Eve Online is set to release its 51st free expansion on May 27th. This is one of those things that keep players coming back to the game as you can just jump right into the action and not need to buy any missed expansions, unlike so many other MMORPGs.

The biggest thing CCP Games the developers behind Eve Online are sharing is the new Freelace Jobs system. This will allow corporations to offer missions to anyone even those outside of a corporation to go out and do a task and get ISK for finishing it.

The system will start with simple things like killing rats, and other players, mining minerals, and so on. The system is expected to expand beyond that in the coming months once the introduction system has stabilized and any changes that were needed have been applied.

The biggest and longest-term goal for Eve Online has always been empowering the player-driven economy. That goal has been shifted somewhat from the original idea of one day no longer having any NPCs having an impact on the player economy itself. It has come a massive way over the years.

This new system in a way allows player corporations to almost act like an NPC corporation by offering these freelance job missions. Certain activities like delivering a set of minerals to a location through the contract system or market order have been a thing for quite a long time. This seems to be the next evolution.

I could see some of the largest corporations out there wanting to set these things to deliver an almost like mission system to new players as they learn the ropes of living in their new area. Meanwhile, making it easier for manufacturing divisions to put out work for needed materials for what a corporation or alliance needs.

The only issue I can see is the limit of 100 freelance jobs a corporation is allowed to have at a time. It would have also been nice to see this be something an alliance could have also put out with an even bigger number of freelance jobs. As alliances with thousands of weekly players will quickly find this new system to be far too limited. Hopefully, these things will be coming in the coming months as they further roll out the system.

There are also two new ships being introduced. The Triglavian line of ships is being expanded to now include a marauder called Babaroga. Meanwhile, the Angle Cartel is getting a dreadnaught.

Markets are already reacting to a new marauder with certain minerals expected to be needed in its production seeing a spike in price. It is expected that Null Sec alliances will make everything needed in-house to produce the new dreadnaught. It’s individuals in high sec who will drive up quite the demand for the new marauder.

Out of all of this, I think what is more important is some rebalancing that will be needed. While these new ships will be quite powerful. There is an expected power gap behind the much older ships. As such a bunch of stuff is expecting to get a buff. This I feel is always something the player base wants to see as they hate the time things get nerfed instead of the ships that are lacking getting the slight buff that usually is all that is needed.

It’s also not that much of a shock that most of this expansion is more focused around Null Sec and yet again they are getting an even bigger upgrade. Null Sec sovereignty holders will now be able to upgrade Stability Generators that will give boosts to different stats from increased shield or armor to warp speed.

For those not in the know. Most Null Sec Alliances have some kind of fleet doctrine. A pre-defined set of ships and modules that make it easy for that alliance to replace losses when defending as they keep them stockpiled. As well as create uniformity in the kind of logistics that is needed such as armor or shields. It also allows the fleet commander to take actions knowing everyone should have a short- or long-range fitting and so on.

This seems to be a way of giving those who hold areas in Null Sec another defense bonus if they should become under attack. That is however something an attaching alliance that has scouted out an area should be able to take advantage of by knowing the bonus of the area they are attacking.

Many players are also wondering how quickly these bonuses can be changed. It would be a huge home advance if these bonuses could be swapped out quickly. Say if you had a bonus towards shields but then switched over to a bonus for armor once the attacking fleet shows up in a shield doctrine fleet. This is however just pure speculation by many players and seems like a dream more than anything else. I would not be shocked if there ends up being some kind of timer between switching to a different bonus.

The biggest thing that is expected to have any kind of impact on most of the player base is the change to the system map. Seems for now they are going to make it easier to use filters. They also seem to be well aware there are many third-party maps outside of the game that create an experience many players prefer over the one in the game.

Final Thoughts

While some other things are known so far. The rest seems rather minor. For the most part, this seems to be about Freelance jobs and further sovereignty bonuses. Things that I don’t find will have much if any impact on where I play or how I play the game.

It’s also not that shocking to see yet another expansion focused on giving Null Sec even more power. After all that has been yet another long-term goal of the developers in making Null Sec more and more attractive to drive even further players down there.

Even the rebalancing which I did not go over in detail seems to be mostly focused on logistics and even capital ships. Giving Null Sec even further favor in their style of gameplay. As they have expressed capital warfare has not been at the level they intend them to be. With some powerful buffs coming to that section of the game.

At the very least. Since it’s a free expansion after all. Along with how massive a game like Eve Online is. They can mostly focus on a certain area of the game as needed with each expansion. Along with how the expansion cycles go this was not expected to be a massive one adding in something more profound than it seems to have.

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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Eve Online.