Player Features and Ideas Discussion

From what I have seen of all complaints aimed at making changes to cloaked ships alone...

They all indicate a philosophy of wanting consensual PvP only.

If they are not in a ship looking for PvP, they want to be able to avoid it, and reliably with little effort too.
Since local caters to this perfectly, they want it kept, and made more effective too.

Me, I point to high sec.
Do a duel, or get a war dec between corps, that is about as consensual as EVE was ever intended to be.

You should go live in wormhole space.

Not because it is safer, or anything like that... no.
But you seem to be really worried about risk, and at least in WH space that would make more sense. Folks would agree with you.
Docking, on the other hand, kinda challenging, no outposts.

And they are all watching you inside the POS shields, flying in slow circles around the tower... like a giant goldfish in it's bowl being watched by a cloaked and hungry cat....

Remove local,
Allow cloacking only in WHs

Problem solved (everyone wins!)

I think you nailed it!!!!

You have missed the point of the danger. If I see 50 people in station, then I know that 50 people in subcapitol ships might undock and hunt me. If I find one cloaked ship in system, it might suddenly spawn 50 titans, or do nothing, or anything in between without warning, counter, or way to manage the the risk to match the potential rewards. If you take the cloaked cyno ships out of the picture, you can make an intellegent decision on the risk you take in undocking. With them, a single cloaked ship must logically be treated as exactly enough force to wipe you and your whole fleet off the map. Even your nearly unprobable ship that is gone when you get there MUST REMAIN ACTIVE to maintain that level of safety.

You also miss the point of the 100% safety factor cloaks grant to ships with that capability. It's not just that I can't hunt them on my own... I can't hunt them with 1000 of my buddies. They are completely immune to any effort I might bring to bear as an individual or alliance to catch them and nullify the infinite threat they represent.

I will grant that if you can lock down or at least maintain intel on every single system within jump range of a given system then the afk cloaker threat is managed back down to one ship, one pilot---and not even an especially dangerous ship. Seems alot of effort to mitigate one player in a ship that likely isn't even over 100K ISK with all the trimmings.

The rest of your ravings are just that... ravings and straw men. Fleets in neighboring systems can be looked for, POS can be found and looked at, stationed pilots are in single ships at a known spots. Anything other than a cloaked ship can be known and countered with sufficient effort.

Thus the problem with AFK cloaking isn't the AFK, or the Cloak. Its the infinite threat potential combined with the low cost and zero effort of maintaining that threat indefinitely.

Lets pick apart this. If one person is in a station, for I know, he will leave said station in a cyno fitted ship, he then can activate cyno, and /spawn/ many more ships ontop of you. Just cause they don't have a Cloak don't mean they don't have a Cyno, just cause they have a cloak don't mean they DO have a cyno. If you don't like cynos, then erect a Cynosural System Jammer. You now have taken cyno out of the equation. "But now my JFs can cyno in." Oh well, it all about choices my friend, your choices will change how the hostiles will siege your system.

Fleets in neighboring systems can be looked for, yes they can, they can also have Cyno ships station with them that will open up a cyno that can hot drop a much bigger fleet ontop of you, infact it happens all the time, it to get the other fleet comfortable with your attacking forces, and engage, you then open up a cyno to dump a large number of reinforcements ontop of you, I also see it happen all the time as well.

Also another thing you fail to take into note, is this, the inability to be found, does not equal 100% safety, things can happen, you can be found, you can make a simple error. The fleet you bridge in could be counter dropped.

Nullbears like you fail to take in the big picture of not just how cloak works, but also the shear amount of counters for them. I will name a few for you.

counter one: stay grouped up with like minded individual. If they can tolerate mining, then most likely they can also tolerate fitting a simple ship fitted to kill cloakers and guard you, as long as you share part of the profits.
counter two: Bait, and carry a cyno, if they attack and cyno in, you can in turn cyno in your own response feet.
counter three: Make yourself an unappetizing target. A fleet isn't going to hot drop in for a target that is worthless, and a cloaker won't even bother attacking if he think he will lose his ship.
counter four: fit all your indy systems with Cynosural System Jammer. That right away remove the effectivness of a cloaking hot dropper.

my god, look at all those counters that already exist...and you want more?



All ships in the unknown provide a infinite threat potential, as until you engage into combat, and scan(normally a combination of the two) you don't know how a ship is fitted, an you don't know what kind of backup is supporting him.

The true problem falls here, and I shall quote.

You make good points here, though. The key points are that even players in nulsec, specifically the rank and file masses that populate most alliances, are risk averse and will do anything they can to keep from being attacked when they aren't prepared.

I still feel that local control, though, should be in the hands of the local owner of the substructure. Take it away from DED, and give it to the corporation that runs the system. If they want local, so be it. If they don't, so be it. And make it something that can be interrupted by an attacking playerbase.

I feel wholeheartedly that 99% of all corporations in nulsec would have a local substation in their system within a day of this change.

What will a defender do without local:

First hour or so will be spent trying to work out if the numbers reported on the map are blue or not, some alliances might become competent at this, but it might take anything from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours, and it is likely in that period that they will be safed up, not playing by the way.

If the defenders are numerous they will have scouts on gates, if very numerous will have scouts on key gates and will have people checking jumps around the region/constellation. Result, people spending less time playing and more flicking through maps.

Defender scouts have to be on the ball at gates, they have a short time to get the ship type and name of cloaked ships coming through and may miss some due to RL.

Ratters will have to get aligned as soon as possible and use ships that can work aligned, damn back to missile boats, yawn...

The Defender while checking his scouts on gates, checking maps and clicking D-scan every second will also be trying to PvE. To say this is impossible for a single person is an understatement, It’s pretty tough for a team of 5.

If you are in the Australian TZ you are screwed, because there are less people playing.

You need to have people spread around the system to D-scan to catch people logging in on D-scan.

What is the result of this, well it’s is too much effort to assess risk, so what will happen, well LHA Tarawa nailed it in his posts.

NB Even though people mine in groups the vast majority of players PvE solo, though doing CA's in small fleets is fun, people will not be able to just go and play, they will have to organise simple ratting, so at the end of all this it becomes too much effort and I predict that the majority of people will just head back to HS. Null Sec will have islands in which certain alliances will try to control their space, however as this will only be as a function of their ability to hold against others there will be a fight for resources, again many people will just head back to HS. Over time however when all the PvP players have got bored blue balling each other and either left the game or got into FW people would trickle back, but it would be few and far between.

The only change I would propose is to make it so that if there has been no activity on that toon for 4 hours which should cover any reasonable AFK reason, the toon logs and that applies to stations too. There is no other change required, I did see some AFK cloakers using a bot, but hopefully CCP will pick up on that and ban them. No changes are required to cloaking.

In terms of the impossibility of catching people with local, if I was CCP I would look at the issue where you are reported in local around 2 seconds before you actually arrive and can do anything, is it possible to remove that. Then see how it develops.

Another thing CCP should do is open up a completely new region which is the same as 0.0 but without local and the intel detailed above and see how that develops, because people who think they can use WH space as an example are missing the most important thing that defines 0.0, force projection via cyno's.

Removed some attack guff

So my option is to play russian roulette and hope the guy loading all six chambers accidently miss one? Covops ships are only vunerable when they choose to be. That is 100% safety because all initiative is in the hands of the cloaker--- he simply does not leave himself vunerable when there is anyone around to exploit that.

It honestly does not matter if they have a cyno or not, because there is no way for you to know that. Logically any cloaked ship must be considered to be infinitely dangerous because there is no way to know and the potential exists in game.

It's nothing like ships in station or in POS... not only are you in their space, and thus initiative is yours, not theirs, but they are also in known locations that can be engaged and destroyed



I'm not a Nullbear. I don't go out there anymore because it's not worth the hassle. I don't like playing space pinata for mouth breathing baby eaters. When mission fits can be competitive to PvP fits, I may return. However, to your counters:

1) Cloaked Cyno logically is treated as sufficient force to destroy myself and my whole fleet. No matter how much I bring, Cloaked Cyno must be treated as more, and because it has 100% safety and initiative in engaging it should be considered suicide to perform operations with one in system unless all systems in jump range are monitored for enemy fleets. If the Cyno ship was vunerable to hunting, this would be a manageable risk, but the combination of cloak & cyno is not.

2) Bait only works on active players. If I am in a large alliance with a capital ship combat wing on tap, this is reasonable except for the lack of effort required for enemies to maintain that threat indefinitely.

3) This is stupid. I am expected to rely on the mercy and generosity of my enemies simply because I am a worthless target? Not only are there a disproportionate amount of players that kill you just to hear you scream about it, but flying such a worthless ship would be less fun in MY gameplay. Don't blame victims for the crimes of those who assault them... I don't want effortless ISK, just the ability to match my efforts to the risk involved.

4) As already discussed, If I can depley a Cynojammer, then I likely also have the Alliance sized combat fleet on tap. I already stated I have no problem dealing with AFK cloakers in systems with cynojammers.

The thread was about why the AFK cloakers are so hated. IMO it's because of the disproportionate risk they project while being 100% safe doing it. In areas where they can't do that, they are not a problem. If I happen to be in one of the big alliances, they are no problem. If I have the resources to maintain constant vigilance on every system in jump range, they are no problem. For anyone else, they are a real problem that scales from 0 to infinity with no counters.




If you can find where it is and engage it the threat becomes manageable. He may hotdrop you, but you can manage that by going out in a cloaked scout yourself. If he can be engaged you can make the judgement on if you have sufficient forces on hand to do the job. If he does not have 100% of the initiative, then you have options other than hoping he decides not to kill you.

I'm not afraid of risk, I just want the ability to make semi-informed decisions about that risk.



My bad, I meant 100 million, not thousand.