Hello everyone! Now we arrive at the more significant package of balance changes in today's announcements.

As I announced at EVE Vegas, changes to overheating were on the plan for Rubicon, specifically expanding heat functionality to many modules that did not have it before. This set of changes was bumped from the main Rubicon release due to time and will be arriving in Rubicon 1.1, along with some associated balance changes to some modules heavily affected by the heat iteration.

I'll be talking about the heat specific changes in this thread, and splitting the associated balance changes off into their own threads to help focus the discussion.

Those other threads cover:

Tracking Disruptor, Sensor Dampener, Target Painter Changes

Capital Turret Changes

Omnidirectional Tracking Link Changes

I'd advise reading this OP all the way through before jumping to those ones quite yet.


Ok! Time to look at overheating itself.

Heat is one of our favourite combat mechanics as it provides opportunities for good decision making, bad decision making, and the excitement that comes from not knowing how your decision making will compare to that of your opponents.

The main goals of this change are to lower the barrier of entry a little so that newer players can choose to jump into overheating earlier, and to expand the heat mechanic to a lot of modules (mostly active midslot modules) that one would expect to use heat but currently do not.

Firstly, we are reducing the Power Grid Management skill requirement to train Thermodynamics from level 5 to level 4. This means that post 1.1 the requirements to train Thermodynamics will be Capacitor Management III, Science IV, and Power Grid Management IV. PGM is still a great skill to get to level 5, but now you can start overheating before starting that relatively long train.

Next, we are expanding what modules can use heat. Modules gaining heat functionality are:

• Tracking Computers
• Sensor Boosters
• Remote Tracking Computers
• Remote Sensor Boosters
• Remote ECCM
• Tracking Disruptors (see associated thread)
• Sensor Dampeners (see associated thread)
• Target Painters (see associated thread)
• ECM Bursts
• Smartbombs
• Target Spectrum Breakers
• Interdiction Sphere Launchers
• Omnidirectional Tracking Links (see associated thread)

The overheating effects of the modules will be as follows:
TC, SB, Omni, Remote TC, Remote SB: 15% strength
Remote ECCM: 30% strength
TD, Damp, Painter, ECM Burst: 20% strength
Smartbombs, TSB, Bubble launcher: -15% duration

Most of these modules will be getting heat generation rates in the same range as similar modules, with the notable exception of smartbombs. Overheated smartbombs will give off a lot of heat (less than prop mods but more than most other modules) to ensure that a full rack of them cannot be sustainably overheated for extended periods.

That's the changes we are making to heat itself in Rubicon 1.1. There are obviously other changes we want to make in the future including improvements to the UI and feedback for colorblind players, but those will need to wait for future releases.

Please take a look at the other threads linked at the top of this post for information on the other module balance changes being made to Ewar modules, Capital guns, and Omnidirectional Tracking Links in concert with these heat changes.

These changes will be on SISI in an upcoming update and we look forward to hearing your feedback.

Why not make smartbombs overheat be a RANGE increase instead of ROF?