Empyrean Age 1.1

A new patch is upon us in the universe of New Eden.

EVE Online’s Epyrean Age has turned 1.1.

And, aside from resizing all my damn windows down to some ridiculously tiny default size, what has this new version of the age brought us?

CCP has provided us a list of “Ten Changes of Interest.”

#1 CONCORD have gone through multiple changes in organization and effectiveness. The spawn sizes have been reduced to one battleship and two cruisers, however, these ships have increased damage output and a broad range of electronic warfare to prevent escape. In addition the Energy Neutralizing batteries will completely drain a ships capacitor almost instantly. CONCORD will also proceed to eliminate any discarded player Drones. CONCORD response times for aggressing a neutral player in High Security space have also been significantly reduced.

#2 Multiple changes have been made in standing hits for players who aggress a neutral player in High Security space. In addition to a significantly increased CONCORD response time, players will receive a standings hit based on the security rating of a system in which the attack takes place. The base value for aggression is now increased by a factor of 3. Base values are Aggression of 1.5%, Ship kill is 6% and a pod kill is 37.5%

#3 Over 70 new rookie missions and around 100 new missions for all levels and Empire factions have been added.

#4  8 Militia stations now have working Science and Industry tabs. The stations can be found at:

-Iesa IV – 24th Imperial Crusade Testing Facilities 13
-Asakai II – State Protectorate Testing Facilities 13
-Ostingele IV – Federal Defence Union Testing Facilities
-Ebolfer V – Tribal Liberation Force Testing Facilities
-Halmah IV – 24th Imperial Crusade Assembly Plant
-Enaluri V – State Protectorate Assembly Plant
-Eugales V – Federal Defence Union Assembly Plant
-Eszur III – Tribal Liberation Force Assembly Plant

#5 A bug that wouldn’t allow Rorqual pilots to select their cargo hold as the input/output location on installing a job when right-clicking on the blueprint has been fixed.

#6 Drones are now affected by all forms of ECM jamming.

#7 Multiple Control Towers within the same system will now display properly in the “Structures”->”Control Tower” tab on the POS management screen.

#8 When using “Look at” on an exploding ship or structure, the camera will no longer reset back to your ship until the explosion is complete.

#9 Multiple UI upgrades and streamlining of some industrial interfaces to optimize performance.

#10 Killmails are now being generated for POS structures and sent to the player’s combat log. Killmails also show up in the Corp combat log for both kills and losses.

Numbers 1 & 2 are probably the most controversial as they move CONCORD closer to a protective role in high security space.  This will, for a while at least, probably keep systems like Niarja from turning into shooting galleries at peak hours.

Not that I am opposed to highway robbery being a gainful occupation in a game like EVE, but when a corp can set up at a gate in full view of CONCORD and knock off people as they fly by, trading a few frigates and some standing for cargo, it does stretch credibility a bit.  I mean, CONCORD never noticed that freighter harvesting each wreck after they knocked off the attackers?

Still, this is EVE, and I have no doubt that the really sharp operators out there will find a new angle soon enough.  Their old operation just attracted too many copy cats and, as in real life, when something like that gets too much attention, things have to change.

Number 3 is good news for me at least.  I wonder how many level 4 missions are in that bundle?

For number 8 all I can say is, “Yeah!”  More cool screenshots!

And, for number 9, they seem to have added a mystery button.

Services?

It does not appear to do anything.  It may be a location specific function and I have not been in that location. (i.e. in an NPC station or in space)

And, on top of all of that, EVE[geek] reports that version 2.8 of the EVE Fitting Tool is now available.