EVE Online dev-blogs

• CSM 15 - Know your candidates!

  18. May 2020 22:45

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  Greetings, noble citizens of New Eden,

  The process of establishing the 15th Council of Stellar Management is well underway, and we are now at the point where we can meet all candidates that will be in the running this year. After a thorough review of all applicants to ensure that the criteria and requirements listed have been met, we are pleased to share that the final list consists of 40 spectacular EVE community members.

  It is great to see that our candidates cover a wide range of different in-game backgrounds and offer expertise on a variety of essential topics, which is more important than ever now when we are taking bold steps to set EVE Online for a thriving next decade!

  Now, we are officially entering the campaign period, and candidates will be ramping up their efforts to garner as much backing from the community as possible. The forum campaign thread was mandatory this year, and I encourage you all to engage with the candidates and ask them questions to check who do you think will make a fantastic CSM member.

  The campaign period will end on 29 May, and after a weekend, the voting will commence on 1 June at 12:00 (noon) UTC!

  
  

  CSM 15 Candidates

  You can browse all the candidates below or on the website.

  Note: Clicking on each candidate's card will take you to their campaign thread on EVE Online forums.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

• PLEX for GOOD, EVE and CCP updates

  6. May 2020 13:45

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  Dear EVE Online community,

  17 years ago on the 6th of May 2003, a universe was born. I remember this day very well despite weeks of sleep deprivation. It was a bit of an unassuming moment after the armageddon that was the end of the open beta. At 17 years of age, if EVE was a teenager in Iceland we´d be celebrating it having achieved its pilot’s license! A remarkable occasion in so many ways, and my deepest congratulations and thanks to the millions of players and thousands of CCP Employees that have continued propelling EVE to new heights with each year that passes!

  Just over a month ago, during the month of my 20th anniversary working for CCP, I wrote to you about the start of a new edition of the PLEX for GOOD program and gave you an update on CCP.

  To celebrate EVE’s birthday, I wanted to give you another update on the PLEX For GOOD drive, as well as share more news on EVE and CCP with you.

  PLEX for GOOD & Project Discovery

  

  As you saw in the most recent episode of the Pulse, the President of Iceland addressed EVE players and endorsed the fantastic work you have done so far on the PLEX for GOOD collection for COVID-19. The program will continue to run at least throughout June – this is longer than any other PLEX for GOOD campaign we’ve run in the past, but the nature of the threat is extraordinary. Virtual Masks are making their way into New Eden and will be a reward for everyone who donates. As on so many occasions before, you have exceeded everyone’s expectations – so far we’ve managed to collect over 100,000 USD for the fight against COVID-19! Given the current global economic situation, not everyone has the option to donate. With or without donating, we can all play an important role during these challenging times by following the advice of experts, protecting and thanking our healthcare workers, wearing a mask (when applicable), and flying safe.

  We will also be adding another donation option for the overall collection, as it has been a popular request from the community. Donors can specify that their contribution should go to the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (CHS) (in the description window when they create a contract). Given the wide and deep scope of the impact we are dealing with, we would love to hear suggestions from the community on a potential 3rd option.

  

  On the topic of exceeding expectations and accomplishing amazing things, it's time to talk about Project Discovery again. The team at Massively Multiplayer Online Science has been our partner in Project Discovery since the beginning. In this amazing citizen science project we have, with you, tackled protein folding to help with the Human Protein Atlas in phase one, searched for exoplanets in phase two, and now we are hoping for phase three to contribute to the fight against COVID-19. We will be releasing more details as they are ironed out. In the meantime, you can join Folding@home like many of us at CCP are doing.

  _EVE Online _

  

  We are seeing both old and new players flock to EVE Online. EVE players have been extremely welcoming towards all the new Capsuleers coming in, and this has never been more important than it is now, with so many people from around the world having to stay physically distant from the rest of the world. Physical distance does not, however, have to mean social isolation, and the way in which Capsuleers have responded in the past weeks is the best birthday present EVE could ever have wished for.

  We have also seen the veteran community come together and help each other during these difficult times. Tough times don’t last, tough people do. Use the resilience that you EVE players are renowned for to help the pilots around you.

  EVE China re-launched last month and has since been growing in players very quickly. In fact, it has been growing to such a degree that at this pace, the two servers might soon be at a similar size. We’ve also had to make some adjustments as some new player systems on Serenity have been experiencing TiDi!

  

  We have seen an increase in the variety of countries that new players are coming from. This is one of the benefits of scaling up our marketing efforts this year, with new and unexpected sources of players being found. Just imagine all the countries and regions we can bring into our community. Territorial expansion through localization, marketing and support is another aspect of our strategy and it is starting to show results – as can be seen by our entry into the Korean market in November last year.

  Regarding the long-term plan for EVE, the vision is to have EVE outlive us all. In order to accomplish that, we are setting EVE up to flourish in its third decade. That means investments in improving the early experience for new players, putting foundational and sometimes challenging work into the EVE ecosystem, investing in the technological infrastructure of EVE and continuously challenging our core with updates, delivered through the new Quadrant plan.

  

  On that note, we are in the middle of the second Quadrant, Eclipse, and planning for Quadrant 3 is well underway. The Quadrant system has given us a solid framework to increase the speed of our releases and make sure that there is always something new happening in New Eden. The Invasion trilogy that started last year, both in New Eden when the Triglavians invaded known space, and when CCP invaded 9 cities in 9 countries in 9 months, will see the beginning of the end starting in May when the first part of Chapter 3 goes live.

  The war on botting continues and has never been more decisive. We are hitting botters hard as ISK from suspected sources has been reduced by 90% since the Chaos Era kicked off last summer - and we see the impact we are having on RMTers. Detailed information can be found in the regular security blogs as well as many of the Pulse videos, which have been coming out at an increased cadence. If you buy illegally obtained ISK, you are a part of the problem, and we - or Sentinel, our anti-cheat detection tool - will come after you.

  

  Our journey of improved first steps for new players continues. We have made great progress there, but this is a long journey with many different components. 2.5x as many people logged into EVE for the first time in the first four months of 2020 vs the same period in 2019. We are not only seeing the number of people trying out EVE for the first time increase, but their first play sessions are getting longer and longer as we improve the early game, and we are seeing more of them turn into hardened Capsuleers.

  

  We are investing in the technological foundations of EVE. Transitioning EVE to be fully 64-bit was an important step, and I wish to thank all of you pioneers who helped make that happen. We are now working on recompiling the whole codebase of EVE, upgrading to Visual Studio 2019, and we are adding more hardware to increase the power of our servers.

  CCP

  

  On the CCP front, our preparations - as well as a healthy dose of luck - have resulted in no one at CCP contracting COVID-19 so far. Our team at the China studio have been back at the office since early March, lots of masks are being worn and hands are being washed as we are in full compliance with the local regulations.

  CCP Iceland has been working from home since the beginning of April, and in the middle of all of this, we are also preparing for the move to our amazing new office building, Gróska, in June. Iceland has done a phenomenal job of testing for COVID-19, with 20% of the nation having been tested in recent weeks. In the past week, we have seen 0-3 new cases being reported each day. On May the 4th, some of the control measures that have been in place will start to be reduced.

  CCP UK is hard at work from home and following UK guidelines. Great progress is being made on the “secret” project we are working on in London. We look forward to sharing more information with you on that later when the time is right.

  Final remarks

  

  EVE Online is going through a steep upward trend right now. Of course with the whole world at home, every form of entertainment is seeing a rise, but this is a trend we have been seeing since August last year and will continue to see as we invest more in the welcoming of new players whilst also providing ample challenges for veteran players. The technological investments will pay dividends now and well into the future, the war on botting will result in New Eden being the cruel but fair world it should be, and the economic changes will result in a healthy ecosystem for the foreseeable future.

  Fly safe and continue to watch out for each other, after all, the best ship in EVE is friendship.

  CCP Hellmar

  If you would like to discuss the content of this dev blog, please head over to the official thread on EVE Online forums.

• Forsaken Fortress – Coming 26 May

  24. April 2020 19:15

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  Greetings Capsuleers,

  Coming 26 May, further improvements to the gameplay mechanics of structures will be introduced in the Forsaken Fortress update as part of the Eclipse Quadrant.

  Since the introduction of structures with the Citadel expansion, thousands of structures have been built in New Eden. Many of these structures have been used for a variety of purposes by players, with some structures acting as Headquarters, key strategical beachheads, or even as logistical warehouses. For some of these structure deployments, their use may have dwindled over time to the point where they are no longer maintained by their owners. As a result, these forsaken fortresses proliferate in space as ambitions, conflict, and entrepreneurs rise and fall in New Eden. Cleaning up your sovereign space by removing these abandoned structures can be a frustrating experience, a topic that has been brought up by the community and CSM alike.

  In the continuing journey to frequently iterate, there will be changes made following the last structure update of Kicking Over Castles, from 10 December 2019. The Forsaken Fortress update will introduce a new structure state - 'Abandoned' - alongside the existing Full Power and Low Power states to formalize the mechanics of structures being abandoned. This will apply to both standard structures and FLEX structures. In the update, structures will transition from Low Power to the new Abandoned state if they have not consumed any fuel from service modules for 7 days.

  When a structure enters the Abandoned state, the following structure abilities will no longer be available to it:

  • No Reinforcement Phases - The structure will have no reinforcement phases, meaning it can be destroyed in one session (Damage caps will still be in effect. If a structure is currently in a reinforced state at the moment the abandonment timer expires, then that reinforce timer will operate as normal but no new reinforcement phases will be allowed).
  • No Tethering - The structure will not provide any tethering assistance.
  • No Asset Safety - Items will not be put into asset safety when the structure is destroyed (Wormhole located structures will continue to operate with no asset safety for all states).

  Onlining a service module in a structure that is in the Abandoned state will return it to Full Power, restoring its abilities provided that the structure is not damaged, as service modules cannot be onlined for a damaged structure. If a structure survives through a Hull Vulnerable repair cycle and transitions back to the Shield Vulnerable phase, then the service modules will automatically attempt to re-online themselves, provided there is fuel available to do so. This is important in order to ensure that a Full Power structure with sufficient fuel cannot be prematurely forced into the Abandoned state by pushing it through a hull reinforcement and then allowing it to repair.

  Two diagrams are included below that detail the new flow of structure states (Full Power, Low Power, Abandoned) and the phases (Shield, Armor, Hull Vulnerable).

  Standard Structures:

  

  FLEX Structures:

  

  As mentioned earlier, this update to structure mechanics follows the topics and discussion in the community from the previous update to structures - Kicking Over Castles. As the journey in 2020 with EVE in Quadrants continues, it is hoped that these regular balance changes, game health improvements, and permanent meta changes continue to excite you and bring about further discussion to engage in.

  These changes will be coming live to the Singularity test server soon, so keep your eyes peeled for further communications on that from the EVE social media channels.

  Until then, Capsuleers, fly safe o7

  If you'd like to discuss this dev blog please join the forum discussion to give us your thoughts!

  Frequently Asked Questions

  Q: Will structures be immediately abandoned as of patch day if they meet the criteria?
  A: We don’t start the clock on abandoned structures until the update is live so there will be an additional 7 to 8 days before the first structures enter abandoned status. We’re adding a random 24 hour ‘jitter’ to the timing on when a structure transitions from low power to abandoned status. This means that no time zone will get preferential treatment, particularly on the initial goldrush.

  Q: Does this apply to just nullsec?
  A: This applies to all upwell structures across all of EVE: highsec, lowsec, nullsec, and wormholes.

  Q: Will players be able to manually trigger asset safety on items they own in an abandoned structure? Even while under attack?
  A: Players will be able to trigger asset safety at any point before the upwell structure explodes, regardless of abandoned status or if it’s actively under attack.

  Q: Will war declarations still be required to shoot abandoned upwell structures in highsecurity space?
  A: Yes, you will still need an active war to shoot abandoned structures without Concord ending your bash really early.

  Q: How does loot drop from abandoned structures?
  A: This will function exactly like structure loot currently does in wormhole space. Hangar containers for each player who had goods in the station will drop to grid. Everything drops.

  Q: If an abandoned structure is unanchored does loot still drop or does it go to asset safety?
  A: Loot only drops when the structure actually explodes. If an abandoned structure is unanchored all the goods inside will go to asset safety, except in wormhole space where it will drop as it currently does.

  Q: Will there be any changes to EHP or damage caps for abandoned structures?
  A: No. Low powered structures already have significantly reduced EHP so the process won’t be quite as much work as shooting through all 3 reinforcement stages of a high powered citadel.

  Q: How will players know they have items in a structure that is about to go abandoned?
  A: This is still being explored but we will likely indicate this somehow in the assets UI in addition to notifications.

  As this feature is still in development any of these answers may change before the final release. We will let you know about any changes as soon as we can.