User:Erwin Madelung/Sandbox2

Cynosural Fields

Cynosure (pronounced like "sigh no sure") is a little-used word. It means a guide, or a person or thing that draws attention towards itself. It was once the name of the North Star, making it a very appropriate name to give to the cynosural fields of New Eden.

Ships with a jump drive can only jump to cynosural fields or beacons. Cynosural beacons are provided by the navigational structure Pharolux Cyno Beacon (colloquially simply called beacon or cyno beacon). Cynosural fields are generated by the ship module Cynosural Field Generator. Cynosural fields and their generators are colloquially abbreviated as cyno. A cynosural field can be seen on the overview from any place in the system and is "warpable". Further, it appears on the universe map. The Cynosural Field Generator module requires the skill  Cynosural Field Theory at level one to be fitted. Its activation time is ten minutes and it has a base consumption of 500 Liquid Ozone per cycle. As the Liquid Ozone consumption reduced by 10% per level of Cynosural Field Theory, the maximum consumption is actually 450 Liquid Ozone per cycle. The minimum consumption is thus 250, but commonly the skill is trained to level four so that 300 Liquid Ozone is needed. This corresponds to 120 m³ of cargo which fits into the corvettes Ibis, Velator, and Reaper (but not Impairor). Those ships are popular as throw away cyno ships, because you can always board your corvette in any structure. Cynos can only be lit in null and low sec but not in high sec and wormhole space. Mobile Cynosural Inhibitors prevent the activation of cynos in a 200km radius but do not remove existing cynos. Solar systems as a whole can be cyno jammed either through the navigation structure Tenebrex Cyno Jammer or a Sansha Incursion. If you want to light a cyno you have to be in a fleet (only fleet members can jump to that cyno) and slower than 500 m/s. After you light the cyno your nominal speed becomes zero but you continue to drift and can also be bumped, but the cynosural field stays at the position, where you lit it. Further, you cannot dock in a station or structure and cannot eject, but you can self destruct. Indeed you can light a cyno after you initiated the self destruct sequence. This is used as a trick for extra safe traveling. The cyno needs several seconds until it appears on the universe map. If you light the cyno shortly before you selfdestruct and immediatly jump to it, you can minimize your risk to be caught. But, be aware that if you jump to a cyno in the same moment as the cyno ship dies you still jump but don't land at the former spot of the cyno but at the sun – usually, a very undesirable result.

Cynos are commonly lit on cheap expandable ships. Corvettes have already been mentioned above. T1 exploration frigates are also useful as they have a relatively big cargo hold, while being cheap and warping fast. Nereus can be useful for cynos which are supposed to stay up as they can fit a strong passive shield regen tank and have a good cargo. Typical ships to fit a bait cyno are the Maller and Gnosis as they are cheap and can be fitted relatively tanky. Force Recons have a bonus to cynos (80% fuel reduction and 50% cycle time), but they are more relevant for covert cyno, which are expleained below.