CCP CAPSLOCK AND THE PATCH NOTES

Well CCP have released the patch notes for the upcoming Dominion expansion and as usual I've taken a look at them for the interesting, useful and sometimes just funny notes. So without futher ado, here's my review of the patch notes for the Dominion expansion of EVE Online.

• It is now possible to enable warning sounds for when your shield/armor/hull drop below a certain threshold.
• Damage notification plays a warning sound whenever your shield / hull / armor drops below a certain threshold.
• Threshold for damage notification is customizable from the HUD settings.

I hadn't heard anything about this in the past so it came as a bit of a surprise. This could be quite useful during battle, especially when entering structure or low armor. Will be giving it a try.

• The jukebox now uses MP3 format for its music. Additionally, custom playlists may be specified.

Does this mean that all the ingame musiv will be available to pull out and play seperately? I hope so as I quite enjoy the EVE music while programming or doing something else that requires a bit of serious concentration.

• A new "Loot Logging" optional mode has been added for fleets. This works for taking from cans and wrecks as well as for salvaging and mining. Everyone in the fleet will be notified of all these events. You can then export the logs as a text file.

This could prove interesting, especially in the larger fights where it isn't really possible to keep track of things.

• You will now autojoin your fleet again if you connect within 2 minutes of being disconnected. You will not enter your old position within the fleet however.

Now if this applies to intentionally quitting and relogging during a super laggy battle then this will be very useful.

• You can now report players as 'ISK Spammer' from the right click menu of a character in chat. This will remove all their messages from that channel and report it to the GM's

Well that will make the buyers and sellers in the trade hubs happier and should help CCP by making it easier. I'm also sure CCP will be cracking down on anyone who abuses this feature so only use it where appropriate.

• Hacking has the following prerequisites: Science level 3(down from level 5), Electronics Upgrades level 3(down from level 5), Electronics level 1 (down from level 2), Engineering level 1 (down from level 2)
• Archaeology has the following prerequisites: Science level 3(down from level 5), Survey level 3 (down from level 5), Electronics level 1
• Salvaging has the following prerequisites: Mechanic level 3, Survey at level 3 and Engineering at level 1
• Cloaking has the following prerequisites Electronics level 4 ( was 5)

Well as someone who has gone through all the time to train up these skills I'm a bit unhappy. But it should open up the little mini professions to more people which could be useful, especially for the newer players.

• Trial accounts can no longer request missions from agents of level 3 and above.

I'll admit I didn't know this was a problem but I guess if you have a character running level 4's or 5's and get the trial account to fleet up, you could get their standings high enough and fast enough to make it profitable for the macroers.

• You can now right click on a courier package and select "Deliver Courier Package" instead of having to find the contract.

That'll make the logistic monkeys happy. And happy logistic monkeys make happy PvP mokeys.

• You can now add corp/alliances as buddies.

I'm interested to see how this will work.

I'm guessing that it will work by adding that corp or alliance to your buddy list as a single entry that you can use to quickly access their info window. This would mean that you couldn't just add all the memebers of a corp or alliance during a war to know exactly how many and who is online in the other corp or alliance.

• A trial account does not start until the person logs into EVE for the first time, not when the trial is created or activated.

That's a nice little thing that will give trial members more time to get an idea of what EVE is.

• Player owned wrecks can now be marked as "available for all", which allows everybody to take from them without causing aggression.

Well the only case I can see this being useful in is when flying with an alt or allies but generally you wouldn't be shooting them anyway, even if they do have aggro. So odd but nothing harmful.

• Drones would sometimes refuse to attack certain structures; they've been given a stern talking-to and will now obey orders with more diligence.
• Fighter drones will respond faster to return commands, instead of idling around the space coffee machine.

Is it required for drone fixes regarding their following of orders to be in every patch notes? At least they're funny though I still expect drones to randomly attack fleet members and split up without warning. ;)

• The UI is now flatter and squarer.

Ahh CCP. What would we do without this short, descriptive and utterly useless patch note. I'm guessing it's a little easter egg for those of us crazy enough to read the entire patch notes.

• You can no longer create more than 5 tabs when importing an overview XML file.

It was annouced a while ago but as a corp that uses the extra tabs it will mean a rejigging of the corp standard tab layout.

• The items filter is no longer ignoring things with only capital letters for a name. CCP CAPSLOCK approves.

Never seen CCP CAPSLOCK but I approve of his name.

So that's it for the notes I found interesting. It was interesting to see that even with all the dev blogs about all the changes there were a few new ones that I hadn't seen mentioned. If you want to read the entire patch notes yourself then take a look over here.

All in all I think Dominion is shaping up to be a very interesting expansion. Especially as I'm a 0.0 person. Bring on the pewpew!

EVE Blog Banter #8

Welcome to the eighth installment of the EVE Blog Banter , the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here . Check out otherEVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!
This month's topic comes to us from me, Ga'len at The Wandering Druid of Tranquility. He asks: "What new game mechanic or mechanics would you like to see created and brought into the EVE Online universe and how would this be incorporated into the current game universe? Be specific and give details, this is not meant to be a 'nerf this, boost my game play' post like we see on the EVE forums."

Even though this isn't an EVE blog I'm a long time player and fan of it so I thought I'd jump into the blog banter and offer up my view. My first thought was that I'd like to see something like a dueling system where two players or groups of players could agree to a fight without being Concordokkend. But then I remembered an older thought that I've seen put up elsewhere:

"Claimable Low-Sec"

Now the quotes are important. I don't want to see 0.0 style Sovereignty in lowsec. That's what 0.0 is for. What I'm thinking of is something a bit more casual in a sense. And giving pirates and other lowsec corps something fun about lowsec.

The way I see that it could work is by giving corps or alliances the ability to 'register' claims with the Empire that claims a lowsec region. In exchange for a small payment of some sort (ISK, towers around moons, etc.) the Empire give the corporation free reign to destroy ships of corporations with Headquarters or Offices in enemy Empire affiliated stations.

Now to balance it out and to stop the pira... I mean corporations and alliances from having life to easy anyone is allowed to engage the ships of claiming corporations without sentry gun aggro.

Also multiple corporations and alliances can claim a Region of lowsec so they would also be able to shoot each other just to make life more interesting.

Now this would need more work but I think it could make life in lowsec more interesting by reducing the amount of GCC and the consequent sentry aggro.

Capsuleer 2.0 Review

My short review. Great app, works smoothly and it's free. Throw the devs some ISK if you like it though.

Now for the longer one. Capsuleer is an EvE Online related iPhone and iPod Touch app. At its most basic it allows you to track your skills and what you're training within EvE. The user interface is a bit spartan at the moment with only three icons working with space free for many more. The developers have said that more functions are going to be added in the future.

Adding a new toon is easy to do as you just eail yourself a specifically formatted link and your API details get added. After getting the latest info from the EvE servers your current skill queue is then within a couple of clicks with easy access from there to more information about any skill in the queue. The ability to also check the Attributes and Implants of your clone is a nice touch.

Capsuleer also contains a skill browser that displays all the skills you've trained and highlights the current skills on a char's skill queue. The skill inforation page is nice as it clearly shows the description, attribuites, prereqs and training times for the skill in question. There is also a default char with all skills to level 5 that you can use to see all the skills but as all skills are at level 5 no training times are shown. This is the biggest downside I have in day to day use with the app but it isn't a very big one.

Another nice feature of Capsuleer is the built in ability to subscribe to the blogs in the Eve blogroll and the tracking of the CCP Announcements, devBlog and Patch Notes. The best bit of this I've found owning an iPod Touch is that the entries are downloaded to local storage so that it is possible to read the entries without a network connection. One small downside is the lack of support for images on the blog so if you want to see them you have to use Safari to read them.

The final neat side feature is the Server Status. Capsuleer checks the status of TQ and Singularity and the MOTD.

On the whole I'm impressed by the quality of the app and the smooth user experiance that makes using it quite enjoyable. If you own an iPhone or iPod Touch and play Eve then Capsuleer is a must have.

Capsuleer Home Page -- http://capsuleer.evesuite.com/