Hello pilots,

A patch will be released on Tuesday 17 May for EVE: Valkyrie, and it’s a whopper! Crammed full of improvements and some sweet new features.

So grab a fresh cuppa and feast your eyes on the list below.

As always, we are paying close attention to the forums and the valuable feedback you are all providing. Many of the changes in this patch have been driven by the community on the forum, in addition to further discussions at EVE Fanfest last month.

Your continued contributions are helping us to shape the future of Valkyrie!

Thank you.

(I’m raising a glass of Quafe to you all right now)

CCP ROO

NEW! Results Screen

You love your ships! So why not see them in more detail…..large as life, menacing and deadly as they should be. The new results screen will display the ships and pilots of the top scoring players from each team by default, and at a size fitting more befitting of their presence in the launch bay. You can also browse the list of players to see everyone’s ships and pilots in the same level of detail. Zebra print skins are optional ;)

NEW! Reward Screen

We’ve combined all the post-match rewards into a single scene. You can now see a complete summary of all the XP, Silver and Salvage you’ve collected, and keep track of your Rank progress without having to wait through multiple animations.

NEW! Joystick Controller Mapping

This should put a smile on many a stick junkies face ;) You can now re-map your flight sticks to your hearts desires. Simply enter the Setting menu and get cracking with the mapping!

Here’s a far more detailed post from our very own throttle master CCP_Illumin.

NEW! Ship Comparison Feature

You can now compare ship stats in game. Simply visit the Hangar and select the Compare link beside your currently selected ship. Your current ship will then be displayed in a side by side comparison with any other ship you scroll over on the selection wheel. You can compare any ship you like. Whether crafted, declassified (blueprint available) or classified (blueprint unavailable).

NEW! Session player invites for Squads

The functionality to invite players who are active in your session has now been added to Squads. This should make it a lot easier to invite players who are not on your friend lists. We are still working on a number of other improvements, but wanted to get this one out asap.

While in a multiplayer session simply enter the Squads menu and toggle between Friends and Session Pilots using the Left Analogue Stick. Select a pilot, and invite them to join your Squad. This could be there start of a beautiful friend-ship (groans).

Progression changes: Unlocking Heavy & Support

To give you choice in your tools of war we have now made unlocking the Heavy and Support classes much easier. We still need to introduce these classes in a specific order as they require skills and experience learned from the previous classes, but now they will be unlocked based on a players reputation level (Rank), rather than their Fighter XP level. Additionally, they no longer require crafting (all Silver, Salvage and XP requirements have been removed). The new conditions are as follows:

Heavy Class Unlocked: Spectre – Rank 3 (pre-crafted and ready to fly!)

Support Class Unlocked: Banshee – Rank 5 (pre-crafted and ready to fly!)

When a class is unlocked, pilots will be notified via the CAT and a NEW icon will be added to the class selection zone in the Hangar. Simply select the new ship and get straight into the action.

Progression Changes: Crafting pre-requisite removed

To give pilots more choice over what they craft, and when they craft it, we have removed the “craft previous” requirement from all the class progressions. You will still unlock ship blueprints based on hitting XP milestones, but you can choose whether you wish to craft the new ship or continue progressing towards the next without having to spend your Silver and Salvage.

Progression Changes: Launch Tubes can now be purchased

Rental costs for Launch Tubes are being replaced with the option to purchase (in Silver). Once purchased, the Launch Tube will always be available for you to use, for as many times as you desire. When you reach the required Rank for each Launch Tube it will be unlocked for purchase.

Launch Tube 1: No Rank required - free and already unlocked to all players.

Launch Tubes 2: Rank 5 – 100,000 Silver

Launch Tubes 3: Rank 15 – 500,000 Silver

Launch Tubes 4: Rank 20 – 1,000,000 Silver

Gameplay & Balance: Improved assist system

The assist system has now been modified to make things far more generous:

• Any player that healed the Killer within the last [10] seconds gets an Assist.

• Any player that did at least [5%] of the damage done to the dead player in the last [10] seconds gets an Assist.

So basically, if you recently healed someone that gets a Kill, or you did at least a little bit of damage to someone before they died – you get an Assist.

If a player gets an assist (ie. did > [5%] damage within the last [10] seconds), and has done at least [75%] of the dead player’s health as damage, they get a bonus score objective “Near Kill”.

• “Near Kill” objectives give a player [50] bonus points.

• “Near Kill” objectives show up in you Kill feed as “NEAR KILL +[50]”.

Therefore, if you pretty much wrecked someone, but someone else ‘stole’ the kill – you will still get an assist as normal, but we also give you some bonus points for doing all of the hard work.

Gameplay & Balance: Reduced clone vat resources on Team Death Match

Clone Vats have now been lowered from 50 to 30 for TDM. This means more battles will end with someone getting blown up in a hail of cannon fire, and not with an expiring battle timer. Far more in keeping with the Valkyrie vibe 

Gameplay & Balance: Reduced manual respawn time

You can now manually respawn after 10 seconds (instead of 15) in both Team Death Match and Control. What are you waiting for? Get back in the action pilots!

Gameplay & Balance: Missile lock can be manually cancelled

By popular request….missile locks can now be cancelled by clicking the Right Analogue Stick! Never waste a salvo ;)

Gameplay & Balance: Lock-on weapon’s now target drones

Enemy drones can now be targeted with lock-on weapons (Missiles and Phasers). Friendly drones will not be targeted, so don’t worry about any blue on blue drone action.

Gameplay & Balance: Salvage expiring time reduced

Salvage now expires a lot sooner (60 seconds instead of 300 seconds), so scoop it up while you have the chance.

Menus: Improved iconography & text descriptions

We’ve replaced a few key icons and updated some of the description text to be more specific about their content. You’ll notice the changes in the front end, and in some of the MP menus.

The Launch Tube icon now uses that same visual language that is seen when selecting a ship in the clone vat, Single and Multiplayer modes are now labelled as such. This is essentially a usability and consistency pass, and will hopefully make navigating much easier.

The location of some head tracked options in the Hangar have also changed. In part, to accommodate the new Compare ships feature, but also to make assigning a ship to a Launch Tube more obvious.

Menus: Classified Ship blueprints are no longer ghosted

We’ve replaced the previous “ghosted” effect with a variation on the “blueprint” effect. This means that you can see more detail on unavailable ships which you have not earned enough XP to unlock yet.

Menus: Improved description for Legendary Ships

More information has now been added to the Legendary Ships when selecting them via the Hangar. It explains how Legendary XP is earned, stored, and how it can be transferred into the other base class progressions.

In game HUD: Killfeed is delayed after death

We’ve delayed the timeout on the in-game killfeed (left hand side of the cockpit) as many of you were keen to know who dealt the killing blow as soon as possible. You couldn’t even wait to see it in the Clone Vat! Well, now revenge will be on the tip of your tongue sooner. Get back out there and take it ;)

In game HUD: Victory or Defeat banner added

You’ll know the outcome of a battle instantly when the new Victory or Defeat banner is displayed across your windshield. A banner to compliment the screams of joy or anger from your commanders Rán and Fatal.

Basic Training

Now completes and fades down when the final objective is met. The requirement to exit via the gate has now been removed. This functionality is still available in all other training modules to allow players to continue setting hot lap times and leave the simulation when they want.

Art: New male pilot head

An improved male pilot head asset. Just look at that chiselled jaw line. This guy means business!

Various bug and stability fixes

These include: