Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Not sure the covert probe bonus is worthwhile. You can already probe while cloaked, and you're already cloaked while setting up a safe to probe from. The only time a probing ship is uncloaked is the few seconds it uncloaks to actually launch probes. There's no way I would spend extra on a t2 probe just so I could launch it while cloaked. Nobody is uncloaked long enough to get scanned down in their safe in the first place.

A better bonus for covert t2 probes would be to give them a minimum dscan range so they're actually less detectable. Not full immunity, but something like a 5AU detection range. Close enough that someone in the site would still see the probes on the final scan, but might not be able to dscan the probes on the first pass.

I like the idea of t2 combat probes for wrecks though. Regular t2 probe seems kinda wasteful. Nobody with decent scanning skills really needs a higher tech core probe.

Only way I could see t2 probes working at all is if each probe has some cool special ability like the wreck scan, lower AU detection range, etc.

I think a bonus for the normal t2 probes would be an ability to get more detailed sig info, call it an "analyzer probe"

This probe could give you the ability to see the type/info of a scanned wormhole, number/type of clouds in a gas site, number/type of cans in a relic/data site and their status, etc. This would let the person doing the probing more easily value/catalog the sites without flying to them, and act on useful data like WH mass limits, which has situational uses that may make them valuable despite weaker scanning stats than the sisters probes. The idea being that once you've scanned down multiple sites you could park a single probe at each and have a better intel picture of the contents of those sites, but not the ships in them, which would be a middle ground between physically eyeballing the sites one at a time, or having the sites scanned down but not knowing much except their sig type since you can't scan ships, dictor bubbles, etc. with this "wide net" of analyzer probes.

Think of them like really long range survey scanners, only for gas, cans, and wormholes rather than how much ore is left in an asteroid. I guess you could also get a DED style threat assessment for combat sites too just for giggles even though its pretty easy to look up that info.

You'd just have an additional "eyeball" icon next to the little warp arrow on the site. Click that and it pops up a little window similar to survey scanner with the cans showing locked/open/looted, gas types/amounts/ and wormholes with types named and stable/critical indicators for mass/time. This information is current as of the last scan on the site.