Dominion Probe

posted on June 17th, 2010, 10:54 pm

This is about the probe dropped by the A-4 Scout.

As is stands now it has two modes, active and inactive. it is inactive most of the time, and every so often switches to active for a very short time. When inactive it provides no information on an area, when active for that short period it gives you visibility at its location.

At all times it cannot be clicked on to select it, and therefore cannot be force fired upon, you cannot click on it to make one of your ships shoot it.

At all times it CAN be fired upon by units in the area that are armed and are set at red alert.

I propose to change it so the probe is only fired upon by the AI when it is active, and of course the AI continues to fire at it when it goes inactive again as it has been located.

This would not make it really impossible to get one. you just keep a ship nearby for a few seconds until it goes active again and the ship destroys the probe. The probe can still be seen like it is now.

Of course this means if you place a probe near a station that is armed it will only get 1 scan before it dies.

if u place it near a base but out of range of stuff with weapons then its like having a cloaked scout nearby thats easy to detect.

first you have to make it obvious you are doing it by taking the dominion scout nearby, then the enemy will suspect a probe, and will place ships around their base waiting for the probe to activate, any ship in range will fire at the probe. any ships in visual range on high movement auto will fly over and shoot it. so its easier to detect than a cloaked scout.

this way a probe will get at least 1 good sight of a base before being shot by the SB or several weak snapshots from the edge of a base before a ship comes and slaughters it.

the costs of this probe should be adjusted to reflect its added uses.

[Arash8472]

posted on June 17th, 2010, 11:08 pm

Last edited by Arash8472 on June 17th, 2010, 11:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i like this idea, right now the probe is kind ofuseless b/c ships see it and fire on it when inactive.. you don't even get a warning that it's under attack...


edit: i just read other post, i still think that probe is useless it's only good agaisnt cloaking races that pass by it cloaked.. which is useless for you b/c you can't see cloak fleet...

posted on June 18th, 2010, 1:09 am

I don't think that's necessary at all.  A couple of these probes help immensely.  Even if it just shows you where a Fed fleet is going because you saw a gob of red on the mini for a second, then it's been the early-warning system you need.

  I don't there's anything wrong with it .  People just need more time to get used to using the new features.

posted on June 18th, 2010, 1:11 am

You can also drop them on moon pairs to see if anyone has started mining there!

posted on June 18th, 2010, 1:33 am

Yeah, the Probe is quite nice at the moment and I wouldn't want to see it changed. It requires a bit of micromanagement and doesn't require your enemy to babysit to wait for them to appear so they can shoot it. For a fairly cheap drone you can place that will let you know when fleets are coming (aka, if they are destroyed that tells you too), or when your opponent has expanded, etc, it is very nice

posted on June 18th, 2010, 12:30 pm

i'm not saying the probe is useless now, its not. but place it near anything with weapons and u dont get any use out of it at all.

my suggestion gives it a small amount more use. with maybe an equally small cost increase.

detecting it wouldnt require more than a few seconds of micro, until the probe activated, then your ship will shoot at the probe. if u leave it on high movement autonomy it will go shoot any probe within sensor range. so 1 of your own scouts set to red alert and high movement autonomy would cover most of your base easily. the probe would get 1 activation then die. if you saw the enemy take their scout near your base you should consider that they may have dropped the probe on you.

posted on June 18th, 2010, 5:28 pm

i'm not saying the probe is useless now, its not. but place it near anything with weapons and u dont get any use out of it at all.

  Don't place it near things with weapons .

  You wouldn't put a hamster in a cage with a cat and expect it to do well now would you?

posted on June 18th, 2010, 5:54 pm

lol i have a cat and u have a hamster, lets see if your assertion is true

not placing it near things with weapons is obvious, but limits its uses, its by no means useless, i would just like to give it more uses, with slightly more cost as a balance.

posted on June 18th, 2010, 6:11 pm

I think it should be made non targetable like the thing actually says! 

And lets not say that is op and unbalanced as cloaked factions can do the same thing 

posted on June 18th, 2010, 6:27 pm

that would be op, if nothing can shoot it then the only way to damage it would be to search for it then use AoE weapons on the location, which is a pain as not all factions have them i dont think. at least with cloaked scouts you can use decloak on them, then anything on red alert will flatten the cloaked scout.

at least in my suggestion they are only untargettable until they become active. which makes sense, if they were not doing anything (inactive mode) then the enemy probably wont notice them. but when they do an active scan and start transmitting data.

remember the valiant firing that probe in ds9 which the dread didnt even see.

[Tyler]

posted on June 18th, 2010, 6:31 pm

Last edited by Tyler on June 18th, 2010, 6:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Personally, I think hard to target would be better than untargetable. The Dominion should be advanced enough to put a tiny ECM Suite on the thing to throw off enemy sensors.

Even when inactive, there's still an artificial object there. Just so small and insignificant that it's rarely found, and then 'caught out of the corner of thier eye' by pure chance.

posted on June 18th, 2010, 7:58 pm

Maybe if it was within range of a sensor station or something using a cloak detect ping it would be targeted? If you're cloak detecting I'd bet u'd take notice of a little something like a probe interrupting the Tachyons.

posted on June 18th, 2010, 9:02 pm

while I do wish they had a higher miss-rate than they do now... otherwise I think they're fine. How I use them is to set a half a dozen or so scouts on high move autonomy and send them out, and just occasionally bang the drop probe button. in a few minutes time (assuming the scouts haven't wandered right through the heart of an enemy base) I have a good set of eyes of the entire mini map to at least give me some idea of opponents movements.

posted on June 18th, 2010, 9:23 pm

How would that be op!? Its not like its a sensor station that gives you all the current intell  The whole point of it is to get an update on what your enemy is building.  And yes you could use an AoE weapon to destroy it.