Blog Banter 30: “The Melting Pot”

“With the Winter expansion being named ‘Crucible’, it certainly is a melting pot of refinements and tweaks aimed at making the EVE experience smoother and more wholesome. If the developers suddenly found themselves some spare resources and approached you for an additional feature to include before release, what single concept would you pitch them and how would you implement it?

For bonus points, the one thing lacking from this “patchwork” of iterations is a cohesive storyline to package “The Crucible” together. How could this expansion be marketed to potential new customers?”

My pet area of interest revolves around ways of encouraging solo and small groups of players out into Low and Null Sec.  But instead of regurgitating one of these, I think I will throw up something unrelated.

I would like to see a new ORE (or Pirate Faction) Decloaker ship.

It should be around the size of an Industrial, with similar hits and base speed, but without the carrying capacity.  It’s one trick however is that it can generate an electromagnetic pulse that disrupts the cloak on nearby ships.

There would be two modes it operates in.  The first is a full grid pulse, where the ship has to be stationary; the module then has a short spool up time, and then a subsequent cool down.  The second would be a constant radius effect, with an optimal range, and a subsequent fall off which reduces the chance of it being effective.

The most obvious fault with this idea is that it would simply be used to make gate camps impossible to get through.  To offset that, the effect would only work on ships that were not accelerating to, or moving at speeds greater than 100m/s while cloaked.

In short – ships designed to move while cloaked, and being actively piloted, will still escape the effect of this de-cloaking ship.

Why?  This would make it dangerous to AFK cloak off any celestial object, and gives attackers and defenders the chance to find such pilots.  It also provides extra tactical awareness for the fleet commanders on grid.  While the cloaking ships can escape the effect of this ship, they have to be constantly moving.  That means they are either piloted, or will soon float off grid. It adds a further dynamic in how fleets can be operated.  A small, fast roaming gang will have to both wait for it to catch up, and provide protection so that it manages to stay on grid long enough to be useful.

To really throw the cat in amongst the pigeons, so to speak, allow it to be used in Empire without aggression.  That probably goes too far, but the possibilities amuse.

A subsequent T2 version might have a much greater range – I’m thinking 1AU or more for its pulse.

So – useful for both attackers and defenders, provides an extra dynamic to fleet composition, and adds a level of danger to AFK cloaking.

…

I’m afraid I won’t be getting an extra point – I think the crucible name is very apt, a melting pot of so many updates and mini features that it would take an age to explore and full utilise every single one of them.  The sandpit just got bigger.

A list of participants (that will be updated by the owner as time permits) can be found here:  

http://freebooted.blogspot.com/2011/11/blog-banter-30-melting-pot.html