Planetary Interaction on Sisi

2010.03.13.11.27.09

As you can see in the above screenshot I have placed a command center on a planet and build some structures that extract isotopes and aluminum. No skill were needed or anything, I am not sure whether that will stay this way, but that’s how it is on the test server now. You just have to be in the same system as the planet and you can tinker with the plant stuff right off the bat.

The ui seems to be a bit clumsy at the moment, which was to be expected. And ofcourse we only have one devblog to go by, I hope a somewhat decent wiki page will be there once this goes live, since I didn’t have too much of a clue of what I was doing.

But after some trial and error I got some stuff setup. It seems to be rather passive at the moment, like moon mining on planets. And you can create NPC goods like nanite paste in a factory. All you need to do is put those structures down and link them up to the command center. There is no costs associated with the structures at the moment and they do appear out of thin air. No blue prints or anything needed.

One hint: you can click on the resources on the left side like Helium Isotopes and the planet turns blue with 3 striped spots (you’ll know what I mean when you see them) here and there. Those are the spots where you need to put the extractors in order to get the most of ‘em, I assume.

As you can see it’s all a bit rudimentary at the moment, a more flashed out version will be published on Sisi in three weeks, but so far it seems like a fun thing to play around with and earn you some isk. Once Dust 514, I am sure it will be even more interesting ;).

Factional Warfare Test and Rigging

As you might have read on the news or on the forums, there will be a fleet battle test on the test server coming Wednesday.

Apocrypha 1.5 is just around the corner and it brings plenty of improvements and fixes with it. We think you’ll be happy with the changes we’ve made; of course now we need to put it to the test in a “live-like” situation! To that end we will be running a series of fleet fights and other mass-tests on our main test server, Singularity.

I updated my test client today and did some testing. I put the T3 ship skills in both Bela and Morph’s queue. So I can test both caldari and amarr T3 ships, before I commit myself to a big purchase !

Rigs in all sizes

The new rigs are also on the test server. The small ones will be very cheap. You only need a few parts of salvage to make one (like 5 or 6, and that was on an unresearched bpo, not that that matter much with such small quantities). So I am sure just about every frig and cruiser will be rigged once this patch hits tranquility.  On the one hand it will give for more interesting setups, like  speed or armor rigs on your rifter, or double ambits ! Or a double trimarked trasher ! But it will be obligatory to rig your ships, otherwise you’re bound to loose it when you come up against rigged ships.

Originally Rigging was supposed to give your ship a bit of extra oompf. For a price that is ! So if you wanted to you could rig your battlecruiser or assault frig. But now, it will become mandatory for the above mentioned reasons. Well it’ll be interesting to see how it all will work out. I’ll be buying all the new bpos when I first logon after this patch comes out.

pink_ship

By the way, some graphics and icons changed as well. Bela’s command ship is now pink :(, though it’s not as obvious on the screenshot. Not exactly an improvement. The Guardian looks similar. Hope that will be changed.

UPDATE: The pinkish color is because I was using medium shaders at the time, apparently a known problem that hasn’t been fixed yet.