October 10

EVE ONLINE: ASCENSION and Engineering Complexes

The headline feature of EVE Online: Ascension, Clone States, will bring brand new cloning technology to New Eden, including the Omega clone which will be familiar to all our current subscribers, alongside the new Alpha clone, which pilots will be able to utilize to gain free access to EVE Online using a pre-determined skillset, giving access to a whole host of playstyles and in game content without the need for a subscription.

In addition to this, the first phase of a completely re-worked new player experience will offer new pilots more assistance and guidance than ever before as they take their first steps into the vast expanse of New Eden.



Today we’re glad to share with you another update on what the EVE Online team is working on in the run up to EVE Online: Ascension.

This November the Upwell Consortium will be introducing a new set of Standup-brand service modules that will expand comprehensive research and manufacturing support to the entire line of Upwell structures. These service modules will be fully compatible with existing Citadel structures, and Upwell will simultaneously be releasing a new set of Engineering Complex structures which are bonused for optimal performance with these service modules.



Initially codenamed Industrial Arrays, Upwell’s new line of Engineering Complexes are the second stage in the overhaul of the structures system in EVE Online. Arriving in the same size classes as Citadels (medium, large and extra-large), these new platforms are similar in function to the already familiar (and widely used) citadels. While Citadels focus on peak defensive capability, Engineering Complexes are more specialized towards research and manufacturing.



With the arrival of Ascension, a selection of new Standup service modules will be made available to expand the functionality of Upwell structure and allow player organizations to tailor their structure to their needs more closely. These new Engineering Service Modules will be available for any type of Upwell structure (currently Citadels and Engineering Complexes) unless specifically noted:

• Standup Manufacturing Plant I – allows manufacturing of items and ships. This does not include capital and supercapital class ships which have their own dedicated service modules
• Standup Capital Shipyard I – allows manufacturing of capital ships and can only be installed in large and XL citadels and Engineering Complexes in lowsec, nullsec and wormhole space
• Standup Supercapital Shipyard I - allows manufacturing supercapital ships and is exclusive for the Sotiyo XL Engineering Complex. This service module also requires capsuleer alliance sovereignty and the “Supercapital Construction Facilities” Infrastructure Hub upgrade
• Standup Research Lab I – allows research and copying of blueprints
• Standup Invention Lab I – allows invention of Tech 2 and Tech 3 blueprints

We have full details of current draft of fittings and fuel usage for these service modules at the end of the blog.

These new Engineering Service Modules are fully functional out of the box, but to get the best performance from them you will want to combine them with Engineering Rigs for your structures. These new rigs are available for all Upwell structures and provide significant bonuses to specific forms of industrial activity, allowing corporations to customize their structures to meet their specific needs.



Like existing Upwell structure rigs, Engineering Rigs provide the same strength of bonuses at each size category. The primary benefit of upgrading to larger rigs (on larger structures) is that larger rigs are more generalized in their bonuses and smaller rigs are more specialized. This allows larger structures to gain bonuses to more types of industrial activity than their smaller brethren.

For example, a corporation can potentially rig their Medium Raitaru Engineering Complex to receive the maximum possible Material Efficiency (ME) bonuses for constructing small and medium T1 ships, and significant cost reduction to invention jobs by filling its three available rig slots with:

• Standup M-Set Basic Small Ship Manufacturing Material Efficiency II
• Standup M-Set Basic Medium Ship Manufacturing Material Efficiency II
• Standup M-Set Invention Cost Optimization I

If that corporation upgraded to a X-Large Sotiyo Engineering Complex they would be able to get the exact same ME bonuses to production of small and medium T1 ships, while also receiving rig bonuses to a larger variety of industry jobs by installing:

• Standup XL-Set Ship Manufacturing Efficiency II
• Standup XL-Set Laboratory Optimization I
• Standup XL-Set Reprocessing Monitor II

This rig setup provides the maximum ME and Time Efficiency (TE) bonuses to all ship manufacturing, as well as improving cost and duration for all research, copying and invention jobs and enabling maximum reprocessing yield all in the same giant structure.

Thanks to the greater generalization of larger rigs, there will be a total of 64 available M-Set Engineering Rigs, 32 L-Set Engineering rigs, and 8 XL-Set rigs to choose from (including both T1 and T2 variations).

If you’re itching to see all the granular details, we have a chart with the current draft of stats for all of these Engineering Rigs at the end of the blog.



Another area of similarity between the new Engineering Rigs and the existing Citadel Rigs is that the bonuses provided by these rigs changes depending on what type of space their structure is anchored within.

Each Engineering Rig has three sets of bonuses:

• One base value for highsec space
• One for lowsec space that has a 50% higher bonus than the base value
•  One for nullsec and wormhole space that has a 67% higher bonus than the base value

All three Engineering Complex structures receive a 25% bonus to the strength of all Engineering Rigs, just like bonus citadels receive for the structure combat rigs.

To find out more, please head over to the dev blog

October 10

October 118.9 Release To Be Deployed on October 11

We're happy to announce that the 118.9 release for October will be deployed tomorrow, Tuesday October 11th, during a regular daily downtime from 11:00 to 11:15 UTC.

The 118.9 release brings an exciting overhaul of the graphic post-processing system improving the performance on all GPUs. We also get revamped market graphs and a variety of bug fixes. Additionally, blueprints for Command Burst charges will be available, allowing you to build the charges in anticipation of November's fleet boost revamp.

Check out EVE Updates for further information, and take a look at the patch notesfor more in depth details on what's coming tomorrow!