Some Inferno Changes Rumored

Blake over at k162space linked a pastebin entry with a few interesting changes yesterday. Here's the link to the pastebin, which Blake said he found at Reddit.

To break it down, it looks like we have two big time (potential) changes. One is for industry and one is for combat. In combat, we've got the introduction of Micro Jump Drives (MJDs?). From what I'm reading, it seems that MJDs are a navigation system that is explicitly noted as a Battleship class module. It has a spin-up time, ie not instantaneous, but when it activates, it shoots the ship 100km in the direction it was pointing. When the ship lands it still has its same velocity. Also, there is a signature radius bloom akin to MWDs while the MJD is spinning up. Lastly, it says that ships are affected by warp scramblers and warp disruption fields. So does that mean an MJD is shut down by these? Not so sure, but it does certainly make sense.

My initial reaction to MJDs is meh. I somewhat understand the mechanics, but its not quite there yet for me. Battleships are big and slow. These new drives give them they ability to dictate range to some extent. The problem is that whole "big and slow" thing gets them caught before they get to use the new GTFO ability. Another possible thought is that the MJD could also be partially to combat Tier 3 Battlecruisers to some extent. I still see it as problematic though. By the time the BS lands on grid again after a micro jump, would it realistically be able to lock a nano BC and scram it in a reasonable amount of time? I'm still thinking no on that one.

Overall, I understand that Battleships could certainly use a buff. The 3rd Tier BCs definitely put Battleships farther away from the front lines in many cases. The Battlecruisers are faster and more agile than Battleships and they generally pump out similar damage. The MJD might be a step in the right direction, but I think to be a truly effective BS buff, the spin up time has to be relatively short, and optimally, you could choose a distance (say between 100km and 1000km) to Micro Jump to. There are certainly more potential stipulations or add-ons, but that's what jumped out at me to start.

The second major change thrown into the pastebin is that NPC drones are getting bounties put on their heads. Hopefully CCP has the good sense to take away drone alloys if this is the case. Otherwise its just a huge buff for the DRF. Regardless, this puts drones on par or better than other rats, creating uniformity to NullSec space. If the alloys are removed though, this is a huge buff for the mining profession, and you can bet on it having a huge impact on all market operations too. I'm going to send CCP Diagoras a tweet to see if he can tell us what percentage of minerals come from drone alloys. I hope he can field the question and its not too specific. If we do get an answer, it should be indicative of just how important mining is about to become.

The drone ratting change could be pretty crazy. It actually relates to something I've been thinking about in terms of botting recently too. I know people lament the amount of bots in Eve right now and many say that CCP wasn't hard enough on them with the new banning initiative. My concern is that the bots really do help prop up the economy. If the minerals they produce come back to HighSec and get turned into the ships that everyone is buying, the decreased supply of minerals is going to drive up ship prices.

 

 

Supply Shift Inward Increases Price Levels

I think such a change would probably just be for a short while, but it could be significant. Prices would probably spike for a month or two after alloys get nerfed, but then mining will become profitable enough for people to start actually doing it again. I still think that mining needs a legitimate buff in terms of the activity itself rather than a nerf on drone alloys, but its certainly a start for the mining profession. 

As a disclaimer, none of this information is official yet. Not even close. On the other hand though, I saw a similar pastebin regarding Crucible changes before they came out, and most of them were true. That one introduced Tier 3 BCs among other things, and the only legitimate changes we saw were that the Naga became a Hybrid boat and the Talos lost its web bonus and drones. Sidenote: that would have been an incredibly sexy Talos to fly. Anyway, just thought I'd be thorough and not get everyone's hopes up too much. It all looks plausible though. Waiting on the dev blog then.

Settling Back In

Hello again blogosphere! Its been a little while. I've been keeping up with things from a distance, but haven't had the time to write in a couple weeks due to settling back in at school for my last semester of undergrad! \o/  Anyway, let's catch up.

The Crucible patch dropped yesterday, and it seems like more good things. Personally, the new UI is taking a little getting used to, but its not bad at all. I think the biggest thing from this patch is the AF "rebalancing." I've heard a decent amount of clamoring that the Assault Ships weren't properly rebalanced. I'd agree to some extent. Does the patch make them better? Certainly. Its just that it wasn't really a well thought out type of better. Some ships needed an extra slot (Here's looking at you, Retribution), but many didn't. I'm not sure why extra low/mid slots were given out across the board. It seems like CCP heard babbling about "this ship needs an extra slot," or "this ship needs grid/CPU" or "Assault ships need a 4th bonus," etc and just decided, Hell, we've give them all of those things plus a totally random MWD signature bonus. That'll do the trick. Well, maybe it did, but it definitely wasn't what most of us were expecting.

On a totally unrelated side note, it seems that the prices of tons of modules have been trending upwards since the release of Crucible. I've been wondering for a while now how long this will hold. I'm not an economics wiz by any means, but my assumption is that the flood of returning players with Crucible drove the prices up on most commodities; however, there should be natural price levels based on the relation of ships/mods and their component minerals. So without doing the math, I think we have a pretty inflated market right now. Makes a trader a bit nervous.

That's my take on the state of things right now. Should be able to log in and actually get some action  by Friday. I'm looking forward to posting and actually playing more over the next couple weeks.