F2P in Danger? June Update Recap and Dev Direction

Intro

This is my recap of the latest EVE Galaxy Conquest release notes, game announcements, and the dev blog. Here you’ll find a summary of what’s about to be released, what’s already live, and what’s still in the works. There’s a good portion of uncertainty in the dev communication, so let’s just call it soon™. I’ll also share my take on how these changes might affect new players, veterans, P2W balance, and the F2P meta. Let’s break down what’s changing and what to expect.

Season 4 Vanished – Veteran Season Instead

If you’ve seen my previous post about the Season 4 preview, you’ll know I was misled by CCP developers and the official Fanfest announcement. We’re not getting Season 4 yet, nor the new features and assets I was shown. Instead, we’re getting what’s being called a Veteran Season—a filler version of Season 3. That’s fine in essence, if shipped properly.

Transparency and honesty—this is what the Changhai team still needs to master. A simple letter explaining that the team needs extra time to balance the game, fix old bugs, and finalize new features—so they’re reusing Season 3 for Pioneer servers—would’ve been enough.

As for the question: when is Season 4? I have no idea, and I doubt the developers do either. I’m not even sure if Season 4 will be released at all. We may just be stuck in a cycle of Veteran Seasons, with new features, ships, and commanders introduced through events instead.

Patch Notes: Finally Looking Like Patch Notes

First off, patch notes are better. I’m still not sure if all changes are listed or if something got stealth-pushed to prod. If you find anything that’s not in the changelog, let me know in the comments. We now see notes split into fixes, changes, and new features—with proper numbers. That’s definitely a win for the community. Whether it was my rambling or whale pressure doesn’t matter—the result is what counts. These notes finally resemble something close to EVE Online standards.

For transparency, I’m providing the Game Update Announcement from Discord, posted June 9, 2025, in case you missed it or want to reread it.

Game Update Announcement, June 9, 2025

Update Time: This week

New Features:

• Rally Platform will be available on all servers.
• Corporation Requisition will be available on all servers.

Feature Updates:

• Homebase Gantries will no longer be automatically abandoned.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed an issue where Quick Response and Delayed Response can be stacked.
• Fixed an issue where you may be required to capture all grids around the center grid to construct a Homebase Gantry. Now you just need to have the center grid captured to construct a Homebase Gantry.

Balance Adjustments:

Omen

• Shield Extender Mutaplasmid Effect Increased Armor changed from 6.22 to 10.9
• Heavy Pulse Laser Chance to trigger the skill twice changed from 30% to 45%
• Ammatar Navy Heat Sink Mutaplasmid Effect Now targets your Commander with the highest Offense Chance of initiating Active skills changed from 1.5% to 6% and Kinetic damage Critical Chance changed from 3.1% to 9%

Thunderchild

• Shield Hardener Mutaplasmid Effect Reduced Kinetic damage changed from 3.6% to 6.2%
• Energy Enhancement System Mutaplasmid Effect Enemy received damage change from 5.6% to 9.5%

Haatakan

• Courage Follows Money Kinetic damage changed from 85% to 151%
• Nirvana Xenon Bomb Kinetic damage changed from 125% to 181%

Fleet Agent – Assault Captain

Before: Increases damage of your wings by 42.4% in the first 3 turns After: Increases damage of your wing by 16% throughout the battle

Baer

• Rapid Pulse Radiation damage changed from 58.7% to 107%
• Charging Increased Energy changed from 30.4% to 10%
• Network Paralysis Now drain Firepower throughout the battle instead of the first 3 turns. Drained Firepower changed from 22.8% to 4%
• Overclocked Plunder Now drain Energy throughout the battle instead of the first 3 turns. Drained Firepower changed from 22.8% to 4%

We still don’t know the patch date&time, which is odd. If you’ve collected the changes and have a new build (hopefully QA’ed), what’s the holdup in announcing a release date?

Digging Into the Big Changes

The Rally Platform is now available on all servers. It’s unlocked through Corp Research at level 15 for standard and level 20 for premium. The structure appears to have 10,000 HP. A demo on Discord showed it slapped on top of an acceleration gate, but we still don’t know if it can be placed in open space, if SOV is required, how long it takes to build, what the difference is between standard and premium, how many fleets it can replenish at once (probably one), or what Valor Points are and how to earn them. So many questions.

Corporation Requisition is a nice feature. I’m not sure whether there will be any limits, but I’ve already talked about this one. It’s a welcome QoL addition—but it comes at a cost. We’re losing complex collaboration, planning, and dialog between corpmates. Leaders could just flip a switch and take over everything the corp needs, turning it into a dictatorship.

Homebase Gantries will no longer be automatically abandoned. This is more of a QoL fix—previously, you had to manually cancel every 24h to keep the gantry alive.

The bug section lists two items: Delay Response and Quick Response stacking fix. There’s a lot of debate on how these will now interact—especially in combos like Yana, Karth, Ketzi, Tornado. Who cancels whom, and in what order? In my opinion, if an entity gets Delay and then Quick (or the other way around), they should cancel each other, and combat should proceed using regular Data Rate compare mechanics. For example, if Tornado says “Delay” to Ketizi, and Ketizi self-buffs with Quick, then they should just proceed to compare Data Rate like nothing happened. But… you never know until it goes live and we test it.

And second bug – The Homebase Gantry building fix is just a revert—restoring something that used to work as intended.

Omen received a buff. I often jokingly call this the “spectator’s ship” because it often does zero damage in combat. With these new changes… well, not much has changed. It’s still a Russian roulette ship, and the odds haven’t shifted—just the damage if it actually lands. Some durability was added 6.22 -> 10.9 armor for the Shield Extender Mutaplasmid, but in the current energy-damage meta, only raw HP helps. There’s also a misleading description on the Ammatar Navy Heat Sink and its Mutaplasmid. The description refers to “skills,” but game has no skills—only modules for ships and talents for commanders. So what is this module actually buffing? Ship effects? Commander talents? Only active ones? Sigh… more testing needed.

Thunderchild also received an unexpected buff. Maybe it’s to offset a stealth armor nerf? Either way, this ship was already in great shape—wrecking many comps in PvP and deleting ships in PvE. Meanwhile, so many other ships desperately need proper reworks or fixes to be viable.

Same goes for Haatakan. I ranked her B-tier, but she’s already strong in some fleets and a decent counter to popular meta setups. Now, with this buff, we’ll definitely see more of her on the field. But again—it makes me wonder why the devs are changing something that already works fine, while broken commanders like Janus and Vepas are left untouched.

One-Turn Gankers Get Clipped

The change to the Assault Captain fleet agent (was Increases damage by 42.4% in the first 3 turns now by 16% throughout the battle) is clearly aimed at eliminating glass cannon 1-turn gankers. Rifters and Tornados will definitely feel the impact. On the other hand, long-lasting ships like Rokh, Drake, Thunderchild, Abaddon, Omen, and Vexor can now fully benefit from their draws with a full Agent buff. I think it’s a good change—and not just because I don’t own a 4* Tornado or Rifter, nope 😛

The F2P Cornerstone Falls

The Baer change is a huge blow to the F2P player base. It was the only viable poor-man’s substitute for Chelm in Thunderchild comps. The drain mechanic played a big role in its sustainability. The damage buff probably won’t justify the loss, especially now that the community has discovered all epic commanders suffer a 50% damage penalty (75% for blue commanders) compared to legendary ones. Out of my 11 characters, 8 have Thunderchild, and 7 of them were running with Baer. We’ll see how it performs—but chances are, my TC’s heading back to the dock.

List of Undocumented Changes

• Polok 3A talent Network Paralysis and Overclocked Plunder Firepower and Energy drain nerf from 22.8% to 4%. Discovered by @laZy_befOuler

Dev Blog Talk – The Good, the Odd, the Deadly

CCP Singlemono crafted a new message today, posted by CCP Unnon. Given the format, I’d classify this as a dev blog. Again, here is a full text:

Devblog by CCP Singlemono, June 10th 2025

This is CCP Singlemono — great to see you again! And this time, I’ve got some exciting news to share:

The Grid Requisition and Rally Platform features are complete!

Both features will be fully available on all servers in this week’s update — no matter which region you’re in, you’ll soon be able to take advantage of these brand-new strategic tools!

We Hear You!

Lately, we’ve received a lot of feedback, and one message comes through loud and clear: “The game is too grindy!” Chief Commanders are feeling pressured to stay glued to the battlefield, constantly micro-managing, and if you’re on the losing side, it can feel like there’s no breathing room — not even in your Spawning Region. We totally understand that frustration — and we’re doing something about it. The upcoming feature updates are aimed at reducing operational stress, enhancing strategic depth, and giving Chief Commanders a stronger sense of control and security.

Spawning Region Protection

To ease the stress of having your front porch constantly under siege, we’re introducing new Spawning Region Protection rules: When trying to capture a grid in a System that’s not in your faction’s Spawning Region:

• Longer time needed to capture
• Increased Stamina cost

When attacking a structure in a System that’s not in your faction’s Spawning Region:

• Also takes longer time
• Higher Stamina cost
• Reduced siege damage
• It is not allowed to relocate your Homebase to other factions’ Spawning Region!

These rules are designed to make home zones feel safer and more defensible, giving everyone some breathing space, so you can develop your power much safer.

Stamina System Adjustments

We’ve also made a major improvement to how Stamina works: The following actions will no longer consume Stamina

• Deploy
• Guard
• Transfer
• Mine
• Rally

Stamina will only be consumed if combat occurs during fleet movement — and even then, only once per movement. What does that mean for you? Smoother planning, and a lot more room for strategy.

United Fleet System & Rally Updates

Last but not least — and arguably the most exciting part of this update: We’re introducing the United Fleet feature! Officers can now take control of all allied fleets gathered at a rally point, and form them into a United Fleet. This fleet can act as one, moving and fighting together under coordinated orders — perfect for reducing chaos in multi-time-zone battles, and helping Chief Commanders feel less fatigue and FOMO during critical moments.

These features are expected to roll out gradually over the coming updates — and this is just the beginning of our journey to make the game more enjoyable.

Veteran Season

As the first wave of Chief Commanders dives into the Veteran Season, we’ve been closely monitoring your feedback. A number of Chief Commanders have shared their thoughts on the season’s pacing and balance, and we want to take a moment to thank you all for being so engaged and thoughtful in your responses. We’re already working on addressing several of the concerns that have been raised, and your feedback is playing a key role in guiding our decisions. In our next Dev Blog, we’ll go into more detail on the specific improvements and solutions we’re planning.

Skipping over the Rally Platform and Requisition changes, since we already discussed them.

The “we hear you” part is a bit confusing. I’m not sure where the “game is too grindy” feedback is coming from. Personally, I’ve been complaining about the season start being too intensive. If you want to stay in the top ranks or leading corps, you basically need to take a full day off—or two. The starter bonus and acceleration system force you to no-life the game for 4–5 hours before you even hit tile and resource caps. But again, I already expressed that, so no need to repeat it.

Highsec: A Ransom Sandbox or Just Dead Space?

Partial safety in Highsec could be a solution, but as someone who often plays solo and has been capped, I’ve never experienced “endless sieging.” Being in Highsec usually means you’re far from the warzone and have low influence—so ransom fees are low, like 80k mats. I can’t imagine anyone spending 1–3 hours daily to cap harmless players for that. What this change will really impact is the final missions, where it takes significantly longer to cap 8 regionals, three of them located in a Highsec.

A much better solution for small corps or loners would be reducing ransom fees and/or cap timers. Imagine if a 20k-influence rookie ransom only cost 10k RSS—you’d have to be a psycho to camp them nonstop. On the flip side, Highsec bases could become a real pain to maintain control over, which could open up interesting gameplay instead of the usual “patience simulator” where capping a region takes X days and Y stamina.

Stamina Gutting

Oh boy. This one is basically a F2P killer. I’m not joking.

As you may know, I play as a free player. While many of us whine about not being able to stop whales, I found a way to contribute—by baiting whales and forcing them to waste stamina. Stamina was the only non-purchasable, non-acceleratable resource. No matter how good your fleet is, if you’re under 15 stamina, you’re a sitting duck… on a tile.

Stamina was a valuable strategic asset. Mastering it—choosing your targets, deciding when to guard, when to pull back—was a core part of battlefield tactics. With the removal of stamina cost from deployment, guard, rally, mining, and transfer actions, that strategic layer is gone. And so is the F2P player’s role. Now a whale can just move around freely, hunt you down, hit backlines, or roam until they bump into someone.

There’s a Discord discussion here—join in, share your opinion, or vote if you think this change needs to be reconsidered.

United Fleet: From Teamplay to Idle Alt Swarms

This looks a lot like the old drone bunny or fighter-assist tactics from EVE Online. Combined with the stamina changes, I can already picture people dumping all their alt fleets onto one player, who then moves around with a 1000-ship swarm.

At this point, players will have only two reasons to log in: claim daily rewards and maybe replenish fleets, only to send them back to the pickup point. I think devs need to go back to identifying the real problem. I don’t know what kind of FOMO they’re trying to fix. Sure, I’ve seen idle fleets at a stations or stargates—but usually that’s because the objective was completed or the AI settings were off.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have someone drag my fleets around and collect all the Nova rewards. But it removes the need to log in, the importance of siege planning, time zone coverage, and all the strategic management that defines a good MMO organization. EGC is not an IDLE clicker!

Broken Balance, Broken Interest

Lastly, the part about the Veteran Season—I’m not sure where that’s coming from or what exactly they’re doing there. What I’m seeing is frustration and a growing lack of interest. The ship and commander imbalance, persistent bugs, and inability to play with friends are pushing players away. But let’s see what the next dev blog brings.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Overall, the shift in communication with the community is leaning in a positive direction—but content-wise, there are a few red flags. Right now, it’s just a post on Discord, so no real harm done yet. But the potential impact is concerning. That said, I’m glad to see players like Gumi Aihaken stepping up early to voice concerns. EVE Galaxy Conquest would truly benefit from a CSM-style system—like EVE Online’s Council of Stellar Management—a group of active players representing different playstyles, acting like senators, and helping developers steer the game in the right direction.