Small Blazes

Inferno has come upon us. I have been out in the desert, doing what I do (geology) for 2 weeks, so you kind of can see why I have been inactive. My impressions so far:

The inventory system is a total shamozzle. I know Khanh'rhh and others say it will take just a little bit of adaptation and it really is better and no going back...but that is ignoring the minute-long load times on our SMA's, the list of every single POS gun on our POS getting in the way of everything, and some frankly fucking useless options for filtering the piles of crap you have lying about. The shift-click wasn't mentioned in the dev notes, and on this alone, i find CCP failed on selling the whole new system to us. All I heard was "fucking japanese motherfuckers!" and then we got fucked.

Why change something when it isn't broken and everything is working just fine? I have no idea, but there is a llot of frustrating things in this latest dispansion (disaster/expansion) which I hope get fixed over the next few weeks and months, before we do it all again. But enough of the bad, on with the good:

Missile effects.
ZOMG. As a fan of the macross anime from way back in my childhood, the Drake now kinda looks a bit like this. Bombs are now pretty - even when you are the target. Especially when you are; how else do you get to see it so up close and personal? Torpedoes, sadly, are a bit of a letdown.

It is yet to be seen whether this will create lag in large Drake blob fights. I haven't been in one, and likely won't be in one soon.

The Tormentor
This shit is off the fucking wall now. It has gone from a crappy-ass, useless, unloved bucket of crap mining frigate into a seriously punchy, tanky Amarr death prawn. 127DPS, capstable with a neut, with 4890 EHP (in Pyfa)? Back the fuck up, girlfriends. You can even swap the neut for an RR and take these bad boys along on a RR roam. For the next couple of weeks, Rifter pilots will be making mistakes - serious, glaring mistakes - in spottingg these things idling in a belt.

I'm keen to see the other shitty mining frigates and the shitty mining cruisers get worked over. I just hope that in the process of tiercide CCP gives the races a bit of variety; there's not much point having 5 laser-bonused Amarr frigates. Especially when there should be a T1 Khanid missile frigate. 

Adaptive armour hardener
I think people made an assumption that these are useless for PVP. The complaint has been that it changes too slowly to save your arse in PVP. However, in a situation, say, where you are being hit by a uniform damage type and you are recieving RR, this module will definitely swing your tank into favour. I'm thinking, for example, RR BS versus Tengu fleets. Assuming you can actually tank and not get alphaéd.

The new ECM module
I don't know this will help very much. Maybe it will break locks on a bunch of ships trying to alpha you - but will that be enough to save you? Given I killed a doubly-stabbed Mammoth loaded with 3 ECm modules with a Helios (bumping ftw) there is not too many situations where you will jam out all your foes instantly, and escape. Especially not if you face interceptors. It is just a glorified ECM burst.

The new shield boosters
I think these will revolutionise Minmatar active tanks; you won't need to give up so many midslots to tank + cap booster + shield booster. This will possibly result in people flying the Cyclone more, and it being effective without needing a faction booster. yet to try them out (fuck paying the prices nowadays). It will be interesting to see the results pan out. 

That's my first impressions. Overall, minus the fucking UI, Inferno has some interesting things to toy with. Shame it released the same week as Diablo 3. But at least if i'm going to get SMA lag, its not in a single player game!