New dev blog:

http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=603

Seems that is is not dead, he is very much alive.  Many new pieces of information in here.  It’s a huge post and worth reading every bit. It’s revealed about some of the intergration changes that are coming, more to be announced at fanfest.  Look for information about Eveolpedia, in game trading for GTC’s, etc..  He hints are fanfest having much more to reveal.

To make things even cooler now, the Quantum Rise features page is up on the EVE site (http://www.eve-online.com/features/QuantumRise).

What caught my eye was the hud changes.  Now, you will be able to move the combat hud to a different location on the screen!!  There is some info on the weapons grouping and many of the other new features, including a screenshot of the new stargate graphics.

Man, I can’t wait for this thing now!!!

UPDATE:  Seems I won’t have to wait long, it’s being deployed on November 11th!!!

AWESOME!!!!

I will not be able to attend Fanfest as I had to work Friday evening, however, all is not lost.  EVE TV lives!!!  Yes, you heard me, EVE TV will be recording all the action this year.  It won’t be the same as being there, but you will be able to attend many of the events!!

Thanx to CCP Charlie and his latest dev blog:

http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=602

EVE TV & Fanfest

Now, this is a story all about how…

So to start this off maybe a quick introduction is in order, I’m Charlie the newest face in the CCP Marketing team, working as a video producer and having the fantastic role of managing EVE TV’s events. While EVE TV may be changing a bit in the future, its ideals are still based on “something made by EVE players, for EVE players.” I can safely speak for myself and others who have moved from EVE TV to CCP that we’ll continue to put all our efforts, and our free time, into bringing you more events in the future.

Fanfest 2008

So next up on the EVE TV schedule is Fanfest 2008, held every year on top of the world in Reykjavik. The Fanfest is always a massive hit with those that can attend, meeting the developers of EVE, other players, their corp mates and getting the first viewing of what will be coming to EVE over the next year.

But understandably not everyone can make the trip to Iceland, which is where we step in. EVE TV this year will again be filming nonstop for all three days to bring you;

· Every main lecture - over 15 lectures covering every topic you could think of.

· Keynote speechs from Oveur and Hellmar.

· The Producer’s Panel Q&A.

· Roxor & The Party on Top of the World.

· The Fanfest PvP Tournament including “EVE TV Live on stage”.

· Many many interviews with players and CCP staff.

· Everything else we see until we run out of tape!

Once we have recovered from all of that every video will be made available for download within a week or two after the Fanfest.

Book an interview

Attending the Fanfest? Maybe you’re coming with your entire corp? Or maybe you run a big EVE service such as a fan site? Then the ever curious StevieSG and CCP Mindstar would love to schedule you for an interview while you’re visiting! We’ll be interviewing players and staff alike all through the Fanfest but we’d like to book big groups and special interest interviews in advance so we definitely get you on film. If you’re interested drop us an Email with some quick details on who you/your group are and we’ll send you more information. Stevie also recommends that corps bring their own t-shirts, flags and any other corp branded items (wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man?) to give your corp the full on screen impact you deserve!

Yup, another dev blog has come out.  Transport ships are getting a balancing, cloak capabilities, etc…  Check it out as you really should read this.  Transport ships are lacking?  Hmm, not in low sec, they always get past gate camps.  I guess those bubbles in 0.0 DO work…

http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=598

rollin’ rollin’ rollin’

Much has changed in Eve since many of the hauler or mining class ships were introduced. With Quantum Rise we felt the time was right to review these ships and make changes where necessary to refocus their roles and ensure they can still perform in the age of New Eden’s Great War.  Of all the ships, we found the transport class to be the most lacking in distinct roles, so much of this blog will focus on the changes to those and then we will briefly list some of the other improvements to some other ships.

Blockade Runners

The Blockade Runners (Crane, Prorator, Prowler, Viator) are meant to be rather good at getting through gate camps and navigating through low and null sec space with more impunity than the other industrial ships.  Several changes such as the introduction of interdictors, heavy interdictors, and force and fleet recons have had an impact on their ability to run blockades with much success at all. As a result, we wanted to try and balance things to better focus them towards their role in light of many changes EVE has seen since they first were introduced.

To improve them we refocused on stealth rather than agility.  They will gain the ability to equip covert ops cloaking devices and therefore can warp whilst cloaked.  In lieu we removed the +2 warp strength and one or part of their active tanking bonuses which were not really being used anyway as much.  They will also gain the ability to utilize the black ops jump portals.

By switching to stealth and cloaking as their primary defense in navigating through space and getting through gate camps they gain a significant edge in being able to cloak and move away fast if within a bubble.  The ability is use the black ops jump portals is a fringe benefit allowing specialised operations where you would need cargo capacity moved around for a variety of reasons.

Deep Space Transports

The Deep Space Transports (Bustard, Impel, Mastodon, Occator) have good tanks and good cargo capacity but really no focused role beyond the good tank.  The most important part of moving your cargo around is arriving safely at the destination.  The DSTs have significant drawbacks as they are less prone to getting through the all critical gate camps like their Blockade Runner cousins. If warp scrambled, it was a matter of how long their tank might last in order to have a remote chance to survive the encounter.

To revamp their role we gave them the +2 warp strength of the Blockade Runners and also a bonus to the power needs of shield extenders (Bustard and Mastodon) or armor plates (Impel and Occator) to increase the ability to fit for a HP tank which is much more useful than their active tanks in many situations where you are receiving a large amount of damage over a short duration. In balancing this out, one of their active tanking bonuses was removed.

With these changes we hope that the extra warp strength and HP tank will greatly aid their use in all areas of space especially in empire where they have less to worry about with no bubbled camps to have to run through and only the heavy interdictors as their nemesis.

Mackinaw, Procurer, Skiff and Rorqual

The mackinaw gets some love with an additional +10 cpu and +1000 cargo capacity to allow it to be more effective at ice mining.  It always under performs a little compared to the hulk and these changes should allow it to specialise at ice mining better.

The Procurer and Skiff both received minor boosts to their agility as we wanted the smallest barges to be at least agile if completely outclassed by their larger cousins in most scenarios and nudge them towards more of a ninja mining role a little.  It might also be good for you all to know the Skiff has always had a +2 warp strength bonus but this was never detailed in the description so we have updated the description to highlight this rather powerful bonus as a good selling point.

The Rorqual will be receiving a minor boost to its corporate hangar capacity.  This is done to allow the hangar to be used as a shared and secure container for mining ops and also increase its utility for carrying cargo around.

In Summary

These changes are not final and are subject to change following feedback here and from public testing on Singularity.  By no means are we finished and we will continue to look at the industrial line of ships in the future. We plan to focus on improvements to help them fulfil and expand their roles. Specialised cargoholds is one improvement we are looking at in detail for the future.  For now we very much want to hear your constructive views on these proposed changes.

Ave - Chronotis

Yup, it’s yet another dev blog.  Way to go CCP, keep ‘em coming!!!

http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=601

In a nutshell, CCP is trying to balance moon resources.  Instead of having to spend massive amounts of isk to get that much coveted refinded resource from a dysprosium moon, you can take other resources and refine them into what you need.

So how will this work? We’ve created six new reactions which allow you to create key intermediate materials without relying on the rarest moon minerals. This isn’t, of course, an efficient process! Each rare mineral has been assigned a more common counterpart, which can be used in the place of the rare mineral in these new reactions at a ratio of 20:1, which roughly approximates the difference in moon count between the rare mineral and the common mineral in each case.

Read the entire article as there is a lot of information in here.

…Man, CCP has been putting a lot of information out lately.

Dev Blog on Weapon Grouping:  http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=596

Weapon Grouping is something that people have been asking for as long as I can remember.  In a nutshell, you will be able to stack turrets or launchers into a group to make manual reloading and/or changing ammo types faster.  No longer will you have to right click on each weapon and change the ammo type one weapon at a time.  You will simply be able to stack the weapons, then simply right click on 1 module icon and change the ammo type.  You will also be able to select that one module icon to activate all the weapons in the stack.

Alliance Logo Submissions:  http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=585

The long awaited changes to the Alliance logos has finally come to fruition.  I strongly suggest you read this post and get started on making your logo.  It’s not a huge dev blog, but it’s a huge thing that everyone has been waiting for.

The Orca:  http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=597

Again, another long awaited item, the Industrial Command Ship, the Orca.  It looks cool, has some very nice status and will making mining operations even more effective.  It provides a large carp bay, a corp hanger and a ship maintenance array within the ship itself.  Can you say mobile POS?  These things can be built in Empire Space.  As to whether or not his has jump capabilities, that is not listed in the dev blog.  It’s being called a sub-capital logistics ship.  Will this be able to use a stargate or will it have to use a jump drive.  We should learn this soon.