Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Currently in eve, we have long range scanners, probing, local, directional scanner, and the overview, all cluttered, and if you want all the functionality of them, taking up most of the usable screen real estate. CCP has been spending a lot of resources fixing ships so they look beautiful, which would be great if they weren't hiding behind a bunch of windows and tabs. So I sat down, and thought about how one could go about completely overhauling the sensory experience of the eve player.

Goals:
*Condense all scanning/sensor/overview data into one easily usable, compact, and highly functional tool.
*Remove local as an intel tool
*Generally make the sensor information gameplay more varied and interesting.
*Open the door to new and interesting ships, modules, and tactics that fit within the eve universe

What I wanted to avoid:
*Nerfing current gameplay
*Making anything more convoluted then it is now

With that in mind, I got started redesigning the sensor suites that players can use. The end result of this process is a tool that I believe, allows for a great deal of depth, interesting gameplay, and customization.

Step one:
Remove local as an intel tool completely. It is unneeded, yes, there should be an intel tool that is roughly equivalent to local, but local itself is a chat channel, and should be divorced completely from the intel gathering process.

Step two:
Redesign the directional scanner to be more intuitive, and useful as an intel tool. With that in mind, it is combined with the probing scanner interface, into one window, (because there really is no reason not to have them as one window.) It is also made to be automated, and its cycle time, range, and precision are now dictated by skills, you can also now see the cone of area that you are scanning with it in the solar system window, allowing you to quickly and easily scan around passively.

This system becomes known as the passive scanner system. It provides you with limited information on a ship, just basic things such as ship size, and if skilled up sufficiently, class. In order to tell more about a ship, you need to actively scan it, you can use your ships onboard scanner, or a new module that could be added to improve it.

To explain: In general, a ship in space, flying along, not trying to hide itself, will produce a certain amount of a signature, the spaceship equivalent of cavitation noises. A normal, passive scanner system will be able to tell hull size, and a skilled pilot, ship class, but thats all. When you need more information, you need to launch an active scan. Of course, active scanning makes a lot of noise, the ship you are scanning will very likely be able to tell its being scanned unless the scanning pilot is fit very carefully for stealth. An active scan will provide you with the pilot's show info, the specific ship class, and its current velocity and 'energy output' its energy output is a factor of how much noise the ship is making from modules running, sensors active, engines on, and that sort of thing. Now, it is impossible to hide from an active scan, once you're active scanned, you've been found. However, active scanning is useless, if the passive doesn't pick you up in the first place, and herein lies cloaking, and a new mechanic known as running silent. A given ship can, in an emergency, power itself completely down so that it produces no energy output. Since energy output is what the passive scanner is looking at, when you go silent, if you have the skills, the ship is possible to make quiet (the passive stealth system that CCP has in the database would fit nicely in here) and the opponent isn't fit for finding you, you could go silent, and be invisible to the passive scan. Scan probes and active scans would of course still detect you.

Step three:

Combine in the overview into this system as 'short range sensors' these incorporate all the existing functionality of the current overview into one window that could be combined with the long range sensor window if the player wished it. The sensor buttons pop up in the selected items area when you click an item that has the sensor options instead of the close range overview options.

This plan is still very much a work in progress, but the basic goal is to put all the sensor suites and options and 'in system intel tools' into one easily usable system, that allows maximum customization, and also opens the door to interesting new gameplay options, and to sort of make scanning a full time profession in a fleet, where it would be useful to have a dedicated AEGIS type ship, adding an interesting new role, and new gameplay, sort of sonar games, cat and mouse type stuff.

Some ideas for things that could be added with these changes:
*ships specifically set up as huge powerful scanning suites
*modules designed to improve passive and active scan
*stealth systems designed to help reflect/hide from scans
*long range (not on grid) detection from cloaked ships

So, thats the idea, I'm open to changing it and overhauling it to get it up to be something where the devs would actually take an interest in it.

I like this idea, because it makes the game much more "cloak-and-dagger". Of course it does perpetuate the "submarines in space" stereotype of EVE, but that's the sort of game we're paying for!

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