Abyssal Deadspace AMA and Drone Developments

The release of Into the Abyss has seen some exciting and potentially player-changing developments. Not ones to be tentative, or outdone, EVE players have skipped wading into the Abyss and have taken a running cannonball into the deep end.

The last two days have seen a reported losses easily in excess of one trillion ISK in Abyssal space, with that number rapidly mounting. The value of every type of Heavy Assault Cruiser has skyrocketed. Gilas are being lost faster than inhibitions at a winery tour. To top it off, we have seen single cruiser and pod losses that rival some capital welpings. There will be no reimbursement for losses in Abyssal Deadspace. It’s truly a great time to be an immortal in New Eden.

All of this excitement was redoubled as CCP’s Rise, Burger, and Falcon announced a Reddit AMA (short for ‘Ask me anything’) – which ran live from 17:00-18:00 UTC on May 30. Also posted to Reddit was a series of interesting observations on changes to Rogue Drones, made by EVE University’s Hirmuolio Pine.

The Reddit AMA

The CCP devs opened the AMA with a very basic intro:

“This thread is for any questions you guys have, and we’ll be here for an hour after kickoff at 17:00, through until 18:00 UTC to put answers to whatever you want to know about Abyssal Deadspace, which released yesterday with EVE Online: Into The Abyss. Post away!”

From there, over 130 individual replies to the main thread were spawned. That’s far too many to unpack in this article so let’s take a look at some of the bigger developments.

The following details were directly confirmed by one of the CCP Devs present:

• CCP Falcon prefers Coke to Pepsi
• Any type of loot can spawn in any level of Abyssal site (link)
• At least one of the devs is staying up late running the sites (with the rest of us), and they’re paying close attention to what we’re doing and completion rates
• There will be additional balance passes
• CCP Falcon is a Monty Python nerd
• Triglavians are here to stay
• There have been observed bugs, and some deaths attributable to related vulerabilities
• CCP Burger prefers Michael Keaton as Batman
• Abyssal space will definitely be expanded with new ideas
• The Triglavian combat suit is a ‘super duper’ rare drop
• Drone boats were deliberately reduced in power relative to other weapon types, for Abyssal sites
• Filaments were accidentally added to some relic sites (link), confirming reports by capsuleers
• CCP Rise confirmed that when it comes to getting sandwiches, the Icelandic equivalent of Subway is Subway

The following details were hinted at by Devs:

• CCP Burger likes the idea of an exclusionary filter for Abyssal modules in contracts search (he made a post-it and stuck it to his monitor)
• The current instanced iteration of Abyssal space may be expanded upon to include player interaction – if not already [note: I’ve already encountered this on SiSi, running into the wrecks of other players]
• It may become possible to work with, or against, the Triglavians and/or the Drifters (link)
• ESI will be updated to include information about Abyssal sites, but no details were provided about how much will be visible

The following still remains unanswered:

• What future plans will look like for instanced content, and what role they’ll play respective to current PVE – CCP Rise said, specifically:”We don’t have specific plans yet, but we’ve been working for quite awhile now on developing an NPC/PVE system that we could use to replace outdated systems. NPC mining fleets and pirate shipyards paved the way to Abyssal Pockets, and hopefully Abyssal Pockets pave the way updating older content and doing more awesome new content.”
• What the plans are for expanding RNG stats to other ships and mods (link)

Drones – The Threat Multiplies

Hirmuolio Pine’s look at Rogue Drones identfies the fact that CCP DelegateZero and others in the team have put in time to populate Tranquility with new descriptions, flavour text, and indeed a wholly new Rogue Drone Faction. That’s right, the Rogue Drones are an official faction – though not necessarily a cohesive one – and they even have a cool logo.

The post by the established Unista (what EVE University calls its members) further establishes the number of Rogue Drone camps (five), their names, and their suspected alliances. There is even a reference to the origin of the Rogue Drone infestation.

The new Rogue Drone camps are:

• Infested Region Hiveminds – The O.G.
• Navka Overminds – Triglavian-allied(?)
• Unshackled Overminds – Drifter-allied(?)
• Scylla Infestation – Potentially Drifter-allied
  [editorial note: read, possibly members of The Other‘s army]
• Karybdis Infestation – Net-new Rogue Drone group