Alliance Tournament XII - Prizes Revealed
Hello glory-hungry capsuleers! This is CCP Fozzie, bringing you another update on New Eden’s rapidly approaching 12th Alliance Tournament.
Today we’ll be sharing all the details of the incredible prizes that await the daring alliances that will compete in the tournament, as well as providing some updates on our Duality practice server.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with EVE’s premier e-sports event, the Alliance Tournament is an annual competition in which the greatest alliances of EVE can demonstrate their martial prowess and compete for fame and fortune. Previous Alliance Tournaments have provided some of the most memorable moments in the history of EVE, with dynasties rising and falling, rare and priceless ships exploding into scrap, and long-standing rivalries playing out live in front of an audience of thousands.
This, the 12th Alliance Tournament, will be taking place over four weekends stretching from August 16th until September 7th. It will be livestreamed for free from CCP’s Icelandic headquarters via Twitch.tv and will include live commentary from our expert panel of developers and players. The full rules for the tournament and the list of registered alliances can both be found on our EVE Community website.
Tell Them What They’ve Won, Johnny!!
With the prize structure for this year’s Alliance Tournament we have several goals:
- To provide strong and unique rewards that match the epic levels of passion, training and mastery displayed by our competitors
- To ensure that teams feel they have a good chance of being rewarded if they put in the effort to field a competitive team
- To reward the entire alliances behind each team, since in the Alliance Tournament there are often hundreds of players providing support for each team member that you see flying in the matches
With that in mind, here is what this year’s alliances are fighting for:
The Alliance Tournament Cup
The Alliance Tournament Cup is an ingame inventory item of which only one copy may ever exist. Every year we edit the description of the item to reflect the complete list of former tournament winners and move the item to the possession of the most recent winners.
The Alliance Tournament Cup was given to the Pandemic Legion alliance after their victory in the most recent Alliance Tournament XI, and after the conclusion of Alliance Tournament XII it will be taken from wherever it resides at that time and given to the ATXII champions.
Alliance Tournament Medals
In previous years we have provided Alliance Tournament Medal ingame inventory items to the first, second and third place teams. The number of medal items handed out matched the number of pilots allowed in one match (12 in ATXI) so that they can be distributed as collector’s items to the pilots most heavily involved in each team. This tradition will be continuing with Alliance Tournament XII, but will also be expanded through the addition of character sheet medals for every single member of the competing alliances.
We will be recording the membership of each competing alliance as of August 16th (the first day of Alliance Tournament XII). After the tournament concludes, each of these characters will receive a permanent medal attached to their character and viewable through the character sheet (in the same fashion as medals rewarded by a corporation). There will be medals for Tournament Competitor, Top 32, Top 16, Top 8, 4th, 3rd, 2nd and 1st. Each character will receive the one highest medal that their Alliance’s team earned for them.
As a reminder, the medals will only be given to characters that belong to each alliance as of August 16th.
Alliance Tournament Edition Rattlesnake Ship Skin
This year we will be adding a completely new prize category, a cosmetic ship skin that can be applied to Rattlesnake pirate battleships to give them the same visual style as the Chameleon and Whiptail Alliance Tournament prize ships (more on those later).
We will be awarding 10 copies of this ship skin for each series won by a team. This includes the single match series' that make up the bulk of the tournament. This addition provides an exciting reward to help make each match more meaningful for every team.
Due to some back-end work being done by our graphics team, these ship skins represent the only portion of the Alliance Tournament XII prizes that will have their awarding significantly delayed past the end of the Tournament. We are currently expecting these skins to be ready to hand out as of November 4th 2014, so teams will need to wait until then to receive this subset of their prize.
PLEX
As in previous years, we required a PLEX (Pilot’s License Extension) entry fee from each team that entered the tournament to ensure that they are serious about their bids. Also as in previous years, this set of PLEX will be fully rolled back into the prizes.
This year the PLEX will be awarded in the following fashion:
- Teams that place between 17th and 32nd place will receive 5 PLEX
- Teams that place anywhere in the top 16 will receive 15 PLEX
Alliance Tournament Prize Ships
Ever since the 7th Alliance Tournament, the premier prizes each year have been a set of special edition ships with some very exciting combat prowess. In previous years 50 copies of a special edition cruiser have been awarded to the 1st place team and 50 copies of a special edition frigate have been awarded to the 2nd place team. This concentrated distribution ensured that teams could completely control the supply for their ships and allowed the market value of the ships to exceed their combat value.
However in recent years we have been designing the ships in such a way that they hold their value even without complete monopolies. Some players have been suggesting that we spread out the distribution of these ships to help ensure a better set of rewards for all of the top teams and we agree.
This year each of the top 4 teams will receive special edition tournament ships, and each of them will receive equal numbers of our two prize ships.
- 1st place: 25 Chameleon Recon Cruisers and 25 Whiptail Interceptors
- 2nd place: 15 Chameleon Recon Cruisers and 15 Whiptail Interceptors
- 3rd place: 7 Chameleon Recon Cruisers and 7 Whiptail Interceptors
- 4th place: 3 Chameleon Recon Cruisers and 3 Whiptail Interceptors
The two Alliance Tournament Prize Ships this year are both produced by the Guristas Pirates, and both represent the irreverent and innovative spirit of their creators. The stats of the ships are:
CHAMELEON
Gallente Cruiser Bonus:
20% bonus to kinetic and thermal missile damage
Caldari Cruiser Bonus:
10% bonus to all ECM Jammer capacitor requirements
Recon Ships Bonus:
30% bonus to ECM Jammer strength and 20% reduction in cloaking device CPU
Role Bonus:
600% bonus to medium drone damage and hitpoints
80% reduction in liquid ozone consumption and 50% reduction in cynosural field duration
Slot layout: 4H, 7M, 4L; 0 turrets, 3 launchers
Fittings: 475 PWG, 600 CPU
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 1800 / 1600 / 1000
Capacitor (amount / cap/sec) : 1000 / 3
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 170 / 0.6 / 12000000 / 9.98s
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 20 / 150
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 110km / 260 / 8
Sensor strength: 34 Gravimetric
Signature radius: 160
WHIPTAIL
Gallente Frigate Bonus:
10% bonus to kinetic and thermal missile damage
Caldari Frigate Bonus:
4% bonus to all shield resistances
Interceptors Bonus:
15% reduction in MWD signature penalty and 5% bonus to scrambler and disruptor range
Role Bonus:
375% bonus to light combat drone damage and hitpoints
80% reduction in propulsion jamming systems activation cost
Immunity to non-targeted interdiction
Slot layout: 3H, 4M, 4L; 0 turrets, 2 launchers
Fittings: 35 PWG, 160 CPU
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 550 / 400 / 400
Capacitor (amount / cap/sec) : 355 / 1.33
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 430 / 3.7 / 1000000 / 5.13s
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 10 / 40
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 32.5km / 900 / 5
Sensor strength: 15 Gravimetric
Signature radius: 35
We expect that our top four alliances will greatly enjoy the options that these powerful special edition ships will provide them.
Duality is Open for Business!
As we mentioned in an earlier dev blog, this year we are once again able to offer our Duality server as a dedicated practice server for tournament competitors, with some special features that allow teams to apply passwords to a solar system to aid in their practice.
The server has been open for practices for two weeks now, and all the details and connection procedures can be found in this thread in our Alliance Tournament subforum. As always, we advise all tournament teams to keep an eye on that forum for the latest updates from our team.
I want to extend the entire tournament team’s best wishes to each and every competing alliance in their continued preparation and planning.
We look forward to seeing you all on the first day of our Alliance Tournament XII live stream starting on August 16th.
Happy Practicing!
-CCP Fozzie
