When it comes to Eve online, or for that matter any MMO the path of stealth is often a popular one. The assassins, the rogues and the thieves have always had a certain allure to them and it came to no surprise that as soon as I had got my head around the colossal barrage of information that the new capsuleer receives I had an immediate urge to get into a bomber and go sneak around blapping ships.
Five years down the line and I’m sat in a Manticore bashing a SBU wondering to myself why nothing turned out like my romanticised fantasies. I wasn’t zooming around space unknown to my enemies picking off stragglers and care-bears but instead being greeted in local chat and chased jump after jump out of enemies space like Frankenstein’s monster by pilots whom by all rights shouldn’t have even known I was there. I began to question if my covert ops ships were actually that covert at all.
So to take my ramblings in a relatively predictable direction I asked my first question.
This in itself is a relatively simple answer. Covert is said to mean “not openly” or “without detection” which in itself asks a slightly more complex and interesting question. In terms of eve online what exactly is detection, or being detected?
I thought about this question for some time and It occurred to me that detection in Eve has more of a gradient value rather than a yes no answer. Below is my best attempt to define the different levels of detection for a non-covert ship starting from the bottom.
With the exception of maybe locator agents at the very bottom of my scale I have put local detection. This being when your system location is known to the observer. The most obvious cause of this sort is your toon name popping up in local chat.
Next goes the gate fire, pretty much speaks for itself. Gives the observer a general idea of where you’re coming from and where you’re going.
D-Scan gives the observer a general idea of what you are flying and with a little bit of time and a small amount of D-scanning ability your location can be relatively accurately pinpointed to a specific celestial.
This is when the observer is on grid and can physically see you and has all of the information on you that is provided with it.
This is what I would consider the highest level of detection, things get a bit balls to the wall and a fight is very probable.
So with these categories defined for the sake of my argument the second question arises.
Working in the reverse direction we have Warp To, On Grid and D-Scan all of which are easily defended against with the use of a covert ops cloaking device (or any cloak at that matter). The only exception to this being at ranges under 2000m
Next we have Gate Fires, which I feel can be half defended against by covert ops ships. Covert ships still cause a gate fire but if they really needed this can be avoided with the use of a black ops ship and covert jump portal array although this is expensive, not much use for solo/very small gangs and requires a forward scout to light cyno.
Finally we have local detection which covert ops ships have no defense against, you will still appear in local and still be detectable by locator agents.
It’s at this point where what I persevere to be the problem with eve begins to arise. The whole system is upside down, it’s far too easy to get macro detection on a covert ops ship and far too hard to get micro detection. It’s easier to see the needle in a haystack by standing at the edge of the field and squinting than it is by getting up close and rooting around which to me sounds a bit silly, no?
So final question (you guessed it!)
I’m not going to claim I have all the answers because I don’t (and hell I’m sure many of you will be saying that there is no problem to have an answer for), I’m not a professional game developer but while I’m here I may as well air my musings.
The way I see it is the ease of detecting a covert ops ship should increase as it converges on its target meaning they are hard to trace and follow over large distances but easier as they slow down and get closer. The first step towards fixing these issues would be to alter either the entire local system or simply only for covert ops ships. Local makes it far too easy for people to track the movements of a covert ops fleet and gives potential targets too much of a heads up when covert ops fleets are mobilizing. This issue really is not an untouched subject and there are numerous threads discussing possible fixes for this. A couple thoughts I have had on how to improve the matter follows, these are a combination of my own ideas and ideas taken from the Eve online suggestion forums.
A common suggested fix for this issue is to merely prevent all pilots flying covert ops ships from appearing in local entirely. This I feel would be a step in the opposite direction and would make covert ops a bit overpowered in some respects. Covert ops should be difficult to detect locally but only while remaining mobile, which spawned my next idea.
Rather than have covert ops exempt entirely from local, there could be a delay on how long it takes them to appear, lets say for arguments sake the time it takes a naked Pilgrim to warp 100AU which comes to 30.3 seconds. This means that during rapid mobilization they would be very difficult to trace and follow, moving efficiently through enemy space without popping up on Intel channels here there and everywhere. As soon as they reach their destination and hang around for more than half a minute local updates and everybody panics. I quite like this idea however there is one more I feel is worth a mention
With the recent introduction of personal structures into the game and their immediate popularity it seems as good a option as any for balancing covert ops. The idea here is to take the route of completely removing the covert ops ships from local but in addition introduce some sort of counter measure to this. A personal structure which once anchored will ping ever X amount of minutes and update local with covert ops ships included, in addition to this the structure can be manually pinged from anyone in range. This will give the covert ops the ability to move undetected they need but also provide care-bears and ratters with just a little organization a degree of warning.
So lets say that there is a change along these lines and covert ops are buffed in terms of macro detection, we now have to address the issue micro detection otherwise covert ops would become outrageously overpowered causing low-sec and null-sec would begin to feel like current wormhole space. Once again really not a untouched subject. There have been numerous suggestions on how to improve this and I have included some of my favorites split into two general categories.
The most common suggestion to tackle this issue is to introduce an anti-cloaking device. So I see this as one of four Ideas, the primary is a module which works very similarly to a smart bomb, you cycle it on your ship and it explodes in in a radius around you however rather than causing damage it de-cloaks every ship in this area. The second idea is almost exactly the same as the first however rather than a smart bomb, it is a standard bomb shot by a stealth bomber, explodes in a radius and de-cloaks everyone in that radius. Tertiary idea is to implement specialized probes used purely for probing down cloaked ships, in my opinion if this were to become a reality probing down a cloaked ship should require a decent amount of skill and time and probably no less than a full virtue set. The final Quaternary idea is a deployable anti-cloak device, for example a warp bubble that de-cloaks everything inside. My own favorite personal spin on this would be a deployable device which fires out empty cans (like hacking loot-spew) in all directions de-cloaking everything in 2000m.
So in this category there is really only one idea I’ve seen that catches my fancy and that is the idea to give covert ops cloaking devices the requirement to use fuel, this means covert ships will have to think tactically about when using their cloak is most important. I personally like this idea because it brings the nerf that is required but also can be worked around in organized deployments. Cloaky haulers are already used to carry spare bombs so a couple more for fuel wouldn’t be the end of the world.
So that’s my tuppence on the current state of cloaky ships and covert operations. The TL;DR of this I guess would be that the current way of cloaked ships is all arse over elbow and upside down, I know some of you may agree, some may disagree and I’m sure some of you will just tell me I’m talking drivel but I invite you to discuss below in the comment section as I’m interested to hear the opinions on this subject.
Thanks for reading.
~Bo Jangles
All forum posts referenced in this article can be found here: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=6342&find=unread
