More than 14 months have passed since I first started playing and added EVE Galaxy Conquest to the featured games section on kekbur.net. Over that time — and thanks to the relentless efforts of AFish (CEO of New Order) pushing developers and poking the right doors — kekbur.net has now officially obtained EVE Galaxy Conquest Official Partner status with CCP Games.
So… what actually changed?
Not much, in the grand scheme of things. I received two additional channels on the official game Discord where I can post EGC-related content. That’s it. The blog remains fully bootstrapped and independent, with the same goals, tone, and level of honesty as before.
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A New Direction for the Game
Beyond the partnership news, we’re also seeing new faces on Discord — notably CCP Dragon and CCP Homing Beacon — both actively playing the game and interacting with the community.
I don’t believe we’ve met in person at any Fanfests, but if I’m not mistaken, CCP Dragon is approaching their 10-year anniversary at CCP Games and previously worked on the Data team. There’s currently no public information about CCP Homing Beacon’s background or prior projects, but regardless, it’s refreshing to see renewed engagement.
That’s noticeable, especially since CCP Overweight, CCP 7-pack, and CCP Bjorn have largely disappeared from my radar (note to self: do not share business cards during pub-crawls, people tend to lose them), with their current in-game involvement unclear.
Worth noting: CCP has very strict internal policies regarding developers playing their own games. We discussed this during my interview with CEO Hilmar — developer participation is usually voluntary and done in a “bring-your-own-funds” mode. So when devs show up and actually play, it’s not nothing.
Player Council: Early Days
Since my last publication covering the EGC Player Council announcement, elections have taken place and several community members were selected to help channel feedback from the active player base directly to the developers.
They operate through dedicated Discord chats and private channels, and we’ll likely start seeing the results of their discussions soon — both the good ideas and the heated debates.
I plan to do dedicated “Council” content later on, possibly including interviews with some of the members to explain how things really work behind the scenes — and what’s been brewing in those very secret meetings (while, of course, respecting NDAs 😄).
A New Tool Built by Someone Who Plays
Another positive change comes from Anya of Imperium, who built an impressive fan-made tool for EGC. The project is designed to explore and plan strategic fleet comps. You can browse ships, commanders, fleet agents, create builds, and share them as links. On top of that, it includes utility features like a siege calculator, tournament tools, and basic corporation management helpers.
It’s practical, and clearly built by someone who actually plays the game. Definitely worth checking out!
Link to the site: https://eveg-portal.app/
Balance Changes on Test
CCP also shared a batch of balance changes currently under testing. As usual, all values come from the test build and may still change before hitting live — so treat this as direction, not final math.
System-Level Changes
- Fire Control System – Disrupted
This effect now also applies to Barrage skills. A small line in the notes, but one that may matter depending on how Barrage-heavy doctrines evolve.
Commander Adjustments
Mila
Counter Deployment rework
- Skill type changed to Command Skill
- New effect: the main wing gains Counterattack. After taking Kinetic damage, there is a 45% chance to deal Kinetic damage to one random enemy wing (85% damage rate, affected by Tactical attributes, indirect damage).
- Sub-skill: during the first 3 turns, the main wing’s armor is increased by 12%.
Vepas
Force Shield Amplifier redesign
- Shield duration extension replaced with: during the first 3 turns, after taking Barrage damage, there is a 45% chance to gain a Force Shield.
- Sub-skill reworked: when all Force Shields are lost, 55% chance to gain 16% Evasion Rate for 1 round (affected by Offensive attributes). Can trigger once per turn.
Jonas
Ironhide
- Kinetic Damage Resistance increased from 13.5% to 22%.
My Take
One genuinely positive thing here: CCP is finally addressing unused and broken commanders. I’ve been saying for a long time that instead of nerfing the current meta, it’s healthier to bring the existing ~50 commanders closer together and help them find actual battlefield roles.
That said, while the direction is right, the execution still feels too weak.
I don’t see Mila becoming a serious undock choice even after this change — certainly not in the same tier as what people run today. In Vepas’ case, the core issue was never just numbers. The real problem was shield stacking not working as described, and there’s still no clear word on whether the long-standing issue remains — specifically Vepas overriding all existing shield stacks from other sources with his command ability.
That kind of uncertainty kills trust in a commander, no matter how attractive the percentages look.
On a more encouraging note, developers also stated they’re moving away from “stealth” patches. Those quietly did real damage to theorycrafting and drained motivation from content creators — including Anya and myself. If this promise holds, it’s a big win for the community.
Let’s see how it goes.
Talking in Stations: New Episode
Talking in Stations goes live on February 7th at 19:00 UTC, and this episode is especially relevant if you’ve been following — or temporarily stepped away from — EVE Galaxy Conquest.
The stream will welcome new voices to the panel and share updates from the EGC Player Council, including:
- Progress on reviving the content creator program and recognizing creators who consistently deliver quality work (yea, probably a word about me hehe)
- A recap of recent council feedback and discussions
There will also be a look at the new map, focusing on player sentiment around resource availability and whether the revised layout meets expectations. To wrap things up, the team will share results from a recent community survey aimed at understanding how players are feeling about the game right now.
If you care about the direction of EGC, this is not a stream to skip.
Tune-in here: https://www.twitch.tv/talkinginstations
Veteran Season Unfolds
Finally, a few words about the new season map — the ring, the circle, or whatever we’ve collectively decided to call it.
Today, Stargate Level 9 unlocked and the race to Jita officially began. We’re talking about roughly 1100 tiles packed into a single swirling sleeve — around 60 hours of nonstop pathing. Let’s see who can organize a proper logistics operation without losing their sanity.
The season itself is chaotic. Most of the game’s largest corporations have collided on this map. All factions started reasonably strong — except Gallente…, which managed to steer itself straight into civil war on day one.
My small corp is currently sandwiched between 3 large blocs, with no real breathing room. This is something the developers may need to address in the future to reduce zerg dominance — whether that’s limiting corporation size (for example, 75 members) or even better – making outer rings less attractive for massive blocs so neutral and smaller groups can actually play their own game.
That’s it for today.
Go watch the new TiS episode, try out a new tool, or just keep pathing tiles while watching a TV show.
Fly smart, not hard!
o7
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