2022-04-02
Dear Capsuleers, as you all know, there will be a balancing patch for EVE Echoes in April. We know that many Capsuleers are very concerned about the balance adjustment, and have given us many valuable suggestions. Thus, we made this balance adjustment after taking the feedback, real game data, and development plan into consideration.
This balance update covers many aspects of the game, including the yield and distribution of resources, Encounters, ships, weapons, and modules. We'll talk about what we plan to modify and why we do so respectively.
The contents include:
Yield adjustments on Angels/Guristas, etc.
Interdictor, weapon and ship stats adjustments
Shield resistance and armor resistance issues, Shield Field nerfing
Temporary enhancement module issues, including Heat Sinks
Ore compression, missile damage, and flight velocity issues
Anti-drone pulse bomb, restrictions on the number of Encounters and Combat Commendation
We also plan to open the test server on April 9 and invite all Capsuleers to experience the new adjustments. We are looking forward to your suggestions and feedback. We will listen to every Capsuleer and continuously improve the game design to bring you a better gaming experience.
(Please check the community announcement to find out how to join the test server.)
We understand many of the problems reported by Capsuleers. This time we will explain why we make these balance adjustments with these common Capsuleers appeals as the titles.
There are of course similar sayings such as: "Guristas is poorer than Angels! "
We noticed that the blueprint industry in the Angel Cartel region is not as developed as that in other regions. Although the bounty in this region is relatively higher, the profits in the Angel Cartel and Guristas regions are still low because it takes longer to eliminate the pirates.
We tried to balance the types of maps and the value of goods, but these traditional ways did little to us nearing the goal. So we finally decided to take a new approach
— Make fine adjustments to the Factions according to their features while maintaining the balance among them.
After the adjustment, all Factions will have more specific yields and become more different from each other while still being guaranteed similar average values.
For example, the Angels will have a velocity advantage, while Guristas will focus on durability and stability. Let's take missiles as an example: Angel missiles emphasize on flight velocity and explosion velocity, while Guristas missiles emphasize flight time and explosion radius. Of course, both factions still pursue higher damage. In terms of navigation, Angel ships are faster and have better inertia at the cost of low warp stability, while Guristas ships may have better cargo capacity and warp stability.
Inquisitor anomalies and relic sites have similar characteristics, and the types of blueprint for each region will be adjusted in this patch. In addition, we have removed the Decomposer blueprint from the Serpentis region, and there will be new ways to obtain the blueprints, modules, and ships of Decomposers.
The main adjustments are as follows (blueprint types):
Missiles (damage, activation time, flight time, explosion radius)
Drones (now only Guristas Pirates can use drones)
Railgun (Korako 'Rabbit' Kosakami is really resourceful. Although he doesn't use railguns, he does have the technology.)
Shield (shield hitpoints, shield resistance)
Navigation (cargo hold capacity, warp stability)
Engineering (powergrid, lock speed)
Missiles (damage, activation time, flight velocity, explosion velocity)
Cannon (all 4 types)
Shield (3 types of shield recharge)
Armor (3 types of armor repairing)
Navigation (flight velocity, warp velocity, inertia modifier, Particle Anchor, thruster power consumption)
Engineering (battery, lock speed, scanning strength)
Laser (all 5 types)
Armor (all 8 types)
Navigation (warp stability)
Engineering (battery, powergrid, lock speed, anti-scanning)
Mining (all 4 types)
Laser (all 5 types)
Shield (all 8 types)
Navigation (flight velocity, thruster power consumption)
Engineering (capacitor recharge, powergrid, anti-scanning)
Mining (all 4 types)
Railgun (all 5 types)
Armor (armor hitpoints, armor resistance)
Structure (all 5 types)
Navigation (inertia modifier, cargo hold capacity, warp velocity)
Engineering (battery, capacitor recharge, powergrid, scanning)
The rig integrated module materials used for combat and engineering vary greatly in value. In order to balance the value of the data sites of different factions, it is now possible to obtain both combat and engineering integrated materials at all data sites.
Capital ships are different from regular ships. We will make adjustments based on the weapon systems specialized by each faction and the weapon systems of fighters in capital cosmic anomalies.
After the adjustment, Guristas and Blood Raiders will have engineering rigs, and the other 3 factions will have navigation rigs (excluding weapons, shields, and armor).
Now Interceptor Frigates can be seen as a combination of Assault Frigates and Interceptor Frigates, with strong interception and counter-interception capabilities as well as high firepower. In this patch, the damage and flight velocity of Interceptor Frigates will decrease, so their assault abilities will be reduced. Assault Destroyers are still the strongest nemeses of Interceptor Frigates.
In addition, we have improved the firepower of Interdiction Destroyers and Heavy Interdiction Cruisers to improve their abilities against smaller ships. Of course, their firepower still cannot match the firepower of ships of the same tonnage.
As their firepower increases, we also found the Interdiction Destroyers to be too strong in intercepting, so we have restricted the continuous intercepting ability of the Interdiction Sphere. In addition, we have reduced the flight velocity slightly of the two ranged Interdictors — the high-speed Interdiction Sphere and warp disruption field are indeed terrifying.
In the meantime, we extended the scramble range on both Interdiction Sphere Launchers and Warp Disruption Field Generators, making them easier to operate.
It has been commonly-seen that both sides use Shield Field for long-range bombardment in siege battles. Although the Shield Field can be countered by drones and assault, it's still a very formidable system as it can absorb all the damage outside of its range. The Shield Field has generated too much ineffective long-range bombardment, making combat boring and slowing its pace.
Therefore, the Shield Field has been called a bug in the game by some players.
For example, one single Nightmare ship fitted with a large number of advanced resistance modules can withstand the firepower of dozens of Battleships with only a little logistic support, and even several Dreadnoughts can hardly break its defense. This is really too powerful, so we have weakened the resistance of the Shield Field and increased its duration and CD.
Also, in order to emphasize the features of positional warfare and reduce fleet losses due to disconnection, warping will be disabled when the Shield Field and Armor Link are activated, and the speed of guarding ships will be reduced when the Shield Field is activated. That is why the activation timing will be more important and the two tactics will be more different from each other.
In addition, we have made slight adjustments to some logistic ships to make them more distinctive and slightly increased the support capability of all Logistics Cruisers. CONCORD is also exploring new combats in order to improve the performance of Cruisers and smaller ships in certain situations.
Encounters, especially Encounters in high-sec regions, are an easy PVE mode prepared for the Capsuleers who don't like PVP. The profits of different regions are designed to be:
High-Sec < Low-Sec < Nullsec
At present, the profits of Encounters in high-sec regions are not significantly lower than those of low-sec regions due to the refresh mechanism. And due to player gathering, PVP influence, and excessive firepower, there are sometimes not enough Pirates in the nullsecs, and the profits there are not as good as the profits in high-sec and low-sec regions.
In addition, the comfort of Encounters has led to almost all the violators gathering here, which is unfair to the Capsuleers and is the most urgent problem that must be solved. It will have negative influences on the economy of New Eden before the violators are banned, so prevention measures will be more important.
Without affecting Capsuleer habits as much as possible, this adjustment is made based on the statistics and taking into consideration the health of Capsuleers.
We have obtained the following Encounter Completion Data after recording the Encounters completed daily by all Capsuleers:
Capsuleers who completed more than 61 Encounters daily: using violation script rate >99%. After deducting the violators, the ratio is 0.047%
Capsuleers who completed 51 to 60 Encounters daily: using violation script rate >99%. After deducting the violators, the ratio is 0.31%
Capsuleers who completed 41 to 50 Encounters daily: using violation script rate >99%. After deducting the violators, the ratio is 0.46%
A player needs to complete about 25 Encounters to complete the CONCORD Pass Missions of one week.
Setting Corporation tax rate to 100% is also one of the popular means for violators. Corporation tax rate data (long-term):
About 90% Corporations: tax rate <=10%
About 7% Corporations: 10%< tax rate <=20%
About 2% Corporations: tax rate >20%
The Corporations with long-term tax rate >=90%: 99% violation rate
Alpha Clone
If daily Encounters accepted >=40, you can no longer accept Encounters.
Omega Clone
If daily Encounters accepted >=50, you can no longer accept Encounters.
A Machariel Battleship is expected to complete 50 encounters within about 5 and a half hours if fitted with top modules and in good luck. However, it typically takes 10 hours or even longer. Gaming for too long is not healthy for Capsuleers and can be very tedious, which is why the restrictions are added.
This solution would also limit the benefits of violators and increase their account costs, thereby reducing their impact on the New Eden economy. But it will indeed affect about 0.817% earnings of Capsuleers. For this reason, the CONCORD has specially set up a "Combat Commendation" as a benefit to all Capsuleers to ensure that their earnings are not reduced.
Capsuleers can apply for an additional reward to the CONCORD for each bounty gained from repelling Pirates in the last week (open the Wallet page > Filter > Bounty Rewards). CONCORD will grant ISK equal to 100% of the Bounty as an additional reward to encourage Capsuleers to continue fighting Pirates and defending the peace of New Eden.
Each bounty can only be claimed once, and it would be better for Capsuleers to destroy pirates as quickly as possible to get better results and claim extra bounties. Also, there is a max limit for each bounty - 200 million for now.
The higher the Tech Level, the more times you can apply for Combat Commendation every week.
Unused application opportunities can be stored for 4 weeks for future use. Please check detailed rules in the in-game wallet interface.
Corporations created in less than 30 days can no longer set their tax rate at 100%. They can only set their tax rate at 20%.
We have removed the bounty penalty coefficient in nullsec regions. After the adjustment, you can get 100% of the bounty for repelling Pirates, compared to 95% before the adjustment.
We received a lot of complaints from Capsuleers about ships being "too weak" or something like that. Statistical analysis over a long term has revealed that several ships have yet to achieve our design goals.
We have made minor adjustments to some of these ships, such as changing the damage boost from +5% to +6%. You can read more about these small changes in the patch note of this update. Aside from minor adjustments, the following vital updates have been made.
As a result of the statistics and considering the original design purpose, we made the following adjustments to weapons to align their features with their intended purpose. The adjustments are mainly for large and x-large weapons. As a result of the statistics and considering the original design purpose, we made the following adjustments to weapons to align their features with their intended purpose.
In past updates, we have adjusted shields and armor more than once to bring them in line with our expectations.
— The Shield resistance is good while the upper limit is not high, and the high consumption is exchanged for fast recovery.
— The Armor resistance is low while the upper limit is high, and the high capacitor repair conversion rate is exchanged for lasting combat capability.
After this adjustment, shields and armor will be more in line with this feature.
Currently, the strength of adaptive resistance modules is too high but the growth is not obvious — As the Metalevel increases, the effect of shield and armor resistance on survivability is attenuated strongly, and the resistance benefits of shield and armor of different Metalevels vary greatly.
We adjusted the resistance growth curve. After adjustment, resistances no longer have a significant reduction in survivability gains, and the resistance gain coefficient for shield armor of all Metalevels will remain exactly the same.
For example, the resistance of the Deadspace series modules (blue) will remain the same or increase slightly, but the defense effect will decrease when the Metalevel is lower.
At present, small and medium Armor Repairers outperform Shield Boosters in terms of both time efficiency and capacitor efficiency. This goes against the original design intention and requires adjustment.
Enhanced the effect of small and medium Shield Boosters to match their respective characteristics.
The design concept of low slot modules is normally to strengthen itself, and can be actively activated in exchange for stronger effects when needed (similar to overheating in EO). However, due to the bonus of skills and the strong bonus range of active effects, the active opening of low slot modules has become a common method, which goes against our design concept and also increases the burden of Capsuleers' operation.
For the sake of the Capsuleers and in line with the design concept, we have made the following adjustments: Enhanced passive effect, weakened active effect, and increased cooldown time.
Enhanced passive damage bonus, removed additional damage bonus on active activation.
Enhanced passive cooldown bonus, reduced additional cooldown bonus on active activation.
Increased cooldown time (restart time).
In addition, we added passive effects to the Drone DPS enhanced modules.
Temporary shields, temporary armor and temporary capacitors are now too powerful as a temporary emergency option, and they completely surpass self-repairing modules as far as duration is concerned.
Moreover, the additional effects are added according to the proportion, and the effects brought about by ships of different tonnage and different characteristics are quite different, so the following adjustments have been made:
Enhanced passive Armor Hitpoint/Shield Hitpoint bonus
Enhanced the fixed value of Armor Hitpoint/Shield Hitpoint bonus for active activation and removed the percentage bonus, reducing the overall effect of active activation.
Increased cooldown time (Activation Time).
This is what many Capsuleers have said speaking of Ore Compression — "you know what I mean".
The original intention behind Ore Compression is to make it easy for Capsuleers to relocate and facilitate logistics in nullsec. But we don't want this to affect markets in high-sec and low-sec too much, so a high compression cost is required.
Now, as the demand for minerals increases, and as the market convenience has not yet been significantly improved, we decided to increase the effectiveness of the ore compression skill, thereby reducing the cost of ore compression.
We have received a lot of feedback about the gap between missile's actual damage and what is described in its TIPS. This happens to some other weapons as well . Simply put, this is not a bug. It was caused by an imbalance between offense and defense resulting from the non-availability of some weapon skills.
Due to the Flight Velocity bonus now being relatively attainable and high, you can easily rush into your enemies when activating a Warpdrive. In the meantime, since advanced skills are still not available, attributes countering Flight Velocity like Turret Tracking Speed and Missile Explosion Velocity cannot be improved. All of this has led to a lower calculation of damage. In other words, a mismatch between the actual damage and that in the TIPS, and the larger the weapon model, the more noticeable it is.
There is no plan to release skills for Tracking Speed and Explosion Velocity. At the same time, in order to reduce the high operating difficulty caused by the ship's high speed, we reduced the flight velocity bonus effect of all ship operation skills.
Drones are a convenient weapon system. However, due to network and performance optimization issues, if both sides of a siege battle are carrying thousands of drones, it does make it easier for the network to crash.
In addition, due to the low cost of medium and small Drones, and the issue of being targeted and attacked by large ships, it is a very tactful way to use a large number of small and medium Drones to conduct hit-and-run operations against the enemy, which is tricky. As a result, the CONCORD led the development and authorized the launch of a large anti-drone pulse bomb module.
This is a large-scale module, specially designed for the shield system of drones and fighters, which requires higher energy. It is fitted in the High Slot while large pulse bombs are usually fitted on battleships. When enabled, it can damage all drones and fighters within a certain range of the ship.
For small-scale PVP or PVE, there is no need to specifically carry anti-drone pulse bombs. For large-scale battles, several professional anti-drone ships will become the new stars on the battlefield. If you still want to use drone tactics, how you protect yourself and destroy enemy anti-drone ships will become an important tactic.
We are in the process of further improving the performance of large battles in several ways, and will gradually update it in the future. At present, with the use of anti-drone bombs, a huge number of drones could be tackled to a certain extent, and the fluency of the battle will be improved.
Lazarus Unit Giveaway
Considering that Capsuleers may have Lazarus Unit needs after the balance adjustment, we will provide you with Lazarus Unit gifts.
During the event, when the Tech Level reaches 5, you can receive the Lazarus Unit. For higher Tech Levels, each level will unlock a separate reward that can be claimed. The exact amount is subject to the official event notice.
Corporation Management Updates
When the Corporation leader is offline for more than 21 days, Corporation members can initiate a vote to change the CEO. Voting lasts for 48 hours. The vote is a registered ballot and the results will be made public. When the voting is over, the Capsuleer with the highest number of votes will become the new CEO.
Only Corporation members who have joined the Corporation and logged into the game within 3 days before the voting starts will be eligible to vote and can be voted for.
The above is all the content for this balance update. Also in May, we will be kicking off our industry month with some brand-new industry ships and industry balance updates. We are well aware that Capsuleers have a lot of feedback and appeals but, due to limited resources and priorities, we will make the above adjustments this time. Thank you for your understanding! We will continue to collect your feedback and make changes to provide better gaming experience for all Capsuleers. Check out more discussions by following the community:
Discord: https://discord.gg/CkcSbwsUzm
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EVEEchoes
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EveEchoes
And leave your valuable feedback here: https://forms.gle/yMnRWwzczK299UXZ6
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