Grumpy Owly
Paladin Philanthropists
661
   |
Posted - 2012.06.21 06:32:00 -
[1] - Quote
I have to say this is one of "the" more exciting new proposals I've seen in a while personally and gets my support.
It's well thought out also and considers the ramifications of both sides whilst looking at current topical thinking on a number of issues players are having problems with regarding intelligence.
Some extra things to consider might be an extentsion to the active strategical model. This is where the "scout/recon" role can actually helpfully provide more of an initial role within fleets/corps/alliances. If a scout aquires a "target" he is capable of bookmarking the details and adding this information at a corporation level for shared use. At present this is used generically for varous in game needs both with military and commercial advantages.
The extension to this could be to allow a small management to "target" related details so that commanders can effectively prioritise targets and as such help to feed information through to co-oridnated efforts of how best to "dish" out tasks to various individuals/fleets. However, I think it needs to retain the "at time" information as opposed to "real time" information as is current, so that as a complete tactical package it will never replace the need for having effective co-ordinated communications or commanders reacting to real time changes. But certainly having some strategic tool to help co-ordiante tasks fed through from scouts might add a helpful tool.
e.g. scout finds a POS, he BM's it at organisational level. A commander can then maipulate this to than prioritise that target and or/apply specific parties for attention.
To make this more effective then it would mean applying more information to BM's. Like a sub file which may store this strategic info feed items in by command. Likewise it could contain useful info like screen prints with some overview info feed within to help see the actual details. This occurs anyhow but needs a bit of out of game manipulation to achieve to help share. Prinicipally if this could be hosted more at the server level it could go a long way of putting the intel in recon imho.
Other general feedback points about the ideas:
Hopefully not go too module heavy on the hunter as the need to have lots of "toys" just to do the job as this subtracts from the combat capabilties. This is generally the balancing notion with the stealth/hunter role in that they are limited in combat effectiveness by design already by the CCP model for having these capabilties. But if tweaks to fittings compensate the changes to derived added mod use expected of the role then that works just as good. Potentially yes this could mean more a team orientated need to fullfill these things, but the need to retain some solo related gameplay here may be neccesary for various reasons including some other than just functional.
Cloak fuel I'm happy with as a "management" issue if it can still be measured in hours as some observational recon duties are a "patience" exercise at the best of times. One obvious issue with the cargo use and fuel are firstly stealth bombers as bombs take up a lot of space, and secondly Blockade runners whose objective is to make best use of the limited cargo capacities they have currently, some issues with cyno use might be apparent here also for recon ships but if a seperate fuel bay or extension to cargo aspects can compensate here might not compromise those dedicated functions. Certainly the timings of hours might be most applicable and would go a long way to helping with AFK cloakies.
Removal of the easy to use and exploitable local chat intel issue we have currently should not really occur without having the neccesary tools for active "ships in space" network of information to help compensate for the lack of info. But I'm all for making this a more "active" benefit to intel than the passive ease of the chat channel useage presently.
Also might be usefull to consider the "look outside the window" issue on stations if local was simply removed? The gate combat issues and camping is a bit more culturally problematic and convoluted and I don't really have a problem with it really. But I don't really have a magic wand to some of the more apparent "blob" concerns either. Some of the new mods with e-war issues and targetting and other things might help to compensate here?
As some potential "novelty" ideas to explore for intel focussed roles:
1) Limited useage of drop satalites in systems and use them to d-scan in systems remotely (variable ranges)?
2) Remote camera drones/probes, allow a drone/probe to feedback visual information from a distance.
3) Scramble system communications, interupt d-scan integrity.
4) Mirage projection systems. Dummy ship representation.
5) Tracking Devices, ability to attach devices to ships to reveal its location, remotely, similar to the locater agent features.
Otherwise the proposals to add more impact to the relevance of inteligence and the related subterfuge aspects of the gameplay should be explored more and given more emphasis as real things to consider as opposed to having an entilted expectation to having it. Keep working at it with others OP but I really like where you are going with this manifesto on the subject.
Bounty Hunting, Soon Gäó
It's just criminal - Smuggling |