EVE's Dominion 1.1 patch to bring supercarrier changes, fighter bombers

A substantial number of changes will be made to EVE Online tomorrow with the Dominion 1.1 patch. The supercarrier changes and introduction of fighter bombs coming in 1.1 were originally slated for the Dominion expansion's launch last month but had to be postponed. Beyond the changes impacting EVE's capital ship pilots, nullsec warfare will be affected by how CCP is altering the stats of Sovereignty structures. (Territorial Control Units will receive increased hitpoints with reduced onlining time, likewise Sovereignty Blockade Units are getting a defensive buff.)

New features are being introduced as well, like voice fonts for the Vivox-powered EVE Voice. According to the latest patch notes: "This new feature will allow you to alter your voice during chat to increase or lower pitch or to change from male to female voices. This is certainly not going to be abused in any way."

Stick with us past the jump for some highlights of how EVE Online will change tomorrow.

• Motherships are a thing of the past and are now known as Supercarriers. These frontline behemoths will retain their former hulls which are the Aeon (Amarr), Hel (Minmatar), Nyx (Gallente), and Wyvern (Caldari). Supercarriers will receive a massive boost to hit points and can now field Fighter Bombers.

• Fighter Bombers have to be directly controlled by the Supercarrier's pilot, unlike standard fighters, and cannot be delegated to anyone else. They are meaner versions of fighters with more hit points and field compact citadel torpedoes against their targets. Blueprints for the new bombers will be available from CreoDron stations.

• Dreadnoughts, Carriers or Rorquals: when using their appropriate special module, such as the siege module, triage module or industrial core, they will have a much higher mass when these modules are active. This will limit the effect of bumping stationary ships.

• Supercarriers can no longer fit and use jump clone bays.

• Signature Radius of all dreadnoughts has been increased to bring them in line with other capital ships.

• Triage modules have had their duration and fuel consumption halved.

• Citadel Torpedoes and Citadel Cruise Missiles have been balanced with their turret counterparts to ensure they are doing the damage they are supposed to.

• XL turrets have been adjusted slightly to ensure their damage is balanced and to give the short range weapons a bit more range.

• Titans have had their damage bonuses balanced to ensure all the titans are doing similar levels of damage.

• Locked targets show a standings icon making it easier for remote repairing pilots to identify who they should be repairing and who they should be shooting more easily.

• Heavy ships will now properly align themselves towards their warp destination so no more warping sideways of backwards.

• Drones can now be used to attack Zephyrs in wormhole space. (Suggesting they were immune to drone damage before?)

• Killmails will now display more accurate damage totals from participants. Killmails will now be correctly generated in some situations where previously they were not.

The Dominion 1.1 patch notes are far more detailed than what we've briefly mentioned here and are pretty much a must-read for EVE players, particularly those operating in nullsec. Players are also weighing in on the Dominion 1.1 changes in an official forum thread, where the devs are currently providing some clarification on aspects of this patch.

Dominion 1.1 will be deployed on Thursday, January 21st, from 07:00 UTC to 13:00 UTC.