Today, CCP unveiled the latest trailer for EVE Online, this time for the first Quadrant of 2021 titled “Reign”. From the voiceover on the trailer and the news article by CCP Dopamine, this quadrant will be all about strategy. If you recall, the last major mechanic update was in November, with the release of the Tactical Capsuleer Recloner.
The trailer above gives us a rather interesting view of travel in EVE Online. There’s very clearly some fleet warps happening here but we see no clumped up balls of spaceships. This is what actually happens when fleet warping in EVE Online. Instead, we see ships warping in various formations, namely a flying V formation. Maybe we’ll get some new fleet warp formations! Or maybe this is just to show off some of the new jump tunnel animations that have been fixed and re-released after a failed attempt nearly a year ago.
Another updated tool for this patch is the Fleet Finder. Fleet Discovery has been added to the game which acts as a group finder for people to find and register fleets for different activities, like Abyssal Deadspace, Exploration, strongholds, anomalies, and more. This tool should make it easier for newer players to understand how to join fleets and even comes with an indicator for whether or not the fleet is new player friendly.
Further changes can be seen to the home station mechanic with the cost of setting one being removed. We also see that a bug has officially become a feature as being able to set your home station to someplace without a clone bay service is now something that is possible. There are also a few graphical changes and an updated “Home Station” tab that gives you more details about your home station.
There are quite a few defect and graphic fixes in the full patch notes but the most important change in this patch is to “Planetary Production”. Originally called “Planetary Interaction”, this was changed to “Planetary Production” and prompted many a PP joke. Now, they’ve changed all references to either name to “Planetary Industry”. Thanks, CCP, for keeping us from being needlessly childish.
Quadrants throughout 2020 provided a wealth of mechanical changes and new content to EVE Online and we are quite excited to see what this new set of quadrants brings for 2021. And, as always, we’ll keep you updated as they develop.
