This started out as an extremely snarky, unhelpful, post, but I decided I'd probably be better off making something more structured.
Auto-Recalling and Teleporting Probes.Quote:The recall and expire options have been changed a bit GÇô recall is now instantaneous and happens automatically on system jump or dock. Probes still have a timer, but instead of being lost when the timer is out, they automatically recall instead... No more forsaken probes in space!
I'm going to attempt to sum up why I think just about everything in that quote is a terrible change.
ConsequencesEVE is not a game that holds your hand, it is not a game that lets you get away with making mistakes, quite the contrary, making mistakes in EVE often results in you being beaten into the ground. EVE does not prevent you from burning out your modules when you overheat them to dangerous levels, EVE does not turn on your hardeners for you when you begin taking fire, EVE does not prevent you from jumping your Titan into the middle of hostile space instead of creating a bridge for your fleet, EVE does not teleport your drones into your drone bay should you either forget to recall them or are forced to leave without them.
You made that mistake or choice, and you live with the consequences, be it burnt out guns, a destroyed ship, billions in assets lost, or having to buy new drones.
Yet, EVE will now actively step in and prevent you from making the mistake of forgetting your probes by having them teleport into your cargo hold.
This means you will never realise 5 jumps later that you've lost all your probes and have to go buy new ones from someone who either produced them or purchased them from the Sisters of EVE (or both.) This means that you will never go into a wormhole, warp off somewhere and discover you have no probes (somehow people do this,) meaning you have to either make friends with the locals to arrange your safe departure or contact one of EVE's wormhole rescue groups.
By implementing auto-recalling probes on leaving the system, you are not only removing consequences, but removing interactions with other players.
I'm sure some people will say that it's just removing a tedious button click, but it's about as much of a tedious button click as recalling your drones or changing your ammunition to match your engagement range.
All of this can be applied to allowing your probes to expire because you weren't paying attention. Something I myself have actually done, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Immersion.Probes have warp speeds, when they are deployed into space and sent out to scan for hostiles or signatures or what have you, we wait for them to warp into position before they begin their scan cycle. When we reposition them, we wait for them to warp to their new designated positions.
Why do we have to do this if they apparently posess the ability of teleportation? Of course the answer is that teleporting combat probes would be hidiously imbalanced, but hey, it's there, we know that they warp around. Personally after watching their little dots move around on the star map so many times, I find the teleporting probes as jarring as it would be to have my slow-ass Ogres sitting 80km away from me suddenly teleport into my drone bay because I recalled them or initiated warp. Why did I have to wait for them to fly over there in the first place?!
Forsaken Probes in spaceThis one isn't so much a problem so much as potential, I had an interesting, if lengthy discussion on twitter some days ago involving a number of people. One of the points raised was that unlike abandoned drones, you can't do anything with abandoned probes in your system. I'd like to see that changed.
I'd like to be able to probe down forgotten probes (or probes left behind for tactical reasons,) and recover them. Waste not, want not, after all.
Or what if I could scan down and hack into probes left in tactical positions by a hostile while he's gone and sabotage them to fly back to his ship and blow up when he reconnects to them? (That's a pie in the sky idea, it's probably not doable, but it'd be pretty damn cool.)
That got me thinking of what about active probes? What if I could probe down active probes and hack them to either shut them down or mess with a hostile probing ship's scanners who is likely sitting somewhere far off cloaked and can't be impeded otherwise.
Probes in space actually have some interesting design posibilities, and I'd hate to see them invalidated because some people find hitting a recall probes button and waiting 2~3 seconds for your probes to return and dock unbearable.
Hope this helps.