The new Parallax update for Eve Online brings big changes to the systems that governs how players fight over nullsec space, where the AI police have no jurisdiction and ships can attack each other at will.
The Sovereignty system revolves around stations. These act as footholds in nullsec for the alliances that hold them. Capturing a station from an opposing reliance requires following a series of steps over several days, and usually the cooperation of hundreds or thousands of allies. I'll pop CCP's handy video that explains how it worked before the update below.
With Parallax, stations can now self-destruct, allowing 'diplomatic exchanges of territory' to happen more fluidly. Offering to destroy your own stations sounds like a promise that can be easily broken to me. The other major change is a massive reduction to 'jump fatigue', which previously stopped ships from using jump drives and portals for 30 days if they used them to travel too far too quickly. It's now only 5 days. According to the press release, this "should allow more frequent use of EVE’s mightiest ships while still maintaining a proper amount of strategy during deployment."
Every time I hear about Eve happenings I convince myself that the community must be having more fun than anyone else playing computer games. Then I remember all the stories about people stealing thousands of dollars of ISK from each other and hiring in-game contract killers that befriend and then betray their targets. Still, I'll happily watch from the side-lines.
You can read the full patch notes for the Parallax update on the official Eve site..
