Wouldn't heavy scan ships be cool? And invisible signatures?

[Crankjack]

Ships that move slow, scan slow, can’t cloak, and yet are solely capable of pinning down tier-9 or whatever uber sites they’re associated with. Or scanning for truly invisible sites within a reasonable time, which would be such a cool thing too. True ghost sites. And make them so expensive they’re worth guarding with a group.

Scanning is so one-dimensional and simple vs what it could be.

[Iceacid_Frostpacker]

Hi and welcome, scanning I found to be very challenging and really suits the hunter on solo missions.

Knowing what’s out there can become boring and even dscan gives too much information.

[Gerard_Amatin]

I’m not sure there is design space for heavy scan ships in EVE, because of PvP balance.

All ships in EVE have a ‘probe size’, which is their Signature Radius divided by their Scan Resolution. This probe size determines how hard it is to scan them down with probes.

Because it is unwanted for gameplay if ships can increase their scan resolution with sensor boosters until no-one can scan them, as it would render them invincible in a safe spot in hostile space, the minimum probe size of player ships is 1.08.

A ship that size is hard to probe, but not impossible. It would require a scanning strength bonused ship (T2 explorer, T3 cruiser), high skills and a specialized implant set to even get a 100% on those ships, but it is a balanced interaction where players can be mostly immune against probes except against a few determined players. Cloaky campers using fast agile frigates with signal amplifiers to stay under the radar is not an uncommon tactic, but they can be caught.

Introduction of a bigger better probe ship can result in either of two things:

• minimum probe size of ships stays the same: scanning down player ships now becomes trivial with the bigger heavy scanning ship, not even requiring an implant set.
• minimum probe size of ships goes down together with the introduction of the bigger heavy scanning ship: probing hostile players now requires a bigger heavy scanning ship and can no longer be done using the fast and specialized existing probing ships.

Neither of those situations seem good to me. I wouldn’t want scanning hostile ships to become trivial, nor would I want the specialized T2 and T3 scanning ships to become useless for scanning players.

So, for PvP balance I’m not sure if heavy scanning ships are a good addition.

[Aiko_Danuja]

What about chaining together scan ships like logi so like a good sig requires 20-30 skilled alts all chained together in order to perform the task?

[Gerard_Amatin]

Then I would finally have a reason to train scanning skills on my alts!

[Ramona_McCandless]

Id much rather they could scan down wrecks, thanks

[ISD_Drew]

moved to Player Features & Ideas - EVE Online Forums

[Fifie_Brindacier]

@Crankjack

Ships that move slow, scan slow, can’t cloak, and yet are solely capable of pinning down tier-9 or whatever uber sites they’re associated with

Why slow and heavy?
One ship type for one type of site. Seems like a waste.

@Crankjack

Or scanning for truly invisible sites within a reasonable time, which would be such a cool thing too

Why is it “cool” to scan? I personally think it’s a pain in the butt.

@Crankjack

And make them so expensive they’re worth guarding with a group

Your own space compound? I thought there’s already sovereign space if you want to keep other players out.

@Crankjack

Scanning is so one-dimensional and simple vs what it could be

What could it be more than just Scanning? Adding a big slow ship, PvE content aimed at a minority of players and majik space instances don’t improve what Scanning is today. And it’s just still scanning, it’s always been boring in any universe.