allowance, and unmetered overnight, so that'll do the backups from the web servers without impinging. Maddeningly, you cannot put your KC phone number *anywhere* as advertising (including our own web site) without paying the business rate, which I think is execrable.


• Rented a big van for Monday, when we will take up as much stuff as we can - books, kitchen equipment, etc - and fit the catflaps, and so forth. Not bad - £70 from Enterprise for 2 days. And empty the self store unit, before they charge us another heap of money.


• Organised the lorry - 3.5 tonne with tail lift. £75 per day, for 2 days. Also not bad.
  


• Bought a dog cage for the junior cats to stay in while we pack and move, and for them to travel in. Iggy and Mustrum are booked into a cattery for 48 hours, as I suspect they'd simply leg it if they saw their life being packed into a lorry


• Completed the forms for post redirection, which I will take up to the post office today, with all the sundry pieces of paper they need for ID

eve_amarr

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=3377&tid=2

Tanoo, Derelik – Officials of the Theology Council working in the Ammatar Mandate have released details of a formal 'Survey of Faith' carried out in Derelik during the last three months, the main finding of which is that the Ammatar Church is being steadily supplanted by the orthodox Imperial codification of the Amarr faith. While the Ardishapur regime in the Mandate has taken no steps against the Ammatar Church, and indeed has expressly re-affirmed it as a valid sect of the Amarrian faith, the Imperial rite of faith was declared the official religious doctrine of the Mandate by Royal Heir Yonis Ardishapur on receipt of the Mandate as his personal fief.

Iris Selantar, a former lay preacher of the Ammatar Church now observing the Imperial rite, explained her decision to leave the traditional Ammatar sect for the orthodox church. "The invasion taught us many things – the incompetence of our nobles, the failures of our fleet and the spiritual poverty of so many Ammatar. I believe the destiny of the Ammatar people, and all Minmatar, lies in the holy embrace of Amarr and I feel that worshipping with the mother church of the Empire brings me closer to Amarr."

Subdeacon Ottoko Razirshz of the Theology Council mission in the Mandate confirmed that such feelings were typical of those Ammatar surveyed by his officials. "The Ammatar Church is a loyal and faithful branch of the great Amarr holy family," stated Subdeacon Razirshz. "However, it is clear that observance of the Imperial rite is growing in the Mandate. The Theology Council views this as in line with the goal of transforming the Mandate into a core domain of the Amarr Empire."

reddragdiva

• "I'm wearing a pink dress to school today, mom." (courtesy denny)

• Sponsor a bat! (courtesy txtriffidranch)

• Medical marijuana in California.

• NO SKINNY CHICKS!

• NotN: Goldman Sachs "doing God’s work"; Murdoch announces plan to cut off nose (guest post by deathboy).

Sunday I went to the Pembury with nyecamden. He fed me. The new laptop and its remarkable lightness attracted much attention.

This evening I went to a museum computer people meetup that got slightly overwhelmed by Wikipedians. Productive and good, I think! Photos to come, if we ever find the XD-card reader. We refrained from entering the pub quiz, it really isn't fair to let Wikipedians into those.

evenews

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=3559&tid=1

As of December 1, 2009, CCP will no longer officially support TrackIR in EVE Online and it has already been disabled in the current version of EVE Online: Apocrypha 1.5.1. We have enjoyed working with Naturalpoint's excellent head tracking product, but with the low number of users using it compared to the investment in software required to maintain it, CCP has decided to discontinue support for the product.

evealliancenews

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=3557&tid=7

Geminate, U-L4KS: In what has been reported as "an attempt to gain a foothold in the Geminate region", SOLAR FLEET [SOLAR] forces engaged elements of the Wildly Inappropriate. [WI.] alliance, losing fourteen of their carriers in the process.

Tomcat, of Lone Star Joint Venture [LSJV], alliance leader for [WI.] reports that during an operation to take down several SOLAR FLEET towers "[SOLAR] shows up in the system U-L4KS, with their fleet of forty to fifty, mostly battleships, and begins to hit a jump bridge tower in that system." Tomcat goes on to set the stage by stating "we jump in, bubbles go up and the fight begins; both sides were heavy RR-based (remote repairing) so a nice slugfest begins."

What happens next is a gradual escalation of "capital ship support drops", first by [WI.], followed by [SOLAR]. The exact number of carriers on the field is not known, but it is estimated at over thirty combined total.

When the fight ended, Solar Fleet suffered a loss of fourteen carriers, while Wildly Inappropriate. lost none. According to DENWIR, member of The First Foundation [TFFN], fleet Commander for [SOLAR] two mistakes contributed to this loss: allowing the battle to take place in range of the [WI.] tower which "interrupted the spider tank on the carriers with it’s constant jamming" and "being surprised by the [WI.] reinforcements, which made the numbers 64 vs. 191."

While Tomcat acknowledges that this battle did not change the balance of power between the two opposing alliances, he feels that "this was definitely a morale boost for [WI.]; having such a decisive victory... as far as overall status of geminate, it still fully remains under WI control."

GalNet Refences

Battle Report

Are you affected by the events in this article? Do you have information regarding another event in New Eden? If so, please contact us with any information that you may have.

Want to become a news correspondent with IC? We are recruiting.

alisonw_com

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Alisonw/~3/qVOiAtUsQsg/

evenews

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=3558&tid=1

During our scheduled downtime on Wednesday, November 11, 2009, we will be disabling the EVE Online forums as well as our Account Management and account payment features for the site. This disruption will not affect regular server downtime. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

evedevblog

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=707

The 3rd Quarterly Economic Newsletter for EVE Online is now available.  This issue has the standard economic indicator of population, ships flown in space, price level reports and market snapshots.  The specific topic this time around is the latest news on "Unholy Rage," the Anti-RMT operation that has been ongoing for several months now. 

The EVE economy is doing well with constant growth throughout 2009.  As we see in this issue, the biggest changes to the economy have come either from operations against Real Money Traders in EVE or due to game design changes.  When large external events like these happen they of course impact relative prices within EVE but the robustness of the market quickly allows prices to reflect these changes or shocks to the market.  This might be a good lesson regarding our real life economies, showing that if we allow markets to adjust without intervention from governments they correct much quicker than when we try to steer prices to the "correct" level - given that the rules of the market are clear and that information flows relatively freely between agents on the market.

There are a lot of people that contribute to the QEN.  The research and statistics team does most of the data mining and data analysis.  The graphics team does the entire layout and provides us with the beautiful EVE pictures that are included in this volume.  In addition, we get input from different units for our special session, this time around from the Law and Order unit within customer support. That unit has been in the trenches during operation Unholy Rage, fighting off the Real Money Traders.

Please enjoy this QEN and looking forward to the following discussion. 

Dr.EyjoG

eve_minmatar

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=3548&tid=3

Bittanshal – In the months following Empress Jamyl’s emancipation announcement, millions of released slaves have made their way to the welcoming arms of the Minmatar Republic. Millions more still remain within the Amarr Empire, however, hindered by the fear of leaving behind everything that they have ever known.

Onyeka Djekatro was a twelfth-generation slave maintaining production line equipment for the Inherent Implants factory in Bittanshal. When the emancipation order was issued , the corporation released Onyeka’s entire family, forcing them to fend for themselves. ”It was before the Sisters [of EVE] started their work. We couldn’t afford to leave,” Inevne Djekatro, her mother, explains. ”We were told to leave the workers’ housing, but where are we going to go if there’s nowhere else?” With nowhere to go, the family was forced to take menial service jobs on the station in order to pay for lodging and food.

”We thought life would get better at first,” says Onyeka, ‘But it only got worse. We saved what we could, but it was months before we had enough for a place on a shuttle.” At the expense of reduced power to the family of eight’s single room apartment, they saved enough to send Onyeka to the Republic to begin a new life.

For the nineteen-year-old woman, the prospect was both exciting and terrifying. Her family served Inherent Implants since the installation’s inception. Onyeka was born on the station, and though some family members were sold to other Holders, she has neverleft the station’s vicinity. ”I sometimes didn’t want to go,” she admits. "But [my family] decided I would have the best chance. I have good skills and some training. Maybe it won’t be so bad.”

evealliancenews

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=3556&tid=7

Jita - Another record setting lottery is currently under way. The Ships of Eve 3 "Fleets of Eve" event includes a first prize of 223 ships and 80 tech 3 subsystems.

Organized by T’Amber of Ships of Eve [SOE-E], the event will be "fleet themed, with prizes of multiple choice semi-customizable fleets" with the prizes "designed to be accessible and useful for anyone."

There are a total of twenty prizes, with first prize being "a custom fleet of 223 ships and 80 tech 3 subsystems." Winners of the lottery from 2nd to 20th will have several choices that are "based on combat, industry and mystery fleets, to accommodate all pilots' professions." Each ticket costs ten million ISK, with a total of ten thousand tickets being sold for the event. T'Amber believes that the odds "are definitely the best for any major lottery in New Eden."

GalNet Refences

Ships of Eve 3 "Fleets of Eve"

Are you affected by the events in this article? Do you have information regarding another event in New Eden? If so, please contact us with any information that you may have.

Want to become a news correspondent with IC? We are recruiting.