Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Create a means to hack local chat.
A module, a hidden probe left behind, maybe a PI structure DUST players can affect or place.

Not to remove anyone, or hide anyone.

Have it display your presence as a persistent item instead.

Take the AFK cloaking technique, and raise it to the next level, by creating the illusion of presence in multiple systems.

If local is an intel tool, then it is valid play to use deception and false information.

This could expire after time, require fuel, or have other limits.

Credit for this section belongs to Velicitia's creativity.



(The probe scans back as a ship, in other words, and may not be obvious to the probing ship as the target they may be looking for)

I modified it modestly as:

Skill level for Covert Ops gives 5 minutes of travel time per level. For CovOps 5, this means the probe would last 25 minutes.

Since the probe was undetectable as a probe before then, (it showed up as a ship instead), it does a total reversal and vents it's overheated systems at that point, and is visible on anyone's overview like a cyno. (Called hacking probe or something recognizable)
Anyone can then warp to it, and blow it up.

Here is the catch: if the cloaked pilot's name is still in local after that explodes, he really was in the system, and the probe was acting as a decoy. The person who eliminated the probe may be at ground zero for a bomb launcher attack.

This caters to the current state of affairs regarding cloaking.

Cloaking is intended to conceal, but with local acting as an intel tool, such concealment is not truly possible.

Many have objected to the very notion that local should not perform this task. They point out that CCP has left it this way for a good reason, and it is balanced by decree.

Well, this won't remove that warning.

And since CCP has permitted "AFK" cloaking, as a method to spoof and meta game, then that is also balanced, for the exact same reason.

This simply extends that logic, allowing local to not only act in favor of those using it defensively, but to allow it to be used by those who want to plant intel in the same manner as the cloaked vessel.

If it shows a pilot in two systems, and he cannot be located in either due to a cloak, then he is able to project his influence more effectively.

I would suggest making this cloak mutually exclusive to a cyno generator, so at least people seeing a pilot in multiple systems would have that small comfort. They are there to hunt, not hot drop.

I'd go with

* probe launched from the Expanded launcher.
* travels at ????? m/sec in whatever direction you were travelling for ## minutes/hours (but no farther than 1 AU away from the farthest celestial). If you launch one of these from a "deep" safe (i.e. more than an AU away from a celestial), it'll pop in short order (like 5 mins, or as soon as you jump out of system, whichever occurs first).
* Sig radius of a BC or BS for the purposes of probing it down (the transmitter is "loud" or something)

*Different probes will give different BS/BC signature (e.g. Mael, Apoc, Myrmi, whatever)

I think 5 min/level is a bit short for the probe, but otherwise ... yep that was kind of my idea.

However, I didn't mean that it was "undetectable" -- but that it'd show up on d-scans/probe results as a BC or BS (named simply whatever the ship type was -- e.g. "Abaddon" or "Maelstrom").

For those wanting cloaks removed from local, this should be the fall back plan.

You may find that cloaked hunting improves, if local cries wolf so often that your prey begins to ignore it.

That's the point.

This aspect of the interface, local chat, has reduced cloaking to a metagame because it is totally reliable on how it reports ship presence.
And no, looking three inches to the side to see the local chat list does not qualify as effort.

If they won't take cloaked vessels out of local, then we deserve a better tool to deceive local with.

And this way, they can never say they weren't warned, or had to make an extra effort.