CCP have been meaning to shake up the entrenched player territories of nullsec in Eve Online for some time now. The transport changes wrought by next week’s Phoebe expansion might look innocuous enough – but they’ll finally force old alliances to redraw their battlelines.
Long distance travel is going to work markedly differently in Eve beginning next Tuesday – and CCP expect the differences to yield dramatic changes in logistics and warfare.
“The current ease of movement has shrunk the practical dimensions of New Eden considerably,” said the developers, “to the detriment of the game experience.”
CCP want to counteract that by increasing the time it takes to get from A to B and back again. In Phoebe, that means the introduction of ‘jump fatigue’ for characters using jump drives, bridges and portals. They’ll no longer be able to make the rapid, successive jumps that can characterise corp encounters in Eve.
As a kind of compensation, capital ships can now use Eve stargates, which aren’t subject to fatigue – but they’ll be at risk of attack if they do.
“These changes are not intended to be a silver bullet to fix all of Nullsec’s issues in one fell blow,” said CCP. “Instead, they represent a significant improvement to specific areas of concern for Nullsec (and Lowsec) while also setting the stage for the later changes.”
When Phoebe arrives on Tuesday, she’ll also usher in upgrades to the game’s skill queue, market trading, and sensor overlay systems. Will any of that impact on what happens in your corner of space?