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Fanfest: Sisters of EVE and PvP Tournament registration
The real heroes of EVE are not the miners, fighters or traders; it's the men, women and children putting up with a friend or family member who plays EVE. Last year we started the Sisters of EVE offer for those of you who wish to bring your friend, husband or girlfriend and as it was such an appreciated thing we're going to do the same thing this year. We have now started selling the Sisters of EVE Access Pass. Keep in mind that you have to have a regular Fanfest Access Pass to purchase this, and availability of the Sisters of EVE Access Passes are limited, so get yours now!
Additionally, we have opened up registration for the Fanfest PVP Tournament.
Chronicle: And To Live In Peace
Our new story is about murder, abduction and hard ethical choices. Which is why it's a farce.
This is a new EVE Chronicle. They are short-stories written by CCP Abraxas, published every other Monday, and intended to examine the various aspects of life in New Eden. The entire list is contained here.
EVE Online: Empyrean Age 1.1 Patch Deployment
The EVE Online: Empyrean Age 1.1 patch will be deployed this Tuesday, 2nd September. Tranquility will be down from 11.00 to 17.00 GMT. The downtime is unlikely to affect the forums.
Empyrean Age 1.1 consists of hundreds of fixes and changes to all aspects of the game and it also includes the previous optional patches as well as new content in the form of more rookie and Level 1-5 Empire Faction missions. This release also focuses heavily on bug fixes which cover everything from the User Interface, Science and Industry, Player Owned Structures, EVE Voice, Mail and Chat and much, much more.
It is advisable that all players set a long skill in training prior to the patch deployment.
Patch Notes are now available. Patch Notes and all changes are also currently deployed on Singularity. Updates to the notes may be added should any further items be cleared through the Quality Assurance process. These updates will be highlighted with green text.
Expansion discussion may be found in this forum thread.
Many clarifications, amendments and additions have been made to the Patch Notes as of 31 August 2008 at 05.00. It is advisable that all players familiarize themselves with the changes.
As of 01 September 2008 at 20.50 there have been several other clarifications and amendments added to the Patch Notes. All players should familiarize themselves with the changes.
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Forums Refined
For the past few weeks the community team has been working on a forum revamp, including forum mergers, additions and more. We have also completely overhauled the forum descriptions to be more explanatory and helpful for finding the right section. We hope this will lead to easier communication and less confusion of where to post your questions, ideas, or LOLcat pictures.
Some Highlights
One of the most notable changes is the addition of the Warfare and Tactics forum for PVP discussion, including Factional Warfare. With the addition of this area, members of Factional Warfare NPC corporations will no longer be permitted to post in the Corporations & Alliance Discussion forum.
The Science & Industry and Missions & Complexes sections have always held a prime location near the top of the page; trade is an equally important aspect of EVE and we feel it’s time to give the Market Discussions area a boost. These three sub-forums, along with several other sub-forums dealing with gameplay, have been moved to the new EVE Gameplay Center category near the top of the page. We hope this will make it easier to find specialized conversations on gameplay topics instead of just posting in General.
The Trades, trades and more trades and EVE Localization Development and Discussion forums have always been a little skinny; as such, we’ve merged these areas into the larger Want Ads and Known Issues & Workarounds to create Want Ads & Trades and Issues, Workarounds & Localization. This will slim the page size down a bit, meaning less scrolling while browsing the forums. The Events section is also being rolled into the Player Gatherings and Events section, though no name change was necessary.
And finally, several of our forums make their way to the forum graveyard. All readers please take a moment of silence for EveTV and the PvP Championships, Corporations and Alliances Summit, Windows, and EVE Technology Lab. Again, this means less scrolling through the forum area.
A full list of changes is included below. Expect these changes to hit the forums in a couple of weeks!
EVE Information Center
- EVE Information Portal
All the latest news, announcements and archives from the EVE Online development team. This forum is community reply only; players may not create new threads.
EVE Gameplay Center
- Missions & Complexes
From Missions to COSMOS sites, exploration and complexes, this forum has all you need to get a head start in PvE.
- Warfare & Tactics
The home for PVP in EVE: Factional Warfare, 0.0 campaigns, low sec skirmishes and empire wars.
- Science & Industry
Starbases, outposts, stations, invention, manufacturing and mining – it’s all in a day’s work for EVE industrialists.
- Ships & Modules
Share your thoughts on EVE’s ships, modules and your favorite fittings.
- Crime & Punishment
Warn others of the latest scam, hire a mercenary to seek revenge or brag about your kills. This is the place to discuss the criminal elements of EVE.
- Market Discussions
Share your tips for trade and commerce in EVE: playing the market, utilizing contracts, and trading stocks.
- Skill Discussions
Discuss skills and training plans for your EVE character.
- Events & Gatherings
In or out of the game, use this forum to plan events, gatherings, LAN parties, or other social events.
EVE Communication Center
- EVE New Citizens Q&A
New to EVE? Use this forum to ask, or answer, questions about the game.
- EVE General Discussions
General discussion about EVE Online.
- EVE Fiction
There’s a rich history behind New Eden, and it’s still in the making – visit this forum to discuss the world of EVE.
- Intergalactic Summit
An in-character, role-playing center for the capsuleers of New Eden. Forge alliances and make friends, resolve disputes or declare hostilities.
- Out of Pod Experience
Have a funny video to share? Need a name for your new cat? This is the place to discuss topics not related to EVE.
- My EVE
Share your EVE videos, guides, resources, tools, songs, jokes and more!
EVE Corporations, Alliances and Organizations Center
- Alliance and Corporation Recruitment Center
Use this forum to advertise job opportunities or find a corporation or alliance to join.
- Corporations, Alliance and Organization Discussions
From political conflicts to battle reports, news, and corporation press releases – this is the in-character political center for all things corporate.
Council of Stellar Management
- Assembly Hall
A platform for players to bring topics to the attention of the Council of Stellar Management.
- Jita Park Speakers Corner
A less formal venue to discuss or debate whatever you wish regarding the Council of Stellar Management.
EVE Technology and Research Center
- Features and Ideas Discussion
Get feedback on your game-related ideas and suggestions from our developers and the rest of the community.
- Game Development Forum
Feedback and comments about testing on Singularity.
- Issues, Workarounds & Localization
Discuss known issues, solutions and our ongoing localization efforts .
- Macintosh
This forum is for EVE on the Mac, including tweaks, performance and bugs.
- Linux
This forum is about EVE on Linux, including tweaks, performance and bugs.
- EVE Forum Experiments
A playground where you can test your signature and/or play with other forum features.
EVE Marketplace
- Timecode Bazaar
Advertise or buy game time codes. Make sure to set up your trade before your account expires!
- Character Bazaar
Reinvent yourself – use this forum to sell, buy, or trade EVE characters.
- Sell Orders
Sell your ships, modules, and other products in EVE. This forum is for in-game transactions only.
- Want Ads & Trades
The classified ads of new Eden. Find the perfect ship or module – or trade your items with other players.
- Price Checks
Before you buy or sell, run a price check!
Serious Security
We have been looking at suicide ganking and overall security standing issues, and how these features affect the general landscape of EVE. We are not happy with the current ease of suicide ganking and the relative "no hassle" it has become. In many cases, unsuspecting victims have no chance to escape , nor any help from CONCORD. We want to change this.
CONCORD
CONCORD has some issues, mostly that pilots are killed long before CONCORD arrives. We have decreased the response time, meaning they will arrive quicker, and we should see a more helpful CONCORD aiding those in need.
We also changed the functionality and reduced the spawn. CONCORD now spawns in groups of 3 ships: 2 frigate sized vessels, which will lock the aggressor down in place, and a heavy hitting battleship to reduce his or her ship to metal scraps. The frigates will lock almost instantly while the battleship takes longer to lock, and the aggressor is made more aware of his or her impending doom.
Security penalties
Since the beginning of EVE, security penalties have been flat throughout every region of space (excluding 0.0). It has basically meant that the "security level" of a system means nothing, as the same penalty goes in all spaces. Although CONCORD has faster response times in the higher securities, it has not changed the fact that penalties are the same.
Through our research, we discovered that the balance between gaining standing and losing it was not in line with our intentions. It is too easy to gain back lost standing, taking only a few days to erase all the damage done by ganking. This is about to change.
We are increasing the security penalties throughout high-security space. It will be a gradual change, from 1.0 down to 0.1, where the security level of the system will dictate how much penalty you receive for illegal actions against a fellow capsuleer. This means that 1.0 will now be the safest of places, where aggressions and kills will be severely penalized and can quickly outlaw the aggressor from higher security levels. Conversely, 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3 will see a decrease in penalty, but not a big step down. This should move most ganking to the lower security areas where it belongs.
CONCORD will always frown on pod killing, thus the lowest penalty will not go below its current, which is a 12.5% standing loss. It is still possible to pod kill in high-security areas, and of course those at war or in 0.0 won't be affected.
The changes to security standings will make it harder for players to casually gank another player, and creates a challenge, so that if you are going to kill someone, you better realize the consequences.
Note that the security penalty uses the actual security rating of a system. A system listed with a 0.5 rating, for example, can actually range from 0.45 to 0.54. This means that the penalty can vary from system to system, so don't be surprised if you notice a varied security penalty in similarly rated systems.
Player vs. Player standing penalty
We will also count the standings of the two players involved; this extra variable can affect the total penalty received by a few percent. For example, if an aggressor has a high standing, and the victim negative standing, the aggressor get less of a penalty hit. This works in reverse, too. If you have low and the victim high, you will get an increased penalty.
As it currently stands, every whole point of standing difference will increase or decrease the penalty by 1%. If the aggressor has +5 and the victim -4, the overall penalty would be reduced by 9% (and increased if the other way around).
This is, of course, a major change in the landscape of EVE, but we are confident that these changes and the future plans will make EVE a better experience for everyone.
But what for the future?
We have a taskforce (Named TaskForce Doughnut!) which is dedicated to looking over these changes and proposing plans for the future. We have already started work on the above, but the future holds more changes.
In addition, the highly requested feature of removal of insurance in CONCORD related events will be implemented in the near future.
The CONCORD changes and Security penalty will be hitting TQ this fall, with Empyrean Age 1.1.
Be safe out there!
CCP Fear
Empyrean Age Data Export
Until now there hasn't been a clearly defined process for releasing the data export after each expansion, and it has usually fallen on the shoulders of individual developers to sort it out and release it. The last data export was released by CCP Garthagk after Revelations 2 and, prior to his involvement, CCP t20 was responsible for it here and here. After a handful of releases, we concluded that better tools and processes were needed to allow our Quality Assurance and Deployment groups to easily create and release these data exports. This makes them more easily available for other EVE projects, such as EVElopedia that will, among other things, include a new and improved Item Database. The task of creating those tools wound up on my desk.
With a new developer comes a new approach. The previous data exports, both by CCP Garthagk and CCP t20, were in the form of text files with table definitions and insert statements for the data. That method isn’t as maintainable as we would desire and instead our future exports will be in the form of MSSQL database backups (.BAK), which third party developers can restore on their machines to extract the data into whatever form their application uses. If you do not have any available methods of working on MSSQL databases then try SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, as it has the nifty pro of being free.
The new data export is downloadable from the EVE Online website, accessible from the Community part of the website, or from here.
Along with the backup itself you will get a .SQL file called ebs_DATADUMP.sql which will detail the table definition along with existing indexes and cluster definitions. We have tried to keep it in line with the older dumps to avoid excessive refactoring for third party applications. The most notable exceptions are:
- Addition of table agtResearchAgents which will detail what agents have what research skills.
- Renaming of table TL2MaterialsForTypeWithActivity to typeActivityMaterials.
- Inclusion of primary keys and indexes.
- Removal of table crpNPCCorporationTrades.
It is not our intention to publish all future data exports with Dev Blogs so any changes to ebs_DATADUMP.sql, be they additions, removals, renaming, or what have you, will be detailed at the top of ebs_DATADUMP.sql, preceded by a date of change and/or version.
As a final note, in the past we've had requests for inclusion of foreign keys. Fact is that we have no proper foreign key definitions for technical reasons so there are no foreign keys to include. However, any column referenced by other columns usually either has the same name as their referencing column or contain the name of their referencing column as a suffix preceded by a further explanation of the column.
For example, agtResearchAgents.agentID and agtConfig.agentID reference agtAgents.agentID, also typeActivityMaterials.typeID and typeActivityMaterials.requiredTypeID reference invTypes.typeID. Of course nothing is truly that simple as there are some more obscure examples of references like mapDenormalize.orbitID, mapJumps.stargateID and mapJumps.celestialID all reference mapDenormalize.itemID and mapJumps.celestialID actually references a stargate (mapDenormalize.itemID) as we consider them celestials.
In addition to a robust way to create the data export, we needed an automated way to render all the module and alliance icons, 3D models, and other miscellaneous imagery. The system behind the scenes has been rewritten quite a few times to enable a fairly solid degree of sturdiness.
What we ended up with was an automated way to render out any level and grain of detail for every single icon you can see in-game – with certain size restrictions of course – as not every icon is "rendered" but merely exported from an already existing texture.
The icons will be available for download on the same web page as the data export.
CCP Prism X
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5 Mins till the w/e starts 