Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I know I made a thread about them long ago, in my naivety I asked for them to be equippable - with guns or cloaking devices or somesuch to allow them to be more versatile.

In recent times however, on this long and lonesome journey of being a vet player that has played in every part of space (aside from the "large corp" WH arena) I have returned my sights back to the mobile depot. Some key points about them need to be made public here first of all: I do make extensive use of them. Through various techniques I've always tried to maximise how much use one depot can provide me in a given day.

But there are problems, some pretty significant ones.

Well first of all a depot, once you're on grid with it will tell people who put it there, not just the corp you're in but the specific pilot as well. This information does not need to be publicly displayed. If you use mobile depots at all (wrt you can't get an alt to drop one for you) then you're creating an information leak. Simply cargo scan the depot, if it looks good > watchlist the pilot and keep someone nearby with a bookmark to the depot. It's a foolproof system.

Secondly is the ease of scanning for these depots. Taken from here the scanning formula suggests you are nearly impossible to find once your sigR/sensor strength ratio reaches < 1.08. This information is out of date but it is the publicly available material on the EVE wiki. So let's look at some numbers:

Firstly all depots have a sig radius of 500.
Next, the meta 1 depot has a SS of 50, meta 2 = 250, meta 3 = 400.

So their ratios are 10, 2 and 1.25 respectively. It stands to reason that only very highly skilled characters will be able to get a 100% hit on a 'yurt'. Since these factors cannot be modified we aren't going to address them directly, instead we will look at the simplest solution I received when asking the community (ingame): put the mobile depot of choice inside a Giant Secure Container. The GSC cannot be scanned down, can easily store a depot and your desired modules inside and of course can be anchored in space whereever you travel.

The resolution here is that the best solution to a mobile depots vulnerabilities is to neutralise them as much as possible, in this instance by totally circumventing a couple of their major issues by using a similar deployable that is simply unscannable. My response to this loophole is "wut".

And so these two things got me thinking about depots a lot more seriously.

This isn't an issue of their availability, or their capacity to be scanned down. It's an issue of what they could be achieving instead of what they are. These are prototype modules *probably* based off new modular starbase code. That's what they are. What they could be is literally the tent/camp you set up for yourself and in this a few humble changes can be introduced to make them a bit more versatile.

And my proposal is pretty simple.
1. Remove identifying tickers from depots. This protects the real owner but also allows cunning players to attack someone elses depot, destroy it and replace it with their own, introducing a little confusion and frustration to their day while you mount an attack on them. Since you won't actually know who it is that owns *that* particular depot, it can introduce some danger for the attacker as well. In all things, a prepared defence/offence is the preferred method of gameplay.

2. Modify how easily they can be d-scanned. By range. Meta 1 is scanned from 14.3 au as normal. Meta 2, from say 10 au and meta 3 from 5au. This will enhance the ability to 'pitch a tent' in the proverbial back yard of hostile space, a new defensive strategy would also need to be employed by the host/occupants where they must perform a full scan probe sweep between and around celestials in order to be totally clear of introduced hostiles. Not simply warping to sun and hitting d-scan at max range. An incoming force that is seeding capitals in to your homelands and using depots (where appropriate) for refitting or just fuel/stront storage will be a more realistic endeavour if detecting them is harder. This is not to say it will facilitate lightning raids in someones back yard, no, it can however open the door for more options that guerilla forces might like to employ.

These are not just defensive suggestions but ones that can be used offensively by a knowledgable and prepared invasion force that might not want to risk carriers or otherwise bog down other vessels with jump fuel/bombs/whatever to allow for refitting and refueling in hostile space with a reduced risk of so easily being detected.

First of all, wrong forum.

As for identifying markers - no. These apply to everything, even wrecks, that belong to a specific player. Why should mobile depots be exempt? The rationale for this is weak. A little confusion? How is that even a thing worth talking about? No. If you're worried about 'information leaks' then stop shooting and/or deploying stuff.

As for dscanning, there is absolutely nothing except cloak that makes you invisible from dscan, no matter how low your signature is. It is ridiculous to suggest something be invisible to detection from dscan at ANY range without a cloak. No on that as well.

1) I don't understand why anonymity is something that Mobile Depots need. Every other similar item in space has the owners tag on it so why would the mobile depots be any different?

2) The km limit of dscan is the highest tenth of an AU that fits into the int data type (4 byte variable). This is done for optimization purposes so as to make scanning as quick as possible when it checks in the sphere of the chosen range. To add a check specifically for mobile depots, and then a distance check for them a well, could slow down the dscan process significantly. I don't think doing that for just this one item is at all worth it.


It seems that you want to buff Mobile Depots but I don't see any justification for doing so. If you want to make the item more powerful there should be a solid reason why it needs to be that way.

1. From the sounds of it you want to change all containers to be anonymous. That's a pretty big change to make, and it seems it only really benefits solo players. I'm not against that in general but I don't think it's sufficient for the change on its own. There's also the matter that not being able to identify your own containers could be confusing if there are many of them around.

2. Yes, I am suggesting that it shouldn't be implemented for performance reasons. Have you ever done a max dscan in a crowded system? There is a noticeable delay before the results show up in the scanning screen. Adding a check to each and every item would make that delay longer. Now imagine people spamming dscan, which as you probably know happens quite often as a matter of course. That's all those extra checks every 30 seconds. You may think that a small check like that wouldn't matter but in an online game environment every little bit of client to server interaction has to be carefully allotted and every performance optimization capitalized on.

I still need to find possible exploits.

Already figured something out,
but that's only useable under pretty much irrelevant circumstances.

I have no idea what that means.
Not even sure what you are talking about here. Your idea? What idea?

Wtf is wrong with you?

Yes. Did you come up with the idea of the mobile depot?
Hell, I haven't even read through that text you call post....

Projection.

It wasn't me who wrote this hugeass badly readable post,
believing it matters enough that people will care.

If it wasn't for me, this thread would be burried already.

And it was YOU who somehow miscknstrued my above post
in some weird connection to your thread.

Projection. Look it up.

How to hide a mobile depot in deep space.

Plant a scan inhibitor there.

Plant two dozen more around in space.

Costly? Yes.
But it will take a while until it's found.