Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This non-detectable recon ships on dscan is nothing more than catering to the pvp player and is pure crap and should not be allowed. This change will make WH mining impossible and expensive.

This non-detectable recon ships on dscan is nothing more than catering to the pvp player and is pure crap and should not be allowed. This change will make WH mining impossible and expensive.

A stratios doesn't suck your cap dry from 37 km or point/web you at 100 km, though.

And they use a module for it and (generally) have lock time penalties (circumvented in certain cases). Non-covert cloaks are balanced in that you cannot warp with them on. The big problem with the proposed combat recons is that they sacrifice nothing for what is effectively a cloak; maybe it's not equivalent to a cov ops but it is certainly comparable to a normal cloaking device.

Don't get me wrong, I'll probably buy a Curse or two post Proteus, but I still feel like this change is a bit much.

I think this is a complex debate and I'm sure that none of us understand player behavior completely, but my experience is actually the opposite of what you're saying.

Yes, people are risk averse, they want to make good decisions when they're taking risks and that often leads being conservative. That's exactly why I like this kind of mechanic. People want to do the fun thing and take more engagements, but when they have enough information to know that they aren't the favorite they shy away from fighting. However, when some information is obscured they become optimistic and take more risks. I've seen players so willing to make decisions that are likely too risky simply because they lack perfect information. Jumping into gate camps where positional information isn't guaranteed, engaging on stations with people docked, fighting in systems with more in local than can be accounted for, etc. These mechanics that obscure information give people the excuses needed to take risks. Take the example given somewhere in this thread of a low sec camp with 2 Vexors and 2 Rooks. Before these changes, the gang considering fighting them never would because they know they can't deal with the Rooks. After, they won't see them and so they will probably engage. That's more fights because people are risk averse.

The negative side for me is your other bullet point. Because people don't want to take unnecessary risk they will work very hard, sometimes doing something very boring or difficult, just to get at those last pieces of information. And they should. But we would want to avoid mechanics that obligate people to this kind of behavior too heavily without enough positive side to make the mechanic worthwhile.

I would be more worried with this mechanic that people have to spend a lot of time running probe scans when they really don't want to be than that they are avoiding engagements because of the possibility of Recons. I don't think this will be a problem but we'll have to wait and see.

That's because ECM has no counter play. How come no one ever decides not to fight due to "These guys always have Arazu/Pilgrim/Rapier alts" ??? Because all other types of EW has some degree of counter play. ECM is a broken light switch mechanic that needs to be banished from the game completely and replaced with something else. Something that does 'something' as often as the other EW but leaves room for counter play.

This non-detectable recon ships on dscan is nothing more than catering to the pvp player and is pure crap and should not be allowed. This change will make WH mining impossible and expensive.