Eve Online Dev Blog

In EVE Online, wars are fought for any reason the human mind can come up with and are a true melting pot of emergent game play. We've always left it to the players to define WHY they fight, but we've also always wanted to give you guys more tools to frame your war-mongering ambitions.

The new Ally System introduced in the upcoming Inferno expansion is an addendum to the war mechanics, one that allows players to more easily get aid when finding themselves dragged into an unfavorable war, through our mercenary marketplace. A corporation or alliance can join a defender in a war as an ally, fighting alongside the defending side. The war system will effectively regard the two one entity when it comes to tracking war progress.

A previous dev blog (found here) discussed the ally system a bit, but now we have more to show on the UI side and can discuss the nitty gritty in a bit more detail.

My Kingdom For An Ally

So, lets say you find yourself on the receiving end of war declaration and you want to swing the odds a bit more in your favor. You want to it to be known that you’re interested in getting help.

To do so, you go to your Corporation panel in the Neocom and select the Wars tab.

In the 'Our Wars' tab you’ll see the wars you’re engaged in. You can click the sword in a war in which you’re the defender and check the Open for Allies checkbox on the bottom of the popup window called Allies (which also lists all active allies you have, and existing ally offers). Note that only the CEO (or a Director) can make this change.

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The 'Our Wars' tab also lists the ally status of your wars and shows  the wars that you’re an ally in.

If you’re the CEO/Director, you see an exclamation mark (!) next to the sword, when you’ve received an offer from someone interested in becoming your ally. The offer includes a text field and an ISK amount. You can either accept or decline the offer. If you want to negotiate with the interested party, you can use the normal communication channels for that until an agreement is reached.

Can I Come In And Play?

On the other side of the coin, if you want to become an ally for some interested party willing to pay for your services, your first stop is the All Wars tab in the Corporation/Wars section. This is a list of wars to spectators, but a mercenary marketplace to potential sellers of muscle.

In the All Wars tab you will see a list of all active wars (it shows 50 most recent, you can also use the search function to find wars of a specific corporation/alliance). Wars where the defender is asking for an ally are shown with a plus sign on the sword. Wars where there is one or more allies is shown with an asterisk (*) next to the sword.

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The best way to find prospective patrons is to filter by checking the ‘Assistance requests only’ checkbox. You can now see all wars where the defender is seeking allies.

Click on the sword icon on the right, this will bring up a box where you can enter message and suggested ISK cost and send it to the defending corp/alliance to initiate contact. When the defender accepts an ally offer, the ally becomes a formal part of the war and can start fighting 24 hours later.

Say Hello To My Little Friend the Rules Lawyer

Now it’s time to step back a little and look at some of the rules and regulations surrounding the ally system. Let’s do it in a nice, tight bullet point list:

• There are no limits to how many allies you can have
• There is no limit to how many wars you can be an ally in
• You get an ally for a specific war, not all wars you’re in. You can ally with the same corp/alliance several times though
• Only the defender can get allies
• If a corporation that is an ally joins an alliance, then the ally status transfers to the alliance as a whole
• A corporation/alliance cannot join as an ally against a corporation/alliance they are already at war with.
• Similarly, if you’re already an ally against someone, you cannot declare a separate war against them or join as an ally against them again. Basically, ally status counts as being at war with the aggressor corp/alliance, so anything that would create a new war state between them cannot happen
• The payment from the defender to the ally is a one-time payment, it does not recur every week
• The ally cannot seperately negotiate peace with the aggressor – the war ends for him at the same time as the defender (either because the bill wasn’t paid or either side surrenders)
• When you offer to ally someone, you must wait for them to respond, or 24 hours (which ever comes first) before making another formal offer.

Just Shut Up And Tell Me Why

So, now many long and fancy words have been spent to explain the what and how of the ally system. But the why is still left unanswered.

One of the main goals we had in reworking the war mechanics was introducing more options for the defender. The line we had to skirt here was maintaining the war system as primarily a tool mechanic (as opposed to feature mechanic), so whatever options we would introduce had to comply to that.

The ally system ended up being a good solution here, because not only does it provide a simple way for someone to get help, but it also introduced risk for the aggressor and an avenue, or career, for the many pilots interested in mercenary-like activity. And most importantly it emphasizes one of the key truths in EVE – that having friends is really important.

Future Is Not A Dirty Word

So what’s in store post-Inferno? While Team Super Friends is not going to do a whole-release worth of iteration on the ally system, there are a few things in the pipeline.

Setting a fixed contract length to ally contracts is one thing we want to do. While the current implementation is fine for the most part, there are a few edge cases where the eternal ally bond can become an issue. It should also make negotiations smoother, when the knowledge of the exact length of the contract is known beforehand.

Another thing we’re looking into is to exclude the ally system from mutual wars – if a war has been made mutual, then no allies can be involved and existing ally contracts are cancelled. This mitigates a little the fact that now when a war is made mutual the only way for it to end is by surrender. We’ll monitor the early experience with the system post-Inferno and make a decision whether this change is needed/wanted.

There are several improvements for the ally marketplace that we want to look into. Most notably, giving defenders the ability to enter more information when looking for allies, such as by allowing them to enter location, price range, etc. In a similar vein, allowing mercenaries to advertise their services is something we’re looking into, where they could filter by preferred area of operation, their strength, etc.

Another area we might iterate on a bit is the war report - we want to show more clearly the contribution of each ally in the war - how much loss they've inflicted and received as portion of the total. This is in addition to other additions we want to make to the war report that are not just ally related, such as introduce timelines and battle reports.

Finally, we want to expand a lot on the information spreading of wars and their state. We want to show information about active wars, their war reports and how wars concluded in EVE Gate. This can include several kinds of leaderboards, such as ranking war loss inflicted vs. war loss received, rank the effectiveness of allies (i.e. how much loss do they inflict of the total, etc.) and similar rank lists. One thing we want to be very careful about here is what data to count and what data is presented. For instance, wars against entities that actively fight back will count more for these rank lists, to encourage people to fight those willing to fight. Getting this information on EVE Gate would give players a better understanding of the military strength of corporations and alliances, with a special focus on mercenary corps. Naturally, it can also act as a nice status symbol for those interested in this kind of activity, with entities competing for the ‘Hall of Fame’.

On the whole, the ally system is an exciting addition to the war system, one that makes wars more of an uncertain business and an interesting avenue for mercenary pilots in New Eden. 

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In the upcoming EVE release, Inferno, we will be making changes to characters' skin color.

Don't worry, now is not the time to panic... you will not suddenly change color overnight (or downtime), but we'll get to that later in this blog.

The new character creation introduced last year in Incursion is a very robust system, and we still haven't explored the full potential of it. In Inferno, we are unlocking the ability to set your skin color to a wider gamut of options than previously available. This will allow you to have dark skinned Caldari Deteis, white skinned Minmatar Brutors, olive skinned Amarrs, and basically allow for more diversity within each bloodline. We're doing this because we want to provide more options for each race and bloodline, and mostly, because you asked us to do it!

We are adding 14 new skin colors, and they will replace the old skin colors in the color wheel in the character creator and the resculpting mode of the re-customization. All the bloodlines share the same color options, except the bloodlines with the fairest skin, but they will not have the two darkest options available. That restriction was added because we didn't feel the darkest colors looked quite right on those bloodlines. Don't worry though; there are still dark colors available for them.

The 14 different colors are not just a gradient between white and black. Our artists tweaked each color to represent some of the different hues you would find throughout the continents of our world. Each bloodline has a default skin color, but after a new character has been spawned in the character creator, you are free to choose any color for your character's skin.

Click image to enlarge

Click image to enlarge

In order to allow all players, new or old, to take advantage of this skin color change, we are going to give you all something we call a "free resculpt". A resculpt of your character is a special re-customization mode you can go into, where you can not only change your character’s clothes, hair, and pose, but are also able to change attributes that otherwise can only be defined when creating a new character. This includes the bone structure of the face, body weight, and skin complexion.

We have given these resculpts a few times before, and some of you are probably clever like me and have been saving it for a rainy day. Well, in case you didn't know, these resculpts don't stack, so after Inferno's deployment everyone will have one, and only one, resculpt left.

So what happens to your existing characters? Nothing, unless you want to change them. I hate when I go to sleep and wake up only to find that I've changed colors overnight, and we figured that you might feel the same way. Therefore, you will not all change colors during the Inferno downtime and will not be forced into using one of the new skin colors. If you want to keep your current skin color, just leave the skin color wheel be when you re-customize. If you do pick a new skin color and then finalize the character, you will be using the new skin colors from that point.

You are of course free to try out the new colors and see how they look on you and then back out of the changes by either exiting the re-customization without saving or by using the history slider at the bottom of the screen to go back.

With this skin color change, we are also lifting hair-color restrictions, allowing you a greater selection, regardless of your bloodline.

We hope that you enjoy this small addition to the character creator and that you have fun resculpting and tweaking your character to look just right.
- CCP Karkur and CCP t0rfifrans

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Hi there! I’m SoniClover from Team Super Friends, and I’m here to tell you a bit about what the team has been up to lately.

This blog is going to focus mostly on the backend and mechanical stuff. Later this week we will have another dev blog out about the ally system, with lots of cool pics. Until then, you’ll have to accept my verbal diarrhea hitting your palate instead (yes, be happy there is no pic here illustrating that).

As most of you hopefully know by now, the big ticket feature the team has been working on this release is refactoring the War system. You can see more about the thinking behind this in my earlier dev blog here, but to quickly re-iterate, we wanted to give wars a bit more structure, fix a few exploits and give players more options in conducting a war. The overall goal was to keep the war system as a tool for players to use as they see fit, rather than as dictated by CCP and to reinforce the concept that more lucrative avenues in the game (like those enjoyed by being in a player corporation) come with increased risk.

Since that dev blog, we’ve been busy iterating on the system, with a few notable changes. Let’s cover the most important ones.

The Cost of War

We’ve updated the war cost formula bit, from the ‘hey, let’s throw this in and tune it later’ version we discussed earlier.

The refined formula is: (log2.05831 N)^2 * 300000 * N^0.27, where N is the number of corp members (see also comments below). The minimum is 50 million.

Note that the cost is now the same when declaring on a corporation or an alliance.

Here is a graph illustrating the cost increase with the new formula.

This graph shows the cost of declaring war on a corp of up to 5000 members. There is no cap, but the cost continues to taper off, breaking the 500 mill barrier at a little over 7200. Pulling out a few number as the graph is a bit hard to grog:

- It rises above 50 million around 130.
- It breaks the 100 million mark at 374.
- At 1000, the cost is 177 million.
- At 3000, the cost is 320 million.
- At 5000, the cost is 416 million.

The increased cost reflects the easier access to multiple targets. There have been some worries having the cost scale in this way creates incentive to declare war on small entities. Griefing on small entities is not rampant now, and with the cost increasing from 2 million to 50 million, there is no reason to assume griefing on small entities will increase with these changes.

The Even More Cost of War

Couple of important points on the cost formula:

Trial accounts are not counted when counting corp membership. We considered extending this to inactive accounts too, but as this is a fairly low percentage overall, decided to not exclude them. Note also that members in corps/alliances allied to the defender are never counted.

As before, the number of non-mutual wars the aggressor has declared acts as a multiplier (for each war). New wars are created now when a corporation leaves an alliance (to get rid of the dec shield exploit), but these new wars are not counted as cost multiplier. As an example, Alliance A declares war on Alliance B, if 10 corporations in Alliance B leave the alliance, then a new war is created for each of these 10 corporations, but these new wars do not add a x10 cost multiplier to the war cost for Alliance A.

The Corp Hop Song

We’ve also implemented a good suggestion from Fanfest, which is that if you leave your corporation while it is engaged in a non-mutual war, then you will not be able to rejoin the corporation until that war ends, or until 7 days pass, whichever comes first. Note that this rule only applies for non-mutual wars – mutual wars do not prohibit players from entering or leaving corporations. The main reason for this change is to combat the popular alt corp hopping (this doesn’t stop it completely, but limits it a lot).

The Enemy of My Enemy

A final note on the war front, we tightened up the ally system (see previous dev blog for more info on ally system) a little bit by making it so that if an ally corp joins an alliance, the ally status transfers over to the alliance (i.e. the alliance becomes the ally). We also contemplated giving limits to the contract length of an ally, this is something we want to do, but didn’t have time to implement for Inferno. We’ll look into implementing this post-Inferno.

New Toys

A secondary priority of Team Super Friends has been creating and modifying modules. As tends to be the case with non-primary objectives, they are susceptible to the cutting knife. We set out with a list of 12, our haul is likely going to be 7.

Adding modules is always massive fun, as it can have such wide-ranging ramification for so many existing tactics and setups.

Let’s start with what is coming in Inferno. I’m not listing any stats here, as we are still testing these and they could change. Feel free to jump on the Singularity test server and join the fun.

Armor Adaptive Hardener I - Low slot. Armor Hardener that adjusts its resistance based on the damage received. Only one can be fitted. Just the tech I version now, but others will follow if this turns out well.

Extrinsic Damage Amplifier I & II - Low slot. A damage amplifier module for drones.

Small/Medium/Large/X-Large Ancillary Shield Booster I. Mid slot. A shield booster that gives a good boost, but has a very high capacitor need. Can use Cap Boosters as charge to negate the severe capacitor need. Only tech I version for now.

MagSheath Target Breaker I - Mid slot. A module that has a chance of breaking the lock of ships targeting you, the chance increases the more ships target you at one time. Also breaks your locks. Reduces scan resolution significantly as a downside. Only one can be fitted at a time and the can not be fitted to capital ships.  

Small/Medium/Large Overclocking Processor Unit I & II - A rig that increases the CPU output of your ship, at a cost of reduced shield recharge rate.

Light & Medium Web Drones -  Light and medium versions of stasis webifying drones.

Capacitor Battery edits - All capacitor batteries now also provide a defense against Energy Vampires (Nos) and Energy Neutralizer (Neut) effects. A portion of the effect is reflected back on the aggressor.

Future Toys

There are a few notable absences in the list above. We do have a version of the Micro Jump Drive ready, and new graphic effects to go along with it, but there are a few minor issues that we still have to iron out before we can launch it. The salvage drone is another module that we really wanted to finish, but didn’t have time for. The graphic assets are well on their way though, so hopefully we can make this in the near future (can’t promise dates though). We also wanted to update the Tracking Disruptors to affect missiles too, but the version we implemented was too limited (it only worked if you were flying certain ships and/or the enemy was using certain missiles). We haven’t found a good universal solution yet, so we’ll have to wait on this one.

There are loads of other interesting modules we’re looking into, many of which are based on player ideas. This thread here is a good place to post your ideas, as we read over it regularly and note down interesting ideas for the future. There are many excellent suggestions already in there, but feel free to add your own (don't worry of they're the same or similar to existing ones). We’ll see what we can get to next.

The module work for the upcoming release taught us a lot about what works and what doesn’t work in the implementation process, and is a good foundation to build on. The next step is crafting an overall vision and roadmap of what purpose new module work serves in the bigger picture.

Toys’R’Drop

The new modules are being seeded into the universe a little bit differently than often in the past. The original idea was to have this very varied, with one module being available only through LP store and another only through Invention. In the end, we decided to lump them together into a single seeding method, so as not cause too much discrepancy in their availability.

So, three of the new modules will not be seeded directly on the market. The Extrinsic Damage Amplifier, the CPU rig and the web drones will be seeded directly on market. Also note that to get the T2 drone damage module, you need to invent it using T1 BPCs.

For those new modules that won't be seeded, they will not have any BPOs. Instead, BPCs of them drop as loot in profession sites in normal space and as commander & officer loot. These BPCs have between 3 and 50 runs, depending on difficulty of site/enemy. The sites in question are the pirate faction archaeology and hacking sites.

The reasons for not just seeding the new modules directly to the market are several. Seeding on market has always been sort of a quick-and-dirty way of getting things out there that we've basically used too much in the past - it's much more fun to put the whole process in the hand of the players, so that there is gameplay involved every step of the way (finding BPCs, trading them, manufacturing items, sell items, use items). Also, as the thinking is to start to add modules on a regular basis, so we're looking into ways of how we can fight the potential issues associated with it, such as bloating the market too much and introducing power creep. Seeding through loot drops gives us better control over where and when and how much to seed, which is an important feature for us to have for the future.

This is the End, My Friend

Overall, we in Team Super Friends are really excited to see our additions and changes in the hands of the players and look forward to see what mischiefs you guys get up to (ab)using the new stuff.

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With less than two months remaining before Alliance Tournament X takes to your screens, we wanted to bring you details of how your alliance can qualify for this year’s event. The tournament will be streamed live over the course of four weekends, starting on June 30th and culminating in the finals weekend on July 21st. We expect the same level of drama, passion and lulz that we have seen in previous tournaments and we will have new rules, some familiar faces on the commentator panel and your regular hosts of CCP Soundwave and CCP Sunset.

Commentators

This year we had a wonderful group of players apply to be commentators and we were awed at their knowledge of EVE and enthusiasm. It was a very difficult choice for us as we want to maintain familiar faces that have done a great job in the past along with some fresh blood. As a result, the following will be your live on-air commentators:

Kil2

Raivi

Zastrow

Michael Bolton III

Lazarus Telraven

Format

Up to 64 alliances will be granted entry to Alliance Tournament X. The tournament takes places in three stages: Pre-Qualifying, Groups and Finals. See here for match rules.

Please note that both the format and match rules are subject to change. It is strongly advised that participants watch the EVE Alliance Tournament forum regularly for announcements.

This year we will split the entries into 32 teams entering through a random draw and 32 teams through an auction process. We understand that participating in the tournament is a highlight of the year for many alliances so increasing the number of auction slots allows every team a better chance of participating. The random draw will take place first and those 32 teams will be announced on the main tournament page. CCP Soundwave will then hold auctions on the following dates and times in the ‘Alliance Tournament ’ channel:

Thursday, May 24th @ 19:00 UTC - 8 slots

Friday, May 25th @ 17:00 UTC - 8 slots

Saturday, May 26th @ 16:00 UTC - 16 slots

The only eligible bidders at this time will be the CEO of the alliance executor corporation and the Team Captain as nominated in the sign up page.

Payment

This year we have decided to change how you pay for entry into the tournament. The entry fee for the random draw will be 10 PLEX per alliance. Each alliance that wishes to enter the draw must submit 10 PLEX – available in the redeeming system of the CEO of the executor corporation’s account – which will be withdrawn before the draw. All PLEX will be retained by CCP and teams who are not successful in the random draw can use these PLEX to bid for a spot through the auction. If you are not successful in either the random draw or auction, your 10 PLEX will be refunded to the CEO character of the alliance executor corporation.

So why PLEX instead of ISK? Quite simply, PLEX is just much easier to manage and allows us to create some revenue to fund this and future tournaments. As we intend to stream all four weekends, we obviously incur additional costs. Using PLEX allows us to provide a top quality stream and production throughout the entire event.

Competition Dates

• Random Draw Signup Period – Starts Thursday, May 10 and ends at 23:59 UTC on Sunday, May 20. The draw will then take place on Tuesday, May 22
• Auctions – 24^th, 25^th & 26^th May
• Participating Teams & Schedule Confirmed - May 30th
• Pre-Qualifying Round 1 - June 30th & July 1st
• Pre-Qualifying Round 2 - July 7th & 8th
• Group Stage - July 14th, 15th and 21st
• Finals - July 22nd

Tournament Entry

All entrants will be required to sign up via the Alliance Tournament section of the Eve Online community website. The link you need is here. Please note that all executor corporation CEOs will be required to have 10 PLEX in their redeeming system before the page will authorize your submission. Details on how to reverse redeem PLEX can be found here.

The 64 competing teams will be decided as follows:

• 32 teams will be drawn randomly. We will record the draw and host it on the CCP You Tube page.
• 32 teams will bid for a position in 3 separate auctions.
• Entry into the random draw will cost 10 PLEX.
• Auctioned slots will begin at 10 PLEX and have no maximum price.

Pre-Qualifying rounds

Of the 64 initial teams, 32 may progress from the pre-qualifying rounds to the group stage.

Round 1

The 64 competing alliances will be drawn against each other at random and will fight as scheduled.

Teams will be ranked by their match result (Win or Loss), and then by total points (see match rules). A draw counts as a loss for both teams.

Round 2

Teams fight in order of rank - 1v2, 3v4 and so on.

Results

Teams will be ranked by combined match results. All teams are ranked first by total wins, and then by points scored.

The top 32teams according to these rankings will progress to the group stage.

Group Stage

These 32 teams will be divided, at random, into 8 groups of 4 teams.

Within each group, teams will fight "round robin" to determine the top two teams in each bracket. (Round robin means that each team in the group will fight each other team in the group once).

Team rankings will be determined by Win/Loss/Draw and then by total points scored.

Finals

The top 2 teams from each group will advance to the final day, which will be a 16 team single elimination format. This will be seeded so that teams advancing from the same group will not be able to meet again until the final match.

During the finals, in case of a draw, the team which advanced from the qualifiers with a higher score will advance.

Additional Notes

Winning Team Points

The winner of each match gains a 25% bonus to the total ranking points scored. The points values for each ship are available in the match rules page.

Intentional Handicaps

If a team begins the match with less points value worth of ships than their opponent, and wins the match, they score extra ranking points equal to the difference in the two teams' values.

Pre-Qualifying Rankings

If at any point, teams are level in Win/Loss and also level in points scored; the following will be used in order to determine ranking position.

1. If the teams disputing rank have fought each other at any point, the winner is higher.
2. The current ranking (W/L, then points) of the last team that you defeated. Higher is better.
3. The current ranking of the last team that defeated you. Again, higher is better
   
    

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Between the Fanfest presentations, various cryptic Dev posts and latest Inferno changes we put out on the Singularity test server, speculation on Factional Warfare has been running rampant all over the forums, like a violent storm gathering strength across the horizon. And for good reasons if we may add, as this feature has been left in the dark for quite a while, sobering for some well-deserved love it will now properly receive: time has come for us in Team Game of Drones to shed some light on the matter.

In a far far away land

It all began around Crucible release, as part of an effort to iterate on features that desperately needed some love. Factional Warfare was quite a high choice on that list, and thus we got to work; initial investigation by looking at player threads, CSM communication, various metrics and internal brainstorming’s lead to a high-level pitch that focused on improving rewards, consequences and visibility in Factional Warfare.

Fanfest was the perfect opportunity to present it to our player base. We really want to thank everybody that showed up for the presentation and round tables as these were great places for us to listen to incoming feedback. There was a lot of discussion on some controversial features, and as a result we had to reprioritize our plans. Some ideas were scrapped, others delayed as we chose to focus our efforts on points we were most confident in.

Standardization - one naming metric to rule them all

The first point we wanted to tackle is quite cosmetic. While we do recognize that players joining Factional Warfare do so for reasons that most often set them apart from 0.0, we were not satisfied with the lack of consistency EVE displays regarding its territorial warfare mechanics.

We feel having unified names and indicators in both Factional Warfare and 0.0 would be quite beneficial, even if actual mechanics should stay separate so as not to convert one into the other. Factional Warfare has very localized territorial mechanics that don’t carry so much perceived worth anywhere else, and that are confusing for being radically different with anything else EVE has to offer.

That is why we are renaming Occupancy, Control Bunkers into Sovereignty and Infrastructure Hubs. The point is to improve clarity, as anyone can quickly grasp and realize the tactical value of the following notions no matter to which security status they apply:

• Sovereignty: main territorial warfare control unit. Indicates who owns and controls a system
• Infrastructure Hub: structure used by the controlling party to own and upgrade the conquered system. Can be shot down to take over Sovereignty

As a side-effect, the previously numerous confusing Star Map Occupancy filters have been simplified and sorted under the Sovereignty tab.

Click to enlarge

Visibility - opening the gates

We had a look into visibility issues as well, as we were quite not fond on how old the information was displayed. For starters, the Factional Warfare recruitment page was cluttered with a lot of text and wasn't clear about rules and consequences for joining up, all of which while trying to display statistics at the same time. This was a pain for new players trying to join, as they had little clue how Factional Warfare was actually working and it would often deter them from pressing the magic “join” button.

We changed that a bit by splitting information by tabs, cleaning the window in general, and defining the rules a bit better.

We also put a lot of focus on various UI enhancements to help make life easier, mainly the Infrastructure Hub, join up page and main system information. The results can be seen throughout the screenshots in this blog.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Consequences - breaking the daily routine

Another field that needed iteration was related to the lack of consequences for participating. As its name implies, Factional Warfare is supposed to be an actual bloody struggle raging between the various factions. However it currently lacks proper reasons to do so, as little matters when a system is taken. That's a fact we want to tamper with, as to encourage players to be actively helping the war effort by fighting for their faction.

Stations denying docking

As such, with Inferno, all stations within a low-security Factional Warfare system will now deny docking to any factional enemy (neutrals will remain unaffected). That means restricting any kind of service or agent access to all pilots in opposing militias.

However, due to CSM and player feedback, we do recognize this would be detrimental to players across various time zones, as going to sleep only to find out the station you docked at changed control during your absence is nothing but appealing. That is why we are reducing the number of Victory Points handed out from FW complexes by a factor of 5, thus increasing the average time to capture a system from 6-7 to 30-35 hours.

Upgrading space

Holding solar systems currently lacks appeal and we wanted to improve that fact. In Inferno, the faction controlling a Factional Warfare system will be able to donate Loyalty Points into the local Infrastructure Hub to gain benefits, like extra station slots, medical clone cost reduction (doesn’t apply to jump clones), and market taxes reduction. For now, all of this applies to neutrals as well in an effort to promote third party industrial activity to support your war effort; this may change in the future depending on how the alt farming situation will evolve, especially if and when we add new benefits.

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War zone control and LP store prices

On the bigger scale, we wanted to help participating players feel more like they were in the middle of a fluctuating war zone rather than just participating in a line of unconnected skirmishes. That is why progress will now be tracked by counting the number of solar systems held, how many upgrades are installed for each faction and compared to the faction's enemy over the regions being competed for.

Click to enlarge

As individual factions conquer space and upgrade systems, their respective war zone control tier will increase to unlock several benefits.

First, the offer requirements in the respective faction LP store will decrease. As such, at the lowest tier, LP store offers will be 4x times more expensive as they are now, while at the highest tier, they will be 4 times as cheap. This only applies to ISK and LP requirements for offers, not tags or items. It also only counts for the 4 Factional Warfare militia LP stores; no other corporation will be affected.

Second, all members of a specific faction will receive bonuses to all Factional Warfare LP gains, varying between 0 to 20%. Such increases are not tied to a specific solar system and will be granted for any kind of Factional Warfare activity that grants LPs (PvP kills, complexes, missions).

Rewards - paying for a job well done

Another field that direly required some attention was the lack of benefits for actively participating in Factional Warfare. In the reward ladder, helping your faction in territorial warfare should reward the most, followed by PvP, and then finally PvE with missions. However, this actually is the opposite right now as missions pay the most while they impact the least in your faction territory. We really want to reward individual players that take risks and participate in PvP and conflicts, rather than promoting safe, passive incomes.

Capturing payout

We would like to improve payouts by giving LPs for capturing enemy complexes and Infrastructure Hubs:

• Minor sites: 10,000 LPs
• Standard sites: 17,500 LPs
• Major sites: 25,000 LPs
• Major Stronghold or Major Compound sites: 30,000 LPs
• Infrastructure Hub: 40,000 LPs

Please note such LP is split for all eligible members that meet all capture criteria; as such, 2 Amarr enlisted pilots capturing a Minor site would only receive 5,000 LPs each.

Capturing complexes will also cause half of the gained LP amount to be removed from the enemy Infrastructure Hub in the solar system, possibly causing the upgrade level to go down; this is part of an effort to encourage players to defend their space when attacked. However, defending dungeons do not yield LP for now, to avoid abusive farming in a single set of safe systems. This situation may be adjusted in the near future if the situation warrants it.

LPs for kills

In Inferno, we will also properly reward PvP kills, as we are not satisfied by the very small payout it delivers currently. The new formula now will correct this, by handing LPs proportional to the ship value lost, the exact formula being:

[Given LP] = ([Market value of target ship] - [Max. Insurance market value] + [Fitted mods, rigs and subsystem market value] + [Transported items market value]) / 10000

Please note that insurance is always counted as maximum value no matter what your ship actually has to avoid farming. If the killing blow belongs to someone in a fleet, all eligible members will receive a split share of the LP booty, even if they are in the allied militia.

Example: a fleet of 2x Gallente Federation and 2x Minmatar Republic members destroy a target enlisted in the Caldari State worth 4000 LPs. No matter who had the killing blow, each Federation pilot will receive 1000 LP for the Federal Defense Union, while each Minmatar capsuleer will gain 1000 LP for the Tribal Liberation Force.

Below are some examples on how the new formula pays out next with market values taken from our internal test servers:

• Destroying an Abaddon fitted with tech 2 mods: gained LP = ( 196m ISK – 161m ISK + 46m ISK + 0 ) / 10000 = 8100 LP (previous system would have paid 500 LP)
• Destroying a Machariel fitted with tech 2 mods: gained LP = (1.170m ISK – 95m ISK + 40m ISK + 0 ) / 10000 = 111500 LP (previous system would have paid 750 LP)
• Destroying a Providence with 1 b full of cargo: gained LP = (1115m ISK – 839m ISK + 0 + 1000m ISK ) / 10000 = 127600 LP (previous system would have paid 2000 LP)
• Destroying a Punisher with tech 1 fitting: gained LP = (450k ISK – 312k ISK + 100k ISK + 0) / 10000 = around 24 LP (previous system would have paid 25 LP)
• Destroying a Punisher with tech 2 fitting: gained LP = (450k ISK – 312k ISK + 7.8m ISK +) / 10000 = around 794 LP (previous system would have paid 25 LP)

Research agents and datacore changes

A change mentioned during Fanfest concerns datacores and research agents in general. While we do acknowledge that initial the initial period to train up for high-level research agents take times, effort and money, we are not particularly fond of the passive datacore income in general. Indeed, once the initial requirements are met, this is not so much of an active profession and more of a passive collection of items, which we want to look at.

As such, we are removing all field multipliers on research fields, while unifying RP amount to claim one datacore to 100. While this actually double amount of RPs to claim a datacore, we also are introducing a small 10,000 ISK fee per datacore to ensure there is a small cost tied to their retrieval.

We also are introducing datacores to the Factional Warfare LP stores, spilt into each individual faction so there is no market overlap. They are tied to the War Zone control effect on LP store prices, that means offers will dramatically change depending on which side is winning.

It is particularly important to emphasize here we are not planning for balanced outcomes, as we expect and endorse expensive prices coming from a crumbling faction. This however doesn’t mean we won’t act to make it more difficult in the future for each side to achieve total dominance if they already own a majority of systems (basically, implementing diminishing returns of some kind).

While our current intention is to turn datacore gathering into more of an active profession than it currently is, we will be following feedback closely to make sure players that invested time into Research corporations are not abandoned, most likely by making further changes to them in the next release.

A glimpse into the future

We have dedicated a lot of effort to improve Factional Warfare as a whole, and we hope all of this will contribute to better it in the long run. But don't take our word for it: save some cheap PvP fitted ships, and when Inferno hits, give it a shot. Go in there, shoot stuff, get killed and experiment with tactics - that is the point. When you have done all of that, come back and tell us what you think. We crave for feedback and we are not stopping here: we are committed into keep looking at Factional Warfare during next release as well and your feedback will ensure we are doing it right.

As a parting gift, here are some points for us to consider in the near future:

• Keeping an eye on the items mentioned here as the situation evolves – especially station docking and datacore changes
• The possibility of adding new advantages for upgrading a system through the Infrastructure Hub
• Having a look at complex and mission NPCs to make them balanced for all factions
• Revamping ranks in general, and how they fit as rewards
• Further improving visibility and barrier of entry by keeping the UI changes coming
• Iterating on the system capture gameplay in general, and implement ties with DUST 514