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i'm sure both the links and indi arrays will be on SiSi before October they need to wait until after the release on Tuesday otherwise they may not know if something broke because of incomplete code with the November features or if there is an issue with what is about to go to TQ.

Ok let's answer some other questions and update the plan a bit more!

After some concerns raised about the strength of Command Destroyer boosts for smaller/faster fleets, we've decided to bump the magnitude of the burst effect strength bonuses on the Command Destroyers and the Porpoise back up to 2% per level.
We're also going to add a 1% per level Shield Command Burst strength bonus to the Orca, as a smaller mirror of the bonus on the Rorqual.

We're taking the concerns about the strength of the Evasive Maneuvers link into heavy consideration. We completely agree that the link is quite powerful. However the switch to AoE is already a very consequential change for this link and some of the proposals floating around (such as switching it to agility) would be a quite significant nerf to the link. We're not 100% sure that such a change is warranted at this time. We have some alternatives in mind in case we need to change the link further, but we'll probably wait at least until we get some playtesting before making further changes in this particular area.

We've been seeing some questions about whether you'll be able to set your command burst to auto-cycle (largely due to the fact I used the wording "reactivation delay" in the dev blog). We had needed to do a bit more technical investigation before conclusively answering this, but we're now happy to say that players will be free to set their command bursts to auto-cycle or to manually cycle, just like most modules.

Some of you have expressed concern that the "Mining Equipment Preservation" burst isn't valuable enough. I'll start out by saying that not every link needs to be of equal power and that the consolidation of cycle time and cap use into one link is a big buff even if the new 3rd link isn't something you'll always use. However we are interested in hearing from you about what kinds of bonuses you think would be interesting as a replacement for the Mining Equipment Preservation effect. We'll give consideration to your ideas and see if a better option comes up.

As for test servers, we plan to start mass testing of the new bursts for performance profiling soon (probably within the next two weeks) and the burst modules will be available in a usable state on sisi starting at that time. The new bursts are actually working just fine (other than some of the ship bonuses not being finished yet) on our internal servers right now but we need to focus SISI on testing the earlier releases (such as the release next week) so at the moment we can't put that build on sisi quite yet. We'll keep you posted as we get closer.

Like I said above, we're working hard on the next dev blog (focusing on the Mining Foreman gameplay role and the Porpoise/Orca/Rorqual) and we hope to get that out to you all soon.
Thanks everyone for the continued feedback!

Interesting, faction and t2 burst charges that provide a larger radius or higher strength.

Well played

If the third reason was the only one that would be enough tbh. I did say it was in order from least important to most important.

But in general it can be easy to underestimate the effect that a conceptual change can have, just repackaging something to get players into a different mindspace can have a giant impact. This is actually something that I personally tend to underestimate and that I've been learning more and more as I gain experience as a designer.

lol i'll take your word for it

On the cost of charges:

The cost of charges, the duration before reloading, and the overall volume of charges, is way better than I expected. Turns out it shouldn't pose any issues imo.

I still think however that it's a bit awkward to use charges, and to justify it by saying that any revamp needs to be completely different from the old system so as not to confuse players... Is an equally awkward justification.

Still, the intent to increase consumption of materials is interesting and makes sense. It's interesting in that I wonder if this is in any way related to the clone states coming in November. Clone states will definitely change the ratio of people able to mine stuff vs people able to use the mined stuff (through command destroyers, fuel blocks, etc... that is only available for Omegas), so maybe this is one way to increase consumption by a tiny bit to compensate? Interesting indeed :).

Thanks also for increasing the boost strength of command destroyers, and giving the orca a tiny added bonus. These changes makes a lot of sense.

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On the range of boosts:

It seems to me that the very small range of boosts (which wasn't adressed in this post) is however still an issue, as is the lack of sp refund for, at the very least, all the fleet/wing/squad command skills. This second point is actually the symptom of an underlying cause, which is that, even without mentionning these skills have their situations of use turned upside down, it becomes a very VERY, VERY tedious train (x8, x12, not to mention it's in CHARISMA) for very little benefit.

You could kill two birds with one stone (boor birds :( ) by changing the bonus range from 6%/5%/4% to a 10%/9%/8% (total multiplier 3.045 versus the old 1.95), without changing the base module range or ship bonuses. Making the module useful and giving more leeway in terms of range.

If increasing the range is really not an option, then it is still in my opinion very important that you reconsider the role of the Fleet Command skill. A x12 train for a 4% per level is really bad, this range bonus could use being incorporated into the other two skills, and being replaced with something more useful. For instance, reduced cap + reduced cycle time (10% per level for both) so that you can pulse twice as much (but the duration of the buff is not reduced). This would be an elegant solution to cover more people without increasing the range.

It would enable command destroyers to move around and, while yes covering a smaller area, being able to pulse more, while still zipping around the fleet, to compensate. Side note here, if this isn't something that ends up being incorporated into the fleet command skill, I really think you should consider giving a cycle time bonus to all subcaps able to use boosts, as a role bonus. This role bonus strength being inversely proportional to their boost range bonus.

PS: I'm premptively answering to everyone thinking that the presence of skill injectors is an excuse not to do a refund: There is an AUR cost and a loss of 70% of the SP associated with using skill injectors.

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On the third mining boost, and the rorqual in general:

Now for the 3rd mining boost. Here are a few ideas (pick one or more):
(For the sake of simplicity, mining laser = mining laser + strip miners. Industrial ships = Industrial ships + Transport ships + Shuttles + Mining Barges + Exhumers + Freighters + Jump Freighters + Bowhead)

- Increased agility (for everyone or for industrial ships only)
- Increased drone damage (for industrial ships only)
- Reduces substantially (75%) cycle time + cap consumption + crystal damage for mining lasers, this way the amount of wasted mining time due to asteroid depletion is reduced.
- Reduces substantially mining crystal damage
- Repairs (\o/) mining crystal damage
- Makes mining laser able to damage stuff if targeting a ship instead of an asteroid (cool idea but would probably require to do some extensive coding, so...)
- Makes mining laser have an added 10% yield in an AoE of a Xkm around their main target (same, cool but probably hard to implement)
- Makes mining laser give a small yield multiplier to other mining lasers from other ships, targeting the same asteroid.
- Increased agility and warp speed (for industrial ships only - would facilitate running away, and would encourage using gates as a mining fleet to move around if you don't own a bridge / titan (potentially niche but fun) - would NOT trigger weapons timer)

Note: The increased agility link, would make a nice alternative "doomsday" on the Rorqual, if not already incorporated into the third mining link. Instead of the invulnerability, render the Rorqual unable to move for 30s, but launch a pulse that makes every ship around it align 75% faster. The rorqual would have an increased chance to die, but the rest of the fleet would be able to try and escape more easily.

Note 2: Unrelated to boosts, related to the Rorqual, what if the capital tractor beam was able to also tractor beam friendly industrial ships?

We are building similar systems with the Titan effect generators, so this kind of thing could be possible in the future. We'll definitely keep the idea in mind.

-Mining Drone speed/yield -
I'm taking this idea off the rigs, we have drone yield rigs so at some point a team at CCP felt this was a light weight enough to be balanced. I personally favor this idea because I see it being far easier to balance this as there are no hull bonuses (on barges/exhumers) which could amplify this effect and it also works to restore some of what was lost with the removal of the passive yield bonus from MD.


Thanks for the update Fozzie! I'm glad to see you communicating with us on this one.

What about increased mass? I know bumping is still an issue with miners..... i just don't know how this would affect WH is there another way to limit how hard a ship is bumped? idk what all goes into it

Devs - while you're looking at the fleet feature could you please look and see if you can incorporate changes for any of the following unresolved fleet-admin issues with the way fleets work now... In our case these impact static public mining fleets rather than mobile combat fleets. Someone should also explicitly do some thinking about how dc's will impact fleets differently in the new system.

1. Now if the fleet boss dc's the advert (if there is one) goes down. It would be nice if there were a way for the advert to automatically go back up in case the new person who becomes boss happens to be afk and unavailable to click the "post advert" dialog box that is displayed.

2. Will hierarchy still be the mechanism to control who becomes fleet boss if the boss dc's? It would be nice to have a manual mechanism to control who becomes boss (since who see's the fleet is based on the boss address book, and not everybody may have it). ...particularly if fleet tree hierarchy is being de-emphasized.

3. It would be nice to have a mechanism to specify in the fleet saved-settings 2 or more toons who will have boss ability to manipulate the full fleet tree. Having up to 10 people with full rights to move around the tree and who would become boss if they're logged in and have joined the fleet would be nice.

4. It would be nice if free move really meant free move. Now fleet members can't self-move themselves into wing or fc slots. This assumes the wing role will still be valuable for wing-warping, and the wing view of the show fleet composition window.

5. Who sees the fleet is based on the boss's address book, but if you're running a public fleet you can exceed the current max address book size pretty easily. In a public fleet you're not all in the same corp, so corp address book slots are not necessarily available as overflow. It would be nice if the address book size was 2x-3x larger and it would be nice if there was an easy way to share your address book with another player (example: txt file import/export like you can do with fits).

6. There's no way to block a disruptive person unless you block their whole corp. When you allow NPC corps you can't block somebody's alt unless you remove the corp and 1-by-1 add all the npc players who routinely participate in your fleet. This, in part, is what can cause the address book size requirement to balloon. In public mining fleets you have the problem of npc new accounts who join, fly a venture, and then steal ore from fleet members jetcanning. You want to boot, and exclude players who do this from your public fleet.

7. It would be nice to have an import-export mechanism for fleet saved settings, and a way to easily move the motd text among characters.

8 It would also be nice if there was an accurate character counter when authoring fleet motds (or there was a view as text, view as html option). Now it's trial and error because the characters consumed by embedded codes/html tags to add color etc... are not visible to the motd author.

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Features specific to the new system:

1. It would be nice if the boss and FC had a way to see who was boosting, what kind of boosts they were giving, and their boost-ammo status. There's been talk of visual effects due to the new focus of being on-grid but fleet management may be managing a large enough group they are operating on multiple grids.

2. When a booster dc's it would be helpful for the fc/boss/wing to visually see who lost boost and who is in boost range of which booster.

3. It would be nice to know who is boost-capable (based on fit and skills) and of what kind of boost in the show fleet composition window.