Apocrypha - Probing (CSM)

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Raised by: (Meissa Anunthiel)
Submission Date: 14-03-2009
Issue ID: To be indexed

Summary

Issues with probing:

• reduced functionality in solarsystem map.
• No way to filter/identify already probed results
• hard radar/magneto sites require max skills and/or faction launcher/probes to find.
• ship probing is too hard/long.
• Warping to sleeper sites = decloak = dead covops.
• Not enough granularity in WH duration/mass left. No way of estimating total capacity (5 BS? 10 mom?)
• Directional scanner reduced functionality.

Solarsystem map reduced functionality

Contextual menus have been removed from clicking in empty space in the solarsystem map. They were used to navigate around the place for speedy exits when decloaked by sites or when doing POS recon, or gate scouting. The panning ability that has been put in its stead is of dubious value.

Centering the solarsystem map on red/yellow indicators should be doable the same way that occurs when clicking on a planet.

Likewise, centering on probes by clicking on the name of the probe is fine if the probe is active, but should be possible when the probe is set to inactive.

Wireframe probe widget manipulator should be an option which is OFF by default

A new indicator is needed for when probing results conflict with one another.

Filtering/Identifying already probed results

When probing in W-space, space is cluttered with lots of grav sites and, to some extent, ladar sites. The explorers, in order to be able to find the other ones (radar/magneto/combat) need to eliminate all other possibilities first. With 10 sites routinely being present in a 4 AU radius (especially around inner planets), leaving probes as site markers is not an option. Warping to the sites to know their exact location gives a visual indication, but even that is useless to remove the hits from the wider 4+ AU scan.

In the same way the scanning system is able to match results, the scanning system needs to be able to recognize sites previously found, either by allowing player placed markers or by checking wether the site indicator ( down-pointed arrow ) is already present in the solarsystem map.

An alternative would be to spread the sites around to more than 4AUs around planets to prevent clutter around inner planets.

Workaround possible with Apocrypha 1.5. Any signature may be excluded, so you can concentrate on selected signatures as necessary.

hard radar/magneto/combat sites too hard/impossible to pin down without faction/max skills

There are reports that some sites cannot be probed down by a combination of 0.25 AU probes around them, except if the pilot has max skills, a rigged covops and/or faction launcher/probes, even with good probe placement.

ship probing is too hard/long

Probing ships, even when knowing their location, takes too long. This is mostly due to having to move the 4 probes independently at a low radius to finally get a hit on the ship, by which time the pilot has had plenty of time to move to another spot, and the low radius probes don't cover its location anymore.

Also, some ships are reportedly impossible to probe down even with probes set at 0.25 AU.

Boosting probe strength by a factor 10 would still make probing ships very painful, while still providing the possibility.

warping to sites = decloak = dead

a covops ship warping to a sleeper site at 100 arrives at 0, gets decloaked and dies. This renders covops pretty useless for recon operations before an expedition occurs. Ejecting and warping in your pod isn't an option (ejecting causes probing result to disappear). The only option for recon work is to use an alt in a pod and fleet warping him.

Solution: make warping to sleeper sites at 100km a real option.

Directional Scanner Reduced Functionality

The directional scanner used to have a contextual menu associated with the results, thereby making warping to planets/moons rather direct, and eliminating the need to remember the ship type of all 250 ships in Eve (a right click on an Eagle in space would have "add/remove Heavy Assault Ship to overivew", thus making recon work more painful.

Also, it's still not possible to add probes to the overview, thereby making it hard to detect if one is being probed down except by removing the overview filter and repeatedly scrolling down after sorting, this is extremely tedious.