[Brainstorm] The Communication Jammer

Ideas that people had come in many weird and wonderful places, who can forget Archimedes who jumped out of the bath yelling "eureka!". I've tonight had an idea for a mobile deployable module that even I can't believe I came up with whilst having an "disagreement" with my two year old son and voila, the idea was formed.

Premise

The presence of the Local chat window has been a discussion point since before I joined EVE, it’s a very useful feature that allows, at a glance, the pilot to see who is in their local system. As a chat feature it’s good but as an intelligence feature its invaluable.

With the exception of wormhole space where it is delayed and people in the same system do not appear unless they speak, Local is an invaluable tool for identifying whether or not there are Blue, Reds or Neutrals in system.

Whether you’re in the For, Against or just don’t care group you will see and use Local every day but what if its behaviour and how it works could be changed by a deployable module?

A New Deployable Module

Envisage a module that can be only be deployed within 50km of a jump gate in either low or null sec and, after activation, generates a field with a radius from the centre of the jump gate and has one of the following abilities (selected by the pilot when deploying) and these apply when the vessel enters the effect radius (regardless of whether it is cloaked/just jumped in):

• the field causes any vessel within a 500/750/1000km radius of the gate to have no list of pilots and to act as though in delayed mode.
• the field causes any vessel within a 2000km radius of the jump gate to not have any Local chat window functionality for a period of two and a half minutes.

The module would have the following properties:

• Be single use only with a fixed life of 2 hours
• Small enough (~50m3) for any a ship of frigate size or larger to carry and deploy
• Deployment/anchoring time of 60 seconds
• Only one module could be deployed within gate range at one time
• Reinforcement timer of 30 or 45 minutes once shield reaches 25%
• HP: 250,000 Shield, 100,000 Armour and 40,000 Structure with 50/50/50/50 resists

Behaviour 

Local would function normally for anyone out of the radius of the module and people entering/leaving would appear/disappear as they currently do however if within the radius of effect the Local window would have the following behaviour:

The first effect would be useful for people just on or off grid who are lying in wait in a cloaked ship whilst the second effect could be very useful for hiding a fleet either in warp to the gate (who'll be landing in a minute or two) or hiding just off-grid but aligned and ready to warp.

Due to the nature of the module it would affect all vessels within any field radius and d-scan would only show results outside of the effect radius. e.g. Any objects within radius do not appear on d-scan results, but outside of this they would appear as normal.

Wish List

I've submitted this to the thread that was asking for ideas for other mobile structures and hopefully it will be seen by someone at CCP. First post on the forums too for my character, if this carries on I may have two posts in a year :)

[Brainstorm] Freighters and Jump Freighters

Overview

Those who have played for more than a year will know what ships to use and what ships aren't. CCP are changing things to make all ships attractive not just specific ones.

The work being done by CCP to rebalance all ships at the moment, through statistics changing, bonuses are added/removed and changed to make them fit into various roles. The simplest description to cover all this work is to make them better.

These changes are ongoing and CCP does ask for feedback in the forums when they propose changes, and it certainly gets it.

Freighters and Jump Freighters

Look at a Freighter or Jump Freighter and it is, simply put, a large cargo bay with engines. That's it, you can't add rigs nor modules and really you should be able to. Your only way of improving agility or tank is via skills and not modules.

I feel this should change and they should allow certain module and rig types to be installed but also they could benefit from something like T3 sub-systems to allow configuration changes to both the capacity but what type cargo can be carried.

Modules and Rigs

In my opinion it's a huge oversight that you cannot add modules or rigs to a F/JF. Modules should be limited to certain ones and rigs should be Capital sized (F/JF are larger than Battleships which is what Large Rigs are for)

I don't think adding guns to a F/JF should be possible nor any modules/rigs for increasing cargo capacity but modules/rigs that can do the following should be.

• avoid warp disruption
• increase shield/amour/structure resistances/HP
• increase agility
• increase warp/maximum speed

One module that should definitely not be usable is a cloaking device, the mass of the ship or the fact its cargo bay violates the space/time compression field should prevent them working.

Sub-Systems

Sub-systems add a nice configuration option to T3's and whilst I wish there was more variation in the sub-systems, the whole 'idea' works very well. I think it could be ported to F/JF's to open up some excellent options that otherwise may require new ships (and we all know they take a lot of CCP resources to make).

Some of these would be very useful in everyday situations and others have been suggested by some people elsewhere as new ship types. I don't think we need new ships, as nice as they are.
Suggestions for sub-systems that could be added to F/JF's are:

Cargo Compressor - allows more cargo to be added without increasing cargo hold size
Pro: Reduces cargo size by 25% when in cargo hold (does not work on containers, plastic wrap or ships)
Con: Increases mass by 15% / reduces structure by 20%

Ship Transporter - converts part of the cargo hold into a ship maintenance bay
Pro: Converts 80% of the cargo hold into a ship maintenance hanger allowing assembled ships to be moved (excl. capitals)
Con: agility reduced by 20%

Micro Jump - allows use of MJD on F/JF
Pro: reduces cool down of use of MJD by 55%, increases MJD jump range by 100%
Con: Ship capacitor reduced by 15% and recharge penalty of 10%

Electronic Survival - allows use of ECM Burst module
Pro: Allows F/JF to fit a single ECM Burst module to avoid capture, 25% reduction to cool down of Burst ECM modules
Con: reduction in available PG by 50%, CPU by 25%

Active Defence - increases shield, armour and structure HP
Pro: 25% increase in shield/armour and structure HP
Con: agility reduced by 25%, mass increased by 15%

Expanded Fuel Bays - increases fuel bay size
Pro: increases fuel bay size by 200%
Con: reduction in cargo hold capacity by 30%

Warp Integrity - gives a F/JF a chance to escape capture by point/scram
Pro: Confers a +3 Warp Strength to the F/JF
Con: 20% reduction in cargo hold


Those are just some ideas to give extra options to the F/JF pilot. I'm sure there are more and people can suggest better Pros/Cons but these are an idea.

Improve what we have and use new ships, later, to add extra value.