Just a thought.
What if something like the jump fatigue mechanism were used for that type of filaments, affecting all in fleet and not allowing new additions to fleet and whatever else is necessary to prevent far too easy escapes ? Or the “polarized wormhole” mechanism (“polarizing” all the hulls in the fleet for a period) ?
I’m all for hit-and-run tactics but agree that filaments are a safe ticket out hence not good.
With OP’s idea, virtually pinning down an attacking fleet with no extra effort seems like adding to already existing umbrellas and their ease of use ? Plus, the existing decloaking deployable is already enough to deal with waiting out the aggression timer - although not its intended purpose.
The mobile observatory does pretty much nothing when people aren’t afk.
It certainly won’t do anything against cloaked players who are waiting out their 15 minute combat timer as they will be invulnerable to decloak pings the first 15 cloaked minutes as their cloaks are still ‘stable’.
Sure, if it was deployed after the fight ended and not before. And, depending on the fleet size a single observatory probably wouldn’t hit every time. That’s all true.
Timing doesn’t matter: I think you’re missing that all cloaks have a ‘stable cloak’ time of 15 minutes during which they cannot be decloaked by the mobile observatories at all.
Yep, I overlooked that, my mistake and you are right.
My personal preference would be something in the sense of a polarized hull timer that denies the use of a filament or a filament exclusion timer of sorts, forcing the roamers to use the normal connections via gates and holes. That would at least give a chance for counterplay by defenders, while not preventing small gang pvp from happening and losing the benefits the of having filaments in the game, or adding even more pressure to the use of cloaks.
Let’s take the scenario:
I’m filamenting to hostile space, notice I cannot do much (or do not want to do much because I’m extracting to HS through Pochven) and cloak up or warp between safes to wait out my combat timer.
Currently: after 15 minutes the combat timer is gone and I can continue my travels with another filament.
With your polarization: after 15+X minutes the polarization wears off and combat timer is gone and I can continue my travels with another filament.
I don’t see polarization add much of a difference in terms of gameplay, except maybe some extra time waiting depending on the size of timer.
I’ve evacuated billions to HS through Pochven with ease and almost no risk. Pop a filament to Pochven, cloak up, wait out combat timer, decloak and pop another filament out of Pochven to HS (small chance of LS, in which case you repeat).
I think that’s a bit too easy and without risk. Hauling/evacuating from deep null or wormhole space shouldn’t be without any possible player intervention like that. The Mobile Entanglement Generator would add risk if people could place those generators in Pochven.
Alternatively (what I thought of together with @Lugh_Crow-Slave ): the creation of a scannable trace and 2 minute delay before the filament teleports your fleet is also a way to add risk to this method.
As I wrote before, I’d be quite fine with changes that force attackers that came in via filament to have to use normal gates, cynos, w/e else to leave the system again (anything but another filament).
What might work is a temporal deadspace midpoint zone that functions like a crab beacon/proving ground.
Active filament > wait in separate trig deadspace zone > if uncontested, take exit gate to Pochven.
Pochven filament creates a beacon that immediately pulls the full activating fleet inside a triglavian proving ground type space (this fleet is now entagled and committed to the zone; they cannot use return gates).
The exit gate inside this deadspace zone immediately begins counting down from two minutes. The counter stops if a second party enters from the trace. There is a 20 minute global timer on the zone. If the exit gate is paused or return gate is still locked by the time the global timer reaches zero everyone in the zone dies.
The filament trace back in known space (or wormholes) can be scanned down and there is no limit to the number of second party players that can enter this trace; however the important part
‘Anyone new entering this filament trace after the initial activation group must kill the entire activation group in order for a return gate to open. Second party followers cannot use the exit gate that the activation group intended to use.’
Jfc, all of these terrible balance ideas. The ONLY thing that needs to change to balance filaments is a 30 second spool up time when you activate them. If you are hunting a gang in a system and they manage to dodge you for 15 minutes during aggression timer and then you don’t combat probe them in the filament spool time, they deserve to get out and go play eve somewhere else, period.
Better idea. Mobile structure, engagement focusing array. When one of these is deployed anyone filament ing and is in range when they do has a 10% chance of landing on your array.