CCP Games’ CEO, Hilmar Veigar Pétursson has repeatedly been quoted in recent months as wanting to bring a “Chaos Era” to EVE Online, in order to combat the perception of stagnation and dominance within the game’s player run ecosystem. It appears that another change in this vein has been announced, with CCP Rise writing on the official forums that:
“This September we are planning two large changes for Cynosural Fields:
- Cynosural Field Generator I can only be fit by Force Recon Ships and Black Ops Battleships (note: these classes can still fit covert cynos)
- Jump Freighters can jump to Covert Cynosural Fields“
This represents a huge change to EVE Online’s capital movement system, as Cynosaural Field Generators (referred to as simply “Cynos”) are what allow these large ships to jump between systems, with a Cyno being required as a target of each jump. Previously, these could be fit to any ship, and as such this change vastly reduces the number of ships which can be used to facilitate capital movement.
This will have impacts in a number of areas, but the most base level is increasing the cost involved in moving a ship, as using a cyno leaves that ship immobile and easy to kill. As a result, before this change, when moving in a non-combat situation most players chose to use disposable frigates that they didn’t mind losing. The cheapest option, a force recon, will now cost 10-15x more than that. This will also likely disrupt the common methods of home defence used in EVE’s biggest empires, which have typically fit cynos directly to their PvE ships in order to bring home defence fleets in to save them if in danger, which will no longer be possible.
As one would expect with a change like this, opinion is harshly divided, with the forum thread having racked up just shy of 300 posts in an hour. However, with a month or more to go, only time will tell what this proposed change will truly bring.
