Player Features and Ideas Discussion

you know what weak is.. or even idiotic? Reiterating on the same thing for a million of times.

you didnt bring anything new of idea here, what you done is creating another pathetic thread about something whats not broken, with the same idiotic arguments which have been discussed to death here. Why dont you just go and read there, what makes you think you are a special snowflake and have a need for your own ****** thread about a non-issue?

Because he's argumenting the fact that there is no issue with cloaks, a fact I'm willing to back up as a person who has been on both sides of this 'conflict'. Seeing as you don't seem to care for an argument and instead want to play this game ad hominem, I would call this thread null and void.

Again....where does it state there is a "problem" with cloaks? Nowhere. This is a logical progression of that aspect of the game. Just like with every innovation used to make submarines more undetectable, there are more innovations made to detect them.

But three or four times in the same thread is GTG, right?

Well, then he's 'argumenting' in the wrong thread, since OP never said there was anything wrong with cloaks. In fact, his entire point simply seems to be that there should be very specialized ships or modules to hunt them. I tend to agree, although I'm more inclined to confine it to a specific type of ship.

I do more than my share of cloaky scouting and scanning, AFK and not, and would have no issue with a specialized T2 dessy or cruiser being able to pull a 'surprise, ************' maneuver on my cloaked ship. It adds challenge and dynamics to running cloaked, because you'd see something pop up on D-Scan that you know can actually find you if you're not careful.

That doesn't even touch on getting rid of or drastically altering Local intel, which IMO would be for the best.

Wrecks bombers, wrecks popular methods of escpaing gatecamps, wrecks dictors, wrecks scouting. In short, ruins everything that requires a cloaking ship to be on grid with it's target for more than a couple of minutes, thus rendering the cloaks pointless for anything but hotdrops and psyops.

But you'll ignore this or call it trolling again.

So you want to change just to have change?

Calling everyone who disagrees with you a troll to discredit them is similar to them arguing that you are a 9 month old character to discredit you. It was wrong of them and it is wrong of you as well.

@Gerrick

I decided to get rid of the probes and move the system to be an enhancement of DScan. Dropping probes would be a dead giveaway and the system turns into a deterrence rather than a method to hunt a cloaked ship.

In order to balance out the module so it isn't just an easy button for finding cloaked ships, I'd start off with probe-launcher scale CPU use which is reduced if the module is mounted on a Covert Ops - capable ship (Covert Ops, Recon Ship, Strategic Cruiser with Covert Ops Reconfig and Black Ops). It would require a high power slot.

Second, give it enough capacitor drain per use so that players aren't just tapping DScan over and over and over. Or, have it use a cap booster charge on each cycle. Either way works for me. If its a cap booster charge, then the hunter would have to balance the cost vs what he'd gain from hunting.

Third, the second step of the hunting process requires that a missile launcher locks onto the 25km sphere found by the scanning module. The launcher would follow the same pattern of CPU need and capacitor drain as above. The missile itself works similar to a Shrapnel Bomb except that the radius is wider and damage done is zero. It just floods the radius with enough matter to force a decloak and allow other ships to lock on. This launcher only requires a high power slot, not a launcher slot.

Fourth, price. A Covert Ops Cloak II is about 7.7M ISK in Jita right now. The DScan hunting module would probably start at 10M ISK. The specialized missile launcher would come in light and heavy models and run about triple the cost of the meta 4 versions. The missiles would run about 150K ISK for light and 250K ISK for heavy (10km blast radius and 25km blast radius respectively). Equipment would be available in the usual meta, tech, faction, storyline and deadspace variants.

Fifth, counter-detectability. Using this DScan module should somehow show up to other ships on the grid, but not so much that the scanner is easily found or even noticed. It can't be an easy button for the hunted ship. Maybe a momentary blip of the hunting ships location on the screen so that the hunted ship needs to be observant to notice it. If the hunting ship is uncloaked, its signature radius goes up 200% for 5 seconds.

Sixth, false readings. The system can show a false reading now and then. At low skill levels it can be pretty often, at higher levels its lower. This would work to the hunted ship's advantage. The hunting player will never know definitively that what they found was a false reading or not. The player would have to just learn from personal experience.

Seventh, skill tree. Specialized equipment needs specialized training. Just starting to train for these two modules would require several relevant pre-requisites, including Cloaking V.

Eighth, counter-measures. In order to provide themselves a little extra protection, a cloaked ship can drop decoys (while cloaked, no less). These would be cloaked devices that show up to be ship sized when scanned down by the hunting ship. These decoys will remain on grid for maybe an hour and are one use items. You drop them, they're gone. One million ISK sounds like a good price.

Ninth, the process (should have been higher on the list, sorry). You don't just hit the scan button and the cloaked ship shows up. To start out, your DScan needs to be set to about 200km and the scan radius can be 360 degrees. At this setting, a mere shadow would show up on the HUD where a cloaked ship MIGHT be. The hunter turns to that direction, reduces the scan range as well as the scan radius. Each time you reduce the scan radius and range, the resolution goes up similar to using scan probes. I think the best resolution should be somewhere around 35 km and 15 to 30 degrees it would be at these settings a lockable sphere would appear.

The whole idea with range is that I don't want hunters to be able to scan a whole system to find where a cloaked ship might be. The most dangerous cloaked ships are the ones near areas like asteroid fields, ice fields, anomalies, stations etc. So, a hunter would have to visit those areas and do some scanning to find his cloaky prey. Exploration-types in their Buzzards (ie me) should be pretty safe if they put themselves in very remote locations to do their scanning.

Multiple hunter ships can be linked together for a higher likelihood of finding the target. But, no matter how many ships you link, there will always be a chance of false readings and of not finding the hunted ship.

As you can see, we cloaky types wouldn't have to worry about every carebear in his exhumer being able to find you and run for the closest station. However, if you happen to run into a whole mining operation which includes a ship or two capable of mounting a command warfare link just assume there is at least one cloaked hunter in the area.

As far as local goes - cloaked ships shouldn't show up in local. They're assumed to be observing radio silence. They can blow that silence by typing in local if they want, this would make for some fun paranoia.

Again, please show me where I said cloaking was "broken". I think it works perfectly and I use it a lot lately. This idea is just an addition to the game play surrounding cloaking. It doesn't "fix" it, or "ruin" it. It actually enhances it and makes it more interesting.

If you're scouting and exploring, you probably have little to worry about. But if you're looking to cause some mischief, then know you could be hunted.