Intro
It's hard to believe, but it's true. Tyrannis is only about two weeks away now from its May 18th launch date. Tyrannis is making a lot of promises and wants to introduce a wide variety of new features. Let's take a look!
CCP had only left us with a vague outline of what Tyrannis would be and mean:
Planetary Interaction
See: Screenshots of Planetary Interaction
The most talked about feature in Tyrannis will be the exploitation of those pretty little planets floating in space. How will it work and how will it affect you?
Well, if you are familiar with moon mining you have an idea of what PI wants to achieve, sort of a planet mining operation. We can assume that many of the oldie minerals we need can be extracted, and likely some new ones CCP has not released details on.
It is going to be a sort of planet-based POS that is dedicated to industry. You have a command center on a planet where you link refineries and other structures to it. However, this will not be a typical strategy game, the position of your structures will determine the efficiency of your operation.
Presumably, CCP is implementing a Supreme Commander style system where the adjacency of certain structures is more efficient than others and only certain locations on the planet can be harvested. This means that it will only be a few weeks before the optimal mining base setup is on Battleclinic.
CCP's advertising hints that different planets will be of different difficulties and rewards to colonize. This makes sense, a lot like scouting for a profitable moon. However, nothing is really being implemented regarding the glaring flaw in this plan: Inability to attack it.
No, CCP does not seem to have a system in place to claim planets once they are claimed, and I hope to prove me wrong. I don't want all the planets to become gridlocked for 6 months.
Eve Gate
See: EVE Gate Screenshots
Do you like facebook? Most people seem to, and CCP has gotten the picture. Everyone has a clone of facebook now, even the CIA uses a facebook take-off for spies to share information! Now, your character can be glorified as the absolute center of the universe.
The difference? This one integrates with the outside world as well as EVE! That means you can read corp email and stuff without being logged in (I can already see the "URGENT POS DEFENSE NO EXCUSES EVERYONE ONLINE NOW" mails being sent to make 5am fleet ops even more fun).
It will replace the current contact management scheme, which is needed. The current API they are using is buggy and slow, for many people it takes 5-10 minutes for EVE mail to initialize. In addition, corp RSS (for lack of a better term) feeds will be implemented to keep pages up to date with your latest antics.
It looks to be a complete suite, calendar, mail, and all. It should prove to be an amazingly useful communication tool.
What's Missing?
A lot of frequently requested features do not seem to have been taken up by CCP. The following at this time are not in the expansion:
- T3 Frigates
- Dramiel Nerf and other faction balancing.
- Planetary Combat of some type.
- Meaningful Factional Warfare.
