Alright, now that I have had a couple days to calm down about this, I can discuss this reasonably. If there are to be such a thing as proximity probes, limiting them to outpost owners would create a very 1 sided system. If they are going to exisit, then everybody should be able to use them. This would enable non outposts owning corps to perform certain activities on beta islands, and not just be an outpost owning buff.
But there has to be limitations, and cost associated with these. Some thoughts that have been mentioned are very similar, so if I repeat something already proposed, I do apologise, I'm just trying to summarize the issues.
1) Prox probes should be temporary. A limitied time use, no more than an hour. Deploy your probes, and for that period of time you have a sensor net up in the region of their activity.
2) Limited data. All current proximity sensitive technology reports movement or objects withing their detection range, nothing else. Probes should only show that there has been some movement in their vicinity.
3) They must be reasonably detectable. Seeing them at 50m without sensor detecting may be too small a distance. Another solution is to allow the artifact scanning probes detect the prox probes, so you can zero in on their location.
4) They must be limited as far as number deployed. The ablity to spam a hundred of these around is just ridiculous. So here is a suggestion, the probes have to transmit to something else, and be within range of that something else. A 2 component system. A prox probe hub has to be deployed, where you are doing whatever, and then you have to deploy the prox probes withing so many meters of the hub, lets say for discussion 1000m. Overall, you would get a approx 5000m diameter area that you would detect movement in for 1 hour, after which, the equipment burns out and turns to slag.
5) They should be expensive enough that to just spam them everywhere you are doing something is not cost effective. Epriton mining, farming, or if there is a campaign that an outpost were under attack, it would be worth spending that kind of NIC, but roaming or individuals just doing stuff by themselves is not. So about and hour before an intrusion, you deploy your sensor net, and await the enemy, or if you have intell that a major scarab/lithus train is going to be moving thru an area on beta, you deploy your net and hope to catch your fish.
6) Visiblity must be limited to the island that they were deployed on, you have to be on the island to see your probes data, i would also say within the 1000 m of the hub if that mechanic is deployed.
7) Limit the number of hubs and probes a corp can deploy at any one time
Just some thoughts, not necessarily solutions, but the basis of good design is having the general functionality and limitation determined before you actually set to work on it.
What I am more concerned about is the process by which these changes occur. Typically, some form of peer review of a design or concept should be performed, instead of a single individual making a determination as to how things should be. Whereas I have no idea as to Avatar Creations internal review policies, I would seriously suggest that there should be some peer review and brainstorming, with consultation with some players as well ( granted many of perp players are not objective, especially if it is a condition that favors them). Point being, less is more when introducing new features, by which i mean start it nerfed to begin with and build it up, instead of uber and nerf it down, and testing by other individuals who were not involved in the concept or implementation should be performed so that other points of view can be brought into the process and perhaps prevent a repeat of what just occured with the prox probes.
I lived there solo at Koykili for about 2 weeks and only died to NPCS in those 2 weeks (NUB PVER)
