Expansions

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Eve Online has changed a great deal over the years, and this page lists the expansions added to it, along with major features contained within them. While not a common resource, from this page you should be able to see how and possibly why things have been changed as Eve has evolved.


Previous Expansions

The Second Genesis

The original release of Eve Online, it was at the time significantly different to most MMO's of the age. Looking back at it, while many things have changed, the core of what Eve is is still visible. Read on to see how things evolved.

A few notable differences are:

  • Eve launched with 100 different ships, 250 types of NPC, 150 skills, 5,000 systems and 5,000 stations.
  • Initially what are now Level 1 missions were the only missions available, However Level 2 and 3 missions appeared quite rapidly.
  • There were 'Mines' which could be dropped and would explode on proximity, which along with missiles did 'splash damage' to multiple targets, similar to the Bombs available currently.
  • An early patch added 'Highway stargates' allowing rapid travel between empire home systems and CONCORD space, meaning that Yulai (CONCORD HQ) rapidly became the galaxy's prime market hub with the Empire homes being secondary hubs. This was removed in Castor as it was putting severe stress on Tranquility.

Castor

Tech 2 blueprints were added to Eve, using a lottery system to distribute them via new Research Agents.

Conquerable Stations were introduced in NullSec space, giving people something to fight for. Not to be confused with Outposts, introduced later, these are simply NPC stations which can be claimed.

The Armor Repairer and Warp Core Stabilizer were moved from mid-slot to a low-slot modules and the WCS was changed to no longer required manual activation.

Agent changes were introduced, meaning that CONCORD and Jovian agents were no longer available to pilots. Standing decay was also introduced, meaning pilots would need to continue doing missions to retain access to higher level agents.

Targeting speed of ships changed from a single attribute, to adding factors such as Scan Resolution and Signature Radius, and ships using gates had a Cloak applied when entering and leaving the gate network.

Finally, Advanced Learning skills were also added in a later patch, allowing pilots to train skills faster.

Exodus

Exodus introduced a great deal of changes to Eve. Most notable was the new Sovereignty system, with allowed the newly introduced formal Alliances to claim NullSec space as their own though the use of the newly introduced Starbases (with small and medium versions arriving later).

Deadspace Complexes were introduced, effectively as static public missions, and dotted across the galaxy. Level 4 agents were introduced, designed to be group missions, as well as 'agent offers' which were special trade offers. Rogue Drones also began to appear at this time, providing Drone Materials rather than bounties.

Mining Barges, were introduced, along with the Strip Miner, Ice Harvester modules and Ice belts, allowing the ice mined to be used to fuel the new starbases. Destroyers and Battlecruisers were also introduced, Faction Ships were made available though the new agent offers and complexes.

From a corporation standpoint, a few new features were added, such as secure containers with Audit Logs, the ability to lockdown blueprints in hangars, a new Titles system which collected a number of the existing roles, separate corp wallet divisions, and a new tax system was introduced, allowing the ability to set taxes between 0% and 10% on separate income streams. Also added was an early version of what became the API, allowing you to export corp wallet records.

The War Declaration system was also adjusted to take the new Alliances into account. At this time, the cost for a war was 1 Million ISK x 2 x the number of target corporations affected x the number of existing wars declared.

Finally, the Aggression flagging system was revamped, meaning attack by empire navies of outlaws with security status below -5.0 when in HiSec, and a contraband system was introduced.

Cold War

Cold War was what CCP refer to as a 'content expansion', effectively including more content for players and adding some mechanics which would become core to what Eve is today.

The first change was the introduction of the Sovereignty system, which was based on the number of Control Towers in a system, would remain in place until Dominion. This also included the introduction of Outposts, effectively basic stations, which are constructed and run entirely by players, but required the corporation to hold Sovereignty.

The second major addition were the first capital ships, at this time limited to the Dreadnought and Freighter classes. This provided the firepower to deal with hostile control towers and necessary logistical framework to construct the new outposts.

Also added were the first two Cosmos constellations, effectively constellation wide mission groups, introducing archeology sites, and providing special 'storyline' modules as rewards. New deadspace complexes were also added to the existing ones, and the stargate connections were significantly shuffled around, removing the old highways, leading to new markets appearing, and effectively making Eve a larger place.

Significant changes were also made to NPC pirates, with the higher level rats now dropping faction ammo, faction module blueprint copies and pirate implants.

Other changes and additions included were tweaks to cruisers, missiles and tanking, the addition of Logistics Cruisers, changes to Mobile Warp Disruptors, the addition of Tech 2 drones and Tech 1 Mining Drones and the introduction of a PvP logoff timer, along with gang bonuses.

Red Moon Rising

Known as 'RMR', this expansion added a great number of Capital Ships, including Titans, Carriers and Motherships, along with the relevant items for them, such as the Doomsday Weapons and Fighters.

Four new Asian bloodlines, the Achura, Jin-Mei, Khanid and the Vherokior, in preparation for the Chinese release of the game on a seriate server, known as Serenity.

COSMOS constellations were also added for the Gallente and Caldari races, to match the existing areas for the Amarr and Minmatar.

Jump Clones were implemented, allowing near-instantaneous travel between two points, including both stations and some capital ships.

The role of Starbases was expanded, allowing them to now be anchored in space with security ratings of 0.7 to 0.4. Capital Assembly Arrays could also be anchored at this time, which meant that capital ships could be constructed in HiSec space.

Exhumers, the T2 versions of existing mining barges were added, many modules were changed, and Stacking Penalties were introduced. Other T2 ships added were Interdictors, based on the Destroyer hull, Recons based on a Cruiser hull and Command Ships based on the then available tier one Battlecruiser hull. At this point, the Tractor_Beam was also added, which many people were thankful for.

Many new drones were added, with repair drones, EW drones and sentry drones all making their appearance, however the maximum number of drones a pilot could use was lowered to five from the previous ten, although ship bonuses and skills were adjusted to compensate.

The Kill Rights system was introduced, which allows you to attack someone in HiSec and destroy their vessel in revenge for unsanctioned combat. Finally, the Criminal Flag was introduced, meaning that taking from a JetCan now allowed the victim to react with force.

Revelations

This expansion was the first of three major expansions moving toward the Faction Warfare system and saw the first of the Need For Speed changes coming into effect, significantly reducing lag for all pilots.

Warp to Zero was added in this patch, finally making the existing Insta bookmarks obsolete. Previously to this patch, the closest you could warp to a stargate or station was 15km, meaning either the space would need to be made up by slowboating, or alternatively by placing a bookmark 15km beyond your destination then warping to that. This of course meant that different bookmarks were needed depending on the duration you came from, meaning hundreds of bookmarks per region. Bookmark sets were traded between players, and it was not uncommon for each player to have thousands of bookmarks, which were found to significantly slow down the system, so they had to go.

The Contract system was revamped, going from the then 'Escrow' system which was inflexible and simply difficult to use, to a system supporting contracts on a corporation, alliance, and personal level, along with the ability to search for specific items.

This expansion unlocked the Drone Regions, which were previously unavailable with no gates linking to them, as the Jove regions are at present. Initially, the regions has no names, and instead simply had alphanumeric designations, however these were later named by capsuleers in a competition. The initial lack of logistic structures there made life quite difficult, with even relatively close systems around 20-30 jumps away from any market, but within a few months a number of sizable alliances had constructed a significant logistical backbone.

Fleets, were added, to compliment the existing 'Gangs', which were flat groups of members. The new system allowed 256 members, a hierarchical structure, and things along with broadcasts and similar systems. The old system was still available, although now limited to 50 members and no longer provided bonuses.

Eve Voice was also introduced at this time, allowing voice communications between various people. Initially, this was provided as a free trial, with a low-cost subscription model to follow, however the slow take up and a number of client problems meant that it was not as successful as had originally been thought, and eventually became included with Eve.

The scanning system, which had previously been used only to locate other pilots in space was also revamped, removing the majority of the then static Deadspace Complexes, and moving them to Exploration sites. A new on-board scanner was also added to all ships, allowing the relatively easy location of low-level sites around planets. It was however quite some time before the exploration system would become easy to use, as at this point probes were disposable, could not move on their own and had to be dropped manually, not to mention the may the probes would work meant that locating a single site would typically take 30-40 minutes.

Introduced in Revelations were the Tier 3 Battleships and Tier 2 Battlecruisers, along with Salvaging and Rigs. This changed ship fittings significantly, although it wasn't until Apocryphia until small and medium rigs were made available, making it financially viable to rig T1 ships below Battlecruiser hulls. Heat was also introduced, allowing those with relevant skills to overheat modules for more performance, at the risk of damaging or destroying other modules in the same rack. Bombs were added, finally making the Stealth Bomber live up to its name, and adding a way to deal with close concentrations of ships.

In the industrial side, invention was introduced, finally ending the T2 BPO Lottery, and making T2 modules available to all. Prices of once expensive T2 modules and dropped sharply, often to around 20% of their previous cost, with notable items such as the Hulk dropping to around 120 Million ISK from 600 Million.

Other things added in this patch were Combat Boosters using harvested gas from NullSec exploration sites to produce drugs to provide small boosts to skills, an updated 'New Player Experience' with significant more structure, and new characters now began with around 800,000 skillpoints, which unfortunately meant a significant rise in canflippers.

Changes in later patches saw a number of stargate connections changing, asteroid belts removed from busy systems (such as Jita), ice fields removed from 0.8+ security systems, and a patch which saw war fees being revamped to prevent alliances declaring war on too many others, adding an escalating cost.

Revelations II

A few changes were also made to starbases, with a number of structures being moved out of the starbase shields, the introduction of faction defenses and towers, Jump Bridges, Cynosural Generator Arrays, Cynosural System Jammers, and System Scanning Arrays. Outpost upgrades were also introduced, allowing expansion of facilities in NullSec, as well as a new Sovereignty system, which allowed progressively more useful modules to be anchored, depending on how long space was held, eventually allowing a system to be designated as a constellation capital, making its structures invulnerable.

  • Bombs added to stealth bombers
  • Heat - overloading modules
  • Level 5 agents, gang support for missions
  • Cosmic Anomalies (small complexes) can be found using the new onboard scanner
  • DED 3 and higher complexes are no longer static, but need to be found using exploration probes
  • EVE API
  • Various ship changes
  • Corp changes - alliance standings, new wallet divisions, new role allowing people to fuel POSs without giving them other access, and role allowing pilots to take control of defenses.
  • Tech II Sentry and Logistics drones
  • many other changes
  • august 2007 - Rorqual, the first capital industrial ship from ORE, allowing ore to be "compressed"
  • November 2007 official support for linux and os x

Trinity

  • New graphics engine:
  • Higher texture resolutions
  • More detailed models for stations, stargates and ships
  • Electronic Attack Ships, Heavy Interdictors, Black Ops, Marauders
  • Drone Bandwidth
  • Killmails are now part of the character sheet
  • Hacking containers are removed from COSMOS sites
  • boot.ini cleanup
  • 'Boost' Patch
  • Undocking ships no stop automatically creating blocks
  • Welcome pages
  • Various ship changes
  • Electronic Warfare icons for the overview
  • Forgotten containers and shuttles will now be removed after a month of inactivity
  • Shuttles are no longer sold by NPC corporations


Emperian Age

  • The major factions now have militia corporations players can join to fight for that faction
  • New region: Black Rise
  • More ships
  • Various elements added as remnants of the hostilities
  • CONCORD have improved damage and response times
  • New rookie missions
  • Module changes
  • Avoid Systems function for the autopilot
  • Some more jumps around Jita


Quantum Rise

  • Orca, industrial command ship
  • Speed nerf
  • Redesign of transport ships
  • EVE64, StacklessIO and other core changes were deployed earlier
  • Minor changes to blockade runners and the Orca's attributes
  • Some options to improve performance in fleet fights. This includes disabling camera shaking (thank god)
  • Redeem system

Apocrypha

  • Tech 3 cruisers (modular ships)
  • New kind of exploration with wormholes
  • Trinity II graphics for the remaining objects and effects
  • Epic mission arc (long storyline mission with branching)
  • Characters can rearrange their base attribute points
  • Sleeper NPCs in wormhole systems
  • Sleeper and officer NPCs get a more PVP like AI
  • 24 hour skill queue
  • Classic client and Linux client discontinued
  • New scanning system
  • 4th subsystem in each category for tech 3 strategic cruisers
  • Stealth Bombers can now fit torpedoes and covert ops cloaks
  • Boost to the ECM ships Falcon, Rook, Scorpion and Widow
  • Some ships have had their agility and/or scan resolution adjusted
  • Drones can now be scooped up from 2500 meters or less
  • Specialized cargobays for jump fuel or ammo/ore
  • Small & medium rig variations
  • First level 4 mission arcs


Dominion

  • New and much better ingame browser
  • Sovereignty 2.0
  • More faction battleships
  • More detailed planets and starfields
  • Reworked ingame mail system

Upcoming Expansions

Tyrannis

This upcoming expansion will add the ability to interact with planets and mine minerals and other resources from them, building installations on the surface. This will lay the groundwork for DUST 514.

The expansion will also introduce EVE Gate, previously known as "New Eden", "COSMOS" and occasionally referred to as "Spacebook", which will be the integrated Social Networking site and allow you to read EveMail out of game, as well as refreshing the standings system.

Winter Expansion

  • Expected Release: December 2010

No information available, but may be Incarna.

Incarna

  • Expected Release: 2010 (Tentative)

Incarna, previously known as both 'Walking In Stations' and 'Ambulation', is the name for the upcoming expansion which will add the ability for pilots to leave their capsules and walk around the stations and possibly other facilities.

While there has been little firm information on this, suggestions previously have been that it will be possible for pilots to own establishments, shops and similar, and use a complex scripting system to create NPC vendors. Also to be included are various games, such as SecWars, based on the game Slay.

While many believe Incarna will make Eve into "WoW in space", CCP have stated that combat, missions and similar actions will be prohibited in this area, and it will be more focussed on social aspects.

Other Projects

Dust 514

References

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