Once again I have some bullet points about New Eden related topics on Friday.  The EVE Online login server was down earlier today (I had half a dozen updates in my email from the EVE Status alerts page) but things seem to be up and running, so off we go to the bullet points.

• The Expiration of the Null Sec South Eastern Agreement

A year back, with the collapse of the FI.RE coalition and their retreat clockwise through null sec, where many of the parties landed in the now defunct B2 coalition (though a few kept on going clockwise and passed into alliance with Fraternity and PanFam), there was a question as to what would become of the power vacuum left in the southeast of null sec.

That led to the South Eastern Agreement, in with the major null sec coalitions pledged not to attack, take space, or put allies into that area with the idea of letting new non-bloc aligned organizations get a footing in null sec.  The agreement was set to last for one year, a timeline that ran out last week.  Some details:

• • Reddit – The South Eastern Agreement Details
  • TAGN – Southeastern Null Sec Declared Open to Non-Bloc Alliances
  • Reddit – The Coming End of the Agreement
  • NEP – The South Eastern Agreement’s Final Days in Eve Online

The agreement was not renewed mostly because neither side in the current bi-polar bloc structure of null sec felt it was in their interest.  Pandemic Horde attacked, took space, and put allies into the are during the agreement, letting everybody know they could not be trusted, and the Imperium had no interest in protecting the space or being the enforcer, especially since PH seemed keen to provoke a war out of the situation so they could get their allies to assist.  So the agreement ended.

Did it do any good?  Maybe.  Some groups lived there in fairly relative peace.  Now, however, unless they are well out of the line of fire, they are likely going to have to pick sides or be ground down in the ongoing PH attacks on the Imperium down there.

• A Successful EVE Online Kickstarter

The War for New Eden Kickstarter campaign ended earlier this week as well, with the project successfully funded, bringing up the success/failure ratio for EVE Online related campaigns a bit.

EVE Strategy Board Game

The campaign closed out with a number considerably over their initial goal.

The final totals for the campaign

If you are just hearing about this and feel like you have missed out, you can still put in a post-campaign pledge at the War for New Eden web site.  Some links for those interested:

• • War for New Eden Kickstarter Campaign
  • War for New Eden web site
  • Kicktraq details for the campaign

Now, of course, the question is when are backers going to get this rather large board game with so many pieces and board segments?  The promise is by Christmas, but I will be surprised it that happens, even with 10 months to go.  We shall see.

And what were the other EVE Online Kickstarter campaigns?  There are a number of failed ones including the EVE Online Control Panel, a spiffy bit of hardware, and the badly mishandled Fountain War Book campaign.

And the successes?  Andrew Groen’s Empires of EVE Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.

• Havoc Patch Notes

CCP did a fairly big update that included the return of LP trading and a balance pass through a several ship classes.

Honestly, this felt like something that would have been a dev blog in the old days, but they just stuck it in the February patch notes and rolled on.

There are changes to command ships, marauders, entropic disintigrators, and rapid light missile launchers at the top of the list, along with a host of smaller items.  You will, for example, now be able to pre-heat modules while still cloaked and invulnerable after a gate jump, so you’ll be ready to rock when you break invuln and decloak.

You can find all the updates in the patch notes for February 20th here.

There is also a write up over at TNG about it.

• CSM 18 Winter Summit

I haven’t thought about the CSM since the last election, but they are still at work and went to Iceland for the winter summit.  CCP Swift posted the summit agenda back at the end of January, and we have been getting some updates and peeks into what happened over on Reddit, including the following posts:

• CSM 18 Summit Presentation – Industry Overview 2024
• CSM 18 Summit Presentation: Faction Warfare and Low Sec Iteration Non-NDA
• CSM Summit Updates (Dark Shines, INIT.)
• A little CSM update.
• Another CSM Update, Post Summit

Since the EVE Online news ecosystem has pretty much collapsed I am not sure how much else we’ll hear about the summit.  CCP has run hot and cold on minutes of the meetings over the years, so maybe we’ll get something, or maybe we won’t.

Anyway, it is Friday, the weekend is at hand, and it is going to be warm and sunny here in Silicon Valley, all the better to dry us out after the most recent atmospheric river pass.

Once again I have some bullet points about New Eden related topics on Friday.  The EVE Online login server was down earlier today (I had half a dozen updates in my email from the EVE Status alerts page) but things seem to be up and running, so off we go to the bullet points.

• The Expiration of the Null Sec South Eastern Agreement

A year back, with the collapse of the FI.RE coalition and their retreat clockwise through null sec, where many of the parties landed in the now defunct B2 coalition (though a few kept on going clockwise and passed into alliance with Fraternity and PanFam), there was a question as to what would become of the power vacuum left in the southeast of null sec.

That led to the South Eastern Agreement, in with the major null sec coalitions pledged not to attack, take space, or put allies into that area with the idea of letting new non-bloc aligned organizations get a footing in null sec.  The agreement was set to last for one year, a timeline that ran out last week.  Some details:

• • Reddit – The South Eastern Agreement Details
  • TAGN – Southeastern Null Sec Declared Open to Non-Bloc Alliances
  • Reddit – The Coming End of the Agreement
  • NEP – The South Eastern Agreement’s Final Days in Eve Online

The agreement was not renewed mostly because neither side in the current bi-polar bloc structure of null sec felt it was in their interest.  Pandemic Horde attacked, took space, and put allies into the are during the agreement, letting everybody know they could not be trusted, and the Imperium had no interest in protecting the space or being the enforcer, especially since PH seemed keen to provoke a war out of the situation so they could get their allies to assist.  So the agreement ended.

Did it do any good?  Maybe.  Some groups lived there in fairly relative peace.  Now, however, unless they are well out of the line of fire, they are likely going to have to pick sides or be ground down in the ongoing PH attacks on the Imperium down there.

• A Successful EVE Online Kickstarter

The War for New Eden Kickstarter campaign ended earlier this week as well, with the project successfully funded, bringing up the success/failure ratio for EVE Online related campaigns a bit.

EVE Strategy Board Game

The campaign closed out with a number considerably over their initial goal.

The final totals for the campaign

If you are just hearing about this and feel like you have missed out, you can still put in a post-campaign pledge at the War for New Eden web site.  Some links for those interested:

• • War for New Eden Kickstarter Campaign
  • War for New Eden web site
  • Kicktraq details for the campaign

Now, of course, the question is when are backers going to get this rather large board game with so many pieces and board segments?  The promise is by Christmas, but I will be surprised it that happens, even with 10 months to go.  We shall see.

And what were the other EVE Online Kickstarter campaigns?  There are a number of failed ones including the EVE Online Control Panel, a spiffy bit of hardware, and the badly mishandled Fountain War Book campaign.

And the successes?  Andrew Groen’s Empires of EVE Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.

• Havoc Patch Notes

CCP did a fairly big update that included the return of LP trading and a balance pass through a several ship classes.

Honestly, this felt like something that would have been a dev blog in the old days, but they just stuck it in the February patch notes and rolled on.

There are changes to command ships, marauders, entropic disintigrators, and rapid light missile launchers at the top of the list, along with a host of smaller items.  You will, for example, now be able to pre-heat modules while still cloaked and invulnerable after a gate jump, so you’ll be ready to rock when you break invuln and decloak.

You can find all the updates in the patch notes for February 20th here.

There is also a write up over at TNG about it.

• CSM 18 Winter Summit

I haven’t thought about the CSM since the last election, but they are still at work and went to Iceland for the winter summit.  CCP Swift posted the summit agenda back at the end of January, and we have been getting some updates and peeks into what happened over on Reddit, including the following posts:

• CSM 18 Summit Presentation – Industry Overview 2024
• CSM 18 Summit Presentation: Faction Warfare and Low Sec Iteration Non-NDA
• CSM Summit Updates (Dark Shines, INIT.)
• A little CSM update.
• Another CSM Update, Post Summit

Since the EVE Online news ecosystem has pretty much collapsed I am not sure how much else we’ll hear about the summit.  CCP has run hot and cold on minutes of the meetings over the years, so maybe we’ll get something, or maybe we won’t.

Anyway, it is Friday, the weekend is at hand, and it is going to be warm and sunny here in Silicon Valley, all the better to dry us out after the most recent atmospheric river pass.

We are coming into the Lunar New Year weekend, and CCP is embracing its sizable Chinese user base with some specials in the EVE Online store.

New Eden Lunar New Year

It is the Year of the Dragon and CCP has some dragon themed SKINs and apparel for players.

• New Launcher Mandatory Now

The new launcher became available and was made the default for anybody new showing up back in November because it was required to support the bolt-on addition of EVE Vanguard.  While CCP would remind you about this launcher, you didn’t have to use it.

Well, now CCP says you have to use it.

something, something, new launcher

I have been using the new launcher since November and… it is fine.  As I noted back then, you can configure the login process to behave like the current launcher and drop you into character select the way you are used to.  Or you can leave it at its default and do character select in the launcher.

The news item promises it will move all your credentials over, but it totally failed to do this for me on my laptop this week.  The recommended recourse is to just install from scratch and reconfigure.  That they include this in their instructions means they know they have a problem.

On the topic of problems, they also can’t seem to fix the fact that everytime they update the launcher it disappears from your pinned start menu options and you have to go re-pin it again.  New launcher problems.

• The Ongoing War for New Eden Kickstarter Campaign

The War for New Eden board game Kickstarter campaign carries on.  It is now past the half way point of its 28 day run.

EVE Strategy Board Game

The campaign broke out and almost tripled its goal on the first day and was closing in on 5x by the end of the second, but has since fallen into the usual mid-campaign low interest rut so common when a company doesn’t have a mid-campaign plan. (Or has a plan that is indistinguishable from having no plan at all.)  You can see the halftime slump in progress over at Kicktraq.

War for New Eden so far

The chart will likely end up with a spike in the last few days as people who were on the fence finally commit, but I always wonder if going a full four weeks is worth the effort, especially for a physical box item like this that they will likely be selling as a retail item eventually.  They will be selling this retail, right?

• January 2024 Monthly Economic Report and Minerals

The January MER dropped this week while I was travelling for work.  I will find some time this weekend to do something about destruction, but I always peek in on the economic side as well to check and see if… for example… CCP has managed to fix the isogen bottleneck that has kept the mineral price index up near its all time high.  And did they?

Jan 2024 – Economic indicies

No they have not managed to address the isogen shortage that they created.  Their rather paltry “blue star” strategy appears to have had little to no impact.

But that doesn’t mean CCP is punishing players pursuing a production path in New Eden, right?  Right?

• SCC Tax Increase

Over at TNG Noizy has a post up about the SCC industry surcharge increase that popped up in the patch notes at the start of the month.

The SCC surcharge component of the Industry Job Installation Fee has been increased from 1.5% to 4%.

Yes, that isn’t technically a “tax,” but only because they gave it a different name.  It has the same goal of any take, which is to take money out of the economy and… as any economist will tell you… dissuade people from participating in that activity.  Taxes are disinicentives, and CCP has bumped up this one.  Does that mean CCP wants fewer producers or that they do not understand economics?  I think the ongoing isogen issue might argue for the latter.

Anyway, happy Lunar New Year to those who celebrate!

We are coming into the Lunar New Year weekend, and CCP is embracing its sizable Chinese user base with some specials in the EVE Online store.

New Eden Lunar New Year

It is the Year of the Dragon and CCP has some dragon themed SKINs and apparel for players.

• New Launcher Mandatory Now

The new launcher became available and was made the default for anybody new showing up back in November because it was required to support the bolt-on addition of EVE Vanguard.  While CCP would remind you about this launcher, you didn’t have to use it.

Well, now CCP says you have to use it.

something, something, new launcher

I have been using the new launcher since November and… it is fine.  As I noted back then, you can configure the login process to behave like the current launcher and drop you into character select the way you are used to.  Or you can leave it at its default and do character select in the launcher.

The news item promises it will move all your credentials over, but it totally failed to do this for me on my laptop this week.  The recommended recourse is to just install from scratch and reconfigure.  That they include this in their instructions means they know they have a problem.

On the topic of problems, they also can’t seem to fix the fact that everytime they update the launcher it disappears from your pinned start menu options and you have to go re-pin it again.  New launcher problems.

• The Ongoing War for New Eden Kickstarter Campaign

The War for New Eden board game Kickstarter campaign carries on.  It is now past the half way point of its 28 day run.

EVE Strategy Board Game

The campaign broke out and almost tripled its goal on the first day and was closing in on 5x by the end of the second, but has since fallen into the usual mid-campaign low interest rut so common when a company doesn’t have a mid-campaign plan. (Or has a plan that is indistinguishable from having no plan at all.)  You can see the halftime slump in progress over at Kicktraq.

War for New Eden so far

The chart will likely end up with a spike in the last few days as people who were on the fence finally commit, but I always wonder if going a full four weeks is worth the effort, especially for a physical box item like this that they will likely be selling as a retail item eventually.  They will be selling this retail, right?

• January 2024 Monthly Economic Report and Minerals

The January MER dropped this week while I was travelling for work.  I will find some time this weekend to do something about destruction, but I always peek in on the economic side as well to check and see if… for example… CCP has managed to fix the isogen bottleneck that has kept the mineral price index up near its all time high.  And did they?

Jan 2024 – Economic indicies

No they have not managed to address the isogen shortage that they created.  Their rather paltry “blue star” strategy appears to have had little to no impact.

But that doesn’t mean CCP is punishing players pursuing a production path in New Eden, right?  Right?

• SCC Tax Increase

Over at TNG Noizy has a post up about the SCC industry surcharge increase that popped up in the patch notes at the start of the month.

The SCC surcharge component of the Industry Job Installation Fee has been increased from 1.5% to 4%.

Yes, that isn’t technically a “tax,” but only because they gave it a different name.  It has the same goal of any take, which is to take money out of the economy and… as any economist will tell you… dissuade people from participating in that activity.  Taxes are disinicentives, and CCP has bumped up this one.  Does that mean CCP wants fewer producers or that they do not understand economics?  I think the ongoing isogen issue might argue for the latter.

Anyway, happy Lunar New Year to those who celebrate!