Rebalancing and Renaming Industrials

Hello, I'm CCP Rise. I’m kind of new here, but you may know me from EVE where I controlled the honorable Kil2 in space combat for the last 6 or 7 years along with being an Alliance Tournament commentator, podcast host, and YouTuber. Since arriving here in the frigid north my biggest contribution to EVE development thus far has been to the battleship rebalance, which I took the lead on, but I have a lot more to do and I want to talk to you about my latest project! Industrials!

Let’s start with an important tl;dr:

• Industrials got a major makeover and many of them perform much differently than before
• We are renaming the Iteron, Iteron Mark II, Iteron Mark III, Iteron Mark IV, and Badger Mark II

Before I get into what we actually did, I want to share a little bit about why we did it.

Some of you may ask, “CCP Rise, why are you balancing industrials, they are fine, go do something important like deleting falcons from the game (I kind of agree with you)”, so let me explain. As CCP Ytterbium so graciously details in the blog here, we changed a lot of the skill requirements for commanding space faring vessels in Odyssey, and industrials were heavily affected. With all industrials only requiring the relevant racial industrial skill at level I (rather than a range from level I to level V), any trace of decision making was replaced with an obligation to use the Iteron Mark V.  That, along with the fact that many of the haulers were pointless even before Odyssey, made them prime pickings for a rebalance.

Getting these ships finished and ready to ship was quite the process and while I can’t recount it all here, I recommend catching up in the Features and Ideas section of the forums where you can see the version one thread, which had a huge impact on the final design, or go look through all the specifics of the final implementation in the version two thread! For me, this effort represents a huge success in terms of cooperation with the community to make the best choices for the game. I found myself not only our forums, but also posting on Reddit, talking constantly with the CSM (who are awesome and consistently steered us in the right direction), spending time in Twitch.tv stream chat with players and even arguing with DJ FunkyBacon from EVE Radio at 4am. All of it culminated in the resolution of "Mammoth-gate", a set of industrials with a lot more character, and a more interesting class of ships overall.

In case you don’t want to go get all the details from the forum thread, here’s some highlights on the rebalance:

• Like combat classes, industrials have been divided into roles rather than tiers.
• Each race will have one cargo-focused industrial (which can actually compete with Iteron Mark V for carrying space).
• Each race will have one industrial focused on travel time and resilience.
• We are introducing industrials with specialized bays

o   The Hoarder (HODOR!) will have a bay that carries anything in the ‘charge’ group, including ammo, bombs, nanite paste, cap booster charges, etc.

o   The Kyros will have a dedicated bay for minerals

o   The Epithal will have a dedicated bay for planetary commodities

o   The Miasmos will have a dedicated bay for asteroid ore, ice ore and gas

• We also tried to give each industrial something special to set it apart from the pack, whether that means the fastest travel time (Wreathe), the largest cargo bay (Tayra), or even things like drone bays (Nereus) or missile launchers (Badger and Tayra)!

So now with that out of the way, I need to tell you about one of the most important elements of this rebalance that you might have already picked up on: NEW NAMES.  With a move towards roles, which are meant to make each ship different and valuable, rather than a tier system which is about progression, it no longer fits to have the Badger and Iteron lines named in progression-based way. Many players raised this point in the feedback thread and I told them we wouldn’t do it because of how disruptive it could be, but after more internal discussion we decided that there was too much tension between their names and their function. There will be some growing pains as we all get used to seeing these names on our overviews, but in the long run it will be a huge improvement.

CCP Abraxas did an amazing job creating the new names, and he even gave me detailed explanations for the origin of each one.  Enjoy:

By itself, "Iteron" means a specific kind of repetitive pattern of DNA within a bacterial cell. As such, we decided to focus on general themes of organics, base materials, repetition and patterns.

“Iteron” to “Nereus”

Nereus is a Greek sea god with a rich heritage, the oldest of several sons, and a shapeshifter - perfect for an original hauler that later saw several siblings/variations. And it's fitting that this is the only hauler with a drone bay, because Nereus was the father of the fifty Nereids, a small army of nimble and quick sea nymphs.

"Iteron Mk. II" to "Kryos"

This one in particular is a mineral hauler, and the term for a pattern or order of minerals is "crystal". If you dive down enough, the Greek root of that word eventually beomes "Kruos". That particular name is too similar to "Cruor" (we don't want to muck up someone's target calling in lowsec), but as it happens, the pronunciation of Kruos actually became more akin "Kryos" as the Egyptians and Byzanthians picked it up, so there we go.

"Iteron Mk. III" to "Epithal"

Here we're dealing with a motley of different materials, but there's a definite feel of life to them - not just in the strictly biological parts like bacteria, proteins, fertilizer and livestock, but also in the number of compounds that, while not strictly speaking biological, are very much prone to activity if they are exposed to the wrong element. So, we're thinking ordered cells, and something that needs protection. The name for an order or pattern of cells is "tissue". One of the basic tissue types is called "epithelium", and it's primarily in charge of protecting its contents from outside influences, and keeping them stable through whatever means necessary. It's a perfect metaphor for the containment vats you'd need on a PI-focused vessel. Go back in time a little, muck about with the roots of the word, and you end up with the variant "Epithal".

"Iteron Mk. IV" to "Miasmos"

This one carries ore, which means ice, minerals and gas. We've pretty much covered the first two with the Kryos name, so we decided to have some fun with gas. A "miasma" is a gaseous contagion - actually one of the first on record, from Greek mythology; and as we tend to sometimes mythologize Gallente ship names, it was a good fit. Another candidate was "Atreus", the dude who actually caused the plague by doing some horrible things (seriously, look him up), but it's far too similar to the Atron; so "Miasmos" it is.

“Iteron Mark V”

We aren’t changing the name on the Mark V.  This was the best version of the former line of Iterons, it was the most used of the five, and it is changing very little in this balance pass.  For these reasons we feel that both the story and the design are supported by leaving the name intact.

"Badger Mk. II" to "Tayra"

Badgers belong to the sizeable weasel family, which includes anything from the Hairy-Nosed Otter to the Wolverine. A Tayra is a rather clever kind of badger-type weasel.

You can expect to see all of this on Tranquility for our Odyssey 1.1 release coming up later this summer.  Hope you enjoy the changes!

See you in space o/

CCP Rise

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