player-owned-starbase
Latest
EVE Evolved: First impressions of Rubicon
For years I've been writing that EVE Online needs more deployable sandbox structures that any player can use, so I was naturally pretty excited to hear that this was to be one of the key features of the Rubicon expansion. The Mobile Depot sounded like a great freeform sandbox tool when it was announced, but I didn't understand quite how awesome it was until I started setting up my own. While the depot is ostensibly a fancy item container with a ship fitting service, anchoring one feels almost like planting your flag in space, and spotting another depot on the directional scanner means war. I've spent this week exploring low-security space in the new Stratios Sisters of EVE faction cruiser, stealing rare moon minerals with a Siphon Unit, and desperately searching for the elusive but valuable ghost sites. As expected, players have already found some creative uses for the new personal deployable structures: Mobile Depots are being used as advertising billboards in Jita and to bait aggressive players into becoming flagged as criminal suspects, Mobile Tractor Units have seen some unorthodox usage outside of missions, and the Siphon Unit will literally print money if you find an unsecured moon-mining operation tucked away in space. In this week's EVE Evolved, I test-drive the Rubicon expansion's new structures to find out if they live up to expectations.
EVE Evolved: Getting ready for Rubicon
EVE Online's Rubicon expansion goes live in just two days on Tuesday, November 19th, introducing four brand-new personal deployable structures and revamping PvP across the board with a seemingly innocuous warp acceleration fix. The expansion represents the first step in new Senior Producer Andie Nordgren's plan to bring true player-run deep-space colonisation to EVE Online. The new Mobile Depot that can be placed anywhere in space is possibly the most sandboxy feature since the introduction of player-owned starbases back in 2004. Players have been coming up with plans for the device since its first announcement, but I think we'll see its true potential revealed in the coming weeks and months. If you've been saving up your Sisters of EVE loyalty points to get your hands on the faction's new exploration ships, be prepared to buy and build the blueprints as soon as the server comes up. These will be the first pirate faction ship blueprints that are available in high-security space, and a recent devblog confirmed that players have been collecting Sisters of EVE loyalty points like crazy lately in anticipation of the expansion, but those who get the built ships to market first will make an absolute killing. For the rest of us, getting ready for the expansion means planning where to set up a Mobile Depot for some quick profit-making enterprise or building a few small PvP ships to put the new warp speed mechanics to the test. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the best places to set up a Mobile Depot, re-consider the lure of low-security space, and propose adapting your PvP fleets to take advantage of the warp acceleration changes.
EVE Evolved: Deployables in Rubicon
Last week I looked at EVE Online's upcoming Rubicon expansion, which aims to kick off CCP's long-term vision of deep space exploration with a series of new deployable structures. Until now, most structures have come in the form of modules that can only be added to starbases anchored at moons. Starbases are owned by corporations rather than individuals and require a significant financial and logistical investment to set up and maintain, putting them quite far out of reach for new players. Rubicon will fix this with a relatively inexpensive new personal Depot deployable that can be anchored anywhere in space. The mobile Depot is a small feature that was no-doubt trivial to implement, but it could have a massive impact on the shape of the EVE sandbox. The module offers a way to store your items and refit ships in the middle of hostile territory, and this is the first of a new breed of structure that will ultimately unlock deep space for exploration. This expansion will also give us a new auto-looting tractor beam structure and a Siphon Unit that actually steals resources from nearby starbases. Not much is known about these three deployables beyond the basic information already released, and there's a ton of potential for new complementary structures that could be released in the future. In this week's EVE Evolved, I examine the impact that Rubicon's two biggest deployable structures could have on the EVE sandbox and think about new structures that could be released in the future.
EVE Evolved: Everything we know about Rubicon
Back in April, EVE Online Senior Producer Andie Nordgren delivered an incredible long-term vision for the game's future that included deep space colonisation, player-built stargates, and players controlling practically everything that's currently run by NPC empires. This vision sets the tone and direction for development over the next ten expansions, each of which will introduce a small component of the overall goal. In a live interview session earlier this week, CCP revealed the first steps it will take toward space colonisation in its upcoming winter expansion. Named Rubicon, the expansion will be in players' hands on November 19th and promises to give individuals and small groups unprecedented control over the sandbox. It will let players fight over planetary customs offices in high security space, significantly buff the ability of small ships to participate in hit-and-run style warfare, and even introduce a new set of personal deployable structures that can be hidden anywhere in space. All this comes alongside two new Sisters of EVE ships, twitch livestream integration, and significant balance changes to Marauders, Interceptors, Interdictors, and Electronic Attack Frigates. In this week's EVE Evolved, I run down all of the new features and changes announced so far for EVE Online's Rubicon expansion.
EVE Evolved: Strategic resources for everyone!
The past four EVE Online expansions have mostly focused on adding small features and overhauling old game mechanics and content that were beginning to show their age. Crucible delivered dozens of small but highly-requested features and gameplay improvements, and Inferno and Retribution continued with overhauls of several aging PvP systems. Even Odyssey contained mostly small features and revamps, its biggest gameplay features being a new hacking minigame and a streamlined scanning interface. It's been several years since EVE has received a truly massive and game-changing feature like wormholes or a sovereignty revamp, but that may all be about to change! CCP recently announced its intention to start reaching for big ideas again, but this time set over a more realistic timeframe. If everything goes according to plan, the next five years could see the introduction of player-built stargates and true deep space colonisation. I wrote about the potential of this concept last week and looked at some of the big features we'd need to make it a reality, but I didn't really delve into my personal favourite idea for a potential future expansion: New strategic resources and player-created deadspace complexes. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at how strategic resources could be used to get even individual players invested in something worth fighting for, and how player-created deadspace dungeons could be a great way to introduce them.
EVE Evolved: Colonising deep space
If you were watching the news coming out of this year's EVE Online Fanfest, you no doubt heard Senior Producer Andie Nordgren's incredibly ambitious five year vision. The past few expansions have been mostly filled with bug fixes and improvements to existing gameplay, but the goal is now to begin delivering an epic vision of deep space exploration, colonisation, and PvP raids on enemy infrastructure. The five year roadmap toward this goal includes the addition of player-built stargates and completely uncharted solar systems to locate, explore and build an empire in. If the very idea of that doesn't make shivers go down your spine, something may be wrong with your central nervous system. CCP has opened new space before with the addition of the drone regions in nullsec and some new lowsec systems for faction warfare, but it wasn't until 2009's Apocrypha expansion that we saw a true exploration and long-term colonisation effort get underway. I think the intoxicating draw of wormhole exploration was primarily due to the fact that the new systems were hidden and the information on them wasn't public. Just adding new solar systems to the existing stargate network wouldn't have had the same effect. Nordgren's vision may take up to 10 expansions to fully realise, but what kinds of features will we need in those expansions to recreate true exploration and deep space colonisation? In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the challenges CCP will have to overcome to make deep space colonisation a reality and what small steps could be taken in each expansion to get us there.
EVE Evolved: Temporarily fixing starbases
With its exploration-focused Odyssey expansion on the way, EVE Online is about to be hit with a deluge of players (new and old) venturing into the unknown. The expansion will introduce the yet-to-be-revealed Discovery Scanner and will add a ton of new exploration content all across New Eden. Odyssey aims to follow the lead of 2009's Apocrypha expansion, which saw hundreds of corporations lead lucrative expeditions into uncharted wormhole systems. We don't yet know whether the expansion will open new systems for exploration, but when Odyssey goes live, the race will be on to find and lay claim to all the goodies hidden in deep space. With no stations to dock at in wormhole space, corps currently have to store everything in destructible starbases that aren't really up to the task. Player-owned starbases were released in 2004 as sandbox-style tools for tech 2 industry and alliance territorial warfare. They were never intended to be the sole base of operations for an entire corporation, so they suffer from some pretty severe security and usability flaws as a result. Theft from ship and item hangars in wormhole space is commonplace, setting up corp roles for them is a nightmare, and living exclusively in a starbase provides a daily dose of frustration players could seriously do without. CCP has been planning to completely overhaul player-owned starbases for years, but some of today's issues can't afford to wait any longer. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the chronic problems faced by starbase-dwelling explorers and how CCP plans to temporarily fix some of them for Odyssey.
EVE Evolved: How would you build a sandbox?
Themepark MMOs and single-player games have long dominated the gaming landscape, a trend that currently seems to be giving way to a resurgence of sandbox titles. Though games like Fallout and the Elder Scrolls series have always championed sandbox gameplay, very few publishers seem willing to throw their weight behind open-world sci-fi games. Space simulator Elite was arguably the first open-world game in 1984, and EVE Online is currently closing in on a decade of runaway success, yet the gaming public's obsession with space exploration has remained relatively unsatisfied for years. Crowdsourced funding now allows gamers to cut the publishers out of the picture and fund game development directly. Space sandbox game Star Citizen is due to close up its crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter tomorrow night, adding over $1.6 million US to its privately crowdfunded $2.7 million. The creator of Elite has also launched his own campaign to fund a sequel, and even the practically vapourware sandbox MMO Infinity has announced plans to launch a campaign. While not all of these games will be MMOs, it may not be long before EVE Online has some serious competition. EVE can't really change much of its fundamental gameplay, but these new games are being built from scratch and can change all the rules. If you were making a new sandbox MMO from the ground up and could change anything at all, what would you do? In this week's EVE Evolved, I consider how I'd build a sandbox MMO from the ground up, what I'd take from EVE Online, and what I would change.
EVE Evolved: Everything there is to know about Crucible
This summer's lackluster Incarna expansion and the ensuing microtransaction drama took a massive toll on EVE Online's player community and development staff. Players were quitting in droves, and CCP eventually had to lay off 20% of its staff worldwide. Two years of half-implemented expansions, broken features, and "first steps" that were never iterated on left players begging for a content-heavy expansion like Apocrypha or those released in EVE's early years. EVE is known for being practically a new game every six months, but since the blockbuster Apocrypha expansion, daily life in New Eden hasn't changed much at all. To pull things back from the brink, CCP refocused development on EVE Online and gave developers a free pass to work on hundreds of small features and improvements. The company began flooding us with details on new ships, graphical updates, new gameplay mechanics, and desperately needed balance tweaks, and we loved every bit of it. Although it's mostly small features and gameplay tweaks, the Crucible expansion feels like a genuine rebirth for EVE Online. The types of changes made show that CCP knows exactly what players want from EVE and that the company is now willing to deliver it. With CCP's renewed focus on internet spaceships, the Crucible expansion feels like the start of a new era in the sandbox. In this week's EVE Evolved, I pull together everything there is to know about the Crucible expansion that went live this week, from its turbulent origins to the awesome features and PvP updates it contains.
EVE Evolved: A new nullsec for everyone
Several weeks ago, EVE Online developer CCP Greyscale published possibly the single most important devblog of the past two years. Titled Nullsec development: Design goals, the blog laid the ground rules for high-level discussion on EVE's upcoming nullsec revamp. For those who live in nullsec, territorial warfare and nullsec life represent the true endgame of EVE. It's in these massive lawless regions of space that players forge alliances, build their own empires, and lead massive fleets of ships into enemy territory to kick over some space sandcastles. Over the past two weeks, I've been delving into the discussion surrounding the upcoming nullsec revamp and speculating on what changes we might see. I started with a look back at the early days of nullsec industry and went on to give some ideas aimed at reclaiming those glory days. I followed that up with last week's summary of EVE Online's empire-building history, the problems faced by today's territorial warfare mechanics, and further speculation on how the system could be radically changed for the better. In this week's EVE Evolved, I conclude this series of articles on the upcoming nullsec revamp with an examination of the discussion surrounding PvE, the local channel, and the potentially revolutionary smallholding system that could give even casual and solo players a taste of nullsec.
EVE Evolved: Building a better empire
It's often said that EVE Online is 99% endgame, with only the tutorials and epic mission arcs really providing directed gameplay. Once you get out into the open world, the game is dominated by sandbox laws and social interaction. This is most clear in the lawless nullsec regions where alliances war over territory and build their own empires in the void. Last week I looked back at the early days of nullsec industry and examined the problems industry has developed over the years. With a massive nullsec revamp scheduled to begin this winter, I went on to speculate on how the game could be changed to bring back the glory days of nullsec industry. Although adequately incentivised local mining and production could transform player-created empires, those aren't the only areas of gameplay being revisited. Sovereignty mechanics, fleet warfare, small gang warfare, exploration and small-scale territorial control will all eventually be redesigned as part of the massive iterative overhaul. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the history of EVE's empire-building and territorial warfare mechanics, some of the problems faced by the sovereignty system, and how those aspects of EVE could possibly be changed for the better.
EVE Evolved: The Industrial-Sized Knowledgebase
The EVE Evolved column has been home to dozens of in-depth guides on various aspects of EVE Online. Over the past two years, I've written multi-part guides to many industrial and PvP-oriented topics. On the topic of research and development, we've covered tech 1 research, invention, reverse engineering and five top tips for researchers. Perhaps more useful was the three part series on trading, which first covered the basics before delving into advanced trading strategies and a few useful tips. Other guides which have proven popular among newer players included our three-part guide to mission-running, and the recent three-page guide to exploration. Members of the EVE community regularly produce new guides and tools to help players make the most of their time in New Eden. This week, EVE player Laci surprised the EVE community with the release of an impressive new guide aimed at new players and industralists. The comprehensive 416-page Industrial-Sized Knowledgebase (or ISK for short) covers practically everything a new player could want to know about the game. Until now, the guide had been available only in Hungarian. After intensive translation and design work, the full guide has been released in English. In this week's EVE Evolved, I take a look at this impressive guide and ask its creator Laci a few questions about it.
EVE Evolved: Five useful starbase configurations
Player housing is one of those features we love to see in an MMO but every game that has it seems to implement it differently. Sometimes it's limited to instanced rooms the player can decorate and sometimes it's a little more functional like shared guild halls. In EVE Online, the closest thing to widely-available player housing would be anchorable starbases, which can be configured to serve a variety of functional roles. Originally, their primary purpose was to mine moon minerals and react them to produce advanced materials for Tech 2 production. Starbases can be very useful as tactical staging points for PvP operations. With the right modules anchored around them, they can also be configured for use in other industries, from mining and manufacturing to research and deep space exploration. Until recently, they also played a critical role in EVE's alliance sovereignty warfare as the alliance with the most starbases in a system gained control of it. With that role now fulfilled by Outposts, Infrastructure Hubs and Territorial Claim Units, starbases have mostly returned to their former industrial and tactical uses. In this article, I look at five different starbase configurations that can be very useful to organised corporations.
CCP Games seeking Dominion expansion play testers, Oct 15th onwards
The Dominion expansion for EVE Online will bring some major changes to capital ships and sovereignty when it goes live on December 1st. As that release date approaches, the developers at CCP Games are seeking feedback from the EVE playerbase on some of the changes being made to the game. They aim to do this through large scale fleet battles on the Singularity test server with a minimum of 100 pilots, although hundreds more would be preferable. The tests will first focus on open combat between large fleets and later switch focus to player-owned starbase (POS) sieges. There are three play tests (tentatively) scheduled, with more to be announced: Thursday, October 15, @ 17:00 GMT Friday, October 16, @ 18:00 GMT (this is specifically a Sovereignty test) Thursday, October 29, @ 17:00 GMT Read the full post from EVE Quality Assurance dev CCP Tanis for more info on the tests and how players can connect to the Singularity test server. Players are encouraged to bring out their capital ships and unleash plenty of drones during these mass-tests of Dominion.
