Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hi,

Firstly, if this idea has been brought forward before I apologise, there are a LOT of pages of ideas so I may well have missed it.

The concept of the Auxiliary Cruiser isn't actually mine, the Germans used them with varied success in WW1 but one in particular that caused absolute havoc on a global scale was the SMS Wolf, and reading a biography on the Wolf was what inspired me to think it could be a great new dynamic in EvE.

The basic concept of the Auxiliary Cruiser is a ship which was designed to look on the outside like a cargo vessel, and could be disguised in a number of ways. Underneath the aparrently innocent exterior she had an impressive complement of guns, torpedo tubes, a system for laying mines and a seaplane hangar for scouting. She would use her disguise to come close to other merchant vessels then board them, steal their fuel and provisions, capture their crew and scuttle the ship.

So... how does this become an EvE concept?

My idea would be something completely new to EvE; a ship which disguises it's appearance on an overview and visually as something completely different.

The Auxiliary Cruiser would have two modes, a disguised mode and an attack mode. In disguise mode they would appear on the overview and also on the visual UI as a common T1 industrial for their race (Bestower for Amarr, Badger Mk II for Caldari etc) and be entirely undetectable as anything else.

In WW1 the SMS Wolf had a pre-departure inspection and the inspectors who came to the ship, despite carrying out a thorough inspection of her seaworthiness and equipment, failed to discover the array of armament in it's stowed position on her deck. This could be reflected in EvE by throwing a completely innocent hauler fitting back to Ship Scanners when in disguised mode.

If the ship is engaged, or the pilot chooses to, the seemingly innocent T1 hauler would then shift into attack mode. CCP have started adding some pretty nice animations for turrets, bomb launchers, Rorqual mode-shift etc and this ship could take advantage of that, and really show off some transformer-style animation as the faux-hull plates on the ship split apart revealing the turrets underneath. At this point the ship-type displayed on the overview would also shift to show the actual ship-type.

So, to the ship itself. I am not talking about making anything ridiculously imbalanced, just a nasty surprise for people looking for "easy" kills, so it would be aimed somewhere in between a regular cruiser and a HAC. It's use in EvE would probably be baiting a lot of the time, or piracy (or counter-piracy) on mining operations so it would have to have a fair sized tank, and also bonuses to it's ability to point and hold an enemy ship. Damage-wise again it wouldn't have to be imbalanced but it would be nice to have bonuses to cruiser-sized guns and torpedoes just like the original Auxiliary Cruisers.

Cargo-wise it would have to be pretty small (more cruiser sized than industrial sized) as people would stop using haulers altogether if this thing had a large cargo-bay, but the original Auxiliary Cruisers, and the Wolf in particular were designed to go on massively extended "roams" without the need to come into port to re-supply, so it could have an ammo-hold that was large, but could only hold torpedoes or ammunition.

So, let me know what you think. It's not a ship that is going to swing the balance of EvE by any manner of means, but it would be an interesting new dynamic to the game and open doors to a whole host of new tactics and uses.

Thanks for reading,

╦

I support this plan and podding service.

Sounds like a nice alternative to cloaking, the technology of this ship could be similar to holographic imagery and sensor manipulation. So the ship should have relativly weak armor, But powerfull weapons. The other way around may also a posibility: Strong armor but weak weapons, making it a nice bait ship.

this can be somewhat achieved by particular fits of industrials atm, but a ship designed for this function could be fun and not much different from cloaking when it comes to mechanics.

one criticism would be to do with ship scanners. If a scanner readout always shows the same fit then it would make the ship more detectable.

i personally dnt agree that it should be impossible to detect and because ship scanners have a degree of inaccuracy to begin with i think they should attempt to show the actual modules fitted to the cruiser. depending on what comes back on the scanner, it may be obvious or near impossible to discern whether its just some kind of battle badger or a disguised cruiser. perhaps the ship would be inherently resistant to scans and would increase their inaccuracy.

also how would this ship react to cargo scanners? if its going to be selected as a target it needs to have something in its hold, and making it random is unreliable (transporting a thousand janitors or other worthless items will make things obvious again). Unless there was a way to influence what cargo scanners pick up this ship may be undone by cargo scanners.
thoughts on it multiplying certain carried items (perhaps in a dummy hold) by a random amount or up to a certain fake-capacity on scanner readouts?

making them tackling bricks would be perfect for their nature and might even see them used in more direct pvp. whether thats too good or not, i dnt know.

ok, for the ship scanner part, how about only if the persons skills for scanning is lvl 5 and using a T2 ship scanner (even then it will barely detect the cruisers guns and such)

for cargo scanners, how about adding a module for the pilot to add whatever he wants (not actually of course,

yeah in war decs and low sec the scanning will be much less of a problem. i was thinking of using it to draw gankers in high sec. but now that i think of it again, that would be a pretty shoddy way to pvp and shouldn't be supported.

so i pretty much withdraw my earlier reservation and ideas, but i still think scanners should work on it, if even at a further reduced level of accuracy.

it was probably already ur intention, but a ship as specialised as this must be T2. a tank around that of Hictors and sacrificing high slots for extra mids (firepower for tackle) whilst using a high slot for its disguise (like a cloak) would be a trait of its class. Pretty much like a heavily tanked recon with no e-war.

supported for the sneaky 'GOTCHA' of it all- wonderful concept... this would bring some wild nights and excellent stories -oh wait, that's tequila, but this would be cool too