EVE New Citizens Q&A

Ship changes:

- T1 ships have been buffed up to be closer to T2 ships in terms of performance. And also, all sub-capital ships have been rebalanced to be useful, and correct some of the cases where certain ships were overpowered, and others sucked.

- A number of new classes of T2 and T3 ships have been added; some of them have built-in abilities such as d-scan invisibility, or the ability to punt other ships 100 km away. Makes for more interesting tactics.

- CCP is currently in the process of revamping capital ships. Carriers have been changed to just perform DPS roles, and you're really playing "manage the carrier's runway" in the way they operate. Dreads have options now - you can fit big guns or you can fit anti-subcap guns. Titans are getting more different doomsdays. They're basically in the middle of being changed.

- T2 modules and weapons have had their prerequisite skills reduced from V to IV to III, making T2 more accessible to newbies. The names of most modules have been 'standardized', and some of the meta 2 - meta 4 modules (loot drops) have been reduced to just 1 or 2 versions, for simplicity. Ewar has been changed slightly, for example warp scramblers (not disruptors) turn off the target's MWD.

Other changes:

- Market taxes have been increased hugely, and player-owned stations (citadels) have been introduced, where player corps can set 0 tax. Citadels can be fitted with capital-sized weapons and doomsdays, and can be destroyed, if you go through the reinforced timers, but the loot that drops is somewhat protected in that the owner can click a button to automagically redirect some of it to the nearest NPC station.

- Personal use mobile depots, tractor beam depots, and other such deployables have been added where you can carry them in even the smaller frigates, anchor them in space real quick, and they allow re-fitting, they auto-loot, etc. This has changed the PVP tactics a bit.

- You can remove your skillpoints or insta-inject skillpoints, for crazy amounts of ISK, Aurum, or $$. They've introduced ship SKINs (paint jobs), again for crazy amounts of Aurum or $$. You can preview the colors in the ship viewer.

- CCP has moved to monthly "expansions," instead of once or twice a year. So far, it's been excellent, they release stuff a lot more often and they're keeping us interested. They also discuss upcoming changes a lot more, in this forum.

Not sure if these are new changes for you:

- They've added wormholes that lead to an additional 2500 star systems (wormhole space). Unlike stargates, these connecting wormholes pop in and out of existence and must be probed down. As a result, you have 2500 star systems that have extremely variable and volatile exits, which have, nevertheless, been colonized with POSes, ships, and other player assets, and see a lot of PVP.

- They've changed the combat and aggression system, resulting in a more robust high-sec PVP. Certain actions place flags on you, and then depending on what flags you have, there are repercussions. The rules are mostly like before, just formally defined via these timers and flags that you can see counting down on your screen.

Player politics and the PVP scene:

- We've had a period of stagnation when they announced the citadels and the changes to capital ships, because nobody wanted to commit to any big wars before the new stuff was implemented. NAP's everywhere.

- Then more recently the Goons managed to **** off an ISK gambling website (iwantisk.com), and they funded trillions for all the other big alliances to band together and attack the Goons, which they did, because trillions and "honor" or w/e. Went about as expected, but big war, lots of news, drama, and propaganda.

- So now you're after that war, at a time where citadels are being installed everywhere and destroyed in a bunch of places, and people are figuring out how to properly use capital ships again.

- The recent stagnation and war seem to have convinced every big alliance that funding a newbie recruiting corp is a good idea, so you have large, open access, newbie-friendly groups like Karma Fleet, Pandemic Horde, Brave Newbies, etc. All ships provided, ops every day, the works. CCP has taken to it and is encouraging them to keep drawing the newbies in and provide fun for them.

- You also have "public" fleets, NPSI (not purple, shoot it); basically, a fleet forms and everyone outside the fleet is enemy, even if they're your alliance, for the duration of the roam. All sins forgiven afterwards, in the name of good fights.

- And you have the wormhole roams, killing wormhole residents, or wormhole transits, because wormholes can open all over the known space, and you could enter a wormhole in the North, travel across a couple w-space systems, then exit another wormhole deep in the South in your enemy's back yard, and have a fancy roam.

So the PVP scene is vibrant.

Making money:

Currently the big ISK seems to be in manipulating the markets from your tax-free citadel, and/or taking out all your skillpoints to sell for huge profit. Next best thing is probably exploiting w-space; they just added some cloaky mining ships, some exploration-specific ships, and the loot and ore are excellent. Otherwise the other methods still exist, missions, incursions, manufacturing, trading, FW, etc.

If you want "no effort", buy PLEX with real cash and sell on the market for ISK, there's always demand. And get an alt to 5.5 m skillpoints, then set a skill training and keep extracting the points as they accumulate, for continued income. SP farm alt, basically, pays for itself and then some.

Yeah, people are flying frigates (T1, T2), destroyers (T3), and cruisers (T1, T2, T3) nowadays. Feisty little ships, lots of gimmick tactics, cheaper to use.

Also welcome back to Eve.

May you have a much longer and more rewarding career this time around.



DMC