Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I like the idea of OAs effecting things like D-Scan. Again, this could be designed similar to how we use scan probes now. A network of these would make D-Scan very effective for friendly ships (longer range, ability to create a warpable lock on very strong signals...). Or, they could make life tough for unfriendlies (such as very decreased D-Scan range).

As for the effects on the star map, they could be used to effectively hide friendly structures and ships to unfriendlies. A well-established network might be able to obscure an outpost from all but the best probe users. Without OA abilities in-system, a structure shows up on the overview. With one or two OA assets in place, it becomes an anomaly. With a good network, friendly structures become signatures that need to be scanned down, their difficulty depending on the network.

As for communications, in Null, they can be used to establish local in sovereign systems. Without them, no local. In low, they could disrupt local in some way, shape or form. But, this could lead to a silly escalation. A corp in Rancer wishes to disrupt local, so he puts up an OA for this. Another corp, who ships regularly through Rancer, puts one up to counter the first one. The first guy puts up another and so on. In highsec, local stays as is, its part of high sec life.

I am not sure on some of the proposed gate abilities. Affecting movement, speed and agility? Maybe this class of structure should be called something other than a gate. Have gate be a subset.

For gates, like the communication OA's, there needs to be a limit or else things might get silly with dozens of gates in a given system. And, even though it would be realistic, I fear the idea of having gates collect tolls in the game. That could create a huge mess.

Any ideas of forcing open or maintaining open Bob's holes makes him very angry. Making your home more or less inviting to Bob is probably tolerable but Bob roams where Bob roams and he will not be controlled by your meager technology. Nor may you summon him summarily like some common pilot that you require to answer your fleet op calls. Similarly Bob does not like to be exposed to your spreadsheets. Bob grants you information on his state and his fog is his cloak against your incessant meddling into his universe.

In a slightly less tongue-in-cheek response, be very careful of messing too much with cloak and d-scan mechanics inside wormholes. w-space is sufficiently different that a common set of mechanics is probably not desirable even if the Observatory Array is anchorable in w-space systems. I'm not a big fan of any anchorable structure that tends toward less randomness and/or more control in w-space.

We already deal with controlling our space via active players through the hole rolling mechanics but the randomness is what make w-space special and different. I would hate to lose that uniqueness.

Are there plans to increase the different venues of information that can gathered from an observation post, outside of currently obtainable information?

For example:
Ships logged off in system
History of pilots spotted
Watch list jamming?

Hopefully the observation arrays that add this intel / safety will also provide relatively easy killmails, or at least be as trivial as an entosis link to shut them off as well. A small group of carebears that don't want to fight, but want that extra intel advantage would be spending a lot on undefended OAs that keep getting reinforced/destroyed/stolen by roaming gangs.

Maybe a nice hacking mini-game could turn an OA against it's owners and change the desired effects.

Watch list jamming would be extremely cool to have. As it stands, nonconsensual watch listing provides way too much intelligence about enemy forces in a way that is extremely easy to read from the client's memory and output into an irc channel. Short of removing nonconsensual watchlisting, having a mechanism to blunt its effectiveness would be marvelous.

I really like the open discussions and concepts exposed in the structure presentation. I think CCP is doing a great job of putting theses on the table and have us comment on them upfront.

As for this specific topic about observatory arrays, the most important thing is to make sure these structures help active connected pilots, and put a significant risk on inactive pilots not in a safe zone (POS or Station).

I fully support the concept of a system wide de-cloaking pulse from an observatory array, as long as it can only be activated by a pilot that has to go to the observatory array, and trigger the pulse there from a module that would "sync" with the structure (much like the upcoming entosis link, so not doing it from a pod, not doing it remotely from a safe spot, or worse without even being in the system). The module could have variations, selected by the pilot, to bring some kind of effect variation to such a pulse (delay, strength, range,.. whatever..)

I think these structures should not necessarily be inside a POS shield but placed around the system, larger systems requiring possibly more of such structures.
They would still need to link to an online POS somehow (or was there any mention that these new structures will be deployed independently of POSes?).

Overall, I do not recommend having various roles for the same structure. A gate is used to go from System A to System B. If something should affect the warp speed in a system, that should be a new structure on its own. Deployable structures like that should stick to one role only, as multiplying effect on the same structure will lead to higher risks of unbalance.

I like that idea. Watchlisting not only is bad from gameplay terms. It is also bad from a roleplaying standpoint.

Would it be possible to link local to these observation arrays? Many times now Fozie has said he hates local. Why don't we make it so these arrays are in all low sec and high sec and not in null and must be placed. I think probably a limitation for WH, I doubt they would want an active local.

Some kind of observation array. Basic array takes 30 seconds to register a player in local. Then upgraded like 5 seconds and then highly upgraded array is instant appearance in local. Could also link it to gate activation. Maybe also deny local to certain people based on standings.

Not sure how far this can go, but some kind of mechanic like that maybe cool if hacking could then disrupt local. So defending in in a sov war can be quite helpful, while the attacker might find it appealing to hack it and create surprise attacks or just hack it to gain local.

I daresay that is the entire point — observation arrays replace or enable Local functionality, in whole or in part, among other tasks.

Before the discussion continues I'd like to first know how the data on afk cloakers was collected by members of the player base. Was it tea leaves, chicken bones thrown in a fire, or tarot cards?

That being said, if cloaking is somehow modified to keep people from being terrified of who is in local, what will become of ships that can not be d-scanned? Would I not be able to sit in a safe in a ship that can not be d-scanned and still terrify bots set to dock if local is not 100% blue?