Warp traces are invisible objects that each ship drops when it enters and exits warp. This object will exist for a short period of time (5 mins). Players will not be able to interact with this object but it will be able to be seen on D-scan.
These objects will be named according to what ship entered or exited warp. For example a Minmatar ship will drop a “plasma signature”. This will give players a clue of activity that is happening in their solar system. It will also make it easier to track down fleeing enemies.
Should cloaked ships drop warp traces?
I would say yes. This could give some counterplay to cloaked ships. It would at least give a clue of cloaked activity in system. Cloaked ships could ofc sit still for >5 mins, waiting for all their traces to expire.
Should rigs exist that prevent warp traces from being dropped?
I would say yes, not leaving warp traces is a tactical advantage. Is that tactical advantage worth the fitting hit? That would be a good choice for players.
Should some hulls be bonused so that they don’t leave warp traces?
I would say yes. This would give some uniqueness to that hull, especially if rigs to prevent warp traces didn’t exist.
Should large/medium/small warp traces be dropped depending on ship size?
I would say yes. It would give you an additional clue to what size ship has been through.
Should only specific ships be able to see warp traces?
Ohh, now this is fancy. What if warp traces were only seen by special hunter ships? Super cool.
When exactly should the warp trace be dropped?
What would make most sense to me is upon entering and exiting warp.
Could you fire a “tracer” weapon at a ship to make that ship drop a “traced plasma signature” for a short time?
Oh man! You could give a ship a hidden debuff. What if you could warp to these traced signatures? =)
I like the idea of some sort of ewar module that causes a ship to have a warp trace. If all ships were to have one however, I think they shouldn’t last a whole five minutes. Probably between 30 seconds to a minute, which is plenty of time to use Dscan and see it. Pretty solid idea overall.
Yep. Even if you can combat probe or even warp directly to warp traces it doesn’t kill things. A ship will be able to move 20km away or more b4 someone lands. That is, if they are quick enough.
Lol at “Kinda like a dog pissing on a hydrant”. But yeah, that’s exactly what it would do. Warp Traces would give a clue that someone is active around you.
Oh! Here’s another idea: what if the warp traces decay into a “faint plasma signature” after some time. Would be neat.
The OP forget to post the point of the this.
It doesn’t matter if it’s self evident for some, or even all.
What benefit is there?
Why does anyone need this?
Why isn’t just pressing C on the target and looking where it moves, enough?
What about combat probes?
Why is DScan not giving enough clues to local activity?
Why should anyone be able to follow every ship around that way?
It makes it harder for people to escape,
which also means it’s easier to gank miners who warp off to a safespot.
Plus, as I can’t not warp around in highsec constantly,
I’d be riddling a grid with literally hundreds of them per hour.
In my personal opinion, detection in Eve online is lacking depth. Everything you do should get you a little closer to being exposed. However, in Eve you can do quite a lot without ever being detected. You can pop up right next to someone without them even knowing it! And I’m not saying that’s unfair, I’m saying that it’s very binary. You either detect someone or you don’t, and when you detect someone you get almost all the information you need about them, because ship type tells you A LOT about their capabilities. What I want is to make warping a risk decision. Should I risk being detected (but maybe they can’t tell what ship I’m in) by warping?
Also, this leads to some interesting counterplay, as some in the comments have already pointed out. You can bait people to your warp trace, where your gang waits cloaked. You can tell what WH/gate someone has fled to, so you can further chase. There are lots of possibilities for interesting stuff, especially if you can ‘tag’ a ship so that you can warp to their warp traces.
This could be cool in wormholes where you don’t have gates , like tracking the warp signature of a ship with a special ship that has jump ability like black ops , something like in Star Trek .
It will change things drastically , but it will be hard to do for CCP , just too much work to be taken into consideration , so many things to think about and balance .
Making the signatures visible could also be a problem , add more stress to the client , i guess you could use potato mode here in the very big fights .
I don’t see how this would be that difficult for CCP to pull off, I mean with coding there are always unforseen difficulties. A warp tracer I could see as harder though, because it will involve the creation of a module.
I wouldn’t want the warp traces to be visible on overview but it would be good to have them overview controlled, like they wouldn’t be visible on D-scan by default. They would have to be turned on. And yeah, the problem raised by having tons of warp traces littering trade routes could become a server load problem, but I doubt it. In reality it adds an additional layer of complexity because fleeing ships in HS could hide almong the ‘noise’ created by the high activity.
For me it will be interesting if you could use it as i described it , each ships has a unique warp signature . You’ll have this new ship that CCP should create , that can track those signatures and jump there when it pinpoints them. Obviously it will consume fuel. You will have a time window to pinpoint those , if you don’t do it in time they expire like you said.
So for example you have a warp signature of a ship in a system , say it was a mining barge in an asteroid belt, then he leaves system to another one and goes to another belt . You can then trace that warp signature and jump on top of the mining barge on the new location . But this will have to be balanced , i can think of a wide area where you can land on top of your target , say like around 15-20 km , that way you won’t just decloak every ship that has cloaking , but you have a chance regardless . And also the tracing ship should have a sensor recalibration when it exists the jump , so it won’t instantly point the ship is after , just like black ops.
It doesn’t have to be a new hunting ship , we could just add these abilities to existing cov ops …
