Undetectable for a period of time then start to degrade and become easier to scan down, locate & destroy.
Skills needed besides some science and engineering skills could be something like: Satellite (Increases scan/intel gathering range per level with level 5 being total system, maybe add a T2 variant(s) that can scan constellations, Advanced Satellite Control)
Satellite Decay (Increases undetectable timer per level)
The satellites would use fuel and have a module similar to a cloak that would use the fuel once activated. The amount of fuel needed would be determined by your Satellite Decay skill and type of satellite.
Different types of satellites. For example: count gate jumps, count NPC destroyed, count cynos lit, etc…etc.
Spy Satellites could only be deployed for corporation (not personal) and could be named. The name would be visible once a satellite is able to be scanned down but information on who deployed the satellite would not be revealed. Spy Satellites would be anonymous.
I absolutely love the direction your head is taking you. Iv always though eve needs something like the sensor tower in starcraft 2, showing enemies fleets as a red ! next to the system, but not explaining who what or how many.
when it comes to eve, these types of structure options have huge potential to remove a lot of the distrust that rots away eve because of spies, however it will never be effective as long as player-channels can be created for intel. There is a condition to this however.If the intel provided was more easily accessed and detailed then in intel channels, the intel channels themselves would be invalidated. The problem is that unless there are game mechanics to ignore that fully (ie the sensor system) you really dont get any true benefit out of the change when it comes to content generation.
In other words, the intel channels stop content because players are able to get away to a station before the enemies can arrive. Removing intel channels or local would resolve this issue, but i find WH mechanics to be of poor design and i’d even advocate they are taken out of WH space.
If the changes to the sensor system had a work around mechanic (like stealth ships not being detectable by the sensor tower), you’d get a lot more value out of stealth ships, but you’d also re-validate the purpose of intel channels, thus effectively turning development resources into waste.
so what we learn from all this is that we need to remove intel channels from the game. To do this we really just need to remove player-creation options for channels.
