Posted - 2011.07.31 16:41:00 - [1]

 

What i believe to be wrong with dscan currently:

• uniform short scan duration regarless of range.


• Identification of names of ships as well as the ship model (the actual ship and not ship type eg bestower and not industrial).

DScans role in Eve Online & points to take into consideration.

• A lot of people use dcan religiously.


• Its an integral tool for gang and fleet strategy.


• Any changes or fixes to it would need to be fair and reflect the current dscans abilities and shortcomings, at a tactical level.

Proposed Changes:

• Scan duration should tie in with its current scan range.


• Scan results should not include shipnames or discreet ship model names, but ship class names.


• Scan results should show distance to target but without a numerical indication of scan range deviation of 25% (based on user defined scan range)

>>> Explainations <<<

The longer the range the longer the scan duration and therefore the less server requests for max range dscans in busy contested systems. its totally logical.

Dscan should not be able to identify shipnames or shiptypes like Rhea or capsule or vagabond, but be able to identify hull size or approximate ship type from sig radius and categorise them as say freighter, capsule or cruiser. there should be no way such a short scan on items within a 14AU range should return such detailed information so quickly. because of this its immersion breaking, even if you’d hate that both a vagabond and a celestis would come back as a cruiser, it makes much more sense than the current system.

This form of returned result would have tactical advantages if tied into ships signature radius, as active mwd’s could skew results into a larger shiptype (eg a Battlecruiser with an active mwd could be erroneously categorised as a battleship). this would depend on tests to check whether this has any increased server overheads otherwise it could just return the ship class.

its an outlet for racist, sexist, inflamatory and profanic messages, though hardened to this from years of fleet chat links, in retrospect it’ll probably help with game promotion if kiddies starting out in eve in hisec arent asking their mothers what a ‘blue waffle’ is when they see it as a ship name on dscan.

What this sort of ship identification nerf should be rebalanced with is the dscans ability to pinpoint distances. but with a varying degree of accuracy. accuracy thats not based on levels in astrometrics but fixed across all shiptypes and all Skill levels.

Using the dscan should be a skill that pilots learn by practice and not grinding SP.

Much like probes, distance approximations should carry a level of deviation. so for example the max dscan distance of approx 14AU should have a sufficient deviation derrived from its range, in percent. i put this figure at 25%

hence a 14AU scan with a result of 1 contact at 12AU would mean that that contact can reside in a space anywhere within 9AU and 15AU due to the deviation of 12AU’s at 25% = 3AU’s. The shorter the range thats scanned the smaller the deviation, even though the percentage stays fixed.

An explanation of this deviation for game immersion can be that scanning to a longer ranger requires a boost to signal strength, and that this boost negatively affects scan resolution.

How i arrived at this percentage was to approximate a contact that would lay close to the maximum scan range and push the deviation out to a point that it would likely encompass not just a single planet and its moons but likely a few planets. this form would still require pilots to range-find contacts.

this is an approximation of the way many pro pilots use the current dscan to calculate contacts distance by constant re-scanning and range finding using approximate km equivalents of AU’s, then ranging smaller values until the contact can only reside in a few specific areas.

TBC..