Player Features and Ideas Discussion

With the "recent" changes to jump capable ships, I figured it's a good time to revisit this particular suggestion.

My proposition is to simply allow people to light, and jump/bridge to, covert cynos in highsec.
This would enable a wealth of new tactical options for combat in highsec and give black ops ships a rather significant boost to their possible areas of operation.

It's a relatively easy change to implement, and it makes sense in the lore as well (the reason why capital ships can't enter highsec systems is because they're cynojammed. In nullsec, cynojammers do not prevent covops cynos from being lit, which is a particular strength of them.
It would also fit in rather well with the current storyline that the capsuleers are gaining in power over the empires. This would be one way that we could "circumvent" the policies of the empires.

Naturally, jumping to covert cynos in highsec wouldn't be without consequences. Especially not with the neutral alts that are all over the place.
There are already some significant drawbacks involved in blopsing. Namely the requirement for both a Cyno V character (easy enough to have), and more importantly, a Black ops (and bridging capable) character with preferably JDC V (which is NOT easy to have). On top of that, a significant investment of isk (varies) and the proper organization to properly execute black ops maneuvers.

This however, is not enough. Some additional rules have to be established.
Mainly that every single ship involved in Black Ops operations in highsec will automatically be assigned a suspect flag. This goes for the ship lighting the cyno, the ships bridging, being bridged and jumping. Every single one.
Furthermore, I'm halfway partial to having a ship fitted with a covops cyno in highsec that is online be flagged as suspect as default setting. Just to give targets a bit of a heads up about what's going to happen if they stick around. (to prevent too big of an advantage to using neutral alts, even though they'll only be useful against a target once if they're clever).

Possible worries (these are arguments against that I've heard before in the past)
This change makes transportation too easy.
It might've been that way, but jump fatigue and the range jumps handily take care of that problem. It's very likely to be faster to simply use a blockade runner and transport goods that way, unless they're contraband, in which case using blops in highsec will finally give you a way to circumvent the customs scans (it'll still be slower than regular transportation).

Our mining ops might get hotdropped without warning during a war now.
The suspect flag on the cynoship will give you a heads up, furthermore, you can take steps to protect yourself. And it's not like cynos are "THAT" instantaneous)
(on a side note, what are you doing mining during a war...)

You could easily bridge highsec to highsec to avoid lowsec between islands and main highsec.
Blockade runners have very limited cargo capacity compared to Jump Freighters, some types of goods can't even be carried because their holds are too small. Furthermore, Blockade runners should never even die when traversing lowsec via gates, barring some freak happestance.


Thoughts?

I like the idea of it being done right but if CCP do it they will just catter to carebears and make highsec even safer to traverse for high value goods and to avoid wardecs.

+1 to combat
-1 to combat avoidance
-9001 to ccp messing everything up

I only need the affects of this on newer players as pointed out by Lugh Crow-Slave ito give this one a -1.

If you want to use your covert cyno's to hot drop people that is what the nul and low sec regions of space are for, go forth and have fun.
If you think high sec is to safe then get out and make it less safe using the reasonably well balanced set of tools that are already in the game.

There are hundreds of valid reasons why cyno's and cap ship are not allowed in high sec and it needs to stay that way.
So just in case you may have missed it earlier.

-1 to another really bad idea on how to change high sec.

This isn't actually a bad idea at all. My trading and hauling industry revolves mostly around high value, low volume goods. At the moment I am having to use a completely brick tanked Tengu which I've pumped a lot of isk into. With cov ops cynos I could potentially load up a blockade runner and transport the goods in a far safer way whilst also managing to avoid the obvious and very dangerous pipe systems.

While I am effectively already at the end game, ship wise, for my trade. New players would be able to set this up far faster and with less capital than I needed and could finally give me a bit of competition. I'm going to +1 this.

Well, if we're talking along the same lines of thought, then the same argument you make could be made about duels (depending on age of the player), wars in general, awoxes (for as far as they still exist) and suicide ganking.

Compared to these things, covops drops would actually be rather rare because of the entry level in terms of skill and isk required.
It wouldn't be that common to start with.

except awoxers have been nerfed to a point that they can't do much to the average player in HS duels can be ignored and even week old players can learn to understand the emblem of a war target and dock up when that appears in local.

and the "barrier to entry" you have is only about three moths for a bridge capable blops so it's not very high.

if you had to be in the same corp to light the cyno then I would not see much of a problem but adding this limitation would poorly affect game play outside of HS and making to a rule that only applies to HS would just get confusing

Liked this in the past, still like it now.

1. You have to be using a ship that can light a covert cyno. These arent the tankiest ships in the game (except OP T3). Go suspect and sit still with a target on their head.
2. You can only jump in with ships that can use a covert cloak. Again, these are not the hardiest of ships in the game. (except OP T3)
3. Its little different than baiting with a drake whilst the vindi/guardian fleet waits one jump out. The main difference being that the types of ships you can use are restricted.

(TLDR: nerf OP T3)

It doesnt make the war dec system any noob-stompier than it already is. If you wanna stomp noobs, the current system enables that quite well already.

If you want to play with the nice toys move to the right space for them.

I couldn't agree with this more. It's not like we can use bombs in high sec, so its not really going to affect that, and we can't bring in any capitals, so that's fine too.

-1. While a competent players would not find avoiding this too much of a problem, it would primarily be used to surprise kill people the newer, younger, less knowledgable players that define highsec.

If you were restricted in highsec to only bridging to a cyno lit by a member of your corp (and thus a char that would also be in the wardec), then maybe. But staying alert and aligned at all times to avoid surprise cynos lit by neutrals would be an excessive bar for demanding vigilance.

Even in null and low and WH space it's possible to pick out the people who are there to kill you (and have freedom to do so without consequences). It's called "anyone not blue".

I'd rather not see the next wave of newbies be griefed out of the game by getting constantly dropped on through a method they don't understand and can't predict before they even manage to muster up the courage to leave highsec.