Bam-zine

The Circle of Life

Our next expansion is focused around planets and all the cool stuff going on there as outlined in Hammer’s recent blog.  There will be many more blogs to come in the weeks ahead covering the details of the first release of planetary interaction and other gritty details on Tyrannis in the weeks ahead.

The focus of this blog is to talk about upcoming changes covering two important and linked topics, life and death and something of everything in-between, or, more specifically with less analogies: minerals and ship insurance. 

The ABC’s of Minerals

Minerals come from three distinct sources in EVE: Asteroids and Mining, NPC combat and loot reprocessing, and Rogue Drone Compound reprocessing.  Of these, mining of asteroid ores and reprocessing of rogue drone compounds are dependent on the value of the minerals to determine that activity’s relative income level, whereas NPC loot is one of the total rewards given for NPC combat.

Houston, we have a problem!

Ideally, mining should be the greatest factor in determining the value of minerals since miners can target specific ores where these ores are available and, therefore, specific minerals.  Next up should be rogue drones and their compounds, with the distinction that this activity is not targeting specific minerals but collecting them en mass to exchange for money. 

However, the value of minerals is increasingly being determined by the diffused loot reprocessing source which forms only a small portion of the overall NPC combat rewards, yet devalues and slowly cripples the specialist activities, as NPC combat is not as adversely affected in income terms from mineral values decrease, whereas the specialist activities are.

This means long after miners have stopped mining as the ore values drop and you have long lost interest in the drone regions, loot reprocessing will still be carried out since it is only a part of the NPC combat activity and a supplemental rather than only source of income. 

It is this scenario we want to make changes to and fix by altering the mineral sources in such a way that each gets a fairer amount and relative income in mineral value and that the specialist activities are stronger competitors in determining overall mineral values obtaining minerals in a ratio which is more equivalent to the manufacturing demand ratios.

So what are you changing with the mineral sources?

NPC Loot

We identified a core set of loot tables which are responsible for contributing to the majority of the NPC loot sourced minerals and these are the first ones we want to adjust with Tyrannis, reducing the quantity of the Tech 0 items being dropped and substituting it with a variation of scrap metals or tags, for example.  There will still be the same amount of Tech 1 meta 1-4 modules being dropped and these will still act as mineral faucets if you desire a source of minerals still from NPC combat.

Whilst this will reduce one of the secondary incomes from NPC combat initially, this is weighted against all the potential rewards of NPC combat activity. With less overall mineral supply, the lower quantity of minerals still possible from loot reprocessing will eventually be worth more.

Rogue Drone Compounds

The rogue drone compounds had two distinct problems, which meant that when you analyze the specific type of NPC found marauding through drone space and what they dropped in component terms alongside what the components reprocessed to that the overall supply was far from the actual demand rates required by manufacturing. 

The fundamental focus of our changes here was to alter both the quantities dropped of each compound from the entities but also change the quantities of minerals they reprocess to so they more precisely fit with the ratio of materials required by manufacturing and therefore the market demand alongside a general decrease in volume of the loot so will be easier to haul the compounds to station for example. 

This provides the additional benefit of allowing drone region dwellers to be more self-sufficient by having a better ratio of all minerals for their own production whilst not adversely oversupplying the global market with certain excess minerals.

Asteroids

Asteroids and mining are a little trickier, economically; you are following the correct signals which are to mine what is most valuable and exchange these for the least valuable minerals.  You would eventually if left reach a point where the supply rate of the rare ores would continue to increase and saturate until you should switch to other ores (dynamic equilibrium in ore values) or reach the physical global supply rate limit of the high end minerals. 

In the short term with just the changes to loot and drone compounds, you would experience increased income but only until the economy re-adjusts and more miners return to the arkonor, bistot, crokite asteroids.

The initial changes will introduce higher amounts of low end minerals such as tritanium, pyerite or mexallon to low sec or certain null sec ores ensuring you can make it worth the effort to mine these as a viable alternative instead of purely mining the ABC asteroids constantly.  Here we are following the same principles of better balancing the supply to the demand rate ratio.

And now onto Ship Insurance

Ship Insurance is our mechanic by which we compensate you for death, essentially.  By risking your ship in combat and giving you some compensation to allow you to get back in space and continue fighting whilst ensuring combat and death and the economy that springs from it, is both meaningful and relatively easy to recover from.

The core principle is you are compensated some of the ISK cost needed to replace your ship.  However that payment was based on static ship values decided at the launch of Eve when we set the value of all minerals on the market.  Since those days we removed those caps and relied upon the scaled potential supply and demand rates of each mineral source to maintain relative value.

However these supply sources and rates have changed over the years as we added new sources or favourable activities but the insurance values never changed relative to the market cost of your replacement ship.   This means you might end up getting more money than is really desired to the extreme of occasionally getting more than the replacement cost of the ship itself making death meaningless and going far beyond the intention of allowing you to pick yourself up again.

So ship insurance will be marked to market?

Yes, ship insurance will now revalue itself periodically based on a trimmed mean of the ship’s manufacturing materials global market weighted average prices.  This means the insurance quote when you are buying insurance will be now estimated and may change if the payout occurs during the next insurance period.

But there is more to discuss!

Our new insurance system recalculates the value of all ship classes which includes Tech 2 and Tech 3 classes establishing the base material cost of the ship.   To this we have added the ability for us to define more precisely how much of the total material value of each ship class should be paid out.  Our intention is that we can make certain ship classes pay out much less, some closer to the full value. 

Here we can then say that a tackler class which is a highly dangerous role and prone to see you dying a lot might pay out more than say a specialist covert ops class of ship has a higher survival rate.  So players who fly the ships with short life expectancies will be more sustainable to fly on lower incomes, and the same can be applied to more casual ship classes such as cruisers or battlecruisers used more by newer players to allow them to get to grips with the game whilst not losing everything constantly.

On the high end game play side of this is the role of strategic ship classes as valuable targets.  Here we refer to them as supercapitals, the largest classes of ships in the game which cannot dock in stations.  Currently they get a default payout of 40% of the old static value of the ship which is around 5 billion ISK for supercarriers and 20 billion for titans. 

The idea is that these are cut to a fraction of their current payout values so they might only get 1-10% for example of the base build value of their ships.  This is done with the intention of making strategic ship classes be more valuable targets and their death have much stronger meaning and value.

We have our own ideas for how much of the full insurance value we want to payout for each ship class which generally is 100% for Tech 1 ship groups, 20-60% for Tech 2 and 100% for Tech 3 ships (those this is only a portion of the value of the entire ship since subsystems are not included currently).  However we are interested in your feedback on what you think they should be for each ship class and why.

In closing

So there you have it, many and wide reaching proposed changes to many parts of the proverbial circle of life of the capsuleer.  This is understandably a large balancing change and one which many of you undoubtedly have opinions on.  We would love to hear your constructive feedback and your own ideas.  Look out for updates and new threads in the test server feedback forum in the weeks ahead as we move to public testing with more specific details on the gritty numbers on each of the changes.

Ave – Chronotis

Mass Testing on Singularity April 3

Our next scheduled mass testing, to be conducted on the Singularity test server, will be held on Saturday, April 3, 2010 at 20:00 UTC. We would like 300 or more (500 is ideal) pilots to help us test session changes, fleets and lag. More information about the test can be found in this thread.

Station Vacancies on the Rise at Pashanai Blast Site

Pashanai – Commercial and residential station vacancies have risen sharply since the Bloody Hands of Matar attack on the Ministry of War Bureau Offices station at Pashani III. Businesses across the system continue to cancel rental agreements, while some homes have simply been abandoned.

Kadeyn Osirani, a rental agent at the local Amarr Certified News Development Studio, said several reasons, from changing plans to “unsafe conditions,” have been given for the termination. The development studio orbits less than 550 kilometers from the site of the attack and has been the location hardest hit by the exodus of tenants thus far.

“People are frightened,” Kadeyn explained. “They feel this kind of thing shouldn’t have been allowed to happen, not again. The attack was a harsh reminder of Malkalen and Yulai.”

One renter, who refused to identify himself to The Scope, said he was born on the station and had never considered leaving it until now. “You don’t know where or when the next attack might be,” he said.

Analysts across Pashanai agree that this trend will reverse itself in due course and noted that the majority of residents are staying put, though stations will experience the effects of lost rental revenue for some time.

Jamyl Sarum meant to have been on Pashanai station at time of explosion, cancelled briefly before incident

Pashanai – New information has come to light on the explosion that occurred yesterday at a Ministry of War station in Pashanai. According to station manifests, Empress Jamyl Sarum was scheduled to make a short stop at the station at the time the explosion happened.

Sarum was making a diplomatic tour of the outlying areas in commemoration of St. Kuria’s Day, a little-known Amarr religious holiday observed annually by the Holders and the religious establishment, though it is generally not celebrated outside of these cirlces. By tradition, the emperor spends this day meeting with religious figureheads and observing rites with them.

Approximately twenty minutes before the explosion took place, Empress Sarum’s office cancelled her meeting at the station. She was to have met with Theology Council Arch Deacon Mervan Moritok, who was present at the station and died in the blast. Representatives of her office could not be reached for official comment, but a highly-placed source within the Empire has gone on record saying, “Diplomatic tours [such as the St. Kuria's Day one] are verydifficult logistical undertakings, and scheduling conflicts often arise with very little warning.”

The explosion at Pashanai, an act of the Minmatar revolutionary organization the Bloody Hands of Matar, claimed the lives of 5,563 people.

EVE: The Burning Life Novel by Abraxas

Hjalti “CCP Abraxas” Daníelsson’s pen has come to rest, his very soul drained to paper to provide capsuleers a true glimpse into the darkest corners of EVE Online. EVE: The Burning Life, the second novel set in New Eden (Tony Gonzales’ EVE: The Empyrean Age novel was the first), is now available in Europe and will be in the US on March 30th. Read his dev blog to learn more about the novel.

EVE:The Burning Life is available in several formats in bookstores near you as well as Amazon UK and the Macmillan store in the US.

EVE: The Burning Life novel now for sale!

“You died not when you expired, but when your life was neatly packed away.”

That’s at the start of the novel. Actually, a lot of people die very soon after, and not very neatly, either.

The novel is called EVE: The Burning Life, and it’s out now in the UK and very soon in the US (March 30th). As per the title it takes place in EVE, or New Eden rather, and tells the story of …

Well, in one way it’s the story of two people who go through a boatload of hurt, but it’s also a story about the empires, and the pirate factions, and how all of us reading this have come to dominate their world. It’s almost a travelogue: We get to see Gallentean bodymod conferences, Amarrian convents, Caldari Mind Clash games, and a strange Minmatar exodus. There are the Angels, all marching in step; and Guristas, living their crazy lives. There are the Sansha, in their quiet metal hell. And the Sisters of EVE, trying to save a few souls along the way. They’re important to the story.

It’s a novel about revenge and redemption, about putting away old things – or settling scores, depending on who you ask – and moving on. About change, really, which is a concept every EVE player will be intimately familiar with. We’re good at adapting to new circumstances. We’re also pretty good at revenge.

“They went in through the eyes”

That’s near the middle. It’s a creepy part, though not in the way you’d think. It’s fun to subvert the readers’ expectations, and the novel hopefully manages to do that a few times. As much as The Burning Life is science fiction and takes place in a dark, brutal future universe, it is, like fiction should be, about people. Spaceships come and go (and get blasted to pieces), and there’s terrific fun to be had from describing all the ways they can be destroyed, but it’s even more fun to write about the wonderful, terrifying, beautiful, awful, desperate and above all surprising things that people get up to when you put them in a bad situation, make that situation even worse, and then push and keep pushing until something gives way. I don’t believe in starting stories with action or crazy mad excitement; the reader has no emotional investment in the characters yet, and completely lacks the orientation to realize the full extent of what’s happening. Instead, I like to start stories right after something terrible has happened, and pay close attention to the aftermath. That’s when you see the truth. That’s when people show you what they’re really like.

I’m fascinated by good people who do bad things – for, I should add, reasons that they feel are entirely justified. Nobody’s a bad guy in their own mind. And even though I have a reputation for writing spooky stories, I keep returning to the idea of humanizing the horrors of EVE. One of the starting points for The Burning Life came out of my obsession with the Blood Raiders, a spacefaring part of the Sani Sabik. The Sani Sabik worship blood, and the Blood Raiders actively harvest it. Raiders are scary people who fly scary, red-mottled spaceships. But you can’t build an empire solely on scariness; people simply don’t work that way. Terror and oppression, certainly, those are tried and true ways of keeping your populace in order; but if every single inhabitant in your faction is eagerly engaging in the kind of balls-out craziness that drives them to kidnap spaceship crews and suck out their blood, something has gone rather spectacularly wrong. A nation of billions is not composed solely of bloodthirsty crazies.

So what do the rest of the Sani Sabik do? How do you, as a presumably sane and well-adjusted person in that faction, reconcile your normal (albeit religiously devout) life with the idea that somewhere out there, someone is kidnapping, mutilating and murdering innocent people in your name? What kind of stamp does that leave on your society? If a nation can adjust to that incredible, frightening peculiarity, where else will you see its effects?

In short: What if these are real people, trying to live their real lives? Same goes for the ones who reside on the space stations, and the planets, and on the fragile, unprotected, easily targeted asteroid colonies. What if it’s all real? What are their lives like, down there?

“I’m a capsuleer”

That’s right at the end.

In time we may tell many different stories, but in a way it’s always the same basic experience. I’ve published eighty short stories, had two plays performed at Fanfests, written a bunch of in-game text and other unpublished EVE stuff; and now there’s a novel with my name on it. Each time, you share what’s inside your head, but more than that, you share your experiences with the world: How you saw them, what you thought of them, and what happened next.

The Burning Life is the same novel as it was almost a year ago, but it’s been polished and fixed and rewritten and tweaked in countless ways. The editors – Simon Spanton at Orion/Gollancz and Eric Raab at TOR – deserve thanks, and thanks upon thanks, for all their hard work. I spent a weekend in the TOR offices going over the novel page by page by page with Eric, and believe me, when you’re a young editor living in New York and working in an office that overlooks the very heart of Manhattan, there are many things you could be doing over the weekend other than editing my book. It’s a joy to tell stories, but you need good people with sharp eyes to ensure it’s fit for others to enjoy. A story is not a proper story until it’s been heard.

Likewise, a book isn’t a book until it’s been read. A book – a novel – is a shared experience. This one has existed in my head for over a year, and now, at last, it’ll take on its own life. To me, the novel won’t properly exist until it belongs to others, much in the same way that EVE doesn’t exist unless it’s a shared experience. There isn’t just you: there’s the people in your corp or alliance, the ones you mine with, the ones you fight alongside and the ones you fight against, and everyone you see on local, doing their own thing.

And then there are all the people you didn’t see. The ones on the spacestations, making way for your passage. The ones on your ship, scrambling for their escape pods when you drop into hull and the bulkheads start smoking. The ones on the colonies, refineries, pleasure hubs and all those other places that exist only a as brief, bright explosion and loot drop site for the rest of us. Some of those people, they had a very definite experience because of us. Some of them very much want to share it. At least one of them wants vicious revenge. The Burning Life will tell you what he did, and why.

*Abraxas/Hjalti is a humble man. It is my solemn duty to help sell his dark mind’s work.  You can purchase it in bookstores, for sure, but also online via Amazon UK and the Macmillan store [US Version] in a several formats. Buy his book. You won’t regret it. – CCP Manifest

Trade on Ammatar-Minmatar Border Halts as Authorities Impose Order

Pashanai – In response to heightened terror alerts across the Amarr Empire following the Pashanai attack, Amarr Customs has mobilized to lock down civilian travel on many heavily trafficked transit routes. At checkpoints along the Ammatar-Minmatar border, the sudden density of traffic and limited customs presence has resulted in complete curtailment of trade and transit vessels.

Jaikhan Dhomn, a Thukker merchant employed at the Trust Partners Trading Post in Tanoo, was planning to cross the border with his family when he learned of the security lockdown. “Everyone is afraid and angry after this [attack]. The Amarr fear us for what the Bloody Hand did, and we fear the Amarr for what they will do in return,” he said.

Capsuleer traffic remains unimpeded across the Empire. Amarr Customs Commander Bachain Zhaide commented, “Everything that happens to a capsuleer ship, every ounce of goods moved on or off it, is logged in meticulous detail by CONCORD. Amarr Customs has directives not to interrupt capsuleer traffic beyond standard procedure. We barely have enough manpower as it is, so if CONCORD keeps track of the capsuleers, we have more resources to dedicate to keeping everyone else safe.”

Amarr Customs has given no indication of when it expects the lockdown to end.  

Amarr Construction sends specialists to ailing station.

Nererut – At a hastily-organized press conference today, Amarr Construction Assembly Manager Terma Tesh declared that a team comprised of their best structural engineers, site workers and nanite technicians had already departed for Pashanai. The team will work to stabilize the station structurally and attempt to keep essential services running in support of rescue and evacuation efforts. When pressed on the matter of security, Tesh revealed no Minmatar workers were selected for the specialist team.

BREAKING: Bloody Hands of Matar claims responsibility for Pashanai explosion

Pashanai – The Bloody Hands of Matar, one of the most notorious terrorist organizations in New Eden, has come forward to claim responsibility for the massive explosion on a Ministry of War station at Pashanai III earlier today which claimed the lives of just under 5600 people and destroyed several billion ISK’s worth of infrastructure.

In a prepared video statement released to several media outlets simultaneously, an unidentified man with a black cloth across his face speaks in a distorted voice, explaining intricate technical details of the operation that experts have now confirmed indicate a reliable level of involvement. The man then proceeds to direct scathing political rhetoric toward the Empire and the Ammatar Mandate, starkly berating them for their “centuries of unlawful subjugation and violence.”

The Minmatar Republic has moved swiftly to denounce the attack. In a nationally broadcast statement just minutes ago, Sanmatar Maleatu Shakor expressed his condolences to to the innocent people of Amarr, caught up in this brutal attack unawares, and pledged to assist with relief efforts in any measure the Empire requested.

The attack represents by orders of magnitude the biggest act of terrorism ever perpetrated by the Bloody Hands of Matar. The organization has kept largely out of the limelight since assassinating an Ammatar consulate ambassador just under three years ago. Their numbers, resources and the extent of their operational capacity are unknown at this point. 

President Roden Sends Condolences to Empress; Urges Caution

Villore – President Jacus Roden has officially transmitted condolences to Empress Jamyl I following the deaths of several thousand people – including Theology Council head Mervan Moritok – in a devastating explosion at the Amarr Ministry of War station in Pashanai system. Although the explosion was initially believed to be an accident, the Amarr Ministry of Internal Order are now investigating it as an act of terrorism.

In a statement on behalf of the Gallente Federation government, the President’s office said, “The explosion and the thousands of deaths and injuries are a tragedy for the entire New Eden cluster. We note with regret the death of High Deacon Mervan Moritok and offer the condolences of the Gallente Federation for his and other deaths resulting from this terrible event.”

Commenting on public statements of Amarr security officials suggesting the station explosion was a deliberate act of terrorism rather than a tragic accident, the release urged caution: “The Gallente Federation stands ready to offer any and all assistance that may be required both for rescue workers and investigators. If this tragic event is confirmed to be an act of terrorism we respectfully urge caution so that the true perpetrators may be punished without any further unnecessary loss of life to innocents.”

The President’s office confirmed that Federation Navy units have been put on stand-by along the border with the Amarr Empire to serve as an aid and security task-force should any assistance be requested.