The Stargate Trailblazers event is now live, and it is time for the Empires to work together and gather the resources needed to construct new stargate routes in New Eden! You can find information about what connections are going to be built in the Agency in-game and patch notes.
There is a specific gameplay policy associated with this event that you can view here. In brief, players may not take actions that are intended to deny other players the ability to complete the empire mining expeditions sites unless those actions involve direct PVP combat.
Hello industrious capsuleers! I’ll be using this post to give an overview of the Stargate Trailblazers event for anyone who is interested.
Stargate Trailblazers is a new mining event that brings back the sites that had formerly been a part of the old Resource Wars feature in a new form with some additional polish and rebalanced rewards.
The four empires are each planning expansions to the stargate network to advance their respective interests. These new stargates will be online next month, but in the meantime the empires are offering riches and renown to capsuleers willing to contribute to the project of collecting resources for these gates. The newly planned connections for each empire are:
After the loss of Niarja to the Triglavian Collective, the Chief Executive Panel has prioritized the creation of a new direct connection between the State and their traditional allies and trading partners in the Amarr Empire.
OOC: This new connection creates a new shorter option for travel between Jita and Amarr that includes a lowsec system (Ahbazon).
The Empire (and especially House Tash-Murkon) feel prepared to engage more directly with their enemies in Sansha’s Nation and as a symbol of their confidence they are constructing this new stargate a stone’s throw from the ruins of the Traumark Installation in Saminer.
President Celes Aguard ran on a platform of prioritizing the traditional periphery of the Federation, including a promise to finally connect the Solitude region to the rest of Federation space with a new stargate connection. Her administration is now following through to keep that promise.
OOC: The new connection between Kenninck and Eggheron connects Solitude with Federation space while preserving Solitude’s unique nature as a region that can only be accessed through lowsec and nullsec. Solitude’s highsec areas will remain islands surrounded by lowsec, but now a new lowsec route through Placid will exist as an alternative to the existing lowsec route through Aridia.
This gate directly connects Minmatar Republic space with the CONCORD constellation in Genesis. The wounds from the events of YC110 are slowly healing, and this represents a significant sign of trust between the Republic and CONCORD. This particular connection is also connected to discussions between the empires and CONCORD the results of which will be revealed in the future.
OOC: This connection opens up access to a relatively isolated section of Metropolis, and it notably increases connectivity to CONCORD space. I won’t go into two much detail at the moment, but CONCORD space is expected to become more significant in a number of ways in the future.
The four empires are putting their immense resources towards the completion of these new stargate connections, and they are more than capable of constructing the gates without capsuleer assistance if needed. However capsuleers are incredibly powerful and efficient resource harvesters so all four empires are offering to reward capsuleers who assist with collecting resources for these construction projects. This takes the form of the return of the empire mining expedition sites that had previously been a part of the resource wars feature and that were removed for polish and repurposing a few months ago. The basic mechanics of these sites remain unchanged, with players tasked with mining a special set of ores and depositing the results into friendly NPC Orcas with a time limit and waves of hostile and friendly NPCs.
Each of these mining expedition sites has a limit on the types of ships that can enter as well as the number of pilots that can be inside.
The Limited Mining Expeditions allow up to three pilots flying corvettes and frigates (including the Venture)
The Minor Mining Expeditions allow up to four pilots flying corvettes, frigates, expedition frigates, and destroyers
The Standard Mining Expeditions allow up to five pilots flying corvettes, frigates, expedition frigates, destroyers, cruisers, and mining barges
The Major Mining Expeditions allow up to six pilots flying corvettes, frigates, expedition frigates, destroyers, cruisers, mining barges, battlecruisers, and exhumers
The Critical Mining Expeditions allow up to seven pilots flying corvettes, frigates, expedition frigates, destroyers, cruisers, mining barges, battlecruisers, exhumers, and battleships
Each site has a time limit, and if your group completes it more quickly you can receive bonus ISK and LP.
These sites will only provide ISK and LP to pilots who have contributed to the completion of the site.
The changes to this content from the previous versions in Resource Wars are:
The rewards have been rebalanced completely. This includes improved ISK/LP rewards from the sites themselves and a complete reworking of the resource wars corporation LP stores which now directly provide permanent skins and clothing items.
The ship faction restrictions and standing restrictions have been removed from all mining expedition sites.
New variations of the Imperial expeditions have been created that include Sansha enemies
Various minor bug fixes
These mining expedition sites can now be found in large numbers within the constellations containing the new stargate links. This includes highsec, lowsec, (and in the case of the F7 gate) nullsec systems.
Beside the direct ISK and LP rewards for completing these sites, the empires will also be placing monument structures at each of the new stargate connections once they are built. These monuments will list the capsuleers and capsuleer corporations that contributed the most to the construction of that specific stargate.
A leaderboard with recent listings of the top players and corporations can be found at Stargate Trailblazers Event Leaderboard.
Considering, narratively, the scale of the empires, I doubt we could really stop them in any notable capacity, and frankly… you expect an event with hours of dev time put into it to be left entirely up to player choice? Chances are, we either accelerate or delay the inevitable is my bet
Considering this is an alleged sandbox MMO where our actions matter I would find the inability to side with the local pirate NPCs that seek to harvest the minerals for themselves a HUGE missed opportunity.
“This has, unfortunately, attracted attention from the local pirate groups seeking to take the newly mined resources for themselves.”
My corporation consists of career criminals… pirates. Why can we not rebel against the empire factions and assist pirate NPCs in seeing New Eden change how WE want?
Everything officially written about this event has been VERY vague about whether or not a new gate can be prevented. I too smell a predetermined Triglavian Invasion-style outcome.
Be nice if we could even enter the sites, keep getting the message theyre at capacity, yet no one on dscan. Let alone enough people in local to fill every site…
