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EVE Trinity: Boost patch to bring balance to the EVE force

Matt Warner
Updated ·4 min read


Once in a blue moon random EVE developers will brave the frontlines and answer cries in space. No preparation, no scriptwriters, nothing but the ums and ughs that lead Capsuleers to the path of enlightenment! These adventures are known as the Live Dev Blogs. This trip focuses around EVE Trinity's aftermath. Mindstar MC's the event, directing questions to Hammerhead, EVE's Lead Game Designer and Zulupark, whom holds a Game Designer a title. If you missed out on the live version CCP recorded it and has posted it on their website -- our heroes drone on for about an hour.

I started transcribing the Live Dev Blog and then my brain exploded at around the second sentence. I quickly realized it was going take days, no years, to extract and present the information in type. Luckily, an EVE player by the name Jameroz is a better transcriptionist than I. If audio isn't your deal, you can read the text in full here. Jameroz is also accepting any ISK compensation since it took him all day to transcribe this. I listed the worthwhile points after the break if you don't want to slog through the audio or the full text.


Boost Patch (EVE 1.1)

The objective: Fix a lot of the unintended suck. Boost patch will the save the day and hopefully not blow up anymore boot.ini files. (I'm probably missing a few points from the blog. Feel free to pew-pew me in the comments.)

Carriers

  • Devs explanation on not controlling Fighters, a controversial decision that was reversed after Trinity: Sometimes it doesn't work out like you think it will.

  • Triage Mode improvements.

  • Carriers were never intended to be over-powered Freighters. Trade-off was to increase the maintenance bay size and decrease the volume on Battleships; so Carriers hold more combat ready ships, but aren't floating warehouses.

Motherships and Titan

  • Devs want to give all Capital Ships a unique role.

  • Motherships are currently a beefier version of a Carrier.

  • Titans have no clearly defined role.

Other Ships

  • Still relatively early to tell what impact the Tech 2 ships will have at this point in the game.

  • Assault Frigates will get some love in the Boost Patch.

  • Other ships are being looked into as well.

  • Eos and Myrmidon nerfs: Eos was a ship was intended to give out command bonuses and tank well. It turned out to be a killing machine when compared to other Race's command ships. No reason given for the Myrmidon.

Jump Freighters Cost

  • Save your Decrypters. Their Invention cost will come down in a later patch next year.

Scripts

  • Introduced to provide balance to over-powered modules.

  • Expect new Scripts of all kinds.

Drone Bays & Bandwidth

  • All ships will be reviewed. Expect many ships to see an increase in Drone Bay size now that the Bandwidth mechanic is in place.

POS Warfare & PvP

  • Devs aren't happy with POS warfare and think it's boring.

  • Devs want smaller goals for the players. (More gang skirmishes).

  • There are too many industrial game systems tied into POS Warfare.

  • Devs feel that shield tanking in PvP is viable.

Modules

  • Tech 1 modules change on volume and mineral compression.

  • Player buildable modules will be removed from many loot tables.

  • Took the top 100 compression modules and tuned them down to something reasonable.

  • The discrepancies between various Module volumes that make absolutely no sense are bugged.

  • Increased Capital Modules volume sizes is intended.

  • Meta variants and Tech 2 modules on the new stuff are not a priority but will eventually happen.

  • Gang module usability improvements in the future.

  • Capital Tech 2 component construction was implemented to prevent market destruction on high-end moon materials.

  • Information Warfare Links and their reduction in effectiveness equates to bad math! Boost patch to fix.

The Amarr-- Where's the love?

  • Nothing specifically pinpointed at this time.

  • Devs are aware of the Amarr ships that aren't ideal in fleets, need to be reviewed.

Speed

  • Speed stacking is wacky and needs to be looked into. Interdictors speed was nerfed because the Devs felt that one ship bubbling an entire fleet and zooming away was too over-powered.

Torpedoes

  • On reducing their range and damage increase: Following every race's weapon setup, having a long range weapon and a short one too.

Exploration

  • Onboard scanner and probes too locate crazy cool rats. The system under utilized – needs more love.

Missions

  • CCP Devs located at the Atlanta studio are focused on writing new EVE missions.

  • It's difficult to find some new missions as they go into the same pools as old missions, which Agents randomly pick from.

The EVE Economist's role in design

  • Dr. "Eyjo" Guðmundsson role is playing a bigger impact as his knowledge on EVE continues to expand by the day. His current focus is solving the economic crisis in Jita. Devs don't want Jita to be a central trade hub. They are looking at providing incentives for players to spread out to other systems without nerfing Jita. CCP will also throw more hardware to help alleviate the growing pains.

EVE Game Designers

  • Devs do read the forums.

  • Devs will sometimes take game design ideas from the forums and implement it if it fits within their vision for the game.