Changes to combat and contracts in EVE confirmed by devs
by James Egan 
Oct 14th 2008 at 6:00PM
Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Economy, Forums, Game mechanics, Crafting, PvP, News items, PvE
New changes to EVE Online seem to be on the way as reported by players on the test server, and confirmed by CCP Games developers on the forums: weapon grouping and contract refinements, in addition to the previously-reported certificates.
Having several high slots of weapon turrets and needing to change ammo types mid-combat has likely frustrated most EVE players at some point. Now, it seems that it'll be possible to link up weapons systems (turrets and launchers only, at first), simplifying reloads and ammo swaps. EVE dev CCP Ytterbium says, "This feature allows players to group weapons together into one slot. From there you can swap all ammo at once without doing the usual ritual of right-click gun 1, load ammo, right-click gun 2, load ammo again etc..." He does caution that the feature is nowhere near ready to go live on Tranquility, and should be considered a work in progress. More information on this feature (which is a welcome change for many EVE players) will be detailed in a future dev blog, he said.
Another new feature that's turned up on the test server is "storefronts," which are enhanced contracts for corporations to use. CCP Lingorm said, "Essentially they are a customised view of selected Contracts issued by your corporation. So that people can see what you have available, they also allow you to sell packages and build a relationship with your customer."
A key aspect of storefronts that CCP is working on is "offers" -- which CCP Lingorm explains through the example of a typical transaction: "This means I can 'offer' a f.e. Raven for 100 mil, but do not have to commit that Raven to the contract. You can then come along and take up the offer of the Raven, at which point an item exchange contract for 100 mil for a Raven is created from you to my corp. I can then accept the offer and the Raven is delivered to your hangar. Also note the Offer is still available in the Store Front for others to take up."
The end result is that player corporations in EVE will be able to build to order through storefronts. As with weapon grouping, a dev blog will discuss storefronts in greater detail once the feature is closer to completion.
