Over Valentine's, CCP released a devblog by CCP Fozzie talking about the major rebalancing changes coming to Retribution 1.1. This article is intended to be a round-up of the most important features - a slightly smaller 'wall of text', if you will. If you absolutely can't stand reading, CCP kindly launched a video on their YouTube channel that highlights Tuesday's changes as well as their plans for the future. You can find it here.

Release is Feb 19th: remember to play Skillqueue Online

Again, this update will feature a continuation of the concept of 'Tiericide'. It will focus on the start of Battlecruiser adaptations, armor tanking and Black Ops. Some important notes on upcoming changes, however, were mentioned as well.

- The skill changes that are coming to ship navigation are coming with the Summer expansion, this was repeated again for the people who suffer from deafness or are still paranoid that they won't make it in time.

- 'Tiericide' is a concept developers are pushing through not only to review old ships but also to make sure changes to new ship stats will keep getting implemented as developers see fit.

- Kil2 will be helping out with the 'Tiericide'-project.

It's new and it's shiny

T1 and T2 Battlecruiser are now known as 'Combat Battlecruisers' in CCP-land, while T3 Battlecruisers are now 'Attack Battlecruisers'. This update will feature adjustments to the T1 and T2 Battlecruisers while T3 will receive love later on.

Data showed that both the Drake and the Hurricane are the battlecruiser of choice, while other T2 battlecruisers were less popular. The T1 variants on the other hand were neglected, according to Fozzie. The goal is to make both Tiers viable ships to fly in. A first step to do this had been undertaken in the launch of Retribution by nerfing some of the Drake and Hurricane combat capabilities.

What follows is a synopsis of changes to each battlecruiser.

Prophecy - claimed wildly unpopular by Fozzie

New role: Drone boat

10% bonus to drone damage and hit points per level

Increase to 75mbit drone bandwidth

225m³ drone bay

-2 high slots

+1 mid slot

+1 low slot

Harbinger - A ship 'overshadowed' by his big brothers

-1 turret

Doubled damage bonus

Less HP

Focus on Light drones rather than Medium

Ferox

The 'shield/blaster brawler-role will be made more viable

+1 turret hardpoint

+1 high slot

Drake - Mother of all EVE Derp

-1 launcher hardpoint

Doubled damage projection through missiles

HP reduction

Brutix

-1 turret hardpoint

Doubled damage bonus

+1 low slot

Lower mass which means increased speed with a MWD

Due to armor tanking changes, this ship will benefit in that regard as well.

Myrmidon

+25mbits drone bandwidth

+50m³ drone bay

-1 turret hardpoint

Cyclone

Is now a missile boat - projectile bonus has been swapped for missile bonus

Extra shield HP

-1 high slot

+1 low slot

Hurricane

-1 high slot

Slight reduction in HP

Increased mass

You have my armor

This update will feature several new additions and stat modifications.

- Active armor tanking rigs will no longer have a velocity penalty but will be replaced with a 10% penalty to the powergrid requirements of local armor repair modules.

- A reduction of powergrid needs for medium active armor systems by 20% and 10% for large modules.

- The AAR or Ancillary Armor Repairer will be introduced in small, medium and large sizes. From the devblog:

The AARs use the same cycle time, fitting and build requirements as a Tech One armor repairer of the same size. Their blueprint copies are found in all the same places where other blueprints for prototype modules such as the ASB can already be acquired.

Unlike the ASBs, AARs always use the same capacitor as a Tech One armor repairer to cycle. This cap use does not change when the module is loaded with charges.

AARs can optionally be loaded with Nanite Repair Paste to increase repair amount, using a similar system to the way cap boosters can be loaded into ASBs, including the same 60 second reload time.

When not loaded with Nanite Repair Paste, the AAR repairs 3 / 4 the amount of a normal T1 armor repairer. When loaded with paste this repair amount triples, causing the AAR to repair 2.25x  the amount of a T1 rep.

Small AARs use 1 paste per cycle, Mediums 4, Larges 8. If less than the normal amount of paste is left in the module, it will use what is left and scale the repair bonus proportionally.

Each AAR can hold 8 cycles worth of paste before either running at reduced rep effectiveness or requiring a reload.

Unlike the ASB, AAR modules are limited to one per ship. You may run one AAR alongside as many normal armor repairers as you wish.

I will bridge chaos with my mini-titan

The Black Ops will see some love (but more will follow) in this update, as well with the following changes.

- Base jump and bridge range will be 3.5 lightyears, same as titans

- 25% fuel cost reduction and 25% increase of the fuel bay

- T3 cruisers, such as Tengus and such will be able to fit Covert Cynosural Field when fitted with the Covert Reconfiguration subsystem.

Let the comments reign supreme! What do you think of CCP's work?