Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You may have a point regarding activity INSIDE the mission.

However, at the entry point itself, is an ideal ambush spot.

I don't do a lot of missions where this happens, so maybe you know.
If you log out inside, when you log back in, are you dumped at the entrance, or where you were before?

Honestly, I've never logged out in a mission. Since you warp back to location though, I imagine you'd land on the warp in.

That was just a history lesson, and this predated the whole BLOPS thing.

Bombers back then did not fire torpedos, just cruise missiles. They could not warp while cloaked, but like todays blops got a speed bonus tied to skill while cloaked.

I agree that you don't need the cyno to be successful in either k-space or w-space, but the presence of the cyno greatly complicates the afk cloaky issue in k-space.

I actually find it quite interesting that anyone would suggest that the cloaky cyno issue was a separate issue from afk cloaky issue. To put it simply, if the only thing in my system was a solo cloaky, which I can never afford to assume to be afk no matter how long it resisted my baiting ops, and I KNEW that the cloaky could not light a cyno, I would have ZERO ISSUE WITH THE CLOAKY. The only time the cloaky becomes an issue for me is when the possibility exists that it may be able to light a cyno and that there may be a group of unlimited size on the other side able to jump through (I don't mind blob warfare when the mass has to travel through gates where they can be scouted). Most null sec people don't mind dealing with a solo stealth bomber or recon, so the afk cloaky issue is really about the fear of the blob hotdrop.

Since the afk cloaky fear appears only in the presence of the threat of blob hotdrops, I believe that it is reasonsable to re-focus this afk cloaky thread on cloaky cynos. TBPH, I really don't care if any player is afk, touching their input devices, or touching other things, because the only way to remove the possibility that the player is active is to auto-signout. So unless there is a proposal to auto-signout based on amount of time since last interacting with the client or based on multiple webcams covering the area around the client to determine if there is any person able to see or interact with the client, it doesn't make sense to take about "afk" and none of that addresses the issue of players avoiding at all costs the hotdrop threat by cloakies, only counterable when they de-cloak like when activating a stargate to move between systems.

So, in summary, to me, the cloaky cyno is not a subset by rather the entirety of the issue with afk cloakies: because no one can afford to assume they are afk and the only time we cannot deal with them engaging even our pve ships is when the cyno is a possibility. I hope that clarifies everything surrounding my focus and emphasis on the cyno part of this issue for you.

Added: The BLOPS cyno/bridge brings a similar issue, but the decreased range and dps makes it much easier to deal with. I am not sure if anything needs to be addressed regarding BLOPS cynos, but for now it is probably safe enough to neglect the covert cyno; any changes to the covert cyno would necessarily be quite different from treatment of the regular cyno. Since all cynos are really whs, a mass jump limit and total mass limit for each seems quite reasonable and helpful to these issues.

I disagree that it would require "randomness" to achieve this variation. I agree that it shouldn't be a dice roll as to who wins, but I believe such variation should - and can - exist, and could be tailored such that it comes from smarts, skill, diligence of the players involved. It wouldn't be "random", but would instead be based on the inherent differences between both individual players, and corporation and alliances.

In all honesty, I used to see a lot of that in wormhole space. I believe that the removal of local coupled with the much more limited ability to project force (200 capitals supers can't just be brought in if things go awry) are what allow for this to happen in wormhole space.

Your childish attempt to smear me by simply saying I haven't figured out how to catch him means nothing to me, it demonstrates your own inability to argue your point. However, for the sake of argument... how about you tell me what ways there are to catch him? Prove your statement correct, friend. Remember though that Lucas himself has stated that if he does everything right under the current mechanics he can escape every time (discounting things like glitches).

It is not entitlement to ask that both players of a game have a chance to win the game, even Lucas agrees that those chances should exist.

Additionally, you keep suggesting that people should "find others that want to fight"... but that's not how eve works. It isn't a game where you enter a consensual PVP arena. The entire game is the arena, by signing up you agree to fight.

I've omitted the rest of your post because you again lied about my intentions and position: I am not asking for things to be served on a silver platter, only that opportunities actually exist.

Well what if part of the "perfect" steps you had to take depended on things that inherently varied.

For example - and this is purely an example, I'm not suggesting this as part of a fix - if one of the steps, as a hunter or a local, was simply asking corpmates something: Have you seen anyone in the surrounding few systems in the last hour? How long as XX been sitting in system YY? Did anyone see what ship XX was in? If you ask at 4am when everyone in your corp is asleep, there will be less intel, and the outcome may then be different.

Or if, as another example, gathering intel used modules and skills (the same way probes do, but I don't mean probes in particular). In this case, the effectiveness of what you're doing is based on which version of the modules you bought and your skills. Perhaps you only took Relevant Skill to level 4, as thats good enough 90% of the time... but one day you encounter a hunter who has it at 5, and they have a slight advantage this time.

Of course, with that latter example you could then argue that you are not "doing your job perfectly" unless you have the skills maxed out and the best modules possible... but realistically thats fine, because people make those concessions all the time, otherwise everyone in wormhole space would have virtue set implants :p

Say there were some modules or skills related to this, if you took the time to train them all to five, and are willing to buy the best version of the mods and have them fitted then I think that's good and at that point I have little problem with you being able to regularly escape. You've put in a substantial investment, or made a compromise with your fitting - as a result you should have better chances :)

I still don't think you should have absolute certainty, but I think new more involved mechanics could still allow for such variance. In the theoretical example where part of it may be relying on corpmates (or alts) to gather parts of the intel, the mechanics of this theoretical New Intel Gathering procedure could be such that doing it entirely yourself with alts makes it inherently less of a sure thing. A single person attempting to use four alts to watch - or even better, actually perform some intel gathering actions - is more likely to miss something than four separate people. And even if you could do it sufficiently, it acts as a considerable trade off for the result you want

All i was saying is that people do get caught by fast ships jumping to the right grav, thus showing that the claims of having no chance to kill are not entirely accurate.

The bit we are talking back and forth which I'm still not sure is getting across is that any mechanic can be mastered. If both sides fully master their mechanics, there has to be a winner and a loser, and that result will not change. unless one side or the other makes some kind of error, the result will always be the same.
And that's what happens at the moment. If I make no errors, I escape, no matter how perfect the tackler. Note, that doesn't mean I effortlessly survive. It takes effort to ensure I am always positioned right, I'm watching local, I'm watching regional intel and I'm not looking away, ever. If using my hauler, I'm having to ensure there's sufficient clear systems around me to get an emergency warp out before taking him out.
If local were to go, but a new method of detecting an entry into the system were to come about, I'd master that, and the position would be the same. If they made it so it worked the other way, that a cloaker doing it right could always catch me, I'd find something else to do, since I would be losing material value for no reason.

Yeah, that's right. But beyond a certain point C=1 rendering the random element useless. There's also a part of it that deals with glancing hits, smashing hits and their damage dealt. But that's generally predictable enough to ignore the randomness beyond a per-hit scale. Things like speeds, acceleration, agility, scrambling, these things are all static. Everything that goes into the scenario of a cloaker jumping into system and catching a miner is static and predictable.