Player Features and Ideas Discussion

No no no bad bad bad!

DScan needs to be a "click" and you get the info RIGHT NOW! Any types of delays, games, dances, recitation of poetry... it can and will kill people.

Dscan needs to remain simple and above all else immediate.

>click< OH CRAP! "Warp drive activated"

If whoever is hunting you actually belongs in a wh, your d-scan probably won't matter a whole lot anyway. I run sites in a loki with the probing subsystem in, means combat scanners can cover the entire system, just ignore all signatures of your buddies etc, click the scan button every time the last one finishes when something new appears run away and investigate.

As far as the of it being a repetitive task, computers are made for repetitive tasks, let the computer do it.... Well what's mining? or missioning, or ratting, or grinding sleeper sites? If your d-scan told you how much damage it did to the interstellar medium each time you clicked would that make it fun?

i agree the d-scan wh lifestyle is beyond idiotic, but it should be replaced as part of a greater overhaul of intel gathering in both w and 0.0 k-space

The D-Scan could use an update (not just for us WHers) and here's how to do it.

Automatic mode = When set via checkbox, D-Scan cycles every 10 seconds on its own after the first manual scan. Benefit is, if you leave your scanner window open, you'll be able to see new ships pop up on scan if the timing's right. Downside is, if they're a cloaker and it happened to catch them, the readout may auto-refresh and disappear by the time you cancel the auto-mode. You have to un-check automatic mode and then scan to get an update sooner than 10 seconds from last scan. Pressing scan after the first time on auto mode will give you a quick error and tell you how long until the next automatic scan is begun. Also, put a 10 second delay on switching modes so you can't go Manual-Auto-Manual in less than 10 seconds.

Manual mode = Performs identical to current single-mode D-Scan. Useful for 0.0 when scouts want to take a snapshot of an enemy fleet when they're in range and as an override for "I'd really like to check now".

Both require you to be at your computer and paying attention. No extra visual/audio queues to alert you to a ship presence, just an option for an auto-refreshing D-scan with a drawback which is the cycle time.

Yes yes I'm sure you have great expertise at clicking a button. Be proud.
But for the rest of us, who have more trouble grasping the clearly high level manuever of finding the [SCAN] square, moving the mouse over it, then activating the left-mouse trigger, perhaps an intel gatering feature based on preparation, or intelligent gameplay (well, more intelligent gameplay). Just a thought.

Consider the fact that we're supposed to be pilots; that can't be killed, can use faster than light travel, use giant space lazers, and kill inteligent drones...
Yet, we can't set D-Scan to auto repeat. Why is this so hard to ask for?

Honestly now, what's so hard about that...

I think that if you could auto-cycle d-scan, it needs something to balance it. How about linking cycle time to scan range? So the longer the scan range, the longer the cycle time?

Perhaps that's not what we're getting on about here. I can fly at millions of kilometers per seccond but can't set a function "ctrl+s" (these can be set for things, recall drones align to gates, all meant to reduce the amount of time things take), to the scan feature.

I would like to be able to run the scan without having to click the button every 2-5sec's as I have been doing in 0.0 (yes that null sec you love so- much) and Wormhole space, (where this practice is most common).

I don't think it's too much to ask for a 10sec auto repeat. Especially if there is a drawback to using this feature, therefore making it optional. An option that we can use to multi-task more efficiently.

To explain what I think of as a drawback, if you set auto repeat you have to unset auto repeat and wait untill the cycle ends to use the manual scan. Therefore the drawback is 10s delay.

Some ships will warp at 18au/s
Commonly scouts warp at 9/13.5au/s

So one of the slower ships will both enter and leave your scan range in 2 seconds if you don't scan for that ship at the right time, OR in this case the cycle has just ran, and will not run untill this ship is out of your sensor range. There would be a way of manipulating this but you would need say 10 active accounts, and if they're not all on one player, they must then have voice com's to efficiently relay this information.

To recap: I propose two options.
1) allowing the scan button to be controlled by keystrokes.
2) add an automatic rescan feature to the directional scan window (it's not out of this world...or is it)


Justify your reasoning. (anyone can make statements without anything to support it, [think of all the your ma'ma jokes])

You want to lag out the servers for one thing. Auto-click on dscan would send thousands upon thousands more calls to the servers then now. That would not end well.

Seriously, it's not to hard to click and see what's there. A ten second auto-click would suck, it's too slow. A faster auto-click would suck... I may not want to click right away if I see something, and I want that information to stay intact until I do. You really introduce more potential problems than it would be worth.

Yes, auto Dscan please, or at least let us bind it to a key, clicking it over and over can gtfo.