CCP has announced several balance changes that will make affect mining, small gang and tournament gameplay, fighters, anchorable bubble mechanics, and various quality of life updates. There is not yet a date set for the March release to be pushed onto Tranquility but changes can be found on Singularity. Information on accessing Singularity can be found here.
Total Worth
CCP has added a feature– allowing you to see your characters total worth in the character sheet. This is further broken down by liquid ISK, estimated value of assets, and contract/market escrow. This is currently achievable through the API and programs such as jEveAssets which allow for multiple characters and corporation assets to be totaled.
Structure and Drone Improvements
The CCP will add the ability to repair while docked in structures. This allows ships to mass repair and also saves time when trying to fix heat damage or reonline a burned out module. All repairs will be free and do not currently allow the owners to charge for repairs, like in current null-sec stations. Undocking with a session change timer will queue the request giving a smoother experience.
A shortcut to drop drones is planned to be added. This will make it significantly easier to multibox drone-based ships, especially the speed with they can set up their drone assist. This has been long requested and will be a good improvement to gameplay quality.
Super and Fighter Balance Pass
Shield supers are getting a slight buff. The fighter bay of the Wyvern and Hel are both increasing by 10,000 m3 which will bring the Wyvern on par with the Aeon and will match the Hel’s to the Nyx. This will be revisited once shield slaves are released, which were announced at last year’s fanfest.
Signature radius of all fighters is being increased and shadows are getting a buff to their damage. They will be more responsive under load and multiple shortcuts are being added to improve QOL.
Bubbles
Anchorable bubbles are being balanced to make them easier to kill, decay over time and require them to be actively attended. There will also be an increase for the health of T2 and faction bubbles while nerfing T1. Adding killmails to anchorable bubbles gives players incentive to clear gates of them, and discourages leaving them unattended. The decay will help prevent gates that remain bubbled for long periods of time while the occupants of a system rat in safety.
At some point in the future CCP is working on removing the excessive bright/whiteness that comes from stacking bubbles but nothing concrete is planned.
Rorqual Nerfs
In perhaps the biggest change of this release, CCP is again nerfing Rorqual mining yield. Since their rebalance with Ascension, mineral prices have crashed. This, in turn, has driven down the prices of all ships and continues supercap proliferation with build cost on titans hitting as low as 55 billion ISK. Some players have complained that this will make Rorquals useless again but they will still be used for their mining command bursts and PANIC modules, protecting other mining ships around them.
Rorquals are losing their role as a heavy tackler or “jump HIC” as they will now require a target lock on an asteroid to be able to PANIC. Excavator drones, valued over a billion ISK in Jita, will now generate killmails when destroyed.
Warp Disruption Field Generator Changes
Heavy Interdiction Cruisers gained the ability to warp scramble ships when the warp disruption field generator was rebalanced as part of tiericide. This was extremely powerful, giving them a 37.5-kilometer scram without links or heat. HICs do tend to be slow but can fit massive tanks and moved around grids creating a little sphere of death to any ship that strayed in and was able to be caught.
This had impacts in the kiting/small gang meta as well as the alliance tournament where the Fiend excelled. Devs are reducing the base 37.5km for a T2 point to 20km with T1 sitting at 16 and faction reaching out to 21 kilometers. This will help give the Arazu and Lachesis more of a niche in the meta as a long tackler.
A Well Balanced Update
While the March update does not bring any “Jesus features” or significant new features, it delivers much-needed balance and quality of life updates to the game. Constant small updates were something CCP embraced when they changed release cycles and it will be good to have continuous tweaking to the games ecosystem especially as we lead up to the introduction of drilling stations and other new features. This update does just that and changes something that nearly every player can appreciate.
