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.

As a result, most ships that light a cyno are expendable frigates. The Tech 2 Force Recon cruisers get an 80% reduction to the cost of lighting a cyno, and are only rendered immobile for 5 minutes, but they're expensive ships for lighting a cyno.

Once the cyno is lit, a capital ship in the same fleet as the ship lighting it (or in the same alliance, in the case of the array) can right-click on the pilot lighting the cyno and select "Jump" to jump to the field.