EVE General Discussion

I'm of the opinion that D-Scan needs an overhaul.

BUT, I would settle for the option to toggle the scan to scan automatically every X seconds. This wouldn't be gamebreaking, unless you you consider spamming the scan button a "player skill". But it would be a nice quality of life change.

Similarly, how can you guy argue about automatic D-Scan being perhaps too much, when you have LOCAL, which is a system-wide automatic scan? I mean, come on! Local will let you know if someone's coming long before D-Scan.

And what's more, what's with the table of results, rather than a visual display like a radar? DScan is one of the reasons EVE is so often called "spreadsheets online". If the results were presented graphically in a 3D space, the effects would be much more comprehensive at a glance, with significantly higher ease of use. Not lazy, just better.

Look at it as driving a screw into a wooden plank. You can do it manually - turn, change grip, turn, change grip, turn, change grip. Repeat as needed. Or you can use an automatic drill - press a button and wait. It's not lazy, it's just better way of doing the same thing.

This is an excellent idea. CCP plz put some helmets on Aurum market for 3k Aurum. Nao !!

And once again I say that the whole ship detection system needs an overhaul, directional scanners included. And yes, automated which in a way would be no different to passive - in this case passive meaning that they are always on.

And of course like always, finding ships should be based on sig radius. Critical point, extremely critical point indeed.

Assuming that local didn't exist.

Submarines are the key. Submarines I tell you. EVE would end up being 20 times better on so many levels because done right you end up with:

A: not having to spam a silly button every 2 seconds.

B: a game of cat and mouse that would benefit everyone because finding and hiding would rely on player skill and awareness at a higher level than it currently does now, not to mention open up a whole branch of options.

C: one step of many taken towards increasing population in low and null-sec just like that simply because the cautions ones will have more readily options available which allows them to stay hidden, yet at the same time not so invincible that they cannot be hunted down. EVE lacks in this particular department somewhat horrendously at the moment.

D: If needed, stealth would be open for very easy revamp options as it could be tied in to the new system in several different ways. Keep it as a module that removes you entirely from the grid, change it to a module that reduces your sig radius somewhat significantly when activated, but keeps you visible, removes you from everyone's overview when activated but you stay physically visible (bit same way as to how I think ECM should work but otherwise completely unrelated) etc etc.

I don't find the manual part problematic at all, it becomes second nature and most of the time I don't even notice using it anymore. However, the range and angle setting part is just terrible.

- the slider. ****, must be the worst UI object ever invented. It's ridiculously small, the ball is tiny and the width too little for precise adjustments. There is not even a readout about your current angle ffs. Replace with a bigger slider with proper markings, or preset buttons for various angles, since it's not an analog selector anyway.

- KM vs AU. Lol. Yes, we learn to use handy tricks to play with the range, but as long as it's own results are read in AU and overview is in AU, it simply makes no damn sense to use KMs in input field.


As what comes to the player skill part, it's not about passively scanning at max range, but locating ships and objects with it and interpreting system events based on the information presented in dscan results.

The issue here is that hitting the button proves that you're actively engaged in the scanning process which I think most of us, if not all, would agree is important.

Much as I'd love to get rid of the spamming (and the now annoying messages that tell you that you're spamming...), anything that removes this necessary engagement will be too much of an easy intel tool.

The problem I think lies in the fact that we have both D-Scan and Probe mechanics for finding ships in space. The latter is obviously a good skill based mechanic for finding ships. The D-Scan is equally able to be used to skilfully find and track down ships, but it's also a defensive system for early warning.

I've no idea how we can get around this issue at the moment.

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On the other hand, I think there are millions of ways to make the D-Scan system much more usable. As has been said, the interface is turd. It seems that in all the UI improvement, D-Scan has seen no love, despite the fact that for many of us, it is the most important window on our screens, behind local (sadly).

1. That slider needs sorting, it's a PITA to select the right angle and often it twitches past the one I want.
2. The range selection is a PITA. I have a note giving me the KM - AU conversion and have to copy-paste different ranges into the text box. Seriously, how often do we use it to find things that are a matter of KMs away? Yes, occasionally I want to see whats around my grid but that's pretty infrequent!
3. Moving the camera to get the right angle on something is just annoying, especially when you're in a cloaky. Presently, we select our own ship to get a box and place that in relation to celestials and I kind of know what the different angle ranges include on my screen but why can't we see an overlay pop up for our vision cone when we scan? An unobtrusive indication of what, on screen, is the scan range, would make scanning much less of a guessing game.

As well as this, why does a frigate have the same D-Scan range as a BS, or a recon? Presently, the only way of actually surprising an alert player who is using D-Scan is to fly a cloaky. Don't you think an interceptor or other forms of tackle should have extended ranges and be able to make an attempt at staying outside of the range of other ships' D-Scans whilst tracking them down?

Inteceptor with long range scanning makes sense. An Ibis with 14au range is ridiculous.

Yeah and Lag-fest will be awesome... Scanning in real time in eve ? Take three fingers and tap into your so called head.

Immediate local needs to go away and be replaced with an improved D-scan+other intel gathering tools. Also, move L4s and incursions to lowsec .

Thing is that I'm happy to use km to find out if the safe spot of that juicy T3 flying around is about 5000km instead of 0.0whatever AU

It doesn't. There's not enough space to put a huge antenna or w/e on a ceptor.
A titan with 14 AU range makes sense.