Te more I think about the MSI the less I like it.
It seems that it would be useful to a complex runner or ratter, but it is only good by the hundreds to make it impossible to chose the right one.
From an offensive standpoint it is good as a trap, but then again it is too obvious a trap.

I'm not really sure the direction you were trying to go with this module.

Not if you're in a wormhole.

Currently, hiding from d-scan requires smarts. You can find places off d-scan to hide assets that can hide non-cloaked ships, and use cloakies with all the disadvantages therin. What you CAN'T do is hide an entire cap escalation fleet, or build up forces without the enemy being able to know composition.

There's nothing stopping a corp putting up ten or twenty with bubbles anchored within them, screwing over anyone hunting for more than long enough to allow disengagement from the sleepers or preparation for PVP. You need a lot of scouts, or you have to be using cloaky/nulli T3s which is just pushing one ship into being the only option for a particular role, something Eve is supposedly against.

It can simultaneously be used to remove even more of the risk from PvE and to add an advantage to an invading fleet, and while that might seem balanced all it's going to do is MAKE BOTH SIDES LESS LIKELY TO FIGHT. This is the exact opposite of what we need.

Okay, in k-space you know there's someone there, you know their NUMBERS, you know exactly where they could be coming from (barring wormhole exits), but in w-space there's a lot less information and a lot more variables, and this will allow non-cloaky ships to come through a wormhole without giving away exact composition, which is just going to mean more people hide behind their POS shields and we get less good fights. No longer does hiding from d-scan require a cloak or clever/lucky placement out of d-scan range. The enemy will know that SOMETHING is coming, but that could be one T1 cruiser from a high or nullsec entrance screwing with the big scary wormholers by anchoring a bubble on the hole, or it could be a fifty-man T3 gang with a bubble already anchored to pull your scout right into the middle of them, and you have physcally no way of knowing any more.

This thing should in fact appear in OVERVIEW, not needing a probe to find it. THen I think we might have it balanced.

Anything that makes the already laughably easy life of an NPCer easy is out of the gate a bad idea. They're hard enough to catch, if they want safety they go to high sec, if they want riches and danger, 0.0, but safe riches and danger is dumb, so the MSI is bad, because if you think cost will prohibit these from being used in broken ******** ways to make NPCing easy then I'd like to sell you a bridge.


MMJD is bad, the ships using it get something for nothing, they suffer no penalties and make no fitting concessions to gain the ability to MJD. Coupled with the fact that it instantly obsoletes the LMJD module because why ever bother fitting one if you can just drop this thing and get it done?


Scrap both mods, they're garbage.

It takes a truly horrific idea to bring together people this different against it.

But look at the time frame these are online for. 2 Hours... That means someone put that up recently, and with purpose. Engaging hostiles in a system with one of these up is little different than engaging hostiles in a system with other unscouted players (be they cloaked, docked in an inaccessible station, or hiding in a deep safe). Remember, players will still be in local and these only last two hours. If these are spammed around a system, then something is up. We'll learn pretty quickly who put these up and why. I'm really trying to understand why this will ruin solo PvP.

There honestly is one area that I can think will directly alter solo travels. When you see this on scan by a gate, and hostiles in local, it becomes very difficult to know whether you can warp to that gate (more often than not, you shouldn't). But these are static, meaning they are easily bypassed. They have a 30 km's radius, can't be within 75km's of a gate or station, nor 40 km's of a POS. This means it will only obfuscate those campers on a catch bubble. Anyone with mild preparation (i.e. having bookmarks in yoru roaming area) can still warp to the area, check out what's up, and fly about.

I believe that in the current iteration, the scan disruptor provides too great a margin of safety for PvE fleets in C5/C6 W-Space; Just anchor a few dozen of these around your system before rolling out the PvE capital fleet, and by the time any hostiles roll into your system and have correctly identified which site you're in, all assets will have gotten off the field.

If by 'easy to scan down' you mean that a 16 or 32-AU scan will resolve them in a single cycle, that might be tolerable, but likely still tilts the advantage too much towards the defender.

Just a couple of thoughts:

As it currently stands with the latest scan and warp speed changes, the time it takes a hunter to enter a system, find a target, warp, and point is ridiculously low. Additionally, the warp changes have made warping away even harder for prey.

There seems to be a weird assumption that hunters should have it easy and prey should have it hard. All of the advice to prey who are doing anything besides PvP in a system is basically to warp or cloak when local spikes. And because thatGÇÖs the only option available to prey, AFK cloakers can shut down a system. The MSI actually provides options that reduce the GÇ£powerGÇ¥ of the AFK cloaker. He canGÇÖt just sit there and present a possible threat; he has to warp around to present an actual threat.

While I can understand some of the dismay over the upcoming "shell game," I don't see any inherent problems with making the hunter have to work more than 30 seconds to find and point prey. The shell game also has an easy counter: throwaway alts in shuttles. IGÇÖve also not seen anyone propose the counter use of MSIs against a shell game. They have a whole bunch of MSIs placed? You setup a whole bunch of MSIs. Better yet, you get there first and you put MSIs on every anomaly. Hide and seek works both ways. I can think of lots of other ways to use these against other players who are using them and for other offensive purposes.

As for the suggestion that ships inside the MSI field not be able to d-scan, thatGÇÖs absurd. The hunter has only a 30km bubble in the system that he canGÇÖt scan. The prey in that scenario would have an entire system he canGÇÖt scan. ThatGÇÖs not an equal tradeoff; especially since nothing prevents the hunter from scanning down the MSI or in any way prevents him from finding or engaging the prey.

Personally, IGÇÖm happy to see that a scout has to do more than enter local, read the local member list, and spam d-scan.

the prepared pilot with bookmarks in the area.

Well... I suppose that depends if you count suiciding "Alts in shuttles" as PvP...

Well... I suppose that depends if you count suiciding "Alts in shuttles" as PvP...

For the first time in EVE, pirates will be forced to take risks if they want a better chance at the rewards.

There's a big difference between having extra protection and having every advantage there is.

You mean the scram taht cannot be applied over a marauder in bastion mode..t he same marauder that can use that thing while in bastion mode?

Well said.

dude, it is already impossible to catch even a BS if it is within a deadspace pocket provided the pilot has more iq than an oister, thx local + dscan.

anyone else think it's silly that the scan inhibitor shown up on d-scan? This thing should only be detectable via probes.

Well, no. They can still be used as traps, or to prevent information gathering about a fleet, but using them all over the place would be a much less attractive proposition, since then anyone dedicated enough would be able to find you after going to all of them without repeated and easy to detect scanning. Maintaining the decoys with decloaking bubble traps would make this a valid means of forcing a cloaky scout to decloak if he makes the wrong choice.

They'll still be attractive for a PvP fleet trying to hide its composition, but nowhere near as nice for PvE groups just trying to HIDE.

Giving people more ways to defend themselves from ganking is not necessarily a bad thing, if it's about fairness. The same thing can be said not to allow a warp bubble be set up within the effect of a MSI. It shouldn't be used behind an acceleration gate for the same principle.

These should be no brainers no matter how much status quo is to be changed. Looking forward to see the balance changes.

This is an interesting statement to make. It seems to me that you believe that constantly and dramatically shaking up the game balance of Eve Online with wholly new mechanics is good in its own right; that you don't believe in destructive disruption of the status quo. I can't decide if I think you're shaking it up because you think that the core game design of Eve Online is fundamentally broken, or because you're hoping to use constant chaos to prevent the meta stagnation we saw for so many years. Either way it's pretty obvious that you're heavily betting on the sandbox nature of Eve to cover over the flaws.

I guess the point of this post is to say that I'm deeply concerned by the constant introduction of new mechanics and the whipsaw effect on game balance that comes has come with them. I'm afraid that this kind of cavalier approach to introducing new mechanics just for the sake of shaking things up will lead to a place of exponential chaos and a future outright collapse of the system. I'm also concerned that it may lead to a more mundane demise: a place where the core user base no longer recognizes a future incarnation of Eve as the game they've played for so long.

I don't believe that we need either of these two modules, and I believe they will be disruptive to the game in a way that is destructive.

-Liang

I think adding 'terrain' to this serious spaceships game is a good idea.

I agree that not having character skills tied to it in some ways (either the deployer, the users, or both) is an unusual choice for a game so focused on character progression.

Having said that, I disagree that there's no player skill involved, especially in gangs (player != character, in case that wasn't clear). Get even 5 pilots to use one of these together and see how well their fleet can control their formation and ranges in a combat situation; further, this coordination scales poorly as fleet size goes up which (IMHO) is A Good Thing.

If anything, I think using the MJU in combat will demand MORE player skill - from everyone, not just the FC - not less.

Do we have confirmation of whether scraming the ship trying to use the MMJD stops it or not?

If it doesn't, it really should.

From the perspective of the "AFK" cloaker, how does this make any difference to him? And from the perspective of the one using the MSI, how does it make any difference if the cloaker is cloaked?

Neither one sees the other in either case. I don't get it.

Ships inside the area of a MSI's effect will have their own directional scanner and probe results disabled.
We're adding a minimum distance of 75km from wormholes.
We're reducing the sensor strength of the structure to 5 and increasing the signature radius to 500. Go ahead and apply as many projected ECCM to that as you want.
We're increasing the build cost to ~15m isk.
We're decreasing the structure's lifetime in space to 1 hour.
Minimum distance to another MSI is now 100km.
We're increasing the volume of the structure to 100m3.


I'll be updating the OP momentarily.

Fozzie's post implies that you can't get probe results for anything that would require a combat probe while you're in an MSI, but you can get stuff like wormholes. Basically you can't see anything that would require combats or d-scan.

Ships inside the area of a MSI's effect will have their own directional scanner and probe results disabled.

I must admit I haven't seen many scanning T3s without covert ops cloaks, but there is a place for them in certain kinds of fleet warfare. I think it is probably a good piece of balancing, though - they have to stick their head in to see what's inside, so you should have to stick your head out.

I had exploration T3s in mind. You often do not want the covops subsystem on them, since it completely ruins your damage.

Argument against MSI: If we send a scout, it might tip our hand and let a bear escape. If we warp en mass, we might get slaughtered because it could be a trap set up by non-bears.


SOoooo...Risk averse bears are going to be too safe because risk averse PVPers won't commit without knowing exactly who/what/how many are hiding beneath the MSI skirt.

Mobile Scan Inhibitor

This structure prevents anything inside its 30km radius from appearing on either DScan or Probe Scans. The Scan Inhibitor structure itself however does show up on both types of scan and is very easy to probe down. So you can prevent people from knowing what is inside it but you can't prevent people from knowing that something is there.