Back! - Apocrypha 1.3 on Monday - POS Changes!

Hey there! Long time no see... my writer's block seems to have dissipated and I'm going to pick up where I left off.

These past 3 months I've been busy doing a mix of exploration/missions/t2 invention and building... same old, same old...

Exploration since the Apoc expansion has been really swell, even in K-space (aside from the fact that everyone and their dog is doing it); I've gotten really lucky and managed to find a couple of sweet deadspace items that basically paid for my shiny Kronos (and a few other shiny ships too), and word is exploration is about to get even sweeter come Monday, with the Apocrypha 1.3 patch.

Patch notes are available here, and what it means is basically they are to increase the number of RADAR sites in WH's (in an effort to bring T3 cruiser prices to a lower point of equilibrium).

Other changes of special interest to me - POS mechanics are being changed a bit:

"Multiple changes have been made to the anchoring and onlining of starbase modules and structures. All offensive starbase structure anchoring times have been reduced by 50% and all offensive starbase structure online times have also been reduced by 50%. Defensive starbase structures such as hardeners will have their anchoring, online and un-anchor times reduced by 50%. Finally, all starbase tower un-anchoring times have been reduced by 50%."

Faster anchoring and onlinin of gun and ewar batteries, faster unanchoring of ALL structures - this is great!

Also of note, CCP has decided to kill freeform contracts. Yup, that's right, come Monday you won't be able to make new freeform contracts, and all ongoing freeform contracts will become void.

Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, you be the judge... I'm afraid this is yet another step taken to further dumb eve down; while this change in itself doesn't "do much", it creates a precedent where CCP takes action "due to griefing problems".