Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I have been tossing this around in my head more. I realized I placed a skilled character in an expensive ship on an even balance with a noob ship piloted by an unskilled alt.
Is this something we want to do?

Here is a consideration to ponder:

Why should that disposable starter ship or kestrel, piloted by a character less than three months old, ever be a better choice?

Acknowledging that the player may not have an alt or other players with a recon handy, the disposable ship should still be an option, but one that makes them disappointed by the need to use.
"Darn it, I will probably lose that cyno boat. At least it is cheap, and the alt uses a low cost med clone"

Working backwards from that, the incentive to use the expensive and highly skilled recon should justify the effort and cost involved with bringing it onto the field.

Put another way, someone with recon to level 5 should avoid the beacon at all, but still endure the spool up time.
I would suggest they also be able to cancel the cyno at will after the spool up time expires. This would still lock them down for a full minute without a beacon, but allow them to shut down the cyno and book out once they are ready.

For clarity:
Recon to level 4: Beacon goes active 10 seconds before the cyno is jump capable, exposing a locked down recon for that period. (Whether or not a ship jumps to the beacon during or after that, the recon can cancel it and flee)
Recon to level 3: Beacon is active 20 seconds before the cyno is jump capable...
Recon to level 2: Beacon is active 30 seconds before the cyno is jump capable...
Recon to level 1: Beacon is active 40 seconds before the cyno is jump capable...

Only at level 5 is the recon a solid choice every time.
I take precedent for this logic from other classes, Logistic specifically, where having the skill to level 5 produces a significant improvement over level 4, and having it below level 4 often bars practical use in fleets per typical doctrines.
The recon at 4 might still get someone warping to it, but by the time they arrive, the timer should be too short to keep them.
The recon would probably be aborting the cap jump, but it would be able to survive in many cases.
At level 3 and lower, the disposable ship makes more sense, especially if hostile traffic is anticipated.

Would this adjustment make sense?

My bad... I had left the spool up time in my idea, that would have effectively eliminated hot dropping by either recons or disposables. I can see that your idea accepts the possibility that this might want to be kept for tactical options.

Now, I can't say people will be thrilled with complexity, but I think perhaps an option for a "Dropper" cyno using your described mechanic might make it better.

I personally don't see people using recons placing them deliberately into harms way, although people can and will do things that defy logic.
I would suggest a strategic vs a tactical version of the cyno.

The strategic being intended for moving cap ships into position for action, not dropping them into the action directly.
The tactical being for quick and dirty "Hot-Drop-O'Clock" attacks.

My reasoning, is that people will use what they perceive as the most cost effective path.
Just like we have prototype cloaks and T2 cloaks, alongside covert ops cloaks.
No single variation can address all the likely uses.

While I agree to a degree, I don't think we should exclude their use completely. But if they are used, then they should come with far greater penalties.

If you think that further penalties should be applied or adjusted, then I'm up for any suggestion.

I think this thread needs to come back to the top.

Mag's has a solid grasp of this issue.

For myself, I focus on the strategic uses of a cyno for selfish reasons. Simply because this is how I would like to see them used, which to me makes sense.
I believe the strategic side is best served by favoring preparation and effort over cheap and disposable, while the tactical side may well prove to want kamikaze hot droppers in ships whose loss is acceptable.

That means to me, the skill intensive and costly recon ships with the skill level at 5, so the pilot can bring in the cap ship with minimum exposure is the best strategic answer.

For a hot drop, the most terrifying thing an enemy pilot can see could be a ship they know is considered expendable, telling them a fight is coming to visit them soon.

I took it that Asuka's point, was more about my Regular Cyno fitted to a Recon ship. I had the cyno beacon on fully in that draft, so adjusted it accordingly. I believed she was right in that regard, as I think there needs to be reasons to use this ship for it's intended purpose.

I am aware of the tactic you speak of and hope you can see that even with this change, it's still viable.

bad ideea.

Just delete cynos...... or at the very least, force cynos to only be used with jump portal generators.

Caps should jump themselves.

I actually really like the concept quite a lot.
In-fact for the most part this could be simplified quite substantially so that it will work without any major mechanics changes.

So instead I make this counter-proposal:

2 Skills That Affect the Cynosural Field

Cynosural Field Theory (For Creating the Beacon & Reducing Fuel Cost)
Cynosural Field Force Projection (For Reducing the Beacon Spool Timer)

To compliment that you have your 3 Variations of Cynosural Field Generator.

Cynosural Field Generator [Meta 0 - 4]
• Supports Up To Capital Class Ships
• Can Be Fitted On Anything

120 Second Activation Timer
60 Second Spool Timer

Cynosural Field Generator (Covert) [Meta 6]
• Supports Only Covert / Black Class Ships
• Can Only Be Fitted on Covert / Black Class Ships

30 Second Activation Timer
10 Second Spool Timer
(Hidden from Overview when Off-Grid, Shows on Direction Scan within 1 AU)

Cynosural Field Generator (Tech 2) [Meta 5]
• Supports All Ships
• Can Only Be Fitted on Combat Recon / Command Ship

120 Second Activation Timer
45 Second Spool Timer

-- || --

So the Spool Timer basically becomes the "Can Activate Jump" time, so for each Cynosural Force Level this would have a reduction of 10% (up to 50%) Reduction... but is a completely optional skill to learn.

As such this would still require the Cynosural Ship to be on field for a few second before the Fleet Supporting it can jump even with Max Skills. This also affects the Beacon (Overview) display time, with the default being 0 Seconds to 75% Cynosural Spool Time (15% per level display reduction) ... so for example a standard Beacon with 60 Seconds, with Max Force Projection would take 30s to Spool and won't display until it is 23s Complete.

Obviously anyone on-grid will know, but in-system they won't.
It could be an idea to also make that a Separate Skill as well, but then again if the Skill is say a x8-10 Multiplier then it becomes quite time intensive; so that might balance it out well.

Still it's important that anything affecting the Spool / Display MUST be separate from the normal Cynosural skill, as most Covert Pilots already have that to 5 and more skills that are useful on their own merits are always good to have... bit like pulling apart the powerful skills to separate things, stops any one skill being a super-powered must train.

-- || --

I would also go further with this that the Cynosural Portals should really be Mass Limited by the Beacon Size, the bigger the Ship the more Fuel, the more Fuel the Stronger the Beacon, the Stronger the Beacon the Bigger the Cynosural Portal allowing more ships through.

Imagine Wormholes in a way, it is a good way of making sure a system isn't overly abused by large forces.
While I know that the ship creating the Bridge / Jump in the first place uses more Fuel for distance, iirc it doesn't use more Fuel for the Ships, simply the number of activations required.

It is why Covert Cynos often are a pain, because the window is so small and the portal closes so quickly that getting your full force through in one go takes practise.

So instead keep the Portals linked so both the Cynosural Beacon and Jump Portal Ships are locked until the Mass Restriction is reached or until the Natural Collapse of the Beacon. I mean it would be more interesting if Titan Bridging wasn't a simple case of "nose out of POS, Bridge, back in" on the whole they're not really vulnerable for very long at all.

Would be better if
a) Cynosural Fields could not be Bridged if the Bridging Ships are not fully outside of a POS Bubble
b) These ships were linked for a set period of time (in the suggestion above ~2minutes)

Still back to the Mass Restriction, don't have the numbers off-hand but would think something along the lines of:
Frigate Size = 25,000,000 Mass
Cruiser Size = 140,000,000 Mass
Battleship/Cruiser Size = 1,800,000,000 Mass

Idea being that you're looking at only a moderate Force Projection size, roughly 20 Ships of each class (with a bit of wiggle room)

Might seem quite restrictive, but really if you have that many people you need to move in fleet; there should be a Fleet of Beacons to move them. Keeps it balanced and geared towards smaller scale engagements unless you prolong them enough to light additional beacons from the same beacon ship.

You might also notice that it is barely large enough for a single Super Carrier (Mothership) and not big enough for a Titan.
This is deliberate they would be exceptions to the rule of mass, as they are limited to using only the Tech 2 Cyno Generator, so in the same sense you are only limited to 1 Super per Cyno.

In this respect it doesn't prevent people from bringing say 40 Super Carriers (or lol Titans) in to Low-Sec, but they need the specialised Cyno Ships in those numbers to accomplish that; often it will be a good indication to locals something big is going down and to well not be there when it does.

So it'd force larger groups to make harder decisions about what they actually want to drop and when.
Cynosural Fields to me have been over-powered for far too long, providing incredibly Force Projection to all Null-Sec groups to keep their space Safe.

I mean if you put it altogether with just some little changes, it really adds up to something that will affect a massive number of players... not just Low-Sec (allowing us to play with our Capitals again without worrying about the constant PL/Goon Super-Drops) but also Null-Sec.

All without limiting their range or really usefulness, simply by adding logistics and required protection issues.

The context might help it make sense. I was speaking about how cloaked vessels are often assumed to be ready to cyno in attack vessels by hot drop.
As a result, a lot of possible PvP encounters seem to be avoided since the threat level effectively is overwhelming to many pilots.

I left out that part of the reasoning in the source post, based on the theory it was self evident. I hope people who were not thinking along those lines will please accept my apologies for being confusing.