Invasion Chapter 3 update from Team Event Horizon

Communications Center General Discussion
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Hi everyone,

We’re now entering the second weekend of the the awesome Invasion Chapter 3 content that was released on 26 May. Since the launch, thousands of capsuleers (or kybernauts, if you prefer) have been striving to advance their cause in systems all across New Eden; whether it be for EDENCOM or the Triglavians.

We’ve seen EDENCOM lock up a significant number of systems, meanwhile the pro-Triglavian kybernaut forces have managed to make Raravoss into the first final liminality system in New Eden and are now fighting hard to also lock in Vale.

Whichever side of the fight you’re on it should be clear by now that you’re involved in one of the most significant, high-stakes struggles in the history of EVE Online!

During this time we have been watching closely to see what issues might have arisen as this chapter unfolds, and Team Event Horizon has prepared this Q&A below to respond to some of the most common questions.

If you have any additional questions or follow-ups please leave them in this thread and we’ll do our best to respond, although in the short term please bear in mind that we’ve just entered the weekend so it might be a couple of days before someone can respond to specific questions!

Greetings intrepid capsuleers,

This week saw The Triglavian Collective ramp up their invasive efforts and drive further into New Eden. Capsuleers across the cluster have been showing their true colours by either defending the home of the Empires with the help of EDENCOM forces or testing their mettle with Triglavian support.

As the conflict continues, here are a few questions that capsuleers have been raising:

Does Autopilot consider a system with reduced Security Response Time to be low-sec or null-sec?

Yes, if a system has an effective Security Response time of a low-sec system, autopilot will try to avoid this system if the filters are set to avoid low-sec space.

If you encounter something to the contrary, please file a bug report about it here or press F12 in-client.

Why do the Triglavians and their supporters have the ability to lower Security Response time, but EDENCOM and their supporters cannot raise it?

The Triglavians are invading New Eden and their presence in our cluster is causing these changes. EDENCOM and their supporters are defending the status quo. There are no plans currently to change this dynamic.

It is worth noting however, that it is not yet known by capsuleers what the full impact of these changes to effective security response time will mean to the landscape of New Eden.

Why do I not always seem to get a Standings change for the effort I am putting into this conflict?

Standings changes are processed in batches. This means that the accumulated Standings changes are reported to your Standings log as a single entry even though they contain the earned Standings of several actions you have recently taken. This can very occasionally result in a description that does not match your latest action. The accumulated amounts will be accurate though for all of the activity in that time slot.

How do I gain Standings with my chosen side?

Standings are gained by killing any of the NPCs found in the various situations. Different NPCs grant different amounts of Standing, and capsuleers will have to determine for themselves how best to gain favour in this conflict.

It seems as if the Triglavians are only really interested in certain systems with certain star types. What is the point of attending Invasion systems that aren’t these types of systems?

The first few days of the Invasion saw the Triglavians and EDENCOM simply abandon some of the systems that they and their allies had won during their Stellar Reconnaissance. Triglavian and EDENCOM forces will now maintain a presence in these systems with the new Minor Victory Invasion states.

Once an invaded system changes to a Redoubt or Liminality stage can it be changed back?

Yes. During Redoubt/Bulwark or First/Second Liminality stages it is possible to bring it back. This will skip the Stellar Reconnaissance stage, moving directly into the opposing faction’s stage.

How do I know what level the Influence is?

We realize that messaging in this area is not ideal and we will be making it easier to determine what the current Influence level is soon.

Can we expect more to unfold in Final Liminality and Fortress systems?

Final Liminality and Fortress states are locked in to the winning faction. This sees faction forces redeploying to new fronts, with the victorious party only leaving behind enough to maintain a presence.

When can we expect to see the World Ark construct the next Transmuter stage?

A watched pot never boils. EVE’s content distribution systems historically do not deploy content on top of players.

Team Even Horizon are continuing to monitor the progression of the Invasion, with a particular eye to the balance of the war.

We hope that you are finding these recent changes to the complexion of New Eden as exciting as we do. Please let us know your thoughts below or reach out to the current members of the CSM about it, as they are an excellent conduit for feedback.

Speaking which, did you know that elections for CSM15 are currently ongoing? You can find out more here.

Please feel free to also use this thread to also promote your in-game organisations whether your cause is to support EDENCOM or the Triglavians!

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The Kybernauts would be happy to take in refugees from among the Empyreans to aid in the effort of liberating territory for the returning refugee empire of the Triglavian Collective.

The nature of ‘proving’ and the desire for the glorification of the fit seems to be right in line with our immortality. It is been too long that we have been held back by our Baseliner oppressors, their guard-dog CONCORD, and their Jovian tricks.

We call upon all true immortals to rise up, and reject the power-grab known as EDENCOM and assist in preparing territory for the returning refugee Triglavians.

To Zorya: We voluntarily become refugees from those who gave us birth. We require from you full admittance into the Triglavian Collective. We have been proven, we flow in one with Vyraj, we request admittance into the Collective, and the domain of Bujan!

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Ah, thank you, @CCP_Convict.

So, purely from a lore standpoint, I have a question about the latest events in the Invasion:

CONCORD controls all capsuleer cloning contracts. They control the fluid router infrastructure your infomorph (the burn-scan data of your brainstate at the moment of death) transits as you move to your next clone. Part of the reason for the Blackout was to preserve fluid router bandwidth for that kind of critical usage cases.

So why isn’t CONCORD just turning off capsuleers who are siding with the Trigs against EDENCOM?

Edit, also, reposting this:

Can we please just get a link to https://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/world-news/ on the articles page? Maybe over on a sidebar like the patch notes are?

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because trigs must have Russian version of the same sh#t

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Except they haven’t given the ‘Kybernauts’ access to any of their communications systems, nor have they demonstrated any control over the CONCORD cloning facilities those clones are at.

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Thank you CCP for reaching out and answering some really important Q&A with regard to the Invasion Chapter 3 content.

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Can you explain why so many systems have been won by EDENCOM rather than the Triglavians? Is this because there are fewer capsuleers supporting the invaders, or is there some other game mechanic involved that favors EDENCOM?

To put it another way, if equal numbers of EDENCOM and Triglavian were being eliminated, can you confirm that an even number of systems would be moving to each side (notwithstanding the Sun type restriction on Triglavain progress to full Liminality)?

Garth

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There’s an incentive for PvE raters to support status quo of maintained high security space. There are also mechanical challenges to supporting Triglavians.

-Supporting Edencom against Triglavians awards Concord LP. Trigs offer low ISK.
-Triglavians drop datasheets in wrecks. More consistent stable payout than Edencom wrecks.
-Triglavian systems with established invasion structures experience debuffs to warp speed and number of targets locked. In addition to lowered system security, this makes it more difficult to chase down rats and for logistics to function.
-Edencom systems have no debuffs, only buffs including armor strength and mining cycle time.

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hahahahahahahahahahahahahah.

The actual numbers are massively skewed toward the Trigs. But EDENCOM’s working on securing systems the Trigs aren’t hitting yet, so many of those get secured, because the Trig-supporters aren’t there. In addition, the Trigs’ ‘reconnaissance’ is hitting systems they won’t push into Liminality. That’ll only happen for Blue and Yellow stars (we think, and so far seems to hold up), so other systems (Like Aldik) get flipped, they decide ‘this star isn’t suitable’, and they leave.

Also, absent capsuleers, EDENCOM will outnumber the Trigs and win, from what we’ve seen so far.

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Does this mean a cloaked player could sit next to stuff on grid and force a wait until downtime?

Sounds like trigs should give a warning timer and start doing grid wide weather damage with all this solar energy they are harvesting to force players off grid for the necessary amount of time.

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With a recent update systems that initially seemed to fail and reset are now being counted as ‘minor victories’ for team Doritos or Edencon. No player knows how minor victory counts will factor into the final state of things.

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No-one even knows how the scoring’s done, or if this is timed or ‘first to 15 points’. :wink:

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So the answer to the question is just … no!? Is this it? There is no plan, no grand scheme behind all of this? This kills all initial enthusiasm for the new content.

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Or the objectives are different for the sides of the conflict. That would be a twist

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Kind of relating to this part.

@CCP_Convict : EVE has a rich lore official background and and CCP maintains an extensive library of it in the Fiction Portal and the CCP-provided World News in addition to Scope.

However, the Triglavian content has not been mentioned on the FP at all so far and only sporadically in the World News, during all the chapters so far. There has not been an update to either since Chapter 3, which has now been ongoing for weeks.

The lore nerd community is kind of puzzled by this and it looks like CCP has more or less stopped providing the extensive written lore content that used to kind of be one of its trademarks, and moved on to the “fluffier” videos and flavor texts only.

While we would be very sad if this was the case, a lot of us would very much like to explicitly know, instead of having our hopes set on content that won’t be coming.

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Good post!

A lot of people myself included are engaging with this content for RP purposes and it would be really helpful to know quite a bit of various things about the Triglavians and what exactly is happening in these invasions. How are the planets effected? Are there evacuation attempts? How hard do the Triglavians hit the settlements?

There was a mention in a news article about the Triglavians hitting stations and planets about a year ago, but very little since then. These Triangles are being made to be a big part of the world, but neither them nor their effects are being explained well.

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All of this is inaccurate. CONCORD do not control all capsuleer cloning contracts. They don’t control all cloning facilities. They don’t even control all FTL comms infrastructure. Moreover, the implication that capsuleers require a fluid router chain between them and their cloning facility’s built in fluid router is not true. The Blackout wasn’t about clone personality transmission, it pertained to every other critical usage of the network.

They can’t. The idea CONCORD can “turn off” capsuleers is a persistent one, with some seeds in deprecated lore, but it’s simply not the canonical position. Capsuleers have had the ability to establish their own cloning infrastructure for most of EVE’s lifetime and that has been well represented in the game by various features.

Increasing the exposure and accessibility of the Game World News, Fiction Portal and so on is very much at the forefront of our minds. It’s not just on the radar, it’s being actively looked at.

We don’t intend to stop writing the deeper lore that you and many others enjoy. I understand the puzzlement and frustration but I don’t feel I can offer an explanation other than say it wasn’t possible to do everything we would have wanted to do. I’m not happy about that but we will look to close the gap you identify very soon.

Part of the active focus in the next period I mentioned above will include a return to development of the Fiction Portal, both in terms of the technology it uses, its design and it’s content. I realize these are things that have been heard before but resources are being targeted on the vital importance of lore to EVE and its community.

Now, I think the primary intent of this thread is to focus on the FAQs and other points of the Invasion Chapter 3 feature that are mostly concerning mechanics and player experience. I was happy to address these points but I think I will leave it there for the weekend.

Cheers,
DZ

CCP Delegate Zero
Narrative Designer

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Thank you for the reply and I am happy to hear that there are still plans to fix these issues.

I kind of consider it telling though that “player experience” is considered a separate thing about how the story is being told, for content that has pretty much been marketed as an opportunity to shape the story of the universe.

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I’m just going to say, to be very clear, that this is not a separation I recognise or see as an element of CCP’s game development. I was attempting to suggest this thread on the Invasion Chapter 3 feature FAQ continue to be about it and what touches on it specifically, rather than a general discussion of how lore is delivered in EVE.

Thanks,
DZ

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As a thing of lore/narration specific to Chapter 3, I suppose the lack of lore becomes a special issue when there is so little other information to support the narrative, too.

I do like the gameplay idea that we do not know the mechanics beforehand and will discover them as we go.

However, it fits poorly with the narrative that you can “pick a side and decide the fate of the universe”. Even disregarding the lack of deep lore about what the trigs want, you cannot strategically decide whether to push a button, or which button to push, when you do not know what each of the buttons do.

So, us players can have an effect on what the universe looks like, now, and it’s novel and fun and whatnot. But we cannot really choose what kind of a universe we are fighting for, because we don’t have enough information, neither lore-wise nor mechanics-wise.

And that falls short of the hype.

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