This week we have a new Dev Blog. An event is running where the Empires are wanting Capsuleers to capture certain Sleeper components and hand them into their agents. Apparent Sleepers have had a change of behaviour and everyone wants to kwow why!
This event will being about "new technology". Clearly someone is going to get something special named after them, but what about the rest of us? Will new blueprints be created from this research race?
"Out of character, I can reveal that this storyline and the associated donation drive will lead directly to new technology falling into the hands of players in the near future. The relative success of each empire’s donation drive will determine in what order each faction will get access to this new technology."
What could this new technology be?
T3 Modules?
This particular blog post wasn't the original planned for today. I had a different draft post on my guesses for the next steps of Null Sec. In that I suggested that now force projection is being nerfed, CCP might shake up the economy and redistribute wealth making far flung worthless regions of null-sec suddenly very profitable. One way I suggested was to put ring mining in areas of null and make the "ring goo", actually that is a horrible name for it, one of several components in new T3 modules. Could this new technology talked about in the Dev Blog be the first wave of new T3 modules?
New Faction Modules?
May be not T3 but as the Empires are involved and inparticular their Navies are we going to see a wider choice of faction based modules? Fozzie is onto module teiricide so its quite possible we'll see new faction based modules I guess to cover gaps in the range of modules.
A New Logistics Ship?
Not as in repairing, as in moving. JF's are getting nerfed with a 5ly jump range. One of the suspected reasons is that CCP doesn't want the power blocks repackaging their battleships and shipping them accross the cluster at max speed. What if they are planning something between the Blockade Runners/Transport Ships and Jump Freighters? An industrial that had a long jump range, low fatigue but lower cargo capacity? It has a 10ly jump range but only 10-25k m3 cargo space? Helps logistics with deep-space regions but doesn't impact on power projection.
T3 Frigates?
Since the announcement of Strategic Cruisers CCP have said the next T3 hull would be frigates as they are the easiest access for all pilots. Could we be seeing these finally make an appearance after all this time?
Player-Built Stargates?
Too soon! 2015/16 more likely.
"Out of character, I can reveal that this storyline and the associated donation drive will lead directly to new technology falling into the hands of players in the near future. The relative success of each empire’s donation drive will determine in what order each faction will get access to this new technology."
What could this new technology be?
T3 Modules?
This particular blog post wasn't the original planned for today. I had a different draft post on my guesses for the next steps of Null Sec. In that I suggested that now force projection is being nerfed, CCP might shake up the economy and redistribute wealth making far flung worthless regions of null-sec suddenly very profitable. One way I suggested was to put ring mining in areas of null and make the "ring goo", actually that is a horrible name for it, one of several components in new T3 modules. Could this new technology talked about in the Dev Blog be the first wave of new T3 modules?
May be not T3 but as the Empires are involved and inparticular their Navies are we going to see a wider choice of faction based modules? Fozzie is onto module teiricide so its quite possible we'll see new faction based modules I guess to cover gaps in the range of modules.
A New Logistics Ship?
Not as in repairing, as in moving. JF's are getting nerfed with a 5ly jump range. One of the suspected reasons is that CCP doesn't want the power blocks repackaging their battleships and shipping them accross the cluster at max speed. What if they are planning something between the Blockade Runners/Transport Ships and Jump Freighters? An industrial that had a long jump range, low fatigue but lower cargo capacity? It has a 10ly jump range but only 10-25k m3 cargo space? Helps logistics with deep-space regions but doesn't impact on power projection.
T3 Frigates?
Since the announcement of Strategic Cruisers CCP have said the next T3 hull would be frigates as they are the easiest access for all pilots. Could we be seeing these finally make an appearance after all this time?
Too soon! 2015/16 more likely.
New Industrial Ship?
Fozzie did say he was working on a T3 Orca. Really he did. However he did say this in the early hours on the 2013 Pub Crawl to a lot of pissed up Eve players. I called "Troll" at the time. May be I was wrong....?
Fighter-Bomber Changes?
CCP have said they want to end the dominance of super-capitals grinding infrastructure. I'm assuming they want to see large BS blobs hammering TCU's and not a dozen super carriers chewing through them at 10x the speed. This is a difficult one. How are they going to nerf super carrier DPS against infrastructure but not against other capitals? Super carriers should still chew through capitals. Or with the new jump changes are they about to re-purpose super carriers totally? Personally I'm guessing fighter-bombers will be changed to impact on sovereignty structures less. Reduce signature radius on these structures so compact citadel torps do less damage or are we going to see wholesale changes to fighter-bombers through this new technology.
My crystal ball is foggy. I guess we'll see early November (assuming this is leading up to something new in Pheobe?)
Fighter-Bomber Changes?
CCP have said they want to end the dominance of super-capitals grinding infrastructure. I'm assuming they want to see large BS blobs hammering TCU's and not a dozen super carriers chewing through them at 10x the speed. This is a difficult one. How are they going to nerf super carrier DPS against infrastructure but not against other capitals? Super carriers should still chew through capitals. Or with the new jump changes are they about to re-purpose super carriers totally? Personally I'm guessing fighter-bombers will be changed to impact on sovereignty structures less. Reduce signature radius on these structures so compact citadel torps do less damage or are we going to see wholesale changes to fighter-bombers through this new technology.
Ooh, t3 frigates..Frigates specializing in generalization! So we no longer have to buy a whole collection of cheap ships to have different ship types. Now we can buy a single expensive frigate.
ReplyDeleteT3 ships are meant to be flexible. A Swiss-Army knife. Not better than a T2 ship in its area of expertise, but able to adapt to fill any T2 role, plus a few unique ones.
T3 frigates are pointless. Frigates, as compared to cruisers, are naturally not as flexible, due to tighter fitting requirements and fewer slots.
The only thing I could see using a T3 frigate for, is as a frigate-class command ship.i.e. able to fit links that provide boosts to frigate only sized ships.
As a side thought, what I would REALLY like to see, is that the new Sleeper behaviour is a reaction to all the advanced drone use in New Eden. Sleepers will start to take over any advanced drones, so all empires will drop the use of advanced drones, reverting the tech so capsuleers can retain control of them. With the loss of performance of drones as a primary weapon system, they return to being of merely incidental use. Drone ships as the dominant meta dies a fiery death, to the benefit of all folks in New Eden.
How about T2 capitals/supercaps, to follow up on the jump changes to redefine how that level of power is projected?
ReplyDeleteI'm actually starting to wonder if maybe we're going to see some sort of new implant... or it could be related to the POS revamp, possibly? Oh hmm... riffing off Knug, maybe they've finally got the stuff in place to nerf links to on-grid-ness and we're getting destroyer link ships? Actually, some new jump ship doing something different seems most likely.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, part of the reason I wanted to post was to make sure someone observed that, if we had certain systems being particularly good with your ring mining idea that I'd be disappointed if they didn't get referred to as a "ring goo star."
I wonder how much of an isk sink this is (well a pause anyhoes), and if it will alter their prices long term for the 2 sleeper loots.
ReplyDelete