These are about useless except a very niche situation and way to costly for whats often a cheap kill. Either the cost should come down or we should be allowed to scoop to cargo hold.
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Agreed, imho they are a complete fail design and should be re-done from scratch. Good ideas are already around.
Good idea, but they would need to be much more expensive as a compensation.
Of course mobile observatories are âuseless except a very niche situationâ.
They have been designed to target that particular âvery niche situationâ of AFK cloaked players. And carefully designed too, to not impact cloaks in other situations.
I think their design is pretty successful.
Until the introduction of mobile observatories it was very common to see lazy AFK cloaked players camp null sec space all day long.
The mere existence of these deployables has stopped most of those strategies - nowadays itâs rare to see people camp space. Only few people are dedicated enough to still do so, but have to deal with counterplay. Counterplay that didnât exist before.
I call that a success.
This is a good suggestion.
If those deployables arenât going to be consumed they can have a far higher price.
This also makes it easier to bait active cloaked players with a deployable that is visible system-wide and is also a 300M ISK killmail.
yeah we had this discussion like a dozen time and you are not going to convince me this time as well. 
An unrecoverable deployable that does cost more than most ships that actually pose the threat you want to remove (covert cyno ambushes) is fail. Itâs like cutting off your hand because it hurts.
Yes, they can be more expensive.
Yes, they can be in a fixed location youâd have to protect actively, else the other side might destroy the MoOb quickly.
Yes, there could be even a visible beacon.
But the fact that they are more expensive than a Bomber or Covops AND unrecoverable will always make them a fail design in my book. Just saying âit works!â doesnât mean it is a good solution. You can put a nail into a wall with a wrench, doesnât mean you shouldnât aim to invent something like a âhammerâ.
Simply no.
Itâs more like nuclear wespons.
Their price isnât that important, what is important is that it exists and can be used.
Deterrence, threat of being able to use it and not only the use itself is already having a big impact on the meta.
I have deployed less than a handful of mobile observatories since they were added, but I see significantly fewer AFK cloaky campers in space. In fact, before mobile obsetvatories it was rare not to have an AFK cloaky camper near, now itâs the opposite and itâs rare to see one.
Their price is hardly relevant, their mere existence already deleted most AFK cloaky camping from the game.
Theyâve been a big success if you ask me.
They are more like inflatable baseball bats tho. They donât deter anyone who is a real threat and will only catch lazy/stupid people.
As said: truly afk cloakers never were a threat. The threat comes from those who have a BlackOps Gang behind them ready to jump at any moment, and those guys just refresh their Cloak Stabilization.
Yea, and the mere existence of mobile observatories now allows us to see the difference between the lazy/stupid people and the determined threats: These days only the latter are still cloaky camping, while the others stopped.
I love that change, it means far fewer AFK cloaky camping happens, only because mobile observatories exist.
I donât doubt that it is a tiny step into the right direction.
It still doesnât do what it should: Put real pressure on long-term cloakers, that forces on them what their presence forces on the locals: staying alert at all times. A good MoOb design would allow for tactical gameplay, means the cloaky opens the conflict with âthreateningâ the locals with a probable cyno drop. Now the locals can react and âthreathenâ the cloaky with a MoOb. The cloaky now either has to pay very high level or attention, or he leaves.
That being said: the 15minute cloak stabilization is much too long either. 5 Minutes are absolutely enough, those cloaky campers shouldnât be used on semi-afk alts that just refresh their cloak stabilization every so often. Every monkey can have that on a script or just a good old stopwatch running while doing other things and still be 100% safe. And that isnât balanced.
15 minutes is short though, very short if it is used as strategy against non-covops cloaked ships.
Imagine someone uses a cloak to move their capital ship through non-friendly space. Every jump adds blue and red timer until youâre waiting 30 minutes at a time in a system before you can jump on.
Add mobile observatories and you can now simply decloak the target for a few dozen million ISK. Add a few more mobile observatories, up to 10, to maximize the decloak chance to catch a nice super and suddenly itâs not viable anymore to use cloaks on supers.
When discussing anti-cloaky camper methods you have to make sure you donât accidentally hurt legitimate uses of cloaks.
Luckily CCP made the first 15 minutes immune and if you want to extend it past that there are some expensive drugs you can take which still makes it possible and viable to use cloaks on big expensive ships.
And viable on cheap ships too - imagine how useful a cloak on a cloaky interdictor would be if someone could deploy a mobile observatory for âcheapâ that âpings every 5 minutesâ.
It would be a lazy hard counter to cloaky dictors.
Mobile observatories werenât meant to destroy the use of cloaks, they were merely meant to target AFK cloaked gameplay.
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not again⌠that has all been debunked a looooong time ago. Thats why this discussion is so tiresomeâŚ
Has it?
Where has it been debunked that a mobile observatory is an easy counter against non-covops cloaks?
Non-covops ships cannot warp out of cloak to easily safely reset. Once decloaked theyâve got to warp off and if itâs a rather large ship it may not be able to do so before combat probers tackle it.
This means if the timer is too short, this means mobile observatories become a counter against non-AFK cloaked strategies, which is not the intended design of mobile observatories.
And if mobile observatories become reusable by allowing people to scoop them, you can use them for free to push off any active cloaked player out of cloak when theyâre not using a covops cloak.
Iâd call that unbalanced. You might as well remove non-covops cloaks.
All your âcounterargumentsâ have been addressed in previous topics:
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âif cloak stabilization is reduced, you cannot move capitals thenâ â Capital get a +200% bonus to cloak stabilization, back to 15 mintues. Nothing changes for them. Everyone else has to no free 15min invulnerability any more
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âpeople would drop dozens of MoObsâ â no, MoObs would be much more expensive and only ONE per system can be deployed, at the grid of the Star and creating a warpable beacon. That creates a point of interest that the âdeployerâ would need to defend for as long as the MoOb is out, else he loses a very costly investment. It gives the Cloaky a chance to ambush it if the Deployer doesnât pay attention. It creates an opportunity for combat, a really useable tool instead of 100% wasted money for the deployer, pressure on the cloaky that is equal to the pressure he puts on the locals. Because they cannot leave their ratting ship or mining ship or hauler in space for 15 minutes without caring, to get themselves a coffee or take a phonecall or go to the bathroom and do a pretty hard ****. The cloaker can. The local would find his ship destroyed if he did. That is an imbalance and a redesigned MoOb would at least diminish that.
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no one ever aimed for âcloaks to be destroyedâ, a deployed MoOb only forces a cloaked ship to be at the computer at all times and not go afk, not even for 10 minutes. If he wants to, he has to do like all the other players: go dock up, move to a safe area or log out.
So after making your chance you need to make an exception for capital ships to mess them up?
What about cloaky dictors that I also mentioned. Another exception? Black ops battleships, another exception?
Itâs going to be pretty easy to catch non-covops ships with a mobile observatory otherwise even when theyâre not AFK. And thatâs not the intention of observatories.
So not only do you want to change how effective it is, you also want to heavily limit it to one per system?
Iâm not a fan of unnecessary limits and like that we can deploy multiple if you want to pay more to have more effectiveness. An arbitrary limit of one feels weird, both mechanically and lore-wise. But maybe thatâs just me.
While the current mobile observatory strictly also has a limit (of 10) you rarely ever hit that limit unless youâre trying to break the mechanics by maximizing decloak chance on a cloaky titan in system or something like that.
You keep ignoring the regular cloaks. Ships with a regular cloak also get impacted and they cannot simply warp up to a safe to recloak, they get caught and killed if a decloak ping happens while theyâre still nearby hostiles.
Mobile observatories arenât meant to be countering regular cloaks either of non-AFK players.
Also, why do you even care so much about observatories? Correct me if Iâm wrong, but arenât you living mostly in wormholes, only visiting null on roams? No judgment, but if anyone is to complain about mobile observatories, shouldnât that be a null sec resident like myself?
Sry I donât get your point. If you get hit by a MoOb ping, you either warp or cloak again, whatever you think is more useful in the situation. I helps to stay aligned all the time and/or in or close to jumprange at a gate or wormhole. And if the opponents pretty much know where you are and begin to bring multiple fasttacklers to your location, you probably messed up before and maybe need to try to burn away and/or fight your way out. But again, it will take a few minutes before the MoOb is anchored and you absolutely have time to slowboat out of their tackle range. But you have to pay attention and make clever decisions. Before you cloak up and while you are cloaked.
BlackOps get it even easier, they get a speed-bonus under cloak.
And whoever cloaks a normal Battleship in a location where hostiles can see that, is simply â â â â â â . They would decloak him with a ceptor+dones attached anyway in no time.
Yes, because that allows for a much more tactical gameplay. I like tactical gameplay over just a ânumbers gameâ. But thats just me.
If you dislike unnessessary limits, you should dislike the current one as well. Itâs completely arbitrary, why not 9? Why not 11? Lore wise, exactly one does make sense, because the MoOb can use the Stars Corona as a giant reflector, like we use the earthâs atmosphere as reflector for radio waves. And that simply would require a fixed anchoring spot: the starâs grid at 0. Thats at least better lore than 95% of all other âexplanationsâ in this game.
Because I want EVE to be a better game, and the current mechanic is stupid. My suggestion would add tactical gameplay options. Reason enough for me.
And all your current concerns about ânormal cloaksâ also apply to the current MoOb mechanic, because that one also can decloak a normally cloaked ship right next to some hostiles. So if you cloak up, you better pay attention where you do it and how you get out of that situation again.