Of Outposts, Improvements, Upgrades and Dragons

Well, maybe not dragons, but outposts for sure. And possibly upgrades. And improvements too.

Before we start off, I recommend reading the devblog about sovereignty changes, since the new sovereignty levels are pre-requisites for the ability of modifying your outposts.

With Revelations II deployed, we should see the first outpost upgrades happens within the next two to three weeks, thus making the information about these additions all the more needed.

Let’s dive in, shall we.

Upgrades? Improvements? What’s the difference?

An outpost has three tiers of upgrades, each tier unlocking a certain number of improvement slots.

Simply put, you first upgrade your outpost to a given tier, and then you may install improvements which actually modify or extend the outpost’s different services and functionalities.

Upgrades

There are three tiers of upgrades, and in order to deploy and install them, a certain level of sovereignty is required;

• Foundation Upgrade Platform (Tier 1) requires Sovereignty 2
• Pedestal Upgrade Platform (Tier 2) requires Sovereignty 3
• Monument Upgrade Platform (Tier 3) requires Sovereignty 4

An outpost is upgraded by deploying the upgrade platform within range of the station, supplying it with the required materials and then waiting for the downtime for the upgrade to be effective – these are the same mechanics used to deploy outposts.

Note the Pedestal Upgrade Platform requires for the Foundation to be present in order to be installed, while the Monument requires the Pedestal (and hence the Foundation) upgrade(s) to be installed.

Once the upgrade platform has been installed, it allows for the possibility of installing improvements, which are, as the name indicates, the actual improvements to the outpost itself.

Improvements

Each upgrade platform allows for a certain number of improvements, with;

• Foundation allowing for one Tier 1 Improvement to be installed
• Pedestal allowing for an extra Tier 1 as well as a Tier 2 Improvement to be installed
• Monument allowing for an extra Tier 1, an extra Tier 2 and one Tier 3 Improvement to be installed

This makes for a total of six possible improvements on a monumentally upgraded outpost (pardon the pun); three Basic (Tier 1), two normal (Tier 2) and one Advanced (Tier 3).

While upgrade platforms have no racial traits, improvements are tied to a particular outpost type, and every outpost has its own improvement trees or paths.

Each outpost has 5 possible improvement paths based around four of the station services; factories, research, offices and refining.

Installing improvements follows the same procedure as deploying an outpost or installing an upgrade platform; deployment of the Improvement Platform, filling it with the required materials, and committing it through a downtime.

So in other words, only one enhancement job may take place per day (downtime to downtime).

Les paroles s’envolent, les écrits restent …

… or so says an old Gallente proverb.

In more intelligible form, what it points out is the permanent nature of upgrades and improvements to outposts; it is currently not possible to remove or replace an improvement (or upgrade for that matter) that has been installed.

There are 60 different possibilities per outpost, and only 6 improvement slots, so it’s highly recommended to be thorough when doing the research before installing.

More?

A few other changes were made to conquerable stations and outposts, ranging from slight re-balancing to introducing a new layer of gameplay.

The Caldari Research Outpost has had its number of ME/PE/Copy slots changed to 10 for each.

The Gallente Administrative Outpost has seen its office slots increased to 24, and now has 10 Booster manufacture slots.

The other big change is the possibility of targeting and disabling station services for conquerables and outposts.

Exposed services?

As can currently be seen on Tranquility, station services can be targeted and shot.

This means that a strategic decision can be made to disrupt the holder’s operations without having to conquer the system. Disabling each service has specific effects;

• Medical
  Denies the ability to issue new clone contracts, while existing contracts are not voided, but disabled; players that die will be sent to their home station.
• Science & Industry
  Prevents the creation of new production and research jobs and pauses all active jobs in the station. Factories and research facilities are separate targets.
• Fitting
  Prevents pilots from fitting their ship.
• Repair
  Prevents pilots from repairing their ships in station.
• Reprocessing
  Disables refining and reprocessing of any kind in the station.

In order to disable a service, it has to be shot down to structure, at which point the service cannot be used until it is repaired back to 50% shields (as well as 100% structure and armour).

Each service has a certain importance; the more important it is, the higher its hitpoints, so while the Fitting service has the highest importance, the Repair Facility is the easiest to disable.

That's All Folks!

Or at least, for now. I hope it was informative, and should you have questions, feel free to comment.

Until we meet again,

LeMousse