All hell is about to break loose in EVE Online for the territorial alliances waging wars in the depths of space following some the craziest weeks in the game’s long history. A series of events that kicked off late last month with NPC fleets attacking player-built structures throughout nullsec is about to escalate into all-out anarchy. The game’s creator CCP Games is about to perform a major shakeup of how safe the nullsec regions are by triggering a blackout of the local chat channels – starting tomorrow.
One of the core concepts in EVE from the moment of its creation was the idea that more lucrative areas of space to live in should be more dangerous, but today players have tamed the wilderness of null-security space and made it effectively safe. The local chat channel currently provides an instant list of every single player in a star system, allowing organised alliances to keep track of enemy and neutral ships in their space. When the blackout begins tomorrow at 11 a.m. GMT (7 a.m. EDT), this perfect intel-gathering tool will no longer function in alliance-held territories across nullsec, throwing them into chaos.
But what does that mean and how will it affect the game? In this edition of EVE Evolved, I look at recent developments in nullsec, what the impact of the blackout may be, and how you can prepare for it.
Breaking the blue donut
One of the big problems experienced throughout EVE‘s lifetime is that often major alliances will simply make deals to leave each other alone so they can farm their territories in peace. At several points in EVE‘s history, the game has been in a state of effective cold war in which all the alliances are trying to build up resources and all major players in nullsec have agreed not to capture each other’s territory — creating something players call “The Blue Donut.”
Last month CCP added a wrinkle to the nullsec defense equation when they activated NPC Drifter fleets throughout nullsec and let them run rampant. The fleets will hunt down and kill players in a system and will even attack structures left unguarded, creating some extra opportunities for rival alliances to move in and attack strategic structures. This caused some of the largest nullsec alliances to rage at being forced into “non-consensual PvE” in order to defend their space and even pull back ships from wars further afield.
The difference between player and NPC attacks is that you can’t sign a non-aggression pact with NPCs to get them to leave you alone; the Drifters can’t be bribed or manipulated, and they won’t join any blue donut that forms or political coalition. CCP has been experimenting with Drifter behaviour to help shake things up in nullsec, and it’s clear that they’ve caused some real chaos already. The local channel blackout seems to be the next big step in CCP’s plan to give the sandbox a bloody good shake and see what happens.
Why is nullsec so damn safe?
When EVE was first created, there were three types of space players could inhabit: Relatively safe high-security systems patrolled by CONCORD police; pirate-infested low-security systems with no police and minor consequences for attacking players; and the lawless nullsec regions with no penalty for aggression. The idea was that players who exposed themselves to higher levels of danger would reap higher rewards, but this was only true for the briefest few years at the start of EVE‘s life.
Once players could colonise nullsec and it became feasible to live there long-term, they set about making it the safest place in the game to grind and farm resources. Today’s alliances have not only non-aggression pacts with major neighbours but also dedicated intel channels and even their own custom applications to monitor neutral and enemy ships in their space. If you lead a small stealth fleet into the space owned by a large alliance to hunt miners or NPC farmers, you can now expect your targets to flee before you arrive or an overwhelming military response to get dropped on you.
The addition of the Drifter threat has made nullsec more dangerous for those living there, with the attacks most recently targeting those in combat anomalies in addition to hitting structures. While many of those killed in these attacks have been flying ships typically used for AFK farming such as the Gila and Vexor Navy Issue, the Drifters can strike without warning and use overwhelming force that could definitely feel unfair. If you want to get up to date on this issue, check out Jin’taan’s fantastic video on the topic below:
Nerfing local is a huge deal!
The local chat channel is the cornerstone of most intel systems in EVE, providing a perfect list of everyone in a particular star system at all times.
Miners and farmers will watch the local channel and immediately warp to safety as soon as someone they don’t know appears in it, so you won’t catch someone unless they’re seriously asleep at the wheel. Botters can also use this same system to farm in absolute safety, as there’s no way to get in range of a botter to warp scramble them before they warp out even if you know exactly where they are in system.
This is in stark contrast to wormhole space, which operates on a “delayed mode” system in which people only show up in local chat if they chat in it. Wormhole space is a legitimately dangerous place to live in, and those living there have learned to cope with it using a variety of tools and strategies that ultimately require people to play it safe and in defensible groups. When the blackout hits nullsec, it too will be operating on this delayed mode system and will become an incredibly dangerous place to live.
Surviving the blackout
While some nullsec citizens and even alliance leaders have been denouncing the blackout as an end to their way of life and loudly threatening to cancel their accounts over it, the tools do exist in EVE to stay safe without local perfect channel intel. Wormhole corporations have had to live in this kind of environment for years, and use a variety of tools and techniques to stay safe, many of which will prove just as useful in nullsec during the blackout:
- Directional Scanner: The directional scanner is absolutely the most important PvP tool in all of EVE Online, allowing you to scan for any ships and other objects within 14.3AU. This can be filtered using any of your overview categories, so create a filter just for things you need warning about (ships, scan probes, structures etc) and keep the scanner open on your screen at all times. Press ‘V’ every few seconds to keep it updated and you’ll have plenty of warning of most incoming ships. Combat Recon cruisers and cloaked ships don’t appear on the directional scanner, however, so don’t rely on it as your sole form of intel.
- Use Scouts: In the absence of instant intel about enemy and neutral movements in nullsec, it’s more important than ever to have scouts actively out in the field. I predict that many pilots will simply deploy cloaked alts on key stargates and keep note of everything that comes through, and that they will keep a close watch on any wormholes spawning in a system.
- Stay Aligned: By aligning your ship to a safe spot such as a friendly Upwell structure and moving at 75% of maximum speed or more, you can instantly enter warp by clicking the warp button. Since EVE‘s grids were expanded in radius to thousands of kilometres a few years ago, you can now see incoming ships on your overview a few seconds before they can target you and should always have enough time to warp out if you’re aligned and paying attention (assuming they don’t manage to set up a bump). Miners might want to consider looking into the Higgs Anchor rig to make it easier to stay aligned while staying in range of asteroids
- Warp Bubbles: Anchorable warp disruption bubbles can be used to effectively lock down a stargate and slow down the speed that enemies (cloaked or otherwise) can travel through the gate. They can also be placed in asteroid fields and structures to catch people warping from certain common vectors like stargates, while local players can set up bookmarks to get around them. Keep in mind though that certain tech 3 cruiser configurations and interceptors are immune to bubbles, but these will show up on the directional scanner if not cloaked.
- Defense Fleets: Roaming gangs and cloaked ships looking for fights will be everywhere this weekend during the blackout, and that presents an opportunity for some fun fights. If you’re in a big bad nullsec alliance, get a couple of friends together and bait out some kills. The blackout works in your favour too as you can have friends waiting cloaked and ready to strike or light a cyno to call in reinforcements.
For most of EVE Online‘s lifetime, player-owned nullsec space has been functionally safer to live in than anywhere else in the game as long as you’re in the right alliance. EVE‘s upcoming local channel blackout will give nullsec a taste of the danger and PvP opportunity that delayed local has provided in wormhole space for years, but there are still a lot of unknowns about how players will react.
The blackout is due to go live tomorrow at 11AM GMT to coincide with the daily downtime, and we don’t yet know how long it will last. Alliances have had just 48 hours to prepare for the chaos that is sure to ensue, and it remains to be seen which alliances will be able to successfully adapt to the new dynamics and come out on top. New strategies are sure to emerge, new opportunities for PvP will present themselves, and some epic stories will undoubtedly play out as people get to grips with this monumental change to EVE Online.
EVE Online expert Brendan ‘Nyphur’ Drain has been playing EVE for over a decade and writing the regular EVE Evolved column since 2008. The column covers everything from in-depth EVE guides and news breakdowns to game design discussions and opinion pieces. If there’s a topic you’d love to see covered, drop him a comment or send mail to brendan@massivelyop.com!
Null-sec has been a bastardized version of what it was meant to be for a long time. So much so, that the economy eve has always so proud of has been all but destroyed.
You can’t let thousands of players(and thousands of bots) farm the most lucrative areas of the game unopposed for years without seriously screwing things up, but that was exactly what CCP did.
I’m glad to see their finally willing to make some big changes to shake up the nullbears, but it’s too little to late imo. The game has been spiraling downward for a while.
Yes, the player numbers are still decent(not great, but Ok for a 16 year old game) but CCP has been milking their golden goose too long while starting, then scrapping, new project after new project and the well is about to run dry.
Shame too, CCP should have been a major player in the industry with all the money they made during Eve’s golden years but they pissed it all away.
From the above MOP article:
LMAO! What happened to all the “Harden the F**k up…” cries from the PvPers in EVE anytime some PvEer from Highsec took a dip into Nulsec?
Really, the hardcore PvPers find EVE PvE too hard? (Again…LMAO!)
This is magnificent and a great move by CCP that goes a tiny way further to implementing what I think was their vision.
I’ve always felt the game had these brilliant ideas that were then undercut by technical inconsistencies that drained away the greatness.
For example, “raw heartless pvp across empty reaches of space” … except anyone can find immediate and perfect safety in a station.
Cutthroat politics, subterfuge, and dirty tricks are all completely allowed…except everyone’s credits are completely safe and immune to theft.
A core of vast, powerful states whose power dwarfs that of the players…but as long as players only fuck with EACH OTHER, there are never any legal consequences.
I really laughed when I read this: “…rage at being forced into “non-consensual PvE”…”.
About time CCP shakes up these complacent PvP folks and gives them a taste of the same medicine they have been dishing out to others for years!
I mean, the solution to these changes is not hard. Just need active patrols and combat ready pilots 24/7. No more botting while AFK. You know, actually play like you are in a dangerous area?
The solution in the short-term is simply for groups to get organised. Actually patrol your space and use scouts when doing any kind of farming, and organise mining/ratting core hours where scouts will keep the intel channels up to date.
In the long term, I imagine this is the first step toward implementing player-built intel network infrastructure with Observation Posts. Some large alliances have literally built their own intel software, and I think tools like that should be built into the game instead so everyone can use them.
Observation posts are by far the worst idea to implement if this stays, Denice already said this.
Now you had an intel tool everyone could use, but the larger alliances could make the best use of it.
Observation posts would basically give that tool back to large alliances but no one else, effectively making the old situation even *worse*.
There are plenty of ways observation posts could be implemented that don’t involve just giving local back to large alliances. The local channel is a perfect and instant intel tool, but there’s plenty of scope between that and no intel at all.
For example, observation posts could be a rapid deployment structure that lasts for just few hours and has no reinforcement mechanic, making them actually an offensive op structure and not a large alliance only thing. They could simply D-scan every 10 seconds and report the results to a panel in the fleet’s UI. Or they could just report a live list of all ships on grid, simulating having a player scout there.
Even if they were to be a longer-term structure providing a local chat level intel system, they could be live-delayed by a certain number of minutes and people could maybe hack them within that time to disrupt them and let a fleet pass. Alliances would still use the intel from them because it’s better than no intel at all, and small fleets would be able to sneak past.
There are definitely a lot more ways this could be implemented, and I imagine CCP will be looking at the data resulting from the blackout to see which options might be worth pursuing.
For years I’ve wanted to play EVE. But life being the way it is… So looking at this from an outsiders view, I think it’s a great idea! Specially if this was how nullsec was suppose to be.
And we all know how it goes when people say they’re gonna quit…they always come back.
I love the vistas in EVE. There really are few words that adequately capture the beauty. I’ve never been able to reconcile some of the weird choices that are in the game. Tons of fire control automation, tons of tactical navigation automation, but the amount of manual interaction where you’d really expect automation defies logic in so many ways.
Glad to hear they’re rebalancing, though. Hopefully it will open up some space between the big players to make more small unit actions possible. I’d be more than happy to play space trucker in a game like EVE if there was a little more chance that everyone’s too busy to notice or blockade runners became a real thing.
I’m really tempted to come back after hearing this.
In my limited experience with nullsec, the big corps and alliances do a lot of gate-camping anyway. So the big difference I see this making is that it obfuscates how many and what kinds of ships managed to pass through after breaking a gate-camp, which should open up some interesting war strategies. In theory, anyway. :)
Non-agression pacts with neighbors generally only stipulate not attacking each other’s sovereignty or structures. The Imperium and Legacy coalitions have such a pact, but we still roam into their space to shoot their ratters and miners and they still roam into ours to do the same.
Sometimes cloaky-camping is added to the list, though there are enough third-party hunting groups doing this that I am not sure that does much anymore. And, of course, without local everybody is a cloaky camper unless you catch them on d-scan.
Still my favorite game…to read about.
I recently brought up that point with Hilmar, that a lot of people say it’s their favourite game to read about but they don’t want to play. He said something along the lines of “Then maybe the EVE product for them is MassivelyOP” and maybe he’s right. We also have things like Andrew Groen’s Empires of EVE book (sequel in the works now) etc.
I’ve played in the past, but could never make it more than a few months. The combination of skills increasing at a set rate regardless of my playtime, lack of a corp (joined two and was completely ignored in both), dull/predictable PvE, working my way through a PvE mission and then having a ship spawn that I simply can’t hit, lack of goals other than “get isk” and “get more isk”, the endless, pathetic attempts to scam me, that damn target list window that I could never seem to configure properly…
I feel like the only people who like Eve are people who have played it for years and that they only like it because they’ve played it for years.
These are all the same issues new players have been reporting for years, and they’re still problematic. Regarding people who like EVE, it’s more that we like in because we managed to get past those stumbling blocks you mentioned (and others). Most people don’t get past them, they get stuck on one thing or another and don’t stay with the game but all those issues are totally fixable.
– The skill myth needs to be addressed early on, and I would love to see a way that low-skillpoint players could “catch up” (even to ~20m SP) through active play rather than just through buying skill injectors. I don’t think veterans are that precious over their skill point lead any more that they’d care if newbies were given more of a helping hand.
– Players need to be able to find their ways into active corps that actually do activities together. This is where the fleet finder overhaul could come in, letting you find an active corp you enjoy playing with before joining the corp rather than joining at random on the promise of fun. They’ll need to seriously incentivise public fleets to pull that off though.
– Dull PvE has actually been addressed in my opinion, as there are now loads of different types of PvE. We have truly solo Abyssal Deadspace PvE with procedurally generated content that keeps you on your toes, and the new completely unpredictable Invasions that are more like PvP than PvE (though these are difficult for new players to get into).
– The age of big scams is kind of gone in EVE now, and most of the ways people scammed were made more difficult by CCP adding confirmation windows and warnings in places. Scamming is still part of the game, but it’s pretty rare to actually get scammed and a bit pointless now. Just ignore Jita local, it’s all spam bots.
– The default overview settings are total garbage, and it’s all so that CCP can support tiny screen resolutions nobody uses. Same with the default chat window, the inventory management windows, the neocom, and everything else in the UI. This one really needs fixed, the fact that the default UI is so bad and people have to fix it themselves is kind of unacceptable for a game that wants to boost new player retention.