Assembly Hall

It's not you. You never know what you're talking about, and pretty much everything you say is a self motivated, selfish lie.

Speaking of which, I'm still waiting on that 2 week skills, 2 million isk, 600 DPS catalyst you promised me.

Who takes more risk

The cov ops bomber that has to sneak through dozens of bubbled systems spending days finding the particular target he can kill...or the ratter that sits in system with 50+ allies ratting isk away? Let's think.

Your scenario is improbable, and to expect this as a common occurance I believe goes too far.

You found a fool mining unprotected, in most likely an NPC null system, and you think this defines the entire experience in null?

Do you seriously believe the rest of us have no experience with which to compare these claims, and see them for the novelty event it really is?

Or maybe you expect us to think you reliably find that many fools in exhumers operating without a clue... anything is possible, but shooting fish in a barrel sounds more challenging than beating someone in a defenseless ship.
How your alleged target got the ISK together, and moved into null, and then promptly forgot how to not get killed in EVE... that's the real mystery.

Expecting this as a normal play experience is not sustainable, precisely because your target's existence the way you described it is not self sustaining.

Hey I want to chime in with two cents here.


Regardless of whether you're on one side and feel you shouldn't have to worry about whether someone is actually at the keyboard or not, or on the other side and feel that people who don't come out when there's a neutral in system are cowards, or any of the positions that are similar or fall somewhere in between, here's the facts.


When someone is AFK cloaking, they're probably off playing another game. By nature, they're encouraged to do so, since just sitting in a system waiting for someone to maybe come out is rather boring.

When someone is AFK cloaking in a system, the natural reaction of the inhabitants is to treat him with caution and never assume he really is AFK. That, in turn, causes the player or players living there to be more likely to log off and go do something else. Whether this is a reasonable choice or the choice of a coward or whatever is utterly irrelevant, as it is a fact.

In other words, what we have with all the mechanics surrounding AFK cloaking is a game system that, regardless of design intent, is causing people to log out of eve and go play other games.

Now how ****ing stupid is that?


So.

• I believe there should absolutely be a way to harass ratters, miners, people out doing PvE in space, and ways to catch and kill the unwary.
• Conversely, I believe that those who are wary and vigilant should be difficult to catch.
• I believe that means should be available to simultaneously encourage a PvE pilot to stay on field and fight instead of flee and reward them for choosing to do so/punish them for fleeing... the ESS is a pretty decent example of this.

Unfortunately, as it stands, the definition of "wary" is far too low thanks to how local works (note: simply removing it is not the solution), there's little in the way to encourage someone to choose to stand and fight, and even if they do, the nature of EVE PvE tends to require specialized fits that do not hold up well in PvP, making that choice a death sentence. Address those things with a revamp to local & intel gathering, more reasons to stand and fight, and a PvE revamp to bring PvP and PvE closer together and you're most of the way there. Finish it off by adding some means of hunting down cloaked ships, balanced such that those that are active and wary (the same requirement we're imposing on ratters) can evade detection but the unwary or AFK die in a fire, and we've got a solved problem.

Simple, right?

Simple....
If only this was the case.

We actually have a significant number voicing the opinion that the blue donut's very existence should preclude any need to do more than man a gate camp, and possibly anchor a cyno jammer.

Once these are done, they seem to effectively want very dull PvE play, where mining and ratting are immune from sustained threat short of a massive sov claiming fleet.

I understand many players view PvE as the necessary evil to be overcome, so they can do other things in EVE that are not self sustaining with ISK for them.
But I find their desire to keep their perceived timesink to a minimum is actually dumbing down what I want to enjoy about the game, clever play in ships not requiring massive hordes to operate with.

Mining, and equally ratting, are valid primary play interests, and deserve interesting interaction mechanics.

This game can be the anti-WoW, and make the perceived grinding of other games into so much more than somnolent drudgery.

I had another suggestion brought to me in game. I think there are both pros and cons to it.
Anchorable Module - similar mechanics to I hub it can be upgraded with different modules.
Lore: module is similar to concord technology used to monitor criminal activity by Capsuleers.
1.0 - 0.8 owned by empire faction and would be at max level.
0.7-0.6 owned by empire faction but not fully maxed - ship types, cloaked vessels excluded.
(concord can already see cloaked vessels)
0.5 - 0.1 owned by empire faction but upgradeable by capsulers, destructible with faction standing loss
0.0 - -1.0 anchorable by Capsuleer organization with Sov only, destructible.
NPC null space by NPC faction and is upgradable. destructible, with faction standing loss

UI - works with auto scan, D scan and probe scan in addition to what's already in place. Could be an additional tab.

This module opens a system scan depending on upgrades from instant scans to 5 min delayed scan of pilot beacons in system.
upgraded to include ship types dependent on level of SOV and upgrade affect accuracy and update time
upgrade to include cloaked vessel type only dependant on level of SOV and upgrade affect accuracy and update time
upgrade to include boost to combat scan probe of a faction variant that will allow location of cloaked vessels within 100 km - 15 km
accuracy affected by level of upgrade and level of SOV

This is the general Idea, I think it has merit but I know it also has drawbacks. So far it is the most balanced Idea I have been presented with.
I ask you all for your opinions.

Agreed, I think the intention was that once in place the system would work for all pilots regardless of if they lived there or not.
Nikk I like you idea as well, please repost and give comparisons. they are similar in goal but use different methods to get there.

No offense but your word means literally nothing to me because:

1. You're using an alt name. I can claim I fly titans using an alt even though I haven't ever touched one.
2. You talk about "50 km range" which means you EFTed up a poorly skilled bomber or you're using rage torps for something other than structures which again shows your inexperience flying bombers.
3. Mining ships are actually pretty sturdy and don't die like "kindling on a roaring flame" to solo bombers.

I'm sorry but there's zero credibility here, neither are your arguments good in and by themselves. Finding a target is one thing, finding a proper target is entirely different. And what about the 0.0 systems that are 20-30 jumps in from empire? You want to limit the range of access to bombers too because if people can't leave their bombers out in space, they'll need to make a trip back as well. You simply want to have your little theme park corner and are using fake credentials to talk about how you want pvp to "be more challenging."

Obligatory "post with your main."



No.

Mynna, while you have experience in Eve, it seems to be limited more so to the industrial/economic side of things. And that's great, we need those things. But you proposed things in the past that limit the "little guy" when fighting the bigger enemy, for obvious reasons imo. Your last notable that I remember proposal was concerning the siphon units and oh how terrible it is that now people that own poses sucking billions out of moons might have to undock a ship and pop a siphon or two.

In any case, you base your argument off of two weak assumptions:

1. The "Cloaky afker" is off playing another video game. You have no way of knowing that, this is just opinion.
2. Likewise the cloaky afker makes other people go afk and play other games.

In this manner you frame the argument as if cloaking in its current form is bad for the game as a whole. And this might work into scaring CCP to do something but I'm not sure we're as inclined to follow through with the fallacy. All you did was propose a weak and vague "something needs to be done."

There is a solution but the ratters here seem bothered by it which exposes their line of argument better than anything else. That solution is to remove the cloaked ship from local. No more dreaded "are they there, are they not" scenario. You don't know and that's that. Ah! But that's a problem isn't it? Because now you have to actually fit your pve ship as a pvp ship. Well there you go mynna, this also "brings pvp and pve more in line with one another." And it's all done via a simple patch.

If it is done correctly, and an intel system is put into place which both rewards effort and allows for human failing, then it could be a really good thing.

Especially, if one of the rewarded efforts is to gain knowledge of a ship which would otherwise go unseen.
The ability to hunt cloaked objects, as such, only feels balanced when not being told when to look by a free and automatic source.

I don't want the game playing itself for me, especially when dealing with aspects I feel favor my strengths as a player, such as attention to detail.

Yes I respect him, I think that he writes very good articles on EN24 and have told him so.

I certainly do not agree with the use of fuel nor do I think that there should be an easy way to decloak the camper, I just hope that CCP has more d/c's for ahem cloaky AFK campers, which may actually be what is happening.

I have hunted cloaky campers a lot since I started playing, I have also been camped quite a lot, my first sov 0.0 alliance was SAS and when I arrived in B-7 there was some very effective Stealth Bombers run by Test in the system, it was me who setup a group of people who went after them in covert ops. Ever since that time I have hunted campers and pushed people to operate regardless of them, in fact my latest kill on my second account is a fail AFK cloaky camper which I manipulated over a period of time so that he had a vulnerability so that I could kill him. Seraph's suggestion would prevent me from having any chance of getting them, its difficult enough as it is, especially in terms of those that just do area denial, this loser I killed was in fact doing area denial and smack and the smack part was his failure.

You can interact with cloaky campers with the current mechanics, its basically a case of forcing them to interact with you by using your system regardless, then you may lose a ship but you will then get intel and if you are clever you can also get a kill or two.

I don't like the way that they actually force people not to play Eve, but apart from that I like it as it is.

I have some suggestions, forced d/c after a period of inactivity or the very specialised probes requiring max skills and implants to get a fix within 20 km, but even that one I don't like as a cloaked ship should be cloaked, another alternative is to have the cloak ship blinded by reduced D-Scan abilities. But the current system enables a certain amount of cat and mouse play, if you are dealing with someone who really is a hunter.

I understand that CCP is looking at alternatives to local, CCP has to understand that space needs to be vast, so all this other intel like NPC's killed, people in system, etc. will have to go too if local is removed, I could live without local if the hunters had to really hunt instead of opening up the map and saying ooooh NPC kills in system XYZ goes there and wham bang gets a easy kill.

Anyway I get the feeling that you have a balanced view of the issues which I like, so good luck in working out the right balance on this issue, from what you said its good to see that CCP see the issue around people not playing because of it, though in reality if people do not have alternatives then they have failed in terms of strategic thinking, for example the most stupid thing a renter can do is rent a single very high truespace sov system, that has to be the most crass decision anyone can make...