CCP Rise recently said that Observatory Arrays are coming up shortly after the Refineries:
cptbooniecrab: @CCP_Rise is there a patch planned for fixing cloaky campers like maybe a new probe type to scan them down or a timer on how long you can be cloak its one of the few things in the game that there is no counter to
CCP_Rise: @cptbooniecrab cloaky campers is always a tough question – I think when the structure team gets to working on observatories and other intel focused structures we will reevalute cloaky camping and see if we want to make changes, which means sometime early next year I guess
Given they need a function, beyond just finding cloaked ships, they will no doubt come with a nerf to local in nullsec, and possibly elsewhere, to leave some functionality for the Observatory Array to claw back. It makes sense for that to be their primary function, and make the increase in accuracy and speed of local scale with the number of them in a system, but they could then add the ability to find cloaked ships. As long as it takes a reasonable amount of time to give an semi-active cloaked ship time to move positions or prepare to be decloaked, I don’t see too much of an issue.
Since CCP will also want them to be used beyond just the nullsec context, they will likely have other functions for them as well. These could include things like locator agents functionality (and the ability to determine whether a target is logged in or not), sentry functions like reporting who is in a system or was in a system, automated cargo scanning (I like this one), scan or dscan jammers.
If CCP Rise is correct with “early next year”, we should hear something about them soon, maybe even by Eve Vegas, although given their recent track-record with timelines I wouldn’t bet very much on it. Still, it will be interesting to see what they do with them though as unlike the current structures which have largely just refactored existing functionality, the Observatory Array is the structure with the most promise to deliver new game play and perhaps fix some of the current issues with nullsec.