Helpful Capsuleers
On Thursday, the 23rd of October, we will be temporarily opening the doors to Singularity once again. This time we are hoping to gather your valuable feedback on some of the new mining gameplay, content and systems which are currently planned to be released in the winter expansion.
In particular, we would like some help with performance testing during the mass test and feedback around the gameplay of a new mining site we are planning to release called the “Phased Field”. This site contains a brand new special ore type, and brand new mining gameplay. Which will be talked about in more detail below. As well as the changes and improvements we’ve made to the look and feel of mining.
Check out the planned mass test on singularity here.
Also check out the news item covering this here.
Additionally, we’ve done a huge overhaul to mining UX! And there are a few other surprises in this build.
Keep in mind that features are still in active development, graphics, stats and design may not fully represent the final product. This is primarily a performance test, but we welcome any feedback, but bear in mind that some feedback may be impossible to action before the expansion launches.
Mining UX
Mining cycles for regular ore mining lasers and strip miners have been decreased by 4x, with a similar decrease in yields, capacitor, and mining crystal volatility damage, so mining will feel a lot more responsive and give you feedback more often, while still producing the same yield over time.
Mining Critical hits have been introduced into the game. All Mining lasers now have a small chance to critically hit, and get bonus ore and ice. The bonus amount from crits is not deducted from the total amount of ore inside the asteroid either! You’ll now also be able to see how full your mining hold is in space on your ship
All Corvettes and bonused mining ships will now have a built in asteroid scanner, which can be activated to scan nearby asteroids. The asteroids will glow from yellow (most valuable) to blue (least valuable) in terms of isk/m3 so you don’t have to do a bunch of maths to figure out what you should be mining. By fitting a Survey Scanner, you’ll also be able to see the total amount of ore left in asteroids, ice and gas clouds when you activate the scanner. The ORE industrial command ships will also be able to give everyone the effects of a Survey Scanner while they are in fleet and have one equipped (or a command burst effect??)
Additionally, many other UX improvements have been made such as the long requested ‘compress all ore, ice and gas in my ship’ hotkey.
Phased Asteroid Site
This is a new type of mining site we are releasing with the expansion, it is intended to be a highly rewarding site. In this site, there are 4 Phased Asteroids, as well as regular asteroids. Phased Asteroids cannot be mined normally, they can only be mined while they are inside an object in the site called the fracture, which will slowly move from one end of the site to the other end. The total duration of the site is around 40 hours. While Phased asteroids are inside the Fracture, they will activate and become mineable, however, players will only be able to mine them at 10% efficiency until they deploy and charge up a new mining deployable called the ‘Mobile Phase Anchor’
Mobile Phase Anchors are cheap structures that should cost around 5 million ISK, they can be deployed by anyone, but must be deployed within 50km of a Phased Asteroid. Once Deployed, only an Industrial Command Ship is capable of connecting to one, to provide it with energy. Once the Mobile Phase Anchor has enough energy, then it will become active and begin attempting to phase in the Phased Prismaticite. After 60 seconds, the Phased Prismaticite will be phased in, and can then be mined at 100% efficiency for the next several minutes. It will go back to being phased out again. Mobile Phase Anchors have 6 activations, and 1 activation will be consumed for each phase in attempt.
The energy required by the phase anchor can be provided by 1 Rorqual or 2 Orcas or 3 Porpoises or a combination of these ships.
The new site must be discovered with scan probes, and doesn’t appear on the overview like regular ore sites. However, after approximately 20 hours have passed since it was first discovered, the site will spawn a beacon which will appear on all players overviews, and it will also be discoverable on the world map from anywhere in new eden. The last 2 phased asteroids in the site feature the largest amounts of Prismaticite, and the fracture will not reach them to activate them until the site is visible on the world map, meaning everyone will know about a phased field site when the last 2 asteroids are active.
Prismaticite itself is especially erratic but incredibly valuable. Unlike regular asteroids, when Prismaticite is reprocessed it can randomly become any mineral in the game, and has a variable quantity rather than a fixed quantity like other ores, for example, you could refine 100 units of Prismacite and get Tritanium, and then refine 100 units of Prismaticite and get Isogen! If you want some more control on what mineral type it will become, you can perform a reaction job on Compressed Prismaticite to convert it into unrefined minerals, which will then be able to be reprocessed into a specific mineral type.
Highsec Mining Content
But wait - There’s more. While the focus of the mass test is the Phased Asteroid Field site and the new mining UX. We’ve also revamped a lot of mining sites in high security space including replacing the old asteroid belt remnants site with new managed asteroid field sites, we’re bringing back the old Omber and Kernite anomalies to highsec with a full visual overhaul, and you might find more of them around the empire shipcaster systems. We’ve also added a brand new highsec mining escalation which can be obtained from the Omber and Kernite anomalies, and we’ve also done a visual overhaul of level 1 through level 3 mining missions. We’ve also bumped up the LP and ISK rewards from level 1 and level 2 mining missions by 50%.
New Ships
Singularity will have an early preview of the 5 new ships we plan to release with the expansion, the Pioneer mining destroyer, the Outrider Command Destroyer, The Venture and Pioneer Consortium issue and the SOE Expedition Command ship. These ships will not be obtainable on Singularity and you will not be able to fly them in space. however, you will be able to simulate them and see an early version of their proposed stats and bonuses.
It should be noted that the graphics for the ships are still in active development and not representative of the final version of them. We would also like to remind everyone that this is a test server and things are actively changing and in active development.
Singularity will remain open until Monday the 27th of October, so if you can’t join us for the mass test, then we’d still love your feedback!