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!