Quadrant 4 Ends Scarcity with the Introduction of Solar Interaction

Dedicated white-hat hackers have uncovered files revealing that EVE’s Quadrant 4 will lead up to player-made stargates by means of materials gathered through Solar Interaction. An anonymous product manager, confronted with the evidence, confirmed this suspicion.

“I suppose there is no reason to deny the obvious,” the product manager affirmed, “we are quite pleased to release Solar Interaction with Quadrant 4. This is the next great triumph for our new data-driven product design philosophy. Our metrics indicate that players spend more time interacting with Planetary Interaction than with any mechanism in the game other than ship spinning, which we have already improved significantly. Since this means that PI is clearly a favorite gameplay experience, and stars in New Eden have previously been useful only as eye candy and tools for creating deep-safes, we are pleased to integrate this under-utilized but attractive solar system feature with the favorite user interface mechanic in order to deliver a new and yet familiar gameplay experience.”

Although details are scarce, initial indications suggest exploration vessels will be able to launch a new class of survey probes to identify which resources are available in a particular star. The available resources will change throughout the solar year as calculated by the average rotation period of all planets in the system. Once identified, well-tanked battleships will be capable of withstanding the brutal environment close to the star itself in order to deliver a Solar Interaction base station. When the harvest job completes, a Coronal Mass Ejection will occur, delivering a short-lived coronal mass field into orbit where it can be harvested by ORE industrials.

The extracted materials will be used to create warp gates, eventually allowing players to create wormholes connecting any two systems within a region, but initially restricted to allowing corvettes and Sisters of Eve, Edencom, and ORE frigates access to Jove space. Warp gate restrictions may be briefly lifted by applying PLEX technology in order to allow passage of up to battleship-class vessels.