Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Cloaky campers got you hugging the station? Do you just know someone is out there waiting in the shadows, but you're not sure just where? Sounding charges might just be the answer.

Similar to depth charges or sonar pings, a sounding charge would emit an electronic pulse that temporarially overloads cloaking fields used to hide ships in space. The polarization effect of the pulse temporarially reacts with the camoflage fields of all cloaked ships within a 1 AU radius sphere to create a signal that is detectable by the pulse initiator's navigation and targeting systems for a period of 5 minutes.

Sounding charge broadcasters can be activated once every 15 seconds.

Pulses radiate in a sphere from the user's ship to a radius of 1 AU.

Decloaked ships that are tagged by the sounding charge "ping" become visible icons on the overview panel and are targetable. The cloaked status of their ship remains intact. They are not visible to the capsuleer's eye and can be targeted only by the ship which pinged the target, using the overview panel.

The "pinged" status of the discovered ship is reported to the ship's pilot by an audible ping noise.

The location of the ping result(s) serves as a beacon to allow in-system warping to the location. Note: The cloaked ship may have moved from the location where it was originally detected. It would still be targetable for 5 minutes, however, would need to be located, again (or re-pinged) for targeting to be possible.

Requires:

Sounding Charge Broadcaster (Medium slot) - Fits any ship type, except shuttles, freighters, and other unarmed ship types. - Limited to one broadcaster per ship.
Sounding Charge (Ammo Charge)
Skills - To Be Determined

Seed Items:

Sounding Charge Broadcaster Blueprint - Inventable to a T2 variant, which allows a 1.25 AU radius ping.
Sounding Charge Blueprint

Benefits:

Allows players to detect hostile forces hiding in their vicinity. Cloaked forces can react to being tagged by a ping and possibly affect an escape.

Provides new functionality for fleet security personnel. Easy fitting requirements would allow new capsuleers to fill valueable roles in even the most advanced null sec fleets.

Relatively small detection sphere provides plenty of room for a cloaked enemy to avoid being pinged. Larger coordinated sweeps, conducted by fleets, would prove helpful in locating cloaked hostiles.

anything other than getting too close to an object to decloak defeats the very purpose of cloak to begin with. i wouldn't mind with prototype cloak, but this would only crush covertops.

besides: sound typically requires a medium like air or water to carry it.

It's actually a well-balanced approach to combatting any type of cloaked hostile scouting or assault force. The enormous size of the solar system - in all three axis - provides a huge area in which to hide. Discovery is not a given. It would be fairly difficult.

Although this is not specifically aimed at cloaked AFK campers, the idea would allow them to possibly be discovered, were they not "on the move", occasionally.

More importantly, and a prime reason not to stereotype this suggestion into the "AFK cloaking sticky", is that it would allow for a fleet's picket scouts to detect a fleet of stealth bombers preparing for a bombing run or a black ops battleship and fleet transiting a system. The potential uses of such an implementation allow greater immersion into the game's roles and unlock opportunities for new players to find useful employment in the lawless reaches of the galaxy.

Good observation on the science. Since the signal is of electronic origin the ping detected by the cloaked pilot would be the feedback of the overloaded cloaking device within the ship.



On the topic of effectively crushing the covops, the chances of actually scanning one down - especially one that was trying to avoid detection - would be quite remote. Here's a visualization that comes close to explaining the concept and why a covops force that' wants to stay hidden has a very decent chance of doing so:

If you were to hide something in a ping pong ball (miniature covops ship, maybe), then randomly place the ping pong ball into a large truck full of ping pong balls, you *could* find the one that contains the object, eventually. But - only being able to check one ball every 15 seconds, it would take quite a long time to do. Now, imagine how long it would take if the randomly placed "prize ball" were to move around a lot.

The cloaked force has defenses in the ability to use directional scan to avoid ships which may pose a detection risk.

For the love of.... the AFK Cloaky sticky is at the top of the page.

Closed.