[Into the Abyss] Entropic Disintegrators and Filaments - Naming, Visual, and Descriptive Suggestions


https://giant.gfycat.com/ElasticCheapIsabellineshrike.webm

With assets for EVE’s next expansion trickling onto SISI, we’re starting to see more of how the new elements we’ll be interacting with ingame will be implemented and described - on that note, though, I’ve got a few thoughts. I’ve split the different parts of this post into individual sections, which you can view by clicking the dropdown for each one.


turrets1

Entropic Disintegrator Module - Naming Conventions:

The new “Entropic Disintegrator” modules have arrived, with new naming conventions and visuals for both the modules themselves and their respective ammunition. I’m honestly wicked excited to get my hands on it all and see how things feel, but the naming scheme used for the modules and ammo leaves something to be desired.

As they are now, the different sizes of ED modules look like this:

Small: Small Entropic Disintegrator
Medium: Medium Entropic Disintegrator
Large: Large Entropic Disintegrator

No other weapons have such a cadenced naming scheme - pulse lasers, for one, go from “Small Focused Pulse Laser” to “Heavy Pulse Laser” to “Mega Pulse Laser” - some sizing is left in, but it still lets things sound suitably sci-fi. Flying home from Fanfest, I had some time to brainstorm some ideas of my own - I feel like these names capture the right scope a bit better:

Small: Entropic Disintegrator Stream
Medium: Entropic Disintegrator Current
Large: Entropic Disintegrator Torrent

Using words like “stream”, “torrent”, etc. flow well with the intent behind the modules (literally and figuratively), given their constant flow against a target over time, and a scaled strength increase works well, thematically - combined with the name “Abyss”, some water and ocean-based naming seems entirely appropriate.

Beyond that, the meta and faction modifiers for ED names could also be spiced up a bit. The current meta versions are “compact” and “scoped”, which apply to many regular modules as well. Throwing in a unique metascheme for the new modules, as all other turret types also have their own, would fit a bit more smoothly - maybe terms like “aggrandized” or “truncated”?

As for faction variants, all three sizes use “Veles” as the modifier - but with each Triglavian ship displaying a different name from the three aspects of Triglav, using “Perun” for the small, “Svarog” for the medium, and “Veles” for the large alone would be far more fitting.

(edit: changed Perun/Svarog/Veles to Peruna/Svarov/Velesian, for the three Triglavian “Clades”)

Here’s a how full variant list for the modules would look, should they use the scheme above:

Small:
Entropic Disintegrator Stream I
Truncated Entropic Disintegrator Stream
Aggrandized Entropic Disintegrator Stream
Entropic Disintegrator Stream II
Peruna Entropic Disintegrator Stream


Medium:
Entropic Disintegrator Current I
Truncated Entropic Disintegrator Current
Aggrandized Entropic Disintegrator Current
Entropic Disintegrator Current II
Svarov Entropic Disintegrator Current


Large:
Entropic Disintegrator Torrent I
Truncated Entropic Disintegrator Torrent
Aggrandized Entropic Disintegrator Torrent
Entropic Disintegrator Torrent II
Velesian Entropic Disintegrator Torrent


ammobase

Entropic Disintegrator Ammo - Naming Conventions and Icons:

Next up, ammo. Currently, there are five types of charges per size of Disintegrator, which use the icons you see above - and their names go as follows:

Gluon Charge Bottle - Increased range, reduced damage
Mystic (tech II) - Increased range, slightly increased damage
Lepton Charge Bottle - Standard range, standard damage
Quark Charge Bottle - Reduced range, increased damage
Occult (tech II) - Highly reduced range, highest damage

From the get-go, “charge bottle” should definitely be removed from the item names - the term is already the category name for the charge type, so it really shouldn’t be in the individual charge names as well.

As interesting as using atomic particle types & mystic names with slick red-and-grey icons is, there’s no way to distinguish range and damage by visuals or by name - and as cool as the icons are, they’re all a bit too similar; slightly changing the color range across the board would aid immensely in determining which type of ammo you have loaded at a glance:

ammonew

Adjusting the final color of the weapon’s beam in-scene to match the above would also go a long way toward making the different ammo types recognizably distinct, like with laser ammo.

Moving onto the names themselves, there’s far less issue with them than with those of the modules themselves - but I did also work out a naming scheme of my own during my flight, alongside the turrets. Again turning to water, taking inspiration from the names used to classify the pelagic depth zones of the ocean led to a pretty concise & progressive nameflow:

Gluon → Dawn or Photic - close to the surface, more sunlit & warm than deep or crushing.
Mystic → Twilight - pressure and depth increase, while some light it still present.
Lepton → Midnight - mid-range of the ocean, and mid-range for the ammo spread here.
Quark → Abyssal - the most commonly used ammo - shares a name with the expanse itself.
Occult → Hadal - the deepest, crushing ocean depths - works well as the strongest ammo.


ammonew1

(With each size of the above followed by S/M/L, like all other ammo)

Faction ammo following the turret naming scheme (Peruna for small charges, Svarov for medium, Velesian for large ones), along with a strong faction variant (Triclade? Mitral?), could also be included in the lineup to populate a final list of ammo types as complete as those of other weapon types.


filamentsbase

Abyssal Filaments - Naming Conventions, Icons, and Technobabble:

Finally we come to Abyssal Filaments: the access points for everything that comes with the Abyss. Their names lay out as follows, in order from the lowest to the highest tier encounter:

Types: Gamma, Firestorm, Exotic, Electrical, Dark


Tier 1: Calm (Type) Filament
Tier 2: Agitated (Type) Filament
Tier 3: Fierce (Type) Filament
Tier 4: Raging (Type) Filament
Tier 5: Chaotic (Type) Filament

Starting off, the icon colors for these items are staggered in a strange way - the first three tiers all appear as red, with the highest pair both shining gold. As with the ammo, these do not show their individual depth levels as distinctly as they could, beyond the glowing tick marks on the icon objects themselves.

Color-coding these by depth in the same way as the ammo above displays the deeper and deadlier depths of the abyss as a progressing, cohesive gradient as both potential danger and potential rewards increase:

filamentsnew

As for the naming scheme, some of the tier descriptors for these items (calm, fierce, chaotic) sound less like intensities of weather, and more like some very unpredictable fellow’s moods. Switching out these words for ones more often used to describe storm intensity would anchor the items in a more tangible way. The Type descriptors, on the other hand, are about as apt as they should be - not sounding strange while getting the information of the primary weather you’ll encounter across. My only changes there would be to substitute similar terms for some of them - “Charge” for “Electrical”, and “Flare” for “Firestorm”.

The word “Filament” on just its own also comes off as a tad misrepresentative of the form of the items - visually, they seem to come off as spatial tears, contained and made usable by the ringlike device surrounding them. It may work out a bit better to instead call the item a “Trace”, contained by a cell that braces the tear and allows a user to dive into the Abyss. Justified in Sci-fi terms, the trace cell could be locked internally by the user’s ship’s warp core, which would tug them down into Abyssal Deadspace.

Putting that all together, this is one vision for the naming scheme, visuals, and possible description & technobabble behind the workings of these items:

Types: Gamma, Flare, Exotic, Charge, Dark


Descriptor: Filament → Trace


Tier 1: Calm → Tranquil (Type) Trace
Tier 2: Agitated → Agitated (Type) Trace
Tier 3: Fierce → Turbulent (Type) Trace
Tier 4: Raging → Ferocious (Type) Trace
Tier 5: Chaotic → Raging (Type) Trace


filamentsnew1


Description:
A nonlinear subspace tear, contained and converted into a navigable trace by a contraption of Triglavian origin. Routing a ship’s warp core into the tear will induce a subspace conduit between the source and potentially any dimensionally adjacent point within the trace’s topological scope, drawing the ship into a relatively stable but unpredictable pocket of Abyssal Deadspace. The conduit will contract impassably upon entry, with the original entry trace becoming highly energetic and detectable by even cursory scans of the area; this may prove dangerous in some cases, as the trace remains linked to the warp core of the ship passing through it, and Triglavian navigational structures will eventually reconnect any ships traversing the Abyss to their stable entry point.

This trace will draw an activating (Hull Size)-range mass into a (Tier Descriptor) (Weather Descriptor)


Hull Size: Initially only “Cruiser”, but in the future “Compact”, “Reinforced”, etc. Traces could allow other sizes of hulls to access Abyssal Deadspace.


Tier Descriptor:
Tranquil: “…relatively calm…”
Agitated: “…somewhat volatile…”
Turbulent: “…considerably volatile…”
Ferocious: “…dangerously unstable…”
Raging: “…critically unstable…”


Weather Descriptor:
Gamma: “…area bathed in the afterglow of a powerful gamma ray burst…”
Flare: “…area basking in the heat of a nebular firestorm.”
Exotic: “…area shimmering in a strange storm of exotic particles.”
Charge: “…area energized by an arcing electrical field of stellar proportions.”
Dark: “…area clouded by a dense concentration of gravitationally abnormal matter.”


That’s it for now - I’d love to see some of this be considered, & I’m really confident it would help a lot to make this already wicked cool new stuff look and sound even better - maybe the UI team and @CCP_Delegate_Zero will like some of the distinctions and techno-lorecrafting respectively~

There’s still a lot of time left for iteration before the expansion drops, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the current iteration won’t even end up being the final one - we’ll just have to wait and see where things go from here :slight_smile:

o7

-Uriel

26 Likes

Sounds very convincing, well thought through and more imaginary than the CCP names.

4 Likes

The color changes for the charges needs to be added, that is a very important quality of life feature.

5 Likes

I endorse this product and/or service.

Well done as usual, especially the hue change is a very good idea as simple effect indicator. If CCP’s going to adopt anything from this, it should be at least that.

Edit: Also that “Gluon” really needs to be changed to something else. It sounds too much like “glue-on” at least how I pronounce it in my head.

2 Likes

+1

Anything Uriel writes is worth reading. This OP especially.

7 Likes

Definite +1 from me.

The ammo names in particular are much better than the current ones.

4 Likes

+1 for your well thought-out suggestions. Definitely not a fan of “occult” or “mystic”.

I like Photic, Twilight, Midnight, Abyss and Hadal myself.

6 Likes

Another quality post from Uriel +1 gajillion!

2 Likes

Anyone remember the fiasco with naming polarized weapons? (at one point they were going to be called imbued, among other things)

1 Like

Making an adjustment: as it turns out, the Triglavian corps have shown up, & they correspond with these images images from the art panel:

image

The corps are the Peruna, Svarov, and Velesian Clades - seeing as they match the trio so obviously, I’m adjusting the faction variants of the Disintegrators to match :slight_smile:

3 Likes

If I could possibly make a few alternate suggestions for “truncated” and “aggrandized”?

Truncated Entropic Disintegrator Current
Aggrandized Entropic Disintegrator Stream

Truncated » Shear
Aggrandized » Intense

So:

Shear Entropic Disintegrator Current
Intense Entropic Disintegrator Stream

1 Like

+1 This idea

1 Like

Potato? Ok then. (Peruna is Finnish for potato)

2 Likes

:wink:

But joke aside indeed good post.

2 Likes

Was no joke. He’s always been one of the most engaging and interesting writers in the community.

At one point I was convinced he was an alt of CCP Guard, but in reality, he’s much taller. j/k

2 Likes

Good thoughts, They will add character nicely

You misunderstood, I was referring to myself joking. Check my name and re-read that post, it should make sense now.

3 Likes

shush, just let it be T.E.D.

Oh yes, those are much better and make sense. :+1::+1::+1:

While I like many of the lore and flavor-enhancing suggestions, this one speaks to a good change when helping explain EVE modules to new players: Tier-a-cide and its consistent modifier language. Explaining EVE takes long enough as it is :wink: