Nullsec Eve: Dying or needing Rebirth?

We're all used to the "Eve is Dying" meme, whether you're one of the pessimists or you just laugh at the meme.  If you live in Gal/Cal FW zone like me, some nights are quiet but other nights there's far more content can you can handle.  Our null cousins don't seem to have the "too much content" problem though.  If you follow the Player Count on eve-offline there really is no question that the average number of players logged in is dropping.  What's harder is disentangle is the effect of the consistent CCP push against bots and multi-boxers.  I don't think I buy that the player count is the same thing as the opportunity to find content, given those factors, but that is indeed what each player has to judge from their area of the game.  So as we look at the game, what's going on here?

FozzieSov

So FozzieSov has rolled out and to my ears sounds like a success.  From following along on the eve media it sounds like the results were pretty unsurprising.  The Imperium (nee CFC) had already contracted and was organized and ready, so people hoping to troll them were beaten off without spawning a full control-node event.  Others who are stretched more widely did not fare as well.  You can follow along with the new pages on DOTLAN to see how such campaigns are going (because DOTLAN is awesome and we should all donate to keep Wollari going).  So there is definitely some content generation going on there.

Content Density

But the content density in null-sec isn't where it is in other areas of the world.  I'm looking at stats from Wednesday morning of 7/22 before work (and it may be much later by the time I finish this blog and post it) but here are the regional stats from Dotlan.

So the most violent nullsec region is Providence.  Click on that link to see what the kills look like across that region.  Let's skip down the Empire column a bit to clear the ganking around Jita - we'll see a list of Gal/Cal FW regions.  Take a look at Black Rise.  Now these are live links, so they'll change by the time you read this.  It may be interesting to look at this a month after the blog goes live in fact.

But what we see is that Providence is a big region that has a couple hotspots, mostly in one constellation (but not from a sov event that shows on the Dotlan list).  By hotspot here we mean more than 50 but less than 100 kills of PC ships.

Black Rise is a big different, having more kills in a smaller region.  There's a FW contest going back and forth in Pavanakka with 379 ship kills, with neighboring systems in the 50-100 range.  There's another big hotspot in Kedama of 190 ship kills, again with nearby systems being about as hot or hotter than the big fight in Provi.  There's even another spot over in Nennamaila with 53 ship kills.

Heck, look at the Gal/Cal FW zone - it's all lit up.  The Amarr/Min FW zone isn't quite as consistently hot, but still better than null (which is also why GorskiCar's FW experiment in that side is very different from Gal/Cal).

Why is FW space so much more fun?

So why is FW space so much more content rich?  Why are these FW guys and gals having so much damn fun while null can't get moving?  I've heard complaints about FozzieSov bringing FW mechanics to null-sec, but what the real goal was I suppose was to bring FW fun to null-sec.

1) In Faction War anyone can just move in.  We've recently had Brave return to lowsec, in the lowsec system of Aunsou in Placid just outside of FW.  We have Snuff (who has moved around a bit recently) and Snigg and other pirates, and that even before the actual faction warfare itself (which I've previously written has more action than the top nullsec alliances).  The idea for FozzieSov is to make this possible, to be able to pull down a constellation for yourself with a "small" group, but the entry bar is certainly higher compared to any 10-man corp deciding to move into a lowsec station.  You can't get evicted from a lowsec station as a pirate, though you can as a FW gang - but you at least theoretically have the backing of others in your faction.  The TMC-driven "null contract" pushed the idea of NPC stations in every region that might make that easier (if they aren't all constantly bubbled), and it seems the concept of Freeholds was suppose to support this, but we'll see if it really happens.

2) In Faction War you can contribute with smaller ships.  You will see FW fleets with T2 logi supporting battleships/battlecruisers/HACs, but the majority of the fighting is more destroyers and frigates.  This again makes the entry bar more accessible.  In null-sec you used to have to have caps and supers, pretty much full stop, in order to grind down those massive HP structures even before you get into fighting neighbors.  In FozzieSov that part is gone, but the cultural feel is still there, and you know the escalation can go all the way up to supers, so if you want to hold space you have to consider that.  At least there is a step up in that smaller ships can mount an Entosis link that will get a fight going (example video).

3) In Faction War the attitude is different.  FW pilots are just less risk-averse, in part because of points 1 and 2 above, but also just as a culture.  I see people making YouTube videos of roaming null, but it seems often time those people are not null citizens.  I hear a lot of about policies of docking up when the intel channel light up, instead of going for the fight.  I don't hear about the casual, fun fights in null that happen in FW on gates and in plexes.  This is a bigger, deeper thing - unless the people who are the cultural leaders in null really push a change in attitude I don't think there's much CCP can do with FozzieSov.

So it seems like FozzieSov is moving in the right direction to help bring the fun that FW has to nullsec, but there is a big portion of that which has to come from the players.  Without a Cultural Revolution in null, perhaps it's not so much "Eve is Dying" as "Null is Dying (and needs to be reborn)"

Making a Market: Lessons so far

I've been working on getting a market going in our home system of Fliet.  Now I'm no Sugar Kyle, so it's been interesting to get this going with essentially one character with limited capital and trade skills.  Some of the things I thought might be real advantages are actually disadvantages and I've had one possible market sector pop up that's been fun to try out too. So Psst, hey buddy, need some boosters? But let's step back and ask some questions.

What is the local geography?

Fliet is in the southeast of the busy Gallente-Caldari Faction War zone in the Essence region.  Fliet is home to Aideron Robotics as well as some small pirate groups that tend to come and go over the months.  There is a lot of fighting to be found in the area, though much of it crosses over into the neighboring region of The Citadel (and Sugar's old home market of Sujarento).

There's only a bit of Essence that comes into the warzone (8 systems) so that puts a limit on the number of people looking in their market browsers that will see my stuff.  On the plus side, if I was in Placid I'd be competing with a lot more people including the decent-sized markets in Stacmon and Orvolle.  The smaller market area may be a better match for my smaller capital and skills.  The original point was to supply Aideron, so that's not really part of the choice equation anyway.  But I need to keep in mind that there is going to be a natural limit to the size of this market.

What are the limits of my Skills and Capital?

My market alt can run some 53 market slots, and with PLEX/MCT prices back up close to a billion I probably won't be changing that for a while.  I've also only been able to spare around 2B ISK in capital to stock things up, since I'm not particularly space rich, and that pretty much wipes my alt's liquid resources.  This makes me think about how much profit I can make on each of these slots.  If I hope to make 250M a month, I need each of those slots to turn over 4M in profit after all costs.  That means that where the difference between Jita price and the local market prices is narrow I'll have to really consider if I can get enough volume to make it worthwhile.

As an example, I know people need 400mm Rolled Tungsten (old name, I know) plates, but they are cheap.  If I can get them for 120k ISK in Jita and resell them for 180K that looks great on paper at 50% profit - but it's also only a raw profit of 60,000 ISK each.  So I'd need to sell 60-70 of them a month to hit that 4M per slot target.  Similar patterns come in for ammo and T1 rigs as well.

I know I need to expand those market slots, so if things are successful I'll be looking for another Multiple Pilot Training Cert. However prices on PLEX and Certs are very high right now. Amazingly the MPTC is more expensive than a PLEX, which I don't see any reason for, but it has been sustained for several days at least now.

Who are my customers?

Aideron has a great freighter service for members to bring in supplies cheap from Jita.  This is great for me in being able to stock Fliet, since I don't own a Jump Freighter.  However, this also means that any member who is willing to plan ahead and have an alt in The Forge has no need for my services.  We also keep a lot of the doctrine ships up on corp contracts, so it's easy to grab a ship and go when the fleet is forming.  This is not something I considered when I started doing this, and that was a big miss in my thought process.

So what I can provide is a convenience factor for AIDER pilots outside of doctrine fleets - ships that do solo, combat sites, and WH dives.  It also means that I end up selling to local pilots who aren't in AIDER.  If I look through the names of people who have bought from me, I actually seen relatively few AIDER names.  So my real customers range from pirates passing through (or trying to camp us on the undock) to other GalMil folks who aren't in AIDER but might end up reshipping here. That's something else I didn't think about, which encourages me to reach into saleable items that aren't only in the Gallente-focused AIDER doctrine set.

Is there a niche I can provide?
In talking to corpmates I found there was a need for truckloads of drugs. Based on that I've reached out and gotten supplies brought in for Standard Exile, Blue Pill, and Drop. After that was successful I've expanded that to include Strong and Improved versions as well. This was very expensive - most of my market orders by value are now in the combat booster sector - and we'll see how that turns out. If so, I'd love for Fliet to be a place where people in the area come to know they can get some boosters for the edge in that next fight. As things grow, maybe there is another niche I can fill as well.

BB64 - Torpedoes Away!

With the Blog Banter kicking back into gear, let's look at the latest: missile changes ahoy, torpedoes in the void, so let's steer straight towards the tracks.

BB64: Torpedo! Torpedo! Torpedo!
With the Aegis release we will see missile boats get their own version of the tracking enhancer and the tracking computer. On the forums there have been calls for new 'missile defence eWar' to counter these new modules. Is this needed? Are smartbomb 'firewalls' enough? Do defender missiles need an overhaul to make them actually worth using? Do we need the missile version of the remote tracking disruptor? Or do we go all Star Trek and have Point-Defence Phaser Banks? Banter on!

Firewalls and Missiles

Let's start with the one I find most intriguing.  I'll admit I hadn't heard of firewalling before the recent discussions, but I love it.  I'm a pilot with very limited missile-skills, operating in a space where our numbers are generally small enough that peeling someone off to smart-bomb missiles would be an unacceptable reducing in fleet firepower.  We don't tend to move closely anchored to an FC, nor do our opponents, so the missiles wouldn't be consistently coming from one direction from far enough for this tactic to even work.  But I love it.  Anytime that a smaller group, better organized, with better tactics, can defeat a larger group by their own cleverness - that's the kind of thing that I like about Eve.

Now if the larger-fleet kind of world where T3s and faction battleships and such move on anchors and fire missiles in a narrow band - I get that it could nullify a whole branch of fleet possibilities if firewalling was too effective.  That's exactly the kind of thing that I'm glad balance-minded designers like Rise and Fozzie would have an eye (and an ear) out for.  The idea of tuning missiles and their resistances seems to make sense.  Even if now that just means you park a Nestor in the middle of your firewall to refit off of.  So go for it out there, it doesn't really impact my game play but I'm glad they're keeping the meta moving.

Small Gangs and Missiles

Now I've heard complaints about the balance of missiles out there, but I've died to enough Hookbills and Caracals that I'm not terribly convinced that missiles are in a bad place.  Yes, the missiles are different from turrets in their delayed but guaranteed application, if reduced by combinations of speed and sig radius.  Great, carry on, I'd rather have a different weapon type than just a new combination of optimal, falloff, rate of fire, and damage type.

I'm pretty convinced by the argument that giving up a valuable slot (particularly low-slots which are typically rare on missile ships) to tweak the values of application should be a nice tradeoff.  I don't think we're suddenly going to see the meta dominated by the few Amarr missile ships that have those low slots to spare, either.

However, I do understand the frustration that tracking disruption only matters for turrets, leaving people with reason to turn away from fights with missile ships if their fit includes a TD.  All of the other ewar could plausibly be used on a missile-using target (yes, even cap warfare) but the TD is just useless.  I've mentioned in my last blog about the bad design that leads to there not being a reasonably counter to ECM, and I'd say this falls in a similar place.

Defender Missiles and Point-Defense

Drackarn mentions defender missiles (and point-defense).  This seems like a real missed opportunity.  There's a firewalling system built into the game - it just doesn't work.  Any time there is a module already in the game that isn't working, and a need that isn't being met - well, that's just peanut butter meets chocolate, right?  Overhauling Defender Missiles (and Friend or Foe missiles) seems like a natural thing to include in this rebalancing pass.

This could be very interesting as a fitting and ammo choice.  Consider if Defender missiles would attack any incoming hostile missiles, not just ones at you.  Should your fleet load up your utility slots with unbonused missile launchers, ready to switch to Defender missiles if under long-range missile attack, or to FoF if being jammed at range?

As for Point Defense, I wouldn't like it offhand for the same reason I don't like ECCM as it stands - it would have no value unless it's specific circumstances were triggered.  Now the idea reminds me of WWII battleships with banks of guns ranging from the massive 18" guns to the secondary batteries to the anti-aircraft batteries.  That invokes a potential for a new view of capital ships which might have two bands of high slots: one band of XL weapons plus perhaps one band of M weapons.  That would make the capitals/super-capitals useful for a broader range of fighting - but that's also another topic for another blog or blog banter.

Nerf-Proofing Yourself

Changes to the Eve meta via the nerf bat used to come in big roundhouse swings.  The more recent approach is more incremental but also more constant.  It used to be that newer players were constantly chasing the meta - sometimes by what they saw flying through the void, sometimes directed by their alliances to train the next big thing.  Ever since the beginning of ship tiericide it feels like this has been less of a thing.  But what does the recent wave of changes indicate for characters who aren't already nerf-proof?

Nerf-Proofing

The granddaddy of Eve blogs, Jester's Trek by Ripard Teg, coined the term "nerf-proof" (AFAIK) in a December 2013 article.  In that article he mentioned moving towards a point where he had level 5 skills in all subcap ships, up to level 4 specialization in all subcap weapon systems, level 5 skill in every "significant support skill", and all rigging skills to 4.

The idea there is that if a swing of the nerf-bat devastated a faction's weapon system, or raised a new hull to prominence, then Ripard Teg could switch ships appropriately without having to wait for training.  Characters who just now chased their way up to perfect Ishtar and Sentry Drone skills know that pain.

This is understandably a critical characteristic for those playing at a high level of performance.  In Longinus Spear's recent article "Some Tips and best practices to get your Wspace group up to snuff" he fairly casually mentions that your Wspace group should have a number of fits ready to go including an armor, a shield doctrine, oh and make sure you can fly a Blackbird.  This is needed to be able to handle the different kinds of wormhole ops, but you'll see similar things in other areas of space when group want to quickly jump in a particular doctrine to counter what the enemy is seen (or expected) to have.  Spear's is just one application of that.

Now Spear is not the kind of WH guy who is "T3 or go home" and has often spoken of having fun in T1 ships in wormholes.  His move over to Nova Haven recently certainly will also build up his credentials with low-skill-point players.  But as someone who talks with newer players regularly, just getting multiple racial cruisers (and their attendant tank and weapon systems) up to reasonable levels can be intimidating.

Corporation Focus

By contrast, Aideron focuses its new pilots with a drone-centric Gallente-doctrine approach.  Pilots can much more quickly get to a good level of capability by focusing on what's needed to fly our Rogue Squadron doctrine that focuses on armor-tanking, primary dps from drones, and secondary dps primarily from blasters. In the graphic linked for Rogue Squadron you see that getting into the Vexor doctrine is still 100+ days out for the new pilot (depending on implants).  That's a long time for a newbro - so the pattern gets them into a series of useful ships along the way with the T2 Tristan inside a month.

Another positive side here is that day-for-day this focused approach leads to a coherent fleet of pilots who can all contribute.  The alternative I see around is either the elite player approach: "today we're going to do Zealots and Guardians and if you can't fly that I guess you can fly tackle" or the kitchen-sink approach such as described in Kirith's recent blog on our fights with Operation Meatshield.

The negative side is that nerfs can smack your entire corp/alliance around.  I remember reading TMDC and CZ posts from a year ago (maybe more) where entire null alliances suddenly told their people to start training towards a Megathron - no wait, scratch that, switch to training towards Malestrom and from their to Naglfar.  Ouch.  Brave probably felt this earlier this year after training their folks into the Moa / Eagle path, just to have medium rails get a whack from the nerf bat.



But these are more love-taps from the nerf bat compared to the nerfs of history that raised up and then destroyed hulls like the Hurricane and the Drake.

Return to the nerf-proofing

I think most pilots are better off picking a goal range and focusing on it rather than chasing a meta.  Something like Aideron's Rogue Squadron keeps everyone engaged and valuable.  In my opinion once you hit cruisers you should start looking at branching out.  I started the game at the right time to train Battlecruisers right before they were split into racial groups, and I got a bit into the Battleship range from my HS missioning days but haven't flown one since.  The only use I get out of that is for large hybrids for a Talos - and that's not something we pull out often either.  Until Battlecruisers get a serious rebalance there's not that much reason to stretch up to them, though at least there isn't a new weapon system level to learn there.

Instead, start working on nerf-proofing yourself.  If you already have the core skills down then stretching into neighboring factors will go pretty quick.  If you've trained Gallente then move to Amarr to keep with the armor tank of your corp and all you need to pick up is the lasers.  If you've trained Minmatar then stretch over to Caldari, round out any missile skills and start on hybrids.  As you move into other factions you'll gain access to pirate faction ships that may be the meta of the day (or the day to come), as well as insulation against weapon systems rising and falling.

For myself, I've been focusing on things in the sub-Battleship range, though Gallente Battleship 5 is a backdrop in my skill queue.  I'm think now that I should round out my missile skills as the missiles get buffed and the drones I run with now get a bit of the nerf-bat.  This will make the Worm/Gila pattern a good middle step while opening up missile-focused ships as a possibility for what little PVE I do.

Of course, all that will pause once the Hecate lands, but that's a different story...

o7 Fleet Warp, 7o Nerf/Buff cycle

The o7 show has become a must-watch stream for me.  It's late enough in my work day that I can usually justify watching it.  If I don't then I get to watch the meta explode in conversations for a day or two until they get around to posting the video to YouTube.  Guys in corp talk about it on slack live and for a while afterwards.  The rapid-fitting battles are generally amusing, as is the brief CCP-celebrity roam afterwards which pretty much always ends with the Devs getting chased down, scrammed, and jammed into that hands-in-the-air useless feeling.  Favorite quote: "Everytime I do this I keep wanting to nerf ECM".  Hold onto that feeling, Fozzie, I'll come back to that.

Fleet Warp

The real bombshell from this o7 show was the announcement of a coming nerf to fleet warp.  As more and more people thought about this, the more holes started to appear in the CCP logic.  Wormholes, primarily.  It really feels like it wasn't thought through - perhaps a slip of the tongue in a live show that they then felt compelled to make official?

I'll admit I did't think too much of it at first.  Sure, an attempt to keep people active - fine.  Out here in FW we rarely fleet-warp anyway.  Our opponents are in plexes and on gates, so we don't have probers in our fleets.  Maybe we could gank a lonely ship that thinks it's in a safe, but that's not really the kind of fight we're looking for.

The more I've heard from the other parts of the Eve universe, the more I see why it's a bad idea.  The WH part is pretty obvious: no fleet warping to wormhole chains, you'll have to put them in corp bookmarks and wait for them to propagate to everyone in your fleet.  And that's only the start of it.  For more on the WH/null I'll refer folks to other blogs though.

Nerfs and Buffs

More nerfs to Ishtars via sentry drones (no details though), more buffs to heavy missiles (no details), new modules to buff the application of missile damage (here's some knowledgeable speculation).  Be ready to download the newest version of your fitting tool, though at least unlike the plate/extenders change you probably won't have to redo your fits immediately.  I see why people tire of the shifting sands of the Eve capabilities, though in the same breath people will shout for their favorite nerf or buff.  I'm generally willing to give CCP the benefit of the doubt on tweaks like these and the "many small steps" that Fozzie and Rise have mentioned before.

Bigger things like nuking of off-grid boosters have wide support but seem tied to deeper code issues.  I say that as someone who is training up a booster alt right now, with the expectation that the nerfs will begin as soon as that booster can sit in his T3.

But I'll come back to ECM.  There's a simple argument here that isn't original to me: all of the electronic warfare (and cap warfare) modules that can make you useless in a fight have a counter-modules that has some benefit even if you don't run into the ewar itself.  Sensor Damps are opposed by Sensor Boosters that increase your lock range, lock speed, or both.  Tracking disruption is opposed by Tracking Computers/Enhancers that will improve your tracking and/or range.  Neuts and Vamps are opposed by cap boosters and cap batteries (though I hope cap batteries will get a look in tiericide).  But ECM - well you have ECCM that will benefit you by... umm... making you harder to probe down?  Thanks.

There's also the tactics people use to counter these ewar styles.  We've probably all seen videos of someone pulling away to lower transversal to overcome tracking disruption, or rushing in to try to get back under sensor damps max range, or timing their module activation and boosters to sneak in between neut cycles.  For ECM you can hope that you can get drones on the Griffin before it jams you, or in a fleet you can spin off a fast ship to leave the fight to try to chase off the ECM boat, but nothing for the solo pilot once you're jammed other than hope that the ECM misses a cycle.  Like Fozzie and Larakin did on the o7 show - just put your hands up in the air and wait for it to be over.

One thing I'll give ECM is that it is a decent way to break logi.  I hate fights where one side doesn't even have a chance to get a kill, and while ECM and Logi both can cause that to happen it happens more with Logi.  I say that as a pilot with a corp with a pretty good set of logi pilots too.

Think about it this way - what makes your roaming fleet decide not to engage another roaming fleet?  If they have a wall of logi you can't break, or (particularly in micro-gang) you see ECM that's going to make the fight no fun.  Those should be the warning signs for the game designers that something should be looked at.

Time for the next nerf/buff cycle?

How active is the Gal/Cal Faction War, compared to the rest of Eve?

Innocent question on Reddit (if there is such a thing): "Is the Cal/Gal war zone any fun right now?" So I made a quick reply tied to a corpies post, but let's try to back that up a bit first with a bit of narrative and then with a bit of hard data.  Let's compare the Gallente faction to an infamous and large nullsec alliance.

I could talk about a RL coworker of mine who played Eve in that he was subscribed.  But his main was in a WH corp and that wasn't really matching a real-life that had gotten very busy.  He described how logging in at night only to spend the majority of his limited playtime trying to probe out a chain that might maybe find a fight was frustrating.  So I tried to convince him to put an alt in Aideron Robotics, and after a while he spun up an alt and flew him on out.

We got him into a cheap Atron with meta guns while his skill queue started up and undocked.  In the course of the next hour we got three fights: the first that I yolo'd us into and got spanked, then I realized he needed to know more about accel gates and complexes so I took him to a nice quiet little Novice in Fliet and ended up killing an enemy Kestrel, then we flew off and tangled with some local pirates but managed to escape.  I can't say that every night is that packed with fights, but it certainly was a great way to start things off.

So what about the bigger picture, if all nights aren't like that.  Let's take a look at the killboards.  If we look at the Gallente Federation faction we see that zkillboard considers it to have 1398 active PVPers.  Who else in Eve has about that many active PVPers?  Well, Goonswarm Federation actually at 1379.  Yes - the 13000+ null alliance has approximately 1 active PVPer for every 10 members, using zkillboard's definition.  (I bet some of you aren't surprised really).

What do each of those organizations do with effectively the same number of active PVPers?  We see that the Gallente FW have destroyed 955,952 enemy ships while losing 786,103.  By comparison Goonswarm have destroyed 701,783 and lost 517,402.  So Gallente FW is really roughly a quarter more active than Goonswarm.  The Goons have destroyed more by ISK value (90T to 50T).

Now if you look at the zkillboard Alliance list you'll see that Goonswarm is exceptional - PL is roughly half the number of kills and then Brave and BL are half of that.  On the other side you'll see that the Caldari State is pretty close behind the Gallente Federation.

Over the past 90 days Gal + Cal FW has more kills than Goonswarm, Pandemic Legion, Brave Collective, and Black Legion combined.

So yeah, I'd say the Gal/Cal Faction Warfare zone is active - and that it's a lot of fun.

Armor Plate Rebalancing on SiSi

Looks like there is a Tanking Dev Blog in the midst of being finalized, because changes to armor plates and shield extenders have been spotted on SiSi and broadcast on Reddit (of course).  I've been stuck on a bigger post, so it's nice that something popped up today that is very interesting and good for a quick analysis.  As an armor-tanker you can guess what caught my eye.

The best way to sum this up is with a quick table of the new stats as they are currently on SiSi.  These of course are not necessarily final values, so any speculation you indulge in are your own responsibility.

Name	1600mm Restrained	1600mm Compact	1600mm T2	1600mm Federation	1600mm Imperial	1600mm Syndicate
Armor	4000 (+100)	4000 (-200)	4500 (-300)	5000 (+800)	5250 (+1050)	5000 (+800)
Mass	3,000,000	3,500,000	3,750,000	2,250,000	3,000,000	2,500,000
CPU	30 (+1)	27 (-1)	35 (+2)	30 (-3)	27 (-3)	35 (+2)
Power	500	480 (-20)	550 (-25)	550 (-25)	575 (+0)	525 (-50)

The first part is pretty straightfoward based on CCP's recent rebalancing.  Restrained and Compact offer the same amount of tank, but the Compact is easier to fit.  However, you also pay an additional mass cost for the Compact version.  The T2 plate is even heavier and harder to fit both in CPU and Grid, but gives a nice chunk of armor.

The second part is the entry of the Faction plates to actual usability.  I don't know about you, Gentle Reader, but I've never seen someone fit a faction plate.  Why would you when they were less tanky?  Now they are going to be the tank of choice for faction ships and other pricey hulls.  As a bonus, they're even lighter.  Double-plated battleships will now be running double 1600mm Imperials, you can guess.  It doesn't hurt that with a dominant Amarr FW zone the LP should be plenty available to get those into the market en mass.

The third part is already being noted as the overall small nerf to armor tanking.  Expensive faction plates aside, your average armor tanked ship just lost ehp.  Really roughly a Vexor that used to run a 1600mm Meta4 plate will 400 ehp of 18k (2%) of its armor (assuming one ENAM and a DCU II).

Now there are some changes to shield tanks in that posted diff from SiSi, but much smaller.  This may simply be because those changes haven't been completed and ready to roll out, so we'll see.

Armor tanking groups beware - you will need to reassess all your corp doctrine fits.  Theory-crafters to your fitting tools!