Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I have an idea that is based on the recurring idea of a light/escort carrier and many of the well-known arguments for and against light/escort carriers also apply to this idea. I do not know whether a similar idea has been proposed before. In my mind, I would probably call it a light carrier. My idea is to turn a light carrier into a ship with capabilities to detect and de-cloak cloaked ships.

This idea is somewhat inspired by real-life anti-submarine warfare where helicopters are launched from carriers and are used to search for submarines.

The main reason for this particular idea is to use the fighter mechanics to manually control where the fighters should go. This is, to my knowledge, currently not possible with drones.

Special equipment that can only be used by light carriers:

- Special probes that detects active cloaking devices. The probes should be launched from an expanded probe launcher/special probe launcher. The probes only detect active cloaking devices.
- Detection pulse that radiates from the light carrier to indicate a rough position on the overview.
- Detection support fighters that can be sent to the location on the overview to search for and de-cloak cloaked ships. They sent out a detection pulse that will deactivate the active cloaking devices within the area.

Search and de-cloaking process – concept (specifics to be decided):

- Use the detection probes to identify the search area in a solar system where a cloaked ship is located. Since cloaked ships are supposed to find the search area should be rather big.
- The light carrier then warps to the search area and activate its detection pulse which will indicate a rough location where a cloaked ship is located in the search area.
- The detection support fighters are sent to the rough location on the overview. This is where the manual control of the fighters is necessary in order to search the area. If the cloaked ship is hit by the detection pulse of the fighters it de-cloaks.

Only active cloaking devices are detected, i.e. that ships cloaked after a jump through a star gate will not be detected and neither will non-cloaked ships. The detection pulse causes no damage to the cloaked ship.

Considerations:

Since this is mostly a basic idea I have not thought about all the details detection/search process or about the light carrier itself. However, my general considerations are:

- I would suggest 2 launch tubes for a total of two fighter squadrons, and it can launch one light fighter squadron and up to two support fighter squadrons.
- The light carrier should be a T1 ship class with a size between a battleship and an orca so that it can go into hisec as well (since fighters can already be launched from citadels i hisec, fighters are already in hisec).
- The light carrier should have no ship maintenance bay, fleet hangar, or jump drive.
- In terms of damage I would say that it should be comparable to a top-end battleship with the main damage coming from the light fighters. This could be supported by some cruiser sized weapon batteries for close-range protection against smaller ships (maybe with bonuses for damage application rather than damage). I think that damage from fighters can be adjusted by changing squadron size, the usability of special fighter abilities etc.

This is my basic idea. I know some will think it is a bad idea, but that is fair enough – opinions differ. It may also be that some of you have even better ideas. So please discuss.

Based on feedback I have made revised version of the light carrier which is a scrapping of anti-cloaking abilities to adding cloaking abilities. Please see post #18. As noted in that post this may also be considered a very bad idea.

Thanks for making me aware of that.
I was not aware of that thread.

No, you cannot delete cloaks from the game, go away.

An "anti-cloak" thread. Is it that time of the year, month, week again?

I best kobold Aura voice: Another one? Really? REALLY???

I understand. Now listen to my brilliant idee how to make players use the ingame voicechat more. Chances are good that local chat has to go away as a side effect.

Once upon a time you could scan cloaked ships with probes, warp to them and shoot them, and the players complained because cloaked should mean that you cannot be located. The great gods of EvE (CCP) decided to have pity on the players and gave us cloaked ships that cannot be located. So in typical fashion now the players complain because you cannot find these magical cloaked ships. Can you people make up your minds about what the hell you want so the rest of us can adapt and move on.

Personal thought here, the game needs fewer capital ships not more of them so for that reason alone I say no to your idea.

Thank you for your feedback. As I expected, there are different opinions concerning my idea and that is fine.

In my mind cloaked ships should be difficult to find and as such the detection and de-cloaking process should both demand considerable skill, time, and effort (and maybe a bit of luck). Given all the variables on the ships, modules, and fighters, I think it is possible to find the right balance. However, in the end it is for CCP to decide so we just have to wait and see what happens.

Just a note about the ship itself, it is not meant to be a capital ship with a size between a battleship and an orca. Some may say that fighters are for capital ships, but at the moment EVE already features oversized weapons for ships, like heavy drones for cruisers or large sized guns for battle cruisers. So this would fall into the same category I think (and as noted earlier, fighters are already in hisec via citadels).

Anyway, I personally hope that at some point in time CCP will decide to introduce some kind of light carrier. This will also help future carrier pilots to get used to fighter mechanics before spending 1+ billion of isk on a carrier. But again, this is for CCP to decide.

As soon as I read "cloaky hunter", I got excited and rushed here, only to be disappointed. I really hoped someone was mad enough to come up with a stealth carrier.

Anyway, your idea for a cloak hunter is bad, OP. Rewrite it to be a cloaky hunter instead and we can talk.

I like the final idea. As a light carrier it should be able to pass through all but frigate WH.

I have mixed feelings about this.

On one hand, cloaky campers who can sit afk all day, with the ability to hotdrop the entire world onto your ratting or mining op at a moment's notice is broken bad. There should be more effort required to shut down the economic engine of a system and crash the indexes. Another sign that it is broken is the most frequently suggested counter to it is to do the exact same thing in the form of a counter drop. If a counter to something is to do the same thing, it's generally badly overpowered.

At the same time, I used to live in Thera, jumping into someone else's wormhole every single day. There is a distinct thrill of sneaking around, undetected, in someone else's space. I feel like these things would almost be like adding local to wormhole space. Going to do a big ratting op? Probe the place out, then, once it's all clear, go. The unknown is what makes wormholes exciting, and I would hate to see that go.

Maybe it would be ok if the probes' scan range was fairly short, and they used some sort of search pattern (maybe specified to a certain place if you want to search a certain place faster). This way, if you're savvy, you can warp out of the way of the probes before they can detect you and stay completely undetected in a wormhole, while also not making probing with these things too tedious.

Also, while the ship design looks fairly balanced, I'm not sure what I feel about tying something like this to a single ship, and I'm not too fond of creating too many additional ship classes. Maybe give it to Marauders (because they could use some love) + the Nestor (because it just makes sense).