Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Currently, when you are bubbling a hostile ship, such as a tackled ratting carrier, using an interdictor, you need to use a stopwatch set with a 2 minute timer to make sure you launch another bubble before the previous one disappears. Launching your bubbles as close the the 2 minute timer allows you to conserve bubbles if you need to keep the hostile ship tackled for an extended period of time before backup shows up. Launch a second late and the tackled ship gets to warp away, while consistently launching a bit too early will shorten the length of time you can hold him tackled for.

There really is no need to go fumbling about with a stopwatch, cellphone, or any other stop/start timer when this could easily be included in game. This method is cumbersome, inaccurate, and inconvenient. It also only lets you track one bubble at a time. If you have to launch a second bubble to bubble a second ship, you can't have timers for both unless you have multiple watches, fiddle even more with your phone, etc.

Suggestion: Add a visible timer that appears like the current wormhole polarization timer and is only visible to the dictor pilot who launches the bubble for each bubble that is deployed.

This will remove any additional required timers as you can see when the timer for yourself on screen. It removes the inaccuracy with starting a timer, and the cumbersome effort of restarting a timer over and over again. It does not remove any skill, since starting a timer doesn't require skill, only unnecessary effort. Additionally, it will not excessively impact the coordination required by multiple dictors to tackle a fleet because they will still have to communicate when their bubble is about to go down since only the dictor who launched the bubble can view it's timer. It will also not clutter grid during larger engagements where many bubbles are dropped all over grid. On top of that, it will not give additional information to others who may not have been on grid when the bubble was initially deployed (ie jumped into the bubble, warped onto grid with the bubble, etc.)

This feature should not be too hard to implement as it would use the same functionality of a wormhole or deployable timer and would serve as a huge Quality of Life bonus to many dictor pilots.

The only time a stopwatch would still be required is when you are bubbling two sides of a gate simultaneously and cannot view the opposing side of the gate's bubble.

Let me know what you think!

Sounds like a good thing, definitely supported.

I am against this idea mostly because it dumbs down an area where piloting skill can make a difference. Using a stopwatch solves your problem entirely, or launching a bubble every minute to keep the margin of error high and just bringing a lot of bubbles can do the trick aswell. I see no point in changing this.

When you put it like that, it shows what a bad idea this is...

I must be the only one sitting on a gate counting, "One Mississippi, Two Mississippi..."

Wow. From the title, thought this was a thread to limit the number of probes a character could launch in its lifetime. Left disappointed..