LOL, I could just imagine some poor guy trying to use it like “Start you bastard!!”
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5% chance the filament opens up a wormhole where drifters come out, now when the fleet lands you not only can’t escape you are now fighting on 2 front’s.
Your random chance idea sounds kind fun thou.
“There just needs to be a RISK involved with using them…”
Yes.
I myself have never used a filament so I don’t know the different types. But in terms of RISK how about this:
-Tier 1 Filament: Activation time 1 minute BUT allows anyone within 5 jumps to also “filament” toward you and lock-on and attack and cause a combat timer that you can’t use your filament.
-Tier 2 Filament: Activation time 45 seconds BUT allows anyone within 10 jumps to…
-Tier 3 Filament: Activation time 30 seconds BUT allows anyone within 15 jumps to…
-Tier 4 Filament: Activation time 15 seconds BUT allows anyone within 20 jumps to…
Like a “global tear in space” if you will. Or to put it another way, “The faster the filament, the ‘louder’ it is.”
But at the risk of setting off a sensitive soul, are they playing Eve?
While I like your thinking, That would come with some pretty severe drawbacks.
- If people within multiple systems are able to jump straight to you, then the risk is MASSIVE, in my opinion it would be too severe and cause people to not want to use them at all.
But more importantly
- Filaments would become a tool used by “Hot droppers” instead of having to risk a cyno ship, and only being able to bring certain ship types with you (unless Titan bridging), and having the cyno ship being vulnerable for a few minutes. That would allow people to use “Tier 4” filaments to bring in friends to a fight, with no restrictions on ship types, while only being immobile for 15 seconds, in a heron if they wanted to…
Nice idea on paper, but it would be abused instantly.
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This just made me think of some more goofy pseudo-science filament stuff. How about an EXPENSIVE entangled filament pair. Produced by players using sets of other filaments. They would enable a group to yeet to where the other filament has been activated.
Oh look. Black OPS is dead. Let me go was my mouth out with soap.
I think I see what you’re saying. My idea would be like an advanced cyno in actual practice.
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What if using a filament would be like activating an ESS timer reserve vault? The entire region would be made aware of the use of such a filament.
Honestly, that would get SUPER annoying after a while…
More to the point though, The “Timer” part of it coincides with my original idea of a “Spool up” timer before it activates, but it would want to be short… at MOST a minute… Otherwise it would be too risky and take too long for people to want to use them.
Also, I feel pinging an entire region, or for that matter, even the system it is in is unfair. Filament users should still have the ability to find a quiet system and filament out, they just shouldn’t be able to instantly escape from a hostile situation.
This is about re-balancing filaments, not tipping the scales in favour of the hunter. As it stands the balance is WAY in favour of the filament user, tipping it the complete opposite way won’t solve anything, it will just cause filaments to become completely un-used and will result in even less PvP.
Filament users still need to feel a degree of safety when doing their “thing”, but hunters need to feel it’s even worth undocking for fights when somebody filaments into their space…
What about a dual use then as the users activate the filament a giant 50km sphere forms around the user that activated the filament, anyone inside this sphere cannot warp out and this sphere lasts the 1 minute ish of spool time you guys where talking about. No one from the group filamenting can leave the sphere for the full minute or the the whole process stops. (which means a boosh desi can be used to cancel the whole thing.)
Anyone combat scanning and warping to the group lands at the edge of the sphere and can choose to give chase but then they cannot warp out as they enter the sphere.
At the end of the minute everyone in the original group that isn’t tackled gets moved to a new location and anyone that was pointed gets left behind.
This will give chasers the chance to catch something but this will give the filamenters the chance to peel tackle who are forced to jump ahead quickly.
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Yeah, I could see something like this working.
Would provide a chance to catch filament users, while still not making them overly vulnerable.
My original idea of having the rift appear on overview like a cyno was a bit OP, combat scanning would provide a more difficult target to hunt, therefore helping to maintain balance a bit better.
The bubble idea is interesting. It would make it hard to catch solo players as they would likely stay in the middle of it and hunters would need to boat within point range… (This is not a gripe, I see this as a good thing, as it would help the solo users feel safer) The bubble would also have to prevent cloaking within it’s area of effect though.
All in all, it’s a workable solution, hopefully more people can come up with other ideas.
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I like the idea of a ‘no warping out’ area combined with a spool up. It makes people commit to using the filament and gives enough time for chasing ships to do something about it.
However, how do you stop this filament from being used as a 1 minute HIC bubble on demand, usable by any ship without combat timer?
Because all you have to do is web down any ship that tries to escape the bubble and point half the fleet and they loose half their fighting force, it seems a terrible way to loose a fight 
if used only for the bubble.
Also if they are in a solo fleet then "cannot activate this filament in 10 000km range of another ship that isnt in fleet…
Maybe prevent it being able to activate if non-fleeted ships are within the bubble range?
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Okay, with activation restrictions this instant bubble on demand cannot be used to trap miners or ratters.
A few more restrictions that I would suggest:
- Not within 10 000km of a ship out of your fleet
- Not within 10 000km of any object, structure, gate, station or whatever
- Not on a deadspace grid, just in case someone manages to extend the grid around the ESS
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Agreed it would have to be in a safe spot.
Although what happens if a non-fleet cloaked ship is within that range but cloaked? 
One of two things:
- Cloaked ships are ignored: you can use this filament to instantly bubble cloaked ships that you found at a safe, for example after you’ve caught them with a mobile observatory ping but they recloaked.
- Cloaked ships are not ignored: you can use this filament to check an area for existence of cloaked ships within 10 000km.
Either way is bad, I guess. The first may be the lesser evil, as it doesn’t turn the filaments into a cloaky ship detector and still allows the cloaked ship to move out of the bubble while cloaked.
Yeah out of those two options the first one is the less problematic, though as you note neither is good so hopefully someone can suggest something better than either of those.
There is one and only simple solution.
Delete all the filaments including abyssals, from the game, permanently.