Fractured Skies went live today, Tuesday 10 November, with the 11:00 UTC downtime. We have already covered the roadmap in Fractured Skies Lands November 10 and the design side in Fractured Skies In Focus. Back then most of the numbers were missing. Now they are public, the servers are up, and r/Eve has had its first couple of hours with the patch.
This article only covers what is new: the final figures from the expansion notes, the launch-day gifts, and the first things players say are broken.
Seven days of free Omega, with a catch
The official launch post, The Fractured Skies Expansion Is Here, lists a set of freebies:
Seven days of Omega, claimed in the New Eden Store until 20 November. Once per account, and for up to three accounts per email: a main and two alts.
Daily gifts with up to 800,000 skill points, Quafe Zero boosters, 17 new SKINR components and four empire character backgrounds.
A weekly NES gift of 15,000 SP. Omega pilots can also claim 25 PLEX, once per account, until 10:59 UTC on 17 November.
The three-account limit is the part r/Eve noticed first. One thread sums it up in a line: if you kept all your multibox accounts under one email, only three of them get the week. Another player with a long list of accounts says he could not pick which ones received it, and that two of the three were already Omega. That is one person's report, but it is worth checking before you claim.
A third thread asks where the login rewards are, since the author could not find them right after downtime. The launch post gives no start date for the daily gifts, so we cannot say whether that is a bug or just timing.
Navy attack battlecruisers: what they cost and what they do
The expansion notes, published on 6 November, finally put numbers on the four new hulls. Each one is sold as a blueprint copy for 52,000 LP and 13 million ISK in its faction's Factional Warfare store:
Ship | LP store | Bonuses per skill level |
|---|---|---|
Oracle Navy Issue | 24th Imperial Crusade | 15% large energy turret damage, 7.5% optimal range, 10% less turret activation cost |
Naga Navy Issue | State Protectorate | 10% kinetic cruise missile and torpedo damage, 5% for the other damage types, 10% missile velocity |
Talos Navy Issue | Federal Defense Union | 15% large hybrid damage, 7.5% falloff, 15% less armor plate mass penalty |
Tornado Fleet Issue | Tribal Liberation Force | 10% large projectile rate of fire, 7.5% falloff, 15% less microwarpdrive signature penalty |
All four keep the role bonus that lets a battlecruiser fit battleship weapons: 95% less powergrid and 50% less CPU for large guns or launchers.
More official images: Naga Navy Issue · Talos Navy Issue · Tornado Fleet Issue
The first known issue is about the Oracle
Launch day would not be launch day without one. A r/Eve thread quotes the Known Issues list for version 24.02: the Oracle Navy Issue is using the standard Oracle model with an Amarr Navy SKIN on it, instead of the new faction model. The poster is not amused that a brand new ship shipped with the wrong hull. We could not open the official known-issues page ourselves, so we are relying on the line as quoted there.
Another player reports that the new Imperial Navy tackle modules, which the In Focus post placed in both the Amarr Navy and 24th Imperial Crusade LP stores, do not show up in the Amarr Navy store. Nobody had confirmed or denied it when we checked.
Synchronizer rigs and the "Vital" modules
Synchronizer rigs now have real stats. You can fit only one, in small, medium or large, and it gains a flat 1% for every matching faction module on the ship. Three examples from the notes:
Imperial Navy: 5% energy turret damage, 5% less turret capacitor use, 5% armor HP, 5% capacitor amount.
Dark Blood: 10% Nosferatu and neutralizer drain, 10% overload bonus, 5% optimal and falloff, 5% energy turret damage, paid for with a 200% capacitor recharge penalty.
Dread Guristas: 10% drone HP and damage, 5% shield resistances, 5% ECM strength and optimal, with a 60% drone control range penalty.
A new skill, Synchronization Rigging, costs 25 million ISK and cuts the rigs' CPU penalty by 10% per level.
The notes also add "Aberrant" modules that drop from Drifter and Rogue caches. They have a weak passive effect and a short active burst. The example given is the Vigilant 'Vital' Overdrive Injector: 8% speed passively, 15% for 20 seconds, then a two-minute cooldown.
Players were sceptical before the patch even landed. In "Vital mods will be DOA" (comparison image) the author argues the passive values are too low for what you get in the active window. It is an opinion based on the published stats, not on live testing.
Did someone know the materials early?
On 6 November a gallery post with market graphs claimed that the materials for the new rigs were bought out a week before the costs were published. It reached the top of the subreddit and stayed in the top 25 for 34 hours.
FC Swift answered in the comments, pointing to the dev chat of 28 October, which already described the rigs and the kind of materials involved, and saying the studio always investigates suspicious spikes like these but that they "track more toward speculation after the chat than leaks". Several commenters agreed. The original poster did not.
Balance pass: the final numbers
The earlier article could only say that strategic cruisers were getting "targeted improvements". These are the figures in the notes:
Legion: velocity 185 to 200 m/s, base powergrid 625 to 650, Augmented Plating from +1,000 to +1,500 armor HP.
Proteus: signature radius 190 to 165, and a stronger mass-penalty reduction on Augmented Plating (25% to 37.5%).
Tengu: Obfuscation Manifold ECM bonus 10% to 12.5% per level, Magnetic Infusion Basin damage 5% to 7.5% per level.
Loki: Projectile Scoping Array powergrid +300 to +330.
Sacrilege: rate of fire bonus down from 7.5% to 5% per level, missile damage bonus up from 5% to 7.5%. In effective launchers it goes from 10 to 9.17.
Cerberus: kinetic missile damage bonus doubled, 2.5% to 5% per level.
Vengeance: 200 HP moved from shield to armor (armor 816 to 1,016), plus 3% armor HP per Assault Frigates level.
Carriers: the Integrated Sensor Array now gives light fighters +20% explosion velocity and -10% explosion radius.
Defender launchers: activation cost from 50 GJ to 5 GJ, missile flight time from 3 to 5 seconds.
Void bombs: explosion delay from 7.5 to 12 seconds, velocity from 4,000 to 2,500 m/s.
Reactions split along predictable lines. In the expansion notes thread (98 comments) some call the strategic cruiser changes very small, while others insist that the extra Legion powergrid matters more than it looks. A Tengu thread asks for the same kinetic treatment the Cerberus got. And a short, happy post titled "FC can we have more updates like this from now on" hit the number one spot on the subreddit, mostly on the back of the carrier and rig changes.
Military Campaigns: where to go
The four two-month campaigns started with the patch. The notes add the practical details:
War HQ systems: Mehatoor (Amarr), Onnamon (Caldari), Intaki (Gallente), Amo (Minmatar). That is where the item traders are.
Achievements: each campaign has six regular and six hidden ones. The regular set gives five SKINs, six titles and 600,000 SP. The hidden set adds six more titles and another 600,000 SP, so 1.2 million SP per campaign.
SARO Black Sites: short-lived sites spawned by EVE Vanguard contracts and expeditions, with more campaign drops.
Factional Warfare complexes: NPCs are now capped at five waves, and tag drops go up.
Rogue Drone Outbreaks: infestations in Gallente space that end when players clear the sites.
The first faction in each rivalry to finish its objectives gets its general on the field for the January battle. The notes name them: Capital Marshal Sirdan xer Qosh for the Amarr, Hetman General Kanth Filmir for the Minmatar, Executive General Heika Torigo for the Caldari and Vice Admiral Foriana Revelli for the Gallente.
A small line that pirates waited years for
Buried in the "Little Things" section: assets from Pirate Insurgency FOBs are now sent to Zarzakh by default, and no longer to the closest low-sec system.
It sounds minor. It is not for the people who live there. In a thread from 9 November, a pirate Factional Warfare player explains that they asked for exactly this when the feature launched, and that it finally makes Zarzakh work as a real hub for Angel and Guristas groups, with their gear in one place. His only complaint is that it arrives years late.
The new HUD is in, if you turn it on
Phase one of the new HUD is opt-in. According to one of the first player write-ups (screenshot), you enable it from Settings (Esc), under Feature Previews.
His first impressions are a fair summary of what a quick look gives you. He likes the top alignment, the speedometer, the new heat status and the cycle ring around module icons. He does not like the wide gaps between icons, the darker and greyer look, and the fact that the option is not mentioned in the User Interface tab.
New players: 13 ships that should never leave home
The AIR Academy ships are in: 13 free, pre-fitted hulls for Exordium, one at a time. The notes list a set of safeguards. Outside Exordium and the Abyss they cannot undock or warp, and you cannot eject from them or trade them.
r/Eve immediately took that as a challenge. "You just know one of those academy ships is instantly going to escape containment despite those safeguards," one of the first comments reads. FC Swift replied: "There are a lot of safeguards in place, but yeah you'll collectively figure it out."
The AIR Career Program has also moved into the Achievements system, with 78 achievements. As a reminder thread pointed out the night before, the old goals disappeared at downtime.
Videos
The video an r/Eve user posted this morning as the expansion trailer (thread).
The official In Focus expansion overview.
The official Azdaja Redoubt video, on the event we covered in Azdaja Redoubt: Triglavians Destroy a Drifter Nexus Structure.
What to watch next
Three things. First, whether the Oracle model and the LP store reports get fixed quickly. Second, what the synchronizer rigs and the navy battlecruisers actually cost on the market once the first Factional Warfare LP is cashed in. Third, the campaign race: bonuses go live in early January, and the first empire to finish all four objectives picks where the mid-January battle is fought.
Most launch-day threads are only an hour or two old as we write, so read them as first reactions. We will come back once there are real numbers.
Sources
Official
EVE Online: The Fractured Skies Expansion Is Here
EVE Online: Fractured Skies Expansion Notes
EVE Online: Patch Notes - Version 24.02
EVE Online forums: Fractured Skies - Expansion Notes
YouTube: In Focus expansion overview
r/Eve
