Dominion Upkeep and Upgrades Devblog

[Faife]

CCP Chronotis' previous blog on Dominion's new Sovereignty system gave you a broad overview of the available upgrades and the system that enables them. Today we are going to delve a little deeper into the inner workings of the upgrades of space available to you through the new Infrastructure system in Dominion and the various factors surrounding them. Let's start with answering a few of the more common concerns that have arisen from your feedback so far.

I thought you were getting rid of ‘Sov levels' but now I see there are five of them?

Think of them less as Sov levels and more as time-based indices. These are needed in order to preserve the game play centered on your commitment to your space. Another point to be clear on is that these time indices are applicable only toward Strategic upgrades. They have no bearing on your Military or Industrial upgrades.

I want to take my enemy's upgrades but I'm forced to destroy the Infrastructure Hub. *sadface*

Here is a screenshot of the Infrastructure Hub:
http://ccp.vo.llnwd.net/o2/community...g/2009/Hub.jpg

Originally we considered allowing the I-Hub to be capturable but the more we discussed the idea the more we agreed that it would be a bad idea to allow an invader to capture a Hub and then be able to deploy a cyno jammer five minutes later. However, we did want to preserve a sense of "I want to take their stuff!" so what we've done is disconnect the activity-based indices from the Hub.

Let's say your bloodthirsty hordes want to take a break from marauding and decide you would like to mine for a couple of months (totally happens). A nearby alliance has developed one of their systems to have the most awesome mining available (Level 5 Industry). You mobilize, move in and take over their system as detailed in my previous blog. In the process of this you have to destroy the Infrastructure Hub and the upgrades, but fear not!

Once the evil care bears have been driven from your new home, you can online your own TCU and Infrastructure Hub. Once that is done you will notice that while you do not have the upgrade installed that allows you to use the developed space, depending on how long your conquest took (and Industry-related activity ceased), the actual Industry Index has gone down only slightly. Move quickly to install the proper upgrade in your I-Hub and you now have immediate access to all those lovely rocks.

How do these Decay rates work?

The decay of indices takes place gradually, but if all of a particular activity-based index completely stops, you can expect to lose one level of an index approximately every four days.

Upkeep Costs

Let's talk about money for a minute. We have adjusted the upkeep costs from the initial blog and this is an up to date snapshot of where they have settled.

TCU: 6m ISK / day
Jump Bridge: 10m ISK / day
Cyno Generators: 2m ISK / day
Cyno Jammers: 20m ISK / day
Capital Ship Assembly Arrays: 1m ISK / day

There are no upkeep costs for your isk-generating upgrades, just the Strategic / structure-based ones. We feel this is a fair way of doing things and allows us a good base from which to move forward as we consider what other features we might add in the future.

Upgrade Facts

We got a lot of feedback on the upgrades so let me delve into that for a bit. Many comments have been made about the number of players that these upgrades can support. Please bear in mind that any estimates made on this are just that. What we would like to do now is walk you through the various upgrades that will be available in Dominion and explain what they are and what benefits they will provide you.

Note - Not all of the names of the upgrades are final.

Industry Upgrades

"These upgrades allow your systems to have additional hidden asteroid belts and mini-profession sites."

Ore Prospecting Arrays

These are hidden asteroid belts and you get one site guaranteed for every level of upgrade to a maximum of five. These are not the typical hidden belts though. If you've ever been into wormhole space and seen some of the riches there, then you have an idea of what to expect. Within these hidden belts reside mythical beasts such as ‘King Arkonor' and many of his closest friends.

These sites will re-spawn every downtime, so even if you do not mine out every rock, there will be fresh ones waiting for you the next day.

Survey Networks

This upgrade provides a variety of salvage & archaeology sites to explore. Every level of upgrade will give you an increasing chance per level increase in being able to find one. These sites run on a 12 hour re-spawn delay.

Military Upgrades

"These upgrades allow your systems to have additional anomalies and other exploration dungeons within your space such as encounters and complexes and wormholes."

Pirate Detection Arrays

Each level of this upgrade gives you four anomalies per level, each of which re-spawns instantly upon completion. This mean that at Level 5 you are guaranteed to have twenty anomalies at all times in a system. These are basically dungeons which spawn waves of NPC's for you to happily shoot. The top level anomalies in terms of ISK per hour are among some of the most profitable content in the game.

These anomalies are awesome because there is a constant supply of them and there are no skill requirements to scan them down. They can be found by anyone using the onboard scanner with a 100% success rate. Basically, if you are in a system that's small enough to be covered by one probe, you will get the full list of available sites instantly and you can warp to them.

These anomalies also have a percentage chance to spawn NPC faction commanders, as well as escalate to other dungeons.

Entrapment

These are chance-based on signatures to gain access to DED complexes. Every level of upgrade increases your chances of finding both a signature and a higher level DED complex. Upon completion of running the site, there is the possibility of finding another one (no waiting until next downtime).

Quantum Flux Generator

This one is simple and every level increases your percentage chances to discover a wormhole in the system.

Strategic Upgrades

"These upgrades allow the anchoring and on-lining of the current and any future sovereignty dependant structures like Jump Bridges and Cyno Jammers."

These are the most familiar already to you, so I won't waste time detailing what each one of them does again. What I will say though is that there is great room for expansion in this area and we are going to try to make future strategic upgrades both interesting and dynamic.

Outpost Upgrades

One update to an old feature that we've revisited is that of being able to upgrade your player built outposts with expanded or additional functionality. Some of these upgrades are very useful but due to their past costs were deemed uneconomical. So, while the mechanic and feature itself will remain the same, we have greatly reduced the costs associated with the Pedestal and Monument Upgrade Platforms as well as the actual upgrades themselves.

Things we have changed based on your feedback

Your comments do make a difference so, in review, here is what we have done so far:

Adjusted the system upkeep costs
Increased the number of Pirate Detection Array anomalies from two per level to four per level.
Changed the online time of Sovereignty Blockade Units from six hours to three hours.
Changed the reinforcement variance timers on Outposts and Infrastructure Hubs from four hours to two hours.
The Future

We realize that expectations for Dominion are high and we want to again say that the new sovereignty system we are introducing is a very big first step in what we want to be a continual iteration process. The upgrades we are making available in Dominion are just the beginnings of a system that we plan to expand upon in order to enable players to turn their sovereign space into hubs of economic activity or military fortresses.

- Abathur

[Faife]

20 simultaneous anomalies and 5 ABC sites daily. hm. a maxed out one of these is basically like owning a good quality const.

[Yorda]

I was under the impression that anomalies were near worthless and ratting was better isk/hr. Maybe they buffed them or something.

[SpaceHermit]

I was under the impression that anomalies were near worthless and ratting was better isk/hr. Maybe they buffed them or something.

Soundwave is responding in the comments thread in regards to this, saying that when your systems pirate attracting upgrade reaches lvl 4/5 you will not only get more anomalies, but more of the "higher tier" ones, which will be on par with the better income missions.

They still fail to say whether these "higher tier" anomalies are new or just the same ones we have now. Saying they are as good as high income lvl 4s is pretty damn vague honestly.

[Vladic Ka]

So I can pay 2 mil isk and have my gens on for that day and offline for the rest of the time?

[SolarKnight]

AFAIK the bills are every 2 weeks, thats just the equivalent cost per day.

[Faife]

AFAIK the bills are every 2 weeks, thats just the equivalent cost per day.

that was my understanding too.

anomalies are marginally better than a belt, but can sometimes bring more waves, like a mission.

there would be a time loss involved in getting next anomaly obv, but at least you'd know it spawned somewhere in that time period

[hadtoregistertoreadit]

these can also be scanned with onboard scanner so reds should be able to find carebears much faster too...


i think we will see people using more hidden belts. last i heard you can make excess of 60mill per hour mining abc ores

[Yorda]

Are they fixing the whole jumpbridges and cynojammers being able to run simultaneously in the same system?

If so we're looking at 26mil isk/day (260mil/day in ratting per system at a 10% tax), if not it's 48mil isk/day (480mil/day in ratting per system).

In perspective, Goonswarm has sov in 154 systems in delve / Querious / PB which in order to run bridges+ jammers in each system would amount to 7.5 billion isk/day or about 225bil/month.

For some reason I thought Goonswarm's logistical cost was about 200bil, but maybe that was when they were throwing down new towers (keeping 11 poses in most systems) and building up a fuel cache.

EDIT: meant bridges+jammers not gens+jammers.

[Faife]

Are they fixing the whole jumpbridges and cynojammers being able to run simultaneously in the same system?

If so we're looking at 26mil isk/day (260mil/day in ratting per system at a 10% tax), if not it's 48mil isk/day (480mil/day in ratting per system).

In perspective, Goonswarm has sov in 154 systems in delve / Querious / PB which in order to run generators + jammers in each system would amount to 7.5 billion isk/day or about 225bil/month.

For some reason I thought Goonswarm's logistical cost was about 200bil, but maybe that was when they were throwing down new towers (keeping 11 poses in most systems) and building up a fuel cache.

i'm not sure why CVA is shitting so many bricks. their systems will no longer be the worst in the game, and considering they're able to get their members to do a full CTA for a week, they'll probably be alright. ushrkhan isn't exactly in a position to invade (lol) anything, much less provi.

on the other hand, whoever IT hits? probably not so much, even if by some bizarro world rules they don't hit fountain

[NotARealName]

Are they fixing the whole jumpbridges and cynojammers being able to run simultaneously in the same system?

If so we're looking at 26mil isk/day (260mil/day in ratting per system at a 10% tax), if not it's 48mil isk/day (480mil/day in ratting per system).

In perspective, Goonswarm has sov in 154 systems in delve / Querious / PB which in order to run bridges+ jammers in each system would amount to 7.5 billion isk/day or about 225bil/month.

For some reason I thought Goonswarm's logistical cost was about 200bil, but maybe that was when they were throwing down new towers (keeping 11 poses in most systems) and building up a fuel cache.

EDIT: meant bridges+jammers not gens+jammers.

Thus far it looks like you can still bridge + cynojam a system. And no one has said a word about the combat cap bridge nerf going though.

[Kurth]

Expecting the price of complex mods to drop sharply soon.

[Nicky D]

i'm not sure why CVA is shitting so many bricks. their systems will no longer be the worst in the game, and considering they're able to get their members to do a full CTA for a week, they'll probably be alright. ushrkhan isn't exactly in a position to invade (lol) anything, much less provi.

CVA's (and LFA's) alliance income comes from manufacturing capital ships for anyone who wants them (AAA, Atlas, other reds are regular customers). Dominion threatens this by getting rid of sov4 and limiting the profligation of cynojammers, making the CSAAs that make these ships no longer invulnerable.

While UK and others are certainly in no position to overthrow Providence, it's fairly possible for them to knock over a bunch of CSAAs that were building dreads at the time.

CVA's directors actually tried to get a threadnaught going over it on EVE-O on the Citadel forums but it didn't really work because the rank-and-file Prov dweller wasn't really sold on the idea of passionately defending a source of income that they themselves never ever see.

[Yorda]

Who builds dreads in csaa's?

[Faife]

Who builds dreads in csaa's?

he means supercaps. he's still talking out his arse, but that's what he means.

and i think the nerf to titans will be a bigger hit into that market than any sov rules change

[R0ze]

CVA's (and LFA's) alliance income comes from manufacturing capital ships for anyone who wants them (AAA, Atlas, other reds are regular customers). Dominion threatens this by getting rid of sov4 and limiting the profligation of cynojammers, making the CSAAs that make these ships no longer invulnerable.

Where this comes from?

As Yorda said nobody builds regular caps in CSAAs (besides till far most of the CVA cap-pilots have shopped from others like Paxton who have better industrialists).. also the supercaps are just individual solo projects..

So no idea why did you come up that the whine is regarding Sov4 or CSAAs..

While UK and others are certainly in no position to overthrow Providence, it's fairly possible for them to knock over a bunch of CSAAs that were building dreads at the time.

Yeah right.. ppl will wait till the next Sov drop (if you remember we had one) to get their OPs with 1bil mods getting blown up.

CVA's directors actually tried to get a threadnaught going over it on EVE-O on the Citadel forums but it didn't really work because the rank-and-file Prov dweller wasn't really sold on the idea of passionately defending a source of income that they themselves never ever see.

You should reread Aralis post who is bassically the one and only person who has expressed his feelings in public (CVA doesnt post much/offten in other EVEO forum parts rather than Intergallactic Summit) about his own views of the patch and the way the game is being developed..


Addint the link to it: http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard...50&page=20#572

[Yorda]

Where this comes from?

As Yorda said nobody builds regular caps in CSAAs (besides till far most of the CVA cap-pilots have shopped from others like Paxton who have better industrialists).. also the supercaps are just individual solo projects..

So no idea why did you come up that the whine is regarding Sov4 or CSAAs..

It's because CVA/providence alliances make a lot of money selling supercaps in their sov4. You'll notice that the build cost for a titan is ~40bil, and the sell cost is significantly higher. That's because it's something like 50 freighters full of shit to move, plus a month build time.

[Endie]

While UK and others are certainly in no position to overthrow Providence, it's fairly possible for them to knock over a bunch of CSAAs that were building dreads at the time.

I can tell you for sure that two of the biggest CVA (one ex Libertas Fidelitas) dread producers work from lowsec, not from CSAAs.

[Cupcake]

CCP Chronotis' previous blog on Dominion's new Sovereignty system gave you a broad overview of the available upgrades and the system that enables them. Today we are going to delve a little deeper into the inner workings of the upgrades of space available to you through the new Infrastructure system in Dominion and the various factors surrounding them. Let's start with answering a few of the more common concerns that have arisen from your feedback so far.


I want to take my enemy's upgrades but I'm forced to destroy the Infrastructure Hub. *sadface*

Here is a screenshot of the Infrastructure Hub:
http://ccp.vo.llnwd.net/o2/community...g/2009/Hub.jpg

Originally we considered allowing the I-Hub to be capturable but the more we discussed the idea the more we agreed that it would be a bad idea to allow an invader to capture a Hub and then be able to deploy a cyno jammer five minutes later. However, we did want to preserve a sense of "I want to take their stuff!" so what we've done is disconnect the activity-based indices from the Hub.

Let's say your bloodthirsty hordes want to take a break from marauding and decide you would like to mine for a couple of months (totally happens). A nearby alliance has developed one of their systems to have the most awesome mining available (Level 5 Industry). You mobilize, move in and take over their system as detailed in my previous blog. In the process of this you have to destroy the Infrastructure Hub and the upgrades, but fear not!

Once the evil care bears have been driven from your new home, you can online your own TCU and Infrastructure Hub. Once that is done you will notice that while you do not have the upgrade installed that allows you to use the developed space, depending on how long your conquest took (and Industry-related activity ceased), the actual Industry Index has gone down only slightly. Move quickly to install the proper upgrade in your I-Hub and you now have immediate access to all those lovely rocks.

How do these Decay rates work?

The decay of indices takes place gradually, but if all of a particular activity-based index completely stops, you can expect to lose one level of an index approximately every four days.

- Abathur

I think I'm missing something...

Is it fair to hypothesize that if a system was developed by a Corp or Alliance that a hostile Corp or Alliance could occupy thier system...keep them camped up and take advantage of the upgrades the sovereign Corp or Alliance has put in place?

Also,

Could a Hostile corp camp in another Corp or Alliance until thier upgrades slowly wither away due to inactivity?

Why even bother to try to capture a system? Just wait for them to spend the isk / time upgrading then camp them in long enough to degrade thier work repeatedly. While there why not hit a few of the abundant plex's that have spawned to pass the time?

I was wondering if someone could shed some light on this?

[Yorda]

I think I'm missing something...

Is it fair to hypothesize that if a system was developed by a Corp or Alliance that a hostile Corp or Alliance could occupy thier system...keep them camped up and take advantage of the upgrades the sovereign Corp or Alliance has put in place?

Also,

Could a Hostile corp camp in another Corp or Alliance until thier upgrades slowly wither away due to inactivity?

Why even bother to try to capture a system? Just wait for them to spend the isk / time upgrading then camp them in long enough to degrade thier work repeatedly. While there why not hit a few of the abundant plex's that have spawned to pass the time?

I was wondering if someone could shed some light on this?

They could camp it and take advantage of it and they could sit there until the upgrades withered away but it's boring and you could just blow it up. If you can continuously camp the system you might as well blow up the hub in 48hrs.

[Faife]

I think I'm missing something...

Is it fair to hypothesize that if a system was developed by a Corp or Alliance that a hostile Corp or Alliance could occupy thier system...keep them camped up and take advantage of the upgrades the sovereign Corp or Alliance has put in place?

Also,

Could a Hostile corp camp in another Corp or Alliance until thier upgrades slowly wither away due to inactivity?

Why even bother to try to capture a system? Just wait for them to spend the isk / time upgrading then camp them in long enough to degrade thier work repeatedly. While there why not hit a few of the abundant plex's that have spawned to pass the time?

I was wondering if someone could shed some light on this?

this is both theoretically possible, and good, since it would lead to WULFPAX actually having a point and a means to affect something

[Cupcake]

this is both theoretically possible, and good, since it would lead to WULFPAX actually having a point and a means to affect something

Agreed.

Hopefully it will also encourage an active defence of systems as apposed to waiting out the hostile intruders as time is also the enemy.

P.S. Don't pick a pipe system to upgrade.

[Cupcake]

I just finished reading through the Dev blogs again and I have to say that the more I read through them the more discontent I have become with their proposed upgrades.

Regarding the system upgrades specifically....

The proposed changes allowing a system to be upgraded and thus increasing the amount of plex that spawn in turn de-values the dead space loot that drops from them.

There are more then a few of us that rely on plex'ing as a source of income to fund our pvp habits.

The more dead space loot available the less valuable it is...the less valuable the more time that will have to be spent running them to earn the same isk.

I know they have proposed changes to the build cost of ships via the reduction of high end ores, however this would have to be in direct relation to increase of deadspace items and also the reduction in there value for it to be worth while.

Atleast form a pvp players point of view.

Otherwise we will find ourselves spending more time running plexes to replace the same ships.

It's just my opinion...but I think the whole idea is crap...

[theTwilitehour]

It's just my opinion...but I think the whole idea is crap...

The patch will affect your income negatively so you're against? Wow what a convincing argument you make.

[Cupcake]

The patch will affect your income negatively so you're against? Wow what a convincing argument you make.

It is about income, but it's also about time and the time it takes to replace ships in order to do what we like in the game and that is pvp.

When I refered to the idea being crap I was directing it mainly towards the improving systems portion of the Dominon patch.

The sov part is good because it may lead to combat..... which I like.

Which arguement are you refering too? I was merely stating my opinion do with it what you wish.

[Faife]

Patch notes are up: http://www.eveonline.com/updates/patchnotes.asp

[RansomList]

* 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.

Great, as if macro ratting wasn't easy enough already.

Fleet members are no longer shown on the solar system map.

why the fuck not?

no longer CSPA charges to send to your corp (I think there were), can no longer send to NPC corp.

try playing the game

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.

The end of 'loot stealing' in FW and corps? You know, that one guy that takes the deadspace mod and pretends he hasn't? Fuck him.

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

.....CCP, did you think this through?

# The Phoenix has a new bonus: 5% bonus to kinetic missile damage per level of Caldari Dreadnought Skill.
# The Naglfar has a new bonus: 5% bonus to Missile Launcher rate of fire per level of Minmatar Dreadnought Skill. In exchange, the Naglfar has lost its bonus to projectile rate of fire.

Shit just got real...

[Faife]

Great, as if macro ratting wasn't easy enough already.

dunno if it'll help macro ratting, but it will help semi-afk ratting, like the type i do

[Murr]

and that's great

[duffbeeer]

It is about income, but it's also about time and the time it takes to replace ships in order to do what we like in the game and that is pvp.

When I refered to the idea being crap I was directing it mainly towards the improving systems portion of the Dominon patch.

The sov part is good because it may lead to combat..... which I like.

Which arguement are you refering too? I was merely stating my opinion do with it what you wish.

You realize that this income was only restricted to all small group, that is always online when server is starting up to rush the sigs? I count myself in there too but im really up for allowing more ppl in that system. Doesnt help a alliance much if theres only 3 -4 guys sitting on fat wallets and the rest of the standard pvper gets nothing.

[Kalnov]

The maximum size of a courier package is now 981,250 m3

FUCK YES