Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So congrats to CCP for deployment of Rubicon. It didn't delete my boot.ini file so I am happy (bar is pretty low isn't it?).

While I do NOT follow the forums as much as most who post here in F&I, I do recall that Recons are being very close in being the "next" ship class to getting the re-balance hammer. Which ones do you want to see improved? New role for both field and fleet?

This will obviously gutter down into a ECM debate, but I figure we should go ahead and jump on this sooner than later.

One thing I really do hate is Cyno mechanics. It is by far about the worst game mechanic in Eve...having to sit still for such a long time while being a sitting duck. This mechanic is the only reason players that want to fly capitals need to set up their own Cyno networks of throwaway characters.

There should be no reason to have to have throwaway characters just to fulfill a game mechanic....maybe the recon re balance could offer something in the form of "non tethered" Cyno dropping? Sort of like dropping a bubble...while still being tied to the ship if it dies (has to at least stay on grid). Of course the recon will just cloak after it moves away if possible, but just white boarding here.

Just one of many ideas. Anyone else got any?

I think CCP was trying to give some sort of Cyno advantage to the recon class, but you rarely see them deployed in fleets for that intended role. Why lose a ship like this when a covert ops is much less expensive? Covert Cloaks are obviously a different beast and working fairly well I would think.

But having a big "shoot me now" sign show up on the overview when lighting a cyno in a recon isn't the best way to lose your Pilgrim.

I agree that the easier solution is personal deployable Cynos. On the flipside to that, I wasn't really looking for easy...is there any way we could add skill into the Cyno mechanic, even if it were radically changed? Maybe not.

(at least this is better than arguing about ECM....wait for it....wait....)

Having a speed bonus while cloaked ala BlackOps would be a good addition to the covert side of the recon classes. Hadn't thought about that one yet.

That's an interesting concept. I think it depends on how the current code for cynos works, it's possible the reason that ships lighting cynos were made to not move or act while it's lit is due to the game not liking moving parameters for the jump/bridge destination. That said, it would be nice if that was ironed out. Perhaps making a cyno run more like a HICs bubble, where the ship can continue to move but not be able to warp or use a mjd and also have lowered combat capabilities would be an improvement.

As for using throwaway characters for cynos, I would assume that the reason for this is that the massive benefits provided by jumping ships are supposed to be offset by it being a team activity that requires coordination. Most people like to not require others assistance though, and thus create their own specific cyno alts. Moreover I don't think that this can really be fixed. As long as jumping a ship requires two characters, people will be doing it with an alt. I suppose this could be changed by removing the field generators entirely and making jumping dependent on the Cynosural Generator Array, but this would be removing non-covert hotdrops from the game (and therefor all kinds of ambushes on supercaps) and that's not a good tradeoff for removing peoples ability to jump ships around with an alt. It would be an interesting shift in the meta-game though, resulting in blops fleets setting up stations behind enemy lines to act as beachheads. Honestly, I think cynos are a mechanic so ingrained into gameplay right now that you can't really touch them without completely destroying some gameplay style or another, and that makes them a difficult system to re-evaluate.

So you could like launch bombs without uncloaking? Or capitals cycling injectors while cloaked? Yah, probably bad one :)

So, what would be the PRIMARY role for the "Recon" class? Right now it is not "recon" as that is done quite well by frigate class hulls, and especially the new nullified interceptors. The class of ships are split into 2 with the main difference of having covert cloak (yes many more, but lets be honest, that is the main) as well as the Cyno reduction of time.

Now, people use Recons for their electronic warfare capability (Falcon)...which scales very well in low intensity gang warfare, but not in big fleets (as if you start saying primary for electronic warfare, that is stupid...got to spread the love, which leaves major gaps in coverage).

Its a class really in crisis. I threw out there the Cyno idea, but we need more to stir the pot.

Main reason i brought it (Cynos) up was because it is a role bonus for half the recon fleet in game. To be fair, any discussion is going to devolve into off topic points...

Should we just rename the class as "EW Cruisers" and re-balance away, taking away the covert ops cloak and Cyno capabilities? I find it hard to believe someone uses a recon to move capitals around.

There will always be some things that cannot be accomplished solo. This is good.

Are there really any players in game that pride themselves on being the best cyno deploy-er for their alliance? I highly doubt that.

I like the idea of just removing the name "Recon" from them...or, maybe we can have the combat class be nullified (DPS + Nullified would be interesting if done correctly), and have the field recon keep the covert ops and up the slots to have more utility.

Not letting this thread die just yet, even if it gets pushed off the first page so soon.