I have been playing EVE for many years. For me it is a game about spaceship combat.
Unfortunately, there were no new mechanics introduced over the last few years, and it feels a bit stagnant.
So, here are two new ideas that can work in unison with each other.
A. Ability to shut down your ship’s reactor.
Benefits:
Dscan immunity
Disappear from local
Do not show in overview (But still can be targeted by Ctr + Clicking in space)
Drawbacks:
Become immobile (Can not move or warp)
Capacitor and shields go offline
Can not target anything
Can be probed
After reactivation, there is a 15 - 20 sec delay before reactor becomes operational again
Reactivation starts reactor and shields at 0%
B. Launch a decoy ship
The decoy ship is basically a space junk that is meant to look like your ship on dscan, overview and local.
As an example, these mechanics can be used in the following way:
Step 1: Launch a decoy in a system with your prey so they can see it on dscanner and in local.
Step 2: Go to some other nearby system and offline your reactor in some juicy asteroid belt / cosmic anomaly.
Step 3: Wait for your prey to come and catch them off-guard
there is a ship decoy asset, you launch it into space / use it and it makes a bunch of your ships appear.
I personally think its one of the most under appriciated and under used assets in the game.
there is also something which does actually hide a small group of ships within a range from D-scan, however that very item itself is detectable via d-scan making it mute, I forget what the names are. but last time i checked they were available in jita.
That was a concept Five 0 were working on around Rubicon. Its a deployable that appears as a ship on dscan, the type would be determined in some way by the owner.
I have not seen anyone using these for ages, because it is kind of useless at this moment.
It hides ships all right, but it does not hide itself.
It does not hide you from local
It can only be used for one time, and self destructs after that
Anyone who sees this deployable structure in space will check local window. And when they see you, it will be very easy to figure out your trap and evade it.
Furthermore, if you get bored and decide to switch location\system, you will have to deploy a new one, and then another and so on. Considering the cost, and occupied volume in your cargohold, it will not be so practical.
Mobile decoy unit
To be honest, it is the first time I see this structure.
But for this thing to be practical, it needs to:
Simulate your ship on Dscan and for probes
Put your clone in local.
If both of these criteria are met, then it will be actually a cool thing to use.
All in all, my idea is to incorporate these mechanics to ship itself, which will be more practical and realistic to use them, rather than tie it to some deployable structure.
I saw someone once use the mobile decoy unit outside of jita it create a small spawn of several other ships i saw others trying to engage with them,
honestly i think having these things as modules on ships will likely be the best feature.
decoy module where you click it and it looks like several other ships uncloak around you.
scan inhibitor module, allows you to go completely dark, you basically sink through the floor and enter hyperspace (like when you cloak) but it also cuts off your communication in local, you could still be found by the mobile observatories.
I think some of the stuff for these mobile units needs to be reworked though. like yo said the scan inhibitor hides your ship, but doesn’t hide itself.
personally I’d like to see this become a grid wide effect for something like 1x1x1 AU (it would also help explain dead space pockets in the game) this way people can have “cloaked” structures or establish their own deep space pockets in the game. imagine being able to hide titans and a keepstar in a system.
people see you’re in local and try to find you.
I tihnk maybe these things should have certain time limits though to prevent being excessively abused
like you launch one, it only lasts for 10 days but it takes up crazy cargo space.
i think if some of these things were re-worked it could lead to some very interesting game play.
it truly is a shame mobile scan inhibitor doesn’t hide itself, its literally its biggest flaw.