About Dscan Undetectability

I had a message from a reader the other day about the revamp to recons that CCP is going to do.  The specifics are found in CCP Rise's Features and ideas posting (also see the second post, pointing to his followup posts).  Quoting it:

• Combat Recons will now be permanently undetectable by directional scanners
• All eight Recons will have the capacitor cost of warping reduced by roughly half
• Where appropriate, bonuses will be adjusted to match ship developer trends
• All eight Recons are having their capacitor pool and capacitor regeneration buffed (roughly 20% increase in cap regen)
• The average maximum velocity across the class is going up by around 20m/s

(My emphasis.)  What are my thoughts?  OK, there are the latter four adjustments, which are quite anodyne.  Recons do need something, and better speed/range seems to fit.

Then there is the dscan-undetectability.  This is a major change, and one I dislike.  Still, CCP seems resolved to it.

I have seen a lot of people of the general PVP community disliking it.  You fly to a complex, and dscan.  There's a frigate on scan; you think you can beat it.  You warp into the plex, and it tackles you, and then it and its combat recon buddy (or three) roundly squash you.  Fun?

Of course, people can do that now, with cloakies.  Falcons.  Proteuses.  Do they?  Well, I don't know, not being a kspace PVP person.  In known space, you do at least have the ability to see if more than two people are in local, and become accordingly paranoid.

Here's my take on it, from my wormhole perspective.  I dislike it because to us, dscan is what local is to y'all squares.  It is our means to know whether a system is active.  Any system I enter, I fly around and look for people.  Of course people can still cloak, and they do.  But at least I can see with relative ease if anyone is out on grid doing stuff.  If a system has nobody visible, and no probes, and you watch for a while and don't see any, then it is most likely empty.

The new combat recons will change that, perhaps drastically.  No longer can I enter a system and find people earning money to gank.  The new combat recons will be able to earn money while "cloaked".  A ship that can earn money while dscan-proof is a new thing in EVE.  For PVE, at least the wrecks will give them away.  (Though they still may be worth using for small sites, instead of the site-running Tengu I am using.  I'll have to see about DPS.)

But what about those new null-style data/relic sites?  As my correspondent pointed out, those sites will be perfect to run in a combat recon.  Nobody even knows you are there to look for you, unless they are hunting using combat probes, which is rather rare.  You do lose the hacking bonus, which kind of balances it.  I suppose I will adjust by simply warping into every single relic/data site to check. But even then I cannot gank in my Manticore; it requires a second account, probably also in a combat recon since they can now make it onto grid before being detected.  Or I will have to bite the bullet and upship to a T3 to hunt in.

I probably will get a Rook to use for null sites.  Currently I use a Buzzard.

Overall, I am sure I will adjust.  Grumble.

One other thing I have to mention: it's ugly.  I am the sort of person that likes clean rules, such as "if a ship is not cloaked, you always see it on dscan."  Throwing one more exception into an otherwise clean rule is not a step in the right direction, in my opinion.  Violate it with ship fittings (i.e. cloaks): that's OK.  Violate with ship hulls, and it's not OK.  Whatever that magic stuff is that they build Rooks out of, can't they make my Buzzard from the same stuff?  Or at least a Heron?