March in EVE Online didn’t try to outdo February’s “second Christmas.”
Instead, it did something more interesting. It reminded me why New Eden is still one of the strangest, most unique places in gaming — not because of ships or wars, but because sometimes, this game reaches beyond itself.
Let’s start there.
Table of Contents
Project Discovery — Ten Years of Something No Other Game Even Attempts
Project Discovery just hit its 10-year milestone. And somehow, it still feels underrated.
For anyone new: this is the part of EVE where you stop shooting things and start analyzing real scientific data, an actual datasets used by researchers. Over the years, capsuleers have helped map proteins inside human cells, identify exoplanets, and more recently, contribute to immunology and cancer research. This isn’t a one-off experiment. It’s a decade-long collaboration between CCP Games, scientists, and players. I’ve had the chance to talk directly with Attila Szantner, the mind behind this whole initiative, multiple times over the years.
The scale tells the real story: nearly a billion classifications, over 1.9 million participants, and the equivalent of 471 years of continuous human analysis time. That’s not just a statistic — that’s work that would have taken a single researcher nearly five centuries to complete.
And it produced real results. The original 2016 phase contributed to research published in Nature Biotechnology (Deep learning is combined with massive-scale citizen science to improve large-scale image classification | Nature Biotechnology). In 2017, players helped identify exoplanet signals alongside the team of Nobel laureate Michel Mayor. In 2020, Project Discovery returned again, this time focused on immunology during the pandemic (‘EVE Online’ Gamers Role-Play as Covid-19 Researchers | WIRED), and today continues with cancer-related datasets in Phase IV.
Back when we spoke at Fanfest during an interview, one detail really stuck with me — not just the scale, but the backlog. The volume of labeled data generated by players has grown so large that researchers are still working through it. In other words, the contribution didn’t just help — it outpaced the ability to immediately process it.
To mark the anniversary, CCP is handing out a dedicated SKIN to every pilot who participated, starting March 13. It’s a small gesture compared to the scale of contribution, but one of the few cosmetics in EVE that actually carries context behind it.
Project Discovery will also have a presence at Fanfest this year, which feels appropriate. A decade of turning capsuleers into contributors to real-world research is not something you quietly archive. Project Discovery remains one of the few systems in gaming where the outcome exists outside the game itself.
Catalyst Keeps Moving — And So Do Carriers
Catalyst continues to reshape things inside the sandbox. The latest major update reinforces ship roles, continues Pochven adjustments, and introduces a new carrier-focused CRAB activity that quietly pushes capitals back into the spotlight.
CRAB sites are a pretty direct statement. High-risk PvE designed specifically for carriers, with escalation potential and exposure windows that make you visible and vulnerable. It’s not safe income — it’s content that invites trouble. Which, in EVE terms, usually means it’s working as intended 🙂
Back in December, when I spoke with CCP Burger and CCP Okami, carriers were already sitting on their whiteboard as something that needed deeper attention.
Carriers themselves are starting to shift through very specific fighter changes. Light fighter squadrons were reduced from 9 to 6, while each individual fighter received roughly a 50% increase to both HP and damage. In practice, that means total squad damage and effective HP stay about the same, but each fighter is significantly harder to kill. So instead of losing damage output gradually as fighters get picked off, you now keep your full punch longer — or at least have more time to yo-yo them around. This also directly affects cost. Fewer individual losses mean less constant replacement, which makes carriers cheaper to operate over time.
It reminded me of something much older. Back in 2004, during the Exodus era, droneboats went through a fundamental change — from fielding large swarms of drones down to a smaller number of more durable ones. The goal back then was to reduce server load, improve usability, and make losses less punishing without removing power.
Beyond that, there’s a wide spread of changes — increased cargo capacity for hauling PLEX and other valuables, along with a mix of adjustments touching multiple systems. As usual, it’s worth going through the patch notes; there’s something in there for everyone.
Standings & Awoxing — Fixing Old Scars
I can’t call myself a big faction warfare player. Never really lived that militia life. But even if you never enlisted, chances are you’ve seen the memes. What started as “seagulling” eventually evolved into something much more infamous — awoxing.
And even that term depends on who you ask. Some trace it back to a specific player. Others remember it as blue-on-blue tackles in nullsec. Highsec players will tell you it’s when someone joins your corp, smiles in chat, and then casually deletes your shiny mission ship because CONCORD doesn’t care if it’s friendly fire among corpies.
Different stories, same core idea: weaponizing trust inside systems that weren’t really designed to handle it cleanly.
Faction warfare inherited some of that mess. Standings, friendly fire, penalties — over time it turned into a system where participating often meant navigating rules that felt more punishing than the actual gameplay. Not because FW is dangerous (that’s the point) but because the surrounding mechanics created friction that didn’t feel intentional. That’s what CCP is addressing here. The update strips out a lot of that legacy baggage around standings and friendly fire interactions. Fewer ways to accidentally lock yourself out of content, and generally fewer situations where the system punishes you harder than the enemy does.
And this doesn’t stay contained inside lowsec FW. Highsec players will start feeling it soon as well. Mission runners, casual pilots, even people who never plan to touch militias — the changes bleed into how standings and interactions work across the board. Personally, I’ll probably keep running SOE missions and chasing those Odysseus BPCs. Old habits. But stepping back, this is one of those updates where CCP is clearly trying to make systems behave the way players expect them to — instead of relying on years of inherited quirks and edge cases.
The Lore – Gallente Election
EVE’s narrative layer is always there in the background. But every now and then, it spills into the sandbox. The Gallente presidential election is one of those moments. Not just as lore, but as an active system — where players run challenges, earn rewards, and directly influence which candidate ends up in power.
Until mid-April, capsuleers can pick a side and push it forward through event challenges. The more you do, the more weight your choice carries. It’s a simple and well known loop, but an effective one: gameplay translates into political outcome. And CCP didn’t leave it at flavor.
Gallente ships receive system-wide buffs across Federation space during the event, which naturally pulls more pilots into the region. Add new combat and hacking sites — like Rampant Drone Fabricators and Rogue Drone exploration — and you get what EVE does best: localized spikes of activity (you can check new awesome 2D map and watch the activity around Dodixie).
Rewards are also doing their part. Up to 640,000 Skill points, PLEX, new drones, boosters — the usual mix. But a few items stand out more than the rest.
The YC128 Campaign Bus — essentially three Gallente luxury yacht with a different skin (and abysmal align speed of around ~60 sec) — is already trading around the 400 million ISK mark. Right now, supply is still flowing as people complete the event, so prices will likely soften over the next couple of weeks. But once the faucet closes, it’s the usual story: limited hull, no reissue, and every loss on a killmail slowly pushes the price up again. Collectors will keep an eye on this one.
One detail that’s easy to miss is that each candidate also brings their own unique officer module, available through their Capsuleer Outreach Center (hat tip to @Fritte Cornelius for calling this out in the comments):
- Tenzin’s Modified Guidance Disruptor
- Moreau’s Modified Expanded Scan Probe Launcher
- Roden’s Modified Nanofiber Internal Structure
Depending on how things play out, this is either a clean extra billion ISK… or someone’s first purple module. Just remember — EVE has a way of reclaiming gifts. Fly them carelessly, and they’ll end up on someone else’s killmail. Learned that one the hard way after losing a T2-fit Golem to a bunch of random Catalyst punks.
Then there are the new SKINs, including the Pride of the Federation line, which come with unique warp and kill effects. That’s something worth watching — EVE doesn’t introduce new visual layers like that too often, and depending on how they look in practice, these might end up being more than just another cosmetic set.
It’s easy to dismiss events like this if you’re focused purely on mechanics. But EVE has always been stronger when its world feels alive, not just functional. And sometimes, that means elections — with guns, drones, and a few billion ISK changing hands on the side.
Anger Games 7 — The Community Endgame
And then there’s the part of EVE CCP doesn’t fully control. Anger Games 7 is back this April, bringing that familiar Thunderdome madness. It’s one of the clearest examples of what the community can build on its own, EVE’s longest-running player-run tournaments: a 7v7 team deathmatch format, close enough to the Alliance Tournament to feel familiar, but different enough to produce its own metas and surprises.
This year, the organizers are aiming for a massive 60-team bracket. The event starts with 5-team group stages and then moves into a double-elimination format, which means a lot of explosions and a lot of room for teams to prove they belong there.
If you were hoping to enter, I’ve got bad news: registrations and rosters closed on 15 March. But you can still enjoy the fun with no less excitement. Matches will be broadcast live on the CCP Twitch channel from 17:00 to 22:00 across three April weekends: 11–12, 18–19, with the finals on 25–26 April.
There is also plenty at stake. The prize pool includes hundreds of billions of ISK and PLEX, and for the top performers, one of the real trophies of New Eden tournament culture: the Laelaps (last one saw listed for a 900b ISK).
A Different Kind of Month
March didn’t try to overwhelm. It connected things. Project Discovery reminds you that EVE can matter outside the game. Catalyst shows that CCP is still actively reshaping its foundations. System updates clean up old friction. Events bring players together. And the community keeps building its own endgame on top.
It’s a different kind of momentum. Less about spectacle, more about direction. And honestly, that’s the kind of progress EVE needs.
o7
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