Coming to Wormholes in Proteus
Cilvius Sanctus
Recon Ships
The ship rebalancing initiative is finally getting around to Recon ships, and I have to say I am pretty excited by the changes. CCP Rise details them in a forum post here but the most exciting change (in my opinion) is that Combat Recons (Curse, Rook, Lachesis, and Huginn) are getting a new role bonus: “Cannot be detected by directional scanners.” This essentially gives them a built-in cloaking device to anything they are not on-grid with, which is a pretty big deal in w-space. Current meta for ganks in w-space generally has a scout in a covert ops find a target (or targets) and then either hero tackle that target (with mixed results) or wait for another ship (possibly a HICtor or DICtor) to come in to tackle, or just crashing the wormhole with your fleet and hoping you can grab the target(s) without scaring them away. With combat recons now being hidden from d-scan you now have a very powerful way to nab targets in w-space without tipping your hand too early and without having to wait out a decloak timer before locking. Now a Lachesis can suddenly pop up on grid with you and point you before you even knew you were being watched. The rest of the changes to Recon ships are interesting, though not as exciting. I’m hoping this will give them more use in all areas of space. While the ships themselves didn’t seem to get much of a DPS increase, I can still see Recon fleets becoming a thing, even if only Combat Recons and only in w-space. It is also worth noting, in case you haven’t seen the updates to the originally proposed changes, that Recon Ships were initially going to be changed to all have a T2 resist profile but CCP Rise posted an update to the thread that states they decided to change that for fear that it would be overpowered when coupled with the other changes. The thread also mentions that they had previously delayed changes to these ships because they were hoping to get some ECM changes in before touching them, so hopefully we will get some ECM changes in the module rebalancing sometime soon. All in all, I think this should put Recon Ships in a pretty good place.Modules, Dust Particles, and Corp Stuff
The next few things aren’t terribly exciting, but they warrant a mention. The details are out for the next batch of modules to get rebalanced. This time around CCP is taking a look at Harvest Equipment, Hull Upgrades, Propulsion Upgrades, and Engineering Equipment. Odds are you use something from at least one of these categories so you should take a peek at the blog. CCP is also adding some new effects to asteroid belts and, while I’m not sure if they will show up in the mining sites in w-space, they sure look pretty. Lastly, the dev blog talks about the continuing work toward improving the current sov mechanics. That section briefly mentions changes coming this year toward structures (along with a structures survey) and changes to corp and alliance functions (including alliance bookmarks \o/). The dev blog states that these features will be released throughout 2015 so there is no telling when any one feature will be coming (alliance bookmarks soon please) but hopefully we get some major changes to roles and POSes Soon™.On the Horizon
While Proteus isn’t the most exciting release for life in w-space it still brings some nice things, and with the six week release cycle it won’t be long before we see another release bringing more features and fixes. The Proteus release will be going live on TQ on January 13th.About the author
Cilvius Sanctus
Cilvius enjoys being really slow at scanning down wormholes and targets, getting trapped on the wrong side of a collapsed wormhole, stalking neutral site runners while cloaked as a fleet forms up, and badgering members of his corporation and alliance to use the wormhole mapper site.
