Player Features and Ideas Discussion

CCP has a consistent theme about balancing the risk and effort to rewards, except with cloaking with a cyno. Minimal skills allows a character to slip into a system with a cloaky cyno frigate threaten an entire system. The point of this post is to balance risk versus rewards of cyno cloaked ship presence. Efforts to remove "local" seem to increase the imbalance of risk vs rewards for cloaky cyno ships.

Zero/low threat: A cloaked ship may not be scanned, or otherwise affected until it decloaks and the cyno is lit. The cyno ship value is usually dwarfed by the selected target value and the cyno'd dps ensures a fast kill. Good techniques reduce travel risk greatly.
Zero/low effort: Ship hull cost is low (T1 frigate hull is about 100k). While cloaked, client interaction may be zero or light (dscan or warping around system). The cost of a cloak module is a couple of million ISK. The cost of time and skill books to train cloaking and other basic skills approaches a week. Risk increases when friends are cyno'd in, but the target usually exceeds the ship value greatly: decloak, point, cyno.
High rewards: Interrupting system operations. Looting bling ships. See post #202 for details.

Proposals, updated:
Proposal #1 - Local and cloaking: "local" indicates the status and duration that a player is either cloaked or in station. Cloak or wh jump indicates "disconnected" until the player is registered uncloaked in another known space system, or until DT. Local does not record player onto "local," until after decloak, unless a stargate was used to get there; the information is sent to the system from the stargate.

Proposal #2 - Black Ops and decloak delays: Activated Cov Ops Cloak allows jumping through covert ops bridge, and lighting covert cynos while cloaked It also allows only cloaked ships to be seen on the overview, targeted, and attacked. Cloaked ships will not decloak other cloaked ships, even by proximity. Reg. Cyno and reg. smartbombs may not be activated during cloak, but covert smartbombs may be activated while cloaked and do damage against cloaked targets. Propulsion modules cannot be activated during cloak. [Aggression delay moved to #8] Local does not record a pilot which blops bridges into sytem while cloaked, until it decloaks. Blops may enter and leave a system without a trace. Finally, and long over due, the Black Ops battleship can fit a Covert Ops cloaking device and thus also warp, bridge and jump while cloaked.

Proposal #3 - Cloak mini-game anti-afk: When cloak is activated, the cloak module flashes until it is possible to cloak and then it automatically engages the cloak. After that, a simple mini-game of keeping the cloak aligned with the ship systems keeps the cloak from generating a scannable subspace signature. Multiple successful combat scans reveals the travel vector to your adversary.

Proposal #4 - Cyno jammer and mask: Mobile grid cyno jammer - Anchorable object. Prevents a cyno field generator from activating within 500km of it. Mobile cyno mask - anchorable object. Redirects ships jumping to a cyno in the system to land at the mask. Multiple masks present the possibility of landing at any of the masks with equal probability for each ship. Masks and jammers are on system overview.

Proposal #5 - Cynos fitting with cloak: A regular cyno may NOT be fitted to a ship which has fitted any of the following: Cov. Ops Cloak, Cov Ops Cyno, Cov Ops bridge. A regular cyno fitted to a ship with a regular (non-Cov Ops) cloak activated makes the ship scannable as if it were uncloaked. The regular cyno also reduces the ship's maximum speed while the cloak is engaged by 90%.

Proposal #6 - Cloak Scan: A cloak probe launcher launches cloak probes only while a ship has a covert ops cloak engage. These cloak probes may scan a cloaked ship, and are seen on the overview to all cloaked ships in system. If the target decloaks, the probes can still continue scanning the ship. The scan signature strength for probes increases by 25% for every 20 minutes cloaked on the same grid (even if there is a decloak and re-cloak, or warp out and back), because the cloak effects accumulate over time (if the ship is not on a given grid for 1 hour then the scan strength increase for that grid resets).

Proposal #7 - Super Cyno Jammer: The Super Cyno Jammer destabilizes the wormhole created to each cyno so that ships of exceeding 1800 Gg mass may not pass through it and so that it collapses after 5000 Gg has passed through it; similar in characteristics of the largest known natural wormholes.

Proposal #8 - Delayed decloak aggression timer: Separated from #2 by popular request: Target locking, and high slot modules require delay of 60s for activation after decloak for ALL ships with a cloak fitted; except that the stealth bomber bonuses still apply to allow instant targeting after decloak.

[OP edited to condense and simplify for easier and faster review]

Oh goodness not this crap again, please use the search function.
Oh and NO

Can someone enlighten me as to why showing cloaked ships on combat scanners is a bad idea? I hate using Local as an intel source and it should be done away with (as it is in WH's).

I think you should be able to scan them down, warp in and use an EMP module of some sort that disables all electronic warfare/cloaking within 20k for a short period of time (allied and enemy).

If you're in a cloaked ship, you should be on the move.

Zero rewards, a tiny amount of risk is more accurate

Let's bring this thread back on track. We are assuming that both "local" and the cloaking mechanic are balanced and working fine. Please look to the proposals outlined in the OP or submit your own ideas.

That's a separate issue.

I'm against local being used for intel gathering purposes because it's supposed to be for comms, that's not the same as saying I want this magical class of ship that's invulnerable to every scanning technique we have.

I have a cloaky ship and I can freely move about lowsec, null and WH space without a care in the world. I think that needs a counter.

I see no point in having a live local anywhere, it should work like it does in WH space everywhere. If you want to see whats in a system use your D-Scan. If you wanna be doubly sure and check for cloaks, you need to get out the combat scanner.

On the contrary, it has everything to do with local. Since null has a perfect information network thanks to local, the moment someone enters the system (or even before that) a player can dock up, thereby eliminating a vast majority of the threat, provided the player took necessary precautions. An AFK cloaker reintroduces risk - he may be active or he may be not, you'll never know. It is up to you to take the risk or not.

That said, I do agree with the elimination of afk cloaking, provided we also eliminate the absolutely perfect information network provided by Local - both are anomalies that should not exist in their current form.

Ok, you want to get the thread back on track..... lets look at the thread subject.

AFK Cloaking Camping High Rewards, Zero Risk Zero Effort

You then go on to whine about cyno generators.

Please tell me how an AFK pilot lights a Cyno?


Once again, another totally obvious nerf cloaks so I can be safe in my ZeroSec system post, pretending to be an AFK is bad M'kay, idea.

Please continue your operations in HiSec, or grow a pair!