In a news blast posted by CCP Aurora today, details of some very welcome changes were released. These changes are coming fast with implementation planned for March 23rd and the features currently live on the Singularity server for testing. Among the changes: an update to jump clones, burst jammers, and even changes to wormhole mechanics.
JUMP CLONE CHANGES
First up on the list, a feature that the community has been requesting for ages–the ability to install more than one jump clone in a station or structure. This is something that people routinely get annoyed at since, in its current state, you are required to have additional structures in a staging system just for clones. This makes it increasingly difficult to stage for multiple activities out of the same place and makes it marginally easier for people to lock you down if they know that you’ll be moving about. Bringing about this change reveals that there could be potentially less issues with “POS code” as it was previously stated that changes like this could not happen without breaking something else. We’ll see if this gets implemented without a hitch or requires some poor GM to reimburse dozens of capsuleer implants on release day.
WORMHOLE SINGLE JUMP MASS LIMIT INCREASE
Next up, we’ve got some changes to the mass allowed to jump through Class 1 through Class 6 wormholes. Essentially, this change seeks to offer more ability for bigger ships to get into higher class wormholes and provide a quality of life change to rolling wormholes. On the changes a special note indicates to us that this does not change the total mass allowed to jump through a wormhole before it collapses but, rather, modifies the one-time transfer of a ship from K/W-space to another K/W-space via the wormhole connection. It also goes on to clarify that, though these increases are present, supercapitals will still be barred from entering wormholes (through other means) and that the increases are not enough to get capital ships into lower class wormholes (C4 and below).
This is a continuation of the previous “From Wormholes With Love” update and, if this iteration is any indicator, we could see even more wormhole changes coming soon.
BURST JAMMERS & COLLATERAL DAMAGE
The next, and likely most controversial, change is a change to the Burst Jammer module. Burst Jammers, according to the EVE University Wiki are short-range, high strength area of effect jammers that will attempt to jam all ships in range, breaking existing target locks of affected ships. This update has seen two versions of the changes to Burst Jammers with the latter being the one that will likely go into effect on March 23rd. Initially, the Burst Jammer’s fitting requirements were changed by increasing the power grid requirements to 70 MW in order to fit them. This would disable these jammers from being fit to nullified interceptors. However, upon further inspection, it seemed just some fancy reconfiguring of the fitting was enough to bring most interceptors back to their former state.
However, in a thread about the changes on reddit, CCP Aurora clarified that an older version of the post was posted and the change to the power grid requirements was not on the way. Instead, fitting a Burst Jammer onto any ship will disable interdiction nullification. This means while nullified interceptors can easily fit the modules, they cannot simply warp to a battlefield, burst jam, and warp out–a tactic that is used semi-successfully by multiboxers and various groups alike.
What makes this change feel worse than the initial announcement is that this also greatly disadvantages “chemoing”, a tactic where covert ops cloaked tech 3 cruisers (Lokis, Proteus, etc.) equipped with interdiction nullification subsystems, would warp in to a ball of ships (usually frigates or destroyers), activate smartbombs, and eradicate part or all of the fleet it warps to. During this process, they would activate burst jammers so they could not be tackled and then use their interdiction nullification to warp to safety. Removing the nullification means that there is a big chance that the offending ships can be tackled by interdiction probes and removing the Burst Jammer would mean the ships could be targetable by those leftover after a chemo run and likely tackled.
Parts of the community are split on the implications this will have and some are dejected that yet another mechanic of the sandbox is being potentially removed due to gameplay changes. Some changes could be made to update the smartbombing T3C fittings, allowing the tactic to remain viable, but we’ll leave that up to the experts to determine if this change is one that will be a deathblow to the playstyle or not. On a personal note, I find that creating more opportunities for ships to be blown up only increases my enjoyment of EVE Online the video game and this change definitely does that.
One final change announced on the horizon is one to the Target Spectrum Breaker. This module, only able to be fit to battleships, attempts to jam all ships that are targeting you with increasing strength depending on how many people are targeting you. According to the post, this module is getting reworked to reduce a ship’s signature radius for a short duration. More details are required to understand the exact specifications of what this will entail.
Whether the changes that are controversial to the community get implemented as they are remains to be seen and we will keep you updated on when and if they change. However, given that the poorly received Expert Systems are becoming available, the likelihood of additional iteration before they release is relatively low. To reiterate, these changes go live on March 23rd and are available for testing on the Singularity server now.
