Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Consider this bonus:

Recons: Invisible to local chat. Cannot fit Regular Cynos.

What does this do? Allows the Recon to do well, "recon". It's hidden in some ways, it gives incentive to the pilot to actually do recon instead of making it a gank mobile, while still upping the "Gank factor" for the unwary.

It makes afk farmers and lazy carebears work a bit harder cause now they actually have to watch dscan and gather intel from scouts etc.

But it makes it counterable, and interesting (especially in Null).Low sec dwellers are usually a bit more paranoid so they will be a little less affected but not a lot, and WH's, well in WH's everyone is incognito anyway, whether in a Recon or not you have to do "recon" because there are no gates, no local, etc.

Making them not appear on local will truly make Recons unique. To balance it you allow them to only use Covert cynos. Or maybe you want them to be able to Cyno regularly, I just think it would be cool to see more blops being used by allowing the Recon to have that niche role.

Thoughts?

Okay, first major update just edited into the OP.

Major changes:

We're going to go with a lighter resist profile than originally described, setting all eight recons at the former combat recon resist profile. While we still like the goal of making them more fleet viable, their tank was one of their only stand-out weaknesses and we felt that removing it could make them oppressive at smaller scales. To compensate somewhat we've trimmed 5 more sig radius of each ship.

With the Pilgrim we decided to split the difference between neut range and strength by wrapping both into one bonus. The amounts will be smaller than either of the singular bonuses but this should do a nice job of giving more engagement range flexibility while still allowing for plenty of cap pressure.

We are going to move one high slot on the Lachesis to a low slot, making armor slightly more viable while still preserving room in the mids for damps as well as long range warp disruption. The damage potential for the Lach is still on par with other combat recons even without the fifth high so we feel this fits better than giving up a mid.

The Rook is getting a little more PG fitting room and trading the 5% HAM/HML rate of fire bonus for a 7.5% kinetic missile damage bonus. This is typical Kaalakiota bonus, gives the same number of effective launchers, and favors RLML over the rate of fire bonus.

Finally, I will say again that the directional scan immunity is staying, though we are very aware of concerns (especially concerning FW site abuse) and will watch closely to see how this new capability is used and make any necessary adjustments.

Have a great Christmas o/

Removing from local is not likely to happen, I don't know if its ever going to happen but thats a MAJOR change that likely breaks a few things that probably shouldn't ever be broken. Stop suggesting it.

Excuse me for having an opinion that i reasoned out on the forum. "that likely breaks a few things that probably shouldn't ever be broken." Like Dscan reliably picking up uncloaked ships lol?

Please if you're gonna enter the argument don't tell me not to have an opinion, tell me why yours is more sound.

Okay, first major update just edited into the OP.

Major changes:

We're going to go with a lighter resist profile than originally described, setting all eight recons at the former combat recon resist profile. While we still like the goal of making them more fleet viable, their tank was one of their only stand-out weaknesses and we felt that removing it could make them oppressive at smaller scales. To compensate somewhat we've trimmed 5 more sig radius of each ship.

With the Pilgrim we decided to split the difference between neut range and strength by wrapping both into one bonus. The amounts will be smaller than either of the singular bonuses but this should do a nice job of giving more engagement range flexibility while still allowing for plenty of cap pressure.

We are going to move one high slot on the Lachesis to a low slot, making armor slightly more viable while still preserving room in the mids for damps as well as long range warp disruption. The damage potential for the Lach is still on par with other combat recons even without the fifth high so we feel this fits better than giving up a mid.

The Rook is getting a little more PG fitting room and trading the 5% HAM/HML rate of fire bonus for a 7.5% kinetic missile damage bonus. This is typical Kaalakiota bonus, gives the same number of effective launchers, and favors RLML over the rate of fire bonus.

Finally, I will say again that the directional scan immunity is staying, though we are very aware of concerns (especially concerning FW site abuse) and will watch closely to see how this new capability is used and make any necessary adjustments.

Have a great Christmas o/

You have made Combat Recons stupidly powerful and refuse to so much as consider that making them d-scan immune is a bad idea.

Where are the drawbacks to the immunity? Why not give it a hard-to-fit module which only combat recons can fit and make the ships give up a slot and fitting in order to use it? You are making them undetectable unless they are on-grid with you and there is zero counter to that. Much better resists, much better cap, faster across the board, more hitpoints, additional drone bay space for one of them AND being undetectable via d-scan? Solo players be damned, right?

Not only that but you say that being undetectable in FW Plexes + Deadspace areas is something that you should look at but "won't be able to do before the next release" - So do what CCP have been touting as the main benefit of the new release schedule is and delay the damn update until you HAVE sorted it out, don't release a half-baked polished turd like you normally do. It was like listening to a child that thinks their ideas are the business and can't take criticism when I heard you on the podcast - "I have been waiting for a real reason that this is bad but haven't heard anything close so far." Start playing the game again Kil2, interact with those that don't have brown on their nose.

To be clear: A Curse is going to be the first thing I'm flying post patch, followed by the rest of the Combat Recons as these ships are going to be ******** good. Combat Recon gangs here we come. What a terrible idea. /rant

We are disappointed too with having to pull back the resists for fleets. These ships just need that drawback to balance them at smaller scales where they are more likely to get used anyway.

We have T3 rebalance, black ops rebalance, and potential ewar module changes on the horizon to help address this as well.