Player Features and Ideas Discussion

We might be a large group of loud, sometimes rude, bitter vets but we are here with you.

Dont give in to the cry babies.

I had a vision just the other day of a revamped ECM that could be scripted to turn off INCOMING target locks.
(i.e. you jam something to turn off remote reps hitting it)

As a true solo low sec PvE toon, I can't wait for these changes.

I do my PvE in a T3, that can easily fit an expanded probe launcher to an actual combat fit. Sure it took some SP investment, and I am losing a mid slot to be able to run the probes full time, but it won't overly affect my site times, and as long as I keep my head about me, my risk level will not rise to an unacceptable level.

What will happen is that competition for the sites is going to go way down as people who are too afraid to step out of their Ishtar comfort zone no longer put their HAC's at risk because they are not able to run probes on their main screen.

The guy running an actual solo setup will only need to make some slight adjustments to be able to function in low sec with the new meta. The multi toon people are the ones who are actually affected more. They won't be able to be scanning down the next systems while their Ishtar afk's through the sites for them. They will have to keep their scanning alt in system to protect their mission runner, which will really hurt their ISK efficiency.

On the plus side to that of course is that if I see the local multi tooners running sites and they move their scanner out of system, I can always swap to a recon and contest the site.

So as a solo PvE player, I stand to make more money, face less competition, and potentially get some PvP kills if someone does not have the right focus. All it costs me is a mid slot, and a more active approach to site running.

DScan immunity needs to stay.

Cloaks need a counter.

People need to STFU/HTFU.

Some of the issues I see with recons is simply from lack of a framework for ship and module design and how ships and modules interact. what I propose is building the framework and working from it. It would address many of the concerns that have been expressed thus far in this post and others.


Warning this goes out of the normal box and so can be controversial

A proposed framework for working ship design/module design that could be used from now into the future.

High slots - use these for projected effects. The modules that are used in high slots are all modules that project effects onto the environment. For the most part this is already what happens. However in the case of recons there are bonused effects that come from mid slots. While we are doing this revision lets change that once and for all.

Mid and low slots - use for ship enhancement and projected effect enhancement.

Examples.
Guns and missiles are a damage projected effect that is all high slot with mid and low slot effect enhancements. The counter is remote repair which is also a high slot., Enhancement are mid and low. Those enhancements help in tracking, range, and damage. when one of these effects has no enhancement that is an opportunity to create a new module. As an example there are no enhancements to remote repair for distance or strength, perhaps there should be.

NOS and Nuet are high slots and so is their counter in the form of remote ET. modules could be designed to enhance the projected effects of these systems so that greater distance or Strength(damage in a sense) could be achieved from mid and low slot modules.

ECM and remote ECCM modules would become high slots in keeping with this framework as they are projected effects. Low and mid slots could then be used to enhance their effects for range and strength/"damage"

TP, web, points, and all other remote effects and their counters would again be relegated to high slots with modules that enhance their effects placed in mid and low slots.

Cloaks would move to mid or low since they are not a projected effect.

If the following framework was adopted recons would be specialist ships that project nonlethal force multipliers upon enemy fleets. It would be possible to enhance those effects through low and mid slots and have counters for each effect with modules that enhance individual ships.

With this framework the recon pilot would decide to place ECM in high highs, missiles, or some combination with enhancement for these systems in the mids and lows. more player choice with positives and negatives for each player decision. do I gimp my tank to enhance effects or not? similar to a HAC pilots decision making process of damage vs survivability. Under the current system the recon pilot is basically left with highs filled with damage projection and lows and mids with tank and projected effects with the exception of amarr due to nuets already being a high slot.


This could give rise to a whole new class of logistics ship that goes beyond repairing damage and instead mitigates projected effects with remote assistance.

A proper framework allows designers to see what is missing in the way of projected effects, enhancements for those effects and counters to the effects with enhancements for those counters. With the current ship and module terricide CCP has a chance to establish this framework and find the holes that exist, plug those holes and give players a greater choice in the roles and configurations of their ships with each ship having real differentiation in use. It ends the basically one way to fit a ship issue which many of the recons have had in the past.
*+

This would be quite game altering and have a Lot of unintended effects. The entire meta of the game would have to be rebalanced and it would take years of changes. I applaud your effort in thinking but i don't think Eve is ready to be remade on this scale quite yet.

"can't be at home, have to balance spaceships" is at least a half decent excuse

Giving the pilgrim a 100-125mb drone bandwidth along with the range bonus and neut strength bonus might make the pilgrim too strong and overshadow the other force recon options to too great a degree.
Should the pilgrim be able to reach out to 37km with the effectiveness of 4-6 medium neuts (assuming 2 med neuts, probe launcher/covert cyno and cloak in highs), along with being able to field 5 bonused heavy drones, it would essentially be a cloaked armageddon with less staying power and neut strength.

I'd like to see a pilgrim with 100mb of drone bandwidth and neut strength and range bonuses at 20-25% per level. This would give effective neutralizing capability out to 20-27ish km with 4-6.75 medium neuts worth of strength depending on the high slot layout along with 4x Ogre II's.
Assuming the medium slots are as follows:
Cap booster
AB/MWD
TD
Scram
Web,
the ship would be able to effectively cap out and eliminate just about any sub-cap, turret based ship assuming a long enough window between the initial de-cloak and the arrival of reinforcements.
This would put it in roughly the same category for combat effectiveness as the Stratios, which should be the target for this particular hull.
The Pilgrim, ideally (to me), should be able to deal comparable damage to the Stratios while sacrificing tank and scouting proclivity for ewar and combat utility. The result is a ship that must still carefully choose its targets (being significantly more reliant on its own ability than before) while still being a bit of a glass cannon and ill-suited to general fleet warfare where the curse would easily be the better choice.

Just don't forget the cancer that is ultra easy and effort free perfect intel. It results in far less fights. If not appearing on the directional scanner is not an option, then perhaps not appearing in local chat is. And don't worry about those nullbears, everyone has intel channels and of course the d-scan. If they are proactive in gathering intel for a change, then combat recons will not be the END OF DAYS as some are saying. Don't give in to the fear mongering!