Season's Greetings from Team Talos

If you would like to discuss this dev blog please head over to the thread on the official forums.

It's Tuesday and it's been about two weeks since Team Talos' last content was released, so where's the new update? Well due to the holidays we couldn't push an update even if we wanted to! We hope you'll forgive us for taking a small break over the season and hopefully this dev blog will make up for it in some small way.

Team Talos was created back in October and our mission is straight forward:

1. Challenge the Core of EVE and provide compelling content for veteran players.
2. Ensure there is always something to look forward to through a rapid release cadence which provides new content or changes every two weeks.

We're excited about what we've accomplished so far and we feel like we're delivering on our mission through meaningful core changes at a consistent cadence.

Let's take a look back at Team Talos' updates in 2019 and the effect they have had on the meta of EVE Online!

Release #1 - Warp Drive Active (15 October 2019)

Warp Drive Active brought a straight-up warp speed buff for cruisers, battlecruisers and battleships. Just taking the Cynabal for example, you can see increased usage straight after the buff:

And jumps by some of the most popular battleships increased significantly:

Release #2 - Howling Interceptors (30 October 2019)

This update saw a 5% buff to the damage output of all Combat Interceptors (Crusader, Taranis, Claw and Raptor) and increased the CPU of the Crusader and Taranis to open up some fitting options. Additionally, Assault Frigates had their speed reduced a little bit. As a result there's been a slight increase in Combat Interceptor usage and Ramjags are a bit less annoying. Taking the Crusader as an example you can see a definite increase in usage after these changes:

Release #3 - Trick or Treat Event (30 October 2019)

This one was a lot of fun and a nice surprise for the pilots of New Eden. For one week over Halloween, 100% of all modules and cargo would drop from any player-owned ship destroyed in New Eden. Next time we do something like this, instead of a 100% chance of full loot drop we will probably try something more like "99% chance of full loot drop, 1% chance of no loot drop"... we have a feeling that would lead to a little less killboard padding. :)

Release #4 - Beat Around the Boosh (12 November 2019)

We made big changes to Micro Jump Field Generators and Bosons in this update. The dynamics between capital umbrellas and subcapital hunter fleets are in a tough spot and we want to keep making big changes here to work towards a more healthy balance. A theme in this update we want to continue pushing is commitment to engagements. We want to be increasing the chance of explosions with our changes and MJFGs were just a small part of the puzzle. Logisitcs, capital survivability, and low-risk PVE are other big topics that can have a similar dampening effect on conflict and they are all on the table for changes from our team next year.

Release #5 - Rapid Fire (26 November 2019)

Rapid Fire saw the Tempest Fleet Issue and Stabber Fleet Issue get some love with an increase to their Projectile Turret RoF bonuses and the Typhoon and Bellicose for got some explosion velocity improvements. Also all Autocannons enjoyed a RoF boost and greater falloff. You can see a clear increase in Medium Autocannon damage as a result:

We also tried to bring the Muninn down a notch but so far it's holding strong as a premiere fleet doctrine. We'll be watching the Muninn and Eagle both in the new year and looking for changes that promote variety for fleet pilots.

Release #6 - Kicking Over Castles (10 December 2019)

Changes to timezone tanking and other rules around structures, particularly tethering in Faction Warfare space. This was just a first step and we have so much more to do. We have a plan for low power structures that should make them much less work to remove but we didn't have time to include it in 2019. On top of that, we want to make structures more rewarding to destroy and continue improving the situation with timers. We don't expect to find any silver bullets for timezone issues but we think continuous iteration is the right strategy.

Release #7 - Naughty or Nice (12 December 2019)

And finishing up the year we, along with Team Event Horizon, created some special filaments for the Holidays. The reception has been overwhelmingly positive which is fantastic to see. Since release there's been almost 10,000 magical trips to null sec to spread holiday cheer and the amount per day is only growing! We're currently discussing the future of reindeer filaments and I can assure you this will not be the last you see of them. We do recommend you get your random roams in before these expire on January 14 - there may be a gap before they become available again.

2020 Preview

In January and beyond we're continuing with the aim of releasing something every two weeks. Occasionally we may have release window conflicts, technical issues, or other events that might cause clashes (who is going to Fanfest 2020?), so nothing can be guaranteed. But we do have a long list of ideas for changes, which we are continuously updating and refining. So what have we got coming up in the near future?

• Updates for Factional Warfare and Wormholes are both a big priority for early in the new year. We spoke about both of these in Vegas but weren't able to fit them into 2019 so look for them in Q1 2020.
• Continuous work on Capital Balance and Structures. These two core systems are some of the most important we have and they are not exactly perfect at the moment. We want to keep iterating towards a healthier version of both.
• More ship and module updates of course, including a return to module tiericide.
• Completely new concepts and experiments! Holiday filaments definitely encourage us to keep experimenting with new ideas and we have so much more we want to try.

We are kicking off 2020 with a packed release on January 14th. I can't spoil it completely but here's a little teaser - a stocking stuffer if you will - to hold you over:

Wishing you the warmest of holidays,

Team Talos

• CCP Paradox (Producer)
• CCP Rise (Game Designer)
• CCP Masterplan (Software Engineer)
• CCP TrashMob (QA Analyst)