Player Features and Ideas Discussion

A comprehensive first draft plan to address issues and improve EVE's existing Intel system. I've avoided going much into justifications and why this and not that, so that it's easier to read and understand. However, in general the goal is to make intel something players need to work for, and to encourage guerrilla warfare and sneaky gameplay giving smaller ship classes and CovOps a distinct edge in this field. I welcome comments, suggestions, and criticisms by those who acknowledge EVE as a Sandbox MMORPG built around player conflict.

PART ONE:

Local Chat Intel Changes:

New Delayed mode:
- Automatically applies to High and Low Sec

Players will now appear in Local after a set time of entering the system based on ship class:

Frigates, Shuttles, Pods: 5 minutes delay
Destroyers: 3 minutes delay
Cruisers, Transports, Mining Barges: 1 minute 30 seconds
Battlecruisers, Industrials, Exhumers: 30 seconds
Battleships: 15 seconds
Capital Ships or Player Docked in a Station: Instant

* Cloaks will end the timer and cannot be picked up by Local Intel if not already registered or unless the player broadcasts in the Chat.
* Once registered on a systems Local Intel only logging out or leaving the system will remove you. Cloaking after this time will not remove you from Local.

Note: None of this applies to WH space which remains the same.


- Null Sec:

Local Chat Intel is no longer automatically part of Null Sec, the default state being the same as WH space.

Outposts in Sov Null provide the new Delayed Mode Local Intel in the system they occupy. Much like docking rights, who has access to this Intel in controlled by those that own the Outpost.

Stations in NPC Null will provide the new Delayed Mode Local Intel in the System they occupy to those Players or Corps that have 8.0 or higher standing to the NPC Corp holding the station.

A new mod for Titans and perhaps other Cap Ships that will allow them to provide the new Delayed Mode Local Intel for the System they are in for all Corp and Alliance members. Active mod that will not work in POS shields or while the ship is cloaked. Also will not function in WH Space.

A new deployable The Scanner Array: When deployed will provide the new delayed Local Intel in the system in which it is deployed to the Corp and alliance that owns it. Cannot be deployed in or near a POS. Will not function in WH space. Has a large volume that no subcap combat ship can carry one. Is relatively expensive to produce and relatively easy to destroy. Also shows up on Overview.


PART TWO:

Cloaking Changes:


* A Cov Ops Ships that logs off cloaked stays cloaked until it leaves the game or is uncovered during the time it takes to log off.

* Space Junk no longer uncovers cloaked ships, only ships, structures, and deployables controlled by players or active NPCs (Ships, drones, fighters, mobile warp disruptors, stations/outposts, POS and associated deployables, and gates, NOT cans, wrecks, asteroids, abandoned drones, corpses etc)

* Reverse the change where cloaked ships do not decloak each other when they get close.

* Add Advanced Cloaking Skill used to reduce targeting recalibration to 0 for CovOps ships.

* Black Ops get CovOps Cloaks, lose speed bonus while cloaked.

Cloak Detection is Introduced: (Based off an Idea by Rek Seven)

A new Cloak Hunting Ship. I favor a ship based of the existing Recons that lose their Cyno bonus and one EWAR bonus to be able to equip the new tools I discuss below. However, an all new ship would be ok as well, but it should be T2, cruiser or smaller, Cov Ops, and skill intensive.

New Advanced Probes used with Expanded Probe Launcher and a specialized ship. The Probes would give the Approximate location of a cloaked ship (25-50km depending on skills) and the ability for the ship to warp to that location.



New Skills

Advanced Recon: Requires Recon V and Cloaking V, 20% Bonus per level to SDFD Range and Pulse recharge time (max 50km 10sec) Also Prerequisite at level 1 for flying new Cloak Hunting ship

Advanced Cloaking: Requires Cloaking V, -10% Bonus per level to Targeting delay with CovOps cloaks.

SDFD Operation: Requires Cloaking V, Bonus, Reduction in Cap use and fitting requirements for the SDFD Mod.

Astrometric Subspace Detection: Requires Astrometrics Pinpointing and Rangefinding V, Bonus in reducing possible range deviation of the scanned cloaked ship from the warp-in point using the new Probes. Max skills 25-30km, minimum 50km.


PART THREE:

DScan Changes:

* DScan can be set to an automatic pulse. In automation there are three factors Pulse Frequency, Scan Range, and Scan Angle. In order to have more of one you must have less of the others. So a frequent pulse scan of 360 scan angle would be possible but it's scan range would be very short. You could increase the range by reducing the pulse frequency.

* DScan can be locked to a celestial object rather than camera view.

* Gates in Null can give ghost signatures on it's grid, random false positives that may come up from any DScan covering a Gate. The reason for this is an anti bot measure for anyone using DScan as a means to protect boting operations.

The biggest thing I see missing is that nothing has been done to protect the viability of using a cloaked covops ship for intel gathering. For instance to monitor the comings and goings of a hostile station/jb/staging pos. Maybe exempt the non-bomber covops frigate from being decloaked?

Second, this eliminates any hope of using a cloak on grid to escape from the enemy, for instance by cloaking when you get bubbled and slowboating away in a non-covops ship. A good gang will likely catch you, but sometimes you get away, AoE decloak/detection would ruin that. Generally, this would make it riskier to try to run a bubbled camp.

Still, this is a great proposal, and I commend you on taking seriously the need to address intel as a whole, rather then trying to deal with individual elements. This probably the best proposal I've seen.

Edit: Also, as a followup to point 2, this would also eliminate the effectiveness of prepositioned cloaked dictors on the battlefield. Which like the gate camp issue, is a balance change not really related to the goal of fixing intel.

I'm not sure I follow what part of the proposed ideas make you feel this way. With the new Delayed Local Intel it's extremely unlikely a CovOps Frigate would ever get displayed in Local. It would have to be uncloaked for more than 5 minutes, and in a scouting role there's no reason for that to ever happen. In respect to the Cloak Detection, it's only on a very specialized ship that must launch special probes to get your approximate location. The special probes like all probes would show on DScan potentially giving you lots of warning. Plus if your constantly moving you're a very hard target to detect and uncover. The end result is that a CovOps Frigate would be a very valuable scout in this system, but it would require someone at the keyboard being vigilant and paying attention.



I think a good gang would catch you regardless in this case. The reason I really liked Rek Seven's ideas for cloak detection is precisely because it didn't work that well on gates or encourage blobbing. It's the best Cat and Mouse type Cloaking hunting idea I've seen suggested thus far. Keep in mind how it works, it's probes at best give it a warp point 25k from your actual location, and it's cloak detection cycles every 10 seconds and gives a ghost outline of your position at the time of the scan to the pilot of that ship (not to everyone). On a gate Interceptors with a load of drones set to them is probably a much better bet than the Cloak Hunting ship.

When CCP reintroduced the 'cloaks don't decloak each other' system, the reasoning for it was because it was a mistake that they didn't do it that way in the first place. So I'm guessing that won't be something that will happen, also if they are all in a cluster, it would be easier for them to be detected. The switch has made bomber groups standard for fleets and gangs in sov warfare, there isn't any 0.0 engagement now where bombers aren't used somewhere.

It also seems a little wierd that W-space isn't getting love from the cloaky detection. Maybe have the false positives be native to W-space and operate with limited capability. Just some suggestions as you will get flamed pretty bad soon (1,000,000 ISK on that wager)

Edit: Have the probes that can detect cloaked signatures able to detect Anoms and Signatures but not show the ID number, that way signatures can be confused and it will provide the chance for additional cat and mouse. The lore behind it would be that the probes are specialized in detecting the electronics/thermal signature of the ship and any other equipment on the probes would disrupt the scan, thus causing the ability to pick up signatures but unable to accurately distinguish between them.