The fourth alliance tournament will be held at the 31st August. The rules are available here, and as you can see, have changed quite a bit from the last tournament.

The Caldari Gaming Commission no longer hosts the tournament. A new gaming commission has been formed and is called the Independent Gaming Commission. As capsulers are an increasing power in the galaxy, the various factions are vying for their support as tensions grow.

Timeline:

The tournament was originally scheduled to be held early in the summer, but due to Revelations II development we decided to postpone it until shortly after the expansion. We postponed a second time to 17 August due to the summer vacation block and post-patch issue resolution. A number of key personnel will be attending a game convention that weekend (Gencon) so we had no choice but to move it to the 31 August. This will (hopefully!) be the final date. The 31st is good because it allows for Revelations 2.2 to be deployed (with various enhancements and a much needed fix to our beloved Nosferatu) before the tournament.

Tournament Overview:

The Tournament will be held the first two weekends of September, starting on the 31st of August. We are aiming for keeping a similar schedule to last time, airing from 1500 to 2100 GMT/UTC. EVE TV will televise all matches live and the entire Tournament will be free. Various experts will honor us with their presence and provide commentary on the fights and setups.

Rules:

As you can see, the rules have changed quite a bit from the last tournament. This has alarmed many and I hope I can put your minds at rest with an explanation on how the changes came about.

When revising the rules, the aim was to allow as much flexibility in tactics and fighting styles as possible. With the original 60km diameter arena, there was not much room to maneuver resulting in a severe disadvantage for certain ships and tactics. We wanted increase the arena to a 500km diameter and allow players to use whatever tactics they desired, such as warping within the boundaries, but unfortunately, we quickly ran into technical problems. The EVE TV cameras can not lock a target over 250km away and the camera client will lose lock on a target if it warps. To regain lock, the camera client would have to leave the special camera mode and rearrange all targets on the screen, thus preventing us from showing the status bars of the competing ships. The compromise was to have the arena measure 250km in diameter.

Having achieved a greater freedom of movement, the next step was to determine where the teams would start off. Here we wanted a certain amount of uncertainty or randomness and therefore decided to create four beacons in the system for each team, from where they would warp into the arena.

In the group stage we want a more dynamic point scoring system. In the last tournament we saw winning teams receive 3 points, a draw gave each team one point and the loser got nothing. Now teams will be awarded points for destroying the ships, so even though you lose the match, you might get a few points which could in turn get you into the elimination round. This should also be entertaining for the spectators as they get to see maximum gank.

Point system:

During the tournament revision, we wanted to increase the number of ships on the battlefield, to allow teams to be adventurous and unpredictable in their lineups and hopefully move away from cookie cutter set-ups. I recruited the help of our resident Phd CCP Fendahl, to calculate the relative point worth of ships. The baseline is 10 tech one cruisers are worth 100 points. We then started calculating the relative point worth of other ship classes not only based on the firepower but on their overall effect on the battlefield. For example, command cruisers cost as much as battleships. Overall they may have less flexibility and firepower than battleships, but their other abilities can have a greater effect on the battlefield.

Rewards:

There is a certain amount of controversy regarding the rewards this time around. This is called the Alliance Tournament for a reason, we want the alliances to actively support their teams and to reap some benefit. The reason we are not giving out unique ships is that they can potentially change the delicate balance of power that exists between alliances with the price tag that goes with them, nor can we give out titans or motherships since then we would be bypassing certain very important game mechanics, namely the enormous effort it takes to construct these.

Pilots and Alliances have gained fame and glory in the past tournaments by acheiving great things. This goes to show that reputation is the true currency.

Regards,
Nova