Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The coming expansion will be all about exploration, I have an idea for a completely new type of probe, the scout probe. Scout probes will be a probe that can be launched from a probe launcher and has the ability to scout ahead for gate camps or bubbles or just to find a target or asses enemy fleet strength. This probe will be able to jump through star gates!

It should have several limiting factors, only 1 out at a time. A large mass on the probe (perhaps similar to the size of a cap booster to eat up cargo space), a decent price tag (so you wont want to die with 200 in your cargo!) maybe 1 million for a t1 and 3 million for a sisters variant, a short lifespan or perhaps 1:30 for T1 and 2:00 minutes for sisters variant, it has the align time and signature of a capsule so it sometimes can be killed.

Why? While most fleets will send a noob in a T1 frigate to scout ahead, but often you are far from home and it sucks to get caught in a gate camp and then have to make 20+ jumps to reship, then miss the fight. Or to get podded because you landed in a bubble or by insta lockers. Often noobs will miss important information "there's about 20 of them", "what ships?", "I don't know, I forgot to look, I'm dead" Many in null have resorted to using nullified T3's to scout, but let's be honest, not every player in the game has an alt with a nullified T3 (although some times it feels that way). Also, there are still a few players in the game who haven't resorted to only fighting in massive blobs, and they actually solo or fly in very small groups. In a 3 man gang with 1 tackler you don't want him to die before the fight, when you finally do find a viable target to fight. I watch solo players all the time and they often avoid null roams because of the risk of getting caught in a bubble camped gate. Often you can see danger on the map (ships destroyed in the last hour) but it still doesn't give you a very clear idea if you can actually take on the camp.

The probe will have a simplified screen layout of what a player might have. A single tab overview, just the names of local (probes cannot chat), and the system name/info appearing top center of the screen. The probes vision will appear as a picture in picture on the screen of whoever launched it with it's lifespan timer and it's health at the bottom. They will have to control the probe just like it was a ship, telling it to warp to places and jump through gates.

A probe like this would be a great addition to the game in my opinion because it would allow people to check for gate camps with something that is truly expendable, and give many ships something very useful for "utility" high slots. Perhaps some day well even see people leaving high sec for the first time, because they can actually check for camps without throwing ships away.


Let the nay-saying and hating begin..........