I'm going to throw one final design that I have had evaluated. It is possible to penalize one class over the other. So we can do

if scout then worse plate penalty for example.

Another thing is that we are able to focus the penalty on strafing specifically.

So the idea would be to penalize forward movement less on "normal plates", but severely decrease strafe speed, and more on the scout than other classes. Reactives and ferros would not incur these hard penalties.

This would mean Amarr Sentinels become very unwieldy, bastions like they were supposed to be, but weak to being headshotted at range, and brick tanked scouts will always have speed less than equal ehp assaults.

Let the fireworks begin.

how would this discourage the cal scout from assault bricking their shields?

Other'n that, the idea is AMAZING

calscout can avoid hit detection via strafe shenanigans, just like every other scout can.

Agreed. So do we nerf Scouts to fix strafe mechanics or fix strafe mechanics to fix strafe mechanics?

Note: Assaults can wiggle-wiggle on par with the best of wiggling Scouts.

I came up with an idea. One of the problems with scouts is that their ewar is so good, and it is always on. I made a post about how I disliked the idea of cloak fields reducing scan range as it cancels out your ewar skills and mods to have it active. THis means you're less likely to use them, and more likely to brick out instead of use things they get bonuses to. What if instead things went like this:

1. Take scout's base ewar range to 10m, and increase their profile to 40db.
2. Add a multiplier to scanning range while cloaked, and add a minimum cloak duration (maybe 3 seconds).
3. (optional) Increase cloak dampening by 5% per tier (or add +1% cloak field dampening per level of the cloak field skill)

This gives scouts 2 modes. Combat ready with relatively poor ewar, and defenseless, high ewar mode. You can cloak up to gather information, but to engage an enemy you loose ewar effectiveness. A minimum cloak duration prevents quick activation so you can't just get quick pulses of intel, and it encourages use of better cloak fields for scouting. You can possibly scale ewar range bonus to equipment tier, or add different types of cloaks with different modifiers to duration, range, dampening, cooldown etc.

In short, scouts will be encouraged to use their scout cloak field bonus. They can provide intel and be stealthy (what scouts want) but only temporarily. Any scout that wants to be a stealthy brawler can try, but they won't have the massive ewar stats while doing it.

It probably hasn't been addressed as it forces cloaks rather than leaves them as an option. That is messed up in so many ways... Only having ewar while cloaked would also force a pretty hefty nerf on the cloaking field themselves as, currently, you'd be able to cloak and regain your vision so often that losing it would be temporary at best.

Plus, it means that cloakers have no incentive to do move around while uncloaked and full scans means they'll be able to see if it is safe to decloak. Sure, they will lose a bit of time hoping from cover to cover in order to keep up the cloak time they need to pounce/flee as necessary but the best you could hope for is the old advantage with a map travel time of a Logistics suit.

Also doesn't solve the whole "Killing people before the invisibility wears off" thing since they'd never want to be visible and could do all of their repositioning whilst invisible.... Which is why cloaked shotgun/nova knife is currently so ridiculous...

It probably hasn't been addressed as it forces cloaks rather than leaves them as an option. That is messed up in so many ways... Only having ewar while cloaked would also force a pretty hefty nerf on the cloaking field themselves as, currently, you'd be able to cloak and regain your vision so often that losing it would be temporary at best.

Plus, it means that cloakers have no incentive to do move around while uncloaked and full scans means they'll be able to see if it is safe to decloak. Sure, they will lose a bit of time hoping from cover to cover in order to keep up the cloak time they need to pounce/flee as necessary but the best you could hope for is the old advantage with a map travel time of a Logistics suit.

Also doesn't solve the whole "Killing people before the invisibility wears off" thing since they'd never want to be visible and could do all of their repositioning whilst invisible.... Which is why cloaked shotgun/nova knife is currently so ridiculous...

If the slot were truly dedicated to cloaks then I would be arbitrarily forced to use it. As I choose not use it and, thanks to ewar, am not being arbitrarily punished for it my quality of life is improved.

Scouts currently lose 85% of their scan range while cloaked, meaning that them not being able to be seen also means they no longer see around walls. When they are, themselves, extremely difficult to find they lose the ability to plan ahead as they must now hope they are safe when they decloak. Additionally, they now have to be concerned about someone outside of their field of vision covering whomever it is they are trying to murder as they cannot see anywhere else exclusively whilst cloaked.

As for the conflating of problems, the aforementioned range reduction was designed to lessen the insta-kill cloaking problem. The proposal to do the exact opposite and make cloaked scouts the only ones good at finding and murdering people would compound the problem and is therefore a very big part of the discussion that needs addressing. As only cloaked scouts will get ewar and ewar is essential to compensating for the difference in hp, dropsuit bonus. Do also keep in mind that Caldari and Amarr scouts would lose their race bonus if not cloaked.

When it comes to choice, do you really want people's options to be "Scout with cloak or something else?" Because making cloaks mandatory would turn non-cloaked scouts into Assaults whom miss out on their race bonuses and lose half of their health. If you really want scout speed put on a few kinetics and bask in how fast you are while still having health

As it stands, scouts can fight so effectively that they don't need cloak. They are entirely effective because they have the ability to see the battlefield clearly while engaging the enemy. Cloak now incentivizes scouts to use it as little as possible as their ewar is their greatest asset, and using it to hide in their blind spot is more effective than hoping to not see a shimmer. It is used as a defense tool for running away/hiding, or as an assaulting tool to run strait at an enemy. My proposal is aimed at making it for defense/intel gathering, which is ideally the scout's roll.

Essentially I want to make scouts be scouts. Scouts have INSANELY powerful ewar, and bonuses, and they arguably need these bonuses in order to make the role distinct and viable. However, I believe that putting a limiter on their ability will be the best way to let scouts be fun and different. The cloak is the most convenient way to do it as it only involves changing a few parameters. If cloak duration.recharge is too powerful, then those numbers can be changed (10/20/30 seconds, +50% recharge time, etc). The specific numbers are less important than the idea itself, and if you have a better idea, I'd like to hear it.

words.

I was around when the cloak was first brought up. Scouts did not want to lose their nanite injectors or active scanners (for spin scanning) just for a cloaking device, they demanded a second equipment slot. You choose not to use a cloak on your scout because your scout is perfectly overpowered without it - you do not have to make a choice between combat ability and ewar wallhacks that is the problem - meaningfully addressing this would take away the ewar wallhacks while scouts are in combat mode and return the crazy ewar abilities only while in the non-combat cloak mode.

This is not a meaningful disadvantage to scouts. They can get by without cloaks due to powerful ewar, in short if you are 'good' a cloak is a disadvantage to you, rather than being something the defines the role. A cloak hurts more than it helps at high skill levels. What Ceej's proposed change would do is force scouts to make a plan, attempt to execute, and then fade once executed so they can re-evaluate engagement options rather than being able to perform re-evaluations in the middle of combat.

No, it wasn't it was to make scouts have a deficit, the delay before firing (which is being increased) is the attempted fix for 'insta-kill cloaking'. A scout should be able to find and murder people - they should be forced to re-evaluate after that single target. The could certainly be a minimum duration of cloaked time necessary before you get the ewar bonuses. In regards to 'taking away bonuses', no one needs the ability to see 40-70m+ with high precision at all times that is blatantly overpowered, it is compounded by allowing everyone in your squad to also see these people. As soon as spin scanning was fixed *everyone* jumped over to scouts (in particular the cal scout).

THATS THE ****ING POINT. People shouldn't be playing scouts as light assaults. They should be scouts who take targets of opportunity when available. Assaults should be the main "I want to ****ing shoot people" platform.

I can definitely agree that the core of the problem is that scouts get the best ewar by far and that, if they have been on Dust long enough to afford the scout ranks, arbitrarily ignore the fitting cost of a cloak.

Unfortunately, buffing cloaking fields to add scan range only worsens the problem as it adds incentive to cloaking yet does nothing to solve the issue of them being undetectable by non-scouts or able to murder everyone. As I don't see CCP having the ability to limit this blindness only to scouts who equip cloaks the end result will basically be the death of non-cloaked scouts, presumably with a large portion swapping to cloaking while the rest decide whether or not Dust still appeals to them in cloak-town.

If you won't accept me simply backing Rattati's proposed changes or my proposal to make pure Logistic suits the best at finding non-scouts then here is another idea: make cloaking flare up your profile instead of decreasing it while also toning down how much they reduce the cloak's fitting cost.

Increasing profile size on cloaks would leave non-cloaked scouts relatively viable, as the range and precision mods necessary for ewar to give a consistent edge would still require them to be frail, while asking cloakers a question; are you willing to have empty slots on your suit in exchange for your invisibility?

Keep in mind that a scanned cloaker isn't truly cloaked anymore. If we assume Rattati's range increase will go through, we can safely assume that more than just scout suits will start considering running ewar mods. This means that nonscouts would find them if they opt not to run dampeners, typically it would not be far enough out to actually gun them down with ease but it would give them a chance to fight after the scout has already closed most of the distance, meaning that the close range scout has range advantage while the other suit has health advantage.

Additionally, making cloaked suits have a hefty fitting price for scouts, as opposed to proto scouts being able to just put on the basic one without much consequence, we make it so that cloakers have to leave slots empty if they wish to dedicate themselves to stealth. If they don't want to light up like a christmas tree they have to stack dampeners, but if they put all their stuff into dampeners they won't have the fitting to both be immune to scanners and have a proto weapon, meaning the second they turn on cloak any nearby enemy scout knows it is meal time...

Choice, consequence, yadda yadda. Two people posted since I started typing this so gimme a sec to adjust.

Any thoughts on this compromise to scanning falloff, Rattati?

We are evaluating this technically as we speak. Dynamic fallout is impossible, there may be hope for this

MMMMmmmmmmmmmm good read, will read again. +1

We are evaluating this technically as we speak. Dynamic fallout is impossible, there may be hope for this

Most of this looks good, i like the proposed changes to the profiles of all the suits, and I like the normalization of scan radii idea to make range amps useful for all.
I'm not sure how I feel about removing direction arrows to the minimap, but minor. I thought scanners were fine before the 1.9 changes
As an assault with max precision and dampening, I don't like the idea of tanking mods adding to my profile because I fear using HP mods will negate my skill investments, and that an assault shouldn't be punished for using HP mods beyond the existing penalties, but hopefully the profile debuffs will be minor for these modules. Also, will ferroscale and reactive plates also have the debuff?

To CeeJ Mantis
My apologies, I did not go back to read the post against as my focus was on tying ewar to cloaking. I don't really have an opinion on the changes to profile/scan you recommended as I don't know the current ewar formulas well enough.

For scan range, fifteen is kind of weak and ten renders ewar modules too investment heavy to be competitive for non-scouts. With a 5 in cal scout and the range skill that ten gets bumped up to 22.5m, one complex range modifier bringing it up to ~32.6 for a relatively solid build.

Scans are at their strongest in urban environments where your main concern is turning a corner and dying before getting the chance to run; thirty meters ought to work fine for a Cal scout but I'm not sure anyone else would be so keen on getting range modules. Since everyone else only gets 21 meters for one range modifier it becomes dubious as to whether or not they will have time to respond before shotgun/HMG annihilation, especially if you need one or more precision modules to matter.

I am definitely advocating 15 meters as the minimum on all suits, I'd recommend 17.5 on Scouts to give them a slight edge (albeit at the cost of making the number crunch even more of a *****...) and Logistics at 20.

Cal scout maxes at 57 before factoring in stacking penalty, Logistics can find Heavies with ease, and anyone can slap on one range and one precision to find lazy scouts at 32 meters or better. That ought to be enough to keep them out of insta-death range and, if not, they can add another range as the situation demands.

For the rest of the stuff discussed, I said scouts ought to sacrifice for their cloaks mate, not that they did. Making it so they make a full fit if they wanted a decent cloak would give them a penalty bigger than an equipment slot for their escape device/distance closer/dampener/ambush preventer. Might even be possible to leave uncloaked scouts alone....


Is there some new announcement I am missing? Not seeing anything about a full second delay on the announcement/events section.


General satement
Anyone else feel cloaking as a method of dampening feels backwards? Ewar is the only true counter to cloaking, as relying on the shimmer only works if you don't have anything messing with your vision (for example, I wear contacts which impair my vision when worn long enough) and assumes that the scout is close enough for said shimmer to matter... Which is somewhat regularly close enough for shotgun sprinting...