Player Features and Ideas Discussion

If you don't understand these things then why are you making such game changing suggestions????

And I feel one shouln't be able to simply dock as soon as an hostile presence is announced in local (or 6-7 jumps before due to intell channels) avoiding any risk.

The current system is already strongly unbalanced to strongly advantage the defenders/owners. Wasn't always so, are changes they made in the last years that caused a stagnant boredom.

The defender can already rely on being in their home system, having his hangar there, unlimited reship, corporation and alliance help. POS, station, blobs, gatecamps, unlimited intelligence from local.... nerfing the room left for a cov op intruder equal to totally lock those systems.

That's what null-bears want.

So they can sit 24/7 like fat ISK-pigs 100% safe in the more profittable areas of the game. Alone and AFK.
This is not good for the general gameplay.

Insert shameless self-promotion here -------->

:-)

Double post

Ok, I am missing something here.

Are you operating under the belief that cloaking is not balanced, and this is how you correct it?

OR

Am I missing where this balancing aspect pays for the ability to hunt cloaked vessels?

Neither, really. It is me looking at cloaking and wondering why the heck they can't be hunted and proposing a way to do it. The idea evolved throughout the thread to figure out a balance to it. The thread died before it got there.

There actually IS a mechanic for hunting/decloaking cloaked ships. The fact that the chances of success are astronomically small does not mean that there is no way. You merely have to pass within 2000m of the cloaked ship...

The false statement that there is "no way" to find them, then proposing a "solution" to fix it is disingenuous at best.

Hello.

As a member of a null-sec industry corporation, I have seen first-hand what a Covert-Ops ship can do to a system while being AFK. Maybe I should start with some facts.

Mining ships are mostly easy kills, with somewhat low defences, and not very good align times. Currently, one of the most used tactics to keep these ships alive is to warp to a safe point whenever Intel suggests there is danger.

When an AFK cloaker is in system, it is considered a bad idea to move out of a safe zone with any ship, as many cloakers have the ability to use cynosaural fields and smartbombs.

It is a commonly used tactic to sit in a system with a cloaked ship while AFK. This prevents mining, and to an extent, local travel, as many pilots know the possible capabilities of many cloaked ships. However, they usually don't even know what ship the cloaker is in.

I realise there is a good reason there is cloaking. It adds a very interesting aspect to the game. The problem many people have, is the fact that an enemy player, corp, or even an alliance, can send one ship into a system, have it sit cloaked for an entire day, and disrupt activity in that system without even pressing a button on the keyboard.

Question: "Hey, why not move to another system?"
Answer: "Because someone is AFK cloaked in that one too!"(And the next one... Oh wait, they have the same last names...)

On the alliance level, this is a huge reward, with little risk. Cripple enemy logistics, for the price of a covert ship. And most of the time, that ship comes home safe after a week.

The biggest problem is AFK cloakers. Some suggestions to fix this are:

Fuel for Cloaks: It would solve the problem. However, this adds extra cost to running a cloaked ship. Some other balance related issues have been raised as well.

Dead-Man Switch: Can be botted around easily

Anti Cloak Weapons/Scanners: This affects not only AFK cloakies, but active ones. This solution would need to be carefully analyzed and well thought out before implementation, as it could easily shift the balance too far.

In threads like this, link to other, older threads on the topic. There are many suggested ideas on this topic, and if you can put your support behind them, and your ideas, they may become a reality.

EDIT: I can see where people are coming from on the Local Chat issue. There are other threads focusing on in this issue. My personal favorite is an option to go into "Silent" mode. It would shut down chat, fleet, market, and any other NeoCom functions that would require outside communications, and in return, you can not be seen on Local. I know that this solution is not perfect, but to me, it makes sense. If you are not communicating, you should not be visible on a chat channel.

The reason is because hunting cloaks while doing nothing about local would be unbalanced. It would buff local as a way to avoid fights and make PvE in null even safer.

That is the current consensus....well unless you ask somebody who just PvEs in null, he'll tell you that cloaks are wildly unbalanced and he should be able to "brawl" with them...then go back to ratting in near perfect safety.

The fact that no one cloaked can stop you using gates, docking, undocking, activating modules, refitting ships, ratting, mining etc etc. The fact that the only one stopping you do those things, is you. Those facts?