CCP announced last month that they were taking aim at the menace of cloaky camping, and their solution to the issue went in with today’s patch update.
No longer in testing, but they didn’t put up a new graphic
As previously mentioned, CCP’s plan to address cloaky camping is to introduce a deployable called a Mobile Observatory which sends out a system-wide ping every 10 minutes that has a chance to decloak any cloaked ships in the system.
The blueprints for Mobile Observatories were seeded into the market today and the associated changes are now live.
The Mobile Observatory
As you can see from the above, the structure only lasts for an hour and 40 minutes, so you get only 9 pings out of it once deployed.
As a counter, any ship that does cloak is given 15 minutes of protection from being decloaked. CCP has set that timer the same everywhere, but has indicated that it may, in the future, give different modules of hulls a bonus to that time.
This change has not made those for or against cloaky camping happy. Those looking to eliminate the practice bring up the expense and the vulnerability of the deployable, which can be blown up with just a few salvos from a stealth bomber. Those who favor the practice fear that these modules will be spammed everywhere and multiple times per system so that being decloaked after 15 minutes is almost guaranteed. I suppose we will see who is right.
Also in today’s update are four new empire gates, including the long asked for low sec gate to the Stain region. The new gate locations are:
- Hykkota (The Forge)
Ahbazon (Genesis) - Irgrus (Metropolis) Pakhshi (Genesis)
- Kenninck (Placid) Eggheron (Solitude)
- Saminer (Tash-Murkon) F7-ICZ (Stain)
I expect that the Stain Russians are both very happy and are already camping that gate.
A monument has been placed in each of the systems where these new gates are locate that list out the names of the top players and corporations that participated in the event around the gate construction.
It also means the end of StainGuy, who long advocated for this low sec gate to Stain and swore he’d biomass his character if CCP ever actually put in it the game. He is going to mothball the character instead to keep anybody else from grabbing the name… but not before a final farewell.
Those are the two big items with today’s update, but there are a number of smaller items, including the ability to filter the fleet composition window. But for me, the other big fix was the change to the UI Only Mode indicator.
UI Only Mode, or Super Potato Mode, introduced last October just in time for some epic Keepstar fights in Delve, allows users to turn off the graphics rendering with the command Control-Shift-F9. The main downside was the large opaque reminder that players were in UI Only Mode that hung right in the middle of the screen in the way of just about anything you wanted to look at. (e.g. scrolling messages, brackets on grid)
It would just sit there
With today’s update that message now fades away after 30 seconds, leaving you to peacefully watch overview brackets in peace without a big sign in the middle of the screen.
The T5ZI gate in 1DQ and the bubbles around it
In a way having the UI off and just brackets on is like having an air traffic controller view of an area. I sat for a while and watched ships move around the gate and Keepstar grid in 1DQ. It was relaxing in its own way.
Delta Squad’s symbol above the main Keepstar
Anyway, the patch has been deployed and is live, so the changes are in place and we have to live with them.
Full details are available in the patch notes.
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