either run 2 complex precision mods or run a cal scout, a cal scout is meant to detect gal scouts since Cal and Gal kinda fight each other. (EVE wise)

gal and gal = one scans like crazy but one hides amazing = balanced
minmatar and amarr = one sprints like an athlete and one can run forever at a slow pace = balanced

sure the gal scout is unscannable but a cal scout can scan the gal out out hiding.

I know this is not exactly on topic but
You make a fine chart/graph
Would it be a bother for you to put together an Active Scanner vs Dampening chart?

Kind of on topic portion of post.
The Dampeners vs Precision looks fairly reasonable until you factor in the Active Dampener bonus from the cloak. Scanner could be viewed as the Cloak counter. Though it does not depend on the Precision of the user so much as the cloak depends on the Profile of the userGǪ this is why I am curious about the effectiveness of the Active Scanner vs Cloak. They seem to be direct counters to each other, and I think your graphing would help display any benefits or shortcomings of the numbers. Knowing as well that it would not take into account some factor like the scan field.

You could always just level up eyesight.

Once you get it to level 3 you can start skilling situational awareness too.

Umm, no, a damped scout should be un scan able, balance

Thank you very much for doing that.
I find it very readable.
Your numbers reflect having Damp at lv 5 correct? (just for reference sake)
And yeah the Heavy being able to get under Focused is surprising actually. They do have to give up a lot to do it though I doubt it is worthwhileGǪ but still

Going to put some thought into what I am seeing here before commenting much, but it is an eye opener.

Thanks again.

And so what, a double damoed scout should be un scannable

Yes, but im saying a scout should be fully invisible to scans.

Don't forget that a Cal scout " SHOULD " be able to see that scout and not the counter of that scout being from the same race , how is that balanced ???

A Cal scout that is enhanced and has ranger's or just enhanced " SHOULD " be a counter of that scout should be able to see that scout depending on the role bonus plus the personal bonus from the skill tree and the applied mods .

I shouldn't have to skill into Gal Logi , while being Caldari .. to see a highly dampened Gal scout .

A few people who had done some incredible work on that topic , pointed out that flaw .. and CCP " SHOULD " fix that .

I run precision mods on a CalScout.
Not much gets by.

Would I mind if Precision Enhancers got buffed or cloak dampening bonus were downgraded?
Nah. I wouldn't mind at all.

PS: GalScout and CalScout are very well balanced against one another. They keep each other in check. F*cking around with things should be done delicately if at all, else the scale will be tipped one way or another. Promise.

Isn't it supposed to be that way?

I get gunned down all the time by you damn gangs!

Why would I look at your chart when I can look at your Amarr Head?

PS: My CalScout super vision is shared with my squad. Does that play a part in your chart?

Sorry, I think you may have failed to notice my point. Which is really no point at all because what I am trying to say is 100% unprovable and hence a non-point really. I actually sound just like tankers, saying "get gud" because I am terribly afraid that loosing my crutch will make me horrible at dust again.

Your chart over-simplifies combat dynamics.
Your position presumes that cloak being difficult to detect by MedFrames is a bad thing. Which it isn't.

If you want to harp on something being OP -- which is actually OP -- then why aren't we talking about tanks?

Not every scout uses dampeners. Another scout who loads precision enhancers can see most other scouts, except of course for those countering with dampeners. Just because there is a fitting that counters precision doesn't mean that fitting each number of mods is UP. It just means you have to be a step or two ahead of them, and if they choose to dampen as well then you're out of luck. You shouldn't see cloaked scouts easily, thought I do think the bonus from cloaks is too much.

it also looks like a logi with 2 precision mods can see a cloaked non-gallente scout with no dampeners. Does this really need to be easier? Sacrificing one module to counter 75% of scouts is way too easy, so they require 2 to counter them. The scout can choose to beat this counter by sacrificing 1 module for a dampener. If people are still complaining about how hard it is to spot a dampened/cloaked scout then they clearly picked the wrong suit.

It's actually funny how no one seemed to care about passive scans and didn't pick their suits accordingly. Now there are threads all over the place "my medium suit can't see scouts = scouts are OP". It's like if a scout said "I can't take on a heavy in a gunfight = heavies are OP".

well the alternative is to have something that can scan everything
and nothing should be able to scan everything

A gal scout with 2 damps and a cloak is seriously gimped on slots, and spare CPU.

If the Gal scout has 2 damps, 2 precisions, and a Range amp, then he has 1 slot for actual tank/speed.

Just carry a Fused locus, Mass driver, or Plasma Cannon, or :o SLEEK LOCUSES!?

Also if you have Eyesight Operation level 1, you can SEE the invisible scout.
I ran heavy yesterday, minmatar nonetheless(even max tanked, takes 2 shotty rounds to kill me) and i can kill 95% of the scouts that think they can kill me.

Kinda the point of the Gal Scout. You know, hides from everything.

I'm fine with that going away. it wasn't needed tbh. it just makes it to where any scout can hide as good as a Gal scout.

Also, a lot of EWAR **** needs to come in. I would like to see jamming, as well as tackling come in. And a second suit for it to be bonused for.

Factor in the Active scanner, which does effectively counter most of the cloak bonus and it comes closer to balanced in it's current incarnation. The fact that one piece of equipment can be used to counter the cloak without the need for precision enhancers (which is actually what should be used on the Medium and Commandos, rather than the "add precision enhancers" argument you point out in the OP) works to counter the cloak.
Should all tiers of cloak add a Complex DampenerGǪ probably not changing the bonus by tier would help.

Personally I thought that they would introduce the cloak as a visual EWAR, and add an Active Dampener to counter the Active scanner, but that was a long time ago that I had that thought, when scanners were ubiquitous.
I still think an Active Dampener would create a more interesting EWAR interplay, and hope that CCP separates the Cloak from the Damp bonus to create a Signal Scrambler piece of equipment.

I agree with you here in one sense, however completely removing the dampening bonus from cloaks will leave many a suit vulnerable to caldari scouts given their precision bonus and copious high slots. I would be ok with this if we didn't have shared squad vision, which essentially gives that bonus to everyone in squad....

Take for instance the Cal scout with 3 PEs + inherent bonus v.s. a Min scout with 3 damps.... Cal (and their squad) wins. Same for all except the Gal with their damp bonus if they are stacking 3 damps. Medium and Heavy frames wouldn't stand a chance.

I like the tiered dampening bonus to cloak idea that I think I read earlier back.

Initially I didn't like the fact that cloaks added a free dampening function, when engaged, but given how powerful the Caldari precision is and the shared squad sight I really think CCP needs to think hard about altering it too drastically.

Otherwise, once that Cal scout is in the city and immobile, with their 70m scan radius covering 2 objectives.... game over for the most part, unless you bring in the an entire squad of uber dampened Gallente scouts.... which I'm sure would get decimated pretty fast if the rest of the players on the Cal squad had any situational awareness - as unlike the gallente infiltration horde, they wouldn't be sacrificing any slots for EWAR since they would be piggybacking on the one Caldari scout.

What i'm getting at, it a scout stacking damps doesn't have the HP to survive against a bricked scout, or any heavy worth his salt.

While a cloaked damp scout is definitely a threat, it's not uncounterable.

Yes PE will bring your precision down by 20%% per module and PD will bring theirs down 25% per module(excluding stacking penalties). With 2 Range amps a Cal Scout can see pretty much anything within a 76m radius, and so can his squad mates (Squad sharing passive scans works).

I'm not saying your wrong about the imbalance (your not, spot on). But the alternative (in the current system) would entail taking away the (temporary)PD Buff or buffing Precision Enhancers would simply mean that we would have a situation where we see even more CalScouts than we do today and Profile Dampening would be useless to consider.

Without the current imbalance you have pointed out, the CalScout would be over powered and have the ability to negate what little Ewar exists in the game as of now.

It's always been that way, you either are able to scan someone or you can't. Just how useless do you want cloaks to be? Let's say you require a second dampener so that only a scout with two complex dampeners and a cloak can be ALMOST completely invisible (scanning wise) to everything but the caldari scout (and gal logi maybe?). This would be ridiculous to require someone to invest into the scout suit, cloak, proto dampening, and sacrifice two modules for dampening just so that their entire fitting/tactic is not nullified by passive scans. On top of all of this, the cloak is not permanent. Using range amplifiers make it easier to spot scouts who need to pause for a second to recharge their cloak before going in the for attack.

I don't see how I'm making a false statement but whatever. Everyone had the opportunity to re-evaluate their decisions and choose a suit knowing what was coming in 1.8. If you want to see scouts, get a scout suit or prepare to have to sacrifice your fitting to try. That's what everyone had to decide when they chose their new suits. Among my choices was the caldari scout. Easy choice. Ewar is fine among scouts. If you want to participate in ewar then don't pick assault suits. Get a gallente logi. The scout suits are top tier for this role and mediums are the poor man's scout suit when it comes to ewar. It shouldn't be balanced between scouts and medium suits, that's what scouts are made for. This is why I referenced the heavy comparison. Certain suit types are just made for certain things. Ewar is scout territory just like support is logi territory and slaying/defense is assault/heavy territory. Competition between the suit types in categories like this shouldn't be balanced, there only needs to be balance within the each suit type. In the case of the scouts, it's fine.

Haha this is funny.

1. I never said that. I asked how useless you want them to be, calling for a nerf. As it is, the cloak helps not being seen visually and "electronically". Take away the dampening and you're requiring two complex dampeners on top of the cloak to actually be invisible. Now if you can be passively scanned while cloaked, the cloak is useless. So I'm asking you: How worthless do you want it to be? Do you want to require the scout to run 1,2,3, or 4 complex dampeners before the cloak is not useless?

2. I'll just say it again, it's always been this way: You either can be seen or you can't. Haha that's what I said. Am I wrong? Is there some apparition mode where you can be "half seen"? Must've been in closed beta then because I've never seen it.

3. My suits all have about 300 ehp. I only used advanced suits (minus my proto minmatar super-hack suit) and on each one I run 2 precision enhancers and 2 dampeners/range amplifiers/codebreakers depending on the suit. The extra module is hp whether it be a shield extender or an armor plate. I'm not advocating for assault suits. People that stack armor are gimping themselves enough with scan range/dampening because you can't be cloaked all of the time so it doesn't make it god mode to other scouts. All it takes is them to be within about 50 meters of me and uncloaked for a few seconds and I can see them coming.

All in all I think that dampening should beat out precision because you can't share dampening but passively scanning a scout will share it with your squad. To be the invisible scout you need to separate from the rest of the team who aren't also being completely invisible like you. If a blueberry runs next to you then you're as good as scanned. If it were completely balanced between the modules then it would take a couple caldari scouts to find everyone in the map and the wear battle will be won.

This might be of general interest: Scanning equipment and suits (incl cloaks)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11ouz89DQ0j4dK8K0yUVEDSAysZvELwS9YNN-wBUUO-U/edit?usp=sharing

Fact: Cloaks make dampening too powerful in the EWAR equation.
Fact: Dampening SHOULD be capable of exceeding scanning to be effective.

BOTH of these things are facts. BOTH are true and correct.

Solution: Reduce profile dampening effect of cloak from 25% to 10 or 15%

There SHOULD be a valid EWAR benefit to cloak use, but it's currently too large a benefit.

I think you could get away with getting rid of the dampening bonus from cloaks. Or you could fix cloaks where you cannot fire until fully uncloaked (either a delay or instant), that way you appear on the radar a split second before you fire. I always expected it to work more like the latter.

But there will always be a disparity between precision mods and dampening mods because scanning wins in a tie. With profile and precision rounding to the nearest whole number the disparity has to be significant or precision enhancers would always trump dampeners.

Come play with me - I promise you'll see my passive scans (confirmed repeatedly by lots of people)

* Shared passive scanner vision for squads disabled (results of active scanners are still shared with squads)

I run 2 pro precision and 1 pro dampner. I like to RE people so I want to see them coming. Can't say anything has snuck up on me. I'm on my phone so reading the chart is like reading through a straw. So, you're saying the 2nd precision in pointless? Or both? How is precision for a cal scout when they are also cloaked? Isnt scanning related to dampening?

I just started messing with scouts so I just threw on what fit my adv suit. Oh, and I have Lvl 5 damp and precision (kind of obvious since Im running complex mods).

Once I realized that the range enhancers only added 1m then the math was obvious. Don't waste any SP on them.

With a Drop Suit Upgrade SP reset I wouldn't spend the SP on damage mods past ADV as PRO requires two skill levels and is worthless with the Nerf Hammer being applied. Which is why CCP/Shanghai doesn't want to ever allow SP refunds. They would rather Nerf you out of a benefit after the fact by removing the reason you spent the SP in the first place.

Magnus you almost touched on a missing point here. I agree with you on the cloak with the dampener being a problem, but remember it is an active module, that had its active counter nerfed hard prior to its release. The active scanner should be a hard counter to the cloak, but the whole thing was implemented wrong in my opinion. The active scanner is all but useless in the hands of anything other than a gal Logi, and with it's duration and cooldown times, even in the hands of a gal Logi make it laughable.

The unit should work the same way as the cloak to be an effective counter, similar to the vehicle scanner in that it is scanning as long as it is out in a radius, but with no duration when out of range and only scanning while it's out. As soon as the wielder switches weapons, equipment, grenade, it shuts down. If the wielder is killed, scans are gone. It should have the same activation and cool down mechanic as the cloak, and skills, precision mods should improve its effectiveness. This way you have a piece of equipment that is usable by everyone, but only people with dedicated skills and modules can use it effectively.

It should be expensive to fit to discourage over use, maybe even give a fitting bonus to all the logistic class similar to scouts cloak fitting bonus.

This opinion is coming from someone who has Gal Logi lvl 5 and used scanners this build extensively, Gal Scout lvl 5 and used cloak damp quite a bit, and Cal Scout lvl 4 running with 2 complex precision amps. All my ewar skills are level 5. From my play, Cal's passive are OP to everyone but dedicated dampened and a Gal scouts, and Gal Scout is just straight up OP. Gal Logi is not worth the price you pay to be an effective scout counter with current scan mechanics.

^

It's make no sense to say that the best scanner should ultimately beat out the best stealther - because, and I know this has been said in various contexts now, but seriously - the guy with a scanner still has eyes in their favour, in fact everybody has the innate potential to see even a cloaked scout.

I don't think, in the context of improved scanning especially, we should be QQing all the way to saying that not even the stealth specialising scout can evade all scans if they sacrifice low slots to do it...

The truth is, the overall mechanics of Ewar in DUST is just so badly implemented - Ewar based around a more analogue system of detection would make things a bit fairer and easier to balance IMO.

You 2 (not Magnus) missed my point also. I'm not saying That the cloak should be beatable if fully dampened, right now it's too easily defeated. The best possible dampened and cloaked scout while cloaked should be able to beat the best possible precision enhanced scanner. This is the case now, but the only scanner that can beat most skilled partially dampened cloaked scouts now is an overly expensive, narrow beamed, short duration LONG cool down scanner, and it has to be used by a single suit class at lvl 5. You have to be lucky to hit a scout with that thing. To keep with the prior spirit of dampeners beat enhancers, 2 enhancers beat 1 dampener, 2 enhancers plus scanner beat 1 dampener plus cloak.

I also think this is a pipe dream, so I agree that the simplest solution would be to remove the dampening bonus, I'm just worried that this leave the Cal Scout as king of sight hands down. In my experience, that vision is shared and is worse than an active scanner because it's always on and gives no warning to the scanned.

Shared Squad Sight encourages Squad Diversity. It addresses the concerns you've laid out about profile and precision. Why shouldn't it exist?

Sacrifice a slot or two to counter your concerns if you really are that concerned...

I have been scanned... Yes i've seen "You have been scanned" on my screen when i was fully cloaked with porfile dampener... Gal Logi + Scanner + Proper equipment... Try it out... It works...

1) Irrelevant
2) Irrelevant
3) Good Point

So about that Scout, who is "Scouting" for his squad, cloaked and surrounded by hostiles ...

* He's likely Caldari running Precision in his Highs and Extenders in his Lows.
* He weighs in at ~300 HP.
* If hunts stragglers; should he move to close to the herd, he'll be spotted and insta-gibbed.
* He cannot see the dampened GalScouts, who no doubt lurk about.
* An enemy CalScout in the area will absolutely detect him.

Lots of variables. Lots of risks. Quite different from the 1000HP Slayer Logi w/Scanner, lighting up a 100m radius around his squad of 1000HP Slayer Logis.

Well Said

* He also cost around 150-185k gallogi cost the same
* Has about 250 EHP
* Gal Logi = Dead cal scout logi meet cloaky shotgun
* Another Cal Scout = Dead cal scout works both ways
* Not used for charging a hoard cloaky SG
* Used for hunting low level and brick tanked scouts or other cal scouts and cloaky SG = dead everything
* Used for flanking the enemy to kill with insta-gib cloaky SG
* Used for helping the Sqaud, Especially through comms same as pre 1.8 scanners cept better
* Better than anyone with a scanner, Jumping and doing a 360 scan and having "You have been scanned" for majority of the time on your screen... yeah it is more powerful you are right
* Now that scanning involves a bit mote dedication and skills, all of a sudden everyone is complaining about scans ?! more skills? yeah, lvl 5 cal scout, lvl 5 range, lvl 5 precision... done

^ A precise description of your current position, Magnus.

I believe I may have asked you, once before ...
That gilded helm of yours is massive; can there be no room for reason?

There are a few members other than myself that PVR. I'll try to get a proof video together. Someone in the thread said that a range amp is required, I will try to test both. But I do know that in PC, we were deploying a Cal Scout to sit in the center of the city to light up everything. In non scientific game play testing, it seemed to work for us. Running as a Cal Scout and asking squad members if they could see enemy cloak scouts on their mini, the results seemed positive, but again this was not science.

While the Cal Scout is the Bain of other scouts, in this you should keep in mind the Gal Scout also if shared squad vision is enabled. A Cal Scout sacrificing his highs for precision does leave him pretty gimped, but the Gal scout gets the same bonus to range, has two highs it can equip PEs to bring it's precision down to 24.9 DB (not detecting full skilled cloaked scouts, but EVERYTHING else) and has an abundance of lows (3 at standard and ADV, 4 at proto) to still tank, damp, amp, and gets the 3hp/s armor rep bonus naturally so no need to use one of the lows for a repper. I love my Cal Scout for hunting other scouts, but my ADV Gal Scout build runs 2 complex PEs, 1 complex Dampener, 1 complex amp, a cloak to drop me below what even a Cal Scout with 3 complex PEs can detect, and one plate, so it's sitting well about that flimsy <300 ehp, invisible, and see almost everything for the same distance, and has more distance potential as the Cal Scout.