We have a new guide up, this time describing the wonderful world of professional Tackling! Or, as the guide describes it:

In EVE parlance, a "tackler" is any ship fitted with a module or modules designed for inhibiting another player's ability to warp. Hence, tacklers are any ship setups whose main purpose in a battle is to stop the enemy from escaping, and either avoid the fleet or potentially regroup in a more favourable position.

In addition to warp inhibitors, tacklers often carry stasis webifiers, propulsion inhibitors that slow down a target ship by up to 90%. Due to their ability to pin down an enemy and control the flow of battle to an extent, tackler's are often considered the lynchpin of any squadron or fleet.

You can run across it in our guide section.

It's been a while since the last one, but CCP finally pushed out a Chronicle, this time penned by new CCP hire Abraxas, by the name of "The Greatest Joke". Excerpt:

The voice came from a TV box. There was an avatar on the screen: his AI doctor. You didn't get a human doctor unless you were a pilot, or willing to pay an exorbitant fee.
- We've received the results of the blood test, the voice said. The avatar moved its lips in sync with the words, and didn't smile. That's when he knew it was serious.

In other news, fanfest tickets have almost sold out, so if you were thinking about attending the 2006 Fanfest in November, now's the time to nail down your plans.

Kali hit the public test server today, "Singularity", giving players a sneak peak of the new ships (Tier 3 Battleships and Tier 2 Battlecruisers), the seamless map and the new contract system. As expected, the test server went through a bumpy ride all day, replete with restarts and login queues as eager players tried to bandwagon onto Tranquility's smaller sibling.

Players interested in taking part in the public test of the first Kali deployment are encouraged to check out the many threads on the subject. Note that specialized rules are in place on the test server, and it's always a good idea to read those first.

We've been seeing some activity from CCP's designer Tuxford on the topic of changes to ships, including a global increase in hit points to ships and armour plates/shield extenders - floating with that is a change to Warp Core Stabilizers as well and inertia stabilizers. Tuxford also blogged about upcoming changes to ECM as well, otherwise known as a "nerf".

If we work with the system we have right now, what can we do about this? To us it's pretty simple, move part of your jamming power to the low slots, decrease strength of single jammers and make jammers reletively more powerful on ECM ships (that does not mean boost ecm ships).

These changes are all scheduled to hit with the upcoming Kali expansion, recently dubbed as "Revelations".

The Coldfront IRC server hosted a devchat today, attracting a large number of curious onlookers and knowledge-hungry players. As Devchats go, some very interesting tidbits came to light, and some questions got dodged or ignored, but all in all most agreed that it had been a good one.

Excerpt:

Mitchman-: ... With the increase in HP again, there is large imbalance created. Ships that use cap when firing their guns will have less so now to finish off a target, and cap charges will run out much faster. Suggestion: Reduce cap use on guns by 50% and volume of charges by 50%. Thoughts? 

tuxford: Personally I like the idea of the possibility of running out of charges in a fight. Cap boosters have come something of a must have module and its come up to the point that the one with bigger cargo hold wins. Well ok not quite but still you should see my point. Ammo is a different story its well possible that we'd reduce the volume of those

You can catch the chat writeup here.

We have a new guide up by Tyrrax Thorrk, covering the art of running complexes. The guide itself is a little advanced, focusing mostly on how to do the higher-level complexes, but is nevertheless very helpful.

Complex grinding is about the most profitable thing you can do in EVE right now, it's why every good complex is religiously farmed by somebody, often by many competing entities right after downtime.

Right after server comes up from a reboot/downtime is just about the only time you can be certain it's fully spawned and empty of competitors, (thus) if someone else does show up, you can kill them and claim the complex as your own, or team up / drive them off if you don't have a warp disruptor handy.

Catch it in our growing Guide Section.

Roughly three months ago, a newbie player named INNOMINATE NIGHTMARE [sic] started a thread on the official forums detailing his new experiment: go into lawless space with a new character, a million isk in the wallet and see what happens.

Three months, countless clones and ships, 2 billion ISK and a successful IPO later, INNOMINATE NIGHTMARE is still going on with his experiment, churning out regular updates.

Excerpt:

Should I answer? Or should I ignore him? Would he make me walk the proverbial plank? I decided to be a brave n00b and to answer the call, despite the fact that he was a member of the "Cursed Killers"....

After saying "Hi", he informed me that he had read my bio and that he "wanted me". This led me to three possible conclusions:

1) He wanted me to join his corp.....
2) He wanted my body....
3) He wanted my dead body.....

Figuring that a random homosexual invitation was unlikely, this deep into 0.0 space (although I have seen posts on these forums by a member of the "Minmatar Homosexual Rights League" so anything is possible), I eliminated option #2 and pondered the other two for a while.

Frequently hilarious, punctuated with images and convo logs with prominent people in EVE and praised by developers and player alike, The 0.0 Experiment has proven to be a worthy read for anyone considering entry into 0.0, as well as those used to it's differing reality.

We have a new guide up, this time detailing all there is needed to know about research and manufacturing in EVE.

The easiest and most common way to get a blueprint is to buy the un-researched BPO off of the market. You can easily get any tech level 1 blueprint this way, and there is an unlimited stock of them. Certain blueprints are not sold by NPCs in certain regions, so the blueprint may be marked up by a player reseller depending on where you are. A good way to be safe is to buy the blueprints for ships in a region belonging to that ship's race (buy Caldari blueprints in Lonetrek or The Forge, for example).

Catch it in our guide section.

CCP posted a new Dev Blog recently, going over their plans for the Third Alliance Tournament, EVETV and the Fanfest PvP Tournament. There is also a lengthy thread discussing the planned rules for the 3rd Tournament (highlight changes include a point-based ship selection and the inclusion of Electronic Warfare)

In related news, the third annual EVE-Online Fanfest is drawing near, this time hosted in the opulent Nordica Hotel in Reykjavík, since everyone loved the last one so much. Also, Smiffa's built his third paper model ship, this time the majestic Apocalypse getting a treatment. Props.

The fifth edition of EVE-Online's own magazine, EON, has been filtering into homes these few days, with the rest receiving it over the next week. Sitting at 80 glossy pages and containing full-page ads from ten in-game Alliances and Corporations, three player in-character interviews and a score of new fiction, the magazine sits as a testament to EVE's slow and steady success. As an added bonus, a one-meter long poster of Meridius' Iron Tide comes with the magazine for subscribers only.

These are printed in limited editions, so if you want to snag this one or any of the prior editions, now's the time.