Ok, nasty cold

I didn't get on a lot over the last few days. I'm fighting a nasty cold. Bleh...

On the flip side I am reading with high interest the things that will be coming in the March 10th expansion (yes I will be getting the box, if only to have a souvenir). The new exploration mechanics look to be interesting. We'll have to see how they balance the skilling up everyone has done to reduce scan times vs those who haven't done that yet. The level of exploitation we can see in wormhole space (W-space) should prove interesting. Tech 3 looks to be highly interesting but the level of skill necessary to exploit it runs right along the lines of tech 2 invention and manufacture.

It looks like from the "I want to fly T3" set it's going to take similar skills to T2 cruisers as a base. But you'll need 6 extra skills per faction who's T3 ships you want to fly. 5 of these are pre-requirements to the sixth. And after my current skill finished I shoved in Minmatar Cruiser 5 for the next 31 days.... I'll be able to start learning the T3 flight skills about 3 days after the expansion hits.

The manufacturing side looks like T2 in that it will be two stage: Stage one involves "reverse engineering" a T3 BPC. This looks like it will be similar to invention in that it will involve something we will find in W-space as well as some datacore like items, probably also coming from W-space. Stage 2 involves manufacturing the T3 BPC and requisite materials. It looks like we'll need to have some gasses that will need to be processed at a reactor along with normal minerals. I hope the new reactor does not have the 0.4 sec restriction. These materials will then go into making the T3 components and/or ships. Looks like Cruiser Construciton 4 will be necessary. Looks like a pile of science skills - there are obvious similarities with T2.

Looks like most of the resources we'll need to exploit (and the NPC's we'll need to fight) will be found by exploration in wormhole space. So explorer's paradise. But there will be a combat scanning nerf in that scanning down ships will probably take longer unless the scanner can make seriously good estimated guesses as to where the safespots they want to bust are located. On top of that we can't trust the scan times on Sisi. CCP apparently has a habit of putting in quick scan times on Sisi for testing purposes.