Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Scanning in EVE has become to effortless lately. Specially within PVP.

PVE is not that much of a deal as it only affects you, the pilot who is scanning.

PVP on the other hand is a whole other issue.

We have gone through a lot of changes up through the years:

- No probes (People actually stored ships in SS)

- Single probe that could not be moved, and you had to fly your ship to the position where you wanted to drop the probe. And when deployed, had a ~25 sec scan time.

- Cluster of probes that can be moved around in system from you UI. Scan time of 5 sec. Possible to make unprobable setups.

- Same as above but no longer possible to make unprobable setups. In effect nullifying any proper sniper gameplay.

- Same as above but now with extra modules to increase scan strength, reduce scan time and reduce scan deviation. Also pre setup probe patterns, with possibility to save your own configs.


With current mechanic it makes it close to impossible to fight at range in any effective way. Your entire fit on the ship, sensor boosters, tracking computers, tracking enhancers+++ is effectively nullified in less then 5 sec by a single push on a button.
Any place I have seen where people have been going in at range is quickly filled with scan probes.
The most ridiculous I have seen so far is 40-50 scan probes on a close range scan around a station.

A few years back sensor boosters got scripts, so people had to decide if they wanted fast lock or long range. Now we have a situation where it's faster to probe down a person, then it takes him to lock a target.

Another factor before was the decision to fit for long range or closer range. Now it's just, close/medium range, buffer tank+logis and bring a prober....

There is also a whole range of ships who are unable to properly use it's range advantage due to how quickly it's countered.

Raven: Caldari has the slowest lockingtime in general, + missiles and you know it's hopeless to try and kill anything before someone is on top of you.

Scorpion: Same as above, +ECM bonus @ range doesn't matter when you are scanned in 5 sec.

Eagle: Awesome range, but what's the point?

Apocalypse: ~200km optimal range with T2 ammo ( 2 x Tracking Enhancers ) 35km falloff

Rokh: ~232km optimal range with T2 ammo ( 2 x Tracking Enhancers ) 42km falloff

Megathron: ~155km optimal range with T2 ammo ( 2 x Tracking Enhancers ) 42km falloff

Maelstrom: ~129km optimal range with T2 ammo ( 2 x Tracking Enhancers ) 62km falloff

What's the point with T2 ammo at all? When was the last time you saw a proper fight where someone warped in at 200km to engage? There was a time where your positioning on the field and how quickly you could re-position could have a great impact on how the fight went. Now it's more of who can bomb the other the quickest with stealth bombers.

So we have moved from no probes at all, to a 5sec time it takes before we have a result to warp to. There is no middleground. No work going into it, no time to wait. 5 sec is nothing really, specially when it takes a sniper fit BS 7-10 sec to lock another BS at 200km+.

Time it takes to probe another player has to be increased. There is no way around it.

Increasing "warp to" distance wont fix it, simply by the fact that probers and tacklers/bubblers will move outside of that range.

Nice idea.

But the inaccuracy would need to be more then 10-30km. An interceptor has 30km range default, before you start overheating or bringing in gangbonuses.

And it's not really fixing the issue itself. Would still be probed down in 5 sec. Which imo is the biggest issue.