Lachesis Will Blot Out Sun

The mooted changes to Combat Recons will usher in a new era of roaming wormholes, just like the original buff to HACs made it Ishtars Online inside of 2 weeks. But I think the combat recon changes will cause this to happen instantly, because the competitive advantage is instant and obvious.

CCP seems to have some pretty strong and steely resolve to make this happen. I can see why. Combat Recons have been a relatively underutilised solo ship, because they are relatively weak and have sissy DPS - especially at any range that they need to work at to keep themselves alive with their pissy tanks.

Solo Rook is like a strange sexual pecadillo. You're interested in it, you have a desire to do it deep down in your groinal regions, but if anyone found out you'd bought a Rook and kitted it out with an ASB or an AAR and were thinking of soloing....boy, instant pariah. The only recon which has historically gone solo is the Curse, really.

So they did need a buff, and considering the fantstic* job CCP did with buffing the HACs (*Ishtar), just adding more DPS and tank wasn't going to cut it.

The Recons needed a niche, and apparently that niche is d-scan immunity. I can see the concept - a fleet needs a scout to monitor the enemy's movement, like a float plane launched from a battleship was used in World War II. So you give Combat Recons d-scan immunity and they can fulfil that role almost as well as a cloaked ship! Kind of like the Force Recons, really...

There is nothing wrong, per se with d-scan immunity. The d-scan inhibitor deployable does the job in a spacky and clumsy way. The Combat Recons can still be combat probed down, CCP's way of saying "We are committed to not going full Ishtar twice in 12 months." Golf clap, guys. Golf clap.

Given EVE is compartmentalised, basically, into four PVP game styles based on security status, there's four arguments going on as to whether or not d-scan immunity is a Good Thind, or completely OP and imbalanced bullshit.

Highsec wars, the CR's will be fine. There will be a few gate camping assclown brigades, fisting each other like gay marionette troupes on the Niarja gate or Perimeter gate, fiddle dee dee how many cocks can one suck, waiting for the War Target to land, and then bam, it's Rooks and Curses everywhere, zomg. This I approve of.

Lowsec and especially faction warfare, as pointed ut in the forum, will be Medium complexes permacamped by Curses and Rooks. OMG, someone combat probes the medium installation, the game is up! Countermeasure works fine, mostly because you can stick your combats over the top of the pin in the solar system map and recon the situation ahead of time. You can of course just drive your own Rook or Curse into mediums and surprise buttsex people.

Nullsec, especially fleet fights, it's a little so-so on whether d-scan immunity really fits the floatplane meta. There is such a thing as a cloaky nullified Tengu to perform the recon capability for fleets, and guess what? it can pack combat probes and shiz, too! So the floatplanes of the nullsec fleets are never going to be CR's.

What CR d-scan immunity really allows is for a fleet to field EWAR which gets under-reported by scouts. As you bounce around system or pass through, they report only DPS and logi, not the CR's.  Again, it's already more or less a job done by existing hulls. Right now you can use a Falcon for that job, but you might get spotted jumping a gate. It will be the same deal with CR's - your fleet will just keep its aces up it's sleeve until you get on grid.

For small gang roaming in low or null, the CRs will be surprise additions on grid. If you field 20% CR's, your foe will see, for example, 10 guys blob into Local, and will see 6 Ishtars and 2 Scimi's on d-scan as you warp in, but wont see the 2 Huginns until you're on grid. Likewise, they won't see the Rooks you keep at your off-grid safe ready to pounce down to the gate for an engagement.

However, the big deal is w-space. Lachesis will be the go-to ship for tackling carebears. The advantage is instantly apparent to anyone with half a brain cell - you can pile through a newly minted wormhole and if the foe hasn't seen the sig pop, you can leisurely spend as long as you need scanning for him in his site, and warp in and get point. It just becomes a question of tanking the rats and the enemy long enough for the DPS and backup point (let's say a friction extension Proteus with 73km RF dissy and a ceptor).

Secondly, you can idle at POS in your Lachs and Curses, your Rooks and Huginns and interlopers will not even know you are there. True, you could do the same with your cloakies, but to reship for a fight you have to warp back to POS and would then show on d-scan. Therefore, as a scout checking a wormhole, you really do need to lay eyes on each POS. Remember, I'm selling my 1800 bookmarks for wormhole POSs once you all work this shit out. The price, however, just went up.

Of course, the cure for all of this is combat probes. People used to have to have a set of combats deployed at 64 AU across a system to monitor their surroundings while they ratted. Those days have returned - but also for scouts. You may have checked the POS's and the system may appear empty, bt you really do need to wash the system with combats, just to be sure. You'll never get a CR pilot. it's laughable to think that without d-scan to guide you to his position for a ninja probe effort, that you'll get him. CCP really has no idea.

The effects? Well, certainly the guys in my corp who rat C2's solo are going to lose ships. Our C4 ratting fleet is solid enough and nasty enough that I welcome a Lachesis dropping 50km off us. we'll see how the new tank goes on it. But there's going to be a massive rush for a month, and it could really severely impact on the PVE numbers. A 5 second decloak delay is all that saves quite a few people even now.

I just hope they give the d-scan immunity to EWAR frigates, too.