Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Not "Catch", but detect yes. This is by design

Here's what would hopefully happen.
-The cloaky is sitting at the gate spying and thinking he's invunerable.
-If he sees a anticloak probe show up on his overview then he better warp out, because it means that he/she has about 3 minutes before he's suspected. If he's smart he'll warp to a good distance and will just have to rely on the Dscan for the time being.
-If he/she is bold then he/she will warp back to the gate for short periods of time in order to update on direct visuals, but he won't be able to just sit there like they can do now.
-If he is at a safespot and gets the sense that he's being closed in on then he'll have to warp to a new location to keep them guessing.

If you warp to 0 on the cloaked ship you will get the initial position, assuming the warp to 0 takes longer then the time to the ship moves 2km you will not decloak it initially.... But since the probes will still be on grid, you will just need a second scan to determinate the direction the ship is moving to (you can start the scan just as you initiate warp to gain some time).... so, if you move faster then it (since you can activate speed bost modules) and you now can align to the same direction it is moving as you align to the second probed location it will be just a matter of seconds to get closer then 2km decloking it...

This means that there is a chance to decloak it, but it can be evaded if the cloaked have skill to avoid the hunter ( changing course or warping out)... An afk cloker would be easy tackled this way...

As I said... this would be a extremely exciting game, for the hunter, and for the pray... ( it would be like that old kid game where the blinded hunter says marco, and the pray must say polo... but in this case the hunter kid have a knife )

There are alot of passionate debates going on and some good discussions. Each side has valid points.

With that out of the way there are a few things that need to be adressed.

Anti-cloaking probes: An ok concept but would effect to many other parts of the game, namely wormholes, to actively put into practice.

So lets really look at some new ways to actively encourage intel gathering so that there are viable ways besides local to know when someone is lurking. I have a few ideas, and I really want the wormhole population to chime in, I don't want to change the way wormholes work. These will be implimented if local is removed/modified.

Active Scanning Module- A new mid-slot module that will pulse from the ship to give feedback on the surrounding area. This will detect cosmic signatures and anomolies, and will also detect ships including cloaked ones. There is a 30% chance of a false signature, decreased down to 5% with the skill Signature Analysis. The false signatures will be persistant, so it could remain in the area for a period of time. This will only see that a signature is there and will not give a scan ID, it will give a general direction of that signature from your current location, within 30 degrees, but not distances.

- This will allow you to see large fleets of cloaked ships forming up in an area, but the single cloaker could just be an anomoly or a glitch, you don't know.
- Range would be limited to 10 AU.
- Its an active module so cloakers would have to decloak to use it.

Sov Dependant Intel Probes- This will be set up on gates in systems with the appropriate upgrade in the IHUB. They are anchorable and have about half as much EHP as a small t1 bubble. They will broadcast system wide gate activations and the character name and standings status to the whole system, including reds. This broadcast will not be recieved if you are docked.

- Somewhat passive intel device
- Easily destroyable
- Only indicates a gate activation, not an enemy on grid

Cyno Delay - Cyno's should be delayed after decloaking, this delay should be equal to the sensor recalibration time that all ships are effected by from the decloak. 6 Seconds for Covops and Recons, 0 Seconds for Bombers and Black Ops, and 30+ seconds for non Covops cloaked ships.

Targeted Cyno Jammers - Something brought up in another thread, I fully support the use and invention of targeted cyno jammers. This would be simular to a Warp Disruptor and Warp Scrambler. The weaker version the Cynosaural Disruptor would jam regular cyno's, while the shorter range, Cyno Scrambler would jam even Covops Cynos. Energy consumption on these modules should be high and fitting numbers should be high so that they can fit on a frigate, but at the sacrifice of being useless for anything else.

I believe that if you give the power and ability to gather more effective intel through active interaction, rather than passive observance, the effect on the 'carebear' will be a sense of empowerment rather than dispare. Give them the tools to take control of there environment, this is where it all should come together. Combine that with the ability to prevent hotdrops and give suffiicient reaction time to counter the ambush will go a long way.

Thanks for Reading, constructive comments are encouraged but not required.

Notice something important here?

You're completely leaving out the fact that by being able to detect cloaked ships with these probes you're breaking wormhole intel gathering. Simply being able to tell someone is in your hole cloaked is enough to spoil the intel.

Wow, you still sticking to this ship-crippling horrendously bad idea? Nothing like rendering a cloaking T3 completely useless when it decloaks.

…except that they will automatically be detected — especially if there's that many of them. So no, that wouldn't be abused because the game makes it impossible.

L2P .

If you don't even know the basics of the game, maybe you shouldn't try to “fix” the more intricate bits, hmm?

You're the one saying that a cloaked gang will be automatically found out, when it doesn't appear in local and doesn't appear on any form for scans, not me.

I can only assume that you think there'll be a scout on all gates and all wormholes at all times during the day. In which case, heh, good luck with that pipedream.

That's because I know what intel is available in the game, and you don't. That's also the reason why I understand why local needs to either have a hard counter — AFK cloaking — or needs to be adjusted to provide far less intel than it currently does.

The supposed need for a counter-counter only shows how dependent people have become on their (otherwise) foolproof intel toll, which is a glaringly obvious indication of what the actual problem is and what part is is that needs to be adjusted… and it definitely isn't cloaking.

This idea is stupid.
Theres better ideas out there, like the no local one.

Your idea would be obsolete since people just warp from one point to another every 3-5 minutes and done.